James Gilmour of Mongolia Part 6

'You will see that the whole thing was gone about simply on the faith principle, and from its success I am inclined to think more and more highly of the plan. Without any gammon, I am much more happy than ever even in my day-dreams I ventured to imagine I might be. It is not only me that my wife pleases, but she has gained golden opinions from most of the people who have met her among my friends and acquaintances in Scotland and China. My parents were scared one day last year by receiving a letter from a lady in England, a lady whose name even they had not known before, stating that her daughter had decided to become _my wife_. Didn't it stir up the old people! They had never heard a word about it! My letter to them, posted at the same time with the proposal, had been delayed in London. The young lady went to Scotland, and was with them two weeks, and came away having made such an impression on them that they wrote me from home to say that "though I had searched the country for a couple of years I could not have made a better choice."

'Perhaps I am tiring you, but I want to let you know all about it, and to a.s.sure you that you need not be the least shy of me or of my English wife. She is a good la.s.sie, any quant.i.ty better than me, and just as handy as a Scotch la.s.s would have been. It was great fun for her to read your tirade about English wives and your warning about her. She is a jolly kind of body, and does not take offence, but I guess if she comes across you she will wake you up a bit.'

The other letter was to Miss Bremner, and referred to the part Gilmour was to take in her marriage in 1883 to his brother Alexander:--

'Now as to your affair, a much more serious matter. Alex has said something about my part. I want to take part, but only such a small part as will make it true to say, "a.s.sisted by the brother of the bridegroom." It is for you and Dr. Macfadyen to say what that _small_ part shall be; all I have to say about it, the smaller the better.

'My experiences of the ceremonies of social Christianity have been mixed a little. In England I baptised a child by a wrong name, and had actually to do it again. In China on a similar occasion I began by saying, "Friends, G.o.d has given you this child," when the seeming father stopped me, and explained that G.o.d had not given them this child, but he himself had picked it up in a field where it had been exposed.

'I think I married only one Chinese couple, and to this day I doubt if either the one or the other uttered a syllable where they should have said, "I do." In my own case I think I must have said "I will"

in a feeble voice, for my wife when her turn came sung out "I will"

in a voice that startled herself and me, and made it ominous how much _will_ she was going to have in the matter. Wishing you all blessings,

'Believe me yours truly, 'JAMES GILMOUR.'

CHAPTER VI

'IN JOURNEYINGS OFTEN, IN PERILS OF RIVERS'

The year following the marriage, owing to the absence of Dr. Dudgeon on furlough, was spent almost entirely in Peking. In his absence Mr.

Gilmour took charge of what may be called the unprofessional work of the hospital, the purely medical superintendence being in the hands of Dr.

Bush.e.l.l of the British Legation. He varied this work and the routine of ordinary mission duties by an occasional trip to other centres where fairs were being held, in the company of Mr. Murray, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, for the purpose of selling Christian books.

There was often a very keen friendly rivalry as to which could sell the most, and not unfrequently very large quant.i.ties of tracts and booklets were thus put into circulation.

Early in 1875, with the object of enabling his colleagues and his friends among the other missions which have centres in Peking the better to realise what life in Mongolia was like, he set up his Mongol tent in the compound, and invited them in companies of five or seven to partake of a Mongol dinner, cooked in Mongol fashion, and served as on the Plain. His diary records that five such entertainments were necessary, the utmost limit of the tent accommodation being reached on each occasion.

'The guests came,' we are told, 'at the appointed time, and the fire of wood was lighted in the middle of the tent. While the guests sat around on felt spread upon the ground, Gilmour proceeded to cook the millet and the mutton which furnished the feast. When all was ready a blessing was asked and the meal was eaten. On one occasion a reverend gentleman was called on to ask the blessing, but declined, feeling apparently that what he was expected to eat was not of such a quality that he could ask a blessing on it. Gilmour used often to refer to this with much amus.e.m.e.nt, though at the time he felt some chagrin.'

