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GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

T HE OiEw 'Missionart Series

Each volume is written for young people, by a nsjell-knonvn author, in a bright, interesting style, and has a specially designed pictorial ccrver in full colours by John F. Campbell, as njjell as black and ^hite illustrations throughout.

Royal i6mo, is. 6d. net each

DAVID LIVINGSTONE ROBERT MOFFAT WILFRED GRENFELL JAMES CHALMERS WILLIAM CARET PANDITA RAMABAI MACKAT OF UGANDA GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

London-. MORGAN SCOTT LTD.

— .

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

BY THE REV.

KINGSGOTE WeENLAND

MORGAN SCOTT

12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS LONDON, E.C. ENGLAND

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

Every girl and boy knows the story of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, who lived on a desert island. I want to tell you the story of a foreign missionary named James Gilmour, whom his college chums lovingly nicknamed “ dear old Gillie,” whose life and adven- tures while preaching the Gospel of Jesus in far-away China will often remind you of Robinson Crusoe. Only, of course, this missionary Crusoe was not lonely, but had millions of people round him ; he could have got away if he had wanted to, so

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he wasn’t waiting for a ship ; and of course Mongolia, where he spent over twenty long and busy years of his life, is not an island at all, but part of the big continent of Asia.

THE SCOTCH BOY AT HOME

All you boys and girls who were born in Bonnie Scotland can claim James Gilmour as your own, because he was born on a farm five miles from Glasgow, at Cathkin, in the year 1843 — that is seventy-six years ago. Many boys and girls too, who do splendid things in life, begin by being very poor. But it was not so with my hero James — his parents, though not rich, had enough money to give their children good clothes and food and education. Most Scotch families

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years ago, and many now — though I am afraid not quite so many — were very Christian people, and never dreamed of missing going to God’s House for worship on Sundays. The Gilmours’ kirk was five miles away, and over a very rough road ; and as there were no trams, as we often have, they and their children walked, and in winter found their way in the dark by the light of a hand-lantem. Many years afterwards, when Jamie became a missionary in China, he often wrote stories of adventures with robbers and flooded rivers and camels for the children in England ; and I think he must have first got the idea of doing it from listening to his mother reading stories aloud to them, like Unde Tom’s Cabin, under the lamp on dark winter evenings in the old farm.

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When his parents removed to Glasgow, Jamie had to go five miles by train to school, and he had a season-ticket. He was a very hard-working scholar, and generally at the top of his class ; but at the same time he was full of fun and frolic and what boys to-day call a “ good sport.” He had lots of hobbies, as all jolly children should, and one was swimming, cmother boating, and a third was going rambles in the country, with a little hammer in his pocket, looking for geological specimens. All his chums remember what a horror he had of being late for school. He didn’t fear the cane, not he ! But if his mother wanted him to stay a minute and eat some more breakfast, he used to say, as he looked round for his cap and satchel : “ Can’t take it. No time. What

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if the doors should be shut when I get there ? ”

Now I wonder if any boy or girl who^ reads my little book keeps a diary ? Do you ? When, in 1870, James went out as a missionary to China, he wrote in a book every night what had happened to him during the day. So we know, now he is gone, all he used to think and do. The early part of it, which he says he wrote really for his mother to read, tells of his schooldays. One story makes you laugh. The servant, Aggie Leitch, was reading to him one dark night in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and just as she got to the story of Giant Despair and the horrors of Doubting Castle — bang ! came a terrible knock on the door. Jamie sprang up ; he really thought the giant was upon them !

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His school-days over, he went to Glasgow University, and became a clever student in Greek and Latin. But though he studied hard and came out splendidly in his exams, he was never a quiet or melan- choly boy, as some people think you have to be if you are clever. They say his laugh was known all over the college, and he was packed full of tip-top spirits and loved a good joke. When he worked, he didn’t play ; and when he played, he didn’t work. Now there is one great thing to notice in Jamie Gilmour’s boyhood and youth — he was a Christian through and through, from his hat to his boots. Rather shy, slow to make friends, but when he made them he stuck to them ; a lover of his Bible as well as a lover of his rowing oars or sculls or cricket- bat; a

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student who was very outspoken when he didn’t agree or approve, but thoroughly kind and, best of all, unselfish. “ Where do you live ? ” he asked a chum one day. “ Right over your head,” was the answer. “ Then don’t make a row,” said James. You see he said what he meant, and that is called being straightforward — no fibs, no shuffling, no make-believe.

