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ANDOVER-HARVARO THEOLOGICAL LIBRARV 
CAMBRIDQE. MASSACHUSETTS 



MR, FENWICK AND PASTOR SEN. 




The 

Church of Christ 

in Corea 



BY 
MALCOLM C PENWICK 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NBW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

V 



* 



ANDOVEP-f'AI^VARD 

Theological Library 

Cambridoe, Mass. 



A 






* < t 



Copyright, 1911, 
By GxosoE H. Dokak Compavt 



DEDICATED 

TO THE MEMORY OP OUR GREAT DEPARTED 

MISSIONARIES 

BamalMM and Paul; Xavier and Zwinlech; Morrison and 
Taylor; Moflht and Livingstone; Carey, Jndson and Doff; 
Williams and Paton; to Pastors Harm and Adoniram Jnd- 
son Gordon ; and to all others who, abroad or at home, ''first 
gave themselves unto the Lord," and coanted not their lives, 
time, nor possessions, neither their sons nor their daughters too 
precious for Jesus, if by any means they might hasten the 
day that would bring back again the banished King to realise 
the joy that was set before Him in gathering his ransomed 
ones unto Himsclt 



A NOTE INTRODUCTORY 

MR. FENWICK has written one of those 
rare books — an autobiographical mis- 
sionary record. Its enthusiasm for soul-saving 
and eagerness for sacrifice date back to the first 
apostolic fervor which spread the gospel through 
the Western world Like John G. Paton's fa- 
mous work, it is a latter-day addition to THE 
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, and in this case 
the apostles are the Coreans themselves. 

For years Mr. Fenwick labored in Corea, 
preaching Christ both by word and example, but 
met with scant success. Then he made the dis- 
covery which formed the foundation of the 
Pauline Church that the gospel can best be 
taught to foreign peoples by picked native 
converts. 

While the book is primarily a history of the 
spread of Christianity in Corea, it is incidentally 
a plea for a return to the missionary methods of 
the early Christian Church, and a convincing il- 
lustration of what may be accomplished by 



vi A NOTE INTRODUCTORY 

those methods. If Mr. Penwick's advice were 
adopted in any universal manner, its effect on 
future missionary enterprise would be far-reach- 
ing and revplutionizing ; moreover, it would 
multiply many times the economic possibilities 
for pioneering. 

The apostles whose acts are here related are 
all Coreans; where the white men had failed, 
the native pastors met with unbounded success. 
With fine simplicity and tenderness, Mr. Fen- 
wick sketches their characters and tells of their 
devotion. His record is a clarion call to Chris- 
tian enthusiasm, and a challenge to the apathy 
of the Western world. 

C. W- D. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Pag* 

I How the Shepherd found His lott sheep • • • 1 

II How God first educated, then called me to be a 

missionary 

in I start inland 16 

IV The stupid Westerner studies the Coreans and 

learns they really know something in the East 28 

V Two types: ''Then I will go to hell with my 
ancestors "; ** Qod has had mercy on this sin- 
ner" 39 

VI The enormous task of understanding the people 48 

Vn The foolishness of preaching ...•••.. 52 

Vm Native sons sent out to do the work • • . • 59 

IX One more hard lesson 63 

X The splendid success of the native pastor where 

I had so hopelessly fiedled 70 

XI Pastor Son 78 

Xn Pastor Chang 85 

Xin The simple-hearted believer in any country is 

Qod's sufficient instrument in that country . 93 

XIV Alter Qod taught, we prayed, and he sent the 

laborers He had educated .110 

Epilogue 117 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Pair* 

Mr. Fenwick and Pastor Sen FrofUitpUes, 

The Trjrsting Grove where prayer was made .... 33 

Mr. Fenwick's house in Sorai, where Mr. McKenade 
lived and died 36 

Mr. McKenzie's grave 38 

There stood a beautiful church built by the redeemed 

village, where once demons were worshipped ... 44 

Mrs. Fenwick teaching a special class of women and 

girls 63 

Pastor Sen and fomily in front of old house 66 

Pastor Sen off to visit his churches ; 72 

Pastor Sen's new house, built at a cost of $120.00 U. S. 

Currency s 80 

One of Pastor Sen's Churches 90 

A small country church in a railway town of 30 people. 
This gathering is composed of believers that came 
from far and near to meet Mr. Fenwick 96 

One of Mr. Fenwick's Bible classes 107 

A small group of Native Evangelists — ^the fathers of our 
churches s • . 112 

The eight men who came up from the country — The 

mushroom boy in back row to extreme right . • . 124 



'*Qod hath chosen the foolieh thinge of the world 
to coolbuiid tht wise ; end Qod heth chcMen the weak 
things of the world to confound the thinge which 
are mighty ; and baae thinge of the woiid, and thinga 
which are dee|rfeed, hath Qod choeen, jrea, and things 
which are not, to bring to nought things that are ; 
that no flesh should glory in His presence." 

I Cor. z : a7-9g. 



THE CHURCH 
OF CHRIST IN COREA 



CHAPTER I 
Haw the Shepl^rd found His Last Sheep 

GOD'S need of witnesses — the awful fact 
that one thousand million of the in- 
habitants of earth have not yet had a 
good opportunity to either accept or reject Christ ; 
the fact that the children bom to the heathen 
are more in nmnber, by two himdred to one, 
than the children '^bom again '*; and the still 
more awful fact that the church, after nineteen 
hundred years of effort, is not only failing to 
maintain su£Bcient witnesses for God, that He 
may be justified by every lost soul receiving the 
testimony of two or three witnesses for the es- 
tablishment of every word of His ; but is failing, 
even in a country so lavishly blessed as Corea, 
to provide one witness to each county (counties 
as large as the counties in America and England, 



3 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

and more populous) — constitutes my only ex- 
cuse for writing this book. 

Conscious that my work will contain many 
imperfections, I approach the task with diffidcpce. 
My chief concern, however, is not because of this ; 
but that God's superabounding grace, to one so 
unworthy, should be known among the churches 
where my Lord still walks, and at every oppor- 
tunity given Him, stretches out that hand bear- 
ing the scar of a great jagged hole, and points to 
the regions beyond. Men say, ** A bad workman 
quarrels with his tools." If this be true, we know, 
both by our own experience and by observation, 
that Jesus is a master Workman. He has never 
been known to quarrel with the instruments He 
was obliged to use to accomplish His work. 
And if this book encourages the church to be- 
lieve more completely in His willingness to use 
such an imperfect witness as the writer, or such 
untutored instruments as the Corean evangelists 
mentioned in the story, its purpose will be ac- 
complished. 

The work to which God called me being apaji; 
from any denomination, as soon as souls were 
added to the Lord in different sections of the 
country and it became necessary to appoint over- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 3 

seersy we selected the simplest church name we 
could, which in the Corean language is ''Tai 
Han Kitock Kyowhay/' and being interpreted 
means '' The Church of Christ in Corea." 

As the story is about this church, the book 
takes that title. 

The prime requisite of any missionary of the 
cross being '' the new birth/' I will tell, just here, 
the story of my transfer out of death into life. 

When my grandparents, from Pitcaim, Perth- 
shire, Scotland, disembarked at the site of the 
city of Toronto, Canada, then called York, it 
consisted of a Hudson Bay store, a flour mill, a 
blacksmith shop and a few shanties. Blazing 
their way through the splendid maple and beech 
and white pine forests to the township of Mark- 
ham in the county of York — still considered the 
finest in all the Dominion — they settled on a 
large tract of land, where my father was bom, 
lived and died, leaving behind him a widow and 
eleven children amply provided for, and a fra- 
grant memory. It was little I knew of a father's 
care, as he died when I was but five years of age ; 
but it has been one of the joys of my life to meet 
old neighbors and friends of father's, who were 
always ready to sing his praises. The first time 



4 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

I spoke in the village church after becoming a 
missionary, a dear, old Scotch lady said to me, 
''Are you a son of Archie Penwick?*' When 
she learned I was. She said, ''Weel, laddie, you 
just be as gude a mon as he was and ye '11 do/' 
Also, a gentleman who had prospered atid made 
a splendid name for himself said to me, ''I 
was one of the young men in your father's time. 
I never knew him to meet me or any young man 
that he did not stop us and make kindly inquiries 
and give us a word of splendid advice." In pub- 
lic enterprises, father was ever among the fore- 
most. His home rule was after the strictest, 
old-fashioned, severe type, yet all his children 
rise up and call him blessed. 

I was the last son to leave the home, with its 
beautiful surroundings and helpful atmosphere. 
The Canadian Pacific Railway was being pushed 
through the rich plains of Manitoba and the 
Northwest, and cities were springing up along 
the line, making land booms frequent. I was 
eighteen, and having had all the experience I 
cared for on the Prize Model Farm of Ontario, 
the Manitoba fever got hold of me, and mother 
moving to Toronto I was free to go to the 
Plains. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 5 

The memory of my mother and sisters kept 
me from the grosser sins which prevailed in this 
new country. Another tiling which helped me 
at this time was the teaching and example of a 
Scotch minister, the Rev. Donald M. Mcintosh, 
who for years had lived in our home, and who be- 
came revered by thousands of people for miles 
around. The sick and distressed, the lame, the 
halt, and the blind, scholars and statesmen, the 
living and the dying, sought his help and counsel, 
and what, perhaps, they most needed and invari- 
ably received, his sympathy — his loving, sooth- 
ing, healing, human sympathy. 

Mr. Mcintosh was a gold medalist of Glasgow 
University, and could quote the poets by the hour. 
He had a massive brain. His greatness, how- 
ever, consisted not in these things, but in that 
with all his scholarship, with all his mature wis- 
dom, with all his literary ability, he was first and 
always the hmnble, simple, childlike disciple of 
Jesus Christ; the man so like his Master that 
people of all classes would stop talking, to 
say, '^Yonder goes the man who never put a 
straw in anybody's way.'' To have been given 
the privilege of living under the same roof with 
such a man, I consider one of the greatest ^ hand- 



6 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

fuls of purpose'' my Goel-Redeemer dropped 
for my gleaning. 

I shall never forget the day I left home : how 
he took me into his study, secured a book from 
his library, wrote my name in it, then knelt 
and prayed for me. I don't remember a 
word of his beautiful prayer; but I can feel the 
touch of his hand on my shoulder yet, as he 
bade me good-bye. His parting word I remem- 
ber because it so influenced my life : ** Remember 
the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, Malcolm, and 
you will be all right. I have watched the career 
of many young men, and those who go down 
usually start by failing to remember the Sabbath 
Day." This was the word which made me a 
regular attendant at church; that influenced me 
to accept the office of librarian of the Sunday 
School; that put me in the choir and on com- 
mittees — in short, which kept me in the best 
company in the land. 

After spending three years on the frontier, I 
went to see my mother, who had met with a 
severe accident. One year previous to my re- 
turn, a dear friend, belonging to one of the 
oldest Canadian families, had got me to read a 
chapter, daily, in the Bible. But it was not until 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 7 

I was saying good-bye the second time to mother, 
that an arrow pierced my soul, never to be 
extracted until taken out by the Hand that was 
wounded for me. I could stand all her exhorta- 
tions, but I could not stand her tears nor her 
tender pleading as she said, *' O, my son, if you 
would only give your heart to Jesus, I would 
not care how far you went from home/' I re- 
member how, on the train, I resolved to seek 
Him until I foimd Him. Two years of intense 
conviction followed, during which time I tried 
all the ways I ever heard of to find Christ, such 
as seeking Him alone in the woods, praying all 
through the night, and other self-righteous ef- 
forts, until I gave up in despair, saying to God 
that I was not worthy to be saved. Communion 
service was at hand in the church which I at- 
tended, and I had been asked to join the church 
on that Sunday and to ''shew forth the Lord's 
death'' in company with other Christians. But 
X Cor. zz : 27 was in my mind — ** He that eateth 
and drinketh unworthily shall be guilty of the 
body and blood of the Lord." There is a certain 
spot on a certain street in Toronto — I visited it 
the other day — where, during the struggle of 
those days so long ago, my Prince and Saviour 



8 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

m^ me» and as I gazed into the light of His rec- 
onciled countenance I heard Him say, ** You are 
not worthy, but I am. I died, in order that you 
might live/' And I knew I was saved. I had 
seen that face, "perfect in comeliness"; I had 
heard that Divine Shepherd voice, and as He 
had predicted (John 10:3) I followed, and for 
twenty-five years, "to the praise of the glory 
of His grace," I have been ** faintly pursuing." 



CHAPTER II 

How God first Educated, then Called Me to be 

a Missionary 

IN July, z88g, while the call to go to Corea 
was urged upon me» word came from some 
unknown source that the wife of my be- 
loved friend, Dr. J. W. Heron, then unknown 
to me, was lying in jail in Corea, and was to be 
hung for preaching the gospel. This made good 
copy, and the newspapers in the land spread the 
story. 

An old minister of the gospel who preached 
not far from our old home, like other good men, 
was much distressed, and was moved to pray 
about the matter. So, on Sunday morning, before 
his congregation, he prayed in his usual way, 
and told the Lord how terrible was the calamity 
about to come upon His handmaiden. Then he 
said, '^You know. Lord, Corea is an island in 
the Pacific Ocean." I do not write this to make 
the reader laugh, but to point out what ludicrous 



10 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

ideas even intelligent men have about a small 
thing like the situation on the map of a little- 
talked-of country. In common with many others, 
I thought Corea was an island in the Mediter- 
ranean when I first heard of it. Procuring a 
map, I learned that particular island was Corsica, 
and that Corea was a peninsula attached to the 
extremity of Russia in Asia, laved by the waters 
of the Yellow Sea on the one side, and the Japan 
Sea on the other, lying between 35^ and 43^ north 
latitude. 

As to missions, I was wholly ignorant. I had 
a dim sort of an idea that God wanted the gos- 
pel preached to the heathen, and my missionary 
hero was David Livingstone. Pictures, too, had 
impressed me. Whenever missions were men- 
tioned, I saw in my mental gallery a dark- 
visaged, dreadfully solenm-looking individual, 
standing under a palm tree with a Bible in his 
hand and a native holding a peculiar-shaped 
umbrella over his head, while around him were 
gathered the crowds listening to the gospel he 
was preaching. Of course, I supposed that every 
country where a missionary went was hot. I 
never dreamed, therefore, of finding four feet of 
snow in Corea for three months of the year. I 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CORBA xx 

thought that all countries missionaries went to 
had jungles infested with tigers. Thus» for no 
reason, I had Africa mixed up with India. So, 
when I heard there were tigers in Corea, I was 
not surprised. I had heard, after deciding to go 
to this land, that it was all hills, and this proved 
to be correct; also the presence of tigers there 
was soon proven true. But apart from these in- 
teresting facts, I was woefully ignorant of the 
country. It is true that I corre^onded with 
mission boards and had in my possession two 
books about Corea, written by men who never 
saw the country; but somehow I did not seem 
capable of forming an intelligent idea of the land. 
As to how to conduct missions, I was still more 
ignorant. Everything was hazy in my mind. 
When an acquaintance decided to go to Corea, 
and the battle described later in this chapter was 
over, I offered to go with him and hold the um- 
brella over his head while he preached, and to 
play the organ for him, for I thought that, of 
course, a missionary must have an organ—- a 
baby organ. I don't know how I got that idea. 
In reply to this offer, I received the first gleam 
of encouragement. Answering my objection that 
I was not a theological student, he said, ** I would 



la CHURCH OP CHRIST IN CORBA 

rather have you than many theological students 
I know, because you are * bom again * and know 
it'' To another who spoke to me about becoming 
a missionary I made the excuse that I had never 
studied a foreign language, and doubted if I could 
acquire one. This friend said to me, ^'The heathen 
are all afraid of death ; would you be willing to go 
and die for Jesus, as a witness for God to the 
power of the gospel to make a man die 
without fear, in peace ? When these are brought 
to judgment, God could then point to you as His 
witness, in case they rejected Christ, and could 
say to them, ' I sent my servant to you and you 
saw him die in triumph; my Spirit impressed 
upon you that my servant had something you 
needed, but you rejected the testimony, you re- 
jected my Son, who gave my servant this victory 
in death ; even as I now reject you/ *' To this I 
replied, that at least I could do as much as that. 
Having studied year after year with those 
monarchs of Bible study at old Niagara-on-the- 
Lake, where the people attending the conference 
knew not to what denomination the teachers 
belonged, the denominational feature of missions 
was not strong in my mind. The idea of being 
God's witness to every creature and hastening the 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 13 

return of our absent Lord was ever before me 
as the Christian's part. 