In 1876 the Mongolian trips were resumed. No colleague had yet been secured for him, and, with a bravery and consecration beyond all praise, Mrs. Gilmour accompanied him. This she did not once simply. For the first journey the novelty of the experience and the conviction that she could at any rate help to preserve her husband from the feeling of utter loneliness, which had been so hard to bear in past years, were powerful reasons. But she went a second and a third time. She went after the novelty had worn off, after she had learned by very stern experience how hard and rough the life was, after previous exposure had told but too severely upon her physical strength. And thus she deserves the eulogy pa.s.sed upon her by her husband: 'She is a better missionary than I.'

Comparisons of this kind are obviously out of the question. But it would be hard to find a more beautiful ill.u.s.tration of true wifely affection than the love for her husband that made her willing to share his Mongol tent as readily as the Peking compound. And if James Gilmour manifested a Christlike love for the ignorant and stolid Mongols, so also did the delicately nurtured and refined lady who, in order to do her part in winning them to the Saviour, endured privations, faced perils, and bore a daily and hourly series of trials so irksome and so repugnant that no motive short of all-absorbing love to Jesus Christ is strong enough to account for her endurance.

Here are some pictures of what this life meant to Mrs. Gilmour. The first journey which they took together lasted from April 4 until September 23, 1876, one hundred and thirty-six days being pa.s.sed in Mongolia itself.

'On the evening of April 25 we came upon our servants' tent, already pitched beside some Mongol tents near a stream. Our things were unloaded from the Chinese cart, which soon drove off and left us fairly launched out on the Plain. We had two tents--one for ourselves and one for our servants. They were both alike, made of common blue Chinese cloth outside, and of commoner white Chinese cloth inside. It was originally intended that our tent should be private for our retirement and for Mrs. Gilmour's use; but we soon found that this idea could not be carried out. The Mongols are so much in the habit of going freely into everybody's tent in Mongolia that we found we could not retain our tent to ourselves without running risk of offending them by our seeming haughtiness. That they should think us uncongenial and distant would have been an obstacle to our success among them. So we made a virtue of necessity, and kept open house in the literal sense of the word. At our meals, our devotions, our ablutions, there they were--much amused and interested, of course. It was sometimes annoying to have them so much and so constantly about, but there was no help for it, and soon we began to care little for them, and took their presence not only as a matter of course, but without being disturbed by it.

'One advantage of this sort of public life was that Mrs. Gilmour, being almost constantly in the presence of the spoken language, picked it up very accurately and very rapidly. It is hardly possible to conceive a better plan of becoming easily and well acquainted with any language than that of thus living where it is impossible not to hear it in almost constant use.

'Another advantage of this sort of public life was that one gained the friendship of the people. This perfect freedom of intercourse pleased them much, and even conciliated those not very friendly inclined. It was quite common to hear visitors remark that, while other foreigners in Mongolia are distant and harsh, these people were gentle and accessible, and that such friendly people did a great deal to remove the unfavourable impressions made by other less considerate travellers.

'Our sojourn extended to the end of August, giving us a little over four months at a stretch of tent life. In that time we had experience of many kinds of weather. At first it was cold. Even in May ice was to be seen in the mornings. Then came heat, premature and burning, and all the more trying for ourselves and cattle on account of the lack of rain. Then we had a furious tempest, which raged for about thirty-six hours, overturning our covered cart and threatening to sweep ourselves and our tents away. We had to load down our tent ropes with bags of earth, stones, sod, the bodies of our carts, wheels, boxes, and anything we could find, and even then we had but a precarious existence. Every now and then, by day and by night, there would arise a shout from the one tent or the other, and amid the roar of the wind we heard cries for the hammer and the spare tent pins. We managed to fix ourselves without being blown away, and when the storm was over we patched our riven tents, and were thankful we had weathered it so well. Then came the summer rains--late in season, it is true, but great in strength--pouring and lashing and roaring, the great drops bursting through our rent cloth, broken up into spray and looking like pepper shaken from a box. We had waterproof sheets, but it was next to impossible to keep anything dry. While the rain lasted we sat huddled in our rain cloaks, or, spade in hand, cut new channels for suddenly extemporised streams and pools that grew larger and continued to come closer to our bedding and boxes. As soon as the sun returned, there was a general drying of garments, mattresses, and sheepskin robes. The heat was perhaps the most trying of our meteorological experiences; but even that pa.s.sed away at last, and before we had left the plains night frost had reappeared, covering the pools about well mouths with thin sheets of ice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MONGOL ENCAMPMENT]