When he was about twenty, he made up his mind to the great purpose of his life. He made up his mind to go abroad and preach the Gospel of Jesus to the peoples who had not heard of Him. Listen what he wrote in his diary, and tell me if it isn’t beautiful common sense : “ Is God’s kingdom a harvest-field ? Then I think it is most reasonable that I should go and work where the field is largest and

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the workers fewest.” There ! Another great thing he wrote I should like every little boy and girl to remember : “ 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 the Europeans.”

JAMES STARTS WORK IN CHINA

Good-bye to Scotland ! Good-bye to school and college ! Good-bye to the lovely Clyde and boating and rounders and frolic and fun ! On 22nd February, 1870 — the year that Germany sprang upon France and took away from her Alsace- Lorraine — young James Gilmour, aged 27, sailed from Liverpool on board the steamship Diomed, bound for the great unknown land of China. After a good

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voyage on the ship, where he had talked with fellow-missionaries and cabin-boys and sailors, and conducted Sunday morn- ing service on deck, with the mighty ocean all round, our hero landed in China. Just as he got there, there had been a big riot ; some French Christians were killed, and everybody was afraid the Chinese might rise against the Europeans and turn them out of their country. I must tell you, children, though I expect you know it, that when different peoples are separ- ated from each other either by the sea or because one speaks one language and another another, they don’t know or understand each other. How can they ? And they get suspicious of each other, and think when they come in ships and land that they want to rule them or take

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their country, with its cattle and metals, from them. The Chinese especially have thought that of English and J apanese and Russian people. So that the missionary, who doesn’t go out to trade or to sink mines, or to make deserts into fruitful land, but just to tell the people about God and J esus Christ, has always this difficulty to face — ^to convince the people that he has not come to get, but to give.

James Gilmour knew this, and he saw that the first thing he must do was to learn the language. You always seem afraid of people who talk in a way you can’t understand. For a time he lived at Peking, which is the capital of China, and he began to learn Chinese. It is a very difficult language, and the letters are different from ours, and I believe their

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alphabet has over 700 letters in it. But James Gilmour had set his heart on not staying in China proper. He wanted to go to what is called Mongolia. Get a map of Asia, and I’ll point out to you exactly where it is. The word Mongolia means a big and mostly unknown territory which you’ll find lying between China proper and Russian Siberia. On the east is the Sea of Japan — do you see it ? — and on the west is Turkestan, a distance of 3000 miles. On the north is Asiatic Russia, and on the south is the Great Wall of China, and it measures 900 miles. What this country is like is really high table- lands, and you can only get to it through deep and dark and lonely mountain-passes. In the middle of this huge district is the Desert of Gobi, as it is called. Right

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across runs a sort of great, long, dangerous high-road, over which, in all but the very i bad winter weather, go trade caravans. But they are not like our gipsy caravans i at home here, with basket- chairs and lean i horses, but they have camels and ox-carts, with Chinese and Mongol drivers. They are mostly carrying tea, which you know is China’s chief export. But they also trade in salt, soda, hides, and timber. In the winter the Mongols live in tents, but in summer they wander everywhere, look- ing for good pasturage for their flocks and herds. You see then, that if anyone wishes to get to know them and to let them feel that he is their friend, as the missionary is, he must become a wanderer and have a tent like them, because they are always on the move. You have all heard of

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Buddhism, I expect, which is a great heathen religion; and these people are almost all Buddhists. Their priests are called Lamas, emd about half the men are Lamas. As he rides his camel, he says his prayers and counts his beads. The Mon- gol is what is called a “ nomad,” which means a wanderer, and whenever you meet him he says he is on the way to some temple or sacred shrine. I am sure you all know that people can be religious without being Christian. The difference is that Buddhism is a false religion and Christianity is the true one. The Mon- golians are very religious, and their re- ligion tells them not only that some acts are right and some wrong, but it tells them almost everything they have to say and to eat and to wear. It tells them when to

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pray, and also what sort of a coat to put on.

