THE VISIT TO ENGLAND IN 1882
From 1880 onwards Mrs. Gilmour suffered severely from illness, and medical advisers recommended at length the rest and change of a visit to England. Mr. Gilmour's furlough was also nearly due. Consequently, in the spring of 1882, he and his family returned to England. This visit was helpful and memorable in many ways. The rest so thoroughly well earned was greatly enjoyed. The return to civilisation, the society of loved relatives and friends, the comforts of ordinary English life, and the change of thought and occupation which these involved—all reacted happily and refreshingly upon both Mr. Gilmour and his wife.
But a sojourn at home is not by any means a season of entire rest for the jaded worker. The Churches constantly need the stimulus and awakening that are best supplied by the men who have been filling the hard places in the field. Gilmour also was so full of enthusiasm for his work, and so eager in his desire to benefit the Mongols, that he would doubtless have found for himself many opportunities of pleading their cause, had not the authorities of the London Missionary Society, following their usual custom, furnished him with a long list of deputation engagements, Into these he threw himself with an energy that very greatly enlarged the circle of his friendship, secured very many new supporters for the missionary cause, and obtained for himself, on the part of many, a devout, prayerful sympathy for the remainder of his earthly service.
He had brought with him a large quantity of manuscript material dealing with his twelve years of Mongol life and experience. From this he prepared the volume which was published by the Religious Tract Society in April 1883, under the title of Among the Mongols.
The book was very cordially welcomed by the press, and we single out for quotation a portion of one review which stands out pre-eminent not only for its literary quality, but also as placing on record the impression James Gilmour was able to make upon men entirely ignorant of him and his work by the simple narrative of his experiences. It appeared in the Spectator for April 28, 1883.
'We have a difficulty in passing judgment on this book. It is possible, even probable, that the impression it has made on us is individual to this reviewer, and due to an accident which, with other readers, will not repeat itself. Having time, and an interest in nomads, he read a page or two, and read on, and read on, for five hours, till he had finished the book,—which is much too short,—fascinated, lost, carried out of himself and England. He was in Mongolia, sitting under a blue-cloth tent, with savage dogs howling around, and gazing outside, through the doorless doorway, on a vast panorama of poor tufted grass, stretching away to huge black hills in the distance, and Tartars on camels, Tartars on horses, Tartars on springless, unbreakable ox-carts, hastening up to the encampment; while inside he listened to a quiet Scotchman, resignedly yet clearly explaining everything in a voice—— there was the puzzle. Where in the world had the reviewer heard that voice before, with its patient monotone, as well known as his oldest friend's, its constant digressions and "reflections," its sentences so familiar, yet so new, sentences which, as each topic came up, he could write before they were uttered. "James Gilmour, M.A." Never knew him, or heard of him; yet here was he, talking exactly as some one else had years ago talked a hundred times. So oppressive at last became the will-o'-the-wisp reminiscence, that the reviewer stopped, after an account of the Desert of Gobi, and deliberately read it through again, in search of a clue which might reawaken his memory. It was all in vain, and it was not till another hundred pages had been passed, always under the impression of that bewildering reminiscence, that he exclaimed to himself, "That's it! Robinson Crusoe has turned missionary, lived years in Mongolia, and written a book about it." That is this book. To any one who, perhaps from early neglect, does not perceive this truth, our judgment will seem erroneous; but to any one who does, we may quite fearlessly appeal. The student of Robinson Crusoe never expected that particular pleasure in this life, and he will never have it again; but for this once he has it to the full. Mr. James Gilmour, though a man of whom any country may be proud, is not a deep thinker, and not a bright writer, and not a man with the gift of topographical, or, indeed, any other kind of description. He thinks nothing extraordinary, and has nothing to say quotable. There is a faint, far-off humour in him, humour sternly repressed; but that, so far as we know, is the only quality in his writing which makes him littérateur at all. But Heaven, which has denied him many gifts, has given him one in full measure,—the gift of Defoe, the power of so stating things that the reader not only believes them, but sees them in bodily presence, that he is there wherever the author chooses to place him, under the blue tent, careering over the black ice of Lake Baikal, or hobnobbing in tea with priests as unlike Englishmen as it is possible for human beings to be, yet, such is his art, in nowise unintelligible or strange. It may be, as we have said, that it is an individual impression, but we never read, save once, the kind of book in our lives, did not deem it possible ever again to meet with this special variety of unconscious literary skill. We are aware of a dozen shortcomings, of a hundred points upon which Mr. Gilmour ought to have given light, and has not; but there has been, if our experience serves us at all, no book quite like this book since Robinson Crusoe; and Robinson Crusoe is not better, does not tell a story more directly, or produce more instantaneous and final conviction. Heaven help us all, if Mr. Gilmour tells us that he has met any unknown race in Mongolia, say, people with the power of making themselves invisible, for Tyndall will believe him, and Huxley account for them, and the Illustrated London News publish their portraits—in the stage of invisibility. We do not say the book is admirable, or perfect, or anything else superlative; but we do say, and this with sure confidence, that no one who begins it will leave it till the narrative ends, or doubt for an instant, whether he knows Defoe or not, that he has been enchained by something separate and distinct in literature, something almost uncanny in the way it has gripped him, and made him see for ever a scene he never expected to see.
