To take their minds off what lay ahead, the two young men set out to see the sights of London. They strolled past Buckingham Palace, where a flag indicated that newly crowned Queen Victoria was in residence. They strolled across London Bridge and passed the Tower of London. On Sunday they went to three different churches. There were so many wonderful sermons to hear in such a large city.
David tried to remember every detail of what he saw so that he could write home and tell his family all about London. He pictured them all sitting around the fire reading his letters and trying to imagine what life was like in such a faraway place.
On Monday morning, David and Joseph Moore took their first exam. Afterwards they walked to Westminster Abbey, where they looked at the graves of Great Britain’s most famous people who had been honored by being buried within the Abbey. Little did David know that one day he too would be one of the famous people buried there.
After the second exam on Tuesday morning, both men were interviewed by the directors of the London Missionary Society. Much to David’s relief, both he and Joseph Moore had passed their exams and were officially accepted into the training program. One of the directors explained that they would study for three months under the guidance of the Reverend Richard Cecil, who lived in Chipping Ongar, a small town in Essex. If at the end of that time the Reverend Cecil recommended them as good students, Joseph would go on to further theological training and David to further medical training as the final stage in their preparation to become missionaries. This pleased David greatly. Although he had learned a lot of medical theory while at Anderson College, David hadn’t spent much time treating patients. He looked forward to the opportunity to diagnose diseases and operate on people.
Life at Chipping Ongar was harder than David had anticipated. The Reverend Cecil seemed to not care much for Scottish people. He criticized David’s strong accent, nor did he have many kind words to say about David’s Latin and Greek. The Reverend Cecil was a hard taskmaster, but with great effort, David was able to complete the work he was given. That is, until one Sunday.
David heard a knock at the door of the boardinghouse where he was staying. Then he heard the landlady call his name. “Mr. Livingstone,” she said, “there is a messenger boy here for you.”
David hurried from the parlor into the boardinghouse entrance, where he found the Reverend Cecil’s houseboy. “A letter for you, sir,” said the houseboy, handing the sealed envelope to David.
“Thank you,” replied David, wondering what the Reverend Cecil had to say to him that couldn’t wait until the following day.
David unfolded the letter and read it. “Dear Mr. Livingstone, the minister at Stamford Rivers has sent word to me that he is ill and will not be able to preach tonight. I would like you to take his place. The service begins at 6 p.m., and you will need to be there at 5 p.m. Thank you. Sincerely, Reverend R. Cecil.”
David read the letter through again. He looked at the clock on the mantel. It would take him an hour to walk to Stamford Rivers. Thankfully, he already had a sermon written and memorized. Learning to write good sermons was one of the requirements for missionaries in training. David found this requirement one of the easier things he’d had to do in the training course. He liked to make his thoughts flow logically, and he had a wonderful memory. And even though he had not been expecting to preach his first sermon at such short notice, he was not concerned about it.
Four hours later David was standing in front of the modest-sized congregation. As the strains of the final verse of the hymn faded, David knew it was time to deliver his sermon. He walked confidently to the pulpit and looked out at the congregation. He could hardly believe his eyes! There, right in the front row, sat the Reverend Cecil. A million thoughts suddenly raced through David’s mind. He had to remember not to speak in his Scottish accent. He had to pause between the first and second parts of his sermon to allow the congregation a moment to reflect. He had to remember to raise his voice on the last sentence and look directly at the congregation.
The church was silent as everyone waited for David to begin. But the man who had been able to recite Psalm 119 since he was nine years old could suddenly not remember a single word of his sermon. He stood in the pulpit for a full minute waiting for the first line of the sermon to come to him, but it did not. The Reverend Cecil’s steely blue eyes settled firmly on David as if to say, “Ah ha! I knew you couldn’t do it.”
David opened his mouth. “Friends,” he began calmly, and then, unable to come up with anything else intelligent to say, he blurted, “I have forgotten all I had to say.” With that he slammed his Bible shut, tucked it under his arm, and raced down the aisle and out the front door of the church. He never looked back until he was safely in his room at the boardinghouse with the door shut firmly behind him.
David sat on the edge of his bed, scarcely able to believe what he had just done. Of course, the whole sermon came flooding back to his mind soon after he walked out of the church, but it was too late. He was certain that as a result of this incident, he had just failed the training course with the Reverend Cecil. He was right.
The next morning the Reverend Cecil called David into his office. “As you know,” he began in a droning voice, “a large part of being a missionary is the ability to prepare and preach an adequate sermon. Last night you proved you were not able to do that, and although you have passed the other aspects of the course, I cannot recommend you to the London Missionary Society for further study. I have nothing more to say.”
As David walked back to the boardinghouse, he was grateful that the Reverend Cecil had kept his remarks short. The last thing he wanted was to relive the humiliation of the night before!