Our hero, “Crusoe” Gilmour, desired deep in his heart to tell these people who believed in Buddha, who was once an Indian prince, about Jesus Christ. But you will see how hard a task it was to persuade them to give up something that they had believed all their lives, and their parents before them. First, he had to learn their funny language. But he had two splendid things on his side : God was on his side, and even before he went there, the Bible had been translated into their language.

Just for a minute I am going to cut out of Mr. Gilmour’s diary a few tiny sayings, but there are hundreds more like them. If I put them between inverted commas

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you’ll know they are his own words and not mine. They are all about his journeys, how he spent his Sundays, what these strange people thought of him, what he ate for his meals, and how very lonely he was, and best of all, how dearly he loved Jesus Christ. “ I was up at daybreak. Camels watering ; made porridge and tea. This is the Lord’s day ; help me, O Lord, to be glad and rejoice.” “ Met camels and a cart. I know where I am by the map. God never fails those who trust in Him.” “ To-day I feel like Elijah in the wilderness when he asked God to let him die. How lonely Christ was ! Nobody understood Him. I want to follow in His steps.” “ I never feel I have done as much as I must, and when I am doing most I feel best.” “ I gave the Lama a

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book on Saturday, and when I came back on Tuesday he had read it twice.” “ I told the people God was everywhere, and one of them asked me : ‘ Is He inside our kettle ? Will the hot tea scald Him ? ’ ” “ My money is in a box on my donkey, yet it came in all safe and none lost.” “ When my Chinese teacher says I have written a good letter in Chinese, I think he simply wants to be polite to me. ’ ’ “ When

my native boy tries to light my stove and it won’t burn, he goes on his knees in front of it and says : ‘ Moo too poo shing, ’ which means, ‘The wood won’t do.’” “When mourning for the dead, the Chinese dress in white, not in black as we do at home. In winter, if they can afford it, they have their Clothes lined with fur.” “ In Peking the main street is called

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Ha Ta Mun, which means ‘ great street. ’ ” “ Chinese mules will only travel single file, even when there is room enough for them to go abreast. My friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Edkins, used to ride with his face to the tail of his beast, so that he could face those who were riding behind him and go on talking to them.” “ In the winter I used to live at the Yellow Temple to meet the visitors who used to come to worship there, and they called my Bible the ‘ Jesus Book.’ ” Please remember, boys and girls, that though the Chinese and Mon- golians are heathens, they are not all ig- norant, but are really very clever. They asked “ our Gilmour ” many clever ques- tions : “ Is a man punished for another man’s fault ? ” “ How can Christ save

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a man ? ” “ If a man prays for a thing,

does he get it ? ”

These questions and hundreds like them they used to ask the brave little Scotch missionary as he stood in the fair or market-place preaching and distributing medicines.

GILMOUR THE DOCTOR

Every missionary story you read always tells you a great deal about something else the missionary does. He becomes a doctor to them. Diseases are everywhere, and the people have very poor native doctors who know very little about the body. If a man or a woman or a child suffers with bad eyes or a pain in the stomach, or a cough or a swelling, they generally think some evil spirit has done

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it, and they never put it down to the right cause — cold or whisky, or eating too much, or anything like that. Now, as the missionary is God’s physician for their souls, so he is God’s doctor for their bodies. When the missionary is not liked, and the people throw stones at him in the street or burn his house down, as they sometimes do because he is a foreigner, it is one of the very best ways of showing them that he is a friend and loves them, to cure them of their pains and complaints. And this James Gilmour used to do every day. Of course he was not really a trained doctor, but he says : “ What little I know is very useful to me, because almost every Mongol man, woman, and child has something that wants putting right. It would be terrible to sit and see

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a native with his face swollen with toothache and not use a pair of pincers and cure him.”

