Sacrifice and Recompense

DAVID LIVINGST0NE.

When the body of Livingstone was brought from the heart of Africa, it was identified by the scars where the lion had mauled him.        

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 that is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny thereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and 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 compared with the glory that shall hereafter he revealed in, and for, us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made, who left His Fatherˇ¦s throne on high to give Himself for us.

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