At the time when God called me out of darkness 
into the marvelous light of His Son, I was en- 
gaged in business — wholesale hardware busi- 
ness. I was then manager of a warehouse with 
about forty men under me. Later, I was pro- 
moted to the managership of a branch office and 
salesroom in a distant city on the seaboard. At 
the same time, I was studying the Bible at night 
and preaching the gospel wherever there was an 
opening, as a so-called layman preaches. When 
at Niagara Bible Conference the call came to go 
far hence among the Gentiles, I began, as I have 
before intimated, to make excuses. " Lord, you 
know I am only a business man,'' I said. " Go i " 
said He. " But I have not a classical schooling. 
I 'm not a minister. I have never been to a theo- 
logical seminary. Lord." *' Go I " He said again. 
" But I don't want to go," I replied. " Will you 
let me make you willing? " said He. " No," I re- 
plied, " I don't want to be made willing." About 
the third day I said, ** Lord» I 'm not willing, and 
don't want to be, but if you wish to make me will- 
ing to be made willing, why, perhaps I could stand 
for that." That evening I heard Brother Wilder, 



14 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

of India, telling of a man dying of thirst out in 
the desert, crying for waten He said if I took 
him some water in a fine cut glass pitcher and 
handed it to him in a fine cut glass goblet, he 
would appreciate it. But if I had only an old 
rusty, battered can to take it in, he would gladly 
drink and live. It was water he needed. That 
simple illustration made me willing. That settled 
all the educational, theological excuses I had 
made. I could at least be a battered, rusty 
can and carry the life-giving water. But there 
was still one thing holding me back. Not a 
whole lot of things — just one. So Mr. Wilder 
was God's messenger to furnish a story for that 
also. He said: ** A man got in a row-boat and, 
taking the oars, began to pull. After pulling for 
some time, he noticed he was not yet away from 
the shore. Getting up, he went to the stem and 
found that his boat was still tied to the shore 
and hence all his going was useless. Seizing 
a knife, he cut the painter and the first stroke of 
the oars started him off." That fitted my case. 
So the rope was cut and " The Skipper " of Luke 
V, got aboard, and landed me four months later 
safely in Corea. Most captains would have said 
good-bye and perhaps wished their passenger 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 15 

lots of good things; but He didn't. He said, 
^^I'm going with you» and I'm never going to 
leave you. 1 11 be your Shepherd and lead you 
over these Corean hills and through their beauti- 
ful dells." So we went together. He and I, and 
we have had a blessed time. Of course there was 
little I could do, and I was all the time trying to 
get ahead of Him, and to do foolish things, like 
noany another witless sheep. But He who sought 
me ''until" He found me, and, rejoicing, put 
me on His mighty shoulders, never left me, and 
still carries nie all the way. I believe He edu- 
cated me. I believe it was He who kept me near 
the soil and taught me agriculture and horticul- 
ture and commerce; who then sent me to the 
Northwest where I learned frontier life, then 
into a law office where I learned legal procedure, 
and into a business house where I learned practi- 
cal accounting and banking. All this before I 
was bom into the family of God and became a 
discq>le of the Lord Jesus — a part of the body 
of Christ. I was then put to managing men and 
systematizing my work. These last two things 
I consider the greatest factors taught me on 
practical lines — factors in producing economical 
results in foreign missions. 



CHAPTER III 
/ Start Inland 

"The Corean is the cleverest alphabet, the simplest in struc- 
ture, the most consistent, and has the widest phonetic range. 
It was formed five centuries ago." Hulbert. 

THE Corean hills became symbolical of 
the hills of missionary service which 
were just ahead of me. The first hill 
that loomed before me was the language. Fortu- 
nately for me» this hill was so big it hid from 
view more formidable hills which lay beyond. 
During the first ten months of my life in Corea, 
I had conned the text-books and manuals 
seeking in vain to get a grip of the language. 
Gifted with a fairly good memory, I would mem- 
orize two pages of the meaningless jargon until 
I could repeat it correctly in a variety of ways» 
only to find next morning that it had all de- 
parted from me. Old-fashioned reviewing fail- 
ing to lead me farther toward a practical use of 
the language, I broke away from all conventions. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 17 

text-books, English-speaking people and advice, 
and, in order that I might mingle with Coreans 
only, started with some Corean friends for 
Sorai, a village about one hundred and sixty 
miles distant. Passing through the streets of 
Seoul, the capital city, on our way to Sorai, 
mounted on the trusty Corean ponies, we saw 
many strange sights. Beyond the stone tigers 
that guarded the palace entrance and around 
the watch tower built upon the outer wall, there 
were numbers of interesting people and things. 
Outside the gates of the palace, officials' donkeys 
in charge of the grooms stood waiting ; five men 
on one shovel were mixing clay for the con- 
struction of a new wall, proving the strength 
of imity; boys dressed for the occasion were 
going to visit their grandfathers, and one little 
fellow, not so dressed, demonstrated the effect 
of overmuch rice. 

City belles turned their backs or gathered their 
street veils, so their faces could not be seen, 
some of them riding in closed sedan chairs, while 
the other women carried their water buckets, all 
unconscious of their beauty. City dudes lounged 
in groves or rode their prancing chargers. Even 
at this early date (1890) Mr. Rockefeller had 



i8 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CORBA 

secured a market for his coal oil in the hermit 
nation, and the regular water-carriers, who are 
men, profited by the tins the oil was shipped in. 

A long procession of Wood-cutters were coming 
to the city with their bullock loads of pine 
branches, while some used ponies, and others, 
too poor to own a beast of burden, carried huge 
loads on their back-racks. 

Passing through the gates into the open coun- 
try, we f oimd things different. The bright young 
country lads were dressed in country garb, while 
the country belles hid their beauty under hats 
even more ultra than the igio American ladies' 
hats. The country gentleman sat contentedly 
on his porch with his much-loved long pipe. The 
coolies in the fields, strong, splendid-looking fel- 
lows, stopped and gazed at us, while the farmer 
plowed his groimd and did it well, too. Others 
reaped their rice crops in gangs who sang in 
unison the weird choruses of the East. Commu- 
nity of labor has done much for Corea. It les- 
sens the need of cash and exalts the workman 
above the wage. The men, and sometimes the 
women too, weed in gangs, plant their rice and 
other crops, also, in gangs, and work right mer- 
rily to a tune. The Coreans are the most tireless 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 19 

of workers. Their custom of working in gangs 
is similar to the exchange of labor which pre- 
vailed in American farming districts during pio- 
neer days, as illustrated, for example, by the 
logging-bee. 

Mjniads of game flocked fearlessly to the 
traveler's fowling-piece. Corea, in those days, 
could scarcely be called a sportsman's paradise, 
as there was no huntii^ to do. I have seen the 
water black for three miles with five varieties of 
ducks, and wild geese in such flocks as darkened 
the air when they rose in countless numbers from 
the '^ paddie-fields," while the Mongolian pheas- 
ant, Asiatic swan, wild turkey, red deer and stag 
were in abundance. Larger game, such as the 
wild boar, black bear, leopard and tiger could be 
found in plenty in the hills. No finer climate can 
be imagined than Corea affords during the Au- 
tumn season; the country was particularly in- 
teresting all along the way to Sorai, and we made 
the one hundred and sixty odd miles very pleas- 
antly in six days. 

As the quarters available in the village were 
very tiny — no room larger than seven feet square 
to be had — we decided to build a small house, 
but this could not be undertaken until the follow- 



20 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

ing Spring, so we got along as well as we could 
in our cramped quarters. 

Our two hosts, Mr. Ann and Mr. Saw, were 
intimate with each other, but being gentlemen, 
had adhered strictly to the custom of the coun- 
try, and each had never spoken to the other's 
wife, though the wives were also intimate friends, 
and for years had visited in their respective 
homes. The Western teacher was, as yet, very 
ignorant of the Corean customs, and so insisted 
that the gentlemen bring their wives to meet the 
missionary and become acquainted themselves, 
if they were, as they professed to be. Christians. 
They acquiesced without much . objection, and 
that night the two women, each about fifty years 
old, not only spoke to a white man for the first 
time, but for the first time in their lives spoke 
to a Corean gentleman other than a member 
of their individual households. 

My friends in Toronto and Detroit had sent 
me a box, so I was prepared to do the honors. 
I do not remember what these Corean ladies 
thought of my rather elaborate "spread," but 
I shall never forget how thoroughly they enjoyed 
the fruit-cake, which was one of the richest I had 
ever tasted, for I was somewhat alarmed as to 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 2z 

the probable effect of the wholesale manner in 
which they partook of it. Years afterward, I 
learned the fact that their carrying off all that 
remained of the feast, that night, was, according 
to their custom, a compliment to me. 

There was no organized work in the village; 
so I got a class of boys together, and, as one of 
my hostesses, Mrs. Ann, was the only woman in 
the village who could read, I was proud when she 
promised to teach the women and girls. I wanted 
to sing in Corean and get the people singing. 
This could not be done until the hynms were 
translated. I somewhat dreaded this task, as 
my vocabulary was so limited. But there came 
to my mind the thought contained in the wise 
saying of a friend, back in the homeland: '^Is 
there an}rthing you dread? Make it dread you," 
and I succeeded in translating the simple hymns 
'' Jesus Loves Me " and '' I Am So Glad " with 
little di£Eiculty. But when I attempted Ogden's 
^'Look and Live" my first real battle was on 
with Corean custom as expressed by Corean lan- 
guage. The sentence " Life is offered unto you " 
caused the trouble. There was no word in the 
Corean language for ''offer" except the one 
used in connection with a servant offering some- 



22 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

thing to his master or a subject making an offer- 
ing to his king. *^ That will never do/' said three 
or four of my Corean friends at once. ^'Why 
not? ** I asked. " Why, it humbles the great and 
holy God to the position of a menial servant, and 
exalts worms of the dust like us to a high place.'' 
''But is not that the truth of the gospel?'' 
"No, no, that cannot be so." "Ah, friends," 
said I, " you do err, not knowing the Scriptures." 
"But," persisted these children of the East, so 
pitifully uninstructed in the Word of Life, "no 
one 'offers' an}rthing to another except a ser- 
vant, or a subject to his king." " I quite imder- 
stand, now, this custom of your country," I 
replied, " but God has said to us, ' My thoughts 
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my 
ways ' ; and if His own word places Him in the 
position of a servant bringing to us eternal life, 
there is nothing for us to do but to humbly and 
gratefully accept His wondrous grace. Shall we 
follow the custom of your coimtry or the teaching 
of the King of the Universe?" Still, with im- 
movable obstinacy, they answered me, "It will 
never do to say that God takes the position of a 
servant. Quite impossible to believe." 
Opening the Chinese Bible at Philippians ii, I 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 23 

asked them to read verses 6-1 1 from the last 
words of verse 5, " Christ Jesus, who, being in the 
form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal 
with God: but made Himself of no reputation, 
and took upon Him the form of a servant, and 
was made in the likeness of men: and being found 
in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and 
became obedient imto death, even the death of 
the cross/' Having previously given them Ro- 
mans 6 : 23, 1. c. ** The gift of God is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord," I hoped that they 
might grasp the marvelous truth of these Scrip- 
tures; but although they were professed Chris- 
tians, subsequent history revealed them to be 
merely religious, and that Satan had blinded their 
mind9 lest the light of the gospel of the glory of 
Christ should shine unto them. Custom was 
more to them than the gospel, ^* the natural man *' 
being the same the world over. I finally said, 
" Gentlemen, the Scriptures declare that the Son 
of God took upon Him the form of a servant and 
stands today stretching out two hands, as your 
servants do to their masters, * offering ' unto you 
eteij^al life as a free gift for your acceptance. 
You may not comprehend His love; you may 
spurn the gift, but do not ask me to deny the 



24 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

great fact that the Lord of Glory still waits before 
us though we are but worms of the dust, as you 
have said; and once more I declare to you in 
His name and in the words of this hynm: 

" Life is ' offered ' unto you ! Hallelujah I 
God ' offers ' it to you." 

This occasion gave me the glad privilege of 
adding to the Corean vocabulary the above joyous 
Hebrew exclamation, the existence for which 
there had never been any use until Christ was 
made known to them. 

My practice of the language, in Sorai, was to 
give the Coreans a copy of the Chinese Bible, 
while I took the English Bible myself. By noting 
the number of chapters, I was able to distinguish 
one book from another, and got my teacher to 
write in my English Bible in the Corean sylla- 
bery, the name of each book. I next learned the 
words for chapter and verse. I had already 
learned the numerals. So, taking up an English- 
Chinese dictionary of the language, I found 
the word, for instance, for *' atonement,'' and 
asked the Coreans to turn to Leviticus 17:11, 
that together we might study the subject of the 
atonement. Their wonderful patience and the 
large dictionary, plus a little perseverance on my 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 25 

part, enabled me to make them comprehend that 
the following verse contains the great secret of 
the atonement — " The Life of the flesh is in the 
blood ; and I have given it to you upon the altar, 
to make an atonement for your souls/' They 
imderstood, I learned later, what a sacrifice meant, 
better than the American or Britisher, and the 
fact doubtless helped me. In this way we went 
from passage to passage searching out what God 
hath said about the atonement. When through 
with this subject, we took up another. Two 
months later, when I returned to Seoul, I found 
myself thinking in Corean. So truly was this the 
case that for several days, when speaking in 
English to a friend, I would think of the Corean 
word first and wonder what was its equivalent 
in English. Having been banished from English- 
speaking people, and having lived day and night 
among the Coreans who spoke no language but 
their own, in two short months the idiom, which 
is the backbone of any language, had been indel- 
ibly, though unconsciously, fixed in my mind, 
without cost or effort to myself, except a tem- 
porary lack of comfort and fellowship. The 
balance of my^tudy, which still continues, is a 
mere adding of words to my vocabulary. 



26 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

A few days after my return to the capital, I 
sat talking with the first and oldest Christian 
Corean, and was showing him my translation of 
the h3rmn ** Life for a Look." I asked his opinion 
of it. He read it through verse by verse, saying, 
'^Choso" (good), until, like the men of Sorai, 
he came to the word '' offer." Then he, as they, 
stopped short and said that would never do~- 
it was awful, it was putting God in the humili- 
ating position of a servant. There followed prac- 
tically the same prolonged discussion as had taken 
place in Sorai, when, reminding this beloved 
Corean brother that he had forgotten Philippians 
2: 6-1 1, I asked him to look it up and read it. 
He did so, and after pondering for a while the 
wonderful truth of this passage, he said quietly, 
^' Thank you, shepherd." Then followed a few 
moments of delightful communion, as the yellow 
man and the white man met together in Christ 
and talked of the amazing grace and condescen- 
sion of our God. While conversing thus, a young 
man, the teacher of my host, who was a mis- 
sionary, came in, and as all writings not hidden 
away are common property in Corea, he immedi- 
ately began reading the h3rmn. Not a word of 
comment followed until he too reached the word 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 27 

*' offer." Then» just as the others had done, he 
became greatly excited and indignant. I sat still 
and let the Corean brother answer him. The 
Testament still being open at Philippians ii» the 
older brother held it out to him and said, ** Have 
you seen this? " In silence the young man read 
and as silently walked away. As he opened the 
door, he turned, and two big tears rolled down 
his cheeks as he said» ** Choom poasso " (" I have 
seen it for the first time "). This emphasized ex- 
perience with the hymn caused me to realize 
fully that I had already started over the hill of 
** custom " which was long and steep and difficult 
to climb. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Stupid Westerner Studies the Coreans 

and Learns They Ideally Know 

Something in the East 



«< 




OONGSOK" (custom), "yea" (prin- 
ciples and practice), and "pop" (un- 
written law), these three; but the 
greatest of these is " pop." All three are inter- 
woven in the general and specific affairs of the 
people, and the terms are frequently interchange- 
able in their vocabulary. They are, in fact, 
usually grouped together by English-speaking 
people under the one word "custom." This, 
however, I am persuaded, is a careless mistake 
on the part of the Coreans, as these three terms 
are capable of being distinctly classified. 

" Poongsok " means, literally, the customs of the 
country with regard to the ordinary doings of 
everyday life. It is a thing hoary with antiquity, 
and therefore sacred to the man of the East. For 
example, it is the custom in Corea to eat rice 
and wear yellow for mourning. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 29 

** Yea " would be placed in our Western cate- 
gory under the head of Constitution and By- 
laws — the distinctive difference being that in 
the East "yea" is unwritten, though it is none 
the less to be observed on that account. Because 
it is unwritten, it comes under the head of " the 
word of a gentleman." " Yea " is a generally ac- 
knowledged, voluntary adherence to certain fixed 
forms, with almost never a departure from this, 
on the part of man, woman or child. 

"Pop" has to do with all legal procedures 
and transactions, great or small, from the price 
you pay a coolie for carrying your baggage, to 
the life or death of a criminal. " Pop " is the 
strongest word in the Corean language. To say 
it is the " pop " of your country, or the " pop " 
of your house, is to put an end to all controversy. 
And the exclamation " What kind of a * pop ' is 
that?" or "Whoever heard tell of a *pop* like 
that ! " is one of the most scathing things one 
man can say to another. Corea is not a country 
of bonds and agreements. Apart from deeds of 
freehold property and cash notes and marriage 
settlements, there are few agreements in writing. 
It is a land where in regard to anything pertain- 
ing to " pop " the phrase " His word is as good 



30 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

as his bond" has a chance to prevail. This 
phrase refers to business, while the similar phrase 
used in relation to ^* yea " in a previous paragraph 
refers to etiquette. There is no word for ** busi- 
ness/' however, in the Corean language; hence, 
all business transactions come under this unwrit- 
ten " pop " code. A deed is not to bind the man 
who sells, but a voucher given to the buyer that 
he is honest. A cash note is to enable the receiver 
to use it in advance of the cash to settle a claim 
against himself and save his '^face"; while a 
marriage certificate is not for the wife's benefit, 
nor because the bride's father is to be doubted, 
but that the bridegroom may have something to 
show to the world that he is not a rascal — a 
** face-saver " for him. It is issued by the bride's 
parents and the go-between. 

