Robert Moffat

A Light to South Africa - The Missionary (Part 1)

When I think of Robert Moffat, I am reminded of the Scripture in Zechariah 4:10, which says, "For who despises the day of small things?"

It seemed a small thing to some godly men in a southern Scotland church when a boy about four years old, from a home of poor but pious parents, knelt at an altar to pray.  His decision was despised by the elders as one who was too young to understand. Thank God, one unnamed, unknown-to-us brother bothered to kneel in prayer with "Robbie."

Robert may well have been converted to Christ then -- if not, it was the commencement of a chain of events that led to his conversion and to the opening of doors of evangelism to the uncharted depths of the continent of Africa.  Never through one man has a longer shadow for the Gospel been cast in Africa than the one Robert Moffat cast.


The Man

Robert Moffat (1795-1883), missionary was born at Ormiston, East Lothian, [Scotland] on December 21, 1795. His father was a customhouse officer; the family of his mother, Ann Gardiner, had lived for several generations at Ormiston.

In 1797 the Moffats moved to Portsay, near Banff, and in 1806 to Carronshore, near Falkirk. There, in the home, Robert received much of his religious training where his mother Marjory taught him from the Bible and the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms.   She also read him many stories of the Moravian missionaries, their triumphs, tragedies and the unfinished missionary work of the church in Greenland and the East Indies. [Ed. The Moravian church grew out of the church that Cyrill and Methodius translated the Bible for in the late 4th century.]

Robert went at an early age to the parish school, and at age four went to the altar to pray and accept Christ as Savior. When he was eleven was sent, with an elder brother, to Mr. Paton's school at Falkirk. In 1809 he was apprenticed to a gardener and during his apprenticeship he attended evening classes, learned to play a little on the violin, and took some lessons at the anvil.

Call To Missions

It was when Robert was in his mid-teens in 1811 that his family moved, due to his father being transferred to Inverkeithing.  At the end of 1813 Robert began to work as an undergardner for Mr. Leigh Smith of High Leigh, Cheshire and it was there where his spiritual convictions were confirmed.  And it was on a walk from High Leigh to Warrenton that another event occurred which would engineer him into evangelism in Africa. He saw a sign announcing a missionary meeting.

On such a small thing as a poster, God prompted the heart of the youth to purpose to become a missionary. Moffat attended the meeting and there is evidence he got the message for shortly afterward he contacted Rev. William Roby, the Methodist preacher in Manchester, became a member of the Methodist Church and was soon recommended to the London Missionary Society.

One thing that impressed Robert is that his boss, Mr. Smith had two sons who had became missionaries. They also had one daughter Mary who Robert grew to love. During one of his stays at Dukinfield that Robert became engaged.

Mary was born in 1795 at New Windsor and had been educated at the Moravian school at Fairfield, and had also formed strong religious convictions. As she grew up, her parents had no objection to Mary’s brother becoming missionaries, but her parents at this time objected to the match with Robert if it meant her becoming one too.  Her parents would have consented to their marriage if they had been willing to remain in England, but they could not bear to think of their only daughter's crossing the seas to a land like Africa.


In the summer of 1816 Robert was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a missionary, and on September 30, 1816 he was set apart for the ministry work of church planting in the Surrey Chapel, London. And it was during the summer of 1816 that Robert decided he wanted to marry Mary and take her with him to South Africa. However, due to Mary’s parents objections Robert decided to head to South Africa and trust the relationship to the Lord. Robert knew that the Lord had called him there and it would be no small matter for the Lord to resolve the issue of his love for Mary.

In October of that year he embarked in the ship Alacrity, Captain Findlay, for South Africa, and arrived at Cape Town on January 13, 1817. At the age of twenty-one, Robert reached South Africa. Robert was destined for Namaqualand, beyond the border of the colony, but permission to go there once he arrived was temporarily refused by the governor for political reasons, and so Robert went to Stellenbooch to learn Dutch.

(Part 2 soon to follow)