THE BACHELOR WHO CHANGED HIS MIND; OR, LOVE STRONGER THAN LIONS
“Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
For love is heaven, and heaven is love!”
“How often one dead joy appears
The platform of some better hope.”
DO tell me about that dreadful lion! What did you think of when he seized you?" asked Mary Moffat, as she walked with David Livingstone through the garden created at the Kuruman by her father's toil and skill.
“I was thinking what part of me he would eat first," was the reply.
“But do tell me about it," said Mary. "We have had our share of danger, but I have not before heard a story just like yours.”
“I will try to do so," he answered. “Soon after my arrival here, while waiting for your return from England, I made a tour of 700 miles to view the country. I saw one thing very clearly, that it was no good for white men to crowd together into the South; they must go right into the interior, and open up the deserts, or whatever there may be northward. And I saw that we must reach the people by native agency if we meant to do permanent good. I remember once, on my first journey, I had just left a village about 150 miles from this place; after we had got 10 or 11 miles on our way, a little girl about 11 or 12 years of age ran after our wagon. She had lived some years with a sister who had died. Then strangers took possession of the child, and determined to sell her for their own advantage. They loaded her with beads to make her fetch a higher price. How the little thing sobbed and begged me not to let her be sold! We gave the man all the beads she had on and brought her here. I determined she should not be taken by force. In 1842 I went again into the interior of the Bechuana country, and while passing through the great Kalahari desert, during my stay at Sekomi's village, a woman was devoured by a lion while walking in her garden. Oh, it was fearful to hear her poor children sobbing for her. The valleys resounded with their cries, like the mourning of the African people in sorrow without God!”
“Poor creatures I but what has that to do with your accident? You are giving me an account of your adventures here. I did not ask you to do so.”
“No, but I want to do so for a reason that I have. The chief Sekomi once came to me and said, 'I wish you would change my heart. Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud and angry, proud and angry always.' I lifted my New Testament, but he stopped me and said, I don't want your teaching; I want something to drink, which will at once change my heart, for it is always proud, uneasy, and angry with someone: please give me something to drink.' Poor fellow, I could not make him understand that God alone can change the heart.
“During my wagon journey through the interior of the Bechuana country, I was amused to hear the natives talking about me. They did not know that I understood their speech and heard them say, He is not strong, he is quite, slim, and only appears stout because he puts bags on his legs, he'll soon knock up.' This put me on my mettle and I kept them at the top of their speed for several days until they had to confess themselves beaten. In 1843 I selected the beautiful valley of Mabotsa for a station; a lovely spot, but infested by lions which the natives believed belonged to another tribe, and were therefore hostile to them. Knowing that if one of a herd of lions is killed, the others leave the country, I went with them to try and kill one the next time they attacked the herds. The lions were on a small hill, about a quarter of a mile long, covered over with trees. We formed a circle and drew nearer the animals. The schoolmaster fired at one without hitting him, and the lion broke through the circle and got away. There were still two other lions on the hill but the natives let them escape also. As we were returning towards the village, I saw one of the lions sitting upon a rock with a bush in front of him and fired both barrels into his body. I began to load again, when he sprang upon me, seized me by the shoulder, and shook me as a dog does a rat. A sort of dreamy stupor crept over me.; I felt little pain, but was fully conscious of all that transpired. He had one paw on the back of my head bearing heavily upon me; but when one of our people fired at him, the lion left me and bit one man in the thigh and another in the shoulder. I had on a tartan jacket which I believe saved me from some of the virus, but besides crunching the bone to splinters he left eleven teeth wounds upon my arm.”
“And you came here to be nursed. Now you are cured, you will be going away and forgetting us all, I know!”
“When I was visiting the Bakhatla they allowed me to visit a native iron manufactory, but would not permit my companions to enter the hut, and can you guess the reason?”
“I am a bad hand at guessing, Mr. Livingstone.”
“Well, the reason they allowed me to enter the iron works, was because I was not married and therefore could not bewitch the iron.”
“Well, then, you had better get married as quickly as you can, only don't marry one of our best mission girls!”
“Perhaps someone I know would consent to share my lot at Mabotsa?”
