'The great theme, however, was Christ, and I think that most men in that little market town, and a great many of those who used to come to the fair, both heard and understood the great gospel truth of salvation in Jesus.

'Eager to see some more of the country, and in the hope that I might be able to talk to him on the way, I hired a Mongol to carry my bedding and books, and made a descent on a village thirty miles away. The general cold of the winter was aggravated by a snowstorm which overtook us at the little market town, and I have no words to tell you how the cold felt that day as I paraded that one street. I sold a fair number of books, though my hands were too much benumbed almost to be able to hand the books out. I made some attempts at preaching, but the muscles were also benumbed—that day was a cold day.

'I was turned out of two respectable inns at Bull Town because I was a foot traveller, had no cart or animal, that is, and had to put up in a tramps' tavern because I came as a tramp!

'Next journey I made I hired a man and a donkey. The donkey was my passport to respectability, and I was more comfortable too, being able to take more bedding with me. I was warned against going to Ch'ao Yang, sixty miles, the roads being represented as unsafe; but I went and found no trouble, though there was a severe famine in the district. I spent a day each at two market towns on the way, and two days in Ch'ao Yang itself.

'The journey home I made on foot, a donkey driven by a Mongol carrying my bedding and books. I adopted this plan mainly to bring myself into close contact with the Mongol. He proved himself a capital fellow to travel with, but as yet has shown no signs of belief in Christ. As we did long marches my feet suffered badly.'

In a private letter written at this time he enters a little more fully into what he had to endure.

'I had a good time in Mongolia, but oh! so cold. Some of the days I spent in the markets were so very cold that my muscles seemed benumbed, and speech even was difficult. I met with some spiritual response, though, and with that I can stand cold. Eh! man, I have got thin. I am feeding up at present. I left my medicines, books, &c., there, and walked home here, a donkey carrying my baggage, a distance of about three hundred miles, in seven and a half days, or about forty miles a day, and my feet were really very bad.

'At night I used to draw a woollen thread through the blisters. In the morning I "hirpled" a little, but it was soon all right. I walked, not because I had not money to ride, but to get at the Mongol who was with me.'

These graphic pictures enable us to realise how Mr. Gilmour began the last great missionary enterprise of his life. He returned to Peking, and then had to pass through that severe trial which comes to almost all missionaries in the foreign field, which is often one of their heaviest crosses. His two eldest boys were sent home for education. They sailed from Tientsin March 23, 1886, the diary for that day containing the brief but significant reference: 'At 6.45 A.M. came all the friends once more, at 7.30 cast off, and the vessel slowly fell out into the middle of the river. Oh! the parting!' But at 8.30 on the same morning the sorrowful father had started on his solitary return journey to Peking. Bereft now of both wife, and boys he was to pass the rest of his career in China, except for the brief intervals of residence in Peking, in the cheerless, noisy, uncongenial quarters of an ordinary Chinese inn. The return of the Rev. S. E. Meech in April 1886 set him entirely free from mission work in the capital. He had already acquired the needful experience of his new field of labour, and on April 22, 1886, he started anew for Eastern Mongolia. It is neither necessary nor desirable to enter into any very detailed description of the next three years. In many respects day after day was occupied with the round of ever recurring and similar duties, but it is desirable to enter, if we can, with some minuteness into his inner life, and to lay bare the spiritual sources and springs of his outward actions. It is in these, in our judgment, that the true beauty, the abiding lesson, and the great success of his life consist. And this he has enabled us to do. In a private, not an official, letter to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, the Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, he indicates his actions and the motives that were impelling him so to act, during the summer of 1886. Differences of opinion arose with his fellow missionaries as to the wisdom of his methods and the soundness of his judgment. Those who differed most strongly from him knew little or nothing by personal observation and experience of the conditions of work either on the Plain or at Ch'ao Yang. But no question ever did or ever could arise as to the absolute consecration of his heart and life to the work of winning souls. The truth of the words in one of his official reports was manifest to all: 'Man, the fire of God is upon me to go and preach.'

'The past four and a half months has been a time of no small trial and spiritual tension. Since April 22 I have had no tidings of the outer world. An agent of the Bible Society, who was selling books in the district, was with me for a month, but he had gone out before me, so that when we met he had no news for me, but wanted news from me.

'Some men, who gave promise of believing in Jesus, have fallen away, and I have a haunting suspicion that it was one such man who, on the morning of Sunday, June 6, stole my beautiful copy of the revised Bible, leaving me till now with only a New Testament in English. I had much difficulty in procuring that Bible, and wasn't it heartless of a Chinaman to steal it for the leather binding, for which even he could have hardly any use? I said not a single word to anyone in the town about it, as I feared that making trouble over it would hinder me in future, by making innkeepers afraid to receive me, lest they should be held responsible for such losses. I can hardly say though, that, at first at least, I took joyfully the spoiling of my goods. Secret tears testified to my sense of the loss, but falling back on the faith that all things work together for my good, I was comforted, and gave the more earnest heed to the New Testament.

'Then the Chinese would ask, "How many people have believed and entered the religion since you left Peking?" and such questions kept before my mind painfully how slowly things move, and drew out my soul in more painful longing for God's blessing in the conversion of men.

'In the beginning of July I must have got a touch of the sun. Nearly all that month I was ill, but just then was the great annual fair at Ch'ao Yang, so, ill and all, I had the tent put up daily and dispensed medicines. My assistant, however, had to do most of the preaching; I had not much strength for that. The first three weeks in August I had diarrh[oe]a and dysentery. I was at Ta Cheng Tzŭ. There was no fair, and but poor market gatherings, but, weather permitting, we put up our tent daily and did good work. Paul says (Gal. iv. 19), "My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you," and he is right. It is a carrying of men in prayer until the image of Christ is formed in them; and how many of them prove abortions.

'One of the converts at Ta Cheng Tzŭ caused me no little anxiety. I knew that he professed to be impressed last winter. He said he wanted to call on me in my inn and tell me his difficulties. I was eager to get home, but as he said he would have no leisure before a certain date, I waited till then, nearly a week, for almost no other purpose than to see him. He never came, and I trudged back to Peking downcast about him.

'This year when we came to Ta Cheng Tzŭ on our way to Ch'ao Yang, on going to his place for breakfast (he is one of two brothers who own and manage a restaurant, and both of them, and a third brother, are members of a sect which forbids opium, whisky, and tobacco), we were shown into the more private part, and he and his brother and the cook set upon us to inquire more fully about Christianity, how to enter it, etc, etc. This took me by surprise, and made me so glad that my breakfast for the most part remained uneaten, though we had travelled eight hours that morning. In the evening I did not go for a meal, and my assistant on going was met at the door by the inquirers, and so engaged in conversation about Christianity that darkness set in, the cooking range was closed, and the establishment shut for the day before they were finished. My man had no dinner. Next day we went on towards Ch'ao Yang thankful and happy. These restaurant people had a few days before been visited by the Bible Society's agent, and had derived much Christian benefit from his Chinese assistant.

'Our interview with the restaurant men was on Monday. In Ch'ao Yang next Sunday, just six days after being, so to speak, on the mount of transfiguration with these Chinamen, on dismissing the few hangers-on that remained at the close of the afternoon preaching, and stepping down from the little vantage-ground from which I had been speaking, one of the audience said he would go home with me to my inn, as he had come with a letter to me from Ta Cheng Tzŭ from the Bible agent. I went to the inn, read the letter, and found that he and his Chinese helper had differed, and he had come to Ta Cheng Tzŭ seeking me. He needed and asked my help, so next day I started for Ta Cheng Tzŭ, and on arriving there found that the little place was full of the news of the quarrel between the Christian foreigner and the Christian native. That was bad, but, worse still, on going to the restaurant I found the earnestness of the inquirers gone, and one of them said openly, "If this is the sort of fruit that Christianity bears, what better is it than any other religion?"

'In a later visit paid in May they seemed colder still, and the place where I had hoped to gather fruit seemed barren and hopeless.

'In August we again visited Ta Cheng Tzŭ. I was blue. The fever of July, the defection of the Mongol donkey man, who failed to come for us, the diarrh[oe]a, which on the journey changed to dysentery, being baffled in attempting to find suitable quarters in Ta Cheng Tzŭ, and the chilled hearts of the restaurant men, made our entrance not cheerful. On the way my assistant and I had talked over matters, and resolved by prayer and endeavour to see what could be done for the restaurant men. Just ten days after our arrival the eldest brother called on me in my inn and said, "To-night I dismiss my gods, henceforth I am a Christian. I am ready to be baptized any day you may be pleased to name."

