Under Bishop Steere, the successor of Bishop Tozer, the Universities Mission has re-occupied part of the mainland, and the freed-slave village of Masasi, situated between the sea and Nyassa, to the north of the Rovuma, enjoys a measure of prosperity which has never been interrupted during the three or four years of its existence. Other stations have been formed, or are projected, one of them on the eastern margin of the lake. The Church Missionary Society has occupied the shores of Victoria Nyanza, achieving great results amid many trials and sacrifices, at first wonderfully aided and encouraged by King Mtesa, though, as we write, we hear accounts of a change of policy which is grievously disappointing. Lake Tanganyika has been occupied by the London Missionary Society.
The "Société des Missions Évangéliques," of Paris, has made preparations for occupying the Barotse Valley, near the head-waters of the Zambesi. The Livingstone Inland Mission has some missionaries on the Atlantic Coast at the mouth of the Congo, and others who are working inward, while a monthly journal is edited by Mrs. Grattan Guinness, entitled The Regions Beyond. The Baptist Missionary Society has a mission in the same district, toward the elucidation of which the Rev. J. T. Comber's Explorations Inland from Mount Cameroons and through Congo to Mkouta have thrown considerable light.
More recently still, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, having resolved to devote to Africa Mr. Otis's munificent bequest of a million dollars, appointed the Rev. Dr. Means to collect information as to the most suitable openings for missions in Central Africa; and on his recommendation, after considering the claims of seven other localities, have decided to adopt as their field the region of Bihé and the Coanza, an upland tract to the east of Benguela, healthy and suitable for European colonization, and as yet not occupied by any missionary body. Thus the Old World and the New are joining their forces for the evangelization of Africa. And they are not only occupying regions which Livingstone recommended, but are trying to work his principle of combining colonization with missions, so as to give their people an actual picture of Christianity as it is exemplified in the ordinary affairs of life.
Besides missions on the old principle, Medical Missions have received a great impulse through Livingstone. When mission work in Central Africa began to be seriously entertained, men like Dr. Laws, the late Dr. Black, and the late Dr. Smith, all medical missionaries, were among the first to offer their services. The Edinburgh Medical Mission made quite a new start when it gave the name of Livingstone to its buildings. Another institution that has adopted the name for a hall in which to train colored people for African work is the Fisk University, Tennessee, made famous by the Jubilee Singers.
In glancing at these results of Livingstone's influence in the mission field, we must not forget that of all his legacies to Africa by far the highest was the spotless name and bright Christian character which have become associated every where with its great missionary explorer. From the first day of his sojourn in Africa to the last, "patient continuance in well-doing" was the great charm through which he sought, with God's blessing, to win the confidence of Africa. Before the poorest African he maintained self-restraint and self-respect as carefully as in the best society at home. No prevailing relaxation of the moral code in those wild, dark regions ever lowered his tone or lessened his regard for the proprieties of Christian or civilized life. Scandal is so rampant among the natives of Africa that even men of high character have sometimes suffered from its lying tongue; but in the case of Livingstone there was such an enamel of purity upon his character that no filth could stick to it, and none was thrown. What Livingstone did in order to keep his word to his poor attendants was a wonder in Africa, as it was the admiration of the world. His way of trusting them, too, was singularly winning. He would go up to a fierce chief, surrounded by his grinning warriors, with the same easy gait and kindly smile with which he would have approached his friends at Kuruman or Hamilton. It was the highest tribute that the slave-traders in the Zambesi district paid to his character when for their own vile ends they told the people that they were the children of Livingstone. It was the charm of his name that enabled Mr. E.D. Young, while engaged in founding the Livingstonia settlement, to obtain six hundred carriers to transport the pieces of the Ilala steamer past the Murchison Cataracts, carrying loads of great weight for forty miles, at six yards of calico each, without a single piece of the vessel being lost or thrown away. The noble conduct of the band that for eight months carried his remains toward the coast was a crowning proof of the love he inspired.
Nearly every day some new token comes to light of the affection and honor with which he was regarded all over Central Africa. On 12th April, 1880, the Rev. Chauncy Maples, of the Universities Mission, in a paper read to the Geographical Society, describing a journey to the Rovuma and the Makonde country, told of a man he found there, with the relic of an old coat over his right shoulder, evidently of English manufacture. It turned out, from the man's statement, that ten years ago a white man, the donor of the coat, had traveled with him to Mataka's, whom to have once seen and talked with was to remember for life; a white man who treated black men as his brothers, and whose memory would be cherished all along the Rovuma Valley after they were all dead and gone; a short man with a bushy moustache, and a keen piercing eye, whose words were always gentle, and whose manners were always kind; whom, as a leader, it was a privilege to follow, and who knew the way to the hearts of all men.
That early and life-long prayer of Livingstone's--that he might resemble Christ--was fulfilled in no ordinary degree. It will be an immense benefit to all future missionaries in Africa that, in explaining to the people what practical Christianity means, they will have but to point to the life and character of the man whose name will stand first among African benefactors in centuries to come. A foreigner has remarked that, "in the nineteenth century, the white has made a man out of the black; in the twentieth century, Europe will make a world out of Africa." When that world is made, and generation after generation of intelligent Africans look back on its beginnings, as England looks back on the days of King Alfred, Ireland of St. Patrick, Scotland of St. Columba, or the United States of George Washington, the name that will be encircled by them with brightest honor is that of DAVID LIVINGSTONE. Mabotsa, Chonuane, and Kolobeng will be visited with thrilling interest by many a pilgrim, and some grand memorial pile in Ilala will mark the spot where his heart reposes. And when preachers and teachers speak of this man, when fathers tell their children what Africa owes to him, and when the question is asked what made him so great and so good, the answer will be, that he lived by the faith of the Son of God, and that the love of Christ constrained him to live and die for Africa.