“Oh, you mean Agnes, I suppose; well she is very staid, and her first husband gave her a good character.”
“I don't mean Agnes at all. Listen, Miss Moffat, I am very serious.
“I want to ask you a question-whether you, Mary Moffat, love me enough to become my wife, sharing my mission work at Mabotsa? I've looked carefully all round the question, and I think you will not regret consenting to share my joys and sorrows. No answer! Why do you turn your head? Tears!... Mary, darling, what is the matter? Oh, I understand now; there's no need to speak more about it. You wait here and I'll go and speak to Mr. Moffat and come right back to tell you what he says.”
In a short period he returned.
‘It’s all settled, Mary, "he said," your mother says, though, that it's a blessing I am a plain man. I'm going to start tomorrow to build a house with as many windows as I can put in.... But we must go in, for it is getting nearly supper-time. May God bless and hallow the engagement into which we have now entered, and may we both look to Jesus as our common Friend and Guide.”
After the house had been built by Livingstone's own hands, he brought Mary Moffat to it as his wife, and they commenced active efforts to preach the Gospel to the poor degraded natives.
Livingstone believed heartily in the services of native agents, and intended to found an academy to train preachers for service among their countrymen, but the scheme, through the opposition and jealousy of some of his fellow missionaries, fell through.
Sechele, the chief, went to see him one day, and said: "Look here! Do you ever imagine that the people will be converted by your preaching? I can make them do nothing for me without thrashing them; but if you like, I will call my herdmen out; with our whips of rhinoceros hide, we will soon put them right. I'll make Christians of the lot in a very short time.”
“But that is no good; we must strive to change their minds, then they will themselves alter their lives, O chief, seek the grace of God for thyself, and then seek to lead others to the Jesus who has cased you.”
“I do try, O friend! You have a heart that loves the black man; but you cannot tell how hard it is to get ideas into one's head. We never thought about anything after death before you came; so long as we had plenty of beef and beer, that was all we required. But I do try.”
The jealous folly of his colleague induced Livingstone to give up the house he had built, and upon which he had spent his year's salary of one hundred pounds, and make a new station at Chonwane, some forty miles inland from Mabotsa. Yet the committee at home did not render aid cheerfully in building a new house, though the Livingstones had borne such privations, that upon Mary Livingstone's returning to the Kuruman after two years' absence, the old women of the village crowded around her exclaiming: "Bless me, how lean she is! Has he starved her? Is there no food in the country to which she has been?”
The Livingstones did not stay long at Chonwane; removing to their third residence at Kolobeng, still further inland.
Rising with the sun, after worship, breakfast, and school Mary Livingstone occupied herself in household matters; for butter, candles, and soap had to be manufactured by her toil. After dinner she went off to an infant school. Livingstone himself was occupied by manual labors until about five o'clock, when after tea visits would be paid through the village, finishing the day with a prayer meeting in the house of the chief.
Thoroughly honest, Livingstone refused to form a church of merely nominal adherents; as a missionary he had little of showy success to display, but what success he had was real, and therefore worth all vaunted imitations.
“It is hard to keep on preaching the love of Christ to insensible hearts, but now I feel delight in dwelling upon the love of God, because as contemplated in the example of Christ it warms my own heart, Mary," he said one day to his wife.
“When you went yesterday, David, to help that poor fellow so fearfully injured by the rhinoceros, I was in much distress while you were away. I felt what risk you were running to try to help him, but I knew you would be preserved, because you went to do what you felt to be your duty; and I rejoiced in the love that I felt sure would watch over your path.”
“I came back safely though, dear wife," replied Livingstone. "I don't believe any danger should hinder us from doing what is right, and somehow I believe that God does and ever will protect us.”
In 1849 the long thought compelled the natives to leave the locality of Kolobeng, and Livingstone set out northwards to visit a powerful chief named Sebitaune, who lived beyond a great lake, and ruled one of the largest territories in Africa. Sechele agreed to accompany him, and as the women were compelled to be absent seeking locusts, the men also going long distances to hunt for food to supply the lack caused by the drought, Livingstone felt that he could leave his station, where indeed all Christian work was for the time impossible.