LIVES OF ROBERT AND MARY MOFFAT.* Tins we have found

to be a most interesting book, and one that may be read with abundant pleasure and profit. The lives of Robert and Mary Moffat offer examples of noble courage and self-devotion which it would be difficult to match, and, perhaps, impossible to surpass. That Robert Moffat possessed these qualities every one must be aware; but of his wife less is known. Her letters show that she had abilities of no common order, and her physical and mental dauntlessness enabled her to meet and overcome dangers and trials that would have appalled most women.

"Who would true valour see, Let him come hither.'1,

On the present writer, it may be, this book has an especial claim. In childhood, the missionaries Moffat and Williams were the objects of his extreme admiration, his heroes, and the ideals of his ambition. There was a charm and a fascination about these narratives which captivated the young imagination. How we toiled with Moffat's waggon over the waterless plains of South Africa, or flew with the Martyr of Ercomanya from isle to isle of the South Pacific Ocean on board the Messenger of Peace.' The holy Williams, it is true, had even then finished his course, and fallen under the clubs of his murderers ; but Moffat was with us until the other clay. Compared with these enthralling books, which possessed, moreover, the priceless advantage of being true, the tales of ordinary romance were feeble and barren. Nor has the power of their influence ever passed away. It was, therefore, with feelings of more than ordinary interest and expectation that we sat down to peruse this book. Nor have we suffered any kind of disappointment. If it be possible, our hero has been proved worthy of a yet higher niche, which his saintly wife, his equal in zeal, courage, and self-sacrifice, is shown worthy to share with him. Together they laboured for the good of their beloved Bechwanas, together they suffered and were strong; and among the glorious ranks of our fellows who have "battled for the true, the just,"

• Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat. By their SOD, John S. Moffat. London : T. Fisher Unwin. Second Edition. 1855. few, if any, have fought a braver fight, or deserved a brighter

crown. As to the manner in which their son has accomplished his task, we are reminded of what Sidney Smith wrote concerning

the similar labours of another son :—" I think Robert Mackin- tosh has done his father's life very well ; done it by putting as little mortar as possible between the layers of stone." Happily,

in this case, owing to the numbers of letters from his parents to each other, and to friends at home, which have been preserved,. Mr. Moffat has bad plenty of material at hand ; and his mortar,.

of excellent quality, has been laid on with a judicious and reverent hand.

Robert Moffat was born at the end of 1795, at Ormiston, in East Lothian, his father's family being obscure, and his mother belonging to a lowly race, long natives of Ormiston, noted only for their firm and unobtrusive piety, which she in her turn inherited and passed on to her son. She was a woman of strong character, uniting a most tender and loving heart with a stern

Calvinism ; and she might, we are told, "have sat to George- MacDonald for his portrait of Robert Falconer's grandmother."

When Robert was two years old, his father obtained a post in the Customs, which later on brought him to Carronshore, in the Firth of Forth, where their cottage still stands. Sixty..

three years later, Moffat revisited the home of his childhood, from which, in very tender days, he ran away, and went to sea, making several coasting voyages with a friendly captain. At the age of eleven, the sea was abandoned, and he had six months' schooling at Falkirk. At an early age, Robert was sent to learn gardening; and though he had to work very hard, he managed to indulge his life-long craving for learning some- thing of whatever he came across, and he acquired an amount of odds and ends of knowledge which were most acceptable and valuable in after-life. At the age of sixteen, he left his home in Scotland for Cheshire, the voyage taking nearly three weeks, and he narrowly escaped being pressed on board a King's ship. At High Leigh, his new home, Moffat met with the Wesleyan Methodists, and was much affected by what was, to him, a new religious development. After a period of indecision, his choice was made, and he threw himself with energy into the work and society of his new friends. It is clear that at this time he felt intensely, as he did throughout his entire life. His was no wavering faith ; it was earnest and sincere, and his entire life and work render a splendid testimony to the force and reality of his convictions. The spirit of simple and complete surrender to the Divine will abounds throughout every part of his letters and writings ; and apart from

all differences of opinion on such matters, none, we are satisfied, can peruse these pages without being affected by the unques- tioning acceptance, by his wife no less than by himself, of hard- ship, danger, and painful separation whenever they held that these lay along the path of duty. His parents received the

news of the change of his views with characteristically Scottish caution. A little later, chancing to go to Warrington, he saw, for the first time in his life, an old placard of a missionary meeting that was to be presided over by the Rev. W. Roby, of Manchester. This brought to mind long-vanished tales of Moravian missions he had heard from his mother's lips. In a delightful piece of autobiography, he tells us that "my thoughts became entirely occupied with the inquiry how I could serve the missionary cause," and as a last resource, he resolved to go to sea again, and get landed among the heathen on some distant coast. Soon after, hearing Mr. Roby preach at Manchester, he plucked up a spirit, and decided to call upon him, but hesi- tated much at the door :—

