THE KING’S BUSINESS
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And through prayer he (as we see here) crossed rivers, faced poisoned arrows, waded marshes, endured fevers, and, bearing on his back the cross of the African’s agony of slavery, marched on to the little hut at Ilala, where at cockcrow his followers found the faithful disciple who had entered into the presence of his Lord on his knees in intercession for Africa. In celebration of his own last birthday on earth, Livingstone gave himself thus “Birthday.—My Jesus, my King, my Life, my A ll; I again dedicate my whole self to Thee. Accept me, and grant, O gracious Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my task. In Jesus’ name I ask it. Amen. So let it be.—David Livingstone.” Faced by the life of this amazing man, whose life of action was more incessant and fruitful than that of any other Christian of his generation, one is met by the still more astonishing fact that he was greater even than his deeds. We look for the inspiration that was behind him, and we may find it in those words of his which enthralled the undergraduates of Glasgow who had come armed with their pea-shooters and ready for disturbance, but sat in enthralled silence as he told them of his travels, and closed with the words:— “Shall I tell you what sustained me amidst the toil, the hardship and loneliness of my exiled life? It was the promise, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.’ ” A BIBLE CHRISTIAN. The real test of the inner life of a man of action comes in his time of enforced quiet. Livingstone, as he trudged through the Manyuema country stricken and shaken with fever and smitten with sores that stained his path with blood, (Concluded on page 258)
ended?—he set his face resolutely and w i t h stern, unfaltering courage against the hideous atrocities of the slave trade—the bones of slaughtered Africans cracking beneath his feet as he walked across deserted plains where once “the smoke of a thousand villages” had risen in the air. With that “forward tread which meant getting there” he struggled on against increasing weakness, often with bleeding feet, bearing on his bent shoulders the cross of African—slavery. The gleam of the.fellowship of Stanley shone out momentarily, and then flickered out as he turned back alone to face the end. Then he was borne to that hut at Ilala. There, in late hours of the night, by the dim light of the flickering candle, the awed and whispering companions saw the bowed form of their master kneeling by the bedside, his head buried in his hands on the pillow. RELIANCE ON TH E PRAYER LIEE. The forerunner of Christ in Africa had crossed his last river—in prayer— for Africa. When at last he was laid to rest in the “forest of stone”—Westminister Abbey—that story of his fight for slavery was told, at which “both the ears of everyone that heard it tingled.” And the whole world heard. The treaty abolishing slavery in Central and East Africa was signed. Never, surely, were audacity and childlike meekness, intrepid and indomitable courage in face of hydraheaded perils, utter simplicity and the strong meekness that inherits the earth, blended more intimately into a great heroic life. The central secret of each of those qualities (as we look meditatively over them) lies right back there, as we see in a multitude of passages from his journals, in that utter reliance on the prayer life.
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