Full text of "Lights and shadows of mission work in the Far East; being the record of observations made during a visit to the Southern Presbyterian missions in Japan, China, and Korea in the year 1897"

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Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund.

BV 3400

.C43 1899

Chester,

Samuel H.

1851-

1940.

Lights and shadows

mission

work in the Far

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

Mission Woek

THE FAR EAST

BEING THE RECORD OF OBSERVATIONS MADE DURING A

VISIT TO THE SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONS

IN JAPAN, CHINA AND KOREA IN THE YEAR 1897.

S. H. CHESTEK, D. D.,

Secretary of Foreign Missions in the Presbyterian Church
IN THE United States.

RICHMOND, VA.:

The Peesbtterian Committee of PrBLioATioN.

COPYEIGHT
BY

JAMES K. IIAZEN, Secretary of Publication^
1899.

Printed by

Whittet & Shepperson,

Richmond, Va.

TO MY FRIEND,

WILLIAM HENRY GRANT.

v/HosE GENEROUS KiNdNess made the experiences
Herein recorded possible;

AND TO THE

MISSIONARIES IN CHINA, JAPAN AND KOREA,

WHOSE Warmth of welcome

MADE THEM ALTOGETHER DELIGHTFUL.

PEEFACE,

In tlie autumn of 1897 the author made a
visit to the missions of the Southern Presbyte-
rian Church in Japan, China and Korea. The
visit was too hurried to admit of very extensive
taking of notes, and the pL^n was adopted of
jotting down mnemonics that would serve to re-
call such things as, on a first view of them, spe-
cially interested him, and were in some way con-
nected with the missionary problem and mis-
sionary life. An account of these observations
has been given in a series of addresses made in
a few of our churches and church courts. The
renewed interest in missions that has seemed to
be awakened by these addresses where they were
delivered, and the impossibility of reaching
more than a small section of the church in that
way, has led to the preparation of this little
volume, which, it is hoped, may find its way into
missionary libraries and homes in all parts of
the church.

Of the books which the author's happy ex-
emption from sea-sickness enabled him to read
6

6 Preface.

during the voyage, and found helpful in en-
abling him to have a better understanding of
some things which he saw, he would make spe-
cial mention of ^Troblems of the Far East" by
Hon. George K. Curzon, which, while none too
sympathetic in its references to the missionary
work, is exceedingly happy in its descriptive
chapters, and most thoughtful and just in its re-
flections on the social and political conditions
of the countries treated of. For a fuller and
more adequate description of a Chinese city,
especially, than that given in the text the reader
is referred to the description of Peking in Mr.
Curzon's book, pp. 229-259.

This book is given its local coloring from the
fact that the author's visit was especially to the
Southern Presbyterian Missions. But, as mis-
sion work and mission problems are of largely
the same character with all Protestant missions,
it is believed that the matter the book contains
will be found of general interest. If any dull
hearts are stirred by it to more prayer and help-
fulness in the mission work in his own or other
churches, the author will be more than satisfied
and amply repaid for his labors.

Nashville, Tenn.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. Page.

To THE Far East, 9

CHAPTER II.

The Country and People of Japan, . . 15

CHAPTER III.
New X\pan and Christian Missions, , . 28

CHAPTER lY.
The Country and People of China, . . 46

CHAPTER V.
The Missionary Problem and Work in China, 65

CHAPTER VI.
Hindrances and Results, . . . . 77

CHAPTER VII.
The Country and People of Korea, . . 91

CHAPTER VIII.
Mission Work in Korea, .... 114

Mission Woek m the
Fae East.

CHAPTEK I.

To THE Far East.

Those of my readers who may be medi-
tating the possibility of a foreign tonr will do
well, before determining the direction of their
travels, at least to consider the relative claims of
Europe and Asia. The one advantage on the
side of Europe, it seems to me, is the shortness
of the time required for the journey. For the
same length of time the expense of the Asiatic
tour is far less. The things seen are more in-
teresting because so utterly unlike what one has
ever seen before. The flavor of immemorial an-
tiquity and of associations connected with the
infancy of our race lend an added charm. And
one interested in the triumph of God's kingdom
on earth will find in the Far East especially the
place where the battle is now on which is to de-
termine whether the gospel is stronger than the
9

10 Lights and Shadows of

powers of evil intrenched in their most ancient
strongholds.

Looking at the matter from a more worldly
and prosaic standpoint, it is donhtfnl whether,
The voyage. ^^^' pm'poses of absolutc rcst, human
experience furnishes anything quite
equal to a voyage across the Pacific in the month
of August. Our good ship is indeed a ^'lodge in
a vast wilderness^' of waters, where no rumor of
business cares can reach us ; the sea is even mo-
notonously placid, and we grow just weary
enough of the "boundless contiguity" of sea and
sky to experience the full effect of the vision of
green hills and purple waters when the island
ournewpos- of Oahu first gTCcts US tlirougli the
sessions. niomiug mist. On this island is the
city of Honolulu, the metropolis and seat of
government of the Hawaiian group. Although
it is Avithin the tropics, the climate at Honolulu
is so modified by a cold current from our north-
western coast that the maximum temperature
in summer is only 8Y° Fahrenheit. The mini-
mum in winter is 55°. Whether viewed from
the outside, or entered and explored, it presents
lis everywhere with views of enchanting loveli-
ness. Looking down from the top of the Punch
Bowl or the Pali, one might imagine himself, as
Bayard Taylor says, "standing on the Delectable

U-

HAWAIIAN FISHERMAN.

Mission Woek in the Far East. 11

Mountains, with the valleys of the land of Beu-
lah spread out before him.'' Standing in the
valley and looking at the mountains shrouded in
mist, and the gorges arched over with rainbows,
the suggestion is of Bunyan's dream of the gates
and towers of the Celestial City. Eoyal palms,
cocoanut trees, spreading banyans, oleanders,
the pomegranate, the orange, mimosas, banana
groves, all manner of trailing vines, with flowers
of every hue, are everywhere. All this flora has
been imported, the soil of volcanic origin being
originally devoid of such vegetation. But, once
planted, it flourishes in the richest tropical luxu-
riance.

The physiognomy of the native strongly sug-
gests the East Indian origin which tradition also
ascribes to him. He has a fairly well-shaped
head well set on broad, square shoulders, a large
and muscular-looking physique, and an attrac-
tive face. But he is lackinc: in toughness of
fibre, his eyes are dull and his brain is pulpy.
The women especially show an early inclination
to obesity, for which they are only the more ad-
mired. The first civilized dress introduced
among them was the "Mother Hubbard" wrap-
per, and to it they still almost universally ad-
here. One good of it, considering the sudo-
rific qualities of the climate, is that is does not

12 Lights and Shadows of

adhere much to them. In spite of their wealth
of black hair and the beautiful flower wreaths
worn on their hats, they do not achieve much in
the way of picturesque appearance, except when
riding a bicycle or on horseback astride.

