The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His FamilyBlaikie, William Garden
Religion
The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family
Blaikie, William Garden
Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
Dr. Livingstone asked Dr. Stewart to commend her spirit to God, and
along with Dr. Kirk they kneeled in prayer beside her. In less than an
hour, her spirit had returned to God. Half an hour after, Dr. Stewart
was struck with her likeness to her father, Dr. Moffat. He was afraid to
utter what struck him so much, but at last he said to Livingstone, "Do
you notice any change?" "Yes," he replied, without raising his eyes from
her face,--"the very features and expression of her father."
Every one is struck with the calmness of Dr. Livingstone's notice of his
wife's death in _The Zambesi and its Tributaries_. Its matter-of-fact
tone only shows that he regarded that book as a sort of official report
to the nation, in which it would not be becoming for him to introduce
personal feelings. A few extracts from his Journal and letters will show
better the state of his heart.
"It is the first heavy stroke I have suffered, and quite takes away my
strength. I wept over her who well deserved many tears. I loved her when
I married her, and the longer I lived with her I loved her the more. God
pity the poor children, who were all tenderly attached to her, and I am
left alone in the world by one whom I felt to be a part of myself. I
hope it may, by divine grace, lead me to realize heaven as my home, and
that she has but preceded me in the journey. Oh my Mary, my Mary! how
often we have longed for a quiet home, since you and I were cast adrift
at Kolobeng; surely the removal by a kind Father who knoweth our frame
means that He rewarded you by taking you to the best home, the eternal
one in the heavens. The prayer was found in her papers--'Accept me,
Lord, as I am, and make me such as Thou wouldst have me to be.' He who
taught her to value this prayer would not leave his own work unfinished.
On a letter she had written, 'Let others plead for pensions, I wrote to
a friend I can be rich without money; I would give my services in the
world from uninterested motives; I have motives for my own conduct I
would not exchange for a hundred pensions.'
"She rests by the large baobab-tree at Shupanga, which is sixty feet in
circumference, and is mentioned in the work of Commodore Owen. The men
asked to be _allowed_ to mount guard till we had got the grave built up,
and we had it built with bricks dug from an old house.
"From her boxes we find evidence that she intended to make us all
comfortable at Nyassa, though she seemed to have a presentiment of an
early death,--she purposed to do more for me than ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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