" At last, after walking backward and forward for a few minutes, I returned to the door and knocked. This was no sooner done than I would have given a thousand pounds, if I had possessed them, not to have knocked ; and I hoped, oh! how I hoped with all my heart, that Mr. Roby might not be at home, resolving that, if so, I should never again make the attempt. A girl opened the door. Is Mr. Roby in?' I inquired, with a faltering voice.—' Yes,' was the reply, and I was shown into the parlour. The dreaded man whom I wished to see soon made his appearance. Of course, I had to inform him who I was, and my simple tale was soon told. He listened to all I had to say in answer to some questions with a kindly smile. I had given him an out- line of ray Christian experience, and my wish to be a helper in the- missionary cause. I did not even tell him that it was his name on the missionary placard which had directed my steps to his door. He said he would write to the Directors of the Society, and, on hearing from them, would communicate their wishes respecting me. I returned to my charge, and after some weeks was requested to visit Manchester, that he might get me placed in a situation which would afford him the opportunity of examining me as to my fitness for missionary work. On my arrival, Mr. Roby took me to several of his friends to obtain, if possible, a situation in a garden, a mercantile house, or a bank ; bat all failed, there being no opening for any one

at the time. Mr. Roby then remarked, have still one friend who employs many men to whom I can apply, provided you have no objection to go into a nursery-garden.'—' Go!' I replied ; I would go anywhere and do anything for which I may have ability.' Very providentially Mr. Smith, of Dukinfield, happened to be in town, and at once agreed that I should proceed to his nursery-garden. Thus was I led, by a way that I knew not, for another important end ; for had I obtained a situation in Manchester I might not have had my late dear wife to be my companion and partaker in all my hopes and fears for more than half a century in Africa. As it was, Mr. Smith's only daughter possessing a warm missionary heart, we soon became attached to one another ; but she was not allowed to join me in Africa till nearly three years after I left."

His decision was a heavy trial to his parents, and for months he hesitated to tell them. To go out into the then unknown region of heathendom "into which few had gone, and from which still fewer returned," was like taking a last farewell, but with dignified resignation his father bade him "God-speed," and in 1816 he said good-bye to his parents, who, however, both lived to welcome him home twenty-three years later. By a coinci- dence, he was very nearly being sent with Williams to Poly- nesia; but a certain old Dr. Waugh over-ruled their proposal, deeming " thae twa lads ower young to gang tegither." He reached South Africa in January, 1817, but only to find the proposed journey to Namaqualand, which was beyond the border, prohibited by a short-sighted Government, and for some months he and his comrade were detained within the Colony. This gave Moffat an opportunity to learn Dutch, which was of inestimable value to him ever after. At length a start was made, Namaqualand was reached, and Moffat went on alone to Afrikaner's kraal. The story of this remarkable chieftain is fully told in the Labours and Scenes, and Mr. Moffat only touches on it here. Namaqualand proved a failure as a place for settlement and progress, and it was arranged that Afrikaner should remove his tribe to the Kuruman River in Bech- wana-land, where Moffat had decided to settle. But owing to Afrikaner's death the plan fell through, and his people were divided and scattered. In 1819 Miss Smith joined Moffat at the Cape, and early in 1820 the missionary party, consisting of John Campbell and the Moffats, started for Lattakoo. Of Campbell, Moffat wrote, fifty years afterwards, on receiving his snuff-box as a relic :—

"His name is fragrant. The very sight of the box brought to mind great and little incidents of long bygone years. I have often seen him, when perplexed, take out his snuff-box, take a pinch, and sometimes two if the subject was weighty, and in the tent, or outside of the tent, or on the other side of a thin partition, he might be heard to say, 'Oh, I never was in such a world as this !' More de- lightful society and a better fellow-traveller than Mr. Campbell could not be desired."

This journey was the first of many that Mrs. Moffat made across the wilds of South Africa. Their progress was slow and painful, and it was not until seven weeks had passed that they reached the Orange River, which is now within two days' journey of Cape Town by railway. Nor was it until after a delay of some months at Griqua Town that they reached the Kuruman, which was to be their home for nearly]fifty years. At the time of their arrival, things were in a bad state. The Bech- wanas paid no heed to the message brought them. They stole the crops raised with infinite toil by the missionaries, drove off their sheep, and laid hands on all kinds of tools and utensils.