There has never been a written code of laws in 
Corea until within the last two years. 

In " pop," as in " poongsok " and ** yea," ** face " 
reigns. ^^Face" is the exact opposite of the 
Golden Rule. In the language of David Harum, 
it is ** Do to others as they do to you and do it 
fust." '' Face " is the A to Z of the ethics of the 
Orient. If you add to ** face " the custom of the 
Samurai (the Japanese nobility) of committing 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 31 

** harikiri " (suicide) you have the philosophy of 
Japan. Whenever one fails to accomplish any 
important thing he undertakes, he has lost his 
** face/' or so-called Japanese honor, and can only 
regain it by committing suicide. This is the 
secret of Japan's boasted bravery. It is not 
bravery at all as we understand bravery — it 
is religion with him, the brass rule of which is 
" face." What I have written will give the reader 
an idea how steep and high is this hill of custom. 
Not having been described in the writings of the 
people, it is peculiarly illusive to the white man 
of the Western world. We are in the habit of 
meaning what we say, and of admiring the man 
who can express himself most directly, yet courte- 
ously. Asiatics are in the habit of ''beating 
around the bush"; of not meaning what they 
say, always fearful that they will say something 
which will lose their ** face," and of admiring the 
man who will, with the greatest courtesy, steal 
the other fellow's ** face " and save his own. The 
Confucianist points with great admiration and 
glee to his master's skill in this direction. It is 
stated that on one occasion it became a question 
of great diplomacy between Confucius and a high 
official as to which should give the other ** face," 



32 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

and call first. It ended by the official paying 
** face " to the great sage. He was very courte- 
ously received and treated. When he left, how- 
ever, ordinarily he would have been accompanied 
to the front gate and perhaps escorted a little 
distance on his way. Confucius was bent on 
stealing the official's '^face.'' So he said good- 
bye in the audience hall, and quickly seizing 
a stringed instrument began to play, thus show- 
ing in a clever way his contempt for the official, 
and very neatly stealing his ** face." A Westerner 
might easily have misunderstood this act of Con- 
fucius, and might have been flattered by what 
seemed to be an effort on the part of the great 
man to entertain his departing guest. 

Leaving Seoul the following Spring, I returned 
to Sorai, carrying a hamper for the Sununer's 
supply, also some garden seeds sent me by my 
Detroit brother, and cuttings from the gardens 
of American residents in the Capital, including 
several varieties of fruits and flowers. We soon 
had a flourishing vegetable garden near the se- 
lected house site. After our little house was 
built, we got a dozen or more bull-carts and 
hauled earth from two miles out on the plain, 
which we piled three feet deep on the bare rock 



THE TRYSTING GROVE WHERE PRAYER WAS MADE. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 33 

in front of the door. When this was surrounded 
by a stone wall we had an ideal place for a flower 
garden, which we quickly planted, and had the 
satisfaction of seeing it thrive amazingly. 

Not so with the spiritual garden. 

With the exception of Mrs. Ann, the place 
seemed devoid of all spiritual life. A number 
came on Sunday to church, 'tis true, but, like 
some we have seen in other countries, church 
attendance seemed to be the beginning and the 
end of their experience. Satan befools a great 
many people by making them religious, and so 
lures them on to destruction. ** He that hath the 
Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath 
not life." Christianity is not a religion. It is a 
Person — the Christ — who is all in all. My lone- 
liness drove me to the solitude of a beautiful 
grove near by, which was one of the regular 
groves attached to all villages for the sacrifice 
to and worship of demons. There I told my Lord 
all my sorrow, and pleaded that this lovely spot 
might be taken from Satan and given to Him. 

While the vegetable garden was being made, it 
shocked the people a bit to see a Western teacher 
take off his coat and work. According to Eastern 
ideas, a teacher or gentleman must never on any 



34 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

account labor with his hands. It almost makes 
one wonder if the classes in the West did not bor- 
row their exclusive notions from the heathen. 
Out of a crowd of fifty or more, only three of us 
worked — two hired Coreans and myself. The 
soil was good but freely mixed with small stones, 
and had never been loosened deep enough to 
make a mulch that would stand a drouth. So we 
dug it fourteen inches deep and threw out all the 
stones. Then we gave it proper fertilization. I 
had my first experience of Corean conservatism 
later in the Autumn. Although my Corean ac- 
quaintances admired and praised the splendid 
growth of the large crop of vegetables in my 
garden, which contained the best Western varie- 
ties, when I asked them to let me order seed for 
them, I learned to my chagrin that away down in 
their hearts they considered our products very 
inferior to their ovm, and when urged, they 
plainly told me they wouldn't give the seed 
garden-room though I bought it and gave it to 
them. 

Ungrateful, slow, stupid people ! you say. Not 
80. It was I, the Westerner, who was stupid. 
For I learned later that the beans, for instance, 
which they refused to replace with Western seed. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 35 

were the '^soy" variety, since become famous 
in America, then unknown in the West, and now 
regarded by experts the richest cereal on earth, 
to say nothing of the value of the plant for 
making hay richer than alfalfa. 

The Coreans taught me in many ways that 
we of the West do not know everything; and 
the Easterner usually has a good practical reason 
for what he does, generally well adapted to his 
circuipstances and always economical. This fact 
was well illustrated during the Russo* Japan war, 
when the Japanese army put up horse stables in 
a few moments — our Western reporters looking 
on in open-eyed amazement — and put up bridges 
almost while they walked over them. Their 
strong rice-straw rope, which we would scorn to 
use for any purpose^ was the secret I have yet 
to meet a Corean of any rank who could not make 
straw rope. For any man or boy to be unable to 
do so is considered one of the greatest disgraces 
of the country. Custom again! 

In Japan it is the same. The knowledge and 
practice of the Japanese soldiers from their youth, 
of tying anything and everything together with 
straw rope instead of using nails and bolts, as we 
do, simplified matters for the army. A rice-field 



36 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

or a farmer's stack furnished material for the 
rope, a grove or limoiber pile produced the poles, 
while the reed mats, to be had everywhere in Asi- 
atic countries, supplied the roofing for soldiers' 
quarters and horse stables. And the quick multi- 
plication of these made the wonder picture, with 
the proverbial few strokes of the artists, for our 
" tender-foot " newspaper men. 

After leaving Sorai at this, the second time, it 
was decided to open up work on the east coast of 
Corea, at Wonsan, where as yet no Protestant 
mission was located. This undertaking and a 
visit to the homeland intervened, filling six years 
of time, before I could again see the village of my 
first work in Corea. 

During the interim, Mr. McKenzie of Nova 
Scotia had gone there and occupied the house 
for about a year, and had, I trust, found the gar- 
den very useful and homelike. The "Tong 
Haks " (Eastern Doctrine Society), a weird band 
of Coreans not unlike the Boxers of China, hav- 
ing taken advantage of the opportunity created 
by the China- Japan war, were, at this time, mak- 
ing themselves obnoxious to the people in the 
Sorai district. This circimistance proved God's 
opportunity, and Mr. McKenzie was brought into 



MR. HcKENZIE'S GRAVE. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 37 

such tender favor with the people that they 
brought their goods to him for safe-keeping, pil- 
ing them around his house, over which he ran up 
a British flag and another of his own designing — 
a red cross in a white background. This has since 
been known throughout Corea as the flag of the 
Christian Church. Several times word came that 
the " Tong Haks " were coming to kill Mr. Mc- 
Kenzie and massacre the village that had shel- 
tered him. Bravely and wisely, however, he 
finally visited their camp, and by means of a 
quiet good-natured talk with these outlaws he 
dispelled their ill-feeling toward the white man 
and his mission. The property entrusted to the 
missionary was saved, and Mr. McKenzie could 
have anything he wanted in Sorai section within 
the gift of a grateful people. After this, Mr. 
McKenzie was taken ill with the deadly Corean 
fever, one hundred and sixty miles from the 
nearest white people, and triimiphantly passed to 
his reward. 

He used to say he was only doing a little weed- 
ing — that others had been there and planted the 
seed, and he was only cultivating the field. His 
herculean body never rested, the people said. He 
just went from village to village and was good to 



38 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

everybody. When he fell asleep, the people for 
many miles around mourned for him, and buried 
him with the greatest honors. Noble man! He 
did not live to see his prayers answered or his 
devotion rewarded, but we who remain have seen 
God's abundant response to his sacrifice. 




CHAPTER V 

Two Types: ''Then I Will Go to Hell wUh 

My Ancestors''; ''God Has Had 

Mercy on this Sinner '' 

,HE Spring following Mr. McKenzie's 
death, I returned from America to Won- 
san. It was the time of the Russo- Japan 
war, and Japanese pickets guarded their settlement 
in Wonsan, which I was obliged to pass through 
to reach my place. The steamer I arrived on 
being loaded with ammunition for the army, re- 
mained three miles out from the landing. At 
three o'clock in the morning I got off with the 
mail boat, and, thanks to an acquaintance with 
the mail clerk, got into the city without being 
shot. It was more difficult to get past the sentry 
going out of the settlement; but an explanation 
^in the Japanese language that I was a resident of 
Wonsan caused them to lower the rifles they had 
so promptly cocked when they called ''Halt!'* 
and to let me pass. It was intensely dark. After 



40 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

feeling my way around the orchard to see how 
large the trees had grown which I had planted be- 
fore leaving for home, I went to a missionary 
friend's house, and calling to him in the Corean 
language was taken for a Russian. No amount of 
pleading in the Corean tongue would gain admit- 
tance for the tall man wearing a Tennyson over- 
coat, but when I said in English, '' Oh, come along 
and open the gate," about thirty seconds sufficed 
to receive me into the bosom of the family, where 
my little friends peeped out of cradles and cribs, 
and one little cherub I had not hitherto seen was 
put into my arms by the proud mother. 

Though natiu'ally anxious to see Sorai again, it 
was impossible to go before Winter. The snow 
usually comes about Christmas time in Wonsan, 
and it was necessary to get to the other side of 
the mountains before it fell, or nothing save snow- 
shoes would suffice to cross. The Coreans use a 
round snow-shoe about one foot in diameter, made 
of a five-eighths inch bent withe, laced with deer 
thongs. To avoid the hardship of climbing steep 
mountain passes through deep snow, the lesser 
hardship of declining Christmas dinners in Won- 
san became necessary. The twenty-fifth of De- 
cember found me in the hills, greeted by the fast 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 41 

falling snow-flakesy with my faithful ''boy/' as 
personal attendants are called in the East. We 
were a bit lonely, I expect, but when we reached 
a village in the mountains, where hitherto the 
name of Jesus had not been proclaimed, and two 
men turned from idols to serve the living God and 
to wait for His Son from Heaven, we had a 
Christmas feast in the company of the redeemed 
that angels coveted. 

A long detour to the northwest and down the 
Yellow Sea shore brought us to a standstill sixty 
miles from Sorai. Pony's hind legs began to 
''wobble," and finally he could not go another 
step. Too much millet straw will kill a horse, 
while cows thrive splendidly upon it. An appeal 
to the village, where our horse's strength failed, 
brought, as it always does in Corea, that ready 
hospitality to the stranger which reminds us of 
the Arab whose blood is supposed to be in Corean 
veins. The best house was immediately placed at 
our disposal, and also, what is a rare find in that 
country, a comfortable stable for our broken-down 
steed. Three days' delay gave us a splendid op- 
porttmity to give to this village the story of re- 
deeming love. On the third day our host said, 
" Do you mean to tell me that there is no other 



42 CHURCH OF CI^RIST IN COREA 

name given among men whereby we must be 
saved? " I replied, " That is what God declares," 
and showed him Acts 4 : 12. " Then what is to 
become of those who never heard of this Jesus 
whom you preach?" God help me! I could 
only quote, " Shall not the Judge of all the earrth 
do right?" '*But what does God say of those 
who never heard of Him, even? " I quoted from 
Romans ii, and after his further insistence I 
quoted Psalms 9:17, and left him to decide 
whether they were wicked or not. Then he 
stormed, **My ancestors died without believing 
in Jesus — never heard of Him. If they have 
gone to hell, I will go with them." I leave' the 
reader to imagine my feelings. 

Pony could walk again, and another day's jour- 
ney brought us to the divide separating us from 
Sorai. To cross the divide meant a journey of 
ten miles ; to walk around by way of the seashore 
was thirty miles. '' No man can get through the 
snow," the villagers said. " But I 'm a Canadian 
and used to snow," I replied. " Can't be done," 
was their stolid answer. A short climb through 
the deep snow and we struck a wood-cutter's 
trail, where the Winter's supply of fuel is skidded 
down the hills on a sleigh not imlike the Red In- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 43 

dians' drag. When near the top of the beautiful 
\ pass, where rocks and evergreens, snow and rush- 
ing torrent combined to make a scene of rare love- 
linesSy we met a little boy carrying a foreign 
hand-satchel. Wondering whose this could be, 
we inquired and found it belonged to the son of 
a magistrate of my acquaintance. When he came 
up, we leame^d that the people of Sorai were all 
well and that Mr. Ann and Mr. Saw were behind 
him. Climbing on top of a huge boulder, I dis- 
covered my two friends just coming over the 
ridge. I shouted, '' Who goes there? " and catch- 
ing sight of me they came tumbling down pell- 
mell through the snow and took me in their arms. 
Their bright faces told their story. Mr. Saw's 
first word was, *' Since you were here God has 
had mercy on this sinner," smiting his breast, 

« 

**and pardoned my sins; and on that sinner," 
pointing to Mr. Ann, "and pardoned his sins, 
and our whole village has been brought to 
Christ." 

Mr. Ann having to go on to the magistracy, he 
made Mr. Saw, who returned with me, promise 
to take me in to see. Mrs. Ann. " Because you 
know," said he, " she has prayed so longingly for 
six years that the Father would send her teacher 



44 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

back.'' When we reached her home Mr. Saw 
called to her. She came feebly into the court, for 
she was an invalid* leaning heavily on her staff. 
Seeing me, she came forward, and, taking my 
hands, looked heavenward, saying, " Now lettest 
Thou Thine handmaid depart in peace, since Thou 
hast heard my prayer and sent back my teacher." 
I have often thought of this scene, and am always 
sure that it was plenty reward for any cost which 
the winning of such a jewel for the Master's dia- 
dem had entailed. 

Passing on to the lower village, I caught sight 
of the grove where prayer had been made that 
the worship of demons, to which it was dedicated, 
might be stopped and the grove be given over to 
the worship of Him whom demons hate. There, 
in front of its stately trees, I saw a beautiful tiled 
church erected by the redeemed village, and at 
prayer-meeting that night I had the unspeakable 
joy of leading three hundred brothers and sisters 
in Christ in prayer and praise. Two weeks of 
Bible study followed, consisting of morning and 
afternoon sessions with the men, and evening 
sessions with the women in Mrs. Ann's home, 
Mrs. Ann herself having been largely influential 
in winning these women to Christ. 



THERE STOOD A BEAUTIFUL CHURCH BUILT 

BY THE REDEEMED VILLAGE, WHERE 

ONCE DEMONS WERE WORSHIPPED. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 45 

About the twelfth day I took one of my old 
friends aside and said to him, " Do you realize 
that God is not working in our meetings? There 
is not one particle of unction so far as I can dis- 
cover. Now, there can be only one reason. No 
niunber of sinners, no matter how vile, can hin- 
der the Holy Spirit's working, but it only takes 
two believers hating one another to stop Him. 
Now tell me, who among the believers here are 
hating one another? He broke down and cried, 
telling me a pitiful story (all such stories are piti- 
ful) of how he and two others were hating one 
another. When asked if he would ask God's for- 
giveness and then go and ask theirs, he said he 
would. We knelt in prayer while he got right 
with God, and then he started out to make it 
right with his brothers. One of these was shoe- 
ing my pony. It was delightful to see my friend's 
efforts to help him, by handing tools, holding the 
horse's foot, etc. When opportunity afforded, 
he confessed his fault of not loving these two 
brothers to both of them, and the next day, 
being Sunday, the break came, when three hun- 
dred disciples broke down and wept before the 
Lord as one of their restored number addressed 
them. 



46 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

Telling a brother missionary, the Rev. A. P. 
Appenzeller, of this scene a few days later, he 
said with a great heartache, " Brother, I would 
walk a thousand miles to see one Corean weep- 
ing like that for sin. I have not yet seen 



one." 



