Chapter IX: A Change of Field (1)

During 1885 James Gilmour gradually reached the conclusion that a change of field was desirable. He was aware that friends and colleagues more or less qualified to form an opinion had urged upon him the advisability of labouring in Eastern Mongolia among the agricultural Mongols. No one knew so well as himself the advantages and the disadvantages of this plan. The reasons that finally led him to a decision were noble and characteristic. It was a hard field, and no one else could or would go. The Mongols of the Plain were to some extent benefited by the American Mission at Kalgan; those dwelling in Eastern Mongolia were without a helper. Considerations like these, as he tells us, decided his new course of action.

'In these circumstances my mind has turned away north-east from
Peking, where people are not so scarce, and where the Mongols live
as farmers. I have been to that region twice. I knew some people
who came from that region. As soon as Mr. Rees returns from Chi
Chou I hope to go again. A doctor might be induced to settle
somewhere there, and though it would be hard a bit, a family might
live there too, which I don't think would be possible on the plain
beyond Kalgan.

'I am fully aware of the difficulties. They are:--

'1. I have no proper Chinaman to take with me. More than half the
population is Chinese, and I could not do well without a Chinaman.

'2. It is a new district and will take time to work up.

'3. It is not easily reached from Peking or anywhere else, and will
be a very isolated part.

'4. It is rather a rough and unsafe district.

'I know all these, but feel, in reliance on God, like facing the
thing as the best and proper thing to do. There are inns all about,
and though for some time a private location may not be secured, we
can still go about among the people. My main hope, though, is in
settling down somewhere as a head centre, in close contact with the
people, so that I earnestly desire that the doctor should come. If
he is unmarried I would be glad to see him to-morrow. Could you not
get a doctor who would be willing to remain single till a location
could be secured? After a location has been secured let him marry
if he likes.

'I think that the region I have in my mind would make a good centre
for a doctor, and that he would have plenty of practice among
Mongols and Chinese, especially if he could start a hospital for
in-patients.

'I am very glad that the Mongolian region around Kalgan has shown
signs of bearing fruit. It has strengthened my faith much. I am
also glad that God has acknowledged in some degree my work here in
Peking, and I feel more hopeful than ever I did. God, too, has cut
me adrift from all my fixings, so that I feel quite ready to go
anywhere if only He goes with me.'

Mr. Gilmour entered upon this new departure on the understanding that a medical colleague should be sent to him at the earliest possible moment. This responsibility the London Board assumed and endeavoured to discharge. The result was a severe trial to the faith, not only of the solitary worker but to all interested--and they were many--in the fate of the new mission. As we shall see later on, when a congenial and competent medical colleague reached him, and was entering with vigour and hope upon the work, Dr. Mackenzie of Tientsin suddenly died, and before the immediate and urgent claims of Tientsin the claims of Mongolia had to give way. But in estimating the success of both missions, that on the Plain, and that in Eastern Mongolia, it must never be forgotten that what Gilmour considered _essential_, the presence and help of a medical colleague, was never in the Providence of God granted to him for any length of time. In the account he gives of his first visit to the region as its missionary--he had been twice before on visits of inspection--he dwells upon this necessity.

'I left Peking December 14, 1885, and re-entered Peking February
16, 1886, so that my absence from here was just two months. The
part of Mongolia I went to is situated 800 li, or say 270 English
miles, north-east by east of Peking, and, at the usual rate of 90
li (or 30 miles) a day, is nine days distant. This is not the part
of Mongolia near Kalgan. Kalgan is north-north-west of Peking, five
days' journey.

'Whilst I was considering my plans a Mongol appeared in Peking who
was willing to take me to his home, and I went with him, hoping
thus to get introduced to a district of country, an introduction
being both necessary and helpful. Ta ChÍng Tz[)u] is the name of
the place where, through his introduction, I was located from
December 23, 1885 to February 9, 1886. I had a room in an inn. I
spent some days at the home of my Mongol friend and made two
journeys to other places, but Ta ChÍng Tz[)u] was my headquarters.
It is a small market town, with a daily fair. The surrounding
neighbourhood is peopled with Mongols and Chinese in about equal
proportions. The Mongols are mostly lords of the soil, and style
the Chinese slaves, that is in the country. The real trade of the
whole locality is in the hands of the Chinese. The Mongols all
speak Chinese, and the town resident Mongols have, many of them,
forgotten Mongolian, and laugh at themselves as not being able to
speak their own language.

'The country is like Wales in this respect, that, though Mongolian
is the native language, the coming language and the language that
is affected and sought after, is Chinese. Well-to-do Mongols have
Chinese teachers for their children, and read Chinese well. During
my stay there I sold more Chinese than Mongolian books, and talked
more Chinese than Mongolian, though my intercourse was largely with
Mongols.

'Opium is largely grown there, so is tobacco, and large quantities
of whisky are manufactured and consumed. It was partly a famine
year. At a little distance from Ta ChÍng Tz[)u] the harvest had
failed, and I think the line of preaching that seemed to impress
the hearers most was one that reasoned with them about the growth,
manufacture, and use of these three, being so contrary to Heaven's
design in giving land and rain to grow food, that it was not to be
wondered at if, seeing how the land and rain were perverted, God
should send short rations. Evil speaking, vile language, made a
fourth subject which naturally came in for notice, and on all these
four subjects I scarcely ever spoke without gaining the nearly
universal concurrence of my little audiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By the close of 1886 three main centres of work had been selected in the new district--Ta ChÍng Tz[)u], T· Ss[)u] Kou, and Ch'ao Yang--all three being towns of some importance. Mr. Gilmour used to spend a month or so in each town, visiting also the neighbourhood, especially those places where fairs were held, and where consequently the people came together in large numbers. He had a tent which he used to put up in a main thoroughfare, and there he stood from early morn until night healing the sick, selling Christian books, talking with inquirers, preaching at every opportunity the full and free Gospel of salvation. His constant and consistent life of Christlike self-denial in the effort to bless them told even more upon the beholders than all these other things combined. His correspondence is full of sharp and clear pictures of his daily toil, and of his spiritual experiences.

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

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