I expected to see an exhibition of barbaric
splendor in the Government House where the
representative of our government now sits in
the chair of the ousted Queen. But it is simply
a neat stucco building, with tasteful interior
finishings, but nothing loud or gaudy about it.
In the Bishop Museum one may still see the
gorgeous feather cloaks once worn by the Kame-
hamehas on occasions of state, the large circular
wooden ^^calabashes," or trays, dug out and pol-
ished to a wonderful smoothness by stone imple-
ments, and the ropes, some with stains of blood
still on them, once used in strangling human sac-
rifices, and the large hooks once used to fish for
sharks, with a piece of a Hawaiian for bait. But
these now possess even for the native only an
antiquarian interest.

The Americans who have found a home in this
^'Paradise of the Pacific," about three thousand
American ^^ numlbor, have first civilized it,
enterprise, ^j^gj^ appropriated it, and then gener-
ously donated it to their home government.
Without raising the question of abstract right

Mission Work in the Far East. 13

involved in these proceedings, it may be said
that whatever was done that, from a theoretical
standpoint, might soein high-handed, has the
justification of having been done for the sake of
self-preservation; and it cannot be denied that
the whole result has been beneficial to the na-
tives. The introduction by the early navigators
of civilized vices, diseases, rum and gunpowder
reduced their numbers during the century from
400,000 to about 40,000. But under the influ-
ence of the schools, colleges and churches with
which the islands are now covered, and of the
orderly administration of government given
them by the Americans, their numbers are now
increasing again, and their condition is in every
way unspeakably better that it ever was under
their native rulers. What further will become
of this interesting people as the wards of our
nation remains for time to disclose. Let it be
hoped that the public sentiment of the twentieth
century will tolerate nothing but justice and
kindness in our dealings with them. Our brief
glimpse of them and their lovely island home
was onh^ an episode of our journey to the Far
East. Ten days more of quiet and restful sail-
'ng, with only an occasional grateful gale, just
strong enough to clear the ship of the odors ris-
ing from the Chinese steerage, brings us in sight

14 Lights and Shadows of

of land again. Presently our ship casts anchor
in Yokohama Bay, and we hasten ashore to see
the things new and old Avhich the wonderful
Sunrise Kingdom has to show us for our in-
struction and delight.

Mission Wokk in the Far East. 15

CHAPTEE II.

The Country and PEorLE of Japan.

Many exaggerated ideas are abroad in regard
to Japan, "but one thing concerning Avhicli we
Physical ^an scarcclj have an exaggerated
features. {^qq^ {g i\iq physical bcautj of the
country. In sailing aronnd the world one will
pass in view of many goodly islands and charm-
ing landscapes, bnt of none that surpass in
beanty those that greet its in our passage throngh
the Inland Sea. The vision of them, left behind,
lingers with the traveller ever afterwards like
memory of a lovely dream. And where, among
moimtains, shall we find the peer of Fnji, visible
far out at sea, standing np like a sentinel to
gnard the coast, twelve thousand feet high, an
almost perfect cone, and crowned with perpetual
snow ?

Of the total area of the country about two-
thirds is occupied by mountains, not bro^Aii and
bare- like most of those we see in China and
Korea, but covered with green foliage, or ter-
raced and cultivated to the very top. Long
avenues lined with the lofty and graceful crjq)to-

16 Lights and Shadows of

nieria lead back to picturesque little shrines, or
to great and gorgeous temples, in dark shaded
groves. The cherry blossoms in the spring, the
azaleas in smnmer, the maple leaves in autumn,
or the ice crystals on evergreen trees in winter,
light up the glens and gorges with a perennial
blaze of glory. ISTo wonder the people love their
beautiful islands with a devotion so intense that
some esteem it to be even foolish, and call them
''the land of the gods.''

But there is an element of terror also mingled
with the beauty in the aspect of nature in Japan.
Among these lovely mountains there are hun-
dreds of extinct volcanoes and about twenty that
are still alive. The tradition of Fuji is that it
was heaved up from the ocean in a single night
about three thousand years ago, and its history
is that one night, about three hundred years
ago, the whole top of it blew off with a great ex-
plosion, scattering broken rocks and lava far
and wide and covering the streets of Tokio, sixty
miles away, with ashes. In the autumn that
most extensive and violent form of the cyclone,
known as the "typhoon," sweeps across both land
and water, leaving wreck and ruin in its track.
There is an average of one earthquake a day,
some of them mere tremors, but others so violent
as to reduce whole villages to ruins. Accom-

Mission Work in the Far East. 17

panying the earthquakes huge tidal waves some-
times sweep over tlie coasts, in one of which, a
few years ago, more than 30,000 lives were de-
stroyed. The rivers which up in the moun-
tains are little rivulets, playing and cascading
over beautiful white rocks, are filled in the
spring by the melting snows with floods that go
raging do^\ai into the plains, sweeping away
dikes and bridges and covering thousands of
acres of prosperous farms with silt and gravel.
Character- The character of the people is

istics. plainly marked by both of these fea-

tures of their government, being a combination
of tragic moodiness with a sort of playful ces-
theticism.

The aesthetic faculty is strong in all classes.
The wealthy spare no pains or expense on their
gardens of ornamental shrubbery and flowers.
In the back yard of every house, important
enough to have a back yard, flowers of many
kinds, and especially the royal chrysanthemum,
are cultivated in their highest perfection. The
school boy's table is adorned with flowers, and
the farmer returning from his day's work in
the field will stop by the way to admire the
beauty of a budding peach tree. In the spring
when the cherries are in bloom they go out in
great pic-nicking crowds to see and enjoy them.

18 Lights and Shadows of

On the other hand, in the summer, bands of pil-
grims, dressed in their white mourning cos-
tumes, go to the top of Fuji to worship there
the gods of the storm and earthquake. Suicide
is their refuge from trouble, about 7,000 a year
being regarded as a conservative estimate of the
number. The favorite method in the olden time
among the soldier class was that knoA\m as liari-
hari' (belly-cutting.) Before the weapons of
modern warfare were introduced every soldier
wore two swords, a long one for his enemies and
a short one for himself. When defeat or calam-
ity overtook him he would sit on the floor of his
hall with his friends around him and insert the
short sword into his side and draw it across the
abdomen, after which a friend would complete
the operation of hari-kari by cutting off his head.
This was indeed a ^^shuffling off" of the mortal
coil, and reveals a strong element of the tragic
in those who would choose that method of mak-
ing their exit from the world.