'We do not know that we have any more to say about the book. Its merit is that, and no other; and we do not suppose anybody ever proved Robinson Crusoe's value by extracts. But we must say a word or two about the author and his subject. Mr. Gilmour, though a Scotchman, is apparently attached to the London Mission, and seems to have quitted Peking for Mongolia on an impulse to teach Christ to Tartars. He could not ride, he did not know Mongolian, he had an objection to carry arms, and he had no special fitness except his own character, which he knew nothing about, for the work. Nevertheless, he went, and stayed years, living on half-frozen prairies and deserts under open tents, on fat mutton, sheep's tails particularly, tea, and boiled millet, eating only once a day because Mongols do, and in all things, except lying, stealing, and prurient talk, making himself a lama. As he could not ride, he rode for a month over six hundred miles of dangerous desert, where the rats undermine the grass, and at the end found that that difficulty has disappeared for ever. As he could not talk, he "boarded out" with a lama, listened and questioned, and questioned and listened, till he knew Mongolian as Mongols know it, till his ears became so open that he was painfully aware that Mongol conversation, like that of most Asiatics, is choked with doubles entendres. As for danger, he had made up his mind not to carry arms, not to be angry with a heathen, happen what might, and—though he does not mention this—not to be afraid of anything whatever, neither dogs nor thieves, nor hunger nor the climate; and he kept those three resolutions. If ever on earth there lived a man who kept the law of Christ, and could give proofs of it, and be absolutely unconscious that he was giving them, it is this man, whom the Mongols he lived among called "our Gilmour." He wanted, naturally enough, sometimes to meditate away from his hosts, and sometimes to take long walks, and sometimes to geologise, but he found all these things roused suspicion—for why should a stranger want to be alone; might it not be "to steal away the luck of the land"?—and as a suspected missionary is a useless missionary, Mr. Gilmour gave them all up, and sat endlessly in tents, among lamas. And he says incidentally that his fault is impatience, a dislike to be kept waiting!'
A MONGOL CAMEL CART
(From a Native Sketch)
The book met with a ready and wide acceptance. It soon 'found its public.' It was only to be expected that many of the friends and supporters of the London Missionary Society would welcome it. And there are others, like the reviewer, who 'have time and an interest in nomads,' who were certain to consult it. But in addition to these special classes the book did good service in some cases, by deepening the impression already made by other first-rate delineations of missionary enterprise and endurance, and in others by creating respect for missions and missionaries in minds hitherto strange to that feeling. In various editions very many thousands of the book have been sold during the nine years which have passed since the publication of the first edition.
The success of his book led to the suggestion that he might easily find much useful employment for his pen. He did contribute some papers to the Sunday at Home, Pall Mall Gazette, and other publications. But in this, as in all other enterprises, loyalty to the great work of his life ruled him. He soon came to the conviction that he ought not to take time from the work of winning souls, and spend it in writing papers and books—and from the moment of that decision he put mere literary work resolutely aside.
'I feel keenly,' he wrote in 1884, on his return to Peking, 'that there is here more than I can do, and writing must go to the wall.' And as late in his life as 1890 he added, 'I could have made, and could now make, I believe, money by writing, but I do not write. I settle down to teach illiterate Chinamen and Mongols, heal their sores, and present Christ to them.'
