Amanda Smith, Evangelist

Mrs Amanda Smith

Amanda Smith was born in 1837, to a slave family in Baltimore County, Maryland, the oldest of thirteen children of two godly parents.  Her father, Samuel Berry, was well-trusted by his owners and when their master passed away, his widow allowed Samuel to work to pay for his freedom.  She allowed him in his trips to the city to sell the farm’s goods to also sell his own material.  He was known to often stay up late in the night making brooms, placemats, and other household items to sell.  He purchased his freedom, then continued to work to purchase each of his family members’ freedom.  Once freedom for the family was secured, the family moved to Pennsylvania, in the Lancaster County area and managed a farm.

Her parents were avid readers, and encouraged all the children to read and become educated.  Samuel, despite his very busy schedule, read from the Bible daily to his children.  The children were invited to attend a school which was five miles away, but the school was structured in a way that the white children were given their lessons first and, only if there was time remaining, were the black children allowed to be taught.  This proved to be not worth the effort, and they abandoned the idea of attending this school – instead opting to teach themselves with newspapers and Scripture.  Amanda estimates she received only about three months of formal schooling in her entire life.  Despite this, she learned from her parents and together with her siblings.

Sam Berry’s farm became a stop on the Underground Railroad.  In those days, harboring a runaway slave was a crime – even in northern states.  As a black family, they were watched very closely.  Amanda notes that her father would often work a full day on the farm, come home to eat his dinner at night, sleep about two hours, then disappear around midnight leading a few runaways to the next stop, about fifteen miles away, return home and, after about an hour of sleep, work another full day on the farm.

As a young woman, Amanda was hired by a local doctor and his wife to help take care of their children.  The family was very kind and they often invited her to church, and it was under their influence that Amanda found faith in Christ.  Her heart was especially moved by a visiting missionary who told of God’s work in many places around the world.

In 1854, Amanda married.  Her husband was killed in 1863 in combat in the Civil War.  She remarried, and her second husband died of illness in 1869.  Between her two husbands, she had five children – four of whom died very young.

After her second husband died, Amanda tried preaching.  A member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, there was initial resistance to a woman preaching, but she persisted and won many to Christ.  She became a popular speaker – eventually having doors opened for her across the United States, especially in the South.

The call to foreign missions beckoned, though, and when she got the chance to travel to England to work with churches, she jumped at the opportunity.  After a year in England, she spent two years in India where she was fondly remembered for many years after her departure.  Eight years in western Africa followed, where she was very active not only in preaching and ministering but in the Temperance movement – as active in Africa as it was in the United States.  In Africa, she adopted two orphaned children.

A man named Bishop Thoburn, Methodist Missionary in India, who served closely with Amanda during her time in India wrote the Introduction to her autobiography, An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored Evangelist.  In the Introduction, he wrote of a few of his experiences with Amanda – we will recount two below: 

First, he wrote of his first meeting of Amanda Smith, at a Camp Meeting near Cincinnati, while home on a furlough from India, where he served.  Many were scheduled to speak, including Bishop Thoburn and Amanda Smith.  He confessed that the meeting was not very successful and that a general feeling of depression had descended on the leaders of the meeting as they met to plan the next few days.  To top it all off it began to rain, adding to the feelings of gloom.  As they prayed, he was startled to hear singing.  He looked up and saw Amanda, kneeling with hands spread out in prayer, singing what he called “a triumphant song” which changed the course of their prayer and the meeting.  This left a very marked impression on Bishop Thoburn.

Secondly, he wrote of meeting her in India and being very delighted to have her company.  He spoke of her being fiercely attacked in the local papers and her graceful tact in her responses.  During a particular meeting in Calcutta, he recounted how they had a problem with young men purposely disrupting the open-air preaching by rushing the stage and beating the speaker.  During one such meeting, they saw this group of young men getting ready to rush the podium.  Amanda positioned herself between the speaker and the young men, fell to her knees in prayer, face lifted to Heaven.  The young men stood still, unable to move.  The rest of the meeting passed without incident.

