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Recognizing his lifetime of service as a jungle doctor, Life magazine in October, 1947, titled an article about Albert Schweitzer “The Greatest Man in the World.”

Schweitzer, who earned doctorates in philosophy, theology, and medicine before he moved to Africa, came to America only once, in 1949. When he was to arrive by train in Chicago, where he would receive an honorary doctorate of laws, a committee of dignitaries from the university stood at the depot, waiting to greet him. They knew what he looked like—the whole world knew what Schweitzer looked like—but Schweitzer had never met or seen a picture of any of the welcoming committee. When Schweitzer disembarked, the committee observed something they could not forget.

Dr. Schweitzer noticed a bent old woman carrying her bags with great difficulty. Spontaneously dropping his grip to the depot floor, the seventy-four-year-old doctor picked up her bags and carried them to a cab. After helping her into the cab, he returned to his grip and began to look for someone to chauffeur him to his speaking engagement.

That afternoon the dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, introducing Dr. Schweitzer, set aside Schweitzer’s massive curriculum vitae and spoke straight from the heart: “This morning Albert Schweitzer carried a feeble little old lady’s bags. As long as we live we will never again see a person in need and be able to pass on by. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Albert Schweitzer.”73

Schweitzer once wrote of his decision to leave his prestigious, comfortable life in Europe: “I wanted to be a doctor so that I might be able to work without having to talk. For years I had been giving of myself in words . . . but this new form of activity would consist not in preaching the religion of love, but in practicing it.”74

He meant to make his life his argument. Mission accomplished.