Probably no human being was ever in circumstances parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood.  Years had passed since he had heard from home.  The sound of his mother-tongue came to him only in the broken sentences of Chuma or Susi or his other attendants, or in the echoes of his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or in some cry of home-sickness that could not be kept in.  In long pain and sickness there had been neither wife nor child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy, or lighten his dull hut with a smile.  He had been baffled and tantalized beyond description in his efforts to complete the little bit of exploration which was yet necessary to finish his task.  His soul was vexed for the frightful exhibitions of wickedness around him, where “man to man,” instead of brothers, were worse than wolves and tigers to each other.  During all his past life he had been sowing his seed weeping, but so far was he from bringing back his sheaves rejoicing, that the longer he lived the more cause there seemed for his tears.  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.  How clearly it was intended for such as him, and how sweetly it came home to him!  How faithful, too, were its pictures of human sin and sorrow!  How true its testimony against man, who will not retain God in his knowledge, but, leaving Him, becomes vain in his imaginations and hard in his heart, till the bloom of Eden is gone, and a waste, howling wilderness spreads around!  How glorious the out-beaming of Divine Love, drawing near to this guilty race, winning and cherishing them with every endearing act, and at last dying on the cross to redeem them!  And how bright the closing scene of Revelation—­the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—­yes, he can appreciate that attribute—­the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from the mourner’s eye!

[Footnote 70:  See Last Journals, vol. ii. p. 154.]