Gilmour of Mongolia

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6reenland, Kingscote, 1868
; 1956.

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GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

T HE OiEw 'Missionart Series

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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

6

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

7

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.

8

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 9

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 !

10 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA ii

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

12 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 13

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

14 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 15

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

i6 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 17

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

i8 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

20 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 21

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

22 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 23

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

24 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 25

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

26 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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.

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 27

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

28 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 29

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

30 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 31

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 —

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 33

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

34 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 35

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.

36 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 37

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

38 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 39

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

40 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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.

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 41

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

42 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 43

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).

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 45

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

46 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 47

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

48 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 49

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

50 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 51

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

52 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 53

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

54 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 55

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

56 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 57

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.

58 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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.

6o GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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

GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA 6i

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

62 GILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

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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