226 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xi. 



" It is deplorable to think that one of the noblest of our missionary 

 societies, the Church Missionary Society, is compelled to send to 

 Germany for missionaries, whilst other Societies are amply supplied. 

 Let this stain be wiped off. The sort of men who are wanted for 

 missionaries are such as I see before me : men of education, standing, 

 enterprise, zeal, and piety. ... I hope that many Avhom I now address 

 will embrace that honourable career. Education has been given us 

 from above for the purpose of bringing to the benighted the knowledge 

 of a Saviour. If you knew the satisfaction of performing such a duty, 

 as well as the gratitude to God which the missionary must always feel, 

 in being chosen for so noble, so sacred a calling, you would have no 

 hesitation in embracing it. 



" For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has 

 appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have 

 made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called 

 a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt 

 owing to our God, which we can never repay 1 Is that a sacrifice 

 which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the conscious- 

 ness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious 

 destiny hereafter ] Away with the word in such a view, and with 

 such a thought ! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a 

 privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, 

 with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, 

 may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink ; 

 but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when com- 

 pared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. 

 I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we re- 

 member the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne 

 on high to give Himself for us ; ' who being the brightness of that 

 Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding 

 all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged 

 our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.' . . . 



" I beg to direct your attention to Africa : I know that in a few 

 years I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open ; do not let 

 it be shut again ! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for 

 commerce and Christianity ; do you carry out the work which I have 

 begun. I leave it with you !" 



In a prefatory letter prefixed to the volume entitled 

 Br. Livingstone's Cambridge Lectures, the late Professor 

 Sedgwick remarked, in connection with this event, 

 that in the course of a long academic life he had often 

 been present in the senate-house on exciting occasions ; 

 in the days of Napoleon he had heard the greetings 

 given to our great military heroes ; he had been present 



