ROBERT MOFFAT - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman. [With Illustrations Including a Portrait]

Think what missionaries have done towards opening up the great unknown continent of Africa!

Let us dwell a moment on the career of Robert Moffat, who left his lowly Scotch home at the age of twenty, who battled with the Governor of the Cape for permission to go outside the colony, who refused any post which, however it secured his personal safety, might mix him up with polities; and who, while waiting for the delayed permit, learned Dutch, that he might preach to the Boers. The chief upon whose conversion Moffat had set his heart was so notoriously cruel, that when the youth was at last free to start on his errand, the kindly Christian Hottentots wept over him, saying, "He was so young to be eaten up by that monster!"

But the Christian lad conquered; the fierce chief was his first convert, and became his devoted friend. Afterwards, Moffat advanced into the country of the Bechuanas, where he remained many years. One can imagine the awfully wild and lonesome life, the horrors of native warfare. But the missionary had a true wife by his side, he had his violin to soothe him, and many resources to occupy his mind, and keep the over-strained bow from breaking. And church and school were built, and the translation of the Scriptures went on, and the naked savages donned clothing. By 1840 the New Testament was complete, Moffat returned to England to get it printed, and went back to Africa with thousands of volumes, and with David Livingstone, the great explorer of the future.

Livingstone, also a Scotchman of humble birth, first settled at a station near the Transvaal, but the squabbles of the Transvaal drove him away, and drove him on and on, until at last he made his famous journey across Africa. In 1843 he married one of Dr. Moffat's daughters. When he revisited England, in 1856, he greatly revived interest in Africa, and after this visit and its results, commissioned by the Government of the day to inquire into and report on the slave-trade, ho again set forth on his lonely work of African exploration.

Afterwards, in company with sixteen released slaves, he made a voyage to India, and during his stay there put his companions to school, and returned to England for a short time, went back to fetch them, resumed his explorings, disappeared from European sight for some time, was met in the interior by Stanley, and shortly afterwards died in the wilderness. In the words of Sir Bartle Frere, "he desired to solve the most difficult problem of African geography, simply as a necessary preliminary to letting light into the heart of Africa. He knew that the traveler must precede both the merchant and the missionary."

His father-in-law, Robert Moffat, remained at his post till 1870, only leaving it after fifty-four years of hard labor in some of its most trying fields. Calmly surveying his past life, he says, "Bearing in remembrance what our Savior underwent, we persevered, and much success has rewarded our efforts."