BIO:Robert Moffat 1795-1883

   Missionary to South Africa. Robert Moffat was born in Ormiston,
Scotland, of pious but poor parents. The educa- tional advantages
afforded him were limited, so, at a young age, he became an apprentice
to learn gardening. Upon the completion of this apprenticeship, he
moved to England where he was won to Christ through the efforts of the
Wesleyan Methodists. With an intense desire to serve the Lord burning
within him, he attended a missionary conference being held in
Manchester, and there he felt the divine call to carry the Gospel to
the heathen.

   He was later accepted by the London Missionary Soci- ety, and at the
age of 21, he sailed for Cape Town, South Af- rica. The hardships and
primitive conditions did not deter him as he pushed northward into the
interior, where he won to Christ the most dangerous outlaw chief in
that region.

   Returning to Cape Town in 1819, he met his fiancee, arriving from
England, and they were married. Together, they spent the next 51 years
on the mission field, experiencing the many hardships and sorrows of
that primitive area. Three of their children died in infancy and youth.
However, five of the remaining ones remained in Africa as missionaries.
Mary, the oldest daughter, became the wife of David Livingstone.

   The work of Moffat was, as it were, the stepping stones which others
used in spreading the Gospel throughout the Dark Continent. He opened
many mission stations and served as the pioneer missionary in an area
of hundreds of square miles. He translated the Bible into the language
of the Bechwanas, first having reduced the language to written
characters.

   In 1870, after 54 years in Africa, he and his wife returned to
England, where one year later she died. Moffat continued to promote
foreign missions the rest of his life. He raised funds for a seminary
that was built at the Kuruman Station, where native students were
prepared for missionary work among their own people. At his death in
1883 the London newspaper said, "Perhaps no more genuine soul ever
breathed. He addressed the cultured audiences within the majestic halls
of Westminster Abbey with the same simple manner in which he led the
worship in the huts of the savages."
