Livingstone has told us that the village of Blantyre, with its population of two thousand souls, contained some characters of sterling worth and ability, who exerted a most beneficial influence on the children and youth of the place by imparting gratuitous religious instruction. The names of two of the worthiest of these are given, probably because they stood highest in his esteem, and he owed most to them, Thomas Burke and David Hogg. Essentially alike, they seem to have been outwardly very different. Thomas Burke, a somewhat wild youth, had enlisted early in the army. His adventures and hairbreadth escapes in the Forty-second, during the Peninsular and other wars, were marvelous, and used to be told in after-years to crowds of wondering listeners. But most marvelous was the change of heart that brought him back an intense Christian evangelist, who, in season, and out of season, never ceased to beseech the people of Blantyre to yield themselves to God. Early on Sunday mornings he would go through the village ringing a bell to rouse the people that they might attend an early prayer-meeting which he had established. His temperament was far too high for most even of the well-disposed people of Blantyre, but Neil Livingstone appreciated his genuine worth, and so did his son. David says of him that "for about forty years he had been incessant and never weary in good works, and that such men were an honor to their country and their profession." Yet it was not after the model of Thomas Burke that Livingstone's own religious life was fashioned. It had a greater resemblance to that of David Hogg, the other of the two Blantyre patriarchs of whom he makes special mention, under whose instructions he had sat in the Sunday-school, and whose spirit may be gathered from his death-bed advice to him: "Now, lad, make religion the every-day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; for if you do, temptation and other things will get the better of you." It would hardly be possible to give a better account of Livingstone's religion than that he did make it quietly, but very really, the every-day business of his life. From the first he disliked men of much profession and little performance; the aversion grew as he advanced in years; and by the end of his life, in judging of men, he had come to make somewhat light both of profession and of formal creed, retaining and cherishing more and more firmly the one great test of the Saviour--"By their fruits ye shall know them." CHAPTER II. MISSIONARY PREPARATION. A.D. 1836--1840.