On December 9, 1833, a young pastor named Daniel Lindley offered his services to the American Board of Foreign Missions. He wrote, “I am willing from love to the Savior to make every sacrifice that my going will cost me.” He was bound for an unknown land filled with unknown dangers.

Daniel Lindley was born in Ten Mile Creek, Pennsylvania, on August 24, 1801. He came from a long line of pioneers who had been among the first to settle the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Daniel was educated at Ohio University and then attended Union Theological Seminary which was located at that time in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

After graduation, Daniel Lindley pastored a church in North Carolina for several years before becoming convinced that it was his duty to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the “Dark Continent” of Africa. At the time that Lindley offered his services to the American Board of Foreign Missions, the famous David Livingstone had not yet set foot on the African continent, and the vast interior of Africa was still a blank spot on the map. But if God was truly the omnipresent Lord of the universe, He was Lord over the vast, uncharted African continent too.

Lindley did not propose to go to Africa alone. In November of 1834, he married Miss Lucy Allen. The new bride announced her willingness to accompany her husband to Africa. Many claimed that it was a shame to send such a “handsome couple” to waste their lives overseas in the Dark Continent. But God has always seen fit to select His choicest vessels for missionary service, such as the example of Paul and Barnabas whom He chose to send on the first missionary journey.

So it was that Daniel and Lucy Lindley, only a month into their marriage, sailed aboard the Burlington in the company of five other missionary couples. Upon their arrival in Africa, the Lindleys were chosen to be part of the “interior party.” This meant that after their long voyage by sea, they were expected to travel 1,000 miles inland by ox wagon.

Leaving the Cape Colony, the newlyweds embarked upon their arduous adventure. Along the way, they met swollen rivers, malarial swamps, dry wastelands, prowling lions, angry elephants, and threats from warring tribes. But they knew that, wherever they traveled, the Lord, their ever-present God, went before them.

Along the way, in the uncomfortable surroundings of an ox wagon, Mrs. Lindley gave birth to a daughter, the first of eleven children that she would bring into the world. She did not flinch at the challenge of giving birth far from the comforts of civilization. Indeed, Mrs. Lucy Lindley has been called “one of the pluckiest women to ever tread the soil of Africa.”

The couple intended to set up their missionary work among the Matabele tribe of King Mzilikazi. At that time, war between various African chieftains made work among the tribes very dangerous. A potentate named Shaka had united numerous tribes under his leadership several years before the Lindleys arrived in Africa. The unified tribes under Shaka became the Zulu Confederation. With his highly trained warriors, Shaka had swept through south Africa, bringing blood and terror wherever he went.

After Shaka’s death, various petty rulers like Mzilikazi of the Matabele tribe tried to maintain the same position that the former powerful chieftain had occupied. Bloody tribal wars erupted. To add to this confused state of affairs, the Voortrekkers, Dutch colonists also known as the Boers or Afrikaners from the Cape, were leaving the confining regulations of British colonial rule to seek land and cattle in the interior.

The Boer pioneers carried with them their Bibles as they drove their vast herds of cattle. With their large families in tow, they traveled by ox wagons into the vast interior to find ample pasture for their flocks and herds. Although the Voortrekkers professed the ancient faith of their Dutch and Huguenot ancestors, they were without pastors or any church organization. They saw their mission more similar to that of Joshua and his conquest of Canaan than of the Apostle Paul.

It was inevitable that conflict between the Voortrekkers and the Zulus would come —and it did. Disputes over cattle thefts, natural water supplies, and grazing lands arose between the colonists and the natives. Raids by the Zulu impis, comparable to a basic fighting regiment, and reprisals by Boer commandos escalated. At the “Battle of Blood River,” 464 Voortrekkers repelled the attack of an overwhelming 15,000 Zulu warriors! The determined Voortrekkers won a decisive victory, killing 3,000 Zulus, and not losing a single man of their own.

It became obvious to Daniel Lindley that before the Zulus could be reached with the Gospel, the Boers needed to be Christianized. The Boers were sincere believers in the God of the Bible, but they needed the discipline of Christ and the oversight of a pastor they could trust.

Most “ministers” were too weak and too pietistic to be of any use to the bearded Voortrekkers. They had asked for pastors from the Cape, but none had been willing to come and brave the dangers and trials of the African interior. Mr. Lindley was not afraid. In 1839, he opened a school for the Boer children and began teaching them to read and write. Among the young men that came under his Bible teaching was a young farm boy named Paul Kruger, destined to have an important role as the leader of his people in South Africa.

Lindley worked among the Boers for ten years, preaching, teaching, traveling to isolated farms to baptize children, solemnizing marriages, conducting funerals, and encouraging the Boers in the ways of Christ. The Boers found Daniel Lindley to be a man after their own heart. He was not a “tenderfoot” like other ministers they had known. He was an American, not an Englishman. He could talk with them about wagons and oxen. He could hitch up a wagon as well as any Boer trekker. He was a crack shot with a rifle and knew how to hunt the rhinoceros and the elephant. Faced with a line of horses, Lindley could pick out the best and strongest horse “almost as well as a Boer”—which was the highest compliment they could bestow!

Lindley was strong and courageous—a man who was a brave pioneer as the Boers were. He wore a beard like a Boer, rode a horse like Boer, and hunted like a Boer. The Boers came to respect and love their pastor and all that he taught them from the Bible.

After serving the Boer farmers for ten years as a traveling preacher, Lindley entrusted them into the care of their own pastors whom he had helped to train. Then he turned his attention back to the Zulus. He built a mission station at Inanda, and endeavored to help the Zulus learn to manage their land, learn a written language, and come to the light of the Gospel. Lindley met with steady success.

Lindley’s wife Lucy was also busy with ministry. She founded a school for girls, teaching young Zulu women how to be faithful wives and mothers and how to raise their children in the ways of God. Mrs. Lindley also instructed the women and girls how to cook, sew, and wash clothing. The Lindleys raised their eleven children in the heart of Africa, providing in their own happy, warm family circle an example of what a Christian family ought to be.

One of the highlights of Daniel Lindley’s life was the day that he ordained the first Zulu Christian to the work of the Gospel ministry. Old age eventually forced the Lindleys to return permanently to the United States in 1874, but several of their children remained in Africa to carry forward the advancement of the Gospel.

By the time Daniel Lindley died at the age of eighty, Zulu churches were under the leadership of national pastors who were preaching the Gospel and leading their people in singing hymns in the Zulu language. Upon hearing of Lindley’s death, these African Christians took up an offering and sent it to America to “bury our father.”

There is much that is bad and ugly in the history of South Africa, but whatever is good and beautiful can be traced in large measure to the sacrificial labors of Daniel and Lucy Lindley. Indeed, Daniel Lindley had remained true to his words written many years before to the mission board: “I am willing from love to the Savior to make every sacrifice that my going will cost me.”

Sources and Further Reference:

Richardson, Don. Eternity in Their Hearts. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2006.

Smith, Edwin W. The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley. London: Epworth Press, 1949.