James Gilmour

“ Thanks be to God that there is, and that we know that there is, a bright and happy life beyond. Let us make that the great meeting-place for ourselves and our children and friends. May it stand before us as a joy ! As ever and anon one and another goes there, may we feel that we have more and more interest there ! Let us live looking to the joy set before us ! ”

“ Having time, and an interest in nomads, he read a page or two, and read on, and read on, for five hours, till he had finished the book,—which is much too short,—fascinated, lost, carried out of himself and England. He was in Mongolia, sitting under a blue-cloth tent, with savage dogs howling around, and gazing outside, through the doorless doorway, on a vast panorama of poor tufted grass, stretching away to huge black hills in the distance, and Tartars on camels, Tartars on horses, Tartars on springless, unbreakable ox-carts, hastening up to the encampment ”

“ Men, poor it may be, strive through college with a mind and deter mination beyond their circumstances and bodily strength, fight a great battle with poverty and more clever students, resolute to take the first place if possible, and just as the college is finished with them, and sending them forth to the field of life decorated with all the honours it can bestow, the fond Alma Mater has to keep on mourning and drop her tear over an early grave. ”

“ Do we not in our day rest too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, still to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him. ”

“ If it be hardship, cold, poor food, scorn, slight, deaf ears—never mind, go ahead. Christ looks to us to go ahead, or come ahead, for He has gone through it all. Trouble, hardship, trial, suffering,—all will soon pass and be done. And is there a trouble or hardship we have yet surmounted for Christ's sake that does not seem sweet to look back on? Then, come what likes, let us face it; or, if we be overwhelmed, let us be overwhelmed with undaunted faces looking in the right direction. By the mercy of God may we be saved ”

“ Later in the season, one afternoon, the loungers in the tent looked out and remarked, " The Mandarin has come," and gave place to a richly dressed, corpulent Mongol, who entered the tent, followed by one of his servants. Saluta tions over, he soon showed his colours and unmasked his batteries. He had come to fight, and we both went at it tooth and nail. He had read a good deal, and had come evidently prepared and primed, not in any spirit of un friendliness, but under the evident conviction that a better case could be made out for Buddhism than for Christianity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ God I call my Father, Christ my Saviour, heaven my home, earth and the life here the entrance to real life. If there is anything in our faith or in our belief, then heaven is as much better than earth as it is higher than earth, and our souls life is insured from all harm. If a man is insured against all possible harm, why should he be afraid? ”

“ Often a gentleman would come up and ask, " Where are you going ? " to which Mr. Gilmour would reply, " We are cooling ourselves ; we are going nowhere." It was always a mystery to people what we could possibly mean by taking walks to the country. One day two lads followed us for some miles across some low hills, anxious to know our busi ness, and getting well laughed at by their friends, poor fellows, on their return to the town.
One thing about Mr. Gilmour always impressed me deeply his wonderful knowledge of the little touches of Chinese politeness, and his wonderful power of observation. ”

“ Few men have cast the bread upon greater waters, have sown the seed over a wider area, or had to mourn more sadly over those heart-breaking months which intervene between the seedtime and the harvest. Impartial critics have recognised the intense honesty, the shrewd wit, the faculty of vision, the power to tell the story of his rare experiences with such verisimilitude as to force upon the reader a ready acquiescence in every detail of his narrative. But his Christian brethren saw a deeper vein than this in Gilmour's achievements. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are living on the slope of a volcano that may put forth its slumbering rage at any moment. For example, people ask why there is no rain, and blame the foreigners for it; and should a famine ensue, we may fare hard for it. Now is the time for trying what stuff a man's religion is made of. We may be all dead men directly; are we afraid to die? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jesus is real and heaven is real, and our share in heaven, if we trust and follow Jesus, is real. You say you are busy: so am I. You have cares: so have I. Go ahead and look after your work and business; but you'll do it all the better that your heart is at peace with God and at rest in Jesus. I find that the closer I am to Jesus the better I can meet and bear all troubles, trials, and difficulties, and you will find the same true if you try.
'I feel quite lifted up to-night. I have a room to myself. This is the first time I have had a room to myself since leaving Peking January 25. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The Bible is all very well for those who have advanced a little, but there is very little of the narrative portions even—the simplest parts of the whole book—which you can read without encountering terrible names of persons or places, or quotations from the prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah. When a Mongol comes upon these he feels inclined to give up in despair. Even in China my experience has been that people are slow to buy a complete gospel, even at less than the paper on which it is printed costs, while they will buy with avidity very small books at almost their full value. ”

