His desire to be a missionary to China--Medical missions--He studies at Glasgow--Classmates and teachers--He applies to London Missionary Society--His ideas of mission work--He is accepted provisionally--He goes to London--to Ongar--Reminiscences by Rev. Joseph Moore--by Mrs. Gilbert--by Rev. Isaac Taylor--Nearly rejected by the Directors--Returns to Ongar--to London--Letter to his sister--Reminiscences by Dr. Risdon Bennett--Promise to Professor Owen--Impression of his character on his friends and fellow-students--Rev. R. Moffat in England--Livingstone interested--Could not be sent to China--Is appointed to Africa--Providential links in his history--Illness--Last visits to his home--Receives Medical diploma--Parts from his family.
It was the appeal of Gutzlaff for China, as we have seen, that inspired Livingstone with the desire to be a missionary; and China was the country to which his heart turned. The noble faith and dauntless enterprise of Gutzlaff, pressing into China over obstacles apparently insurmountable, aided by his medical skill and other unusual qualifications, must have served to shape Livingstone's ideal of a missionary, as well as to attract him to the country where Gutzlaff labored. It was so ordered, however, that in consequence of the opium war shutting China, as it seemed, to the English, his lot was not cast there; but throughout his whole life he had a peculiarly lively interest in the country that had been the object of his first love. Afterward, when his brother Charles, then in America, wrote to him that he, too, felt called to the missionary office, China was the sphere which David pointed out to him, in the hope that the door which had been closed to the one brother might be opened to the other.
When he determined to be a missionary, the only persons to whom he communicated his purpose were his minister and his parents, from all of whom he received great encouragement[8]. He hoped that he would be able to go through the necessary preparation without help from any quarter. This was the more commendable, because in addition to the theological qualifications of a missionary, he determined to aquire those of a medical practitioner. The idea of medical missions was at that time comparatively new. It had been started in connection with missions to China, and it was in the prospect of going to that country that Livingstone resolved to obtain a medical education. It would have been comparatively easy for him, in a financial sense, to get the theological training, but the medical education was a costly affair. To a man of ordinary ideas, it would have seemed impossible to make the wages earned during the six months of summer avail not merely for his support then, but for winter too, and for lodgings, fees, and books besides. Scotch students have often done wonders in this way, notably the late Dr. John Henderson, a medical missionary to China, who actually lived on half-a-crown a week, while attending medical classes in Edinburgh. Livingstone followed the same self-denying course. If we had a note of his house-keeping in his Glasgow lodging, we should wonder less at his ability to live on the fare to which he was often reduced in Africa. But the importance of the medical qualification had taken a firm hold of his mind, and he persevered in spite of difficulties. Though it was never his lot to exercise the healing art in China, his medical training was of the highest use in Africa, and it developed wonderfully his strong scientific turn.
[Footnote 8: Livingstone's minister at this time was the Rev. John Moir, of the Congregational church, Hamilton, who afterward joined the Free Church of Scotland, and is now Presbyterian minister in Wellington, New Zealand. Mr. Moir has furnished us with some recollections of Livingstone, which reached us after the completion of this narrative. He particularly notes that when Livingstone expressed his desire to be a missionary, it was a missionary out and out, a missionary to the heathen, not the minister of a congregation. Mr. Moir kindly lent him some books when he went to London, all of which were conscientiously returned before he left the country. A Greek Lexicon, with only cloth boards when lent, was returned in substantial calf. He was ever careful, conscientious, and honorable in all his dealings, as his father had been before him.]