Towards the end of 1882 James Gilmour entered upon a long series of meetings on behalf of the London Missionary Society, consisting of sermons and addresses to Sunday School children on the Sunday, and speeches at public meetings during the week. A long series of his letters written to his wife between November 1882 and March 1883 is still extant, and they form an impressive record of the work considered suitable for a wearied missionary at home in search of rest and change. He visited Edinburgh, Falkirk, Glasgow, Liverpool, Kilsyth, Hamilton, Paisley, Dundee, St Andrews, Arbroath, Lytham, Aberdeen, Montrose, Manchester, Hingham, Cambridge, Norfolk, and Southampton. And this list exhausts only a portion of his excursions on the effort to stimulate and develope the faith and the zeal of the churches at home. His wanderings brought him into contact sometimes with relatives, sometimes with old college friends, now grave pastors fast hastening towards middle life. The meetings he attended always added to the circle of his friends, for none could hear his ringing voice, and feel the clasp of his hand, and pass under the influence of his ardent enthusiasm on behalf of the great enterprise of the modern Christian Church without receiving an impression never likely to be effaced.
He in turn experienced a strong and abiding spiritual refreshment from this renewal, after twelve years' absence, of touch and fellowship with the Christian life of Great Britain. His earnestness deepened, he studied with intensest interest movements like the Salvation Army, then coming into great prominence, and other agencies for improving the religious life of the nation, and he rejoiced in all fellowship with other disciples of the Lord Jesus which had for its aim the strengthening of the life of faith.
He rejoiced greatly when at infrequent intervals a Sunday came upon which he was entirely free from engagements. Such rare occasions he utilised very fully for spiritual edification. He was somewhat hampered in his possibilities on these days by the fact that his temporary home was at Bexley Heath, and his strong Sabbatarian views never permitted him to travel by rail or omnibus on the Lord's Day. The following letter shows how he passed one of these days.
'Yesterday being a fine day I left home at 7.15 A.M., walked to London (twelve miles), got to Spurgeon's at 10.30. Had a permit from a seat-holder, was close to the platform, heard a good earnest sermon, was introduced to Spurgeon in the vestry after service, went home to one of his deacons for dinner, there met an American who had under Mr. Moody been converted from drunkenness to God, and whose craving for drink was as instantaneously and as thoroughly expelled as the devils by Christ of old. After dinner visited Spurgeon's Stockwell Orphanages, then walked to Camberwell and dropped in, in passing, at the Catholic Apostolic Church and heard a sermon from a man who would have described himself as an Apostle, I suppose, and who ridiculed in a gentle and mild way the idea that all men were to be partakers of the Gospel blessings which he seemed to think were the special property of what he called "The Church"; walked on to Lewisham, heard Morlais Jones: and then walked home in the moonlight, arriving here footsore and weary about 10.20 P.M. I enjoyed the day very much, all but the last four or five miles home at night. I am thankful to find myself so strong. I had a warm bath and slept like a top.'
Those who were privileged to entertain James Gilmour, if congenial, and the old friends who were fortunate enough to secure him for even a brief period, often experienced his power of vivid and entrancing narration. His twelve years of service had been very full of varied and uncommon experience, and when in the vein he could make the hours pass almost as minutes. 'During this furlough,' writes Dr. Reynolds, 'I had several opportunities of intercourse with him, and listened to several of his addresses on the progress and need of missionary enterprise in the north of China and Mongolia, and was profoundly impressed by his earnestness, but I was more deeply moved when in quiet tête-à-tête he unveiled some of his special experiences. I should like to mention one. He once had great hope of the conversion to God of a Mongol, who had given him his entire confidence, and who was suffering from cataract in both eyes. Gilmour felt that this was a case in which surgical help might restore the sufferer to at least partial sight, and he made arrangements that in the escort of a Mongol the patient should find his way to the medical institution at Peking. He started on the pilgrimage when Gilmour, with his brave young wife, were encamped in a great temporary settlement of Mongols, who were in a state of considerable fanatical excitement against the new faith and its foreign teacher. Gilmour said, "We prayed night and day for the success of this experiment, and we arranged to cover all expenses connected with the arrangement." Alas! wind laden with dust, and blinding heat and other apparent accidents conspired against the poor sufferer, and when the necessary time had elapsed after the operation and the bandages were removed, the patient was found to be stone blind. The Mongol companion stirred up the poor fellow's suspicion by telling him that he knew why the Missionary had sent him to Peking. "I saw," said he, "the jewel of your eye in a bottle on the shelf. These Christians can get hundreds of taels for these jewels which they take out of our eyes."