'I cannot say what a relief these words brought me. There still remained anxieties in his case, but in a day or two things came out all right, and day by day in public in the restaurant he might be seen studying his catechism when unemployed, and speaking for Christianity to all who asked what book that was.

'He is a leading spirit, though a poor scholar, and was the deacon or head of the branch of the sect in Ta Cheng Tzŭ, called Tsai li ti. There are some twelve or sixteen members. Most of them joined the sect through his endeavours, and he is eager to rear up Christianity in the same way. You will partly understand now how anxious I am about him. If he goes on all right, we may soon have a little company of believers there. If he falls away—well, all things work together for my good.

'One thing that moved these restaurant men towards Christianity was an incident which happened in their establishment last winter. A half-drunk Chinaman reviled me badly one evening at dinner. He laid to my charge many bad and grievous things. Though they were utterly false as regards me, they might be quite true of some other foreigner whom he may have met. It was useless to reason with a drunken man over a case of mistaken identity, so I said nothing, ate my dinner, paid my bill, and went to my inn. The restaurant men were very wroth with the man, they told me afterwards, and felt like "going for" him themselves, and never forgot what they were pleased to call my patience. In God's providence this little incident seems to have been an important factor in impressing them with favourable ideas of Christianity.

'Another thing which seems to have impressed them was their seeing me this August, day by day at my post in my tent, carrying on the work, when they knew I was ill, and, according to their ideas, should have been in bed. I was not really so ill as all that, but that was their idea. I would be very glad to have another reviling and another attack of dysentery if the same results would follow.

'The profession of the other adherent at Ta Cheng Tzŭ, and the moving of the hearts, seemingly at least, of other two men who live at a distance, and had to leave for home suddenly before receiving full instruction, but of whom I try to have hope, have all moved my heart and seem answers to a great longing I had been crying to God about, namely, that He would give me power to move these heathen. Oh that He would do it!

'I have felt it my duty to become a vegetarian on trial. I don't know whether I can carry it out. The Chinese look up so much to this supposed asceticism that I am eager to acquire the influence a successful vegetarianism would give me, and I am trying it in true Chinese style, which forbids eggs, leeks and carrots, &c. As far as I have gone all is well. I am a little afraid that the great appetite it gives may drive me to eat till I become fat. We'll see.

'The mothers bringing their babies moves me much. It reminds me of scenes in Peking when another and more skilful hand ministered to their diseases; then the picture of the family surroundings fills itself up, and I have to seek a place where to weep.

'Altogether it is a sowing in tears. The district is not an easy one, the life which the work entails is a hard one. There is no hardship or self-denial I am not ready to "go in for," but I want you to understand me and let me have your sympathy.'

This long extract, not too long we venture to think, as enabling us to see into the heart of the man, raises several points of great moment. Nothing could illustrate better his eagerness to get into close touch and perfect sympathy with the people. He had long before adopted the native dress of an ordinary shopkeeper or respectable workman. He now adapted himself, as far as possible, to the native food. He lived on such as the poor eat. Often he would take his bowl of porridge, native fashion, in the street, sitting down upon a low stool by the boiler of the itinerant restaurant keeper. The vegetarianism referred to was, as he indicates, very thoroughgoing and in accord with Chinese ideas.

The great poverty of the people also pressed upon his attention the enormous waste induced by whisky drinking, and by the smoking of tobacco and opium. The sect Tsai li ti referred to was a small organisation among the Chinese for endeavouring to secure entire abstinence from all three. It did not seem tolerable to him that the level of Christian morality and practice with regard to these things should be lower than that of the heathen. Famine often visited those parts, and he came to hold the view that men could hardly pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' with any hope of a favourable answer, or even reasonably expect God's blessing upon their tillage of the soil, while they continued to use a large part of the grain produced in the manufacture of strong drink, and while they continued to set apart large districts for the cultivation of tobacco and opium. Hence, at first, he made entire abstinence from all three an indispensable requisite for admission into the Christian Church.

It was hardly to be expected, perhaps, that his colleagues in the North China Mission would be able to see eye to eye with him on these points. With regard to opium the opinion as to abstinence is unanimous. With regard to the other two, the prevailing opinion was that, however desirable entire abstinence may be, it is not authoritatively commanded, and ought not to be made an indispensable qualification for baptism.

It seemed to some of them that there was danger of the heathen confusing Christianity with their own Tsai li ti. In reply to such a suggestion Gilmour wrote: 'My hearers not know the difference between Tsai li ti and Christianity! Thanks be to God, this whole town and neighbourhood has rung with the truths of Christianity. Children, men, shop-boys, and, of all people in the world, a lad gathering grain stumps in the fields a long way off—it has been my lot to hear them repeat sayings of mine, when they saw me, and did not think I could hear them.'

Into this controversy as a mere discussion we have no desire to enter. But to enable the reader to know Mr. Gilmour exactly as he was it deserves more than a passing reference. The following may be taken as an example of many letters that passed on this subject.

'I start perhaps on Tuesday. Pardon me for expressing myself on one matter—the Chinese teetotal business. You and some of my colleagues seem to me as if I could not move you on this question. It is a great grief to me. I think you are not right in your ideas about this. I suppose you can beat me in argument. I am still more than ever convinced that teetotalism is right and needful for the success of native Christian life in China. We have some painful instances here of that among the natives—specially two—one of the two hailing from Tientsin.

'I don't know your Tientsin Church history, but if it is anything like ours here you would find men standing nowhere almost as to Christian character, who but for drink and its concomitants might, humanly speaking, have shone. And yet these are men to get whom out of sin Christ died—brethren, for whom Christ died.

'Pardon me again when I take a short cut to what I want to say: "I believe were Christ here now as a missionary amongst us He would be an enthusiastic teetotaller and a non-smoker."

'Tobacco is comparatively a harmless matter, but it is not so unimportant as it seems to us foreigners. Whisky should go, and I feel that the Chinese would be quite ready, if led, to turn both whisky and tobacco out together. They are born brothers in China, useless, and acknowledged to be such; harmful as far as they are anything, and comparatively expensive.

'I would like to see you start in your church an anti-tobacco and whisky society; voluntary, of course, in a church established as yours on the old lines. Though I stand alone, I believe the flowing tide is with me.

'Wishing you many souls in 1887, and eager that no minor difference of opinion should hinder our prayers.

'Yours I-hardly-know-how-to-say-what, 'JAMES GILMOUR.'

In the Chinese Recorder, for which he had been in the habit of writing for many years, he published a paper in which he set forth with great clearness and fulness his views on this important matter. It deserves a place in the story of his life because in it he has sketched, as no one else could, himself, and some of his later methods of evangelistic address.

'In December, 1885, in a district of North China new to me, I found myself preaching to a small crowd of Chinese and Mongols in a small market town. I was in a lane leading on to the main street. At my back was a mud wall, in front and at both sides was the audience, within hearing was the main street, above, a bright sun made the place warm and cheerful. After listening a while the audience wanted to know how good seasons could be secured. To the truths I had been preaching they had listened with respect and fair attention, but at the first opportunity for speaking they wanted to know how to get a good harvest.

'At first I paid little attention to this question, but after a little while it was asked again, and that by several men in succession, and I soon found that the people of the place had little room for anything else in their thoughts. There was good reason for it too. Their last harvest had been a poor one. Three-tenths was about the yield. They too with their three-tenths were comparatively well off. Some distance from them the yield had not been more than two-tenths, and a little beyond that again, there were fields which had been sown, but never reaped. There had been nothing to reap. Nothing had grown. I passed some of these fields afterwards and saw them. Was it wonderful then that the main thought in their minds should be the harvest failure, and that they should be mainly anxious to know how to secure a good season next year? Looking at my audience I saw that nine-tenths of them were poorly clad. Nearly one-half of them were quite insufficiently clothed, and many were in garments suited to summer weather only. I was in a sheepskin coat and felt shoes, and even thus was not too warm, and could not help thinking how cold they must be, in their torn clothes and ordinary shoes. In addition to this they seemed hungry. I dare say perhaps one-half of them were in actual suffering from deficiency of food.

'Taking these things into consideration, I did not regard their great and often-repeated question, "How about the harvest?" as impertinent, and set myself to answer it. When the question was again asked I replied by asking another, namely, "Do you think you deserve good harvests?" This question usually made them stare and ask, "Why should not we deserve good harvests?" and I would reply, "In the first place, because of that tobacco pipe in your mouth." A laugh of incredulity would usually pass round the audience, but when done laughing, and asked to consider the folly of spending money buying a pipe and tobacco when the smoker was shivering in his rags, and hungry, and especially when asked what was the good of smoking, they laughed no more. When pressed to say where the tobacco came from, they would admit that the cultivation of tobacco took up no small proportion of their better-class land, and when pressed to say how much land was given up to tobacco cultivation, they would admit, what did not seem to have occurred to them before, that the amount of land given up to tobacco cultivation was very large. How large it was I had no conception till the following summer, when, walking round the suburbs, I would look over the low mud walls of their gardens, and be amazed at the expanse of land covered with the great, broad green leaf of the flourishing tobacco plant.