'Later in the season, one afternoon, the loungers in the tent looked out and remarked, "The Mandarin has come," and gave place to a richly dressed, corpulent Mongol, who entered the tent, followed by one of his servants. Salutations over, he soon showed his colours and unmasked his batteries. He had come to fight, and we both went at it tooth and nail. He had read a good deal, and had come evidently prepared and primed, not in any spirit of unfriendliness, but under the evident conviction that a better case could be made out for Buddhism than for Christianity. The tent was crammed with eager listeners, and we reasoned together from the Creation to the finish, including all manner of side issues and important questions. It was a long time before he could be convinced that our Jesus was not spoken of and made known in the Buddhist cla.s.sics. When he was at length satisfied (on that point), he wanted to know about the Trinity; how men could get good; how it was right that men should escape punishment due to their misdeeds by praying to Jesus; why G.o.d allowed animals, such as starving dogs, to lead a life of suffering; why G.o.d did not keep sin from entering the world; how could Jesus come, when it is said He is always with us; and how about the souls who died before Jesus came.

'At last the sun got low, and the Mandarin, with many words of friendship, rode away, promising to come another day. But he never came.'

In a later journey they had a very narrow escape from one of the frequent perils of this tent life:--

'In Mongolia we had one rather serious adventure. The south edge of the Plain is famed for storms, and the night we camped there, just after dark, began one of the fiercest thunderstorms I can remember having seen. The wind roared, the rain dashed, the tent quivered; the thunder rattled with a metallic ring, like shafts of iron dashing against each other, as it darted along a sheet-iron sky; the water rose in the tent till part of our bed was afloat. It was hardly possible to hear each other speak; but amid and above all the din of the tempest rose one sound not to be mistaken, the roar of rushing water. There was a river to right of us, but the sound came more from the left. Venturing out, I found there was a great swift-flowing river on both sides of us; that we could not move from the little piece of elevated land plain on which we had our tent; and that a few inches more water, or an obstacle getting into the path of the upper river, would send the full force of the current down on our tents. Flocks, herds, men are said to be swept away now and again in Mongolia, and for an hour our case seemed doubtful; but about 11 P.M. the storm ceased and the danger was over, and, though we had hardly anything left, we went to sleep, thanking G.o.d for His preserving mercy.'

Courageous, undoubtedly, Mrs. Gilmour was; her example of self-sacrifice in the Master's cause was lofty in itself, and is stimulating to every Christian mind. Yet it is to be greatly feared that the first of these journeys aggravated, if it did not actually develope, the disease from which she ultimately died. She found the ceaseless round of millet and mutton so unpalatable as at the last to be able hardly to eat at all; and experience of tent life was needful before she could realise how absolutely devoid it was of almost everything that a European lady looks upon as essential to daily existence, and thus make adequate preparation for the life. Yet, in 1878, she not only accompanied her husband again, better equipped by reason of previous experience, but she also took with her their infant boy.

The winter of 1876 in Peking was devoted to work more or less directly bearing upon the Christian conquest of the nomad tribes.

