The Story of Westminster Abbey

by Violet Brooke-Hunt

"We being anxious upon public grounds to show our respect for the memory of the late William Wilberforce, and being also satisfied that public honours cannot be more fitly bestowed than upon such benefactors of mankind, earnestly request that he may be buried in Westminster Abbey, and that we, with others who agree with us in these sentiments, may have permission to attend the funeral."

So to the Abbey he was brought. All public business was suspended, and public men of every rank followed him to the grave. Members of Parliament were there in numbers to show their reverence for one whose eloquence had ever been put to the noblest uses, and, fitly enough, his body was laid close to the tombs of Pitt and Fox.

"If you carry this point in your life, that life will be far better spent than in being prime minister many years," a much-loved friend had said to Wilberforce when he first resolved to devote himself to the cause of the slave, and to set aside all thought of his own career and ambition. The young enthusiast had counted the cost, but it had not changed him from his determination, and though he lived and died plain William Wilberforce, member of parliament, the Abbey roll of honour is made richer by his name, and he rests worthily in the Statesmen's Corner, great as any of those among whom he lies.

Just as Wilberforce was nearing the close of his life, a young spinner in some mills near Glasgow, glowing with enthusiasm, was resolving to offer himself as a medical missionary to China or Africa. David Livingstone, for he it was, came of homely Scottish stock.

"The only point of family tradition I feel proud of is this," he declared. "One of my forefathers, when on his death-bed, called his children round him and said, 'I have searched diligently throughout all the traditions of our family, and I never could find there was a dishonest man among them.... So I leave this precept with you, Be honest.'"

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

And perfectly honest David Livingstone certainly was to the end of his days. Though he went to work in the mills when ten years old, his love of books made him learn eagerly in every spare moment and on so late into the night, that his mother, half in anger, half in pride, often went to him at midnight and carried off every available light. However David was a sturdy youth, or twelve hours' work each day in the factory added to six hours' reading would have ruined his health. He was twenty-five when he offered himself to the London Missionary Society, and he was sent for a three months' trial to a training-place in Essex. But when he had to deliver his first sermon, every idea fled from his brain. "I have forgotten all I had to say, friends," he announced frankly, and left the pulpit. But for his other sterling qualities, this would have put an end to his career. As it was, he was given another three months and came successfully out of the ordeal, after which he went for two years to a London hospital. Africa was to be his destination, "Don't go to an old station," Dr. Moffat, the veteran missionary, said to him on the eve of his ordination. "But push on to the vast unoccupied district to the north, where on a clear morning I have seen the smoke of a thousand villages no missionary has ever reached." Kuruman, an important station of the Missionary Society, more than seven hundred miles up country, was his first halting-place after leaving Cape Town, and he set himself with great energy to learn the language of the natives, acting at the same time as their doctor. In this last capacity he soon made his name famous, and patients came to him over enormous distances. Splendid patients they were too, he always declared, perfectly obedient and of extraordinary courage. When once he had mastered their language, which he did in a short while, he combined his missionary and medical work very happily.

In 1843 he left Kuruman to form a new station about two hundred miles to the north-east at Mabotsa, and whilst here he married a daughter of Dr. Moffat, a girl who had lived among missionaries for many years, and so was accustomed to the rough, solitary existence which would be her lot. "My time," wrote Livingstone to a friend, "is filled up with building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering, preaching, schooling, teaching, and lecturing, while my wife, in addition to her usual work, makes clothes, soap, and candles, and teaches classes of children."

Gradually it dawned upon Livingstone that a great work awaited him in the interior, but it was a work which he must face alone. "I must not be a more sorry soldier than those who serve an earthly sovereign," he wrote to the Directors of the Mission, to whose care he commended his family. "And so powerfully am I convinced it is the will of God, that I will go, no matter who opposes."