'Putting these things before my audience, they would admit that the cultivation of tobacco was a misuse of a large portion of their better land, that in cultivating and using tobacco they were doing what was wrong, and hindering heaven from feeding them. Heaven had given them good land and good rains for the purpose of growing food. The growth of tobacco was defeating heaven's purpose, and as long as they did so, what face had they to ask for good seasons? To take good land and plant it with tobacco, with what face could they ask heaven to send rain, seeing that if rain came, what grew would not be grain but tobacco, a thing which they themselves to a man admitted was no use at all? And so my audience would admit that as preliminary to getting or even expecting a good harvest was the discontinuance of the use and growth of tobacco.

'In the course of a year and a half of outdoor preaching in streets and at fairs, and private conversation with individuals, I never met an audience that defended tobacco as useful, and do not think I met more than three individuals who had anything to say in its defence. Almost everyone, smokers included, admitted its uselessness. Many do not seem to have thought the cultivation and use of it any harm, or having any bearing on the question of food supply and good harvests; they usually regarded it as simply a piece of extravagance on their own part, which had no bearing on anything or anybody beyond themselves. But when pointed out to them they readily admit that tobacco cultivation lessens the production of grain, and as readily admit that the wrongdoing in this misuse of land is likely to further harm the harvest by offending heaven into being unwilling to send rain. I myself never used to look on smoking as any great evil, till led into this district, and thus forced to study the subject. In England I had never seen tobacco grown. A smoker there spends a few coppers, and smokes; what harm does he do? Does not he increase trade and help the revenue? His smoking seems to harm no one but himself. Such were my thoughts. But in this district I see the cultivation of tobacco limiting the supply of grain, thus raising the price of food, and consequently making men go hungry. In addition I see men, women, and sometimes children, in rags and hungry even, with pipes and tobacco, and when they complain of heaven not supplying them with enough food to eat, it would be less than honest not to point out to them that the fault lies not with heaven, but with themselves, and that part at least of the scarcity of grain they experience is due to the cultivation and use of tobacco, which throughout that whole region is very excessive.

'I have dwelt thus at length on the tobacco question, not because it is the most important of the three things here spoken of, but because many good brethren have not been able to see with me on this point. They feel, as I used to do before I went to that region, that tobacco smoking is a small affair, not worth raising into prominence or the region of conscience or Christian duty at all. These brethren have not seen how things work. I feel sure that almost any missionary placed as I was would have done exactly what I have done, taken a stand against this excessive growth and more excessive use of tobacco, for, not content with what they grow, they actually import quantities of it. Tobacco is not the greatest cause of poverty and hunger in the district, but it is a much greater factor in poverty than would at first be supposed. But for its use in that district a large number of men, women, and children, who are deficiently clothed and fed, would be warm and sleek. Christ taught men to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." It must be wrong to make hundreds of men, women, and children go half clad and half fed, simply that eighty or ninety per cent. of the adults of that district may indulge in tobacco, a thing, according to their own admission, utterly without use, and for the continuance of which they can give no reason, further than that they have acquired the habit and find it difficult to give it up.

'A more serious question, however, is the whisky. In going into that region I was amazed at the quantity of whisky used. I used to lodge in an inn and take my meals in an eating-house. There, twice a day, I had an opportunity of studying the drinking habits of the country. Almost every man who entered the eating-house first called for a whisky warmer. Supplied with that, he would go out and buy his whisky, coming back he would set it in the charcoal fire to warm, and then slowly drink it from the tiny wine cups common in China, inviting me to join him, and wondering at a man who could evidently afford it, not treating himself to two ounces of whisky, and wondering still more when he learned that I did not use tobacco. It would be an exaggeration, but not a great exaggeration, to say that every man who entered the eating-house began his meal by drinking whisky. In replying to the question put by my street audiences as to how they were to get good harvests, I would ask them, after finishing the tobacco question, "How about your whisky drinking?" Frequently they would anticipate me in this, and say, "If tobacco is wrong, how about whisky?" To convince them of the wrong of whisky was never difficult. To ask good harvests from heaven, then take grain given by heaven for food, and turn it into whisky, they did not need me to tell them this was wrong. And there in that district it is a very crying wrong. The quantity used is immense. Not only does it seem so to me, but natives from other parts of China are struck by the excessive use of it.

'The first time I travelled in the district, I was struck by the manner in which they described the size and amount of trade of towns about which I made inquiries. Such and such a place had or had not a distillery and pawnshop. Such and such a town had so many distilleries, and so many pawnshops. One travelling about the country soon notes that nearly every imposing trading establishment with grand premises seen from afar is either a distillery or a pawnshop, or both combined. The bank notes current among the people are issued, at but a small percentage, by distilleries and pawnshops. The first crop to ripen in the district is barley, and that, the natives will tell you, all goes to the distillery. On the road you will meet large carts drawn by six or seven mules. The load is grain, and of these carts a large number are owned by distilleries, and go round the country collecting grain, from which to brew whisky. One of the first things to be heard in the morning after daylight, in a quiet market town, is a peculiar beating of a wooden drum. Ask what it means, and you will be told it is such and such a distillery calling its hands to breakfast. Ask how many hands they have, and you may find that one establishment has some sixty or seventy men who eat their food! The whisky trade is simply enormous. It is out of all proportion to every other trade. The women as a rule do not drink, the men do all the drinking—the males I should say, for not a few boys acquire the habit of taking whisky to their meals long before they can be called men. A very few men do not use whisky at all. The poorer agricultural labourers drink it only when they can get it, and just as much or as little as they can get. Many men take regularly two ounces—Chinese ounces—to each meal. Many take more. Many well-to-do people drink half a catty per day. Others drink a whole catty.[7] Some drink a catty and a half a day. A small proportion of the male population find drinking a greater necessity than eating. These are usually elderly men, but as I write I can think of two men, both young, and both Mongols, one a priest, the other a layman, who have arrived at this advanced stage of whisky drinking.

[7] A Chinese weight equal to one pound and a third.

'This excessive use of whisky has impoverished many families, and has demoralised many men. It has caused many quarrels, and given rise to many lawsuits. The evil caused by whisky is apparent to all, but custom requires that friends should be honoured by being offered whisky, business should be transacted over whisky, and the general saying is that without whisky nothing can be done. A farmer, for example, adding a few rooms to his buildings must supply his masons and joiners with whisky. Thus in universal use, the quantity consumed is immense. The quantity of grain used in the distilleries is almost beyond computation, and I don't remember ever meeting a Chinaman who did not admit that to distil whisky was to do evil. They ask me how to get good harvests. I tell them; "Give up abusing the grain you have got, before you ask for more. If heaven sees you taking a large part of your superior land for raising the useless tobacco, and taking a very large proportion of the grain sent you as food, and using it not to eat, nor to feed animals, but distilling it into the hurtful whisky, do you think heaven, seeing all this waste going on, is likely to hear your petitions and increase the supply of what you now waste so large a proportion? If you bought food for your child, and he ate only half and threw the other half to the pig, would you be likely to buy him more just then, even though he might say he was hungry?" This reasoning seems quite satisfactory and convincing to them, and never fails to secure their expressed assent.

'As to opium I never find it necessary to say much. All admit it to be only and wholly bad. Yet the quantity grown in the district is immense. In the early spring the very first movement of cultivation is the irrigation and working of the opium land, and at the season nearly all the best land blazes with bloom of the poppy. It is a sight to see the country people going to the markets with the "milk" in bowls and basins, and the buyers and sellers of it riding along, each with a weighing-balance stuck in his belt. Government restriction there is none, the duty imposed is not very heavy, and public opinion raises no voice against it. It was originally grown, say the natives, so as to keep money from going out of the district in buying imported opium, but the more it was grown the more it was used, and now the quantity raised and smoked is immense. There is a small proportion of farmers who have good land, suitable for growing opium, but who do not grow it. But these men are few, and as a general rule the very best pieces of land are set apart for the cultivation of opium. The common conscience of the people tells them this is a wrong thing. When therefore they ask how to get a good harvest, they themselves acknowledge that the reply is just, which says, "First leave off the waste of heaven's grace involved in the growth and manufacture of opium, whisky, and tobacco, and then, and not till then, will it be reasonable for you to ask heaven for more bountiful harvests."

