It became needful from time to time for him to justify his actions to the home authorities. Not that this was in any way needful from any doubt or lack of support on their part. But with regard to methods upon which there was marked divergence of view in the missionary committees abroad it was needful that a man like Gilmour should put his motives and reasons clearly before the governing powers. It is doing him bare justice to say that from this task he never shrank. The following extracts are from letters to the home officials of the London Missionary Society and they enable us to appreciate accurately the standpoint of the man whose thought they express. Writing in the light of the suggestion that perhaps he was putting a more severe strain upon his health than the efficient discharge of his difficult duty demanded, he says:—
'I feel called to go through all this sort of thing, and feel perfectly secure in God's hands. It is no choosing of mine, but His; and, following His lead, I have as much right to expect special provision to be made for me as the Israelites of old had in the matters of the Red Sea, the manna and water in the desert, the crossing Jordan, and the fall of Jericho.
'One thing I am sure of. The thousands here need salvation; God is most anxious to give it to them: where, then, is the hindrance? In them? I hardly think so. In God? No. In me, then! The thing I am praying away at now is that He would remove that hindrance by whatever process necessary. I shall not be astonished if He puts me through some fires or severe operations, nor shall I be sorry if they only end by leaving me a channel through which His saving grace can flow unhindered to these needy people. I dare not tell you how much I pray for.
'It is the foreign element in our lives that runs away with the money. The foreign houses, foreign clothes, foreign food, are ruinous. In selecting missionaries, physique able to stand native houses, clothes, and food, should be as much a sine quâ non as health to bear the native climate. Native clothes are, I believe, more safe for health than foreign clothes; they are more suited to the climate, more comfortable than foreign clothes, and so dressed, a Chinese house is quite comfortable. In past days I have suffered extreme discomfort by attempting to live in foreign dress in native houses.'
And yet James Gilmour had nothing of the fanatic or bigot about him. At the period of his life with which we are now dealing, his severest trial was the loneliness due to his having no colleague. Whenever his brethren ventured to address remonstrances to him, they were due largely to the conviction that entire isolation, such as he had to endure throughout his Mongolian career, must tell adversely upon his temperament. But in judging the character of the man it only heightens our love and respect for him that he did not allow the utter and successive failures of all efforts to secure him a colleague to hinder the work. No man more readily and more constantly acted upon the principle of doing the next best thing. His idea of satisfactory conditions for the work was never reached; but this never led him for one day to relax his own efforts or to loosen the strong hand of his self-discipline.
To any reader who has carefully followed the previous pages it must have become abundantly evident that Mr Gilmour believed in God's present and immediate influence in the passing events of daily life, and that the right attitude of life is one of absolute dependence upon, and submission to, the will of God. His diaries abound with proofs of this. He is delayed one morning in starting from his inn, and is annoyed. An hour or so later he overtakes the travellers who started earlier, and finds them just recovering from the assault of a band of robbers. The delay was God's providential care protecting him from robbery. And yet no man was ever less under the spell of religious fatalism. All that active effort and promptitude of mind and body could effect in the service of life he freely and constantly expended in his work. And indeed there lies before us a long letter written at Tá Ssŭ Kou on March 15, 1888, asking for an official proclamation from the Chinese authorities at Peking affirming 'that Christian worship is an allowed thing, and that native Christians are not required to contribute, or are exempted from contributing, to idol and heathen ceremonies, such as theatricals, or the building and repair of temples.' The proper official document was applied for at Peking, and in due time obtained.
On March 24, 1888, James Gilmour was rejoiced by the seeming fulfilment of his heart's most eager desire—the arrival at Tá Ssŭ Kou of a fully qualified medical colleague, Dr. Roberts. We have seen how repeated had been his entreaties, how earnest his yearnings after this essential factor in the success of his mission. For a month he enjoyed to the full the uplifting of congenial fellowship and of skilled help. Then came a blow, harder almost to endure than the previous solitude.
'Two days ago,' he writes under date of April 21, 1888, 'a man pushed himself in among the crowd round my table as I was dispensing medicines in the market-place here, and announced himself as a courier from Tientsin. When asked what his news was, he was silent, so I led him away towards my inn. Oh the way I again asked what his news was. He groaned. I began to get alarmed, and noticed that he carried with him a sword, covered merely with a cloth scabbard. This looked warlike, and I wondered if there could have been another massacre at Tientsin. Coming to a quiet place in the street I demanded his news, when he replied, "Dr. Mackenzie is dead, after a week's illness." At the inn we got out our letters from the bundle, and found the news true. In a little Dr. Roberts looked up from a letter he was reading and said he was appointed to the vacancy. Then the full extent of my loss flashed upon me. Mackenzie dead—Roberts to go to Tientsin! One of my closest friends dead—my colleague removed!
'Forty-eight hours have elapsed, and I am just coming right again. I have been like a ship suddenly struck in mid-ocean by a mountain sea breaking over it. You know in that case a ship staggers a bit, and takes some time to shake clear and right herself.
