The Call to Be a Missionary by David Livingstone

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 21, 1914

The Call to Be a Missionary

By David Livingstone

For my 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? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own best reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the thought 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, make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this be for only a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.— David Livingstone.