Upon her return to the United States, Amanda settled near Chicago.  She had to be coaxed into it, but eventually wrote the aforementioned autobiography.  She used proceeds from the book and money from a missions organization in England to start the first orphanage for black children in Illinois.

Amanda had to retire, due to failing health, in 1912.  An admirer paid all expenses for her to move to Florida and retire there.  When she died in 1915, a large group of ministers accompanied her casket to the train in Florida.  On March 1, 1915, one of the largest funerals Chicago had ever seen honored her memory.

From her autobiography:

“I often say to people that I have a right to shout more than some folks; I have been bought twice, and set free twice, and so I have a good right to shout.  Hallelujah!

https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smitham/smith.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Smith

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2006/10/amanda-smith.html

http://www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/r-s/smith-amanda-berry-1837-1915/

 

 

 

Lott Cary

Lott Cary was born a slave on a plantation in Charles City County, Virginia (southeast of Richmond), in 1780.  His situation was such that his extended family lived together.  His family attended a Baptist church and feared the Lord greatly.  Later in his life, Lott remembered his grandmother Mahala as the one who greatly shaped his faith.

When he was twenty-four years old, Lott’s owner sent him to Richmond to work in a tobacco warehouse.  While there, he began drinking and behaving in ways he was not proud of later.  After two or three years, he began to feel conviction of his sin and was converted in the First Baptist Church after hearing a sermon about Nicodemus.  He was baptized there and, intensely curious about the story of Nicodemus, made arrangements to learn to read so he could study the story himself.

His faith affected his work ethic, his work at the warehouse thrived, and he was promoted to supervisor of the warehouse.  He was often tipped by tobacco buyers and he was allowed to keep and sell extra tobacco.  This money was diligently saved and Lott soon had enough to purchase freedom for himself and his young family.  The warehouse kept him on as a salaried employee.

Lott Cary felt the call to preach and began preaching to slaves around the Richmond area.  People of all races who attended his sermons called them among the most moving they had ever heard.

Feeling an increasing call to go to Africa as a missionary, in 1815 Lott worked with other ministers to form a Baptist society for African missions.  The Society saw the state of Liberia as a starting point for missions to the entire continent of Africa.  They raised funds for a number of years and in 1821 Cary left as co-lead of a team to establish a mission in Monrovia, Liberia, where a number of freed blacks had resettled.  Intending to preach, Cary found himself enmeshed in the political climate and in the practical matters of government – even to matters of training local doctors and to the self-defense of the small city from large bands of bandits and rebels.  All of these duties were performed while he was active as the pastor of several churches in the city.

In 1826, Lott Cary was the acting governor of Liberia but was unfortunately killed with seven other people in an explosion when he was helping to prepare cartridges for the colony’s defense.

His untimely death left a great hole to fill, but because of his efforts in his day, Liberia remains a free nation and the National Missionary Baptist Convention continues to send missionaries around the world.  There is also a large missions organization headquartered in Lanham, MD, named after him which sends multicultural teams into parts of Africa on a short-term basis for purposes of evangelism, health, anti-human trafficking, and disaster response.

https://mbcpathway.com/2021/02/25/lott-cary-former-slave-becomes-first-baptist-missionary-to-africa/

https://www.imb.org/2018/08/28/missionaries-you-should-know-lott-cary/

http://lottcarey.org/

James Pennington

 The Fugitive Blacksmith

James Pennington was born into slavery in the Eastern Shore of Maryland around 1807.  He was apprenticed as a mason and later as a blacksmith.  After receiving a severe beating and witnessing his father receive an even more severe beating James made a dash for freedom at age 19, leaving behind his parents and eleven siblings.  He knew only to travel north and had a number of misadventures along the way – including being captured by bounty-seekers, whom he secured his freedom from by subtly mentioning that he had recently come into contact with a group of escaped slaves who were all suffering from smallpox.  This was clearly a lie, but it did the trick and James was released from his brief period of custody.

