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「一粒麥子不落在地裡死了，仍舊是一粒，若是死了，就結出很多子粒來。」（約翰福音十二章 24 節）
在美國馬薩諸塞州桑普頓城的古墳場，讓我們憑弔一下大衛﹒勃雷爾的墳墓，在他的旁邊，葬著他的愛人耶路霞﹒愛得華小姐，他死得太早，生前未及和她完婚。
這位年輕的傳教士的遺骸，把多少希望和對於基督事業的雄心帶進了墳墓，他的工作如今只留下了不少珍貴的回憶，和幾十個淺黑色的印第安信徒。但在當年，那位年高望重的清教聖徒約那坦﹒愛德華，曾希望以大衛為東床快婿，在大衛死後，他曾把他一生事蹟收集起來，寫成一本小冊，這本書插翅飛越大洋，降落在一位劍橋大學學生亨利﹒瑪泰的桌上。
可憐的瑪泰，他就丟棄了學業，天才和一切機會，到東方去傳教。當他從「印度的珊瑚灘」轉回家鄉時，他帶著病體向北跋涉到黑海邊緣。像托卡特的寂寞王一樣，他以馬鞍堆疊起來，遮蔽身體，躺在地下，貼著泥土以減輕他的高燒，終於在那裡孤獨地死去。他成就了些什麼？
這種犧牲有些什麼後果？從勃雷爾的墳墓和遠在黑海濱的瑪泰的孤塚中，已興起了一隊一隊可敬的現代傳教士，這就是他們的結果。 ── 倍根
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“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a single grain, but if it dies away in the ground, the grain is freed to spring up in a plant bearing many grains.” (John 12:24.)
Go to the old burying ground of Northampton, Mass., and look upon the early grave of David Brainerd, beside that of the fair Jerusha Edwards, whom he loved but did not live to wed.
What hopes, what expectations for Christ’s cause went down to the grave with the wasted form of that young missionary of whose work nothing now remained but the dear memory, and a few score of swarthy Indian converts! But that majestic old Puritan saint, Jonathan Edwards, who had hoped to call him his son, gathered up the memorials of his life in a little book and the little book up the memorials of his life in a little book, and the little book took wings and flew beyond the sea, and alighted on the table of a Cambridge student, Henry Martyn.
Poor Martyn! Why should he throw himself away, with all his scholarship, his genius, his opportunities! What had he accomplished when he turned homeward from “India’s coral strand,” broken in health, and dragged himself northward as far as that dreary khan at Tocat by the Black Sea, where he crouched under the piled-up saddles, to cool his burning fever against the earth, and there died alone?
To what purpose was this waste? Out of that early grave of Brainerd and the lonely grave of Martyn far away by the splashing of the Euxine Sea, has sprung the noble army of modern missionaries. --- Leonard Woolsey Bacon.
“Is there some desert or some boundless sea, Where Thou, great God of angels, wilt send me? Some oak for me to rend, Some sod for me to break, Some handful of Thy corn to take And scatter far afield, Till it in turn shall yield Its hundredfold Of grains of gold To feed the happy children of my God? “Show me the desert, Father, or the sea; Is it Thine enterprise? Great God, send me! And though this body lies where ocean rools, Father, count me among all faithful souls.
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