You children know how much of our Lord’s time was devoted to healing the sick, the lame, and the blind. You also know how clever mother is in treating you for little complaints without sending round for the doctor, though she has never taken an exam, and hasn’t got her name on a brass plate on the door. One thing our hero says which will go right to your hearts I’m sure. He says the Chinese and Mongolians are very hos- pitable, and will give strangers they like food and shelter, but they are not kind to their own old and sick people when they come to die.

At the end of his first long journey in

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his new and strange land, “ our Gilmour ” says one thing that will show best of all how brave a man he was, how he would not despair, and how he still trusted in God : “I have as yet, after all my preaching, seen no results. I have not as yet seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian. But by healing their diseases I have had opportunity to tell many of Jesus, the great Physician.”

OUR CRUSOE MISSIONARY MARRIES

Perhaps some of you, when I tell you how very lonely Gilmour was, will ask : “ Where was his wife ? ” She was in London — Miss Prankard — but she was not yet his wife, and hadn’t even seen him. You see, he was young when he went to China first, and had not married.

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You know the word “ romance,” don’t you ? Well, James Gilmour’s marriage was his beautiful romance, and it reads like a lovely fairy-tale. From far-away China he wrote to her in England ; and because she liked his kind letters and admired all his sacrifice in living for the Mongols, and also because she prayed that God would guide her in all she did, this young lady, who was a teacher in a school, left her work in London and sailed away and became our missionary’s wife. They loved each other more and more as the years went by, and they had two boys, and Mrs. Gilmour was almost as good a foreign missionary as her husband. She went and saw James’s parents in Scotland before she sailed, and they loved her very much too. You would like, I know, to

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hear one thing he said of her just after they were married, in a letter to a friend : “ I was married last week. We had never seen each other till a week before. She is a jolly girl, as much — perhaps more — of a Christian and a missionary as I am.” So that for many years after, till she died, the missionary was never lonely, but always had at his side a loving friend.

JOURNEYS AND DANGERS AND RIVERS For a long time after his marriage Gilmour lived in Peking, and used to take trips with his wife into the Mongol desert. Some of the habits of the people would make you smile, and Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour didn’t like them till they got used to them. One was this. They carried with them on their journeys on the backs of camels

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two tents, made of common blue Chinese cloth outside and commoner white Chinese cloth inside. They meant one tent as a sort of sitting-room, into which they could invite the camel-drivers, to train and teach them ; and the other as their own private room. Now listen ! The Mongols didn’t like this at all. They are so in the habit of going freely into everybody’s tent, that they 'were offended when the missionary and his wife left them, to go into their private one. So what do you think they did ? They followed them, just as if anybody in your street followed you into your own house and sat down, without being asked. They sat there on the floor and watched Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour pray ' and have their meals, and even wash and do their hair. You see, they were really

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very much like children, and they did not mean to be rude or impolite at all. So the missionaries allowed them to come, and in this way they became great friends.

But Mongolia had other and less amus- ing things in store. Both in spring and autumn there were great storms of rain and wind that swept down and swamped their camping-ground and blew over the tents. The wind, Gilmour tells us, was so strong that they had to weight their tent ropes with big stones, and put heavy bags of earth in their carts to hold them down. Then came the rains, pouring and slashing and roaring, the great drops bursting through their blue tent cloth, broken into spray and looking “ like pepper shaken from a box.” He tells us of one great

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storm which began just after dark, which was one of the fiercest thunderstorms of all his missionary life. It filled the river on both sides of them, and washed away their tents, and they were nearly drowned. Another trouble and sorrow was that the missionaries and doctors who were sent out now and then to help him very often had to go home again because they were ill, and sometimes they caught fever and died there. Mrs. Gilmour, who was as brave as her husband, and accompanied him, with her little baby boy, on their trips, really caught the disease by her coming and going, which in the end killed her. And it is very sad to die far away from home and dear ones in that lonely land. They have in China and Mongolia, too, something we in England never get —