'In connection with all this, there is another fact that must not be forgotten. Drinkers of whisky, and smokers, especially of opium, the better the year is, the more they indulge. In a poor year they use less whisky and opium; the better the year, and the cheaper tobacco, whisky, and opium are, the more they use, so that in place of making a proper return to heaven for a good year, they only take the opportunity afforded them of running deeper into waste and wrong-doing. Is this the way to get better harvests? Considering the excessive growth and consumption of tobacco and opium, and the excessive manufacture and use of whisky, what could any honest, straightforward man say to the people, when they earnestly asked how they were to get good harvests, but "Repent, and cease this great waste"? And thus from no deliberate plan of mine, but from the plain leading of circumstances, it came to pass that I felt compelled to call upon the inhabitants of the district to lay aside the use of not only opium but also of whisky and tobacco, as one of the first steps toward worshipping the true God. Many friends have demurred to my making teetotalism an essential of Christianity, and many more have still more strongly demurred to my taking such a pronounced stand against the use of tobacco. The position of my friends is exactly the position I held myself before going into that region, but after going to that region and seeing just how things were, no other course seemed open to me, but to demand in all who wanted to do right the abandonment of the whole three; and I am convinced that almost any other missionary placed in the same circumstances would have taken the same stand.

'This position too commends itself to the native mind, and the native mind, quite apart from me, and before my going into the district, had already risen up in protest against these abuses, and, in some parts of the country there, the Tsai li ti sect boasts not a few members. The main practical doctrine of this sect is, Yen chiu pu tung—abstinence from tobacco, whisky, and opium. The very existence of this sect, and its flourishing condition there, is a plain indication of what serious-minded natives felt about the excessive use of these three things. Friends say that I am putting this self-righteousness in place of faith in Christ and the practice of higher duties. I do nothing of the sort. Beginning with the Chinaman where I find him, and answering the questions which he insists on asking first, I appeal to him to give up what he admits to be wrongdoing, sin (tsao nieh), as the first step in ceasing to do evil learning to do well, and coming into right relationship with God through Christ. Some friends are much alarmed lest this should lead to self-righteousness. There is no danger of that. The danger lies all the other way. To leave Christians drinking whisky and smoking tobacco in that region, would be to preach forgiveness of sin through Christ to men who were still going on in the practice of what their conscience told them was sin, and all must admit that this would never do. The condition of things in that region is such that I have no hesitation in saying that a man, to be honest in obeying God by refraining from what is wrong, must throw up his connexion with these three things, tobacco, whisky, opium.

'In that region. It will be noticed that I have carefully confined my remarks to the state of things in that region. That region is peculiar in producing within its own bounds almost all that is necessary for life and luxury even. It is peculiar too in having just exactly as many inhabitants as it can support, no more, no less. When the population increases too much it overflows into Manchuria. When the population is less than the full complement, it is instantly replenished by fresh arrivals from the South. The production of tobacco, whisky, and opium, not only reduces a large proportion of the inhabitants from comfort to misery, but also reduces sensibly the number of inhabitants. But for these three things many more men could find a living within the bounds of the district Is not that little district an epitome of the world? Is what is true of that district not true of the whole world? Opium is a bad thing anywhere and everywhere. About that there need be no debate. Whisky and tobacco reduce the comforts and the number of the population there—is their effect not the same on the world in general? Is it not true that but for tobacco and whisky there would be food and clothes for a much larger population? And if so, do not tobacco and whisky take the bread out of men's mouths and the clothes off their backs? And if so, has not every smoker and drinker a part in this sin? Christians pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Does not consistency require them to desist from defeating this prayer by smoking and drinking, and thus reducing the amount of the total production of the necessaries of life?

'Tobacco seems harmless. It is less harmful than opium and whisky by a long way. But its production sensibly reduces the supply of grain and cotton, and thus hinders the feeding of the hungry and the clothing the naked. Good earnest Christian men smoke and drink. Evangelists and pastors owned of God in the salvation of souls smoke and see no harm in it. The reason is they have never seen how the thing works, and don't know the harm it does. I feel sure that if they could see with their own eyes men, women, and children, hungry and in rags, when but for tobacco and whisky they might be well fed and well clothed, these same good brethren, whose example is quoted against my position, would be the first and most earnest to say, "I will neither smoke tobacco nor drink whisky while the world stands."'

At a later date, not from any change in his views, but in deference to the views of others, with whom he was always anxious to work in harmony, he modified his plans so far as not to make the use of whisky and tobacco absolute bars to admission into the Christian Church.

His brethren also were opposed to the ascetic mode of life he adopted, and the extreme of hardship which he so often and so willingly encountered in his work. But he himself often said, and there are many references in his diary to the same effect, that the kind of life he was living in the interior was quite as healthy, and quite as conducive to longevity, as the ordinary and certainly much more comfortable life of a missionary at Peking. While it may be true that the exposure and sufferings of twenty years had so weakened him as to leave him powerless when seized by the last illness, yet the labours of twenty such years spent in the service of God and the service of man are surely the seeds from which there shall yet spring a rich harvest to the glory of God and to the blessing of the dark and degraded Mongols and Chinese.

By the close of 1886 three main centres of work had been selected in the new district—Ta Cheng Tzŭ, Ta Ssŭ Kou, and Ch'ao Yang—all three being towns of some importance. Mr. Gilmour used to spend a month or so in each town, visiting also the neighbourhood, especially those places where fairs were held, and where consequently the people came together in large numbers. He had a tent which he used to put up in a main thoroughfare, and there he stood from early morn until night healing the sick, selling Christian books, talking with inquirers, preaching at every opportunity the full and free Gospel of salvation. His constant and consistent life of Christlike self-denial in the effort to bless them told even more upon the beholders than all these other things combined. His correspondence is full of sharp and clear pictures of his daily toil, and of his spiritual experiences.

'Ch'ao Yang, May 14, 1886.—The people are very poor here. Last year the crops were not good. When the leaves come out on the trees, the poor people break off branches and eat the seeds of the elm-trees. I saw one woman up a high tree, taking down the seeds. She took off half the door, laid it up against the tree, went on the cross-bars like a ladder, and so got up. She threw down the little branches and twigs, and her three children below gathered them up. The elm seeds are just ripe now. They are the size of large fish-scales; when the wind blows they come down like snow.

'I met three lamas going to a far-off place to worship. Every two or three steps they lay down flat on the ground, then got up other two or three steps, then prostrated themselves again. They did not know about Jesus saving people, and thought they would save themselves in that way. Poor people! yet they don't like to hear about Jesus saving people. They want the credit of thus saving themselves.

'September 3.—At Ta Cheng Tzŭ we had seven days and seven nights' rain. It was a great flood. The river rose and washed away about a hundred acres of land and forty or fifty houses. For two days the river floated down house-roof timbers, beams, &c. One poor man pulled down his house to save his timbers, and the house fell on him and killed him. It was pitiful to see the river washing away good land, two square yards falling into the roaring flood at a time. The Chinamen did nothing: only stood and looked at it. Lots of walls and many houses fell down. One house in the court next our own fell down one morning after the rain was all over. The people had just time to jump out at the window. No one was hurt. Our room did not leak much, but the outside of the wall towards the street fell down. The inside of the wall still stood, so our room was whole. Chinese walls are all built in two skins. The one may fall and the other stand.

'October 25.—God has given the hunger and thirst for souls: will He leave me unsatisfied? No, verily. I am reading at night, before going to bed, the Psalms in a small-print copy of the Revised Bible, holding it at arm's length almost, close up to a Chinese candle, to suit my eyes; for I cannot see small print well now, and I find much strength and courage in the old warrior's words. Verily, the Psalms are inspired. No doubt about that. None that wait on Him will be put to shame. He is here with me.

'November 17.—We start about the fifth watch (6 A.M.), get to the fair early, spend the day on the street; it is late before we get quiet, and I fear it is now well on towards the third watch. I am in first-class health, though my feet and socks are in a decidedly bad way. The country is not at all safe, but we have as yet been preserved. Some days ago, two men who slept on the same kang with us, and started a little earlier than we did, were robbed. We overtook the travellers arranging themselves after the interview. I was annoyed at not getting away as soon as they left. God so arranged it, you see.

'I have got a step nearer to God lately. It is this: I do not now strive to get near Him; I simply ask Christ to take me nearer Him. Why shouldn't I? Does not Christ save men from distance from God and bring us near? Peace, Blessing, and Power, by Haslam, sent me by an old college mate in Scotland, was the means used. This chum tried my soul much when I was at home last. I think I was of use to him, and now he has been of much use to me. Let us sow beside all waters.