'Since returning from Mongolia I have had here a teacher whom I had come from the plains. I read some Buddhist cla.s.sics with him, then had him write to my dictation some of the more striking incidents narrated in the Book of Daniel; then finally had him write for me an explanation of the way of salvation through Jesus. The extracts from Daniel were written mostly with the idea of accustoming him to my dictation; but the explanation of Christianity was a tract that I had long wanted to write, in which I sought to make it as plain as possible, not only that Jesus does save, but also that there is no salvation through any other name. The Religious Tract Society has consented to print for me both the extract from Daniel and the explanation of Christianity.'

During 1877 the ever-recurring question, inevitable, perhaps, and yet very paralysing to any steady progress, as to whether it was really worth while to continue labour in such a sterile field, came up once more for discussion. In an elaborate report, designed rather to elicit the views of the home authorities than to express his own, dated August 18, 1877, Mr. Gilmour depicts rapidly and clearly his relations, on the one hand, to the workers in the station of the American Board at Kalgan, and, on the other, to his colleagues of the North China Committee of the London Society. The American Board had sent out another missionary, and Mr. Gilmour was at first inclined to the view that, although working independently, they might yet act practically as colleagues.

'In addition, the new man, Rev. W. P. Sprague, and I one day undertook to climb a mountain together, and, by the time we got half-way up, we discovered that our ideas about working together quite agreed, and that there was a fair and good prospect of our making good harmonious colleagues in one work, though we belonged to different societies and hailed from different nations. Here, then, the thing seemed to be accomplished; here was a colleague ready to my hand, or I to his.'

But Mrs. Gulick, a most energetic and enthusiastic missionary to the Mongols, died, her husband was invalided to j.a.pan, and Mr. Sprague found himself with the whole mission on his shoulders.

'If things are to remain as they are, it amounts pretty much to this, that in the warmer months of the year I can travel through parts of Mongolia teaching the Gospel and dispensing medicines; the rest of the year I can turn my attention to Chinese work in Peking. This is a pleasant enough arrangement for me, but it is not a very vigorous prosecution of the work of the Mongol mission. On the other hand, such is the fewness of people to be reached in Mongolia that it is only by alternating these periods of deprivation with seasons of activity among the Chinese that a man can keep his spirit alive.

'As regards the opinion of other members of the Committee here, I have never called for any formal expression of it, nor have they (the members of Committee) ever been invited to discuss the question of the Mongol mission in committee, but I know their individual opinions in an informal way. Messrs. Meech and Barradale don't say much; Mr. Owen thinks we will never do much in Mongolia working upon so distant a base as Peking; Mr. Lees thinks it a pity to take up such a seemingly unproductive field while so many more promising fields call for attention; he moreover thinks that the only way to do much for Mongolia is through China; Dr. Edkins thinks I spend too much time and labour over the Mongols, his idea being seemingly a combination of Mongol and Chinese work, with a preponderating tendency towards Chinese; Dr. Dudgeon has always regarded the Mongol mission as hardly practicable.

'On the principle, however, of _Sow beside all waters_, and _Thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that_, perhaps it is well that the Gospel should be exhibited to the Mongols also, and if anyone is to go to Mongolia, perhaps many people would have more disqualifications than myself.'

In 1877 there was what seemed to be a very hopeful development of Christian work in Shantung, and Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Owen visited that district and baptized a large number of converts. Still later, Dr.

Edkins and Mr. Owen, on another visit, baptized some two hundred people. With reference to this latter ingathering Mr. Gilmour wrote, 'I much regret that we have not some definite system of putting men on a period of probation.... About these two hundred I have nothing to say, but of the hundred odd Mr. Owen and I baptized in November I have to admit that, making all allowances, some of them cause me more anxiety than satisfaction.' There was, unfortunately, only too much ground for this fear. Ultimately the movement dwindled almost as rapidly as it had developed, and with little permanent benefit to the missionary cause.

Shantung had been devastated by famine, locusts, and cholera.