The people begged me to remain and be 
their pastor, offering to pay me a salary, build 
me a larger house, provide me with servants, and 
work with me for the salvation of the lost. But 
during my absence another mission had assumed 
responsibility for this work, and it has been one 
long regret that fear of a complication was greater 
in me at that time than willingness to walk into an 
open door with God. 

Fourteen years later, as I write, I am con- 
vinced that had I obeyed God's call at that time, 
instead of heeding conventionalities, a mighty 
work of grace would have started in the land 
by this people prepared of the Lord. Peace 
may sometimes be purchased at too high a 
price. 

When the time came to go, the people refused 
to let me go alone but outfitted and sent their 
choicest young man with me to be trained for 
the ministry, besides giving me a comfortable 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 47 

purse for publishing tracts, and accompanied me 
ten miles on my return journey. 

The two following Sundays were spent speak- 
ing of the love that never faileth to my brother 

I missionaries in the capital, and renewing old and 

I delightful acquaintances. 



'\ ' 



CHAPTER VI 

The Enormous Task of Understanatng 

the People 

STUDENTS from the West, whose lot is 
cast in Corea, would like to know who 
the Coreans are, and what is their origin. 
We do not know. There is some evidence to show 
that they are of Mongolian origin, with a sprink- 
ling of Arab blood, but not enough to be sure. 
The Arabs traded in Corea between the seventh 
and ninth centuries, and seem to have left some of 
their customs behind them. Falconing, as prac- 
ticed by the Arabs, even the training of birds and 
their selection, is exactly the same as in Corea. 
The wonderful hospitality of the Coreans is akin 
to that of the sons of Ishmael. 

Their appearance differs from the Chinese, and 
is totally different from the Japanese, as they are 
much larger in stature than the Japanese, better 
developed physically, stronger intellectually, and 
without any trace of the cruel Malay blood which 
abounds in the latter. The Corean is shrewd, with 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 49 

an intellect capable of acquiring almost any lesson 
set him; inventive, a hard worker, able to endure 
an almost superhuman amount of toil and hard- 
ship, with a vigor akin to the animals of the wild, 
which, being the fittest, have survived. A Corean 
does not count his children until they have had 
the smallpox. Their ethics are largely based on 
those of Confucius, and it is a fact, which in all 
fairness must be stated, that apart from Christ 
the civilization of China and Corea has done 
more, very much more, for the peace and hap- 
piness of the race as a whole, than the civil- 
ization of the West. Slow hand labor has 
done more for mankind than get-rich-quick ma- 
chinery. It is, in my opinion, very far from 
desirable that the East should have the civili- 
zation of the West. A bow and arrow in the 
hands of a savage will do less harm than a " civ- 
ilized,'' "up-to-date," automatic, repeating rifle. 
The breach-loading cannons Admiral Rogers 
found in Corea in 1872, being made of wood, 
were not as effective as our muzzle-loading, metal 
cannons, therefore the Coreans were driven from 
their fort. A sleepy, slow man of the East may 
not be able to kill as many men made in God's 
image, with his old jingal, as a wide-awake Amer- 



V 



50 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

ican with his gatling gun, or a German with his 
Krupp; but the advantage to the ''awakened'' 
Easterner is doubtful. So-called " progress " may 
make a '' diamond match " in a very interesting 
and unique way by machinery, but it is tb be 
questioned whether the sulphurous fumes of the 
modem match factory are in advance of the fire 
in the open, where primitive man made shavings 
on a stick which he dipped in a little sulphur for 
lighting fires. Flint-striking and stick-rubbing 
had their advantages too. There were, at least, 
no quarrels in those days between capital and 
labor, and work, good honest work, has always 
tended to happiness. But it is not so much a 
study of the natural ability of the Oriental which 
is difficult ; the difficult thing is to acquire a work- 
ing knowledge of his process of thinking; to learn, 
unmistakably, his opinion of the barbarian from 
the West, who dares to presume to teach a mighty 
yellow man. While treating you with every mark 
of courtesy, and even smiling, perhaps bowing, 
tQQ, his inner attitude is one of disgust, of de- 
spising, of loathing the white man. He sajrs to 
himself, " The white man is rude; he is arrogant; 
h6 does not know how to e£Face himself ; he smells 
of soap." And in comparison with the Oriental, 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 51 

this is all true of the Occidental. The Westerner 
is in too big a hurry to be courteous. They of 
the East take time. The life-long study of the 
Oriental has been how he may efface himself when 
meeting or dealing with another. That can 
scarcely be said of the sons of Japheth. The Ori- 
entals say that the odor of soap which we have 
is very offensive to them. Their dress is sensible, 
picturesque, artistic, economical and comfortable. 
Ours is none of these. It has the one recommen- 
dation of permitting the wearer to move more 
quickly, and fits well on a people everlastingly in 
a hurry. 

This chapter can only point out another enor- 
mous hill for the Westerner to climb, if he would 
successfully make his way in the East. It does 
not pretend to analyze the difficulties of this hill, 
a hill bigger, much bigger, than the " language '' 
hill, steeper and harder to climb than the ** cus- 
tom ** hill. If it points to the faot that more than 
an alpenstock is needed to climb this mountain 
which lies directly across the path of the man of 
the West who would succeed in the East, its place 
in this book will not be wasted. Beyond this hill 
lie rivers, lakes, seas and oceans to cross, and the 
swimming is good. 



N 



CHAPTER VII 

The Foolishness of Preaching 

IT is, of course, taken for granted that a mis- 
sionary is a new man in Christ Jesus, wise 
unto salvation, with a fair working knowl- 
edge of the Bible and a passion for souls. When 
he has crossed the three hills of Language, Cus- 
tom and People, he is usually considered ready 
for his work. He has then arrived at the stream 
of preaching the gospel. It is not meant to con- 
vey the idea that no souls are won before these 
three hills are crossed. My first fish, I was per- 
mitted to catch long before I had crossed the 
language hill. But when a missionary gets a 
working knowledge of language, custom and peo- 
ple, he is supposed to be qualified for preaching. 
Successful preachers have found it necessary to 
have an atmosphere created in which to speak 
their message. 

Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman claims that Mr. Alexan- 
der does this for him with the Gospel Songs. The 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 53 

people are sung into a willingness to hear the 
message. Now, what is to be done with the 
crowd before us? Race antipathy, which is in us 
all, I think, is most deeply seated in the Easterner. 
Not only the things already mentioned, but the 
hoary antiquity of their genealogy, their igno- 
rance of the things beyond their shores, and the 
strangeness of your message combined with that 
natural hostility to a man of another race, — all 
these are busy working against the white teacher. 
It is true that He whom we preach unto them is 
able to overcome all obstacles. When Cornelius 
did not know what to do, our Lord sent a mes- 
senger all the way from Heaven to tell him how 
he could hear the " words whereby he should be 
saved." God's arm was not shortened then, and is 
not now. He would surely repeat this if neces- 
sary, but seeing we have no record of His having 
done so since Cornelius was favored, it behooves 
us to find out His method of working now. Paul 
explains God's present method by saying, ''It 
pleased God through the foolishness of preaching 
to save them that believe." 

So we have arrived at our first river. 

How are we going to get across? There is no 
modem ferryboat and no steel cantilever bridge. 



54 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

We must get across by ** the foolishness of preach- 
ing." I shall never forget how hard I tried to 
cross. Sunday after Sunday, month after month, 
I labored and pleaded, and testified in tears to the 
love of God in Christ, and to the peace Jesus 
brought to my soul, when, having washed my sins 
in His precious blood. He came. Himself, to abide 
with me and take charge of all my small affairs. 

The people laughed at me, and said that was 
all well enough for me, a Westerner, but they 
were Coreans. In vain I pleaded that Jesus would 
do as much for them. That was the very thing 
they did not want. They would rather be like the 
meanest Corean alive than like me. And if this 
Jesus I talked so much about was likely to make 
them into such a being as this white barbarian 
before them, the best thing they could do was to 
have nothing whatever to do with Jesus. 

I shall never forget, therefore, with what glad« 
ness I met a Corean believer from the place where 
I had formerly lived. ** Mr. Kim," I eagerly said, 
" you are coming to my place to-morrow to tell the 
people what great things the Lord has done for 
you. I have told them, and told them again and 
again what Jesus has done for me, but they just 
laugh. You come and tell them what He has 4one 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 55 

for you/' Mr. Kim promised, and the next day 
appeared; When called upon, he opened his Chi- 
nese New Testament and laid his hand lovingly 
upon it, saying : '' Elder Brothers, this is God's 
word. Believe it. It is not like man's words. This 
is written by the Holy Spirit of God. I presume 
you are much like I was when I first read this Holy 
Book. My teacher (Rev. F. Ohlinger) told me I 
could not understand this with my reason; that 
the Holy Spirit who made the Book would have 
to teach me, and that He would do so if I asked 
God for Jesus' sake. So I commenced to pray 
and read. Had anyone told me that I was a 
sinner, I would have fought him. It is true, I 
did not get drunk, or steal, or commit adul- 
tery. After reading this Book for a while, I 
began to have a strange feeling of tmeasiness 
and unhappiness, which I could not account 
for. It occurred to me that perhaps I had better 
pray harder and read more. I did so, but the tm- 
easiness increased. I began to believe myself a 
great sinner, and was very unhappy. One day while 
pra}ang, the heaviness of spirit all left me, and I 
was made happy, with a satisfied sense that God 
had forgiven all my sins for His only Son's 
sake." 



S6 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

I saw how this testimony gripped the people 
as mine never had done ; just as the testimonies of 
redeemed outcasts and drunkards in the rescue 
missions of Western lands take hold of the poor 
feUow who is ''down and out" when the mes- 
sage of an up-town man fails to touch him. Even 
as many miserable men have believed ''Teddy 
Mercer " because he has " played the game/' so 
these Corean sinners listened that day to Mr. Kim, 
because he too was a Corean sinner like them- 
selves, and God had saved him and comforted him 
and made him happy. 

Strange to say, however, I did not then realize 
that I should have such native Christians to do the 
preaching, largely, for me. I was in the stream, 
breasting the current, frantically trying to swim 
across. When one stroke failed I tried another, 
until, like many another swimmer, I grew weary 
and discouraged. That was nineteen years ago. 
Had I known then what I know now, I had gone 
shoeless and coatless, if need be, to pay that man 
the paltry sum of five dollars a month, to enable 
him to live and to spend his whole time at " the 
foolishness of preaching.'' But so blind was I, so 
enamored with the white man's efficiency over 
the yellow man's, that even an experience like 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 57 

this did not humble my proud heart, and I con- 
tinued trying to swim. 

In 1893 I returned to my native land^ where 
God gave me a three years' course in waiting. I 
then became fascinated with the popular idea of 
taking out a lot of white missionaries to Corea, 
like other missions were doing, and in our Princi- 
ples and Practice I rather insisted upon inserting 
a clause which would debar the native believer 
from employment as a preacher, for fear he would 
preach false doctrine. While home, I had been 
greatly blessed spiritually, and wished to get back 
and try again. At length I was permitted to go. 
The first service, held a day or two after I arrived, 
seven people professed faith in Christ. I thought 
then they were saved. I know now that they 
were not. Not one of them continued in the 
faith, much less " made good ** as soldiers of Jesus 
Christ. Soon I had a crowd together again, and 
I preached and preached, and pleaded and pleaded. 
Plenty of them made professions, but like the sow 
that was washed, they immediately went again 
to wallow in the mire. A few years of this heart- 
breaking work, and it began to dawn upon me 
that something had to be done^ About this time 
some American missionaries who had come to 



58 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

Corea in another mission after my visit among 
them in America, and had become dissatisfied, had 
returned home, and the director of the mission 
turned the property over to me. At this same 
time, a little man, wearing an unclean suit of yel- 
low mourning, had come to Christ, and witnessed 
a good confession. I decided to put hini in charge 
of this work. This place was three htmdred miles 
from where I lived, and to send a Corean that far 
away to take charge of a work looked like trying 
to swim across a good-sized lake. I had not yet 
learned that Jesus is truly the Good Shepherd of 
His own, even though they should be three 
hundred miles away from the under shepherd. 



CHAPTER VIII 

NaUoe Sons Sent Out to do the Work 

IT was with many misgivings that this man 
was sent to a field so far from our immediate 
supervision. It was all the more difiicult 
because he had not had much teaching and could 
not be said to be well grotmded in ** the faith." 
He had stood the test of being separated from 
his father and older brother, who had turned 
him out of the old home when they learned of his 
allegiance to Christ. His mother and wife clave 
to him. I saw the letter in which they declared 
that his Saviour should be their Saviour and his 
God their God. This man, Mr. Sen,' had come 
into our Sunday service dressed in the yellow 
mourning of Corea. The prescribed three years' 
mourning for an ancestor was completed, and he 
was on his way home after performing the last 
sacrificial rites at the grave. The rougher the 
garment, the more tattered it became, the better 
the mourning. Mr. Sen must have done his task 



6o CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

welly as he was certainly a pitiful-looking object 
as he knelt with us in prayer and " passed out of 
death into life " ; exchanging his yellow garments 
of devil worship for the spotless white linen gar- 
ments of the righteousness of Christ — that spot- 
less robe woven throughout with the threads of 
the perfect life He lived as a man, Who, in our 
body of humiliation^ conquered, one by one, fallen 
man's foes. ** The things which the Gentiles sac- 
rifice they sacrifice unto demons and not to God." 

Wonderful Saviour! Marvelous grace that will 
take a man from sacrificing to demons — wear- 
ing the filthy garments of his unholy office — 
cleanse by the blood, sever by the cross, wash by 
the Word, and give such a vision of His glory and 
beauty as will charm from sin and draw out the 
affections in adoring love and gratitude, causing 
the enraptured ''found one'* to offer his body, 
in gladness, without fear, a living sacrifice unto 
God. This, Mr. Sen did, with the simplicity of 
a little child. About ten days after he found 
Christ he knelt down and told his Lord he could 
not manage his life ; that he wished to give it to 
Him, and asked would He please manage it for 
him. 

The reader may wonder at my timidity in send- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 6i 

ing a man with such an experience of grace, even 
any distance from home. I would not excuse 
myself further than this: It was a long cry back 
to Antioch, where the Holy Ghost said unto the 
fasting and praying church, "Separate me Bar- 
nabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have 
called them/' and I had not learned to obey. 
Such a simple thing as God using a man as a 
master workman uses a tool, and that man the 
very man He had prepared for that particular 
work, had never grappled me. I suppose we are 
liable to be timid about the man we send to lay 
a foundation. The apostles at Jerusalem were 
very chary of welcoming Paul, and God had to 
send to them "the Son of Consolation," before 
they would extend to him whom God had edu- 
cated and called to be the apostle of the Gentiles 
the right hand of fellowship. 

Furthermore, I, as they, was still under the in- 
fluence of the Levitical priesthood of Aaron, who 
ministered the law formally, and was vastly ig- 
norant of the Melchizedec priesthood of the King 
of Peace, who ministered grace ir\formally. Even 
John Wesley's practice of using the men God had 
called and set His seal of approval upon was too 
far distant to be seen by my traditionally blinded 



62 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

eyes. Strange that I should not have remem- 
bered such men of our own day as the late S. H. ^ 
Hadley and others. 

However, it was this man or none, and God 
wrung from me a very unwilling and doubting 
consent to '^ separate'' Mr. Sen for the work 
whereunto He ** had called him." 



CHAPTER IX 

One More Hard Lesson 

MR. SEN did nobly and required very 
little supervision. It is true, my 
longer experience as a Christian, my 
greater familiarity with the contents of the Scrip- 
turesy and my greater experience in handling 
men, made my advice helpful to him, and he 
never wearied in asking for it. If I had any diffi- 
culty with him, it was rather one of getting him 
to assume leadership at all than of his assuming 
too much. 

