These graphic pictures enable us to realise how Mr. Gilmour began the last great missionary enterprise of his life. He returned to Peking, and then had to pass through that severe trial which comes to almost all missionaries in the foreign field, which is often one of their heaviest crosses. His two eldest boys were sent home for education. They sailed from Tientsin March 23, 1886, the diary for that day containing the brief but significant reference: 'At 6.45 A.M. came all the friends once more, at 7.30 cast off, and the vessel slowly fell out into the middle of the river. Oh! the parting!' But at 8.30 on the same morning the sorrowful father had started on his solitary return journey to Peking. Bereft now of both wife, and boys he was to pass the rest of his career in China, except for the brief intervals of residence in Peking, in the cheerless, noisy, uncongenial quarters of an ordinary Chinese inn. The return of the Rev. S. E. Meech in April 1886 set him entirely free from mission work in the capital. He had already acquired the needful experience of his new field of labour, and on April 22, 1886, he started anew for Eastern Mongolia. It is neither necessary nor desirable to enter into any very detailed description of the next three years. In many respects day after day was occupied with the round of ever recurring and similar duties, but it is desirable to enter, if we can, with some minuteness into his inner life, and to lay bare the spiritual sources and springs of his outward actions. It is in these, in our judgment, that the true beauty, the abiding lesson, and the great success of his life consist. And this he has enabled us to do. In a private, not an official, letter to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, the Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, he indicates his actions and the motives that were impelling him so to act, during the summer of 1886. Differences of opinion arose with his fellow missionaries as to the wisdom of his methods and the soundness of his judgment. Those who differed most strongly from him knew little or nothing by personal observation and experience of the conditions of work either on the Plain or at Ch'ao Yang. But no question ever did or ever could arise as to the absolute consecration of his heart and life to the work of winning souls. The truth of the words in one of his official reports was manifest to all: 'Man, the fire of God is upon me to go and preach.' 'The past four and a half months has been a time of no small trial and spiritual tension. Since April 22 I have had no tidings of the outer world. An agent of the Bible Society, who was selling books in the district, was with me for a month, but he had gone out before me, so that when we met he had no news for me, but wanted news from me.