300 
DAVID LIVINGSTONE , THE BELOVED MISSIONARY ; 
he passed to and fro at his work, he would catch, now a word, and now 
a sentence from its open page. With learning came the appetite for 
learning; and every evening, after the factory work was done, the lad 
would pore over his books till midnight, and even later. Here we see 
the strength and tenacity of the Scottish character, for he had to be 
at work in the factory by six o’clock next morning, and he did not 
leave it before eight o’clock at night. Fourteen hours of labor, with 
but two intervals for meals, might well have taken all the strength 
and sapped all the determination of a lad of ten; and it is, indeed, a 
pleasant reflection that the humane legislation of later years has ren¬ 
dered such a state of things impossible, or at any rate illegal. 
Livingstone was about nineteen years of age when he determined 
to prepare for the life of a medical missionary, and it is again charac¬ 
teristic of his nationality that he should have set about this task, 
infinitely more difficult then than now, without seeking aid or influ¬ 
ence from any person or society. He was by this time a “spinner,” 
and the wages he earned in summer sufficed to support him in winter 
at the neighboring city of Glasgow, whither he went to get the benefit 
of the Greek divinity and medical lectures of its university. His first 
session was in the winter of 1836-37, and on its conclusion he returned 
to his labor at the Blantyre mill. 
During the two years at Glasgow, Livingstone largely developed 
the scientific side of his nature. His very liberality in theology was 
owing to his perfectly impartial method of testing every question. 
Had he been more of a theologian, it is quite conceivable he might have 
lost much of that primitive Christian spirit which marked his whole 
life, and without doubt contributed largely to his success in dealing 
with the raw African. He has told us himself that, when he was 
advised to join the London Missionary Society, he was attracted by 
its “perfectly unsectarian character.” “It sends,” he wrote, “neither 
episcopacy, nor presbyterianism, nor independency, but the Gospel of 
Christ, to the heathen. This,” he adds, “exactly agreed with my ideas 
of what a missionary society ought to do.” 
During his second season at Glasgow, Livingstone forwarded an 
application to this Society, and, his offer being provisionally accepted, 
he went to London in 1838 to further his interests. He was sent by the 