My eyes being still holden, that I could not 
see, the traditional idea of teaching and training 
likely young men for the ministry loomed up 
before me. Three of our young men at this 
time, living lives of carelessness and worldliness, 
decided Mrs. Fenwick and me to commence a 
Bible school, to train young men for the ministry. 
The fact that we were in embarrassing circum- 



'l^ 



64 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

stances, and had neither building nor money with 
which to undertake such a work, might have 
providentially spoken to us, had we been wise. 
Our zeal, however, spoke emphatically, and tra- 
dition said it was the thing to do. So we started 
our school with an assistant teacher and four 
boys. Determined not to make impractical men 
of them, nor to allow the traditions of Corea to 
find lodgment in their minds as to the indignity 
of a scholar working with his hands, we kept 
them busy half the day on our sinall farm, and 
studying the other half. Another safeguard was 
to avoid giving them the '^ big head " over an edu- 
cation that woidd be extra in some particulars. 
We decided to confine their studies principally 
to the Bible and " The three R's," and to do this 
in the Eastern, rather than the Western, way. 
Our plan of teaching the Scriptures was to have 
them read a portion over as many times, at least, 
as was necessary to enable them, freely, to get 
the gist of its contents. This required reading 
twenty, twenty-five or thirty times, according to 
the ability and memory of the boys. In this way 
we took them through the Pentateuch. The spir- 
itual meaning of the types of Christ was not told 
to them. Rather they were told to go to God in 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 65 

prayer for the meaning of each type, leaning on 
the promise that " The anointing ye have received 
of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any 
man teach you; but as the anointing teacheth you 
all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even 
as He hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him. 
I John 2 : 27." They were told that our beloved 
friend, the late A. J. Gordon, had said: "The 
types in Scripture are as capable of demonstra- 
tion as any proposition in Euclid. For this 
reason, the higher critics have never dared touch 
them." They were told that whenever an inter- 
pretation was not as plain as twice two are four, 
they could rest assured the Holy Spirit had not 
given it. On examination days, the students 
varied, as all students will. I remember, particu- 
larly, one examination on " The Passover " (Exo- 
dus xiii) that was interesting. The first boy gave 
an accurate interpretation, in a straightforward, 
manly fashion. He was asked to preach the gos- 
pel to his teacher, as though the teacher knew 
nothing of it, and was an inquirer, wishing to 
know if it was true that God forgave men's sins. 
The second boy did only fairly well, and the 
third boy was absolutely wrong, showing clearly 
that he did not yet know the gospel. He said: 



66 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

" If you want to get your sins forgiven, the thing 
for you to do is to quit all your wickedness and 
trust in Jesus, and little by little you will become 
a believer." Turning to the first boy, the teacher 
asked if this was true. " No," said he, " it 's all 
a lie." He was asked to explain. "It is this 
way," said he : " In Egypt, that night, there were 
a lot of people, doubtless, among their oldest 
sons, who would be considered good men, while 
in Israel there were, doubtless, many bad men, 
among their first-bom. Neither the goodness of 
the so-called good men nor the wickedness of the 
so-called bad men had anything to do with those 
who were saved that night. There was one 
thing, and one thing only, that counted — the 
presence or absence of the blood on the doors, as 
God had commanded. Without the blood, the 
'good' were destroyed, while its presence made 
the worst man in the land secure. Some would, 
doubtless, rest composedly imder the sheltering 
blood in full assurance of faith; others, doubt- 
less, trembled. Each was equally safe." This 
young man was told that he might begin preach- 
ing the gospel, and he was sent out continually 
during the balance of his four years' course. The 
others were sent, as they could be trusted, to the 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 67 

churches in the surroundmg country, to tell out 
what God had taught them. 

At this time, we had the great pleasure and 
helpfulness of a visit from an old friend. Dr. R. P. 
McKay, Secretary of the Canadian Presbyterian 
Foreign Mission Work. He was greatly pleased 
with the boys^ progress and with the method of 
training adopted. Our friend. Rev. Duncan Mur- 
dock McRae of Hamhung, Corea, after several 
times meeting the boys, and listening to some of 
the lectures given them on the practical things 
of everyday living, was also greatly pleased with 
the method pursued, and encouraged us much 
by his kindly words of commendation, as did 
others. 

We believed that we were on the right road, 
and were taking all the precautions we could 
think of to safeguard the boys and give them the 
best possible opportunities to grow up able 
ministers of the New Covenant of Grace. Occa- 
sionally we heard distant rumblings of their 
being self-opinionated and of posing as knowing 
more than older Christians in the church, but this 
we attributed to jealousy. The results are as 
follows : 

The brilliant assistant teacher acquired enough 



68 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

knowledge to make him easily a leader among his 
people. He went out into the world and used his 
knowledge to win dollars. The first and second 
boysy after four years' training, were persuaded 
by a Seventh Day Adventist missionary that they 
would be lost if they did not obey the command 
to keep the seventh day, and they were also per- 
suaded to accept from him comfortable salaries, 
with a promise of more. The yoimger boy ran 
away because we wouldn't teach him English, 
while the fourth early grew tired and went to 
the bad. 

Even unbelieving Coreans in the city con- 
denmed unsparingly the boys who had received 
teaching and help from us four years, gratis, and 
then left us when they reached the age of usefid- 
ness. Coreans do not talk much to the foreigner 
about a countr3rman while he remains with the 
foreigner. After these young men left us, how- 
ever, it became fairly easy to learn that the close 
contact with the white man had unfitted these 
men for wielding a potent influence over their 
countrymen. 

This was one more hard lesson. Our pillows 
had to be repeatedly soaked with tears, and more 
than one Demas had to break our hearts, by " for- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 69 

saking " us, e'er we could realize that, even here, 
the foreigner from another land was not the best 
instrument to do the needed work. The next 
chapter will show the splendid success of Pastor 
Sen with the task at which we, so hopelessly, 
failed. 



CHAPTER X 

The Splendid Success of the Natioe Pastor 
where I Had So Hopelessly Failed 

THE first thing Mr. Sen did, after being 
placed in charge of the new district, men- 
tioned as being three hundred miles 
away from our home, was to attach to himself 
a yoimg man who had been possessed of demons, 
and freed by God, through him. This lad's par- 
ents, who were very gentle folks, of comfortable 
means, belonging to a good family, had entered 
God's household by the new birth, and had turned 
their young son, who was fourteen years old, 
over to Mr. Sen to be his disciple. 

After a transaction of this kind in Corea, the 
teacher supersedes the parent in all matters per- 
taining to the process of " making a man," as they 
call it, out of the disciple. 

Jesus, having become the divider in Mr. Sen's 
family, separating father and son, brother and 
brother, husband and wife, the wife went to her 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 71 

people, while Mr. Sen and his old mother, who 
belonged to a family of rank, went and lived in 
a little room six feet square. Into this he took 
his young disciple, Pansoonie. Later, the family 
was moved into the center of the work, and again 
their house was a little hut, with mud walls and 
thatched roof, six feet square, and a veranda three 
feet wide, with a few poles leaned up at one end 
and covered with straw for a kitchen. It was 
painful for a Westerner to see Mr. Sen's wife 
(now returned to him) and children and mother 
living in such squalor — and I have never seen 
greater affection between mother and son than 
exists between Mr. Sen and his mother — so I 
managed to send him fifty dollars to fix up his 
house a little. The next time I went down, I 
f oimd them living in the same pitiful way. Natu- 
rally, I questioned him about it, and he evaded 
my questions. So I asked others, and f oimd that 
the devoted little man had used the money to 
send out preachers to the surrounding villages. 
When asked why he did this, inasmuch as the 
money was specifically given to fix up his house, 
he said : '" Oh, I could n't use it on myself. Pastor, 
when so many all around us are dying, without 
any knowledge of Christ." I began questioning 



72 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

closely our assistants and Mr. Sen's students, 
and learned how that devoted man and family 
and students (for he soon had a number of pupils 
around him) had lived on thin soup, in order that 
he might send out messengers of the Cross to 
the perishing. 

Such devotion as this could not fail to be re- 
warded hy Him who is no respecter of persons. 
Mr. Sen soon had a dozen churches started, which 
he visited regularly, riding on his little donkey, 
accompanied by a number of his students, who. 
Eastern fashion, ran alongside. 

In this way, the students got physical, spiritual 
and practical instruction at the same time. Not 
in our Western way, it is true, but in the Eastern 
way, which is far better for the Easterner, as it 
does not rub the beautiful bloom, courtesy, off 
the ripening fruit. When persecuted, as he soon 
was, and sorely pressed, Mr. Sen gathered his 
students anpund him and " prayed through," until 
his enemies were made to be at peace with him. 
One such incident as this would be a life lesson 
to the students. And the tempter could not per- 
suade them, in such a case, that it was the fear of 
the white man. There was no white man aroimd 
and God received the glory. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 73 

We naturally feel better since Mr. Sen and his 
family are now housed in a comfortable new 
building, put up by himself, costing one hundred 
and twenty dollars. How the little man managed 
to encompass his work has BlwBys been a mystery. 
Every time the students were examined, their 
progress seemed marvelous. It has been fre- 
quently said that Mr. Sen was doing the work of 
five white men, yet everything seemed to be pros- 
pering. His churches were models for reverence 
and propriety. They were all trained in the re- 
spectful code of the East, and could take no ad- 
vantage of their dainty little countryman who 
trained them. 

With object lessons of this kind before me every 
time the work was visited, little by little my proud 
heart began to realize that, after all, there might 
be some good in Eastern civilization, until the 
thought grew upon me that, even in method, 
the East was more like the Bible than the West. 

Our simple method of evangelizing as thor- 
oughly as possible the several districts which we 
have been enabled to enter, is to open a Bible 
Room, stock it with Bibles and ** Portions," and 
place in charge of it a man of some experience, who 
also acts as leader of that district. He is usually 



74 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

given from ten to twenty evangelists, according 
to the need of the field and the condition of our 
treasury. Thus far we have not been able to 
put one man in each county. Each of these evan- 
gelists receives a load of Scriptures for his pack 
— all he can sell in one month — and goes out to 
his coimty, where he visits every town and vil- 
lage, taking care not to miss a house, and, as far 
as possible, reaches every human being, giving a 
full presentation of the gospel, with an earnest, 
often tearful plea for its acceptance. If they will 
not buy a half-cent or one-cent copy of the gos- 
pel, he leaves with them a leaflet of the third 
chapter of John, or a compilation of scriptural 
texts, arranged imder suitable headings. This is 
repeated as fast as he can cover his territory. 
When this has been thoroughly, earnestly and 
repeatedly done in the spirit of Jesus, we con- 
sider that coimty has been evangelized. And 
while we do not cease preaching the gospel, nor 
have we any intention of giving the people up 
until Jesus comes again, yet they have had the 
opportunity our Lrord commands His church to 
give them. We have lovingly told them of Jesus, 
of His blood to cleanse and of His cross to sever. 
We have faithfully proclaimed the consequences 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 75 

of neglecting so great salvation, and we believe 
we are freed from the blood guiltiness that hangs 
over the watchman who fails to do this. (Eze- 
kiel, 33.) 

When thirty-one churches were formed, we 
were face to face with the necessity of organizing 
the work into a homogeneous whole, and giving 
to every man his work. This matter of organiza- 
tion had been delayed, until we could no longer 
forbear the apostolic injunction, " to look out men 
of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wis- 
dom, whom we may appoint over this business." 
Acts 6:3. Looking to God in prayer and con- 
sulting Paul's pastoral letters, we found fur- 
ther instructions, which he wrote to Timothy 
whom he had appointed bishop, saying, ** These 
things I write unto thee, that thou mayest know 
how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the 
house of God, which is the church of the living 
God, the pillar and ground of the truth." Again, 
in writing to Titus, another bishop whom he had 
appointed, the Apostle Paul said, '' For this cause 
left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in 
order the things that are wanting, and ordain 
elders in every city, as I had appointed thee." 

Gathering together our assistants, we formed an 



76 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

organization as nearly as we could along the lines 
laid down in the Holy Scriptures, ''given by 
inspiration of God, for our instruction." The 
churches being assembled, every person agreeing 
and there being no dissenting voice, it was decided 
that our situation called for captains of tens, and 
captains of fifties, and captains of hundreds, in 
all the churches. The work given these to do 
was that of assistants to the deacons, who were 
placed over them and who were entrusted with 
the money of the church, as well as the spiritual 
oversight. Pastors were in turn placed over the 
deacons, and given assistants, who, under them, 
visited the churches in their charge. Over the 
pastors was placed a k^ff^fnock, or governing pas- 
tor, whom we call, in English, director, rather 
than the more pretentious name of bishop. 

Every three months in their several districts 
the pastors hold meetings, which are Bible con- 
ferences as well as business meetings. Here, also, 
the churches break bread together, and report 
to the Annual Conclave (which is presided over 
by the director) the men whom they approve for 
captains and deacons. The appointments of pas- 
tors and assistant pastors are made by the di- 
rector. In practice, the director, pastors and peo- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 77 

pie agree on appointments, believing that the Holy 
Spirit has lost none of his ability to administer 
the affairs of the church, and to the praise of His 
grace, be it said, the Tai Han Ki Tock Kyowha^ 
(Church of Christ in Corea) has been enabled to 
hear His voice, saying, '' Separate me A and B 
for the work whereunto I have called them^" 
Acts 13 : 2. 

At the first Annual Conclave, Mr. Sen, fulfilling 
the Scripture requirements, and having made full 
proof of his ministry, was made first pastor of this 
people, gathered by God, from among the Gentiles 
for His name. Acts 15: 14. 



CHAPTER XI 

Pastor Son 

THE difference between the men Pastor 
Sen has trained and those I have taught 
is, that his students have all ''done 
well/' whereas mine have all done ill. You 
ask if Pastor Sen himself was not one of my 
students. I reply, only for a few weeks. He 
was, providentially, taken away from me before 
too close contact with the white man spoiled him 
for further usefulness. It is true that he was 
under my training and supervision from a dis- 
tance; but this gave him no opportunity to be- 
come " important," and his loneliness made him 
more than pleased to see the director and get his 
advice. Furthermore the rule of considering that 
the best way to do a thing you don't know how to 
do is to begin it, then keep at it until you 
can do it properly, if a good rule in the natural 
world, how much more is it so in the spiritual 
realm, where the Teacher ever abides with you to 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 79 

guide you into all truth ! Of the men Pastor Sen 
has graduated, two have become pastors, and two 
have become secretaries. Each of these is a 
practical, hard-working, spiritually-minded, Bible- 
wise, devoted Christian, with a sound mind. It is 
a perfect delight to direct them, to teach them and 
to watch the work of the Lord growing under 
them; but, above all else, to see them ** growing 
in grace and in the knowledge of their Saviour, 
Jesus Christ." For " this is life eternal, to know 
God and Jesus Christ, whom God hath sent." 

Our editors of technical journals are ever tell- 
ing us that one example of what someone has 
accomplished is worth more than volumes of 
theory. I propose to tell, in this and the next 
chapter, what God hath wrought through two of 
these men, Mr. Son and Mr. Chang. The former 
will show Pastor Sen's method of handling men 
outside of his School of the Prophets, and the 
latter will show how he handles them in the 
school. 

Five years ago it was my privilege to baptize 
Mr. Son. He was not very prepossessing in his 
appearance, but his manner was very gentle and 
courteous, and his answers, during his examina- 
tion, were so concise, accurate, and withal so spir-< 



8o CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

itual, that I was attracted to him and thought that 
I recognized possibilities of his future usefulness. 
One year later, while attending a Bible conference 
in that district, I asked Pastor Sen to get me a 
writer. He called Mr. Son, whose writing was 
beautiful. While he was writing, I picked up his 
New Testament, which was in Chinese — trans- 
lated and printed in China, for the Chinese. It 
had been so " well thumbed *** it was almost worn 
out, and the whole book showed ^at it had been 
much used. ** Can you read this? *' I inquired. 
'^A little,'' said he. Handing it to him, I re- 
quested him to read a portion, which he did with- 
out the slightest hesitation, even as easily as I 
would read English. As no one is considered a 
scholar in Corea imless familiar with the Chinese 
language, I was glad to find that Mr. Son had a 
good education, as well as other interesting quali- 
ties. When the churches began sending out evan- 
gelists, he was one of the first chosen by them, 
showing that he was ''well reported of the 
brethren." All of our evangelists carry and sell 
Bibles, as well as evangelize. Mr. Son did not 
shine as a bookseller, but he did shine in win- 
ning souls and in establishing churches. He and 
hia colleague, in a short time, established eight 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 8i 

churches. He neact came to my notice, about two 
years ago, at our Annual Conclave. We usually 
give the people a chance to testify at these meet- 
ings, so that others will get the benefit of their 
testimony, and in order, too, that we may learn 
something of how the brethren are growing in 
grace and in knowledge of Christ. After about 
twenty had testified, Mr. Son arose, and quietly 
said this : *^ I am so glad that my salvation does 
not depend upon me. My beloved Shepherd has 
me on His mighty shoulders, and is carrying me. 
That was the simple, brief testimony. 

It has been one of the privileges of my life to 
listen to some of the great preachers of the 
church, in large and small conventions, where the 
unction of the Holy Spirit was overpowering. I 
have listened to the gospel preached, when strong 
and unemotional teachers of the Word, gray- 
haired veterans of the Cross, wept before the 
Lord, as the Holy Spirit lifted upon us the light 
of God's reconciled coimtenance, and showed us 
the scars of the five bleeding woimds of Emman- 
uel, and let U9 hear the rustle of His kingly gar- 
ments, as He walked in and out among us. When 
Mr. Son testified, this same mighty swaying unc- 
tion, which is so impossible to describe, but 



19 

I 






8a CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

which every child of God knows from experience, 
attended his testimony. A few months later, we 
were again in conference, and again he testified, 
for the space of thirty seconds — a clear, concise, 
scriptural testimony, which went through the 
meeting like a tingle of electricity. 