'My attitude now here is that of Psalm cxxiii. 2-4. I feel that God can perform for, by, or rather use me as His instrument in performing, if He has a mind to; so I am looking for His hand, gazing about among the people that come to my stand to see the ones God has sent. I feel as helpless as a Chinese farmer in a drought; but when God opens the heavens, down it will come. Amen.'

Mr. Gilmour returned to Peking on December 13, having been away nearly eight months. The tabulated results of this missionary campaign were:

Patients seen (about) 5,717 Hearers preached to 23,755 Books sold 3,067 Tracts distributed 4,500 Miles travelled 1,860 Money spent 120.92 taels = (about) 30l. to 40l.

He adds, 'And out of all this there are only two men who have openly confessed Christ. In one sense it is a small result; in another sense there is much to be grateful for. I have to part with my assistant, and am uncertain about whom to take in his place. My travelling arrangements have broken down, and I am perplexed in more ways than I have patience to write about; but

Where He may lead I'll follow, In Him my trust repose, And every hour in perfect peace I'll sing, "He knows, He knows."

After a visit to Tientsin and a brief rest in Peking, largely occupied with preparations for his next sojourn in Mongolia, he started on January 25, 1887. At Ta Cheng Tzŭ he secured a kind of home, so as not to be exposed to all the discomforts and drawbacks of inn life, hoping also that a fixed centre might forward the preaching of the Gospel. Two rooms were taken for a year. They were situated at the inner end of a little trading court, around which were a tin-shop, a rope-spinner's room, and a stable. In one corner there was a pigsty. 'When first I saw it I almost refused to occupy it; but really there is no help for it, and finally we took it for a year.' It is always difficult to secure premises in a Chinese town, and exceptionally so under the limitation of money and of suspicion and dislike to which Christian missionaries are always exposed. 'It is only a lodging for me,' Mr. Gilmour continues, 'convenient for seeing converts or inquirers. The court is much too small, and the place not sanitary. But don't be in the least uneasy. My health is quite as safe there as in the best premises in Peking. I intend to occupy them for a month at the beginning of the Chinese year, and ten or fifteen days in the fourth, seventh, and tenth months. I hope also to come to some arrangement for a lodging in Ch'ao Yang. In Ta Ssŭ Kou I am simply in an inn, and pay at the usual rate for the nights I am there.'

A letter to his boys, dated March 24, 1887, depicts the kind of scene he so often witnessed, and the routine of work which would have proved so irksome but for the love and peace with which the Saviour filled his soul.

'Mai Li Ying Tzŭ is a very wicked place. There were no less than fourteen large tents set up for gambling, and, in addition, some thirty or forty mat-tents for gambling. I was there three days. The first day people were shy. The second day they were not much afraid. The third day I had quite a lot of patients. We sold a good few books, preached a good deal, and doctored a number of patients. From there we went to Bo-or-Chih, starting in the dark and travelling seventeen English miles before breakfast. After we had travelled ten miles we came to a little town just as people were opening their doors. A seller of chieh jao, that sticky stuff, had just set out his wheelbarrow with his pudding. We each bought a great piece, wrapped it in a chien ping (a thin scone), and travelled on, eating it. That was our breakfast. Arrived at Bo-or-Chih, we set up our table at once, and, after preaching for a short time, patients came round us in crowds, and kept us busy till late in the afternoon.

'The inn in which I am staying now is owned by two men, brothers, both of whom are opium smokers. The inn has a good trade, but it is all no use: it all goes to opium, and no good comes of it. There are two barbers connected with the place, and they both drink and gamble, so that they are in rags and poverty, though they have a fairly good business. It is so painful to see men degraded thus when, but for drink and gambling, they might be well off.

'April 28, 1887.—For the last week I have been very busy at a great temple gathering, which lasted six days. Such crowds of people came, though it was only a country district. It was the great religious event of the year for the neighbourhood, and how do you think they do? They hire a theatrical company to come and act six days in a great mat stage, put up for the occasion in front of the temple. Theatrical exhibitions are the religion of China. These shows are supposed to be in honour of the idols in the temple. The people think the gods will thus be pleased, and give them good seasons, health, etc.

'What a crowd of women came to worship at the temple on the great day of the festival! Till noon that day women only were allowed to enter: no men. How the women were dressed—in all the colours of the rainbow, red trousers being especially prominent! How they moved along on their little feet! Walk you along on your heels—as I have seen you do—and that is just how they move.

'No end of gamblers came too. There were twenty-six, or so, large tents put up to gamble in, and about as many straw-mat booths, and they all had plenty of trade. Eh, man, it is sad to see the utter worldliness of these Chinese. They soon found me out. I had my tent put up in a quiet place away from the bustle.[8] In front is the great flying sign, "The Jesus Religion Gospel Hall." At the one end, "God the Heavenly Father;" at the other, "Jesus the Saviour." They found me out, not because they wanted to hear me preach, but to get medicine. Oh, the numbers of suffering people I saw and attended to! I used to go out early in the morning, and be there all day, most of the time so busy that there was no time to eat. To get food I had to steal away because everyone would want me just to attend to him or her before I went. When I had attended to that one there was another, and so on. I was able to cure a number of them, and got preaching a good deal too. I sold a number of books. It was the first time that a missionary had ever been there, and it was difficult to make them understand.'

[8] See the illustration on p. 245.

It is, as a rule, by direct dealing with individuals that the best results of Christian work in China are obtained, and to this Mr. Gilmour was always ready to make everything give way. In season and out of season, at any hour of the day or night, he was at the service of inquirers. The sight of a seeking face could banish his most exhausting feeling of fatigue, and nothing so swiftly dispelled the depression, from which he so often and so severely suffered, as the sight of a heathen coming to be more perfectly instructed about 'the doctrine.' Here are one or two such scenes:—

'In the eighth month we had great pleasure in finding Mr. Sun much advanced in knowledge, and confessing his Christianity with great boldness. Before we left he was baptized, and one or two others were coming forward as inquirers—notably one man, who is a member of a sect, was making earnest inquiries. These men seem to be following after righteousness in their own half-instructed fashion. These sects are strong in numbers in some parts of the district, and, if God should give us some of these men as converts, we might hope for rapid progress among their companions. The last that I heard of this man, he was coming to Mr. Sun, asking many questions. He lodged with us one night, and I invited him to breakfast with me in the morning. He was declining on the plea that he was a vegetarian. It was with much satisfaction that I was able to say in reply, "So am I."

'The Tsai li ti are strong in Ch'ao Yang. I have been praying and working to gain them for a year and more. One evening a deputation of two men called upon me in my inn, and said they had come representing many who wanted to know about Christianity. They, the Tsai li ti, had been watching me ever since I had come to Ch'ao Yang. They had listened much and often to our preaching, and now they had come to make formal inquiries. I gave them such information as I thought they needed, and we got on well enough till they asked me to refute a slander. The slander was to the effect that in a chapel in Peking, the preacher would, when he finished preaching, get down off the platform and have a smoke! I had to admit that this was no slander, but a true statement. I had a good deal to say in explanation of it; but, alas! the men came no more.'

To form any just estimate of Mr. Gilmour's work in Eastern Mongolia, it is needful constantly to bear in mind that it was practically a new departure. So far as we know, he is the only missionary in China connected with the London Missionary Society who adopted in toto not only the native dress, but practically the native food, and, so far as a Christian man could, native habits of life. His average expense for food during his residence in his district was threepence a day. This rate of expenditure was, of course, possible only because he adopted vegetarianism. His practice acted and reacted upon his thought, and he came at this time to hold the view, for and against which a great deal may be said, that it was a mistake for Chinese missionaries to live as foreigners—that is, to wear foreign dress, arrange their houses and furniture as nearly as possible in European style, and eat European food. Both on its economical side and also as impressing the mind and heart of the Chinese, he believed that his was the more excellent way.

Most of his co-workers at Peking and Tientsin did not agree with him. As agreement would have involved, perhaps, following his example, under conditions that differed widely from those of Ta Cheng Tzŭ and Ch'ao Yang, this difference of opinion was only what was to be expected. It is referred to here only as a well-known fact, and no story of Mr. Gilmour's life could be trustworthy which did not represent the decided way in which, when he felt that loyalty to his work and loyalty to his Master constrained him, he could and did act in direct opposition to the wishes and views of brethren whom he fervently loved.