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namely famine. We went a little short of some things during the War, but we cannot imagine what it would be like to have no food at all, and to see hundreds of people, all skin and bone, lying dead or dying on the roads. This often nearly broke the missionary’s heart. He says that with lean faces and hungry eyes and tottering steps, they go to the fields and gather the green grain before it is ripe, and put it in the pot and eat it. And when the grain does ripen, they have been hungry so long that they kill themselves by eating too much or by cooking the grain badly. “ Every Chinaman wants looking after,” Mr. Gilmour says, “ and he pays for being taken care of.” You see, though he may be a grown-up man, he has not seen the great world, and he has led a simple 3

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life with his herds and camels, and you have to treat him as a little child. Es- pecially at the services he and his wife and children liked to sing. They would sing, “ The Great Physician,” and “ Safe in the arms of Jesus,” a great deal out of tune, but still very good music for them. And what they didn’t understand of the words, the tune seemed to please and to do them good, as we know music does.

SUSPICION OF FOREIGNERS Another word let me say about the Mongols’ suspicion of foreigners and of their sicknesses. Like our Lord Himself, many of us, most of us, like to be alone when we pray. We like quiet, so that we can keep our mind free to think of God our Father. That is why we close our

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eyes at prayer. Mr. Gilmour liked to get up early in the sweet cool air of the morn- ing and go up a low ridge of hills to pray. Thispuzzled the Mongols, and they thought it very strange. Whatever should a man get up early for, before everybody else, and go up the hills ? “He must be up to mischief,” they said. “ He must be secretly taking away the luck of the land. ’ ’ So Gilmour had to give up his morning retirement. They are also very suspicious seeing any foreigner writing. “ What can he be up to ? ” they whisper among themselves. “ He is making a map so that an army can come and take our land ! No, he is a wizard.” No missionary must go about with a gun shooting, either. Killing birds or beasts, the Mongols regard as very sinful.

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The most common sicknesses in Mon- golia are skin diseases and bad eyes and teeth. But rheumatism is the chief disease of all. The glare of the desert and the white glitter of the winter snow give the people their sore eyes and make so many of them blind. Of course they don’t think so, but put the blame on the stars, or because, when one was a boy, he killed some worms when he was digging — or something foolish like that. You also have to be very careful when you give them medicines, that they don’t eat their poultices, and drink the lotion that was meant by the missionary to wash their eyes with. They also think a doctor can perform very laughable cures, and they ask him to cure their stupidity and make them clever, or make

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them fat, or cure them of their love of whisky or tobacco, or to give them a long white beard like a priest or a white skin like a European.

HOME ONCE MORE

At last, after being away for twelve long and hard years, our hero was allowed by the London Missionary Society, whom so many of you collect for, to return home. It was in 1882, and one of the chief reasons was also that Mrs. Gilmour was ill, and had been so for some time. How glad and happy he felt at seeing his native land, and his parents and brothers and his many friends, I can hardly de- scribe to you. But though it was his holiday, so many people all over England and Scotland wanted to see and hear the

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brave little Mongol missionary, that he had very little real rest. He went to many big cities and towns like Edinburgh and Liverpool, Cambridge and Manchester, speaking, and begging money, and he preached in Spurgeon’s Tabernacle and many other churches and chapels. But there was one thing he found time to do, which everybody who loves China and missionary work was more than glad about. He wrote his famous and fas- cinating book. Among the Mongols. It is full of stories and adventures, and tells how in all his work and discourage- ment he never doubted God would save China, and he never ran away from his great duty. It was somebody who was writing of this book in a newspaper who called him, just as I have done, Robinson

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Crusoe. “ Robinson Crusoe has turned missionary ’ ’ — that’s what he said. Listen to this, too : “ He could not

ride, he did not know the language, he carried no firearms ... he lived upon half - frozen prairies and under open tents, on fat mutton and sheep’s tails, tea, and boiled millet, eating only once a day, as Mongolians do. And he rode over six hundred miles once over a dangerous desert where the rats undermine the grass. And he made up his mind he would never be afraid of dogs or thieves or hunger or climate. ’ ’

In fact, he could write so well in maga- zines that he said once, and it was quite true : “ I could have made money, I believe, by writing ; but I don’t write. I

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settle down to teach illiterate Chinamen and Mongols, heal their sores, and present Christ to them.” He especially delighted the boys and girls at his meetings with his stories about the dogs and camels and the children of China and the desert, and of how they marry and how they eat, and how they are taught in the street. His chapel in Peking, he told them, was called The Hall of the Five Happinesses. I wonder what five the Chinese thought of. And he made everybody in Exeter Hall smile when he told them that a Chinese bride and bridegroom have their new furniture — big wardrobes and tables and cupboards — carried through the streets in the wed- ding procession, just to show how well off they are.

