don me again when I take a short cut to what I want to say: "_I
believe were Christ here now as a missionary amongst us He would
be an enthusiastic teetotaller and a non-smoker._"

'Tobacco is comparatively a harmless matter, but it is not so
unimportant as it seems to us foreigners. Whisky should go, and I
feel that the Chinese would be quite ready, if led, to turn both
whisky and tobacco out together. They are born brothers in China,
_useless_, and _acknowledged_ to be such; harmful as far as they
are anything, and comparatively expensive.

'I would like to see you start in your church an anti-tobacco and
whisky society; voluntary, of course, in a church established as
yours on the old lines. Though I stand alone, I believe the flowing
tide is with me.

'Wishing you many souls in 1887, and eager that no minor difference
of opinion should hinder our prayers.

'Yours I-hardly-know-how-to-say-what,
'JAMES GILMOUR.'

In the _Chinese Recorder_, for which he had been in the habit of writing
for many years, he published a paper in which he set forth with great
clearness and fulness his views on this important matter. It deserves a
place in the story of his life because in it he has sketched, as no one
else could, himself, and some of his later methods of evangelistic
address.

'In December, 1885, in a district of North China new to me, I found
myself preaching to a small crowd of Chinese and Mongols in a small
market town. I was in a lane leading on to the main street. At my
back was a mud wall, in front and at both sides was the audience,
within hearing was the main street, above, a bright sun made the
place warm and cheerful. After listening a while the audience
wanted to know how good seasons could be secured. To the truths I
had been preaching they had listened with respect and fair
attention, but at the first opportunity for speaking they wanted to
know how to get a good harvest.

'At first I paid little attention to this question, but after a
little while it was asked again, and that by several men in
succession, and I soon found that the people of the place had
little room for anything else in their thoughts. There was good
reason for it too. Their last harvest had been a poor one.
Thr