Later in his travels, starving and dehydrated, he came across a woman who informed him that he had finally reached Pennsylvania.  She connected him with the Quaker family of William and Phoebe Wright who, as was the habit of many Pennsylvania Quakers in that day, gave him shelter and medical care.  The Wrights taught him to read and write, and paid him a salary for his work.  They were also very likely the ones who nurtured the faith of the young man.

James later moved to New York, where he found modest work.  He lived frugally, and used his wages to pay tutors to increase his education.  He was later allowed to attend classes at Yale Divinity School, provided he sit at the back of the classroom and not ask questions.  He was not allowed to formally enroll in the school in the 1830s, and essentially “audited” the classes.  He was not allowed to receive a diploma, but completed his coursework and was ordained in the Congregational Church and called to pastor a small church on Long Island.  He later moved to accept a position at a church in New Haven, Connecticut.  One of his great delights was in conducting weddings for fugitive slaves.  In 1838, a young couple named Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass came to him asking to be married.  Since they had nothing at the time, James married them waiving the customary fee that was normally paid at the time.

During his time in Connecticut, he wrote a book in 1841 which is believed to be the first history of African Americans ever published, entitled “The Origin and History of the Colored People.”  In 1848, he completed his memoir “A Fugitive Blacksmith,” which was widely read both in Europe and the United States.  Pennington later traveled to Europe to raise money to purchase the freedom of American slaves and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg.  Pennington contributed to a number of periodicals advocating for the abolitionist cause.

In 1842, James preached a famous sermon entitled “Covenants Involving Moral Wrong Are Not Obligatory Upon Man.”  In this sermon, he argued that when man’s law requires people to participate in evil, then they must disobey and follow God’s Law.  He had two applications: 1.) Americans who enforce laws holding others in slavery were in violation of God’s Law, and 2.) Those who restored escaped slaves to masters were violating God’s Law which commands God’s people to shelter outcasts (Isaiah 16:3-4). 

Normally a pacifist, probably due to the Quaker influence in his young life, Rev. Pennington ended up helping to recruit black troops during the Civil War.  After the war, he helped nurture a number of congregations in the South and passed away in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1870 after a brief illness.

In 2016, Yale University proclaimed him to be Yale’s first black student and named a classroom in his honor.

Periodical E-mail from Christian History Institute

https://connecticuthistory.org/reverend-james-pennington-a-voice-for-freedom/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W.C._Pennington

 

 

 

Lemuel Haynes

Lemuel Haynes

Lemuel Haynes was born in Massachusetts in 1753.  A black child, he was abandoned by his parents at about 5 months of age.  He was taken on by a church deacon in a common practice of indentured servitude – he would work for the man until age 21, in return for the deacon’s raising him.  Lemuel became, in all but name, a member of the family.  Lemuel was given the opportunity to attend school, a rare experience for blacks in his day.  He was fascinated especially with the study of theology, especially the contemporary works of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.  One evening as a boy, while laying outside in a quiet moment, he saw the Aurora Borealis – the Northern Lights – and quietly gave his heart and life to Christ.

In the home in which he was raised, a common Saturday evening practice was to read a sermon out loud.  One evening, when Lemuel was asked to read, he read an especially rousing sermon.  When asked who wrote the sermon, he sheepishly replied that he had written it himself.  From that point on, he was often asked to proofread sermons or preach in a fill-in capacity.

At age 21 he was freed from his servitude and enlisted as a Minuteman in the Continental Army the day after the battles of Lexington and Concord.  He participated in the siege of Boston, and later became one of Ethan Allen’s famed “Green Mountain Boys” and participated in the conquest of Fort Ticonderoga in 1776.  Soon after this, he contracted Typhus, ending his military service.

Lemuel continued his theological studies, was licensed to preach in 1780 and was fully ordained to the ministry in 1785 – the first ordained black minister in the United States.  Over the course of the rest of his life, he pastored churches throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York.  Notably, his congregations were either mixed-race or all white, a unique circumstance for that day.  His churches experienced great growth during his tenure.