“It’s over,” David said gloomily to Joseph Moore as the two of them took an afternoon stroll together. But he was so caught up in his own thoughts and feelings that he hadn’t noticed how depressed Joseph was.
“I know,” said Joseph Moore. “Me too.”
David stopped and looked at his friend. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Joseph looked at the ground as he spoke. “Reverend Cecil has failed me too. He says my marks in Hebrew are not good enough.”
“I’m sorry. What happens now?” asked David.
The question hung in the chilly afternoon air. David had never seriously considered that he would fail the probationary course. He had always been an excellent student, and although he would be the first to admit he was not a gripping speaker, he had assumed he would be able to preach an adequate sermon. How wrong he had been!
The two friends continued in their gloom for two more days until the Reverend Cecil summoned them both back to his office with good news. Although he had recommended that David and Joseph Moore not continue with the mission, the LMS directors had not accepted his recommendation. Instead, they wanted to give both men a second chance and had extended their probationary period for another three months so that Joseph could work on his Hebrew and David on his preaching.
David was glad to have a second chance, though he doubted he would ever please the Reverend Cecil. However, he didn’t flee from the church the next time he was asked to preach, and by the end of the three months, both he and Joseph Moore had passed the course. Joseph went on to Cheshunt College, where he continued studying theology in preparation for missionary work in Tahiti in the South Pacific Ocean. David was invited back to London to continue his medical studies at Charing Cross Hospital under the watchful eye of Dr. Bennett.
David knew he still had a lot to learn about practical medicine, particularly about operating on people. Until this time all the “surgery” he had performed had been on dead corpses, or cadavers, as the bodies medical students practiced on were called. He soon found that operating on a live body was quite different from operating on a dead one. For one thing, the live person flinched and recoiled from the pain of being cut and poked and prodded!
Under the guidance of Professor Owen at the Hunterian Museum, David studied the similarities and differences between humans and animals. He and Professor Owen struck up a strong friendship, and David promised that if he ever found anything interesting on his travels he would be sure to send it back to the professor for display in the museum. When he was not studying, David was out and about in London, taking in all the sights and sounds the bustling city had to offer. He attended a meeting at Exeter Hall, where Queen Victoria’s new husband, Prince Albert, gave his first speech in England. It was a grand occasion, a ceremony to send off the Niger Expedition, which was going to explore a remote area of West Africa. Robert Moffat, a tall, imposing missionary to southern Africa, also spoke at the meeting.
The gathering fired David Livingstone with new enthusiasm to get to the mission field. There was so much work to do. There was just one problem: The British were at war with China over trading restrictions. In 1839, Great Britain had sold forty thousand cases of opium in China. The opium, a very addictive drug, was produced from a special breed of poppies grown in India. The Chinese emperor was furious that a foreign power would dare to sell something as destructive as opium to his people and ordered the British to stop at once. But since a great profit was being made selling the opium in China, the British refused to obey the emperor’s order. As a result, a war broke out between the British and the Chinese. It was called the Opium War, and it was still raging as David Livingstone was making final preparations to set sail for China. All David had left to do was return to Glasgow and take his physician’s examination to qualify as a doctor. However, since a war was raging in China, the London Missionary Society decided it would send no more missionaries to China until peace and calm had returned. The trouble was, no one could predict when that would be, so the London Missionary Society suggested that David go to the West Indies as a missionary once he had qualified as a doctor.
The West Indies, though, was not where David wanted to go. All the mission stations there were well established, and David would be expected to work alongside a large group of other missionaries and practice medicine in a hospital. Although he got along well with others, David had set his mind on being a pioneer missionary. He wanted to walk where no other missionary had walked, treat people who had never seen a European doctor, and preach to those who had never heard the gospel message. The West Indies might be a fine place for other missionaries, but it was not what David Livingstone had in mind. David knew he was a leader, not a follower, and he told the directors of the London Missionary Society so. But when the directors asked him where he would like to go, he had no answer.
Chapter 5
The Smoke of a Thousand Villages
David Livingstone sat at the dinner table in the Aldersgate Street boardinghouse where he was staying. Seated opposite him was the Reverend Robert Moffat, the missionary he had heard speak at Exeter Hall with Prince Albert. The Reverend Moffat was a missionary in southern Africa and was making his first trip home with his family in twenty years. He was staying in the boardinghouse while in London to meet with the directors of the London Missionary Society. David had been a little confused by some of the things the Reverend Moffat had said at the meeting in Exeter Hall. He decided to ask him for some clarification.
“Reverend Moffat,” he began, “all I have read about Africa would lead me to believe that it is populated only around the edges, that the middle is a huge, unpopulated wilderness. Yet you speak as if there are people living deep inland as well as on the coast. What makes you think that?”