'When the blind man was brought back to Gilmour, his companion spread his suspicions and exasperating story in the entire district, and the fanatical hatred was augmented into seething and murderous passion, and our dear friends were in imminent peril for several weeks. If they had ventured to escape, it would have been a confession of a vile conspiracy with the Peking doctors, and a signal for their massacre. They remained to live down the ominous and odious charge, and in continuous effort to justify the simplicity of their motives and the purity and beneficence of their mission.
'Deeply moved, as I was, by the story of this hairbreadth escape, I asked Mrs. Gilmour more about those fearful weeks of suspense, and she assured me that they had been perfectly calm, and that they were entirely resigned to God's will, whatever it might be.'
'Many other trials of faith and patience were described by Gilmour, without one touch of self-approval or self-admiration, and the only trouble that haunted him was that the results of his long journeys and of his various missionary enterprises had been apparently so few.'
It was certain that James Gilmour's power as a speaker would be utilised for the great event of the London Missionary Society's year, the annual meeting at Exeter Hall. This fell, in 1883, on May 10, and he was the last speaker. This involved waiting about two hours and a half for his speech, and corresponding exhaustion on the part of the audience. But none who were present will forget the rapid way in which he secured the attention of his hearers, and the ease with which he held it to the close. He chose to speak of work in China, rather than in Mongolia; the recent publication of his book helping among other reasons to determine this choice. Part of the speech deserves reproduction here, because it outlines very sharply the work that engaged much of his time while resident in Peking, and because nowhere else can such a realistic, sparkling, and lifelike picture of the preaching work of the Peking mission, and consequently more or less of all preaching in great Chinese cities, be found.
'In Peking we have three chapels. A chapel there is merely a Chinese shop, put into decent repair, and a signboard stuck over the top. The Chinese are very fond of giving themselves very high names. You will come to a man sitting in a little box scarcely big enough for himself to turn round in, and if you read his sign, it is some flowing name about a hall; it may be the "Hall of Continual Virtue," or something of that kind, or the "Hall of the Five Happinesses." So our title above our chapel just runs in the native idiomatic style, and it is the "Gospel Hall.' Inside there is not very much to see. The counter has been cleared away and the shelves, and, in place of the mud, a brick floor has been put down; and then there are forms arranged for the sitters, and there is a low platform for the speaker. I do not know how it happens, but it does happen, that up in the left-hand corner of the chapel—and it is always the left-hand corner—there is a table and two chairs, and on that table there is a teapot and set of cups, because in China everything is done with tea. You must always begin in that way. These chapels are open six days in the week in the afternoon.
'Now, supposing you come in at the door, the natural thing for the missionary seems to be just to walk up to this table and sit down, and then the next thing is to get a congregation. Sometimes there is no difficulty about getting it, if it happens to be a fair day or there is a crowd in the streets. They simply pour in: but the tide goes different ways sometimes, and does not pour in always like that. I want to give you just a fair, square, honest idea of what the thing is. Sometimes the congregation will not come in, and sometimes, after a little while, one man looks in at the door and sees a foreigner, and he is off. He has seen quite enough and does not want to see any more; and if you were to ask him what he had seen, he would not say he had seen a foreigner; no, he would say he had seen "a foreign devil." And, friends, you would not be very much astonished that some of those ignorant men coming from the country are alarmed when they see a foreigner, if you could only imagine the terrible lies that they circulate about us there; about how we take out people's hearts for the purposes of magic, and steal people's eyes to make photographic chemicals, and administer medicines to bewitch them generally. I say that, if the first man who comes to a chapel on an afternoon is a man who has heard these things, you cannot be astonished that all you see of that man is his back and his pigtail as he goes away.
