David Livingstone
On the first day of May, 1873, David Livingstone died at Ilala Hill — a death that closed six decades of life spent in motion across continents, and that fixed his name in the records of exploration, medicine, and missionary work.
Born on 19 March 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, Livingstone pursued an education that moved through Gilbertfield House School, the University of Glasgow, Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, and Imperial College School of Medicine. That sequence of institutions shaped a man who would work simultaneously as a doctor, a geographer, a writer, and a missionary. His faith aligned with Congregationalism, and he served as a pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society. He married Mary Moffat Livingstone, and he conducted his work primarily in the English language as a citizen of the United Kingdom.
The scope of his activities drew recognition from multiple institutions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, affiliations that placed him within the formal scientific culture of his era. He also received the Patron's Medal and the Grande Médaille d'Or des Explorations, awards that acknowledged the geographical dimensions of his career alongside its religious and medical ones. His writings, produced across the years of his work as an explorer and physician, gave him a secondary identity as a writer — a man who recorded as well as traveled.
He died as he had lived: in the field, at Ilala Hill, on 1 May 1873. The Grande Médaille d'Or des Explorations, one of the last significant honors attached to his name, stands as a concrete measure of how his geographical work was received by those who assessed it in his own lifetime.
Quotes by David Livingstone
David Livingstone's insights on:
With others arguments are useless, and the only answer I care to give is the remark of an English sailor, who, on seeing slave-traders actually at their occupation, said to his companion, “Shiver my timbers, mate, if the devil don’t catch these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.
All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one – American, English, Turk – who will help to heal this open sore of the world.
Shall I tell you what supported me through all those years of exile among a people whose language I could not understand and whose attitude towards me we always uncertain and often hostile? It was this: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”.
To be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold, green snake gliding over one’s face is unpleasant.
And although I see few results, future missionaries will see conversions following every sermon. May they not forget the pioneers who worked in the thick gloom with few rays to cheer, except such as flow from faith in the precious promises of God’s Word.
There is a Ruler above, and His Providence guides all things. He is our Friend and has plenty of work for all His people to do. It is such a blessing and a privilege to be led into His work instead of into the service of the hard taskmasters – the Devil and sin.
I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which he made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.