"O! that the Holy Spirit would enlighten them!"
This explanation suggests that the image was part of a longer sequence that represented Christian theology as an extension of sacrificial worship as described in the Old Testament. Like John Williams’ shows, the projected image of Abraham created a visual effect that Ludwig Vogl-Beinek has characterized as “presence.” Though the image is ultimately immaterial, it appears tangible due to the blurred boundaries between the world represented on screen and the space inhabited by the audience. Rather than rely on slides that surrounded figures with opaque black paint, Livingstone created this effect through dialogue with the audience. By describing the theological underpinnings of Livingstone’s narrative strategies, I argue that Livingstone's use of a lantern was ultimately shaped by a Calvinist view of the means of grace.[...] explained that this man was the first of a race to whom God had given the Bible we now held, and that among his children our Savior appeared [...] [1]
Livingstone’s choice to exhibit the sacrifice of Isaac as the first image in the lantern show is unusual when compared to other scriptural lantern lectures. As I have described elsewhere, this scene is the third in Carpenter and Westley’s copperplate sliders, preceded by Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden and Abraham banishing Hagar and Ishmael. The sequence of images as it appears in Carpenter and Westley’s set introduces two key doctrines: atonement and predestination. Opening with the image of Adam and Eve conveys the need for salvation by describing humankind’s initial separation from God. By eliminating this scene, Livingstone risked losing a key piece of the framework through which to describe Christ’s crucifixion. Livingstone accounts for this loss by opening with a scene of sacrifice. This image created an opportunity to map other references to atonement onto this image, allowing Livingstone to mediate multiple passages of scripture through his spoken narrative. This technique would have been especially effective if he had a very detailed slide. For example, using Carpenter and Westley’s version of the sacrifice of Isaac, a narrator could direct the audience’s attention to different parts of the image as they progressed through the story.
The narration would begin by focusing on Abraham as called by God to leave Harran for the Promised Land. The narrator would then describe Isaac as his promised son, shifting towards the center of the slide. The pile of wood and the burning brazier provided the narrator an opportunity to explain the importance of sacrifice as a means to atone for sin. As the narrator remediated the conversation between Abraham and his son about the absence of a ram, the focal point would follow Isaac’s gaze upward to his father’s face then outside the frame as Abraham listed to the voice of an Angel. The narration would close by directing the audience’s attention to the ram caught in the thicket at the lower right hand corner of the image. Livingstone’s accounts suggest that he often used this kind of temporal layering when presenting visual material. Missionary Travels indicates that he collapsed the distance between Abraham and Christ in his narration of this image.
Such a tactic serves a practical purpose as well as an instructional one. A set of wooden slides that had only one image per frame would have been significantly heavier and bulkier than the same number of scenes stored in sliders. Given their size and weight, Livingstone was probably traveling with a limited selection of slides.[2] Layering multiple events onto one image would mask the absence of visual material depicting these other scenes. One of the drawbacks to this multilayered style of narration is that it posed risks to the equipment. Explaining the image in this manner would have taken longer than a more focused narration. In Livingstone’s shows, the time spent narrating each slide would have been further expanded by interjections from the audience. As the show progressed, the lantern would become hotter and hotter. The longer that Livingstone left the slide in the lantern, the more likely it was going to suffer heat damage. The flaking paint at the top of Livingstone’s lantern is the result of this kind of damage. I suspect that if Livingstone’s slides do surface, the paint will be cracked and bubbled due to overexposure to heat.