He was appointed an assistant pastor, which 
position, if the incumbent does good work, is the 
stepping stone to a pastorate. Being sent down 
the coast to a very interesting church which 
needed instruction, he reported in a fortnight 
something like this: ''Through the unlimited 
grace of our adorable Lord, it has been the great 
privilege of this unspeakable, to be His unworthy 
instrument to bring His blessed gospel to the 
people, and eight men have given themselves to 
the Lord to preach His evangel." 

He was then sent one hundred miles fiuther 
south, where no regular work had been done. 
When accepting the appointment, he asked per- 
mission to take one of these eight men with him. 
** He is very much in earnest, and wishes to go 
out preaching the gospel,'' he wrote. It was not 
possible, at the time, to comply with the request, 
much as we would have liked to do so. So Mr. 
Son took the brother with him at his own ex- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 83 

pense, sharing his poor little pittance of five dol- 
lars per month, and each carrying a load of books* 
Inside of six weeks another beautiful letter came, 
telling the glad news that each had been God's 
messenger to establish a church. As we were in 
need of a pastor to look after another group of 
churches, we were led to propose Mr. Son to the 
whole church. They greatly rejoiced at the prop- 
osition, and there being no dissenting voice, we 
believed that the Holy Spirit was saying to us, 
" Set apart Mr. Son to the work whereunto I have 
called him/' and we did so. 

While staying at our home for a few days, be- 
fore taking charge of his district, Mr. Son was 
present one day when I was speaking to ** Little 
Davie " about the believer's indwelling Teacher, 
z John 2 : 27. Mr. Son looked up and listened in- 
tently. When I had finished, he said, ** I believe 
that. Do you remember when you baptized m^, 
five years ago? " " Yes," I said. " One year after 
that," he went on, ^' I went to Pastor Sen and told 
him I wished to know the Bible, and asked him if 
he would not teach me. Pastor Sen replied, 
^ Man's teaching is a very poor thing. What you 
need is to have the Holy Spirit teach you. His 
teaching is unspeakably lovely. Furthermore, as , 



84 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

you know, I am busy visiting the churches, and 
could not give you much time. But He abides 
with you ever, day and night, and loves to teach 
God's children the Holy Scriptures. Ask your 
Heavenly Father, for Jesus' sake, to teach you His 
Book, by His Holy Spirit, and He will' I did 
that, and I have found what Pastor Sen said to 
me was true ; the teaching of the Holy Spirit is 
^unspeakably lovely.'" 

I had the keynote to Mr. Son's useful life, and 
the secret of his power. Previous to this, I had 
thought a great deal of Pastor Sen, but I was 
never so proud of him as when I learned that he 
had sanctified sense enough to give such a soimd 
and beautiful answer. 



CHAPTER XII 

Pastor Chang 

PANSOONIE was the first young man to 
be married in the Tai Han Ki Tock Church. 
The son of a deacon, engaged to the 
daughter of a deacon, about to be married in their 
home town, and it being the first Christian wed- 
ding to take place in that village, pretty nearly the 
whole population turned out. Never have I seen 
a more orderly crowd. As the yoimg woman 
leaves her own home and parents for the home 
and parents of the bridegroom, she usually be- 
comes more of a slave than a member of the 
family. Under these circumstances, it was 
thought wise to exact a promise from the groom's 
father and mother to treat her, not as a slave, but 
as a daughter. The Rev. W. B. McGill, M. D., of 
the M. E. Mission, who assisted at the ceremony, 
said afterward : " You should have seen the look 
of gratitude she gave you when you received that 
promise for her." In accordance with the Corean 



86 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

custom, Pansoonie changed his name that day to 
Sokchunie, and became a man, henceforth to be 
called Mr. Chang-Sok-Chim. 

In a previous chapter it is recorded how he had 
studied with Mr. Sen for five years. He came, 
periodically, to our home for rest and study. Be- 
ing always loaded with a sheaf of Bible questions 
which bothered him, he was a very interesting 
student. As he had acquired a working knowl- 
edge of the New Testament, and could give the 
key verse of every chapter, and recite the principal 
passages of the four Gospels and Acts, being able 
to locate any verse in the New Testament, I used 
him on these visits as my " walking concordance.'' 
On one of these occasions, he begged to be taken 
along to a revival which I was called upon to 
conduct in another city for a brother in the Ca- 
nadian Presb3rterian Mission. He was cordially 
welcomed by my friend. Some of this brother's 
men had been off attending a theological semi- 
nary and had come home with a lot of bloom 
rubbed off, and rather heady. After consultation 
and prayer, it was decided to do nothing but 
preach the Word, as the most effective way to get 
the people right with God and man. After about 
four days the break came. The people wished to 



CHiJrCH of CHRIST IN COREA 87 

make public confession of their sins, as had be- 
come fashionable in Corea ; but this was checked, 
and only their desire to make wrongs right was 
made public. They were told to confess their sins 
to God only, in private, and to ask forgiveness of 
any brother they had wronged by failing to love 
him as Jesus commanded. 

They did so, and then came to the house and 
told what a hard time they had had going to their 
brothers, and how delightfully easy and happy a 
thing it was to ask forgiveness when they reached 
the brother. A number told how, while going to 
their brother's house, they had met him coming to 
them, and how they bad vied with each other in 
taking all the blame upon themselves for what had 
come between them. 

Having thus got right with God and man, we 
mapped off the city and sent them out two by 
two, to give the written and spoken invitation to 
every house and every man, woman and child in 
the city, to accept Jesus Christ as their personal 
Saviour. So successful were they, that not only 
the church, but a portion of the large court, was 
crowded the first night with unbelievers to hear 
the gospel. As the people had so recently been 
jealous of one another, it seemed best to have a 



88 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

stranger preach, so Mr. Chang was asked. Al- 
ways gentle in manner, with three deep dimples 
in his cheeks and chin, I was afraid such a smiling 
young man might not be strong enough for those 
hard folks in the North. As in the East, all 
things go contrary to Western ideas, he turned 
out to be a regular '' son of thunder,'' quite equal 
to the occasion. In about eight days the whole 
city was evangelized, a goodly number were 
added to the Lord, and we said good-bye and 
journeyed southward. 

Here Mr. Chang started a series of meetings 
fn six different centers. Everjrwhere the same 
results followed. In each place he visited, Satan 
was found to have stopped the work of God by 
getting Christians to disobey Jesus' new com- 
mand to love one another, and to obey Satan's 
old command to hate one another, thus grieving 
the Holy Spirit and effectually blocking all work 
for God. 

It is a very interesting fact that Mr. Chang's 
method of simply opening the book and allowing 
God's word to do its work on hearts, in every 
case produced exactly the same results — the 
people were led to cry out to God for forgiveness 
of the particular sin of not loving one another. 



u 



u 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 89 

This is all the more remarkable because of the mes- 
sage which, in each instance, was the same, being 
a compound text taken from James and Peter: 

The coming of the Lord draweth nigh"; 

What manner of people ought we to be in > all 
separated living and godliness, looking for and 
hastening the day of God?" In each and every 
place the people went away and privately con- 
fessed their sins to God; went to those whom 
they had wronged, asked for and obtained for- 
giveness, and in every case while doing so the 
Holy Spirit flooded their souls with light and joy, 
restoring them immediately to their wonted fel- 
lowship with Christ and His people. Mr. Chang 
then sent them out, two by two, into the town 
and surrounding villages, where they delivered in 
the jubilance of their restored love the gospel 
invitation to the weary and the heavy-laden, to 
^'come." The people flocked to the meetings 
in scores, while hundreds occupied the churches 
and the church yards, crowding out the be- 
lievers, who, in generous, hearty courtesy, wel- 
comed them, remaining on the outside themselves. 
After six such centers had been reached, Mr. 
Chang was resting at his father's house a couple 
of days previous to holding the seventh and last 



go CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

of the series of meetings. As he rested, two Co- 
reans, dressed in silk, and calling themselves 
gentlemen, entered his father's courtyard fol- 
lowed by four magistrate's policemen. Mr. 
Chang, who is a gentleman, began to show his 
dimples and went out to welcome them, all 
smiles. " Who is this Western nobleman? " said 
the gentlemen, and turning to the policemen 
they said, ''Fall upon him I Beat him I Pull off 
his 'Clothes I What nobleman is this come here 
with his Western Jesus doctrine?" The police 
fell on him, beat him, tore his clothes, dragged 
him out and threw him crashing through the 
thin ice into the ditch and left him there, while 
the cold winter wind chilled him to the marrow. 
He has never had a well day since. He could 
not walk. His friends carried him, bruised and 
helpless, to the house, all covered with what the 
Apostle Paul esteemed above everything else. 
When defending his apostleship to the Gala- 
tians and pleading for the gospel of grace with- 
out any mixture of law in it, he wrote this final 
appeal : ** From henceforth let no man trouble 
me, for I, in my body, am bearing the brandmarks 
of Jesus." 
After two days, Mr. Chang, all scarred and 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 91 

bruised, waived aside every protest and went to 
the last meeting. Satan had sent his emissaries 
aheady and for four days they opposed the mes- 
senger and his message. Then the break came, 
and these wicked blasphemers were brought to 
Christ. The church having got right with God 
and man, and going out after the lost as the 
others had done, this became the greatest meet- 
ing of the series. For miles and miles around, 
the people came to hear the gospel from God's 
messenger, and many were added to the Lord, 
both men and women. 

Shortly after this my beloved friend Dr. J. 
Wilbur Chapman came to Corea. I was lonely 
beyond all expression — the kind of loneliness 
which only missionaries can understand. He 
cheered me and made me feel that I had one 
himian friend in Western lands who cared in- 
tensely for the welfare of our work. The whole 
Chapman-Alexander party were goodness itself 
to me, and I am sure that all missionaries with 
whom they came in contact feel as I do about 
their visit. 

When the beloved physician and surgeon of the 
Junkin Memorial Hospital, Dr. C. H. Irvin, heard 
of Mr. Chang's illness, he took him in and cared 



92 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

for him as a brother beloved, until he was some- 
what restored. 

He was then sent into a needy field to open a 
new station. A room was filled with Bibles 
from that splendid agency, the American Bible 
Society, which has made possible so much work 
in Corea, that would otherwise have remained 
undone, and twelve evangelists were given him. 
These were sent out into the surrounding coun- 
ties on November 4, 1909 — one man to each 
county, which was, as before intimated in this 
book, as large as the average county in the 
United States or Canada, but contained more 
people. On February 28, 1910, the reports were 
all in, and it was found that so mightily had the 
work grown that thirty-six new churches had 
been added to the Lord in four short months. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Simple^Hearted Bdie^er in ati^ Country b 
God's Sufficient Instrument in that Country 

PERHAPS more interesting still to the 
students of missions is the result of the 
work on the Corean f rontier, at ** Land's 
End," in the North; where, across the Tuman 
River, the mighty land of China commences, and 
where the Russ, in his unquenchable thirst for a 
way to the Big Waters out of his land-hemmed 
domain, has pushed his border; this work is 
more interesting because of the condition of 
things and the instruments God used to overcome 
them. Personally, I know of nothing, in my 
own experience, which gives such a forceful 
drive at the great fact that the simple-hearted 
believer, in any country, is God's most efficient 
and most economical witness, in that country, 
and that comparatively few expensive foreigners 
are needed. 
Leaving Wonsan, a year ago last April, T sailed 



94 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

for the farthest port north in Corea. There, the 
first deacon m our church, who shut up his store 
to accompany me, and I, got our boxes of Bibles 
on a man push-car and started for the frontier. 
The third day we were preaching on the streets of 
the largest city on the Tuman River, which di- 
vides Corea from China on the northeast side of 
the peninsula. There I went on the streets, and 
before a large, respectful, silent crowd, asked 
their forgiveness for haying lived in Corea, only 
five hundred miles away, for twenty-five years, 
without having once come to tell them of the 
Son of God who came to earth and died to save 
them. Renting a merchant's stall for two dol- 
lars and a half per month, we opened for that 
splendid pioneer of the gospel — the American 
Bible Society — a Bible book room in this Border 
town. It was a strange experience to awaken 
in the morning and look out of our quarters, 
across the river, upon the ancient hills of China. 
If I would go on, there were three ways open 
to me: ride on a small weak pony, on a large 
strong bullock-cart, or walk. I chose the first, 
which terminated in the last. The frost was 
coming out of the rich soil of Manchuria, which 
contains so large a deposit of humus it was as 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 95 

black as my hat. It was at that stage of moisture 
which bread attains when turned on the bread- 
board for kneading. The pony almost broke down 
without carrying me, so I trudged along in my 
rubber boots, with ten pounds of the black muck 
on either foot. Deep ditches, six or eight inches 
wide, were cut through this magnificent alluvia 
by the tricklets of melted snow, six feet deep. 
So rich is the soil that all natural fertilizers are 
thrown away, and become a nuisance. I carried 
home with me from this region a corn broom, 
whose fiber, grown without fertilizer, was twenty- 
two inches long. There I tasted potatoes, so 
rich and mealy, I could shut my eyes and fancy 
they were the kind mother mashed, with cream 
in them. Such enormous crops of these were 
grown without fertilizer, that I fear to tell it. 

There are from one to two hundred thousand 
Coreans emigrated into this part of Manchuria, 
and an equal niunber across the Border into Rus- 
sia. Aitet penetrating to the heart of this section, 
straight north from Corea, we turned south again 
and recrossed the Tuman, thirty miles north of 
the book room, and that much nearer the mouth 
of the river. A heavy snowstorm delayed us two 
days on the Border, before we again took to the 



96 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

Corean hills, where the tigers have so terrified 
the people. We, with difficulty, got our horse- 
grooms to cross the mountains. The sun came 
out strong and hot, and we crossed a branch of 
the Tuman, on our zigzag journey into the hills, 
twenty-two times before noon, when the melting 
snow made such a freshet as rendered it impossi- 
ble to go forward or backward. A great, giant 
mountaineer, whose marauding club was highly 
polished with much handling, invited us to his 
home, with all the courtesy of these splendid 
Border folk. I confess, however, to having eyed 
that club a bit cannily, as I lay down to rest 
In the morning we could cross the swollen 
branch, but when I would settle up for our en- 
tertainment, our host, in true Border style, 
spumed to accept remuneration. As politely as 
possible, I tried to get him to take something. 
Drawing himself up to his splendid six feet, he 
said, "" Friend, we don't do that sort of thing in 
I the North. We are gentlemen." Everywhere it 
V was the same. They had never seen a white man 
before, but nothing could surpass their open- 
hearted generosity. I always liked pioneer 
Border people, and my heart went out to 
these splendid Coreans, with unfeigned good-will. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 97 

When, through the deep snow of the north side, 
we had climbed to the top of the Divide, one of 
those strange surprises of nature greeted us. 
In a little pool, in a depression of the road, sing- 
ing away as merrily as in a Southern swamp, 
were a number of young bullfrogs. We were 
looking for tigers. There is a saying in Corea to 
this effect : ** The people hunt tigers six months 
of the year, and the tigers hunt the people the 
other six months." A friend of mine, while in 
the forests of the North, as I then was, saw 
ahead of him a movement in the bushes. It 
proved to be a tiger's tail, twisting backward and 
forward as a cat's will when a bird is in range. 
Following the outline through the leaves, he saw 
the head turned away and the huge beast in- 
tensely watching something over the brow of the 
hill. After putting a ball from his heavy tiger 
gun behind the animal's ear, he went to see what 
had been attracting his attention. Down the hill 
slope, a few rods away, he saw a Corean raking 
up leaves for fuel. The tiger had a magnificent 
pelt and measured thirteen and a half feet from 
tip to tip. But, as Kipling says, that is another 
story. 
From our high point of view, stretching away 



98 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

to the east where lies the land of the only coun- 
try for me, I beheld the waters so far across which 
my loved ones lived, and where was the fresh- 
made grave of my mother. When I left to go to 
Corea alone, in 1889, she, though si3cty-six years 
of age, wanted to go with me. In 1899 word 
came she was failing. The next steamer saw me 
on my way to her dear side. She recovered, but 
I was called upon to say good-bye in life, as we 
both well knew, for the last time. I remember 
taking the Book and trying to pray, and then 
giving it up ! How brave mother was ! And how 
different was this parting from that last parting, 
elsewhere recorded in tliis book. ** It 's aU right, 
my son,'' she now said ; ** Jesus will soon be back 
again, and then we shall see each other, to part no 
more, forever." Blessed hope! How it shines 
in my sorrow! But parting is parting, and I can 
feel the almost imendurable ache of it yet, as I 
went to the station and on, out of the city, 
towards Corea. 

Pardon me, reader •— where was I ? Oh yes ! I 
remember now; on top of the Divide. Well, we 
went down to the coast; then struck northwest 
again, and once more crossed the Tiunan — this 
time, one hundred miles nearer to the mouth. It 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 99 

was a broad, deep river here, and again we en- 
tered China, Hiring a Corean Jehu, with a Chi- 
nese wagon, we were soon across the Border line, 
which separates Siberia from China. The Rus- 
sians had heaped great mounds of earth, to show 
where the boundary was. A hard day's drive 
brought us late that night to the beautiful Bay 
of Possett, where a rich Corean gentleman enter- 
tained us lavishly, until a coasting steamer took us 
to Vladivostok. There another Corean gentle- 
man entertained us, until the mail boat left for 
Wonsan and home. 