The Japanese present a commendable contrast
with other Orientals in the matter of personal
cleanliness. Riunor says that, about the first of
October, the average Chinaman takes his fare-
well bath until the return of warm weather the
following spring. But he is regarded as un-
worthy of the name of a Japanese, whether he

Mission Work ix the Far East. 19

be nobleman or peasant, who does not bathe once
a day in water just below the boiling point. The
unpainted woodwork of their houses is all thor-
oughly scrubbed once a year. Their floors are
covered with beautiful white straw matting,
always kept immaculately clean. To this end,
on entering a house, all shoes must be left at the
front door. This does not greatly incommode
the native whose shoe is a wooden or straw san-
dal that can be readily shuffled off or on, but it
tends to make life a burden to the foreigner with
laced gaiters, and also to the development of end-
less colds and catarrhs and influenzas. The
only heating apparatus is the Tlihachi, a small
jar filled with pulverized ashes with a few
lumps of live charcoal on top, by which one can
v\'arm his hands after a fashion, but which gives
off more carbonic gas than heat to the atmos-
phere of the room. Natives and missionaries
keep their feet warm by sitting on the soles of
them turned up behind. The transient travel-
ler whose joints have not been educated to this
posture must make the best he can of cold feet,
unless he is able to effect a compromise with cus-
tom, as I did, by means of a pair of crocheted
over-slippers furnished me by one of the ladies
of our mission. By the discreet use of these
both the traveller's health and reputation for

20 Lights and Shadows of

politeness may in some measure be saved. Since
the days of iibraham and Epliron the Hittite,
at least, we knoAV that dignity and politeness of
demeanor have been characteristic of Orientals.
But in these qualities also the Japanese stand
pre-eminent. When a visitor enters a room
they bow, usually three times, until the body and
legs are at right angles. If sitting, they lean
over three times until the forehead almost
touches the floor. The use of multiplied lion-
orifics and self-depreciations, and the constant
iteration of deferential grunts and inhalations
is a serious hindrance to rational conversation.
This politeness is characteristic of all classes,
and any common coolie among them would lay
the courteousness of our ''old time gentleman''
entirely in the shade. They are the Frenchmen
of the East, and, like the Frenchmen of the
West, very much of their overdone politeness is
only surface deep. But on the whole they are
to be commended for it, and one feels the con-
trast painfully on coming immediately from
Japan to America and coming in contact with
the railroad manners of our great west.

The people are almost dwariishly small of
stature, but have great poAver of physical endur-
ance. I tested some of them — as well as my-
self— thoroughly in that respect on an overland

Mission Work in the Far East. 21

journey from Kochi to Tokiishima, a distance
of 110 miles, which, in company with Rev. J.
W. Moore and Rev. S. R. Hope, of the Southern
Presbyterian Mission, I covered in two days.
Our vehicle was the famous jin-rich-sha, a com-
fortable little sulky pulled by a man instead of
a horse. The name means literally ^^Pull-man-
car." The way was over one of the old military
roads found throughout the Empire, some of
them said to date from the second century of
our era, and was graded for more than half the
way through a mountain pass. It was about
eighteen feet wide, the mountains rising sheer
up on one side and a mountain torrent foaming
over the rocks at the bottom of a precipice about
one hundred feet deep on the other. An inci-
dental discovery of the journey was that one of
the many things the Japanese have no fear of
is a precipice. Houses were built all along the
edge of this one, with no barriers to keep the
children from falling over, and no one manifest-
ing any anxiety lest they should fall. Small
children with other small children on their backs
were frequently seen standing on its edge and
peering over into its depths. In going around
holes and ruts, in spite of our protestations, our
men would go every time on the side of the preci-
pice instead of on the side of the mountain.

22 Lights and Shadows of

Tliey continued this perverse line of conduct in
the same non-clialant and half-amused way even
after Mr. Moore's vehicle had actually capsized
and pitched him over the precipice, fortunately,
however, at place where there was a ledge a
short distance below the road that caught him.
We travelled forty-five miles the first day with
no change of men and sixty-five miles the second
day with three chano-es. The rich-sha man in
costume looks much like a college athlete equip-
ped for the running match, is very proud of his
muscle and speed, and always assumes a rapid
and high-stepping gait when passing through a
village. A good one will easily cover a distance
of fifty miles on a 2:ood road in ten hours. What
the Japanese lack in size they also make up in
spirit and courage. The Chinese contemptu-
ously call them ''wojen' — island dwarfs. But
as the Chinese have more than once found, to
their sorrow, they have ever been a most unsat-
isfactory people for enemies to encounter in war.
Zingliis-Khan, with his Tartars, overran China,
and his grandson, Kublai-Klian, thought to do
the same thing Avith Japan, supposing, no doubt,
that he would have quite a holiday time with the
little islanders. The expedition, fitted out with
much pomp and circumstance, reached the shores
of Japan, but never landed. It would have re-

Mission Work in the Far East. 23

turned much wiser than it came except that only
three men of it survived to tell the tale. The
war-like propensities of the Japanese seem to
have heen among their original and permanent
traits and not a recent development. Each pro-
vincial city has its ancient castle, the strong-
hold of the old Daimio, who held fief of the
Mikado to nde the province. A fine specimen
of these is the one at Xagoj^a. It is built of huge
blocks of stone, its two main towers being 170
feet high and crowned with figures representing
dolphins of enormous size and covered with
beaten gold. It is surrounded by a moat that
can be filled with water or emptied at pleasure.
Its base is large enough to furnish storage room
for several months supply of provisions, so that
the old feudal lord, even though he might not be
strong enough to come out and fight in the open,
could look out from his observation tower and
smile at all his foes. In the old days of fighting
with swords the sword of the Samura had the
temper of a razor, and the enemy Avho came
within its sweep was almost sure to emerge
from the encounter minus a head. From the
earliest days of their recorded history to this
day the soil of Japan has never been successfully
invaded by a foreign enemy. They have now an
army of about 250,000 men, including reserves,

24 Lights and Shadows of

drilled and equipped after the latest models,
and, except in the cavalry wing of it, hardly
less formidable, man for man, than that of any
western power. They have a navy that is second
in fighting power only to that of England in the
waters of the Far East. And in the light of
present day developments one wonders some-
times if we may not some day see them united
with England and America in an invincible alli-
ance for hnman freedom, not only in the Orient,
but in the world.

The old national religion of Japan is Shinto-
ism — ^^the way of the gods." It is a strange re-
Morais and ligion witli a strangc name, inasmuch
religion. as it talvcs uo account of any gods,
nor of morality in any form. Its moral postu-
late is ihat obedience to the Emperor is the
whole duty of man, and that, as for the rest, all
a Japanese needs to be perfect is to follow the
bent of his nature, which will always lead him
right. In later times it entered into a fusion
with Confucianism, with which it had some
things in common, the resultant combination
being a sort of apotheosis of patriotism, loyalty
and obedience to "the powers that be." This is
to a large extent the religion, or substitute for
religion, of the upper and educated classes.

