’Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass.’  I have tried to do this, and now see the prospect in front spreading out grandly....  But how is the land so promising to be occupied?...  How many of our home poor are fighting hard to keep body and soul together!  My heart yearns over our own poor when I see so much of God’s fair earth unoccupied.  Here it is really so; for the people have only a few sheep and goats, and no cattle.  I wonder why we cannot have the old monastery system without the celibacy.  In no other part where I have been does the prospect of self-support seem so inviting, and promising so much influence.  Most of what is done for the poor has especial reference to the blackguard poor.”

In his letter to Mr. Young he expressed his conviction that a great desideratum in mission agency was missionary emigration by honest Christian poor to give living examples of Christian life that would insure permanency to the gospel once planted.  He had always had a warm side to the English and Scottish poor—­his own order, indeed.  If twenty or thirty families would come out as an experiment, he was ready to give L2000 without saying from whom.  He bids Mr. Young speak about the plan to Thorn of Chorley, Turner of Manchester, Lord Shaftesbury, and the Duke of Argyll.  “Now, my friend,” he adds, “do your best, and God’s blessing be with you.  Much is done for the blackguard poor.  Let us remember our own class, and do good while we have opportunity.  I hereby authorize you to act in my behalf, and do whatever is to be done without hesitancy.”

These letters, and their references to the honest poor, are characteristic.  We have seen that among Dr. Livingstone’s forefathers and connections were some very noble specimens of the honest poor.  It touched him to think that, with all their worth, their life had been one protracted struggle.  His sympathies were cordially with the class.  He desired with all his heart to see them with a little less of the burden and more of the comfort of life.  And he believed very thoroughly that, as Christian settlers in a heathen country, they might do more to promote Christianity among the natives than solitary missionaries could accomplish.

His parents and sisters were not forgotten.  His letters to home are again somewhat in the apologetic vein.  He feels that some explanation must be given of his own work, and some vindication of his coadjutors: 

“We are working hard,” he writes to his mother, “at what some can see at a glance the importance of, while to others we appear following after the glory of discovering lakes, mountains, jenny-nettles, and puddock-stools.  In reference to these people I always remember a story told me by the late Dr. Philip with great glee.  When a young minister in Aberdeen, he visited an old woman in affliction, and began to talk very fair to her on the duty of resignation, trusting, hoping, and all the rest of it, when