While in the motmtains of Corea, we passed 
through one village where was a wedding feast, 
and still another where an old man had seen the 
full Corean cycle of sixty years, and that day com- 
menced a new cycle. As usual, a big feast was 
spread for him, and the neighbors had gathered 
for many miles around. The old man came out, 
took me by the hand, gracefully led me to the 
seat of honor at the feast, and proceeded to lavish 
his best upon the first white man to enter his 
glen. Evangelist Kim soon joined me here, and 
as the people had bought all the books he had 
with him at the wedding feast, and had held him 
by the coat when he would leave, begging him 



100 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

to tell more of that dear old story, he unpacked 
here his entire pony-load of books, and continued 
to sell at this feast as long as his books lasted. 
The deacon left in charge of the book room, wait- 
ing in vain for a few days for the people to come 
and buy his books, put up the shutters, tied some 
Bibles in his handkerchief and started out around 
town, to sell and preach. He came to a hat- 
maker who was a skilled workman, and had 
at one time made large money and was well 
off. But the Chinese had brought British opitun 
(it makes me blush just to write the disgraceful 
word) over the Border, and taught the young 
Coreans to use it. The hatmaker was one of 
these abused fellows, ignorant, at first, of the 
harm being done him. I wonder if my readers 
know what opium-smoking will do for a man? 
Most of us know what drink will do, and a few 
of us know what gambling will do. 

When Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman was in Australia, 
a young man came to his room in the hotel. He 
was a fine-looking young fellow. " Sir,'* he said, 
*' I have a dear wife and two beautiful children ; 
and I am a gambler.'' Holding up his right hand, 
he said, " I 'd cut it off if I could stop gambling." 
Then he held up his left. " I 'd cut that o£F, too» 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA loi 

if I could quit. God knows I cannot. I Ve tried 
again and again and failed.'' That is what gamb- 
ling will do for a man. You know the Saviour Dr. 
Chapman had to offer him that day. Now, if 
you put together all that drunkenness will do, 
and all that gambling will do, to put a man down 
and hold him there, in its fatal grasp, and then 
multiply the downward pull by ten, by fifteen, by 
twenty, you will have some conception of what 
opium-smoking will do for a man. After it is 
used for a while, activity is replaced with stupid- 
ity, and stupidity with cupidity. A man once 
addicted to it will lie, pawn, steal and murder, if 
need be ; but he will get it, if it is to be had. By 
and by the assimilating organs refuse to digest 
food, and nature's storehouse, the flesh, is drawn 
upon to sustain life. Soon it is all gone. Tlie 
skin is dry, full of cracks and drawn tightly over 
the bones. The emaciated face becomes about the 
color of a coal-ash heap, and the end soon comes. 
This poor fellow, the hatmaker, was like that. 
When the deacon told him that great story, he 
listened for the first time to the Name — that 
peerless Name. Then he said, 'There is no use 
talking to me. I 'm a sinner. Why, man, I have 
not only broken God's laws, I have broken all 



102 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

my country's laws; I 'm a disgrace to my family; 
I'm a disgrace to the town; I'm a disgrace to 
my country. My family is starving and I am 
dying." ** Do not talk that way/' said the deacon, 
"I have a Saviour for you. He will snap the 
chain that binds you and set you free. He will 
take away all that appetite. He will wash all 
your sins clean in His own precious blood, and 
He will make a free and happy man of you, if 
you will permit Him to be your Saviour and 
Lord. See, here is God's Word." And opening 
the Bible, the deacon unfolded to him that won- 
derful story of love and grace and power. Leav- 
ing a gospel with the despairing man, he left; 
but daily, for five days, he returned to him. 
On the fifth day, this enslaved opitun-eater said 
" Yes, / wilL I will take this Jesus to be my 
Saviour." Then, with all the simplicity of be- 
lief of a little child, he added: ''He loved me 
enough to die for me. He shall be my Saviour; 
He shall restore me, and I will be His willing bond- 
slave." Listen ! In a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye, that hitherto uncontrolled appetite for 
opium was taken absolutely away, and the thing 
he before loved so dearly he now loathed 
completely. 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 103 

Listen again! In ten days' time his flesh had 
come back on him, like an infant's. His strength 
returned, and he was able once more to use his 
skilled hands. This redeemed man went through 
that town as a burning torchlight, with his face 
all aglow with the light of Heaven, and a new 
ring in his voice, telling people of the mighty 
Saviour who had set him free. As a result of his 
testimony, we have a splendid church there to- 
day, whose members, no matter how weary with 
the day's toil, gather nightly around the Book, 
and pore over its quickening word until far into 
the night. " Well," you say, " did that opiiun man 
hold out, or was it just a temporary thing with 
him? " I will answer your question, most con- 
vincingly and satisfactorily, by relating briefly as 
possible another story. In Corea, if a man takes 
sick among strangers when traveling away from 
home, the people of the house are so afraid of 
death and so superstitious, that they put the poor 
fellow on the street. Then the villagers become 
alarmed for fear bad luck should come to them 
if the man dies among them. Cuts are drawn, and 
those on whom the lot falls carry him on to the 
next village and quickly slink away, for fear they 
will be seen and a vill^e row started. When the 



X04 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

sick man is discovered, the second village repeats 
the perf onnance ; and so on» from village to vil- 
lage, without food or drink being offered the suf- 
ferer, until he dies. I have seen this, as have 
others. I remember passing one of these vic- 
tims, lying outside a village, all cold in death, 
one day — a sacrifice to heathen ethics — the kind 
of ethics that traitors to their Lord dared to place 
on the same platform with Jesus Christ, in that 
obnoxious Parliament of Religions, at the World's 
Fair, in 1903. 

When the one-time opium-eater was adopted 
into the family of God, through " the new birth,'' 
he was told by the villagers that the devils would 
get after him and kill all his household. As 
though to enable them to say, " I told you so," 
the grandmother died shortly after. Then the 
villagers insisted on his appeasing the demons at 
once by a big devil ftmeral. He declined. They 
were determined. But the great Palestine 
Shepherd who came to Daniel's rescue in the den 
of lions knew His little one was in trouble, and 
immediately sent along Evangelist Kim who was 
established in the faith to his rescue. How all 
sufficient for every emergency is our Christ, 
whether in Corea or America ! Our poor man was 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 105 

comforted and encouraged by Mr. Kim, and the 
grandmother was given the first Christian funeral 
in that section. The villagers were truly alarmed 
and made trouble. And, as though to verify their 
fear of demons, two of the afflicted man's little 
children took a malignant fever and died. '' Did 
we not tell you the demons would kill your whole 
family? Now you will have a devil funeral/' they 
insisted. " No I will not," said this babe in Christ. 
''I will have a Jesus funeral.'' ^'But, you see, 
your children are dead." "Oh," he replied, '*I 
am so glad they heard of Jesus before they died. 
It would have been a fearful thing had they died 
not knowing of the Saviour. But it's all right 
now. They have gone to Him." Again at this 
time Mr. Kim was made a comfort to him. One 
Sunday, soon after this, when a service was being 
held, two policemen came along and wanted to 
know who was in charge of the meeting. " 1 am," 
said Mr. Kim. "Well, you must leave town," 
they said. " I can't do that," said Kim. " My 
Lord sent me here and I dare not leave. If you 
have authority to put me out, you must exercise 
it, but I cannot leave." Then the officers fell on 
him, beat him, tore his clothes, smashed his hat, 
ripped his books to pieces, and departed. Some of 



io6 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

the brethren wrote me about the hard time the 
evangelist had been having. The same mail 
brought a letter from Mr. Kim himself, who never 
mentioned the trouble. He simply said» '' Having 
a fine time. Please send more evangelists.'' 

The leader of the evangelists in that section, 
having relieved Deacon Kim of his charge of the 
book room, and being one of the new men who 
had journeyed seven hundred and fifty miles to 
this section, was taken ill. A sort of decline. 
Nothing seemed to do him any good and he 
gradually failed. He was a noble fellow, fifty 
years of age, who had sacrificed much to go. In 
great weakness he made an inventory of his 
books, fixed up all his accounts, then wrote me a 
beautiful letter, telling me he was dying and was 
such an unworthy servant of God. He said he 
had asked God to forgive him, and would not I 
forgive him, too? There was nothing to forgive. 
I never knew a more faithful man, and he was 
very competent, too. The redeemed opitun-man, 
who, at one time, had worshipped demons, put 
sick strangers on the street to die, had ruined his 
life and left his family to starve, went down to 
the book room and said to the dying man, " You 
are not comfortable here. Come home with me." 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 107 

Then he took him to his home, gave him the best 
he hady and nursed him like a mother, until the 
brother went to his sure reward. Then he gave 
him a splendid '^ Jesus funeral/' the fourth from 
his house, after he had found Christ. And now, 
I believe I have answered the question as to the 
^'holding out" of the rescued opium victim. 

Upon arrival at Wonsan, I arranged to have a 
Bible conference in the South, where, after sev* 
eral days of blessing, fifi^ evangelists were set 
apart and sent out — nine of these being for the 
Tuman River district. They gladly left com- 
fortable homes, loved ones, and their native 
villages, which means more of hardship to a 
Corean than to a white missionary who leaves 
his native land. Unlike the latter, they had no 
elaborate outfit, no Pullman car, to travel in, 
no expensive voyaging to pay for. With changes 
of clothing on their backs, tied up in bundles, they 
set out on their weary journey of seven htmdred 
and fifty miles, and crossed swollen streams, as 
John Elliott did, when, sitting down on the oppo- 
site side of a stream, he wrung out his stockings, 
saying, '' John Elliott, thou must endure hardness, 
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." They waited 
days until it was safe to launch the ferry, and 



zo8 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

when their expense money, by reason of delay, 
grew short, they went hungry, but plodded on 
until they reached the Tuman, at a cost to their 
supporters of five dollars ($5) each for the long 
journey. George Pullman did not get much out of 
that. It would have cost nine white missionaries 
three thousand dollars ($3,000) to reach the Tu- 
man from New York or London; for years they 
would have been more of a hindrance than a help, 
and only a few of them, at best, would have made 
useful servants ; as some would die, others break 
down, and still others turn out misfits. 

Furthermore, those three great mountains — 
the language, the customs, and greatest of all, 
the people — had been crossed by these native 
missionaries, without one cent of cost to the 
home churches. It would have cost the latter 
more than forty-five thousand dollars ($45,000) 
to have given an equal education in these 
elementary missionary subjects to nine white 
missionaries. 

Furthermore, so grand a man as Carey spent 
fifteen years before he was used of God to win one 
convert. Now note the following remarkable 
facts. When I passed through these inland moun- 
tains, day after day, I inquired of the men I met 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA zog 

if they had ever heard of Jesus. The invariable 
answer was, " No. Who is He? '' " What," I 
would say, " don't you know there is a church of 
Jesus Christ in Corea, which numbers over one 
hundred and fifty thousand baptized Coreans?" 
" No," they would say, " never heard of it before." 
It was absolutely raw heathen ground, for the 
most part. 

In ten months, these devoted evangelists were 
used of God to establish ten splenAd churches in 
this district, averaging foHy-fioe members each. 



CHAPTER XIV^ 

After God Taught, We Prayed, and He sent 
the Laborers He had Educated 

WHEN, after long years of infinite pa- 
tience, God was able to teach us that 
the work is His, and that He is the 
Worker, too, while His children are only saws, 
hammers, plows, ox-goads and rams' horns, 
shepherd's slings and jawbones, to be used or 
not by Him as seemeth good unto His imperial 
will; after He had taught us, in infinite love, that 
God was the harvest Lord and that the harvest 
was His; that He prepared or educated the man 
for the spot, and appointed the place for the man, 
we began to obey and to pray (Matthew 9:38). 
We asked Him to send us one hundred laborers 
for the field l3ang white to the harvest, and, gen- 
erous Master that He always is, He sent us one 
hundred and thirty-five. We did not dictate what 
nationality they should be, and it pleased Him to 
send all Coreans, whom the world has been edu- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CORE A iix 

cated to believe are poor, worthless, helpless be- 
ings. As though He would give a lesson, and 
teach man how unnecessary all his boasted 
achievements are to Him, and how indifferent it 
is to Him what kind of an instrument He has, 
provided this instrument has been adopted into 
the family of God and carries the open B|ble, 
He sent the kind man despises. For the greater 
portion of these, God provided the five dollars a 
month necessary for their support ; to others we 
gave Bibles and sent them out, selling on commis- 
sion. When, eighteen months ago, we com- 
menced praying, we had about forty churches 
established. We have now one hundred and 
sixty-two. It is an interesting thought to all 
lovers of missions that these have been established 
in exact proportion to the number of God-given 
laborers which we have been permitted to send 
out. These laborers cost home contributors six- 
teen and a half cents a day in American currency, 
while the white missionary costs home contribu- 
tors more than five dollars per day. Since im- 
mortal souls are priceless, and their value cannot 
be reckoned in dollars, and since it is as easy for 
God to supply five dollars a day as sixteen and a 
half cents for His labor, and since He is no re* 



112 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

spector of persons, we are wondering why, of all 
the one hundred and thirty-five. He did not send 
one white man. He does not despise the white man, 
even if the yellow man does. We made no stipula- 
tion when asking as to the kind or color of laborers 
He should send, or what should be their educa- 
tional and other achievements. We simply asked 
Him to raise up and send us laborers for His 
harvest. We believe that He used Pastors Chang 
and Son very largely to raise up these men ; and 
as His wonder-working has passed before our 
eyes, we have done little but sit and gaze, spell- 
bound, in adoring gratitude at His marvelous 
grace and goodness. 

Others have been led differently. This little 
book tells, in its poor way, how God has led us, 
and with our poor, lisping, stammering tongues 
we give Him praise. Soon we hope to see our Be- 
loved, as He is, in all His kingly glory and beauty. 
We believe we shall then be like Him, without 
one fault, because He has undertaken the difficult 
task (i Thessalonians 5 : 23, 24; Ephesians 5: 26, 

27)- 
Mrs. Fenwick and I have at times been lonely, 

but we are looking forward in anticipation of the 

grace we are to receive at the appearing of Jesus, 



< as 
MS 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 113 

so that we may in some measure adequately thank 
Him that ** Unto us, who are less than the least of 
all saints, is this grace given, that we should 
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable 
riches of Christ/' 



EPILOGUE 



EPILOGUE 

After this book was completed some ftiends insisted so 
strongly on the inclusion of an address delivered in America, 
dealing with the application of the secret of the success of 
evangelism in Corea to the conduct of the home church, that 
it is here appended. 

The first great secret of the splendid results of 
the Corean evangelists' testimony is the Spirit of 
sacrifice with which they are endured. 

It is a great thing which comes to the student 
of spiritual psychology, as he first learns that 
when a son of the first Adam is reborn into the 
second Adam, and the Holy Spirit hitherto work- 
ing unto conviction of sin from without ** the old 
man/' takes up His abode within ** the new man, 
he adds nothing to the faculties of '" the old man, 
— He only makes possible one hundred per cent 
values of those faculties as fast as ** the new man " 
yields to His wooing and teaching, in pliable will- 
ingness. 'Tis good, too, to note just here, in 
passing, that, entirely outside of and apart from 
His man, the Holy Spirit works in wondrous ways 
for the encouragement and joy of His yielded sub- 
ject who has only the limited facultiest — who. 



»» 



tf 



t 



xi8 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

ofttimes, stands still, in adoring wonder, to see the 
salvation of God. But when He is making use of 
men and women in GOD'S service. He works 
through their varied personalities and character- 
istics and powers — in short, through the entire 
natural equipment, iniso f ar as it is yielded to 
Him. 

The great outstanding characteristics of the 
Corean are patience and hundlify. These are the 
splendid traits which have brought the nation all 
its political trouble. Genemsify is another promi- 
nent quality. 

Patience ! Humility ! Generosity ! It is easy to 
see what the Spirit of GOD can do with such a 
natural and rich vein of precious ore to mine. As 
these characteristics are yielded to Him, the Holy 
Spirit transmits them into a spirit of sacrifice like 
only to that of the great apostle to the Gentiles ; 
the kind that esteemed everything but dross for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, 
His LORD, — by whom the world was crucified 
unto Him and He unto the world. It is not so 
to-day, in so-called Christian lands. It is well 
known that the church is on very good terms 
indeed with the very old, malignant world that 
crucified the Son of GOD. The Apostle Paul had 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 119 

it under his feet, through Him for whom he 
counted all things but loss, for the unspeakable 
privilege of knowing Him. And "This is Life 
Eternal, to know GOD and Jesus Christ whom 
He hath sent" That is the Life these Coreans 
have — an acquaintance with GOD and His be- 
loved Son. They have become fairly intimate 
with GOD, through His Son, their Elder Brother. 
And, speaking reverently, they got on this inti- 
mate footing in the same way the Apostle Paul 
did, by the sacrifice of self and by the sacrifice of 
the world. This is the negative side — they 
gh>e up the things which are their enemies and 
which GOD hates. Included in these are 
all things — education, position, religious fervor, 
power, a big name, a great income or anything 
which might loom up between the soul and GOD ; 
all those things which Paul had in abundance, 
compared with being on intimate terms with 
Jesus, are worse than worthless. That's the 
value I place upon them, says the Apostle in his 
letter to the church down at Phillippi, where he 
and Silas had been put in jail, because of their 
intimacy with their Princely Friend. 