'Another man sometimes comes—a bolder man, and he comes in, and the most natural thing for him seems to be to walk up to the table and sit down on the other side, and there you and he are a pair. The proper thing is to pour him out a cup of tea: that is etiquette, and the etiquette seems to be that he should not drink it. Sometimes, after the service begins, I see the native preacher come slyly up, as if he did not mean anything at all; and he walks up to the teapot, and lifts the lid quite quietly, and slips that tea back into the pot again, and puts on the lid and warms it up, and it is ready for the next man who comes.
'If you get into conversation with one man, the congregation is, for the most part, practically secured, because, though a Chinaman is very much afraid of being spoken to directly by a foreigner, most Chinamen are very curious to overhear any conversation that may be carried on; so if you are speaking to him, in comes another man to listen, and if you can get other men to come in and listen over each other's backs, very soon more come in than the original speaker cares to overhear his private conversation; and when that step is reached, it is time to go to the platform and ask the hearers to sit down and begin the regular service. Sometimes nobody comes in, and then you have to try something else, and that is to go and sit down a little nearer the door, and sometimes, in that way, gradually a few people come in. But then in Peking sometimes there is a great north-west wind blowing; and I think that is about the hardest thing on a man's congregation before he gets it, because, when the weather is unfavourable, there are not many people about, and so we have to adopt another plan. We do not go on to the streets, but inside the chapel the native preacher and I do our best to sing a hymn. I say do our best, because sometimes these native preachers do not succeed in singing very well; however, we succeed in making a noise, and that is the thing that draws. The people look in, and see what they suppose to be a foreigner and a native chanting Buddhist prayers. In they come; they have not seen that before, and they sit down, and, as soon as the hymn is through, we have the opportunity of telling them the contents of the hymn; and there you have your sermon ready to your hand.
'But suppose you have got your congregation, it is not all smooth-sailing water. Sometimes there are interruptions. Sometimes, just when you have the ear of your audience, all at once a tremendous row happens just outside the door, and the congregation jump to their feet and rush out to see what is going on. I could have told them if they had only asked me. No doubt, some unwise Chinaman, in place of coming straight in and sitting down, stood on the outskirt of the crowd on tiptoe. A city thief coming along says, "Ah, there is my man," and he walks quietly up to him with a pair of sharp scissors, cuts off his tobacco pouch, and goes off with it. Of course, as soon as the man misses the pouch, his first impulse is to grab his next neighbour; that neighbour remonstrates, and then a fight commences.
'Sometimes a funeral passes, and that is almost as serious an interruption as a fight; because, although a Chinaman does not think much about his soul after he dies, he thinks a vast deal about his dead body, and, in order to be perfectly sure that he will not be cheated by the undertaker, he buys his coffin before he is sick, and sees that he has a good bargain. And so, having a good coffin, he wants a good funeral; and it is said some men spend nearly half of their fortune in having a grand procession when they are carried to their grave. When one of these enormous funerals, with a procession sometimes a quarter of a mile long, comes by, it is a very bad job for your congregation. Out they go to have a look at it.
'Then the interruption is sometimes another thing, and this last one is a more difficult case to settle. When one of the upper ten thousand in China has a marriage, they want to have a great exhibition; and after they have bought the furniture, they get and hire a great many men, and have them dressed to carry that furniture in procession along the streets and show it to their neighbours. First comes a great wardrobe, and then a little cupboard, a washstand, a square table, and all sorts of furniture. Now when that comes, what are you to do? They have been at the expense of paying for an exhibition for their neighbours to see, and they feel that it would be unneighbourly if they did not step to the door and look out and see the things carried past, and there goes your congregation. Sometimes unusual interruptions happen. I remember once a woman put her head in at the door. Women do not come to these chapels often—I am very glad they do not. That woman put her head in at the door, and I saw danger. She glared round the place, and then she spied one man, and she shouted out something at him: "Come out of that!" and, friends, he came out of that, in a big hurry, too. He disturbed us very considerably. It was not the woman so much as the man—we all pitied him as he went out.