Lemuel wrote often, on topics theological as well as social.  He was the first African-American published in the United States, and eventually gained an international audience.  Probably his most significant social writing was an essay he wrote as a soldier, inspired by the Declaration of Independence, entitled “Liberty Further Extended.”  In it, he took from Acts 17:26, Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill, “…and He made from one [man], every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation” to demonstrate the equality of all races and point out the shortcoming of the Declaration in not extending that same freedom to existing slaves and indentured servants.  He favored an immediate emancipation rather than the gradual emancipation many of the Founders envisioned.  He pointed out clearly and boldly that slavery was sin, and he pointed out the irony of slaveowners fighting for liberty while denying it to others.

Theologically, he gained great respect when, unknown to him until the last minute, a prominent Universalist preacher was invited to his church to speak.  After a lengthy sermon attempting to demonstrate that salvation was universal (i.e. a loving God wouldn’t condemn anyone to Hell), Lemuel was asked if he wanted to respond.  He stood up and, with no notes or preparation, gave a sermon of his own entitled “Universal Salvation – An Ancient False Doctrine”.  He articulated clearly through the Scriptures and plain logic, without disparaging the previous speaker or even mentioning him by name, the Biblical doctrine of salvation.  Wonderful tact!

Reverend Haynes married a white school teacher named Elizabeth Babbitt.  The couple had ten children, and surviving letters between the siblings speak glowingly of their father and memories of family devotions and prayer.

Lemuel Haynes passed into Glory in 1833, at age 80, in his Congregationalist church in South Granville, New York.  He composed his own epitaph: “Here lies the dust of a poor hell-deserving sinner who ventured into eternity trusting wholly on the merits of Christ for salvation.  In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on earth, he invites his children, and all who read this, to trust their eternal interest in the same foundation.”

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuel_Haynes

https://wallbuilders.com/lemuel-haynes/#

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/haynes-lemuel-1753-1833/

https://thefoundingproject.com/lemuel-haynes-african-american-founder/

https://revivedthoughts.com/lemuel-haynes-universal-salvation-an-ancient-false-doctrine/

https://www.facebook.com/museumoftheBible/photos/a.656534441128184/2710890175692590/

 

 

Nathan Bedford Forrest: Sinner to Saint

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Can God forgive anyone?  Is there any sinner beyond His reach?  Nathan Bedford Forrest has a notorious reputation, much of it earned fairly, some of it unfairly.  “Bedford,” as he was called, was born in 1821, a twin with a sister, the two of them being the oldest of eight children.  His stubborn nature reared itself early in his life where he was a known fighter and brawler, exhibiting a fierce determination for personal success and a self-imposed code of ethics he impatiently expected others to follow.  As a young man, his personal life was one of seeming moral contradictions: he gambled, brawled, and swore, but never touched alcohol, treated ladies with the utmost respect, and, though he called it “a religion for women,” he had the utmost respect for the Christian faith and Christian ministers.  In a surviving letter to his son from late in the war, Forrest strongly implored his son to follow the example of his godly mother rather than his own sinful example.

When he left home, he tried a few lines of work before his found his fortune in two fields: agriculture and slave-trading.  By the time the Civil War began in 1861, Forrest owned plantations and slaves cumulatively worth an estimated 1.5 million dollars.  He was, by all worldly measures, a fantastic provider for his family.

When the Civil War began, the forty-year-old Forrest joined the Tennessee Mounted Rifles along with his brother and fifteen-year-old son.  Bedford enlisted as a Private, but his aggressiveness and leadership abilities soon earned him a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.  Eventually rising to the rank of three-star General, Bedford was the fastest-climbing officer of the war on either side.  With his calvary unit ready in personnel, and too impatient to wait on the government for supplies, Forrest rode into Union-controlled Kentucky and personally paid to outfit his entire regiment with horses, saddles, and guns.  A great story can be read about his efforts to smuggle those goods out of Kentucky.