Now that is negative. The positive side is more 
beautiful. The love of this Kingly Friend had so 



120 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

gripped Paul, that he calls himself (Romans i : x) 
His willing bond-slave. He not only gave up 
everything to be with Jesus, in loving companion- 
ship, but he held his best at Jesus' disposal, night 
or day, anywhere, anytime, under every circum- 
stance, only the best for Jesus. That is positive 
sacrifice. Both the negative and positive side of 
sacrifice belong to the Spirit of sacrifice. This is 
the motive of the GOD-head. It was moving the 
Father, from all eternity, to give His Son, a ran- 
som for many. I fancy I catch a faint thought 
as to the great ache in His heart, as He con- 
templated with His omniscience on the day of 
His great sorrow, when He would make His 
great sacrifice and pollute His spotless Son with 
the foul load of our sins, making Him sin; and 
after heaping upon His tenderly Loved One this 
indignity and shame. He would complete the 
awful necessity by spilling His blood in the most 
ignominious way known to man; that I, the crim- 
inal, who caused this need, might become a blood 
relation of Himself, through His Son. I fancy I 
can see Him searching with those eyes which go 
to and fro in the earth, for one human soul that 
could enter into sympathy with His great sorrow 
— one that would understand. In the space of 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 121 

four thousand years, among an estimated bil- 
lion of people. He found one man whom He could 
trust enough for the necessary trial which would 
beget the necessary knowledge, and He called him 
His friend. 

What a distinction. Then He called on Abra- 
ham to do what He Himself intended doing — 
offer up his only son. Abraham obeyed to the 
limit. But e'er the poised knife descended, GOD 
stayed it. His friend had done all he could do for 
Him. But when He offered up His only Son, like 
the Son, He stood alone. There was no voice to 
call — no power to stay His hand. The sacrificial 
knife did its work. The Father offered up His 
Son in the Spirt of sacrifice. Likewise the Son 
offered up Himself without spot unto GOD. 
His sacrifice was negative and positive. He laid 
aside His glory, and putting on the body of our 
humiliation. He became a poor, helpless Babe 
for us — the negative side ; through the Eternal 
Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of sacrifice. 

And what shall we say of that Spirit of sacri- 
fice. Himself? Did you ever think, reader, that 
from the time Jesus sent Him to live over again 
in us the life of Jesus, lest we be desolate orphans 
—until now — humanly speaking. He has been 



122 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

away from Home and the Father and the Son for 
nuieteen himdred years? I sometimes wonder if 
He is not lonely. I 'm sure it will be a great re- 
union, when He, like Abraham's servant, takes a 
bride of the Father's own kin, back to His rich 
Master's only Son, who comes forth to meet her 
and the Son is comforted (Genesis 24, i Thessalo- 
nians 4:13-18), Thus — the Holy Spirit de- 
nies Himself — negative sacrifice; and is good to 
us — positive sacrifice; because He is the Spirit 
of sacrifice. Being in the Corean believer, and 
being yielded to, in a very beautiful way. He 
brings forth that great fruit, which He, Himself, 
creates and multiplies in them, as I wish to 
illustrate. 

Elsewhere I have spoken of Pastor Sen's sacri- 
fice of home, comfort and even food, that he might 
send out his young students to the perishing 
around him. 

Two years ago, while at our Annual Conclave, 
one of the deacons, asking to be excused, came into 
my room and took down a little spruce box. It 
was about a foot long, seven or eight inches high 
and about six inches broad. It looked as though 
one of John D. Rockefeller's oil boxes which 
carry the oil to Corea in shiploads had been 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 123 

knocked to pieces to furnish the boards. It was 
nailed together with some of Andrew Carnegie's 
steel nails, which also came in large quantities, 
and on top of the box were placed two empty, 
condensed-milk tins, still bearing Gail Borden's 
signature. '^What box is that?" I said to the^ 
deacon. *^ Our treasury,'* he proudly replied. I 
laughed outright, notwithstanding the fact that I 
felt very serious, because of the solemn com- 
mimion of which we were about to partake. The 
box was so rough and crude — yet three of the 
world's richest men were represented in its make- 
up. The next day the reports came in, and as the 
treasurer's report was read, my laughter was 
turned to tears, when I learned that into those 
empty milk tins, and transferred into that rough 
box, these babes in Christ, out of the abundance 
of their poverty, had given seven dollars per 
member to carry the gospel to the lost. There 
was not a wealthy man represented. The richest 
man was not worth a thousand dollars, and there 
were not a dozen worth two hundred dollars. 
Very few were worth one hundred dollars and 
most of them had not ten dollars worth of earthly 1 

I 

possessions. But they were rich toward GOD. If j 
you reckon the average American wage at two 



134 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

dollars per day, and the average Corean wage at 
twenty cents per day, then these splendid disciples 
had put into that box, relatively, seventy dollars 
per member. 

>^ I am told that in the United States the disciples 

1 ^ of the LORD Jesus spend three dollars per capita 

A ) ' ' on themselves, and a fraction of half a cent on 

i others. These men spent, relatively, seventy dol- 
lars on others, and practically nothing on them- 

, selves, — touched by the Spirit of sacrifice. 
Shortly before I left Corea for America, eight 
men came up from the country, fifty miles, to 
study the Bible with me. Learning that I was 
booked for a conference three hundred miles 
away at that time, they were greatly disap- 
pointed. So I delayed starting a couple of days 
and taught them. When down town at the Post 
Office, I noticed one of their number — a dear 
boy, twenty years of age — going from house to 
house, evidently trying to sell a bundle of dried 
mushrooms he was carrying. It was about 
thirty inches long and about eight inches thick 
in the center. The second day I said to him, 
*^I saw you down town. Did you sell your 
mushrooms? " " Yes," said he. " What did you 
get for them? ** " Ten cents," he replied. " Ten 



5 *» 

83 






CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 125 

cents! " said I in surprise. " How long did you 
spend on the hills gathering those?" ^^ About 
ten days/' he said. "Well, that is pretty heavy 
wages, is it not? A cent a day, for ten days." 
Turning to his companions I asked if that was 
all the expense money he had to come fifty 
miles to study the Bible. "Yes," they replied. 
Then I said to him, "The next time you have 
any mushrooms for sale bring them to me; 
I '11 give you more than that for them." " Why 
— does the pastor eat mushrooms?" he eagerly 
inquired. "Oh, I can eat a few and the Core- 
ans around our home can eat more — you bring 
them to me." "Thank you," said he. I bap- 
tized six of them — splendid, noble men. This 
young man, with his hair still down his back in 
a braid, showing him to be unmarried, and there- 
fore, a "boy," was the first to be baptized. At 
the question, "My beloved brother! Do you 
believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of GOD?" he 
turned and looked into my eyes, while his own 
fairly danced in gladness, and his poor, sun- 
burned, pock-marked face, I think, was one of 
the most beautiful I have ever looked upon; 
and then he answered me. I can hear the ring in 
his voice yet as he said, " YES, I DO." That was 



126 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

the happiest moment I had spent in Corea. I 
have baptized very few; I prefer to have our 
Corean pastors do that. But look on this bap- 
tism as one of the great privileges of my life. 

He had had a hard time of it when he first 
came to Christ. The six families of relatives 
persecuted him severely — and he at that time 
only fourteen years of age — but Jesus never 
failed him, and his beautiful life, his earnest testi- 
mony, won over three families to Christ, and 
he thus became the father of a church. He and 
five of the men who came with him to study 
said to me before leaving, ** Pastor I you know 
we are very poor and can't go far from home, 
preaching the gospel, and there are more than 
one hundred villages around our town without 
a single believer in them. Could you not help 
us to reach them?'' I told them how I ap- 
preciated their wish, and how delighted I would 
be if I had the paltry five dollars a month, for 
each, to enable me to send them. *'But, you 
know," said I, '^we have already seventy-two 
evangelists on full pay and we have not another 
dollar to put out." They looked very sad, then 
said, *^ Could you not think of some way? " I told 
them it was possible to give them a supply of 



J 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 127 

Bibles, and a conomission on them, which would 
amount to about seventy-five cents or a dollar 
a month. '^Hallelujah ! " they enthusiastically 
answered. So they started off, each carrying a 
heavy load of Bibles on his back, and glad and 
proud of the privilege. Before I got away for 
America the first report came in. One of these 
men had been used of GOD to establish a church, 
and the mushroom boy had established two 
more — touched by the Spirit of sacrifice. 

A missionary friend of mine in Corea, Doc* 
tor Underwood, was in the country visiting 
his flocks when he came across a godly old 
man tugging away at a plow. Knowing him 
to be fairly comfortable, he said to him, ** Why 
Mr. Kim, what does this mean?" '^Oh, I'm 
just plowing my field to get in the seed." 
"But where is your cow?" "Oh, I sold her." 
"Why, what's the matter?" "Oh, nothing." 
But my friend was not to be put off. So Kim 
said at last, " You see. Pastor, we did not have 
enough money to finish our church, and it needed 
a roof, so I sold my cow, and some of the rest 
helped, and we got the church finished." And 
there was the noble, old man with the perspira- 
tion running from every pore as he tugged at the 



128 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

plow, because he had given his cow to help 
finish a church building, — touched by the 
Spirit of sacrifice. 

Last April, 1910, before leaving the country, 
I sent Pastor Son up to the Tuman country to or- 
ganize the churches there into a district, and ap- 
point overseers. At the meetings he held, seven 
men asked for the privilege of carrying heavy 
loads of Bibles over those hills, for what com- 
mission they might, with hard work, receive — 
seventy-five cents per month, A few days s^o 
a letter from Mrs. Penwick reached me, stating 
that a second trip had been made by Mr. Son, 
and that the seven men on commission had done 
nobly, but were having a hard time — yet did 
not like to give up; that often they were so 
hungry they ate the leaves of the trees to stay 
their appetites. One year ago last April they 
had never heard of Jesus. Now they endure 
hardness like that, as good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ touched by the Spirit of sacrifice. The 
time would fail me to tell a tithe of the noble 
sacrifices our Corean Christians make under the 
inspiration of the Spirit of sacrifice. Who dwell- 
eth with them and is in them. 

And not in them only. A few months ago, I 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 129 

heard a missionary from South Africa tell of a 
little black maid who wanted to give something 
to Jesus. The only thing she possessed that had 
any value was a white enameled washbasin 
which she loved better than anything else she 
owned. Yet she sold it for thirty cents, and 
receiving her thirty brass rods, ran with them 
to her friend saying, ** Take them and keep them 
for me. I fear I would spend the rods for other 
things. Give me only one every Sunday, for 
Jesus, when I go to church.'' The same Spirit 
of sacrifice — operating in the little black girl! 
Mr. S. D. Gordon tells the story of a little 
white girl who was a cripple. Unable to leave 
her room without the aid of crutches, and being 
too poor to get them, some kind people had 
bought her a pair, on which she hobbled through 
the streets — the most joyous soul in all the vil- 
lage. Everybody loved Maggie; she was so 
bright and happy. The minister of the church 
where she attended received a touching appeal 
from an evangelist in the mountains for the poor 
people there. He spoke of it the following Sun- 
day, passing on the appeal to his congregation. 
But somehow it did n't go. The banker yawned, 
the miller snapped his watch, and there was no 



130 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

response as far as the minister could see; so 
sitting down and covering his face with his 
hands, he felt he had made a miserable failure 
of it. 

But a great battle was being fought by a little 
girl in the back pew. ''Oh/' she thought, ''I 
wish I had something to give, but I haven't — 
not even a penny.'' ''You could give your 
crutches, Maggie," said a quiet voice in her heart. 
" My crutches? Oh, I could n't give my crutches. 
They are my very life." "Give your crutches, 
Maggie i " came the voice again. " Oh, how can 
I do it? " " Give your crutches, Maggie! " once 
more came the pleading words, and Maggie said, 
" I will." The usher, seeing only a little girl in 
the back pew, thought he would not bother go- 
ing to her, but suddenly changed his mind and 
gracefully held the plate out to Maggie. She 
raised her crutches and tried to get them on. 
Quickly perceiving her wish, he reached out his 
hand and steadied them on the plate, as he 
slowly went back up the aisle. The people 
stared and said, " Maggie I Giving her crutches I 
Look! " The banker beckoned to the usher and 
hastily writing fifty dollars ($50) on a piece of 
paper, motioned to him to take the crutches 



CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 131 

back. The old miller called him» too. And as 
the people beckoned, the ushers had to pass the 
plates the second time, until four hundred dollars 
($400) had been laid thereon — called forth by the 
Spirit of sacrifice in Maggie. 

For many years it has been my privilege to 
know a beautiful, bright, clever, overflowingly 
happy young lady, who left her comfortable 
Christian home, and going to a large city, in 
obedience to that same quiet voice, took up work 
among the poor and Christless. None of the 
usual ways being open for her support, she 
decided to deal with Headquarters for the supply 
of all her needs, as she worked and prayed. I 
have known her, brave girl that she is, to be 
engaged in busy service for others until ten 
o'clock at night, without having a place to lay 
her head when the evening's work was over, and 
telling no one her circumstances, remember- 
ing that Some One had said, *'Your Heavenly 
Father knoweth." I have known her to go 
cheerfully, two days and two nights, without a 
morsel of food, with a song on her lips and a 
light in her countenance, the two tell-tales of a 
happy, contented heart — touched by the Spirit 
of sacrifice. 



132 CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 

Again I am indebted to Mr. Gordon for the 
following story. A few months ago, an old 
Southern slave who had refused his freedom, and 
lived with his master until the last Through 
the years he had carefully saved up money 
enough to buy a railway ticket back to Georgia, 
when his master should be needing him no 
longer. One morning, as the Georgia train was 
pulling out of Washington, a big negro with a 
very black face and white hair came rushing 
down the platform, and barely caught the last 
car. His shoes were covered with dust, and his 
appearance showed signs of a long tramp. Go- 
ing from one end of the car to the other, he 
found no empty seat, so he stood up against the 
door, wearily shifting from one foot to the other* 
A young man saw he was tired, and courteously 
said, '' Take my seat, uncle.** (If that young man 
should read these lines, I wish he would write 
to me. I should like to thank him. ''The 
Athenians preach hospitality; the Lacedonians 
practice it") Soon the conductor came along, 
crying, ''Tickets! Tickets!** As he reached a 
lady in the seat behind the ex-slave, she said, 
"Oh, sir! I have no ticket, but you must not 
put me off. Last year,** she went on, " the do&- 



CHURCH OF CHRIST IN COREA 133 

tors said my husband had tuberculosis, and 
that his only chance of recovery was to go 
South. So we sold a few things, and got money 
enough to send him to Georgia. Yesterday I 
got a telegram saying he was dying; and oh I 
I must go to him, and I have no money. You 
won't put me off." The kind-hearted conductor 
was touched, but told her, '^ Rules are rules. 
Your story touches me deeply, Madam, but if 
I do not put you off, I will lose my job. Tickets! 
Tickets I " The old negro looked up and said, '' I 
speck. Conductor, you all will have to put me 
off.'' The conductor spoke gruffly, ''You old 
nigger! What do you mean? This woman has 

some excuse, but you if it were not for the 

time, I would stop the train and put you off on 
the roadside. Get off at the next stop ! " '' Yes 
sir ! " meekly said the tired old man. 

As the train slowed down, he pulled his 
Georgia ticket out of his pocket, bought with 
the savings of years that the pull of his native 
birthplace so strong in the negro race might be 
satisfied. When the train stopped, he rose up, 
stepped to the lady's seat, and with splendid 
courtesy, bowed like a courtier of the old school, 
and said, " Dere 's your ticket to Georgia, Mam," 



134 CHURCH OP CHRIST IN COREA 

and going down the steps of the car, started 
on his long tramp to Georgia — touched by the 
Spirit of sacrifice. 

There is one Spirit, one LORD, one Baptism. 
I have told you what this Spirit of sacrifice will 
do for yellow people, for white people, for black 
people, — in Corea, in Africa, in America. There 
is a place where we can all get Georgia shoes — 
a place called Calvary. They are obtainable 
only there. Because, a long while ago, a Young 
Man paid full price for the entire supply, so that 
all who would, might come there, and get a pair, 
without money and without price. They enable 
all wearers to keep step with the Spirit of sac^ 
rifice. They are the only shoes which will en- 
able the wearer to walk that blood-stained way, 
marked by the bleeding foot-prints of the Son of 
God, '* who loved me and gave Himself for me.*' 




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