Among the other honors conferred on him during this visit to Britain was the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. Some time before, Glasgow had given him the honorary degree of LL.D. In the beginning of 1858, when he was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the certificate on his behalf was signed, among others, by the Earl of Carlisle, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who after his signature added P.R. (_pro Regina_), a thing that had never been done before[55].
[Footnote 55: For list of Dr. Livingstone's honors, see Appendix No. V.]
The life he was now leading was rather trying. He writes to his friend Mr. Maclear on the 10th November:
"I finish my public spouting next week at Oxford. It is really very time-killing, this lionizing, and I am sure you pity me in it. I hope to leave in January. Wonder if the Portuguese have fulfilled the intention of their Government in supporting my men.... I shall rejoice when I see you again in the quiet of the Observatory. It is more satisfactory to serve God in peace. May He give his grace and blessing to us all! I am rather anxious to say something that will benefit the young men at Oxford. They made me a D.C.L. There!! Wonder if they would do so to the Editor of the _Grahamstown Journal?_"
Livingstone was not yet done with "public spouting," even after his trip to Oxford. Among the visits paid by him toward the end of 1857, none was more interesting or led to more important results than that to Cambridge. It was on 3d December he arrived there, becoming the guest of the Rev. Wm. Monk, of St. John's. Next morning, in the senate-house, he addressed a very large audience, consisting of graduates and undergraduates and many visitors from the town and neighborhood. The Vice-Chancellor presided and introduced the stranger. Dr. Livingstone's lecture consisted of facts relating to the country and its people, their habits and religious belief, with some notices of his travels, and an emphatic statement of his great object--to promote commerce and Christianity in the country which he had opened. The last part of his lecture was an earnest appeal for missionaries.
"It is deplorable to think that one of the noblest of our missionary societies, the Church Missionary Society, is compelled to send to Germany for missionaries, whilst other Societies are amply supplied. Let this stain be wiped off. The sort of men who are wanted for missionaries are such as I see before me; men of education, standing, enterprise, zeal, and piety.... I hope that many whom I now address will embrace that honorable career. Education has been given us from above for the purpose of bringing to the benighted the knowledge of a Saviour. If you knew the satisfaction of performing such a duty, as well as the gratitude to God which the missionary must always feel, in being chosen for so noble, so sacred a calling, you would have no hesitation in embracing it.
"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left his father's throne on high to give himself for us; 'who being the brightness of that Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.'...