It became needful from time to time for him to justify his actions to the home authorities. Not that this was in any way needful from any doubt or lack of support on their part. But with regard to methods upon which there was marked divergence of view in the missionary committees abroad it was needful that a man like Gilmour should put his motives and reasons clearly before the governing powers. It is doing him bare justice to say that from this task he never shrank. The following extracts are from letters to the home officials of the London Missionary Society and they enable us to appreciate accurately the standpoint of the man whose thought they express. Writing in the light of the suggestion that perhaps he was putting a more severe strain upon his health than the efficient discharge of his difficult duty demanded, he says:—

'I feel called to go through all this sort of thing, and feel perfectly secure in God's hands. It is no choosing of mine, but His; and, following His lead, I have as much right to expect special provision to be made for me as the Israelites of old had in the matters of the Red Sea, the manna and water in the desert, the crossing Jordan, and the fall of Jericho.

'One thing I am sure of. The thousands here need salvation; God is most anxious to give it to them: where, then, is the hindrance? In them? I hardly think so. In God? No. In me, then! The thing I am praying away at now is that He would remove that hindrance by whatever process necessary. I shall not be astonished if He puts me through some fires or severe operations, nor shall I be sorry if they only end by leaving me a channel through which His saving grace can flow unhindered to these needy people. I dare not tell you how much I pray for.

'It is the foreign element in our lives that runs away with the money. The foreign houses, foreign clothes, foreign food, are ruinous. In selecting missionaries, physique able to stand native houses, clothes, and food, should be as much a sine qua non as health to bear the native climate. Native clothes are, I believe, more safe for health than foreign clothes; they are more suited to the climate, more comfortable than foreign clothes, and so dressed, a Chinese house is quite comfortable. In past days I have suffered extreme discomfort by attempting to live in foreign dress in native houses.'

And yet James Gilmour had nothing of the fanatic or bigot about him. At the period of his life with which we are now dealing, his severest trial was the loneliness due to his having no colleague. Whenever his brethren ventured to address remonstrances to him, they were due largely to the conviction that entire isolation, such as he had to endure throughout his Mongolian career, must tell adversely upon his temperament. But in judging the character of the man it only heightens our love and respect for him that he did not allow the utter and successive failures of all efforts to secure him a colleague to hinder the work. No man more readily and more constantly acted upon the principle of doing the next best thing. His idea of satisfactory conditions for the work was never reached; but this never led him for one day to relax his own efforts or to loosen the strong hand of his self-discipline.

To any reader who has carefully followed the previous pages it must have become abundantly evident that Mr Gilmour believed in God's present and immediate influence in the passing events of daily life, and that the right attitude of life is one of absolute dependence upon, and submission to, the will of God. His diaries abound with proofs of this. He is delayed one morning in starting from his inn, and is annoyed. An hour or so later he overtakes the travellers who started earlier, and finds them just recovering from the assault of a band of robbers. The delay was God's providential care protecting him from robbery. And yet no man was ever less under the spell of religious fatalism. All that active effort and promptitude of mind and body could effect in the service of life he freely and constantly expended in his work. And indeed there lies before us a long letter written at Ta Ssŭ Kou on March 15, 1888, asking for an official proclamation from the Chinese authorities at Peking affirming 'that Christian worship is an allowed thing, and that native Christians are not required to contribute, or are exempted from contributing, to idol and heathen ceremonies, such as theatricals, or the building and repair of temples.' The proper official document was applied for at Peking, and in due time obtained.

On March 24, 1888, James Gilmour was rejoiced by the seeming fulfilment of his heart's most eager desire—the arrival at Ta Ssŭ Kou of a fully qualified medical colleague, Dr. Roberts. We have seen how repeated had been his entreaties, how earnest his yearnings after this essential factor in the success of his mission. For a month he enjoyed to the full the uplifting of congenial fellowship and of skilled help. Then came a blow, harder almost to endure than the previous solitude.

'Two days ago,' he writes under date of April 21, 1888, 'a man pushed himself in among the crowd round my table as I was dispensing medicines in the market-place here, and announced himself as a courier from Tientsin. When asked what his news was, he was silent, so I led him away towards my inn. Oh the way I again asked what his news was. He groaned. I began to get alarmed, and noticed that he carried with him a sword, covered merely with a cloth scabbard. This looked warlike, and I wondered if there could have been another massacre at Tientsin. Coming to a quiet place in the street I demanded his news, when he replied, "Dr. Mackenzie is dead, after a week's illness." At the inn we got out our letters from the bundle, and found the news true. In a little Dr. Roberts looked up from a letter he was reading and said he was appointed to the vacancy. Then the full extent of my loss flashed upon me. Mackenzie dead—Roberts to go to Tientsin! One of my closest friends dead—my colleague removed!

'Forty-eight hours have elapsed, and I am just coming right again. I have been like a ship suddenly struck in mid-ocean by a mountain sea breaking over it. You know in that case a ship staggers a bit, and takes some time to shake clear and right herself.

'As to Mackenzie. His friendship I very keenly appreciated. The week of prayer in January 1887 we spent together in Peking. The week of prayer in January 1888 we spent together in Tientsin. These were seasons of great enjoyment. On parting we spoke of having a week together again in April 1889. That is not to be. The full extent of the loss will take some time to realise.

'The prospect of Dr. Roberts settling permanently here in the autumn gave light and brightness to the outlook. My faith is not gone, but it would be untrue to say that I am not walking in the dark. I shall do my best to hold on here single-handed; but I earnestly hope that I am not to be alone much longer. Something must be done. There is a limit to all human endurance.

'Amid many storms we are holding on our way, and making progress among the Chinese. Of the Mongols I have nothing cheering to report. They come around and daily hear the Gospel; but, as yet at least, there it ends. I look into their faces to see whom the Lord is going to call, but have not seen him yet apparently. Meantime, I am getting deeper and deeper into Chinese work and connections, and sometimes the thought crosses my mind that my knowledge of Mongolian is not employed to its best advantage here. On the other hand, I see more Mongols here than I could see anywhere on the Plain.'

God's ways of dealing with His work and the workers are often very dim and obscure to finite understanding. Humanly speaking, no man in China could less easily be spared than Dr. Mackenzie; no man in all that vast empire more needed the joy of fellowship than he to whom it had just been granted. But the indomitable spirit shines clearly through the words of Gilmour: 'It would be untrue to say that I am not walking in the dark. I shall do my best to hold on here single-handed.' Seeing God's hand, as he did, in these sorrowful events, and believing that Dr. Roberts also was following the path of God's will, he turned again to his lonely tasks. But it was at a heavy cost. His health was giving way faster than he realised. The views of his brethren at Peking, that he would break down under the strain of the isolation, were to some extent justified. The home authorities did what they could, but nearly a year elapsed before Dr. Smith, who was appointed to succeed Dr. Roberts, reached Mongolia, and when he did so his first duty he felt was to order Mr. Gilmour to visit England for rest and change. But meanwhile he went bravely on. Like his Master, 'he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself,' and when 'he was reviled, he reviled not again.'

'We left Ch'ao Yang,' he writes under date of September 3, 1888, 'August 10, attended markets, got much rained in, and reached Ta Cheng Tzŭ August 20. There I found that one of the Christians had possessed himself of my bank book and drawn about fifteen taels of my money which I had banked at the grocer's. The delinquent turned up next day, walked in, and hung up his whip as if nothing had happened. At the moment I was dining, and he sat down beside me. I asked him quietly why he had treated me so. He said I might be easy in mind; he had money and cattle he would pay me. "Go, then, and bring me the money; till you do so, don't come to me again." Off he went. Days passed and nothing was done to repair the mischief. Meantime, the scandal was the talk of the small town, and the scornful things said were so keen that Liu, my assistant, got quite wild. He was indignant that I did not go to law with the man, who all the while was swelling about on a donkey bought with the money he stole from me, and using the most defiant and abusive language towards me (not to my face, happily). The roughs of the place began to be insolent, and a drunken man came and made a scene in our quarters. Liu redoubled his attack on me, and even threatened to go home to Shantung if I would do nothing but pray—a course of action on my part which irritated him much. Li San, the head Christian there, joined him in saying I ought to make a show of power. I asked the two to read at their leisure Matt. v. 6, 7. Liu warned me that I was in personal danger. The man was panic-struck and highly nervous. I arranged an expedition to a place some 90 li away, but got rained in and could not go. Finally, the offender sent an embassy desiring peace, and, the day before we left, a respectable deputation of mutual friends, Christian and heathen, found its way one by one to my room, coming thus not to attract attention, and last of all came the thief. According to pre-arrangement I asked him, as he entered, what he had come for. He walked up to the wall, knelt down, and confessed his sin in prayer to God. The end of the matter is, he gives me one donkey and the promise of another, is suspended as to membership for twelve months, and is forbidden the chapel for three months.

