The exquisite inventiveness of a
love that lavished tears as water on the feet of Jesus, and made tresses of
hair a towel, and broke the alabaster flask for his anointing; the feminine
tenderness that lifted his mangled body from the cross and wrapped it in
new linen, with costly spices, and laid it in a virgin tomb, have at length
been surpassed by the ingenious devotion of the cursed sons of Canaan.
The grandeur and pathos of that burial scene, amid the stately columns and
arches of England's famous Abbey, pale in luster when contrasted with that
simpler scene near Ilala, when, in God's greater cathedral of nature, whose
columns and arches are the trees, whose surpliced choir are the singing
birds, whose organ is the moaning wind, the grassy carpet was lifted, and
dark hands laid Livingstone's heart to rest, In that great cortege that
moved up the nave no truer nobleman was found than that black man, Susi,
who in illness had nursed the Blantyre hero, had laid his heart in Africa's
bosom, and whose hand was now upon his pall.
Let those who doubt and deride Christian missions to the degraded children
of Africa, who tell us that it is not worth while to sacrifice precious
lives for the sake of these doubly lost millions of the Dark
Continent,--let such tell us whether it is not worth while, at any cost, to
seek out and save men with whom such Christian heroism is possible.
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