Forrest was engaged numerous times during the war, and earned the nickname “That Devil Forrest” from Gen. William T. Sherman, who promised a General’s commission to any person who could assassinate Forrest.  Despite having no formal military education, he displayed an aptitude for military strategy that makes his tactics a topic of study even to this day.  He led numerous Calvary charges and raids, often times against superior numbers.  He personally led his men into hand-to-hand combat numerous times, having at least thirty confirmed kills in close quarters.  Despite his reputation among the Union as a savage, Forrest sought regular counsel among his chaplains, who had almost as much influence on his later conversion as did his devout Presbyterian wife.

At the end of the war, Forrest disbanded his unit and sought whole-heartedly to do his part to mend the fences between North and South.  He is often mistakenly identified as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.  He did demonstrate a level of involvement for a couple of years, and the then-decentralized Klan seized on his name recognition to incentivize recruitment.  The Klan grew more and more radical in its intimidation tactics, both against blacks and white carpetbaggers, and by 1868, Forrest had written a letter publicly denouncing the Klan and encouraging its disbanding.  Sadly, it had little effect.  Forrest went to his grave saying he never publicly approved of the violence and intimidation tactics the Klan soon came to be well-known for.

Post-war prosperity did not come to Bedford Forrest as easily as it had before the war.  He tried selling bonds and insurance, he tried his hand at being a railroad executive, and tried to go back into agriculture.  All ventures met with limited success or outright failure.

Bedford Forrest had a godly mother who prayed for him and his salvation her entire life.  Bedford’s wife Mary Ann was a devout Christian who patiently endured her husband’s bouts of temper and propensity to gamble, while interceding to God constantly on his behalf.  Numerous other Godly men crossed his path, especially during the war, who planted the seeds of faith in his heart.  On November 14, 1875, Bedford accompanied his wife to church and listened to the pastor preach a sermon on Matthew Chapter 7, the Parable of the Builders.  After the sermon, an uncharacteristically tearful Bedford Forrest approached the pastor and said, “Sir, your sermon has removed the last prop from under me.  I am the fool that built on the sand; I am a poor, miserable sinner.”

The Pastor instructed him to read Psalm 51, the Psalm of the repentant sinner, that evening and promised to call on him the next day.  The following day, they discussed the sermon and the Psalm, and Bedford Forrest bowed his head and prayed with his pastor.  After praying, the former general said, “All is right, I have put my trust in my Redeemer.”

Forrest still struggled with his temper from time to time, partially aggravated by his deteriorating health.  One recounted incident involves him exploding with anger at a tailor who accidentally allowed one of his garments to become moth-eaten.  Even though the tailor promised to make full restitution, Forrest pulled out his pistol and aimed it at the poor man’s head before leaving in a rage.  The following day, he returned, broken, to ask forgiveness.  Such an act of contrition would have been unthinkable in the violent-tempered Forrest of the Civil War, and shows the change God was continuing to work in his heart.

An overlooked, but very significant event happened in 1875, near the time of his conversion.  Bedford Forrest was asked to speak to a Civil Rights group in Memphis called the Pole-Bearers Association (a fore-runner to the NAACP), the first white man invited to speak to a civil rights group.  The full speech is short, but powerful and well before its time in terms of race relations.  As he rose to speak, he accepted a bouquet of flowers from a young black girl named Lou Lewis.  Some excerpts from his speech:

“…I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states…I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong.  I believe I can…assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man and depress none.

 “I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you…When I can serve you, I will do so.  We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together.  We may differ in color, but not in sentiment…I am with you in heart and in hand.” 

Astoundingly, to an onlooker of the day, the former racist, slave trader and decorated Confederate General then leaned down and gently kissed Miss Lewis on the cheek, an unheard-of sentiment in that day.  He was roundly ridiculed for it, but defended his actions as stoutly as he defended any other action he took throughout the course of his life.

Nathan Bedford Forrest is a man of contradictions, a villain turned saint.  While his legacy continues to remain a source of debate on our national stage, he remains proof positive that while his sins were many, God’s grace was enough for even him.  He died in late 1877 at the young age of 56, with his last thoughts and words directed to his beloved Mary Ann.  At his funeral, people of all races lined the streets of Memphis to mourn him.