In Livingstone’s lantern shows, layering events onto a single, static image was done in conversation with the audience. At Kabompo, this dialogue elided geographic and temporal distance by gesturing to objects at the periphery of the performance space. Livingstone primed his audience to think in comparative terms by creating ties between the projected image of Abraham and “the Bible we now held.” By evoking the materiality of the physical book that he traveled with, Livingstone elides the boundary between the world represented on screen and the space inhabited by the audience. The audience responded to this tactic by making comparisons of their own. In Kabompo, the Lunda men introduced African theology and religious objects into this dialogue. They remarked that
the picture was much more like a god than the things of wood or clay they worshiped.[3]
Livingstone’s diary indicates that this comparison extended to all of the pictures projected by the lantern:
Some said these were certainly liker gods than their pieces of wood smeared with medicine.[4]
Livingstone’s remediation of these conversations emphasizes the physicality of African religious practices. He foregrounds the materiality of god figures by describing their surfaces anointed with poultices as a form of prayer. Though immaterial, the projected image of Abraham takes on the physical presence through this comparison with African objects. Simultaneously, the apparati of the lantern show diminish the presence of these god figures. In a completely dark environment, the African religious figures would have been visually erased, leaving only the brightly lit image of the figures on screen. As I have described elsewhere, these viewing conditions produce an immersive viewing experience that removes the boundary between the space inhabited by the audience and the world represented on screen. Livingstone’s account suggests that movement reinforced Abraham’s presence by introducing movement into the image. Unlike Williams, Livingstone was probably not using slides that surrounded figures with opaque black paint. Images with scenery created a more distinguishable boundary between real and representational space through the circular mask of the slide. Despite this visual cue, Abraham threatens to break through this boundary to attack the audience with his uplifted knife when he slides sideways. In Livingstone’s account, the perceived presence of Abraham left tangible markers on the surrounding landscape. The audience
Although an unintentional visual effect, the perceived materialization of Abraham ultimately supported Livingstone’s pedagogical goals. The African gods indicate that the lantern show was given on holy ground, for the Lunda did not set up these idols in urban spaces but in the woods nearby. Moving the show from the village to the sacred space in the woods not only mitigated the effects of ambient light, but it also emphasized the spiritual nature of the show’s content. Abraham’s sideways movement overturns the structures that supported African religious practices, implying that these gods were ineffective in light of Christian doctrine.[6] To an English readership, the toppled gods portended the eventual triumph of Christianity over African superstitions.rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell over each other, and over the little idol-huts and tobacco-bushes[5]
Livingstone presentation of Abraham as a patriarch aligns with the emphases on the doctrines of election and predestination in other lantern lectures. Within the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Evangelical movement, there were competing interpretations of the Holy Spirit’s role in conversion. In its purest form, Calvinism teaches that God predestined a limited number of people to receive his grace before the creation of the world. Christ did not die to atone for the sins of all people but only for the sins of those chosen by God. The elect would be saved from the consequences of original sin, and this election was unconditional, irresistible, and perpetual. An Arminian view of salvation challenged the doctrine of predestination on the basis that it did not sufficiently account for human free will. This theological tradition teaches that God grants salvation to those who choose to believe in Jesus, that Christ died for all, and that salvation may in some cases not be perpetual but dependent on the believer’s behavior. Carpenter and Westely’s scriptural set resonates with a more Calvinist view, particularly in the Old Testament portion of the lantern lecture. The contrast between Ishmael and Isaac in the opening images of the lecture foregrounds the descendants of Isaac as God’s chosen people. The set also includes scenes of God protecting and providing for his elect, including Esther before Ahasuerus, the Infant Samuel, and Elijah being fed by ravens.
While it would be presumptuous to make assumptions about Livingstone’s beliefs, his public professions of faith suggest that he leaned toward the more reformed side of the Calvinist-Arminian spectrum. He briefly describes his conversion experience in Missionary Travels. Here, Livingstone deploys visual metaphors and the passive voice to emphasize God’s role in extending saving grace.