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EMILY CROSSED THE RIVER LAST NIGHT I forget whether I told you that Mrs. Gilmour’s name was Emily. In the words just above, her brave and sorrowful hus- band told one of his friends in Scotland in a letter that his kind and noble wife had been taken by God to His home in heaven. Of course it was a great blow to the Mongol missionary, because she had been with him so many years and shared his travels and hardships, and had also done so much for the women and girls in Peking. You know that in the East women don’t go about the streets as freely as they do in England, but live indoors more, and are really shut up to a very sad life. One of the great services that the missionary’s wife can do to help

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her husband in his work, is to visit these indoor wives and mothers and to tell them of Jesus Christ. And Mrs. Emily Gil- mour had done this in China. Then you mustn’t forget her two motherless boys which she left behind. Those who knew her also tell us that she was very fond of all animals, and of everything beautiful, like flowers.

THE MONGOL FARMERS After her death James Gilmour made up his mind to start preaching in a new place. Hitherto he had been in the plains of Mongolia, as I have told you, preaching to and living with the traders. Now he decided to go to Eastern Mongolia, where the farmers lived. It lay 270 English miles north-east by east of Peking, and if

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he travelled 30 miles a day it would take him nine days to go. He knew he would be much more lonely and cut off from white people, and the people were rather dangerous, as they didn’t like foreigners. The great trouble in this district always was the failure of the crops. The mis- sionary got into a great deal of trouble many, many times because, when the farmers complained and their families had no food, he used to tell them that they mustn’t blame God, but themselves. Why? How could he make that out ? I’ll tell you. Three of the chief sins among the Chinese and Mongolians is taking so much whisky and opium and tobacco. And they used to sow their best land with these three poisons, and then leave the poorer land to supply corn for their food. And the

Gilmour on His Donkey (page 48).

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Crusoe missionary was courageous enough to risk making them angry with him — because, you know, none of us like to be told we are doing wrong — by blaming them for wasting good corn-growing land on opium and tobacco and whisky.

It was then that he himself came to believe with all his heart that if a Chinese wants to be a good and strong Christian he must put away for ever these three bad habits of smoking opium and tobacco and of drinking. You mustn’t call him, as some people did, a faddist and very narrow- minded, because he was not. He was full of forgiveness and sympathy, and also of strong common-sense, and he knew the country and the people better than any other English missionary. And there were other things he did, too. He did not

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believe in telling others to do what he wasn’t willing to do himself. Even when a boy in Scotland he had hated strong drink — he said his body was for his Master to live in, not to fill with poison. So he became more than ever a non- smoker and a teetotaller, and also a vegetarian, because to give up meat was so much cheaper, and he believed much healthier, too. He used to say he wanted to do and be like Christ, and he said : “ I believe if Christ were here now as a missionary. He would be an enthusiastic teetotaller and a non-smoker.” By the way, there were a number of people in China who were called Tsai li ti, and their chief belief is Yen chin pu tung, which means no tobacco, opium, or whisky. Gilmour also wore native clothes and not

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European ones brought from home, and the pictures I have seen of him make him look like an ordinary Chinese worknian or shop- keeper. Wasn’t this, too, like his great Master, who, though He was God, dressed like a village carpenter in Nazareth ?

In this part of Mongolia he was very much in need of a medical doctor, but, unfortunately, we at home do not always give enough money to provide such, and so he and his helpers, and of course the thousands of sick people and children, had to go without. You must think of that when you go collecting again this year for the L.M.S.