It is interesting to note that Bedford’s great-grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest III, served in the US Army as a Brigadier General aviator and was killed in action in Germany in 1943.  His body is buried in Arlington Cemetery, the last male descendant of the great Confederate general.

Kastler, Shane E., Nathan Bedford Forrest's Redemption, Pelican Books, 2010.

http://www.tennessee-scv.org/ForrestHistSociety/forrest_speech.html

 

 

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth

Isabella Baumfree was born around 1797 in southeastern New York.  The exact date of her birth was not typically recorded for those born into slavery.  She was one of twelve children born to Elizabeth and James Baumfee, slaves of a Dutch-speaking couple.  Dutch was Isabella’s first language, only learning to speak English later.  In 1806, at age 9, Isabella’s owner died and his property, including the slaves, were sold at auction. Isabella was sold together with a flock of sheep for $100.  Over the next two years “Belle” was sold twice more, before ending up in the home of John Dumont.  There she married and had children.

New York has begun the process of abolishing slavery some years before, finally outlawing the practice in 1827.  Seeing the end of slavery coming, Mr Dumont promised Isabella her freedom a year early if she ‘worked hard.’  She did, and Dumont reneged on his promise, so she escaped to a friendly Quaker’s home with her infant daughter - unfortunately leaving her other two children, a son and a daughter, behind.  It was at the home of this Quaker couple, and under their influence, that she found faith in Christ.

Just before the official end of slavery in New York, she found out that her son, then age 5, had been illegally sold to a slaveholder in Alabama.  She filed a lawsuit and won, rescuing her son and making her mark as the first black woman to successfully challenged a white man in a US court.  She was eventually reunited with her son.

In 1843, Isabella sought a fresh start for her life and asked God to give her a new name.  She said that God gave her the name ‘Soujourner’ - “because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign unto them.”  She then asked God to give her a second name, “cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.”  Soujourner Truth.

A Methodist, she became an itinerant speaker - preaching the Gospel and advocating for abolition and womens’ suffrage.  In her mind, the two causes were linked - and she feared for the Suffrage movement being concerned that, once slavery was abolished, that the cause of womens’ rights would be forgotten.  Advocating strongly for both, she was seen as a radical in her time.  Being controversial, she was once physically attacked by a mob, and injured to the point that she had to walk with a cane for the rest of her life.

Sojourner spoke to Harriet Beecher Stowe at a reception she held for a number of prominent clergymen.  All were fascinated by her demeanor and her stories.  One clergyman asked her if she preached from the Bible, to which she replied, “No, ‘cause I can’t read.  When I preaches, I has just one text to preach from, an’ I always preaches from this one.  My text is, ‘When I found Jesus.’”  One preacher remarked to her that she couldn’t have found a better text.

During the Civil War, Sojourner recruited black troops for the Union Army.  Her own grandson, James Caldwell, enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, depicted in the 1989 movie ‘Glory’.

Sojourner continued to advocate for the rights of Black citizens after the Civil War and for womens’ rights.  She traveled the country speaking and advocating.  She met with at least two Presidents (Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant).  She later retired to Battle Creek, Michigan, where she died in 1883.

Quotes:

"Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, [and] the men better let them." 

“Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.”

“I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.”

References: 131 Christians Everyone Should Know, Packer, J. I., Holman Publishing, 2000.

https://www.biography.com/activist/sojourner-truth

David Livingstone

David Livingston

David Livingston was born in Scotland in 1813.  He was born in a building housing the families of workers of a cotton mill.  He grew, as expected, to work in that same cotton mill – often working 14 hour shifts as a child – but found time to study theology and science on weekends and evenings as he could find the time.  A faithful Congregationalist, he was moved as a young man by an appeal for medical missionaries.  He added medicine to the list of subjects he was studying.

