James Gilmour (Chinese:景雅各; 12 June 1843 – 21 May 1891) was a Scottish Evangelical Christian missionary in China and Mongolia.

His mother delighted in gathering her sons about her in the evening and reading to them missionary and religious stories and making comments upon them.

He had good school privileges, first at Cambuslang and then at Glasgow, applied himself not so much because of love for learning but because he willed to do so, and earned for himself many prizes.

Later he furnished a small house which belonged to his father in the city, and prepared his breakfast and other meals as he thought best.

He would go out evenings alone and conduct open-air preaching services or talk to labourers by the roadside or in the field about the things of Christ.

After Cheshunt College, Gilmour studied a year in the society's missionary seminary at Highgate, and Chinese in London.

At night he talked to every member of the crew while on watch, and laid the matter of salvation so clearly before them that he afterwards wrote, "All on board had repeated opportunities of hearing the Gospel as plainly as I could put it."

Thirteen French Roman Catholic missionaries at Tianjin, (at that time port city of Beijing) were killed.

"[1] A massacre of all foreigners was planned, but a great downpour of rain the first day it was to begin shut the Chinese in their homes and when they could go out again the excitement was gone and there was no disturbance.

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, a distance of about 3,000 miles; and from Asiatic Russia on the north to the Great Wall of China on the south, a distance of about 900 miles.

In the winter they live in rude huts or tents; during the heated summers they seek the best pastures they can command for their flocks.

Religion, where it has gained a foothold in the southeastern part, was Buddhism; it was estimated that over half the male population were Buddhist lamas.

To carry the Gospel to the nomadic bands of this land, Gilmour of necessity adopted a roving life and puts up with its hardships.

Having decided that the proper way to learn the language and start the work was to go into the heart of the proposed field, Gilmour, in company with a Russian postmaster, left Kalgan, to which point he had come, on 27 August 1870, for the first trip across the great plain to Kyakhta.

Here Gilmour spent three months, acquired the language rapidly and gained real insight into the hearts and minds of the natives.

During the summer of 1872 Gilmour, in company with Joseph Edkins, visited the sacred city of Wutai Shan, a famous place of Mongol pilgrimage.

In his lonely hours in the desert he had taken the matter of a suitable companion to the Lord and asked Him to send one that would help in his work.

He was dressed in an old overcoat and had a large woolen comforter around his neck, -- for it was cold, -- not the usual method to make a favorable impression.

He made occasional trips to fairs at important centers, but not until 7 April 1876 did Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour take a tour into Mongolia proper.

Gilmour turned his attention to preparing two publications, one on striking incidents from Daniel, and the other the story of salvation, both published by the Religious Tract Society for him.

His discourses were simple, full of illustrations from his own life, and with such earnestness and directness as gave them great force.

Most men want medicine to make their beards grow, while almost every man, woman and child wants to have his or her skin made as white as that of a foreigner."

Gilmour and the convert traveled for nearly twenty-three miles together, talking, and then in a lonely place in the road knelt and prayed together and then separated.

This led him to the conviction that personal work was most effective, and forsaking all else, -- secular papers and books, even the bedside of his sick wife at times, -- he gave himself over to inquiries from early morning till late at night.

In simple, childlike faith, on 19 September 1885, she died and the eleven years of happy married life were brought to an end.

Upon reaching a new city he pitched his tent on a main thoroughfare, and from early morn till late at night healed the sick, preached and talked to inquirers.

During one eight months' campaign he saw about 6,000 patients, preached to nearly 24,000 people, sold 3,000 books, distributed 4,500 tracts, traveled 1,860 miles and spent about $200, and added that only two individuals openly confessed to believe in Christ.

Roberts, however, was called to Tianjin after several weeks in Mongolia due to the death of John Kenneth MacKenzie, the director of the Tienstin Mission Hospital and Dispensary.

When the faithful missionary reached England in 1889 he was so thin of body and the marks of struggle so prominent in his face, that his friends did not know him.

In April 1891 he returned to Tianjin to attend the North China District Committee of the London Missionary Society.