Wilson, afterward Professor of Technology in the University of
Edinburgh, who was then acting as unsalaried assistant in Dr. Graham's
laboratory. Frank, genial, and chivalrous, Wilson and Livingstone had
much in common, and more in after-years, when Wilson, too, became an
earnest Christian. In the simplicity and purity of their character, and
in their devotion to science, not only for its own sake, but as a
department of the kingdom of God, they were brothers indeed. Livingstone
showed his friendship in after-years by collecting and transmitting to
Wilson whatever he could find in Africa worthy of a place in the
Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, of which his friend was the
first Director.

In the course of his second session in Glasgow (1837-38) Livingstone
applied to the London Missionary Society, offering his services to them
as a missionary. He had learned that that Society had for its sole
object to send the gospel to the heathen; that it accepted missionaries
from different Churches, and that it did not set up any particular form
of Church, but left it to the converts to choose the form they
considered most in accordance with the Word of God. This agreed with
Livingstone's own notion of what a Missionary Society should do. He had
already connected himself with the Independent communion, but this
preference for it was founded chiefly on his greater regard for the
_personnel_ of the body, and for the spirit in which it was
administered, as compared with the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland. He
had very strong views of the spirituality of the Church of Christ, and
the need of a profound spiritual change as the only true basis of
Christian life and character. He thought that the Presbyterian Churches
were too lax in their communion, and particularly the Established
Church. He was at this time a decided Voluntary, chiefly on the ground
maintained by such men as Vinet, that the connection of Church and State