At first he thought to go to China as a missionary, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society for this work.  The Opium Wars of 1839-1842 put an end to that dream, and he was persuaded by the great British Missionary Robert Moffatt to consider Africa as a mission field.  He accepted the call and arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1841 at age 28 to support Rev Moffatt.  Within four years, David married his mentor’s daughter, Mary Moffatt.  They eventually had six children.  David grew restless tending mission stations on the coast, and developed a vision for exploring Africa, desiring to open “God’s Highway” – a planned 1,500 mile route to the interior of Africa to bring “Christianity and civilization” to unreached peoples.  During the course of his missions work, he traveled East to West across Africa, then back again, crossing the Kalahari Desert each way as well.  He was the first recorded European to find Lake Ngami and the beautiful Victoria Falls, which he named for his beloved Queen.

During his trips into the interior of Africa, Dr Livingston was exposed to the slave trade at its source, and was greatly burdened by it.  He wrote of the “inefficient” slave economy, desiring to replace it with the “efficient” economy of capitalism.  He hoped that developing a commercial economy would expose the slave trade to the world and cut off the slave trade at its source.

Dr Livingston spent the next 15 years exploring Africa, keeping detailed notes as to the geography, peoples, and landmarks he saw.  He was very faithful to report his detailed notes to his mission board and eventually returned home to a hero’s welcome in England, finding that the Society publishing the results of his exploration had turned him into a celebrity.  He published a book detailing his mission exploits, and made enough money from that book to fund the rest of his missions work.

He returned to Africa under the sponsorship of the Royal Geographic Society, with the stated desire of solving what was then one of the great mysteries of the world, finding the source of the Nile River.  Practically, he had hoped that this would inspire other British explorers and businessmen to follow his footsteps and begin to open up Africa to commercial and missions work and begin the construction of his “God’s Highway.”  It was during this trip that the extreme hardship resulted in the death of his wife, among many others in his entourage.

It was during this last journey that Dr Livingstone disappeared from the public eye.  Nothing was heard from him for two years – and his disappearance added to his mystique.  It was later learned that David had fallen gravely ill during that time.  In 1871, the New York Herald sent journalist Henry Stanley with instructions to locate Dr Livingstone and tell his story.  Stanley located him in the interior of Africa in October of that year, uttering the famous line (which he admitted to having rehearsed prior to meeting him), “Dr Livingston, I presume?”  Stanley brought food, supplies, and medicines, which had the effect of saving the life of David who was still very ill.

Stanley stayed with David for five months before returning to New York to publish the stories he had recorded.  Livingstone refused Stanley’s pleas to accompany him, insisting on the missions work yet to be done.  It was less than 2 years later, that Dr David Livingstone was found dead, kneeling by his cot in the posture of prayer.  His friends arranged for his body to be brought back to England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey after an arduous nine-month journey, but they first removed his heart and buried them in Africa, in present-day Zambia.

David Livingstone came to Africa when it was called the “Dark Continent” or “The White Man’s Graveyard”.  Contemporary maps of Africa had large blank spots marked “unexplored”.  He suffered many hardships, including the death of his wife, desertion by many friends and fellow missionaries, his own illnesses, opposition from slave traders which sometimes physically threatened him, and the ever-present dangers of Africa – he was mauled by a lion once, which permanently damaged his left arm.  Despite this, he redrew the map of Africa, helped to expose the horrors of the slave trade for what it was in his day, and established many missions works in the interior of Africa.

His tombstone in Westminster Abbey reads, “Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade.”  One present-day author likened him to a mixture of Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/missionaries/david-livingstone.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone/The-Zambezi-expedition

