ABSTRACT
In some ways Livingstone’s story parallels that of other ambitious, intelligent Nonconformist men of humble background who found in the Nonconformist missionary societies a way to combine their religious passion and their considerable talent. Livingstone’s father was a tea salesman in Blantyre, Lanarkshire,
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salvation is freely available to everyone. His father was also converted at the same time, in 1832, when Livingstone was 19, and the family began attending a Congregational church, which being Congregational was naturally connected with the LMS. In 1834 Livingstone’s father brought home an LMS pamphlet with an appeal, penned by a Dutch Calvinist missionary in China, calling for Britain to send medical missionaries. In response to this appeal, Livingstone went to work as a cotton piecer in order to save enough to pay for medical school in Glasgow. That such a thing could happen at all is an extraordinary comment on the accessibility of higher education in Scotland to an ambitious, intelligent, but thoroughly impoverished young Scotsman. In 1838, equipped with a medical degree and accepted as a missionary by the LMS, Livingstone was placed with a tutor who trained him in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and theology, just the things needed for a missionary.