Kuddhism prevails among the masses, and is

BUDDHA, NARA, JAPAN.

Height, 53 feet; face, 16x9 feet; eye-brows, 5 feet; mouth, 2)4 feet.
Five hundred pounds of gold, 16,000 pounds of tin, over 20,000 pounds
of copper, besides iron, used in casting. Date, 1150 A. D.

Mission Work in the Far East. 25

more alive in Japan than it is even in India, the
land of its birth. Xowhere else are the temples
so nnmerons, so costly, so well kept, or so
thronged with worshippers. Their gold candel-
abra, their bronze filigree, their lacquered chests,
their fretted ceilings of bine and gilt and red
wrought in lotus flowers, butterflies and various
mythical figures, all as fresh and clean as the
day they were made, present a contrast indeed
to the dingy old temples of China. The vitality
of Buddhism, though probably somewhat dimin-
ished of late years, is still everyAvhere in evi-
dence.

As to the general moral result there is much
difference of opinion. Sir Edwin Arnold and
Mr. Lafcadio Hearii are delighted with it. The
national custom of promiscuous bathing and the
general indifference of both sexes to the ex-
posure of their persons is pointed to by some of
their romantic admirers as a sign of their Edenic
innocence. But the impartial observer may find
himself forced to see in such things both a sign
and a cause of the opposite condition. The
census of 1895 reported an average of one di-
vorce to every three marriages, and in every
city the signs of legalized social immorality
are most painfully abundant. In the foreign
banks and business houses in the coast cities it

26 Lights and Shadows of

has been found necessary to employ Chinese in-
stead of Japanese in positions of trust. Japa-
nese trade will have a more permanent prosper-
ity when their silk, which they sell by weight,
is found on inspection to have less chalk in it,
when a larger proportion of their matches will
strike, and when the repudiation of contracts
discovered to be unprofitable becomes less com-
mon. Judged even by Oriental and heathen
standards, it seems to me that the Japanese must
be pronounced to be rather below than above
par in the matter of every-day morals. On the
other hand, their riddance of the curse of a pro-
fessional official class, like the Mandarins of
China and the Yangbans of Korea, their national
pride and desire to appear well in the eyes of
civilized nations, and the subjection of rulers to
the criticism of an active and out-spoken public
press have lifted them far above all other east-
ern nations in their political morality. At pres-
ent, by the operation of the revised treaties, they
are just coming into the fraternity of civilized
nations on terms of recognized equality. It
will mean much for the welfare of other coun-
tries in the Far East as well as for herself if
Japan shall so deport herself in this new role as
to justifv the action of the powers in yielding
her tliis recognition. The missionary body, who

Mission Wokk ix the Far East. 27

constitute much the Largest portion of her for-
eign residents, will rejoice, for her sake as well
as for their o^\ti, if she succeeds in doing so. It
is they also Avho have done most in the past to
make such recognition possible, and who will do
most in the future to make her worthy of it.
And it is a hopeful sign that this is noAV being
acknowledged by some of her leading statesmen.

28 Lights AND Shadows of

CHAPTER III.

]^Ew Japan and Ciikistian Missions.

The Japanese are intellectually bright and
quick, with a consuming thirst for knowledge,
especially of things that are supposed to be new.
They have never been characterized by the false
pride and conservatism that have well nigh pet-
rified and mummi-fied China, but have always
been ready to examine new ideas, and to wel-
come them if they seemed better than what they
had, from whatever source they might come.
They readily exchanged their old barbarism for
the civilization of China when it was brought to
them, and no more hesitate to acknowledge their
obligations to Confucius than if he had been a
native Japanese. So, when our western civiliza-
tion was brought to them they had an open eye
for its advantages, and, after a little preliminary
dallying, made such a rush for it as has no paral-
lel in the history of civilization. In thirty years
time they have set up and put in full operation
a system of parliamentary government under a
written constitution. The Emjieror, though
still nominally absolute, rules practically through
his cabinet and parliament, like the constitu-

Mission Wokk in tile Fai: East. 29

tional sovereigns of Europe. Under the feudal
system the old Daimios not only had the power
of life and death themselves, but their retainers
(tlie Samurai) were privileged to swish off the
heads of the common people mth their razor-
like swords on the slightest provocation. These
have now been required to step down and out,
leaving justice to be administered by courts of
law, under written codes framed on European
models. A school system has been organized
that ascends in regnlar gradation from the pri-
mary school with compulsory attendance through
the middle school, high school and college, and
culminates in the great Imperial University at
Tokyo, which receives an annual appropriation
from the government of about $200,000. They
have better postal and telegraph facilities than
we have, and countless numbers of daily, weekly
and monthly publications, the city of Tokyo
alone having seventeen daily papers. The streets
of the larger cities are fast being equipped with
electric cars and lights. ]^early two thousand
miles of railway are in operation, the great com-
mercial centres from Tokyo to Kobe being con-
nected by a line over which two through trains
a day are run without change. So far as the ex-
ternal features of our civilization therefore are
concerned, Japan has them in abundance.

30 Lights and Shadows of

What then Lacks she yet ? Much every way,
and especially she lacks yet the infiltration of
trne civilization into the character of her people ;
and she lacks the spirit of it luhich is Christi-
cmity.

In the streets of E'agasaki I met a native gen-
tleman dressed in a Derby hat, a steam laun-
dered shirt and collar, a silk cravat, and over
these a linen dnster. The upper half of him was
thus Christianly arrayed, but the lower half of
him was not arrayed at all. He was a walking
allegory. Japan is civilized at the top, but not
at the bottom. Out in the country among the
common people one sees many more relics of
primitive savagery than among the Chinese, or
even the Koreans. She is also civilized on the
outside, but not yet on the inside to any great
degree. And whether this external civilization
of ours Avill in the long run do her more good
than evil, depends on whether we shall succeed
in our effort to give her along with it our Chris-
tian religion, which alone can effect that regen-
eration of character which can make Japan or
any other nation truly civilized and great.
Christian Amoug the otlicr Wcstem things

that Japan rushed at for a time was
Christianity. When the feudal system was over-
thro\\Ti the feudal retainers, who were soldiers,