'I am not bright about Ta Cheng Tzŭ, as you may suppose. Worse than the stealing case is that of the head man, Li San, who says that he was promised employment before he became a Christian! The ten days we passed there we were the song of the drunkard and the jest of the abjects; but the peace of God passes all understanding, and that kept my heart and mind. We put a calm front on; put out our stand daily, and carried ourselves as if nothing had happened.

'The great thought in my mind these days, and the great object of my life, is to be like Christ. As He was in the world, so are we to be. He was in the world to manifest God; we are in the world to manifest Christ. Is that not so? Iniquities, I must confess, prevail against me; but as contamination of sin flows to us from Adam, does not regenerating power flow into us from Christ? Is it not so?'

Meanwhile work was going steadily forward and some impression was being made. He made a flying visit to Tientsin and Peking in the autumn, but was soon back at his post. In his report of work for the year he is able to point to progress.

'1888 has been a tumultuous year. In December, at Ch'ao Yang, there was a sudden irruption of men and boys to learn the doctrine. Evening after evening we had from twenty to fifty people in our rooms to evening worship. We hardly knew how to account for it, but did all we could to teach as many as we could. The cold weather finally did much to stop the overcrowding, but there was good interest kept up among many till the end of the year.

'The baptisms for the year were, at Ta Cheng Tzŭ, two; Ta Ssŭ Kou, two; Ch'ao Yang, eight; total, twelve adults, all Chinese.

'One man has been put out, so that the numbers stand as follows: Ta Cheng Tzŭ, four; Ta Ssŭ Kou, three; Ch'ao Yang, nine; total, sixteen, all Chinese.

'Three adults, Chinese, were baptized ten days ago, and I hope to baptize two children next Sunday; but we have almost no promising adherents here at present. There are three entire families Christian, with Christian emblems on their door-posts; another family is Christian, but cannot fly the colours on the door-posts because the grandfather who has half the building is a heathen.

'In still another family, where only the husband is Christian, they have the Christian colours, but the family is heathen.

'My heart is set on reinforcements. Can they not be had? I had hoped Dr. Smith would have spent the winter with me, but he did not. All the grace needed has been given me abundantly, but I don't think there should be any more solitary work. I don't think it pays in any sense.

'In addition, it is almost time I had a change. My eyes are bad. Doctors hesitate over my heart, say it is weak, and that its condition would affect seriously an application for life assurance. This winter I have gone in for a cough, which is not a good thing at all, and it would be well for the continuity of the work that there should be a young man on the field.

'Don't be alarmed, though, and don't alarm my friends. The above is for your own private information and guidance. I still regard myself as in first-rate health.

'I am not satisfied that we seem drifting away from the Mongols. At present, though lots of Mongols are around, our work is all but entirely Chinese. I am still of opinion that our best way to reach them is from a Chinese basis. This may involve a matter of years ahead, and therefore it is that I am eager to see the future of the work provided for by being joined by a younger man or men.

'Meantime I am trying to follow very fully and very faithfully the leadings and indications of God. I have had times of sore spiritual conflict and times of much spiritual rest, and my prayer is that you and the Board may in all your arrangements and plans for Mongolia be fully guided by Him. Oh that His full blessing would descend richly on this district!'

Dr. Smith reached Mongolia in March 1889, and for the first time met his colleague. He has placed on record for use in this biography his account of that first meeting. On reaching Ch'ao Yang, Dr. Smith found that Mr. Gilmour was not there. 'I followed the innkeeper,' he writes, 'to see the spot where my devoted colleague had spent so many lonely hours. We came to a little outhouse, with a kind of little court in front of it, not many yards wide. The outer door was locked by means of a padlock; but the innkeeper soon found an entrance by simply lifting the door off its wooden hinges, and then we were in the anteroom or rather kitchen. In it was a built-in cooking-pan, an earthenware bowl, and a wooden stick resembling a Scotch porridge-stick; and some brushwood which had been brought in to be in readiness when he next arrived at that inn. One of the two rooms, which lay on each side of this ante-room, was locked, and we could not open it, but through the chinks of the door I could see abundant traces of Gilmour. It was specially refreshing to see some genuine English on one of the boxes; it was "Ferris, Bourne, & Co., Bristol," the people from whom he used to order his drugs. My servant and I decided to take up our quarters in the next room, which was evidently the servant's room. We soon managed to make ourselves very comfortable, and there was an unspeakable relief in at last being in a place which belonged to the London Mission, rented of course. We had to spend the Sunday there. Mr. Sun, the box-maker, soon came round, and seemed genuinely glad to see me, and offered to make all arrangements for the further stage of our journey. We then discharged our carts, and I sent with them my letters for home.

'After spending the Sunday in company with the Christians there, we set out on the Monday morning with a local carter for Ta Cheng Tzŭ, a distance of about twenty-three miles. We crossed a hilly and sparsely populated district, reminding me of some of the bleaker scenery in Scotland. On reaching the town we at once drove to the new private mission premises. It was a little house surrounded by a straw fence. Quite a crowd of rough-looking people followed us in. One of the doors had been stolen, and altogether it looked so unprotected that I decided to take up my quarters in a little Mongol inn, where Mr. Gilmour formerly lived. Next day I expected to meet Gilmour, and the two Christians there were fully expecting him. In the evening we had quite a levee; Li San and the other Christian, whom Gilmour used to call "Long Legs," sat drinking tea in my room for some time, and were very friendly; they were evidently trying to ingratiate themselves with me; I did not then know how disgracefully they had behaved to Gilmour, nor did I know the anxious business which was bringing Gilmour there at that time.

'Next day or the following, I forget exactly which, I was sitting in my room, when a young man arrived, my servant being out at the time. I could not make him out at first, not being able to understand what he said; but he had such an evident air about him that he had some kind of business with me that it at last dawned upon me that he must be Mr. Gilmour's servant, and this was at once confirmed on the arrival of Lin Seng, my servant. He had been sent on ahead to announce Gilmour's arrival. It had been blowing a dust-storm all day, and on that account I hardly expected Gilmour, but now there was no doubt.

'About four o'clock that afternoon Gilmour arrived, and I shall never forget that first meeting. I had pictured quite a different-looking man to myself. I saw a thin man of medium height, with a clean shaven face, got up in Chinese dress, much the same as the respectable shop-keepers in that part of the country wear. On his head was a cap lined with cat's fur. I was struck by the kindly but determined look on his face. He greeted me most cordially, and I remember he said, "I am glad to see you." He looked worn out and ill. I at once gave him his letters.

'After arranging his things and seeing his men comfortably settled and getting over his first interview with the Christians there, he came up to my room in order to spend the night with me. We sat to all hours of the morning, chatting about things at home, and about his boys, whom I had seen before leaving Scotland.

'For the next day he arranged the dreaded interview with Li San down at the mission premises. Gilmour warned me that it would be a long-winded affair, and wished me not to expect his return for a good number of hours. After waiting a long time I went down to see how the interview was progressing. Li San and Gilmour were sitting on the kang, in tailor fashion on each side of a low table, and Li San was singing hymns; but there was a strange look upon his face, as if he did not altogether feel like singing. Gilmour said to me in English that they had not come to business yet, and Gilmour was determined that Li San was to say the first word, so Gilmour invited him to sing hymn after hymn, and then I left. The whole idea seemed to be to get money out of Gilmour, and when he found that impossible he threatened to come down to Tientsin to accuse Gilmour to his missionary colleagues, of having broken his promise to give him employment. Gilmour had no recollection of having done so; he said to me that possibly one of his previous assistants may have on his own responsibility led Li San to form that idea.

'Long Legs was also dogging Gilmour for money, and altogether they worried him; but he settled up everything. The premises were resold, and as Gilmour put it, "it was the funeral of that little church." They were threatening to prevent our leaving the town, as there seemed some doubt in Gilmour's mind as to whether we would be able to get a cart; these fears were disappointed; Li San got a cart for us.'

Before Dr. Smith had passed many days in the society of Mr. Gilmour it became clear to the practised eye of the medical man that his colleague had been overstraining his health and strength. Notwithstanding his buoyancy and occasional high spirits all through his long years of work, James Gilmour had been subject to spells of severe depression. There are a very large number of brief entries in his diary to that effect. 'Felt blue to-day' is a frequent phrase, followed soon in the great majority of instances by words indicating a speedy recovery. Special events, that from time to time had a direct adverse influence upon his work, developed this state of mind rapidly and profoundly. The inevitable recall of Dr. Roberts, already described, is a case in point, and the diary at that season contains entries like these:

'April 26, 1888.—These last days have been full of blessing and peace in my own soul. I have been able to leave things at Ta Cheng Tzŭ;, and my colleagues all in God's hands.'

'May 7.—Downcast day. No one to prayer.'

