Many pages might be filled with loving eulogies of James Gilmour. But the best of all is the simple story of his life. Yet two or three references to his work and influence must here find a place.
From the pen of Dr. Reynolds comes this weighty testimony:--
"The end of his career came all too suddenly, and in gathering together my impressions of it as a whole, I am convinced that I have seldom seen a man so entirely possessed by a grand idea, so utterly persuaded that we had a debt to pay to the heathen world, so invincibly sure that Christian faith and life was the one supreme need of these regions beyond our circle of light. Few men have cast the bread upon greater waters, have sown the seed over a wider area, or had to mourn more sadly over those heart-breaking months which intervene between the seedtime and the harvest.
Impartial critics have recognised the intense honesty, the shrewd wit, the faculty of vision, the power to tell the story of his rare experiences with such verisimilitude as to force upon the reader a ready acquiescence in every detail of his narrative. But his Christian brethren saw a deeper vein than this in Gilmour"s achievements. He was ablaze from first to last with a pa.s.sionate desire to set forth Christ in His majesty and mercy, in all His power to heal and to command. I had unexpected opportunities of finding how tender and affectionate his nature was; how grateful and enthusiastic his love to his Hamilton home, to his father, mother, and wife, and how faithful and loyal he was to the society and the brotherhood of his Alma Mater."
The Rev. G. Owen, at a memorial service held in Peking very shortly after Mr. Gilmour"s death, gave a sketch of his character and work, and thus summed up his life:--
"He spared himself in nothing, but gave himself wholly to G.o.d. He kept nothing back. All was laid upon the altar. I doubt if even St.
Paul endured more for Christ than did James Gilmour. I doubt, too, if Christ ever received from human hands or human heart more loving, devoted service.
"If anyone asks, "Would it not have been better if Mr. Gilmour had taken more care of himself and lived longer?" I would answer: "I don"t know. His life was beautiful, and I would not alter it if I could. A few years of such service as he gave Christ are worth a hundred years of humdrum toil. We need the inspiration of such a life as his. Heaven, too, is the richer for such a man and such a life. The pearly gates opened wide, I have no doubt, to receive him. Angels and men gave him glad welcome, and what a smile would light up the Saviour"s face as He received His faithful servant home!"
"And he being dead yet speaketh. He says, "Be faithful, work hard, for the night cometh when no man can work. Be earnest, for life is brief; be ready, for life is uncertain." But why did G.o.d call him away in the midst of life and work? I don"t know. Possibly work here is not of such importance as we think. Or there is more important service elsewhere waiting for such men as Mr. Gilmour. He has been faithful over a few things; he has been made ruler over many things, and has entered into the joy of his Lord."
Mr. Parker wrote to the sons of his late colleague on June 6, 1891:--
"It is sad that my first letter to you should be to tell you about your father"s death, of which no doubt you have heard long ago....
The last photographs of yourselves which you sent out he always had where he could see them. Whenever he travelled he took them with him. At Tientsin during his last illness he had them on a low side table, just on a level with his bed, so that as he lay there he could see them.... He was very happy, and died like a faithful soldier who had finished his work. It is sad, dear boys, to lose a father such as he was, but it is a great blessing to have had such a father, one so brave, so courageous, one who for the sake of Christ suffered bodily discomfort and pain, suffered terrible loneliness that he might win some of G.o.d"s sinning children back to their Father"s arms. He lived and suffered for the Mongols, and though G.o.d denied him the honour of baptizing even one of them, yet so faithful was he to his work that he toiled on to the very last.
"Faithful unto death" are words fully exemplified in your father"s life."
In his first letter from Mongolia after his prompt return to carry on in a like spirit of faith and devotion the work from which Mr. Gilmour had been summoned away Mr. Parker depicts the grief of the native Christians on learning their loss. "The sorrow of the converts here (Ch"ao Yang) at the news of Gilmour"s death was very touching Grown-up men burst into tears and sobbed like children when they were told he was dead. All along the route where Gilmour was such a familiar visitor, in the market-place, and at their fairs, the first question they asked as soon as they saw me was, "Has Mr. Gilmour come?" And at my reply there was always great astonishment, accompanied by expressions of sorrow. Every day at evening prayers I can hear Gilmour"s name mingled with their pet.i.tions. The Christians here have sent a letter of sympathy to his two boys.
"Here in Ch"ao Yang there are any amount of Mongols, not nomadic, tent-loving, but settled here, and hence they do not have to be sought. Right in the centre of the town is an immense Mongol temple with two or three hundred priests. Every day I have several of the priests in here, and yet I have heard again and again that this mission is misplaced. Some such words often pained the heart that is now still in death. But this is, and shall be, essentially a Mongol mission in this, that as the best efforts of dear Gilmour were for making Christ known to the Mongols, my best endeavours shall be to this end. But if some hungry Chinaman, standing by as I hold out the bread of life to his Mongol brother, seeks to eat of it, he shall have it, and be as welcome as the other."
The letter to the children referred to in Mr. Parker"s report is a fitting description of James Gilmour"s life, and he himself would have desired no other panegyric. It came from the hearts of men on whose behalf he had given his very best, and it shows how strong a hold he had obtained upon their affection.
"We respectfully enquire for the peace and happiness of your excellencies, our brothers Gilmour, also for the peace of your whole school. In the first place Pastor Gilmour in his preaching and doctoring at Ch"ao Yang, north of the Pa.s.s, truly loved others as himself, was considerate and humble, and had the likeness of (our) Saviour Jesus. Not only the Christians thank him without end, but even those outside the Church (the heathen) bless him without limit. We, who through Pastor Gilmour have obtained the doctrine of the second birth, and received the grace of Jesus, had hoped with Mr. Gilmour to have a.s.sembled on the earth until our heads were white and in the future life to have gone with him to heaven.
