{"content":[{"text":"David Livingstone (1813-1873) \n by Arthur Fraser \n Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches (EFCC), UK","bbox":{"left":0.234865,"top":0.083426,"width":0.529752,"height":0.057148000000000004}},{"text":"Dr David Livingstone has had bad press of late. He has been accused of hypocrisy, self- \n righteousness and ruthlessness in pursuing his own aims; in short, a man with whom it was \n almost impossible to work. Are these charges justified? And did he, as some claim, abandon \n true missionary work to become an explorer?","bbox":{"left":0.120984,"top":0.339099,"width":0.7580990000000001,"height":0.068187}},{"text":"It must be conceded that Livingstone had difficult, even turbulent, relationships with fellow \n missionaries, not least his in-laws, Dr Robert and Mrs Mary Moffat. In one strongly-worded \n letter to her son-in-law, Mary signed off “in great perturbation.” When his sending body, the \n London Missionary Society, would not support his plan to pioneer a new route across Africa, \n he resigned from it “without a pang.” On his own admission, Livingstone was fiercely \n independent. Perhaps this trait owed something to his native Highland stock, for although he \n was reared in the Scottish Lowlands, the family’s ancestral home was the small island of \n Ulva just off Mull. Whatever the explanation, his independence, coupled with a strong \n visionary spirit, made him the exceptional man he was.","bbox":{"left":0.120984,"top":0.421054,"width":0.758221,"height":0.150167}},{"text":"Finney’s influence \n Blantyre, his birthplace, was where he worked from the age of 10 in the local textile factory. \n Books placed on the spinning-jenny were read through at no longer than a minute at a time, a \n feat of patience and perseverance which foreshadowed his exploits in later life. Soon after his \n conversion to Christ at the age of 20, his father Neil, in protest against the patronage system, \n led the whole family out of the Church of Scotland to join the independent Congregational \n Chapel at Hamilton. The move was a mixed blessing for Livingstone. Several of the educated \n members of the chapel, who were in touch with theologians in America, introduced him to \n the writings of Charles G Finney whose Arminian views coloured his own reformed outlook. \n In a letter, he once urged a minister friend to read Finney’s works, adding that “ministers... \n must adapt . . . to save souls, and if sinners are not saved the blame is theirs.” It is salutary to \n note that he himself could claim only one conversion in the whole of his time in Africa.","bbox":{"left":0.120984,"top":0.587582,"width":0.75822,"height":0.1967589999999999}},{"text":"Achievements \n What then of his achievements? Was he the failure that some have made him out to be? It \n seems appropriate in this bicentenary year of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to \n focus first on his crucial role in ending the African slave trade. Nearly 50 years before \n Livingstone went to Africa (in 1841), William Wilberforce recognised that legitimate \n commerce would be the most effective way of stamping out slavery in Africa. Thomas","bbox":{"left":0.120984,"top":0.798522,"width":0.757867,"height":0.10058}}],"images_bbox":[{"left":0.417423,"top":0.156488,"width":0.165121,"height":0.168365}],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[{"left":0.417423,"top":0.156488,"width":0.165121,"height":0.168365}]}