'Those audiences are very mixed, and they are very curious to your eyes. Sometimes I see those audiences, most of whom we do not know anything about, listening to what I have to tell them, quite as still as you are now—their pipes out, the smoke cleared away. They lean forward and listen just as still as audiences in this country sometimes listen when the preacher, in an interesting discourse, is coming up to a division of his subject. And, friends, let me tell you what it is that makes them listen best of all—it is the central doctrine of the truth of Christianity. When we come to tell them of how Christ left the surroundings of heaven, and came to spend so many years in such very poor, unsympathetic company on earth (and that is a subject that a missionary sometimes can talk feelingly upon when he has been in a foreign country for some time), when we can tell them that, and then come to the last and greatest part of all: how Christ allowed Himself, for love of man, to be nailed to the cross, and not only that, but kept in Him that gentle spirit that made Him pray for those who were putting Him to death—oh, friends, when we come to that and tell them of it—I know that a Chinaman is degraded, corrupt, sensual, material, but he has a human heart; and when you can get at the heart, it responds to the story of the Cross. We want to do something in drawing the net, and so, on this table in the corner, there is a pile of books, and as it gets towards the time to close, I say to the friends, "Now, you will soon be going away to your evening meal; and as I am a foreigner, probably you have not understood all that I have said;" and then I say, "Now, before you go, there are a number of books upon this table, where you will find the whole of this subject put down in black and white; will you just come up and have a look at the books before you go?" We want, if possible, to establish a point of contact with them, and so to get a little private conversation, as it were. If you ask them to come up and look at a book, and they ask the price of it, you have an opportunity of talking to them, and some of these men not only buy the books, but they read them and come back for others.
'Now, how does the matter stand? These heathen have been in our chapel, and we have taken the opportunity of putting some of the truth into their hearts; but I know a good part, much, it may be, of what the man has heard when he goes out—well, it is stolen away, or it is trampled under foot; but some part of it remains.
'And now I can come to the practical part. I have not been trying to entertain you, but I have been trying to interest you, and what I want to impress upon you is this: after those men have left the chapel you can do as much for their conversion as we can do in China. I want you to pray for the conversion of these men to whom we in Peking, and others in other parts of the world, are the means of communicating these truths of Christ. I believe it is not only the earnestness of the missionary that is going to produce results, but it is your earnestness here. We are your agents, and I believe, fervently, we shall have results there in direct proportion to the measure of your earnestness here. I believe I am speaking to the right people when I ask you to pray. Unprayed for, I feel very much as if a diver were sent down to the bottom of a river with no air to breathe, or as if a fireman were sent up to a blazing building and held an empty hose; I feel very much as a soldier who is firing blank cartridge at an enemy, and so I ask you earnestly to pray that the Gospel may take saving and working effect on the minds of those men to whose notice it has been introduced by us. Not long ago, at the close of a local anniversary, when we had been having a meeting, as we were going home, three of us got off a tram-car—two ministers of the locality and myself—and, as we were walking along, one said: "Ah, Gilmour, it is all the same over again; it is just the old thing; you missionaries come, and you have an anniversary, and the people's earnestness seems to be stirred up, and you ask their prayers, and it looks as if you would get them, but," he said, "you go away, and the thing passes by and is just left where it was before." I do not think that was quite correct. I think my brother was labouring under a temporary fit of the blues, and I was very glad to find his companion said it was not quite correct. What I want is this, to go back to my work feeling that there are those behind us who are praying earnestly that God's Spirit would work effectually in the hearts of those to whom we have the privilege of preaching. If you pray earnestly you can but work earnestly, and then you will also give earnestly; and I do not think we can be too earnest in the matter for which Christ was so much in earnest that He laid down His own life.'
The month of June and part of July was spent at Millport, a watering-place on the west coast of Scotland, near the lovely scenery of Arran. On July 4 he ascended Goatfell, and in so doing had an adventure which might have had very serious consequences. He started late, lost his way, but finally reached the summit at 8.45 P.M., and then, as he notes in his diary: 'Fog came on nearly at once with rain and thunder. Sat in the lee of a dripping rock on a wet stone and looked at a couple of acres of fog and granite boulders. Very dark and cold about midnight, the time wore on very slowly, more rain dripping, and fog. At 2 o'clock A.M. I began the descent, and in a short while it was light enough to see. Came on all right, and saw where I had missed the way.... I have not caught cold. I was wet all night, but kept wrapt up in my plaid and as warm as I could manage. Next day the minister congratulated me on being seen alive after my Goatfell adventure.'
On September 1 the return voyage to China began, and Peking was reached on November 14.