'As to Mackenzie. His friendship I very keenly appreciated. The week of prayer in January 1887 we spent together in Peking. The week of prayer in January 1888 we spent together in Tientsin. These were seasons of great enjoyment. On parting we spoke of having a week together again in April 1889. That is not to be. The full extent of the loss will take some time to realise.
'The prospect of Dr. Roberts settling permanently here in the autumn gave light and brightness to the outlook. My faith is not gone, but it would be untrue to say that I am not walking in the dark. I shall do my best to hold on here single-handed; but I earnestly hope that I am not to be alone much longer. Something must be done. There is a limit to all human endurance.
'Amid many storms we are holding on our way, and making progress among the Chinese. Of the Mongols I have nothing cheering to report. They come around and daily hear the Gospel; but, as yet at least, there it ends. I look into their faces to see whom the Lord is going to call, but have not seen him yet apparently. Meantime, I am getting deeper and deeper into Chinese work and connections, and sometimes the thought crosses my mind that my knowledge of Mongolian is not employed to its best advantage here. On the other hand, I see more Mongols here than I could see anywhere on the Plain.'
God's ways of dealing with His work and the workers are often very dim and obscure to finite understanding. Humanly speaking, no man in China could less easily be spared than Dr. Mackenzie; no man in all that vast empire more needed the joy of fellowship than he to whom it had just been granted. But the indomitable spirit shines clearly through the words of Gilmour: 'It would be untrue to say that I am not walking in the dark. I shall do my best to hold on here single-handed.' Seeing God's hand, as he did, in these sorrowful events, and believing that Dr. Roberts also was following the path of God's will, he turned again to his lonely tasks. But it was at a heavy cost. His health was giving way faster than he realised. The views of his brethren at Peking, that he would break down under the strain of the isolation, were to some extent justified. The home authorities did what they could, but nearly a year elapsed before Dr. Smith, who was appointed to succeed Dr. Roberts, reached Mongolia, and when he did so his first duty he felt was to order Mr. Gilmour to visit England for rest and change. But meanwhile he went bravely on. Like his Master, 'he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself,' and when 'he was reviled, he reviled not again.'
'We left Ch'ao Yang,' he writes under date of September 3, 1888, 'August 10, attended markets, got much rained in, and reached Ta Chêng Tzŭ August 20. There I found that one of the Christians had possessed himself of my bank book and drawn about fifteen taels of my money which I had banked at the grocer's. The delinquent turned up next day, walked in, and hung up his whip as if nothing had happened. At the moment I was dining, and he sat down beside me. I asked him quietly why he had treated me so. He said I might be easy in mind; he had money and cattle he would pay me. "Go, then, and bring me the money; till you do so, don't come to me again." Off he went. Days passed and nothing was done to repair the mischief. Meantime, the scandal was the talk of the small town, and the scornful things said were so keen that Liu, my assistant, got quite wild. He was indignant that I did not go to law with the man, who all the while was swelling about on a donkey bought with the money he stole from me, and using the most defiant and abusive language towards me (not to my face, happily). The roughs of the place began to be insolent, and a drunken man came and made a scene in our quarters. Liu redoubled his attack on me, and even threatened to go home to Shantung if I would do nothing but pray—a course of action on my part which irritated him much. Li San, the head Christian there, joined him in saying I ought to make a show of power. I asked the two to read at their leisure Matt. v. 6, 7. Liu warned me that I was in personal danger. The man was panic-struck and highly nervous. I arranged an expedition to a place some 90 li away, but got rained in and could not go. Finally, the offender sent an embassy desiring peace, and, the day before we left, a respectable deputation of mutual friends, Christian and heathen, found its way one by one to my room, coming thus not to attract attention, and last of all came the thief. According to pre-arrangement I asked him, as he entered, what he had come for. He walked up to the wall, knelt down, and confessed his sin in prayer to God. The end of the matter is, he gives me one donkey and the promise of another, is suspended as to membership for twelve months, and is forbidden the chapel for three months.
'I am not bright about Ta Chêng Tzŭ, as you may suppose. Worse than the stealing case is that of the head man, Li San, who says that he was promised employment before he became a Christian! The ten days we passed there we were the song of the drunkard and the jest of the abjects; but the peace of God passes all understanding, and that kept my heart and mind. We put a calm front on; put out our stand daily, and carried ourselves as if nothing had happened.
'The great thought in my mind these days, and the great object of my life, is to be like Christ. As He was in the world, so are we to be. He was in the world to manifest God; we are in the world to manifest Christ. Is that not so? Iniquities, I must confess, prevail against me; but as contamination of sin flows to us from Adam, does not regenerating power flow into us from Christ? Is it not so?'
Meanwhile work was going steadily forward and some impression was being made. He made a flying visit to Tientsin and Peking in the autumn, but was soon back at his post. In his report of work for the year he is able to point to progress.