"Livingstone lived a little more than a year after Stanley departed. On May 1, 1873, an African servant found the "master" kneeling as if in prayer "by the side of his bed, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow." It was a fitting way for this man of living legend to die. His faithful servants Susi and Chuma determined that there was no other way to pay their respects than to deliver his body and personal papers to his former associates at the coast. After burying his heart under a Mpundu tree, the body was dried in the hot African sun until it was mummified and then carried overland fifteen hundred miles to the coast.
In England, Livingstone was given a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, attended by dignitaries from all over the country. It was a day of mourning for his children, who came to say good-bye to the father they had never really known; but it was a particularly sad hour for the seventy-eight-year-old Robert Moffat, who slowly walked down the aisle in front of the casket bearing the man who decades before in that same city had caught a vision of "a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been."
The death of David Livingstone had a tremendous psychological impact on the English-speaking world. Missionary fervor reached a high pitch as zealous young men and women volunteered for overseas duty, no matter what the cost.
("Jerusalem to Irain Jaya", Ruth A Tuckker, pg 162 .163 2nd edition, Zondervan 2004)
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