“ It pained him to hear any one speaking evil of another. I have seen him turn deadly pale when he has heard any one impute a wrong motive. He longed for more of the spirit of Christ among men. How he longed, too, for more workers in the Mission field! Many a time he would say, after a walk through Hamilton on a Saturday evening: "Just think! In a little town like this there are men preaching at every other street corner, and I am alone in all of those hundreds of square miles in Mongolia! ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is much ignorance to be removed, much suspicion, much misunderstanding of me as a foreigner, and I am hammering away as hard as I can. There are mountains of difficulty to be removed, but I am trusting in God to remove them, and these last days I have had much peace and joy in my heart thinking of God's love to me and the salvation of Jesus. ”

“ The glare of the sun on the Plain at all seasons, except when the grass is fresh and green in summer, the blinding sheen from the snowy expanse in winter, and the continual smoke that hangs like a cloud two or three feet above the floor of the tent, all combine to attack the eye. Eye diseases are therefore very common. The lama medicines seem to be able to do nothing for such cases, and a few remedies in a foreigner's hands work cures that seem wonderful to the Mongols. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The Chinese have nearly as little self-control as children; and is it to be wondered at if, when at last, after long months of the slow torture of unappeased hunger, they found a full meal before them, they should have eaten to the full? When a man emaciated from having gone through a famine, and further enfeebled after repeated prostrations by ague, at length rises up and gorges himself with farinaceous food, half ripe and half cooked, the consequences are not difficult to divine. Diarrhœa and dysentery set in, and became fearfully prevalent—not only prevalent, but peculiarly fatal. ”

“ It may be that we can't be great, let us be good; if we can't shine as great lights, let us make our light shine as God has made it to shine. Let us live lives as in the presence of Christ, anxious for His approval, and glad to take the condemnation of the world, and of Christ's professed servants even, if we get the commendation of angels and our Master. ”

“ It is difficult for men in China to be Christians. How different with you! We all want you to be Christians. Your father and friends all help you to be Christians, and if you are not Christians we are all distressed.
'Boys, do be true to Jesus. In your words and deeds honour Him. Make His heart glad. Jesus wants your love. He loves you and died for you. You cannot but love Him if you think how He loves you. Good-bye. Meantime I am just going to breakfast, and then for a day on the street, trying to tell the people about Jesus. God bless you, my dear lads! ”

“ They seem calm enough, and are no doubt calm enough; shall the courage of the world, shall the courage of scepticism, shall the courage of carelessness be greater and produce better fruit than the courage of the Christian? O Lord, preserve me from the sin of dishonouring Thy name through fear and cowardice! Let us be bold in the Lord!'
By the end of July 1870, Gilmour had reached a fixed resolution to go to Mongolia as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made. ”

“ Is the kingdom a harvest field? Then I thought it reasonable that I should seek to work where the work was most abundant and the workers fewest. Labourers say they are overtaxed at home; what then must be the case abroad, where there are wide stretching plains already white to harvest, with scarcely here and there a solitary reaper? To me the soul of an Indian seemed as precious as the soul of an Englishman, and the Gospel as much for the Chinese as for the European ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meech's perversion from Mongolia to China is much to be deplored. I think it would be wrong in me not to inform you of the true state of matters, and to remind you that it is little short of nonsense to speak of reopening the Mongolian Mission so long as there is only one man in the field. I am fully aware of the difficulty of finding suitable men, and most fully sympathise with you, but don't let us delude ourselves with the idea of Mongol Mission work progressing till another man or two come and put their shoulder to the wheel. ”

“ I have not been trying to entertain you, but I have been trying to interest you, and what I want to impress upon you is this: after those men have left the chapel you can do as much for their conversion as we can do in China. I want you to pray for the conversion of these men to whom we in Peking, and others in other parts of the world, are the means of communicating these truths of Christ. I believe it is not only the earnestness of the missionary that is going to produce results, but it is your earnestness here. ”

“ My object in going into Mongolia at this time is to have an opportunity of reviewing and extending my knowledge of the colloquial, which has become a little rusty consequent upon its disuse to a great extent while here, trying to get up the written.'
All who are even superficially acquainted with Chinese matters know how difficult it is to acquire the colloquial, and still more the written language. Mongolian is not nearly so difficult, but it presents a task needing vigour of intellect and strength of will. Both of these Gilmour possessed in a measure far above the average. ”

“ 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. ”