There were lots of biggish towns where he was now, and he generally stayed at an inn. I think you will smile, and I hope blush, too, when I tell you that because he

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was poor, and generally walked, because he couldn’t afford to buy mules, the inn- keepers wouldn’t allow him sometimes to stay in their houses or hotels. So at last he bought a donkey, and that, he says, made them think he had some money, and so they let him have a bedroom and his meals at the common table. And what do you think it cost him for his food ? Now guess 1 Why, just three- pence a day 1

But though the missionary was a strong little man and had roughed it in all places and weathers, he was not made of cast- iron. Up early in the morning at his stall in the fair or street, selling books about J esus Christ, healing the sick people, and having conversations with anybody who would join the crowd and talk and

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argue, at last he began to fail. You see, he had lost his best helper in his wife, his two eldest boys had come to England to be educated, and most of all, he did not see the success in his work that he so longed and prayed that God would give him. And so he became low-spirited, and had what he used to call, as some- times we do, the “ blues.” So his doctor ordered him rest again in England.

HOME LETTERS

As I am getting near the end of my story of this Mongolian Crusoe missionary, I want you to have a clear idea of what he was like inside his heart. I’ve told you what he was like outside, in his clothes and food and tents and work, but you know it

is what a man or a boy or a girl is inside 4

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themselves which really counts. And what the Rev. James Gilmour really was comes out best in the letters he wrote home to his old father and mother and to his own orphaned boys. To his father he wrote : “ You are 8o years old. I am proud of you. I like to think of your life. Mother told me, when I was a lad, of your early struggles. But God has been with you and guided you through all to a good old age of honour and respect and love.” Another thing he wrote to his father about, and to his boys too, was what to do with the money he had saved by his self- denial. You know many fathers think the very best thing they can do for their children is to leave them plenty of money when they die. But the father of these motherless Gilmour boys, though he

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wanted to leave them some, believed that God would look after them. He says : “ I hear a voice saying to me, ‘ Can’t you trust Me with the money you have laid up for your children ? ’ I think it over and I say, ‘ I may die, and the boys need the money. ’ Then the voice replies, ‘ With Me for their Banker, children are not destitute, and if you prefer father and mother before Me you are not worthy of Me. Give Me the money, and I’ll see they have all that is necessary.’ ” That is real faith in God’s love, isn’t it ?

Once he wrote from Ch’ao Yang to his boys like this : “ I wonder if you are giving a tenth (2s. out of every pound) of the money you get to God ? I think it a right thing to do. Mamma did it. I do it, and God never lets us want for

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money. But don’t do it just to please me. Don’t do it unless you can do it gladly. God likes people who do things gladly. Money given to God is never lost. ’ ’ When his boys wrote back to him in China — simple, boyish letters — he had them bound into a paper volume and carried them about with him in his Mon- golian wanderings. In his letters to them he was fond of drawing rough pen-and- ink sketches of people he met and places he saw. Once, in another letter, he says : “ The laddies are here with me now, and I am father and mother to them. To-night I darned their stockings for them when they went to bed. ’ ’ He also liked to talk to them of their dead mother, because he knew she was not dead, but alive in God’s happy kingdom. And he wanted his boys to

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grow up believing that she was not far away, buried in China, but always near to them. “Cheer up, my dear sonnies,” he says, “ we shall see each other some day. Out here I often think of mamma and her nice face and how good she was to you and to me. We’ll go some day and be with her. Won’t that be good ? ” Then he describes his work in the Chinese streets to interest them : “ Just now the

schoolboys have a holiday for the fair, and they stand for a long time watching me doctoring the people. What the boys like to see is a glass bottle of eye-medicine which I bring out and stand up. Then I dip a glass tube in and press an india- rubber bulb. The air comes out in the water in bubbles and rises up to the surface, and the boys are so delighted to

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see it bubbling. When a man comes to have a tooth out, even the men are de- lighted. They beg him to have it out because they like to see the fun. Mothers send their lads for medicine, and I like to see these little chaps, they are so polite, and make a deep bow when they go away. ’ ’ One more quotation from his letters, and then we must go back to the story — and the end. “ People are very busy here to-day, because it is the last day of the Chinese year, and a great day with them. Every- body is buying food, because the shops don’t open the first few days of the new year. They are busy scraping off the old papers from their walls eind pasting up fresh ones. They are also busy pasting up new gods in their houses. Every house has a god of the kitchen. These

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gods are pieces of paper with pictures of gods on them. They think they send their gods to heaven by burning them. Just before they burn one and he goes, they buy sticky sugar-cakes and give him them, so that he may be pleased and not tell on them for doing evil things. They think the sugar sticks his lips together and so shuts his mouth, and he can’t tell on them because his mouth won’t open. It is very silly, but very sad.”