Missionaries brought relief to the stricken people, giving both money and food. Large numbers were drawn towards the new religion by this example of its deeds, and most of the converts had professed Christianity in the hope of getting something by its means. But this incident brought to a head a divergence of view as to the whole conduct of affairs in the Peking mission between the two older missionaries, Dr.

Edkins and Dr. Dudgeon, and their three younger colleagues, Mr. Gilmour, Mr. Owen, and Mr. Meech. Into this strenuous and protracted controversy we do not propose to enter. Both parties were actuated by high and honourable motives; both were able to express their views pointedly, and with all appropriate force. In the end the view advocated by Mr. Gilmour triumphed. This was that, so far as possible, no pecuniary inducement whatever, either by way of payment for services, or even employment in connection with the mission, should be allowed to influence a Chinaman's judgment in the acceptance of Christianity. Gilmour could take an active part in the discussions only during his winter residence in Peking. But the reader who has followed its history so far will be quite prepared to learn that he made up for the infrequency of his partic.i.p.ation in the controversy by the energy which he displayed when he did so. And in depicting Gilmour as he was, it is essential that he should be seen when opposing no less than, as he much preferred to be in all matters affecting the welfare of the mission, in the heartiest concord with his colleagues. And yet his keenest opponents would cordially a.s.sent to the following statement by one who took an active part in all the discussions. It is mainly for the purpose of emphasising this testimony that the matter is referred to here.

'When in Peking Gilmour took his full share in the debates which were constantly arising. Although he could and did argue to the extremest point, and very hot and sharp words might be spoken during the discussion, he harboured no bitterness of feeling against his opponents.

After excited argument he would get up and say, "Nevertheless I love you." Nor were these empty words. He was kind, and willing to help all, and was doing acts of service continually for those who opposed him most.'

Towards the close of 1878 the Rev. J. S. Barradale, of the Tientsin Mission, died, leaving the Rev. J. Lees alone without a Chinese-speaking helper. Mr. Gilmour sympathised deeply with him in his loss, and wrote to say that, so long as Mr. Lees was thus left alone, he would be glad to make two trips annually to his country stations, either _with_ him or _for_ him. Mr. Gilmour's journal of this work is not only a record of the willingness with which he added gladly to his own heavy labours in order to a.s.sist a colleague; but it also gives some most realistic pictures of what ordinary life in China is like, and under what conditions evangelistic itineration there is carried on. Some of the districts visited had just been devastated by a severe famine.

'From Tientsin to Hsiao Chang is five days' journey. Three hours out from Tientsin we came upon some dogs feasting on a corpse lying at a cross-road. The dogs belonged to cottagers near, but no attempt was made by the owners to keep them away; no one took the trouble to bury the body or cover it up even. Later on we pa.s.sed through one famine-devastated district. Half the houses in the villages were unroofed; large tracts of land were untilled; the landscape was almost entirely dest.i.tute of animal life; travellers were nowhere to be seen; round the villages the little stacks of straw and fuel were not to be seen; the lanes were silent; no dogs, no c.o.c.ks and hens, no pigs; no groups of children playing or running after the foreigner as he pa.s.sed by; and the words of Scripture came to my mind, "the land desolate without inhabitant."

We continued to pa.s.s these desolations for about sixty English miles. We stopped a night in one of these ruined villages, and Mr.

Lees took me round the place to see the nature and extent of the destruction. Closer inspection revealed even more ruin than a mere traveller's pa.s.sing look would detect; for, evidently, some care had been taken to leave house walls and boundary walls on the street standing, so as to hide some part of the destruction, and thus make things look better than they really were.

'Natives of the place gave us numbers, which showed the population was then estimated at not much, if any, more than half the former population. It was expressly stated, however, that the missing half were not regarded as all dead; very many were dead, had died in the place, but many had gone elsewhere--in most cases no one knew where. Of these some few would doubtless return; but it is to be feared that the mortality in a hard year among famine refugees is very large, and of those who left their homes and native places, the few that may eventually return will be very few, I fear.

