Sacrifice

by David Livingstone

Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers an children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life.-- Jesus speaking to his disciples in Mark 10:28-30 (ESV)

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 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 compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice." -- David Livingstone speaking to students in Cambridge, 1857 (Quoted in William Garden Blaikie, Personal Life of David Livingstone, New York: 1895, pp. 243-4).