James Cameron
Missionary, Explorer, Tibetan Trailblazer
I had never heard of the late, great James Cameron until reading this fascinating biographical article yesterday while prepping for the latest China Compass podcast which I recorded earlier today.
I highly recommend reading his entire story, or listening to me share it on the aforementioned podcast. However, I also wanted to publish this excerpt from that article; a passionate and challenging message given by Mr. Cameron at the 17th anniversary meeting of the China Inland Mission on May 31, 1883:
My work has been that of an itinerant missionary. I believe in settled work: it is most important; and yet I believe that the work of the itinerant missionary is as important, if not more important, especially in the first stages of the work.
… I did not travel often by steam-boat. In the north we had carts without springs, we had also the wheelbarrow, but I preferred to use my own legs. … In travelling on foot we meet with the Chinese by the way, and get into conversation with them…
At night we come to an inn … and get a small room, or a small corner in a large room, without a screen or anything else. Our place is allotted to us, and the people hear that a foreigner has come. Well, they want to see him, and perhaps we have not been in three minutes before the whole place is full, right up to our very beds; aye, and they sit on the top of the bed too. There they are, staring at us, picking up our things and looking at them, and wanting to know … all they can about ourselves, even to our great great grandfather, and so on. We are able, in our turn, to ask them a few questions; and then we introduce the Gospel. I have seen them sit with me for hours and hours together.
… And, oh! dear friends, it is a solemn thought that, in coming into contact in that way with people, we meet them but once, it may be, in a lifetime. Oh, what a solemn thought this is: they never heard of CHRIST before: they may never hear of Him again!
… Now, I want you to pray for blessing on the seed that has been sown in China. I want you to pray for the books that have been sold or that have been given away in China. … While you look at all those journeys on the map, just think that God gave me the privilege in those places, not only of telling the people that the Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven, … but that I had also the privilege of leaving portions of the Word of God. Sometimes I used to sell a few hundred portions of the Scriptures in one day… sometimes I would go into a village or a hamlet and not get one to buy. Did I leave them without the Word of God? No, I did not. My desire was to leave with them this precious Word, and that, after I had gone away, God would lead them to take the books from their shelves and read them, and would cause the truth to take hold upon their hearts.
In travelling about China, not only have I come into contact with Chinese, but in my western journey I came into contact with Tibetans and other tribes. I have stood sometimes and thought, “Well, if it were possible for me to divide myself up into parts, I would leave one part there, and another part there, and I would send another part there, and another part there.” And why? Just that these people might have some one to tell them the good news of salvation. … In looking upon the people, what did the Lord JESUS say? He said to His own loved and redeemed ones, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He thrust forth labourers into His own harvest.” Oh, shall He have to thrust us forth? Shall we not rather say, “Lord, here am I. Take me: send me.”
(Excerpted from China’s Millions (1883): 126–127, italics original, https://archive.org/details/chinasmillions1883chin)
As I said on the podcast, “Amen and Amen!” What a challenge this is! And I can vouch for nearly every word from my own experience in this same vast region. May God truly and graciously raise up more laborers to proclaim His glory in Tibet!
Sources:
OMF International: James Cameron—the Livingstone of China
China Compass Podcast: China-US Prisoner Swap / Chongqing: Largest City in the World? / Tibetan Monk Assassins