In 1823, a tide of invasion from the hordes of savages to the eastward rolled close up to the station, and but for Moffat's foresight and courage, they would have been swept away.

His determined measures saved the mission and the tribe, and gained for the missionaries a personal ascendancy which was never lost. But for years, wars, and rumours of wars, disturbed and endangered them, and many critical episodes occurred. On one occasion, Moffat returned from a journey to find that the station had been in momentary expectation of an attack ; and a touching letterfrom his wife, written at the time, will be found at p.122. For years the brethren—Hamilton, Edwards, and Moffat—laboured on, without a ray of light to cheer the gloom, teaching, building, irrigating, and gardening. Every hour that could be spared, Moffat devoted to the study of the Seehwana language ; and in order to gain perfection in it, he spent two months alone in an encampment on the margin of the Kalahari desert, where nothing else could be spoken. Then he set to work at the trying task of reducing the hitherto unwritten language to writing. and proceeded to translate the Scriptures. This was only ac- complished with Herculean effort, as he had no knowledge of the original tongues. "It was only by painfully laborious compari- son of many authorities, and by collation of the Dutch with the English, that he could satisfy himself of having grasped the meaning of the original ; and having so grasped it, there was still the task of putting it into Sechwana."

At length better times came. In 1828 peace, undisturbed for fifty years, settled in the laud; a remarkable awakening took place among the people, and in a few months the whole aspect of the station was changed.. The communion service, which Mary Moffat in stedfast faith had asked a friend to send out years before a glimmer of dawn was visible, came just in time to be of use. The next year, 1830, Moffat made a journey to the Cape to get his books printed ; but finding no office equal to even so small a task, he and Edwards set to work, and by the use of the Government office, they printed the books themselves, and returned to Kuruman with a press of their own. They built about this time a large church, with but little native help, and brought the roof-timbers 250 miles. It stands to-day, a monument of their patient industry. Many long and arduous journeys were undertaken by Moffat, who never hesitated if any good was to be done. In 1839 the Moffats came to England, and met with a reception which was a surprise to them. Moffat's fame had preceded him, and be was in demand all over the country ; and besides this, the public insisted on a book. This led to his writing his well-known Labours and Scenes. By the hardest effort he succeeded in getting the New Testament and Psalms through the press. The Moffats started on their return journey early in 1843, and approached their home after an absence of nearly five years. As they drew near the Vaal River,—

" They were delighted to meet David Livingstone. He had ridden from Kuruman, a distance of 150 miles, to bid them welcome, and to tell them of the ample preparations that had been made for hastening them on their way. From this point onwards they were met day by day by joyous friends, always bringing fresh teams of oxen. Their brother-missionaries and the natives showed the like ardour and emulation, until, as the party drew near to Hartman, it seemed like a royal progress. As the last stage was reached, it was felt by all that they could not stop. The long cavalcade hurried on, until between 2 and 3 o'clock, last before the dawn, on December 10th, the Moffats found themselves once more in their own much-desired home, the scene of so many blessed labours in past years, and still to be the scene of many more in the years to come. Crowds were there to meet them, even at that hour ; and next day, and for many days after, people were coming from long distances round to look once more on the faces of those whom they were beginning to fear they should never see again. It was a wonderful change, which some at least could understand, and it showed that the work of the Lord had struck its roots deep into the heart of the people."

Livingstone soon after married Moffat's daughter Mary.

Ultimately, as is well-known, he was lost to the Bechwana Mission. The spirit of travel carried him far north, and he disappeared mysteriously from view. It was in hopes of learning something of him that Moffat made his third journey to Mosilik-atse, Chief of the Matabele, who had drifted out of ken some years before. The accounts of this expedition and of his fourth journey—which took place in 1860, when Moffat was getting an old man—are exceedingly interesting. Moffat finished the translation of the Bible in 1857; the identical text is still in use, a tribute, as his son justly remarks, to the excellent character of the translation. In 1870 the Moffats paid a last sad farewell to their beloved home of nearly half a century, and came to finish their days in England. From the time of their departure the youngest daughter, who accompanied them, takes up the narrative. Her mother died at the end of the same year. Moffat him- self lived on to extreme old age, taking a lively interest in everything around him, and thoroughly enjoying the country home to which, in 1878, he had retired, and where five years later he died, full of years and honour.