He had not yet seen
of the travail of his soul. In opening Africa he had seemed to open it
for brutal slave-traders, and in the only instance in which he had yet
brought to it the feet of men "beautiful upon the mountains, publishing
peace," disaster had befallen, and an incompetent leader had broken up
the enterprise. Yet, apart from his sense of duty, there was no
necessity for his remaining there. He was offering himself a
freewill-offering, a living sacrifice. What could have sustained his
heart and kept him firm to his purpose in such a wilderness of
desolation?
"I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema."
So he wrote in his Diary, not at the time, but the year after, on the 3d
October, 1871[70]. The Bible gathers wonderful interest from the
circumstances in which it is read. In Livingstone's circumstances it was
more the Bible to him than ever. All his loneliness and sorrow, the
sickness of hope deferred, the yearnings for home that could neither be
repressed nor gratified, threw a new light on the Word.
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