The miraculous nature of a physical cure for colorblindness parallels the Calvinistic account of grace in that the sinner cannot heal himself spiritually. Livingstone’s role in his conversion experience is obscured by the complex structure of the second sentence. The flow of his feelings stems from God’s book, making scripture the catalyst for his belief. However, in his private correspondence, Livingstone shied away from eliminating free will entirely. In a letter to his close friend Edmund Gabriel, he wrote that “No man is forced to be a sinner unless he chooses,” meaning that belief is a choice. Instead of attributing condemnation to God’s will, Livingstone shifts the blame onto cultural forces that make it impossible “to escape into the true faith.”[8]The change was like what may be supposed would take place were it possible to cure a case of ‘color blindness.’ The perfect freeness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God’s book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with his blood, and a sense of deep obligation to him for his mercy has influenced, in some small measure my conduct ever since.[7]
The emphasis on God’s intervention as an integral part of conversion characterized Livingstone’s stance toward the magic lantern. In his journal, he expresses frustration that despite the interaction and dialogue generated by the lantern, these multimodal presentations of Christian doctrine were not achieving their instructional purpose. After a series of shows in Linyanti, Livingstone laments that
This aside contrasts physical illumination with spiritual enlightenment. Though Livingstone used projection as an instructional aid, he attributes lasting spiritual change to the work of the Holy Spirit. Without divine intervention, his audience’s memory of the show’s content seems as transitory as the images themselves. Livingstone’s final turn to scripture, “His word,” represents the slippage between media as a means of grace. The narrative slides seamlessly, almost imperceptibly, between the lantern show, the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, and the role of scripture. Since the Bible had not yet been translated into the languages of the Kololo and the Lunda, the magic lantern show offered an alternative means to encounter scripture. Livingstone’s lantern rendered Biblical material visually legible to an audience that perceived the text as unintelligible, for they had looked on with curiosity as Livingstone wrote in his notebook.[10] Livingstone’s evocation of “His word” in the diary transforms the lantern show into a surrogate for the Bible in its printed form, positioning the audio-visual presentation of scripture as a vehicle for the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts of potential converts.Though they listen with apparent delight to what is said, questioning on the following night reveals almost entire ignorance of the previous lesson. O! that the Holy Spirit would enlighten them. To His soul-renewing influence my longing heart is directed. It is His word, and cannot die.[9]
In his remediations of scripture, Livingstone expressed Calvinist views of the Holy Spirit’s role in salvation. In his lantern shows, his interpretation of Old Testament material supported the Calvinist narrative that God ultimately chooses who will profess faith. Diminishing the boundary between the world represented on screen and the space inhabited by the audience through dialogue was designed to make these concepts an embodied reality. Livingstone’s diary serves as a record of these audio-visual presentations as events, but they also create opportunities for further reflection. Livingstone’s portrayal of the lantern as an ineffective evangelistic tool led to a second remediation of Reformed doctrine. By calling for the Holy Spirit to intervene, Livingstone expresses a desire for spiritual renewal both for his African audience and for himself.
[1] Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; Including a Sketch of Sixteen Years’ Residence in the Interior of Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the West Coast; Thence across the Continent, down the River Zambesi, to the Eastern Ocean, John Murray, 1857, accessible via Google Books, pp. 298-299.
[2] Rev. Smithurst, a contemporary of Livingstone’s who was sent by the Church Missionary Society to Red River, Canada, gave lantern shows with only five slides. He characterized two of these as “wretched daubs.” See page 3 of his letter to Dandeson Coates (the CMS Foreign Secretary), 18 November 1846, Church Missionary Society Archives, University of Birmingham Special Collections, CMS C1/063/34.
[3] Missionary Travels, pp. 298-299.
[4] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, Isaac Schapera, ed., Chatto & Windus, 1963. p. 59.
[5] Missionary Travels, pp. 298-299.
[6] Livingstone describes the Lunda idols in greater detail in Missionary Travels, pp. 286-287. The gods were placed not in the confines of the village but in the woods nearby. This positioning served a protective function, for “if an enemy were approaching they [the gods] would have full information.”
[7] Missionary Travels, p. 4.
[8] “Letter to Edmund Gabriel, 5, 18, 20, 23 January 1855,” Brenthurst Library, Book no. 6754, accessible via Livingstone Online, Adrian S. Wisnicki and Megan Ward, dirs, 2019, Web, p. 23.
[9] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, p. 315.
[10] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, p. 18.
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