Mission Work in the Far East. 31

scholars, and gentry all in one, found themselves
in the new order of things without a reason of
existence. Some of them went abroad and
studied in foreign schools. Of these some be-
came real Christians, and others, finding a con-
venient mode of subsistence in lecturing in
churches and practicing on the credulity of the
Christian public, became Christians for the sake
of the loaves and fishes. On their return they
naturally became associated with the mission-
aries from the countries they had visited, and
found at once a sphere of usefulness and a means
of livelihood as the missionaries' teachers, inter-
preters, and helperSo They reported also to the
men of their class that the civilization they so
much admired was allied in the West with
Christianity. Christianity thus gradually be-
came popular with the Samurai. Meanwhile
many of them had also turned politicians, and
come to occupy positions of influence in the gov-
ernment ; and as churches grew and multiplied
they were found to have a goodly number of
la^\^ers, judges, and members of parliament on
their rolls, and there was even some foolish talk
of having Christianity adopted as the national
religion. The churches and missionary boards
were very naturally, but, as it seems to me, not
very wisely or scripturally, elated, and much

32 Lights and Shadows op

was made in missionary magazines of the fact
that we had obtained a foothold among the ^^bet-
ter classes" in Japan, and mnch was hoped from
their influence for the rapid evangelization of
the country. In twenty years from the time the
first Protestant church was organized in Yoko-
hama about 40,000 converts had been enrolled,
the great majority of them being from this
Samurai class.

Just at this point a sudden and unexpected

turning of the tide set in, and now for some

years past our Protestant missions in

A reaction. ^ ^

JapaUj instead of marching on to
swift and a^lorious victory, have found them-
selves hard pressed to hold their own. Some
writers express the opinion that this reaction
has spent its force, and that we may now expect
to see the native church enter on another period
of rapid growtli. I cannot see that the present
situation has any such promise, nor do I think
it desirable that Ave see any more ^'boom times"
in the experience of our Japan missions. The
prosperity of the early years was in many re-
spects only seeming, and the present situation
is the natural outcome of some things that were
an element of that seeming prosperity. I think
a partial explanation of the reaction is to be
found in the followinc; facts.

Mission Work in the Far East. 33

First, the available material in the class which
had been the special object of evangelistic effort
was about exhausted. This class numbered only
about 80,000 in the empire, and when 40,000
of them had been enrolled as communing mem-
bers in the churches we can readily see that there
was not much field for further enlargement in
that direction. If all of these had been Chris-
tians after the type of Joseph ^eesima they
would have made an evangelistic force that
would have been irresistible. But many of them
had simply come in on the popular wave, and
their motives were everything else but spiritual.
Many others, who were real Christians, were
unfortified by any thorough instruction in Chris-
tian doctrine and characterized by all the native
instability and love of that which was new.

Then, ^Svhile men slept, the enemy came and
sowed tares among the wheat.'' ^ever was there
a more striking illustration of this devil's strat-
egy, and never was there a more fruitful soil for
tares to grow in than in the minds of these nim-
ble-witted, novelty-loving, vivacious, and vola-
tile Japanese. Rationalists from this country
and from Europe went over and made them be-
lieve that tliey represented the new, the ad-
vanced, the improved phases of Christian
thought in the west, while the earlier mission-

34: Lights and Shadows of

aries, with their infallible Bible and their for-
mulated creeds, represented only what was old
and effete. The reason that these heresies, in-
stead of merely weakening the church's spirit-
ual power and checking its growth, did not work
utter havoc and devastation with it, is because
there was an element in it which had learned, in
a genuine experience, and in the fires of persecu-
tion, the divine power of God's inspired word
and the preciousness of Christ's atoning blood.
But this element was not strong enough to over-
come all the reactionary tendencies, and did not
itself wholly escape being affected by them.

It was found also that the class spirit, which
is a trouble everywhere, but is peculiarly strong
in Oriental countries, began to assert itself and
to make our church of the ^'better classes" less
zealous than it should have been in carrying the
gospel to those below them. To expect that this
would be otherwise is more than the history of
even regenerate human nature warrants us in
expecting of it.

And so the history of our Japan missions,
looked at from the standpoint of the hopes once
cherished of them, has been somewhat disap-
pointing.

There has been disappointment also in an-
other direction from which much was once ex-

Mission Work in the Fak East. 35

Educational pected. The first missionaries who
results. went out found themselves much re-
stricted in the matter of residence and travel,
and also in tlie privilege of openly preaching the
gospel. Eut their services were in demand as
teachers, and they took the lead in the new edu-
cational movement, hoping that this would at
least undermine the old idolatries and prepare
the way for the gospel. If this movement had
continued under missionary auspices it might
have had this result, but meanwhile Japanese
young men were going abroad to study in foreign
schools. When they returned with their degrees
they very naturally wished themselves to fill the
places in their native schools, and in course of
time, except for the purpose of teaching English,
the foreign teachers were largely supplanted by
them. Most of them came back mentally satu-
rated with the views of Huxley and Spencer, or
whatever they had come in contact with that
claimed to be new in western science and philos-
ophy. The whole government educational sys-
tem is now under their control and has become,
not only anti-Christian, but thoroughly materia-
listic and atheistic.

The following facts will show to what extent
this kind of education has undermined the old
idolatries. If it has done so with a few of the

36 Lights and Shadows of

higher classes, it does not seem, in their case, to
have i)repared the way for the gospel, but rather
for something even worse than what they had
before. The famous statesman. Count Ito, may
be fairly taken to represent this class. He says,
"I regard religion ?s quite imnecessary to a na-
tion's life. Science is far above superstition,
and what is any religion. Buddhism or Christi-
anity, but superstition, and therefore a possible
source of weakness to a nation."

Among the masses the old idolatries, instead
of disappearing, seem to be taking on new life
and vigor, and are seeking now to extend and
propagate themselves by methods they have
learned from the missionaries. At Kobe, in
company with Rev. H. B. Price, I attended a
funeral conducted by two priests, one of whom
was a woman, at which there was a gorgeous dis-
play of flowers and much beating of drums and
various spectacular accompaniments. In reply
to Mr. Price's inquiry, we were told that the per-
formers represented '^a sect of Shinto, somewhat
like the Salvation Army." At another place we
saw some handsome western style stone build-
ings which, we were told, were "a Buddhist
Theological Seminary," where several hundred
young men were being trained for the jDricst-
hood.

Mission Work ix the Far East. 3t

At Kioto there has just been completed the
finest temple ever built in Japan, at a cost of
about $2,000,000, which was all met bv private
contributions, chiefly of the common people.
The great wooden pillars of the portico were
reared by ropes woven of the hair of many thou-
sands of women, the most precious thing they
had to offer, devoted to the purpose. In the en-
closure of another great temple we saw some
very modern looking machinery at work, which
we found Avas an electric light plant that was
being used to furnish light to some carpenters
who were repairing the roof of the temple. At
Tokio I saw great crowds of people going out on
electric cars over a road from which school
houses, law courts, parliament houses, steam fac-
tories, and all kinds of things belonging to west-
ern civilization were in full view to the magnifi-
cent and well-kept temples on the outskirts of
the city, where they stood, some of them dressed
in cut-away coats and Derby hats, and bowed
and clapped their hands before the idols of
bronze and stone. Some of them chewed wads
of paper on Avhich prayers were written and
threw them at the idols. If the paper wad stuck,
the prayer was supposed to be efficacious ; if
otherwise, it was offered in vain.