'Doesn't the Bible say that it is a harder fate to die of famine than to die by the sword--to die stricken through for want of the fruits of the earth? But of all those who died in the famine in North China there is one cla.s.s whose case is perhaps more distressing than ordinary. A large number of people seem to have died just as the harvest--a plentiful one--ripened. Through all these hard dreary months, when, day after day, month after month, they looked for and longed for rain, those I now speak of struggled through, kept up hope, fared hard, hoped eagerly, and at last saw the rain come, saw the crops flourishing, saw them beginning to ripen, congratulated themselves and others on the prospect of abundant food and better days. But they were to see it with their eyes, but not to eat thereof. As far as could be gathered from the natives themselves, the case would seem to be thus.

'The great ma.s.s of the population was much reduced in bodily strength by the long period of half-starvation they went through; summer and early autumn came with the rains and the attendant ague, which last--the ague--still more reduced the strength of their already emaciated frames. You can imagine them, with lean faces and hungry eyes, tottering about the fields, and counting the days that must yet elapse before the grain would ripen. The rage of hunger was no longer to be borne; they antic.i.p.ated by a few days the ripening; took the grain, still a little green--perhaps sometimes very green--and put it into the pot. But here again was another difficulty. The fuel used is grain stalks, and the famine deprived them at once of food and fuel. Green grain they might cook, but green-grain stalks would not burn. Fuel was thus deficient; and was it wonderful if, as they stood round the pot, and the fuel was deficient, their patience should fail them and they should fall upon the food half cooked? That was bad enough; but that is not all. The Chinese have nearly as little self-control as children; and is it to be wondered at if, when at last, after long months of the slow torture of unappeased hunger, they found a full meal before them, they should have eaten to the full? When a man emaciated from having gone through a famine, and further enfeebled after repeated prostrations by ague, at length rises up and gorges himself with farinaceous food, half ripe and half cooked, the consequences are not difficult to divine. Diarrh[oe]a and dysentery set in, and became fearfully prevalent--not only prevalent, but peculiarly fatal. To make matters worse, medicines in that part of the country are dear; the people were too poor to get medical help, and great numbers who had lived to see the famine end and prosperity return lived only to see the prosperity, and to die when it touched them. The famine fever in summer seems to have been fearfully prevalent. It is said that in a single courtyard two or three people would be lying about the gate, two or three under the shadow of some house, two or three more inside the house--all stricken down with fever. The air of some villages is said to have been loaded with the effluvia to such an extent that one riding along the street perceptibly discerned the taint in the atmosphere.

The fever was deadly too, but evidently not so deadly in proportion as the autumn dysentery. Frequently, when talking to a boy, we would hear he was an orphan, and, on inquiry, he told that his father had died in autumn; frequently, in talking to a woman, we would hear that she was a widow, and, on asking when her husband died, the reply was, "Autumn."

'We reached Hsiao Chang in a snowstorm on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. A few of the people, doubtless, heard of our arrival; but those of the other villages probably did not know we had come; so that our being there, perhaps, did not materially increase the number of the congregation that a.s.sembled next day (Sunday). Sunday was a dull, uncomfortable day; the ground covered with snow; the sky still covered with clouds; no sunshine; yet there was a congregation of about one hundred and thirty, of whom eighty (about) would be women, and fifty (about) be men. The next Sabbath, January 26, was still dull; the congregation numbered about two hundred and eighty--men, say, one hundred and thirty; women, say, one hundred and fifty. Mr. Lees took the women into the chapel. I took the men outside in another court, and preached to them from a terrace which gave me a commanding view of my congregation. Mr. Lees had too little ventilation, I had too much of it; but both of our congregations listened well, though there was no sun, though the cold was intense, and though stray flakes of snow wandered slowly down among us as we worshipped. The next Sabbath, February 2, was fine. All except adherents were excluded, and the congregation numbered about eighty men, and one hundred and twenty women. Twelve men and seven women were baptized.