James Gilmour ( 1843 - 1891) was a Scottish Protestant Christian missionary in China and Mongolia.
At the time Gilmour went to the field, Mongolia embraced that vast territory between China proper and Siberia, stretching from the Sea of Japan on the east to Turkestan on the west, and from Asiatic Russia on the north to the Great Wall of China on the south. In the center is the great Gobi Desert.
To carry the Gospel to the nomadic bands of this land, Gilmour of necessity adopted a roving life and puts up with its hardships. In 1882 the Gilmours took furlough to England. While home he published "Among the Mongols". One critic wrote, "Robinson Crusoe has turned missionary, lived years in Mongolia, and wrote a book about it."
THIS book is a record not many journeys; not a few weeks passed in scouring Mongolia, but of long years spent in unusually intimate intercourse with its people. The writer introduces his readers to a people of whom very little beyond the name is known. In fact, the all-pervading quality of this book is its freshness, and this quality manifests itself in style, incidents, things and scenes described, and, not the least, in the object and end for which the travels narrated have been undertaken.
Every page of this book testifies that the writer goes about with eye and ear open; and as he also possesses the gift of narrating in interesting and lifelike style what he sees and hears, his book possesses the charm which attaches to all true pictures of human life.
With many good qualities, and with almost a superabundance of religion, the Mongols have no love of truth, and are wont to despise a man who cannot meet the stress of daily events by an apt lie.
Gilmour possesses in a high degree the power of graphic description. The book abounds in passages that could be adduced in support of this statement, notably his account of a journey across the desert of Gobi, and a visit to Lake Baikal in midwinter.
No one can read these pages without feeling that to Gilmour has been given by the Master in a very high degree the true missionary spirit. He thinks it a small thing to cut himself off from the comforts of civilization; he wanders about for months at a time living in smoky Mongol tents and striving to win the affection of darkened Mongol hearts; he has laid it down as a fundamental principle 'never to take offence at the conduct of a heathen, however bad it might be ;' and he has learnt that in this as in other fields the work of God is accomplished slowly, though he doubts not that it will be done in His own good time and way. No one can carefully read this volume without feeling that it is the work of a man who is possessed by that love for souls ; and that in the accomplishment of the aim of his life, the conversion of the Mongols, there is no sacrifice he would not make, there is no toil he would not endure.
No one can read this book without benefit. The reader can hardly open at any page without finding something fresh, human, and interesting.