So, as for beautiful and progressive Japan,

§8 Lights and Shadows oIP

the old idolatries are still there; and a much
more formidable enemy, educated atheism^ is
also there; and a Christian chnrcli is there
which is in many respects other than we wish it
might be; and this is the missionary problem
that now confronts ns in that most interesting
country.

And now the question is, what is to be done
about it ?

First of all, it seems to me, some useful les-
sons lie on the surface of this history that greatly
need to be learned, and yet which the church
is very slow to learn. Our Master tells us that
the missionary anointing he received was, first
of all, "to preach the gospel to the poor." If the
situation in Palestine in his day had been, as it
was in the beginning of our Japan missions, that
he had no access to the poor and did have access
to the better classes, he would have preached the
gospel to them. But we do not think he would
have felt any elation at such a state of affairs,
nor counted on any special advantage to his
cause from their financial, social, political, or
other forms of Avorldly influence. Through the
whole course of Christian history whenever the
church has leaned upon this broken reed its hand
has always, sooner or later, been pierced. In
building the church, as in building a house, the

Mission Work in the Far East. 3D

best place to begin is at the bottom. As the
building progresses the middle and the top will
eventually also be reached. Therefore, if in
China and Korea or elsewhere our first access
is only to the poor and lowly, let us not be dis-
couraged, but rather rejoice on that account, re-
membering that "God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty; that no flesh should glory in his
presence."

Again, Japan furnishes a striking object les-
son to show that they are mistaken who think
that secular education and western material
civilization, going in advance of the gospel in
any of these old eastern countries, are in any
sense a preparation for it. On the contrary,
they leave the old barriers unremoved, and erect
new and stronger ones in addition to the old for
the gospel to overcome. It is too late now to ap-
ply this lesson in Japan, but we may apply it
in China and Korea. Our experience in Japan
should teach the church that this is its day of
opportunity in those countries, to go in and evan-
gelize them first, so that when our science and
civilization reach them, as they speedily will,
they will come to Christian instead of to heathen
peoples, and do them good instead of harm.

Finally, as to Japan, it may be said that our
mission history there has, in a certain sense, f ol-

40 Lights and Shadows of

lowed providential lines ; and, although the situ-
ation as thus developed be a difficult one to deal
with^ the very last thing we ought to do is to be-
come discouraged about it. There are some
features in it that are full of encouragement and
Encouraging chccr. While the church there at
ea ures. ppescut coutaius a good deal of chafF
and tares, it also contains many earnest, spirit-
ual, and praying men, who, in the battle that is
now fully on, will not be found wanting. And
while it contains some native preachers who are
not as sound and evangelical as they should be,
there are also a goodly number who are aware
of and mourn over the things that are wrong,
and who are ready to be used for the new and
different kind of work that is now waiting to be
done. I heard one preach on the text, ^'I am
come that they might have life," and the outline
of the sermon as given me by Rev. R. E. McAl-
pine, of our mission, differed from the sermon
outline we often see published in our Monday
morning papers as a piece of bread differs from
a cake of sawdust. The points emphasized were :
(1), The high aim of Christ towards men — to
give them life — as contrasted with Confucius
and other teachers. (2), The necessity of this
life, men being spiritually dead. (3), The char-
acter of it : it is spiritual, penetrating, and satu-
rating the soul, working from within outwards

Mission" Work in the Far East. 41

in the life and character. (4), The spiritual ef-
fects of it, illustrated by Christ's miracles of
healing; set forth in his sermon on the mount,
shown in the lives of his apostles; experienced
by us in temptation, poverty, danger^ and perse-
cution. (5), If we have this life, shall we self-
ishly keep the joy of it to ourselves, or try to
communicate it to our fellowMuen ?

I think it is inspirinoj to know

Needs. .

that we have native preachers in
Japan who can preach sermons like that. The
needs of the present time as they impressed
themselves on me are, first, a large increase
of the missionary force. The increase, how-
ever, should be only of men able to deal with
difficult problems in a wise way, and especially
of men whose voices will always ring true on
the Bible as an infallible rule of faith, and on
the central truths of the old gospel. Then
we need a native ministry trained by such mis-
sionaries as these, in practical work as well as
theology, and taken from the lower classes, so
that they will naturally be in sympathy with
them. And then we need to ffo out from the
great cities where the few hundreds of thousands
live, into all the small towns and villages where
the 40,000,000 live, and preach the simple, old,
orthodox gospel, imtil all the people have learned
to know and understand what it is. This work;

42 Lights and Shadows op

will necessarily be slow and toilsomej largely
hand to hand, and unattended by any brilliant
and spectacular results. The true kingdom of
God will no more come in Japan than it has ever
done elsewhere "with observation." But if we
will do the will of God in this matter, in faith
and patience, then after we have done it we shall
inherit the promise. N^ot by western science and
education, nor by political or social influence,
nor by any other human influence whatsoever,
but only by the foolishness of preaching that
gospel which is the wisdom and the power of
God, will the old idolatries be finally over-
thrown, and the idols be cast to the moles and
the bats, and Japan become in deed and in truth
a Christian nation. On the whole it seemed to
me that the conditions that confront our mis-
sionaries in Japan are more trying, and their
work more difficult, than those of any of the
fields I visited. Thev are standins: in their lot
bravel}^, cheerfully, and hopefully, asking of us
only our sympathy, our prayers, and our earnest
co-operation in their work.

The native Christians also rightly look to us
for the same thing. I had a visit from one of
the elders of the church at ^JsTagoya, a captain
in the army, who came to talk over the situation,
and to urge that we should not diminish, but
that we should try to enlarge our work among

Mission Woek ix the Far East. 43

them. He said we had prayed to God to give
ITS churches in Japan, and in answer to our pray-
ers he had given ns many, most of which were
still in the weakness of infancy. And now to
abandon any of these chnrches and leave them to
perish ^Svonld not," it seemed to him, '^be treat-
ing God with proper politeness." So, speaking
reverently, as Capt. Hibiti meant his expression,
it seemed to me.