'May 9.—In terrible darkness and tears for two days. Light broke over me at my stand to-day in the thought that Jesus was tempted forty days of the devil after His baptism, and that He felt forsaken on the cross.'

'May 27, Sunday.—Service, Romans xii. Present, four Christians. Great depression.'

The most constant force acting in the direction of mental depression was what appeared to him like the want of immediate success. He longed with an eager and almost painful intensity for signs that Gospel light had broken in upon the mental darkness of the men with whom he was in daily contact. He yearned for evidence that the love of Christ was winning the love of Chinese and Mongol hearts, as a mother yearns over her children. Hope deferred as to his medical colleague, ever recurring difficulties defeating all his efforts to secure suitable premises for his work, failure on the part of natives whom he had begun to trust, and all these things over and above the ceaseless strain of his daily toil, are more than sufficient to account for the state in which Dr. Smith found him.

To those who knew him best, and who could appraise at their true value the toils and trials and disappointments of his daily lot, the wonder was not that he broke down; it was rather that physical collapse had not overtaken him sooner. There are many kinds of heroism, but it may be doubted whether any touches a higher level than that exhibited by this patient sower of the seed of life on the sterile field of Mongolia, bravely continuing to do so until imperatively urged to cease for a season, not by his consciousness of failing power, but by the alarm and influence of his medical co-worker.

When the decision was once taken, it was acted upon promptly. March 26, 1889, was the day, and Peking the place. On April 4 he left Peking, and on the 20th he sailed from Shanghai. He arrived in London on May 25.

This visit to England in 1889 was a great refreshment bodily, mental, and spiritual, to the overwrought labourer. The voyage itself, enforcing rest from all ordinary avocations, by removing Mr. Gilmour from the depressing surroundings amid which he had spent so much of the last three years, began the restorative process. He was beginning to feel in himself great benefit from the change even by the time he reached London. But the six years which had passed since he last walked the London streets had left their mark upon him. He had drawn to the utmost upon his physical and spiritual strength in the service of those for whose conversion he lived and toiled. He had been through the deep waters of personal affliction when his wife passed into the sinless life. The many toils and hardships of the passing years had drawn deep furrows upon the cheery face, and the eyes showed evidence of the mental and spiritual strain.

So sudden was the resolution to return, and so prompt his action upon it, that few knew even of the probability until he was actually here. On May 27, 1889, the writer was sitting in his room, overlooking the pleasant garden that brightens up the north-eastern corner of St Paul's Churchyard, in conversation with a gentleman, when a knock came at the door and a head appeared. Not seeing it very clearly, and at the same time asking for a minute's delay while the business in hand was completed, the head disappeared. As soon as the first visitor departed a man entered and stood near the door. I looked at him with the conviction that I knew him, and yet could not recall the true mental association, when the old smile broke over his face, and he burst into a laugh, saying, 'Why, man, you don't know me' 'Yes, I do,' I replied, 'you're Gilmour; but I thought that at this moment you were in Mongolia.' But when I was able to scrutinise him closely I was shocked to see how very evident were the signs of stress and strain. It was not wholly inexcusable, even in an old friend, to fail to instantly recognise in the worn and apparently broken man, thought to be hard at work many thousands of miles away, the strong and cheery Gilmour of 1883.

Carrying him off home, we talked far into the night, not because his host thought it a good thing for the invalid, but because he was so full of his work and its difficulties and its pressing needs, and what he hoped to do on behalf of Mongolia by his visit home, that there seemed no possible alternative but to let him talk himself weary. And how splendidly he talked! He pictured his life at a Mongol inn. He ranged over the whole opium and whisky and tobacco controversy. He gave, with all the dramatic effect of which he was so great a master, the story of how he forced home upon the Chinese and Mongols, until even they admitted the force of the reasoning, how natural it was that famine should visit them when they gave up their land to opium, and their grain to the manufacture of whisky. He gave in rapid dialogue his own questions, the native rejoinders, and he so vividly pictured the scene that his hearer could fancy himself standing under the tent, surrounded by Chinese and Mongols, and assenting, as they did, to the earnest and far-reaching conclusions of the speaker.



CHAPTER X

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS AS ILLUSTRATED BY LETTERS TO RELATIVES AND FRIENDS

This break in active work affords a convenient occasion for exhibiting in a still stronger light, by means of selections from his correspondence, some important sides of James Gilmour's character. He was a good correspondent and wrote freely to his relatives and friends. We have quoted largely hitherto from his official reports and from letters that refer to the condition and progress of his life-work. But it is in the letters addressed to the circle of relatives and most intimate friends that he reveals more fully the deeper side of his life, and the strong and tender affection of his nature.

He corresponded regularly with his parents until the earthly tie was broken by the death of his mother in 1884 and of his father in 1888. His letters to the latter were very beautiful, especially those designed to strengthen his faith in the closing years when he had passed the eightieth milestone. The tone of the correspondence may be judged from the following examples:—

'Peking: Friday, January 23, 1885.

'My dear Father,—So this must in future be the heading of my letters—no longer my dear parents. Mother has gone. Yours of November 21 reached me this afternoon, or evening rather. As I came home from the chapel I found a beggar waiting at the gate. I thought he was going to beg, but he did not. Inside I found the gate-keeper waiting at our house door for a reply note, to say that the letter had been delivered. I went to my study, and was praying for a blessing on the chapel preaching when Emily came. I let her in. She had your letter in her hand. It had come by Russia, and the Russian post sometimes sends over our mail by a Peking beggar, paying him of course.

'I have not had time to think yet. On my heels came in men for the prayer-meeting we hold in our house on Friday evening, and till now I have been almost continuously engaged. It is now 10.20 P.M. It so happens that this week I am much behind in my sermon preparation for Sunday, and it also happens that I am going to preach on whole families believing on Christ. What brought this subject to my mind is one of our old Christians who is dying, the only Christian in his whole family. His great grief is that they (his family) remain heathens. In addition, too, a Christian father admitted to a missionary the other day that he had not taught Christ to his daughter who had just died. Preaching on this subject I will have something to say about my own dear, good, anxious mother, and of how she used to say when I was a boy, "What a terrible thing it will be if I see you shut out of heaven!" She did not say terrible; "unco" was her word.

'I have not yet had time to realise my loss, and cannot think of the Hamilton house as being without her. Eh, man! you know how good a mother she was to us, and I have some idea of what a companion and help she was to you. You two had nearly fifty years together. You must feel lonely without her. Fathers and mothers are thought much of by the Chinese, and you, at my suggestion, were most heartily and feelingly prayed for by the Chinese at our prayer-meeting to-night. You would have felt quite touched could you have heard and understood them.'

There is a special interest attaching to the sentence used frequently by his mother. On page 41 he refers to his conversion, but no record appears to have been preserved, giving any detail or fixing with any exactness the date. But his brothers have a conviction that his constant recollection of the oft-repeated and well-remembered words, 'What an unco thing it will be if I see you shut out of heaven!' was one of the most potent influences in bringing about his conversion. The letters immediately following were written during the last two years of his father's life.

'Let us not be disturbed at all about our not having more communication. I pray often for you and remember you more frequently still, and feel more and more that earth is a shifting scene, that here we have no permanent place, that heaven is our home, that your wife—my dear mother—has gone there, that my wife has gone there and is now in the Golden City, and that, sooner or later, you and I will be there, and that, when there, we'll have plenty of time to sit about and talk all together in a company. Lately I have come to see that we have but to put ourselves into the hands of Jesus and let Him do with us as He likes, and He'll save us sure and certain. He can make us willing even to let Him change us and train us.

'You are eighty years old. I am proud of you. I like to think of your life. Mother told me, when I was a lad, of some of your early struggles. God has been with you and guided you on through all to a good old age of honour and respect and love. Trust Him and He'll not leave you. Depend upon it, God has something better for us in the world to come than He has ever given us here. And it is not difficult to get it. God wants to give it to us all; offers it to us, and is distressed if we don't take it. We have only to go to Christ and ask Jesus to make it all right for us, and He'll do it. I know you are in earnest. Jesus will turn away no earnest man.'

Mr. Gilmour senior acted as steward of the little store which his son by rigid economy was amassing for the benefit of his children. Scotch thrift was well exemplified in them both. But in the course of 1887 James Gilmour became troubled about this accumulation of even that small sum which he could call his own. In his lonely introspective Mongolian life the possession of money came to wear in his view the aspect of distrusting God. At this juncture the London Missionary Society was in a somewhat serious state as regards funds. A special appeal had been sent out indicating that if additional funds were not forthcoming, some fields of work might have to be given up. James Gilmour's response was an order to pay over anonymously the sum of 100l. to the general funds of the Society, and 50l. to that set apart for widows and orphans.