THE LAND OF HIS HEART

You boys and girls have not followed the tiny, many-coloured thread of “ our Gil- mour’s ” life without seeing that though he loved England — so “ cosy,” as he said, and where his boys were, and this Bonnie Scotland too — Mongolia was the land of his

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heart. And why was it ? It was because it was full of people for whom Christ died, and most of them had even yet never heard of Him.

So after eight happy months with his boys here and his old friends, the doctors told him he was quite strong enough again, and he set sail for China. But he never came back. And now God began to give him a harvest for all his loving and patient seed-sowing. Here and there, in village and town, China and Mongolia, men and women and children came to him to be baptized. That was the sign that they had given up their Buddhist idols, which were not gods at all, and had accepted our Lord Jesus. We find in his home letters little records like this : “I have been spending a month at Ch’ao Yang, and was

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privileged to baptize four adults, one a woman, and one child, all Chinese.” This made him very glad. The great difficulty was that Chinese, even when they marry, still live on in their parents’ houses ; and it was so hard if one or two of them became Christians, because they had to still live in a house full of heathen gods and customs. And of course they were turned out and badly treated too.

I think I ought long ago to have told you about two things which everybody remembered Mr. Gilmour always did. They were two foundation-stones upon which he built his wonderful missionary life. The first was, he never neglected to read God’s Word. He loved and believed in the Bible as very few people ever have. What David or St. Paul and Isaiah or St.

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John said, he always believed, and he never doubted. And of course our Lord’s words were to him the law and rule of his life. Whether he was riding mules in the desert or squatting under the flapping canvas of a rain-sodden tent, or lying ill with fever, or resting on board ship, our Crusoe missionary read the Pseilms and the Gospels with joy and delight. The other thing was this : He respected the Chinese and the Mongolians. He never looked down on them or thought, because he was white and they were yellow, that he was superior to them. Never rude but always polite to them, he pleased them and got, as we say, into their good books by his courtesy and kindness. He knew God is no respecter of persons. And so in preaching the Gospel he loved to the people he loved.

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his last happy, busy months of life sped by. He took to his bed with fever one Sunday, and in eleven days God called him home. The last sermon he preached was on “ Examine yourself,” and everyone who heard it never forgot it. His funeral took place one lovely afternoon in May 1891, and on the top of the hymn-paper used were printed the words you know from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress : “ The pilgrim they laid in an upper chamber whose window opened towards the sun- rising. ’ ’

Little Chinese boys who had known and loved him came and threw handfuls of flowers into his grave, and loving hands laid on the coffin a wreath of white blos- soms for the now orphaned boys far away in England. At the memorial service in

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Peking these wonderful words were said : “He spared himself nothing, but gave himself wholly to God. He kept nothing back. I doubt if even St. Paul endured more for Christ than James Gilmour did. I doubt if Christ ever received from human hands or human hearts more loving, de- voted service.” Sixteen Chinese, whose names you and I could never pronounce, sent a beautiful letter to the dead mis- sionary’s boys, in which they said : “ We thank him without end, and we know he has already gone to the presence of the Lord.”

I’m not going to give you any “lessons ’ ’ to learn now, because this is a story ; but I am sure as I put down my pen you will all see, without me or mother or teacher or anybody telling you, that from

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the lonely grave in far-away Mongolia there come to you and me two sayings that ring and ring like lovely silver bells : “ Always pray ! You can do nothing good in this world if you don’t ” ; and, “ Never be frightened or cast-down if you don’t see success. You do your work, and your Master and Lord will take care of the success.”

That is the twofold cry of our Crusoe missionary, James Gilmour of Mongolia.

MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD,, 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON. E.C, 4

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