Vrhat the church needs most of all is the wil-
lingness to answer this touching appeal. And
the day we ought to look and pray for is the day
when it shall be said, God has made His people
willing in the day of His power}

^ Japan also needs a ^yell endowed Christian school of
a grade equal to the best government colleges, the pat-
ronage of which would come from the graduates of the
mission schools. Only from such a school can we hope
to obtain the Christian leaders, both in the ministry and
ill secular life, that are necessary to the success of the
work on any large scale. To guarantee that such a
school would remain Christian and orthodox, for the
present and for some time to come, both its endoAvment
and its board of management should be retained in this
country. If this course had been pursued with the Do-
shisha, the present unhappy outcome of that enterprise
would have been avoided.

The remarks in this chapter concerning unwarranted
and unrealized hopes from the effect of Western educa-
tion and civilization are not intended to imply any de-
preciation of the right kind of Christian education,
which always has been and always will be found to be an
essential part of successful missionary work.

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46 Lights and SiIxVdows of

CHAPTEE IV.

The Country and People of China.

The essential difference between Chinese and
Japanese native cliaracter is shown in the stolid
and immovable opposition which China presents
to the enlightenment and improvements that
have been knocking at her gates for more than
half a centnry from the nations of the West.
There is method in China's madness, however,
in this matter, for preserving as she has done,
almost nnchanged, the way of doing things in-
angiirated by the fonnder of her nation, who is
claimed not without plausible reason to have
been the grandson of Xoah, the transition to new
ways which must come sooner or later will in-
volve a revolution that can hardly be accom-
plished without a violent disruption of the ]3res-
ent social order. Meanwhile, those who would
like to see wliat Oriental life was like at least as
far back as the days of Abraliam can do so by
paying a visit to some of the interior cities and
villages of the Celestial Empire. Excluding
Manchuria and Thibet, China is about two-
thirds as large as the United States, and posses-

Mission Wouk in the Far East. 4T

ses all the variety of geographical features, re-
sources, soil, and climate that are found in the
same extent of country in other parts of the
world. In different parts of China differing
environments have produced some variation of
type among the people. But these are rather
physical than intellectual and moral. In their
characteristics, customs, and ways of looking at
life we find among them throughout the empire
a remarkable homogeneousness.

The best part of China as respects both soil and
people is the region of the Yangtse valley, in
which the stations of our Southern Presbyterian
Mission are located. If my reader will assist
me by the vigorous use of his imagination, I will
endeavor to show him some of the things to be
seen in this region which constitute what may be
called our Missionary Environment in China.

For a vicAv of the country we will take our
stand on one of the high hills that are found at
A rural frcqueiit intervals along the river

scene. bauks. Froui this view point the
great valley spreads out before us northward as
far as the eye can reach. The alluvial plain ly-
ing between the Yangtse and the Hoang-ho on
the north is the largest body of valley land to be
found in one body anywhere in the world. It is
dotted all over with villages, hundreds of them

4S Lights and Shadows of

being in plain view from our hilltop, their adobe
houses reminding us, as we watch the yellow-
skinned people coming out and going in, of a
multitude of great yellow ant hills. Between
the villages are the little farms of from one to
three acres in extent, naturally fertile, and
dressed with liquid fertilizer every afternoon
until the air, even our hilltop, is laden with the
perfume. In this way their productive power
is preserved unimpaired age after age, and, al-
though cultivated with the most archaic imple-
ments, the same old wooden plow and pick that
the grandson of Noah used, and the fingers of
the people, one would judge from the luxuriant
growth and dark green color of the vegetation
that they are yielding now their very maximum
of food in the form of rice and beans and vege-
tables. These farms are inclosed in a network
of canals, which serve to irrigate the crops, and
as highways of travel instead of roads. These
canals are crowded with house boats and rice
boats and foot boats and wood rafts and small
junks, driven by sails or pulled by ropes or pro-
pelled by a single crooked oar that works on a
pivot at the stern, with a motion exactly like
that of a fish's tail. They are crossed by fre-
quent bridges of beautiful arched stone work,
the best of them many hundreds of years old.

Mission Work in the Far East. 49

We see also a multitude of stone structures of
two upright pieces with two transverse pieces at
the top, more or less artistically carved, and cover-
ed with inscriptions. These are memorial arches
of those who have given some extraordinary evi-
dence of the virtue which the Chinese have exag-
gerated into a vice, and which they call '^filial
piety" ; most of them in memory of young women
whose betrothed husbands died, and who gave the
supreme evidence of filial piety by leaving their
own homes and devoting themselves to tTie ser-
vice of the mother-in-law that was to have been,
or, better still, by joining their betrothed in the
spirit world through the door of suicide.

Out in the rice fields and bean patches, and
coming and going on the tow-paths, are the peo-
ple, like the stars of heaven for multitude, not
one in a thousand of whom has ever had a dream
or an aspiration beyond that of three meals of
rice a day, seasoned with a few vegetables and a
little salt fish. They are hard featured, curi-
ous, unsympathetic, and ungracious, and they
flock to a foreigner, and close him in, if he comes
anywhere in reach of them, like ants to a piece
of bread. One of the least enticing phases of
missionary life in China is that you can never
get away from these people. They encompass
you like a suffocating atmosphere, which one

50 Lights and Shadows of

feels at times to be intolerable, but can in no-
wise escape from. The missionary can only for-
tify himself against the nervous irritation it pro-
duces by nursing visions of the time when, at
the end of his eight years' term, he will be able
to renew his vitality by breathing once more the
air of his native woods .and hills. In China he
feels at times that one breath of these were worth
a king's ransom.

The hill on which we stand and all the sur-
rounding hills are cemeteries, where grave
mounds have been accumulating for four thou-
sand years, until they lie as thick almost as they
can lie, one against another ; and in the mulberry
groves, on the canal banks, and on every rising
ground in the fields are the heavy wooden coffins,
holding the unburied bodies of those who died
too poor to afford the luxury of interment, or
who have been waiting for months, or perhaps
years, for a rascally luck doctor, supported by
the family, to find them a fortunate place for
burial. It is a grewsome sight, indeed, and no
one with a heart in him can witness it without
being appalled at the thought of this innumer-
able multitude, who, while the Christian church,
which was commissioned to evangelize them,
and whose first reason of existence has been to
carry out that commission, has been apparently

Mission Work in the FxVr East. 51

going on the theory that this was a side issue, a
kind of optional duty, or no duty at all, have
now gone forever heyond the reach of evangeliza-
tion. But whoever may have been responsible
for these, for those living multitudes, working in
those rice fields and coming and going on those
tow-paths, the church of to-day that lives con-
temporary with them is responsible. And if we
fail to do what we can to give them the gospel
which others have given to us, they also shall
die in their sins, but their blood will be required
at our hands.