The Children's Crusade

Children’s Crusade, 1212 AD
Background of Crusades… In 1099, in the First Crusade, Jerusalem was liberated. In 1187, the Saracens (Islamicists) recaptured Jerusalem. In all subsequent Crusades, Jerusalem was never recaptured. There had been three additional Crusades after this, and for about 15 years prior to our story, numerous people were trying to whip up the frenzy to launch an additional Crusade. The time was ripe with religious fervor.
In May of 1212, around Easter, a shepherd-boy of about 12 years old named Stephen, from a village called Cloyes, sought an audience with King Philip II of France. Stephen claimed to have personally met Christ while tending sheep. Stephen claimed that Jesus had given him the command via a letter to lead the Crusade.
When his scholars confirmed the letter to be inauthentic, King Philip refused to see Stephen, or to read the letter. Stephen, undeterred, began preaching with an extraordinary eloquence, that children would succeed where adults had failed. Children flocked to Stephen, many as young as six years old, and the movement grew. These unarmed, unsupervised children committed to march to Jerusalem and liberate it by force from the Saracens. Stephen preached that when they got to Marseilles, the sea would literally part and give them clear passage to the Holy Land. They were given the blessing of local priests in towns they went through, and families in most cases willingly encouraged their children to join the movement. Stephen was treated as a prophet – with locals requesting locks of his hair as relics. They depended on charity for their provision as they traveled. The road was rough, and many children died en route. Contemporaries spoke of over 30,000 children marching en masse, unsupervised, none of them over 12 years old. This number is probably inflated, but there were certainly multiple thousands of children in this motley band. In Marseilles, they waited for God’s miracle. After a few days, two merchants offered their seven ships to provide free passage to the Holy Land. Stephen and his band were taken aboard, and set out to sea. It was eighteen years before any news was heard of them.
Germans are not to be outdone by the French! In the Rhineland, within a few weeks, word of the French movement was received, and soon after Stephen started his mission, a young boy named Nicholas (age uncertain, but seems older than Stephen) began preaching a similar story. A major difference was that the German youth considered their mission to conquer Jerusalem through the conversion of the heathen, instead of through military conquest. It was similar in that Nicholas preached that children would do what the adults could not do, and also in the belief that the Mediterranean would part for them. Chroniclers of the day estimated Nicholas’ numbers to be in excess of 50,000 children – but these numbers, too, are likely exaggerated.
The German expedition had a very arduous journey over the Alps in the summertime. When they reached Genoa in late August (on the coast, on the west side of Italy, directly north of the island of Sardinia) less than a third of the original number was there. The Genoese, when they saw this mass of children, suspected a plot of the Germans. After the initial confusion was sorted out, they made the children an offer: they could stay for one night of lodging only. Any children who wished to stay as citizens and live in the city could do so. Many of them, by now disillusioned, chose to stay. Many great, ancient families of Genoa today, apparently, trace their lineage to these children. The rest of the children expected the sea to part the next morning, so they were content with the arrangement.
The Mediterranean was no more cooperative than it was for the French children. The remaining children continued south, expecting the sea to open for them further down the coast. They got to Pisa, where some of them accepted passage aboard two ships bound for Palestine. They were never heard from again. Nicholas and the rest of the children trudged on to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Innocent III. The Pope praised them for their courage, but firmly told them to go home, grow up, and return as adults to fulfill their vows to go fight for the Cross. The German children began to dissipate and were either assimilated into the Italian towns or trudged back to their homes the following Spring. Upon their return, the parents of the children were furious over the failure of the expedition (not to mention the loss of their children) and placed the blame on Nicholas’ father. He was taken and hanged.
What happened to the French children? We have only one clue. 18 years after these events, in the year 1230, a lone priest arrived in France. He claimed to be one of the youthful ‘priests’ that accompanied Stephen on the merchants’ ships. His story claimed that of the seven ships, two were sunk in bad weather with all souls lost. The five that survived sailed to Algeria where, by prior arrangement, most of the children were sold into captivity. Others, including this priest, were shipped to Egypt and those that were literate were treated much better, being put to work in teaching Western languages and as interpreters. These in Egypt were not compelled to convert. A few were taken to the slave markets of Baghdad, and eighteen were martyred there for refusing to convert to Islam. At the time of his telling, he claimed there were about seven hundred of the pilgrims still alive. If this one priest’s story is to be believed, he was deliberately released so as to bring the story back to France.
http://historyguide.org/ancient/children.html
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/childrens-crusade-thousands-children-march-holy-land-never-return-003044
Christian History, “The Crusades”, Issue 40, (Vol. XII, No. 4) pp 30-31.