Acts of self-denial that are very hard to do under the iron law of conscience, become a willing service under the glow of divine love.

It was the glow of divine love as well as the power of conscience that moved Livingstone.

Though he seldom revealed his inner feelings, and hardly ever in the language of ecstasy, it is plain that he was moved by a calm but mighty inward power to the very end of his life.

The love that began to stir his heart in his father's house continued to move him all through his dreary African journeys, and was still in full play on that lonely midnight when he knelt at his bedside in the hut in Ilala, and his spirit returned to his God and Saviour.
At first he had no thought of being himself a missionary.

Feeling "that the salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian," he had made a resolution "that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence[6]." The resolution to give himself came from his reading an Appeal by Mr.Gutzlaff to the Churches of Britain and America on behalf of China.