thus reducing
the amount of the total production of the necessaries of life?

'Tobacco seems harmless. It is less harmful than opium and whisky
by a long way. But its production sensibly reduces the supply of
grain and cotton, and thus hinders the feeding of the hungry and
the clothing the naked. Good earnest Christian men smoke and drink.
Evangelists and pastors owned of God in the salvation of souls
smoke and see no harm in it. The reason is they have never seen how
the thing works, and don't know the harm it does. I feel sure that
if they could see with their own eyes men, women, and children,
hungry and in rags, when but for tobacco and whisky they might be
well fed and well clothed, these same good brethren, whose example
is quoted against my position, would be the first and most earnest
to say, "I will neither smoke tobacco nor drink whisky while the
world stands."'

At a later date, not from any change in his views, but in deference to
the views of others, with whom he was always anxious to work in harmony,
he modified his plans so far as not to make the use of whisky and
tobacco absolute bars to admission into the Christian Church.

His brethren also were opposed to the ascetic mode of life he adopted,
and the extreme of hardship which he so often and so willingly
encountered in his work. But he himself often said, and there are many
references in his diary to the same effect, that the kind of life he was
living in the interior was quite as healthy, and quite as conducive to
longevity, as the ordinary and certainly much more comfortable life of a
missionary at Peking. While it may be true that the exposure and
sufferings of twenty years had so weakened him as to leave him powerless
when seized by the last illness, yet the labours of twenty such years
spent in the service of God and the service of man are surely the seeds
from which there shall yet spring a rich harvest to the glory of God and
to the blessing of the dark and degraded Mongols and Chinese.

By the close of 1886 three main centres of work had been selected in the
new district--Ta Cheng Tz[)u], Ta Ss[)u] Kou, and Ch'ao Yang--all three
being towns of some importance. Mr. Gilmour used to spend a month or so
in each town, visiting also the neighbourhood, especially those places
where fairs were held, and where consequently the people came together
in large numbers. He had a tent wh