Little did we think we should have been so unhappy. He has already gone to the Lord. We certainly know he is in the presence of the Lord, not only praying for us, but also for you our brothers.
"We pray you, when you see this letter, not to grieve beyond measure. We hope that you will study with increased ardour, so as to obtain the heavenly wisdom, like Solomon, and that afterwards you may come to China, to this Ch"ao Yang, to preach the Gospel widely. As the father did, may the sons follow, is our earnest desire.
"Signed by the Ch"ao Yang Christians,
"LIU MAO LIN (preacher).
P"ANG TIEN K"UEI.
w.a.n.g SHENG.
NING FU TUNG.
CHANG WAN CH"UAN.
CHANG KUEI.
CHIANG SHENG.
w.a.n.g HUI HSIEN.
LIU I (your father"s servant).
SUNG KANG.
CH"U WEN YUAN.
CHANG CHEN.
CHANG MAO CHI.
NING KUANG CHEN.
LIU CHO.
T"IEN TE CH"UN.
HU TE."
Here, then, we leave him. If the story of his life fail to touch the heart, to deepen faith, to exalt our estimate of renewed human nature, and to revive enthusiasm in work for Christ at home and abroad, the fault must be in him who has tried to tell it, and to set in order the facts.
G.o.d"s ways are ofttimes dark. James Gilmour had often felt this, and, to those who knew him, it seemed as though he were taken just when G.o.d"s work needed him most, when the first-fruits of the coming harvest were being gathered, when his knowledge of the Chinese and the Mongols, and their knowledge of him and affection for him, were beginning to tell.
But G.o.d knows best, and nothing can deprive the Church of Christ of the splendid self-sacrifice, of the n.o.ble perseverance in the path of duty of the bright example of courage, devotion, enthusiasm for souls, and patient continuance in well doing shining so clearly through all the long, years of toil. Love, self-crucifixion, Jesus Christ closely followed in adversity, in loneliness, in manifold perils, under almost every conceivable form of trial and hindrance and resistance both active and pa.s.sive--these are the seeds James Gilmour has sown so richly on the hard Mongolian Plain, and over its Eastern mountains and valleys.
"In due time we shall reap if we faint not." His work goes on. He is now doing the Master"s bidding in the higher service. There, we must fain believe, he is finding full scope for those altogether exceptional spiritual affinities, and powers and capacities which stand out so conspicuously all through the story of his inner life. Upon us who yet remain rests the responsibility of carrying forward the work he began, of reinforcing the workers, of bearing Mongolia upon our prayers until Buddhism shall fade away before the pure truth and the perfect love of Jesus Christ, and even the hard and unresponsive Mongols come to recognise the truths James Gilmour so long and so faithfully tried to teach them--that they need the Great Physician even more than they need the earthly doctor, and that He is more able and willing to heal the hurt of their souls than the earthly physician is to remove the disease of their bodies.
Is not the real lesson of James Gilmour"s life twofold? If it be looked at from the point of view of results, it should give clear and vivid ideas of the unwisdom of being cast down by the absence of results in face of the difficulties of missionary work in China. It is to be feared that there are still large numbers of good Christian people who believe that for the conversion of Chinamen and Mongols all that is requisite is to put into the hands of the heathen a copy of G.o.d"s Word in their native tongue, and then preach to them the good tidings of salvation. No man in this, or in past generation, has done this more faithfully than James Gilmour. No man ever believed more firmly in the truth that it is "not by might nor by power," but by the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, that the intellect and conscience and heart of the heathen are to be subdued to the Saviour. No man ever wrestled more eagerly and fervently in prayer on behalf of the ignorant and sinful, and yet his avowed converts can be numbered on the fingers. Does this prove that G.o.d is unfaithful? Does this tend to show that the enterprise is hopeless?
Or has G.o.d been teaching us, by the life of one of His ablest and truest servants, the lesson of patient continuance in the path of His commands, whether He blesses or whether He withholds? Is He not proclaiming to His Church the need of a self-sacrifice _in all its members_ commensurate with that displayed by James Gilmour and others who like him have not counted their lives dear unto themselves in the struggle with heathenism? Some must go in the "forlorn hope." Some must lay down their lives in preparing the highway of our G.o.d. "Herein is the saying true, One soweth and another reapeth." But succeeding toilers in the Mongolian field, as the direct result of James Gilmour"s sowing, will be able in days to come to apply to themselves our Lord"s words, "I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not laboured:--others have laboured, and ye are entered into their labour."
If the life of James Gilmour be looked at altogether apart from the results that can be entered in tables of statistics, how splendidly inspiring it is! Faithful to his Master, faithful to his work, although the Master _seemed_ to delay the blessing, although the work wore down the worker. "I," said St. Paul to the thankless Corinthian Church, "will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more abundantly, am I loved the less? But be it so." And in the Epistle to the Romans he applied to the Jews who were resisting the Gospel the ancient words of Isaiah: "But as to Israel He saith, All the day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people. I say then, Did G.o.d cast off His people? G.o.d forbid." Nor will G.o.d cast off the Israel of China, or the Mongols who gave to the faithful teacher respect, attention, and in a way the love of their hearts, but who as yet have not surrendered those hearts to their true Lord. James Gilmour, in season and out of season, in almost constant solitude, in superabounding physical labours that often overburdened him, and once nearly broke him down, in the long disappointment of the most cherished hopes, and under the constant strain of what would have crushed any but a giant in faith, lived a life which, if it taught no other lesson, was yet well worth living to teach this--that Jesus Christ can and does give His servants the victory over apparent non-success, after the most vehement and long-sustained effort to secure success, and that this is the greatest victory possible to renewed and sanctified human nature.