Another important feature of the environ-
ment of a missionary in China is the city in
A Chinese wliich he Hvcs. It is an amazing rev-
^^^^' elation to one who sees it for the first

time of the conditions in which it is possible for
human beings to exist and thrive. The Chinese
say,

" Above is the palace of heaven ;
Below are Hangchow and Soochow."

Beautiful for situation is Hangchow, over-
looked by rocky hills that duplicate themselves
in the clear waters of the West Lake that lies
between them and the city. But I enjoyed the
privilege of seeing Hangchow in rainy Aveather,
and tasted to the full ^'the myriad and assorted
odors" that rise from its open air sewerage and

52 Lights and Shadows of

from the islands of garbage standing up out of
pools of a saturated solution of house and
kitchen refuse. The main street of the city at-
tains the enormous width of ten feet, but the
other streets have an average width of about
seven feet.

As one looks up the street the most obtrusive
feature in the prospect is the long row of painted
and gilded sign boards hanging perpendicularly
in front of the shop doors on either side. The
houses are usually two-storied, the upper stories
being the homes of the people and the lower ones
their shops and stores. Across from the upper
windows, above the gilded sign boards, rope; are
stretched, on which are hung blue cotton trou-
sers and petticoats galore, for such an airing as
the atmosphere of Hangchow affords. The fea-
ture of ''contrast,'' which Mr. Curzon declares
to be "the dominant note of Asian individual-
ity," is conspicuously exhibited in the interiors
of the shops and stores. In one of them you will
see displayed the finest and most richly-colored
silks and satins and embroideries in the world.
I^ext door you will see those same silks being
woven by the untidiest of women on an old ram-
shackle loom that creaks and threatens to fall
down at every stroke of the batten. ^N^ext door
to an ivory shop, filled with carvings of such

Mission Wokk in the Fak East. 53

beauty and delicacy as only Chinese patience
and deftness of finger can produce, stands an
auction room for unwashed, second-hand cloth-
ing, or old rags. Next door to this is a teashop,
where a great crowd is gathered to gossip and
smoke and gamble with dice and dominoes and
fighting crickets, or, with endless chatter and
gesticulation, to settle a half-dozen neighborhood
quarrels at one time. Opium dens are appal-
lingly frequent, half concealed, but revealing
their presence by the emission of their sicken-
ing odors. Entering the court of a Buddhist
temple, once imposing with its massive timbers
and the graduated ascent of its paved approaches,
but looking old and dingy now, its glory long de-
parted, we see a few irreverent worshippers per-
forming before the idols, but a great crowd find-
ing entertainment in the performances of the
professional story-teller, the juggler, the ventril-
oquist, or going into or coming out of the booths
where every conceivable kind of humbug side-
show is in full blast. If we stay there long we
shall find ourselves the greatest side-show of all,
and most inconveniently hustled by a crowd
whose idea of the dignity of an American citizen
is expressed by the greeting, ^'Where did you
come from, you old red-bristled foreign devil ?"
Out in the little narrow street are the thousands

64 Lights and Shadows of

and tens of thousands of tlie people, jamming
street life ^^^ jostling each other in what seems
to be, bnt is not, an impracticable ef-
fort to get where they are going, and mingled in
what seems to be, but is not, inextricable confu-
sion. An embroidered sedan is loaded with a
fat mandarin in silk robes and huge spectacles
in tortoise-shell frames, his head bobbing to the
motion of his carriers, portentous in his dignity,
sublimely unconscious of his absurdity. A
creaking wheel-barrow is loaded with three half-
naked coolies on one side and three ugly black
pigs on the other. The man with the bamboo
pole across his shoulders transports by ropes sus-
pended from either end of it every conceivable
kind of burden; the traveller's luggage, boxes
of merchandise, a movable restaurant, baskets
of fresh cabbage and turnips, or of eggs that
were once fresh, but, as likely as not, are now
far gone in the process of transformation into
sulphuretted hydrogen. Most pitiful of all to
see are the women hobbling along on their poor
little stumps of bound feet, many of them carry-
ing in their arms, or strapped to their backs,
from one to three very gaily-dressed, but very
dirty-faced and mangy-headed children. Most
forlorn and wretched looking, but most useful in
their office of street scavengers, are the dogs, as

Mission Work in the Far East. 55

bitterly anti-foreign as the literati, but whose
superstitious fear of the foreigner is luckily
stronger than their hate, so that as we pass
along they first rush out with a furious bark and
then immediately tuck tail and disappear behind
the scenes. Seemingly impossible indeed the
situation becomes when, in the midst of all this
jam and jumble, a wedding procession going one
way meets a funeral procession going the other.
But in the long course of their experience the
Chinese have wisely come to an understanding
about some things, and one of these is as to who
has the right of way in the street. And so, in-
credible as it would seem, they all manage some-
how to work their way along and, for anything
we ever hear to the contrary, to reach their ap-
pointed destinations.

Another thing, of Avhich we are likely to see
several in the course of a morning, is a Chinese
street quarrel, Avhich differs from all other quar-
rels as everything Chinese differs from the
same thins: evervwhere else in the world. We
observe two men walking side by side engaged
in a conversation which grows more and more
animated as they proceed. They are probably
exchanging opinions as to which of their re-
spective mothers was the most disreputable
character in Chinese history. In the space of

56 Lights and Shadows of

half a mile they have wrought themselves into a
perfect frenzy of rage. Their voices have as-
sumed a tone to which the grating of a shovel
on the hearth is music. Finally one of them
gives utterance to a sentiment whose vileness of
expression and comprehensive breadth of un-
complimentary implication the other cannot
hope to rival, whereupon the victor receives the
plaudits of the crowd, and the vanquished, hav-
ing ^^lost face/' retires to grieve over his dis-
comfiture. I was told that these quarrels rarely
had any practical results beyond a little harm-
less pulling of queues, but I saw with my o^vn
eyes three first-class fisticuffs grow out of them,
from which both parties emerged with ugly knots
on their heads, and after which I confess that
my respect for the Chinese and my hopes for
the future of their nation were both considerably
enlarged.

Last and most picturesque of all things to be
seen in this unique street life is the professional
beggar. He is a privileged character, belonging
to a guild that protects his interests, for which
protection he pays an initiation fee of thirty
Mexican dollars.

For an equipment, his face is covered with
something worse than ordinary mud. His gray
blouse, coming to the knees and frayed at the

Mission Wokk in the Fae East. 57

edges, is stiff with that upon which he has been
lying in the street. The part of his person ex-
posed to view is a mass of festering sores. His
plan of campaign is to promenade the street,
stopping before each shop door, going through
various contortions and singing a lugubrious
tune, with the view of making himself so dis-
agreeable that no customer will enter the shop
while he stands there. When the reluctant shop-
keeper at last capitulates by handing him out a
cash, the beggar magnanimously raises the siege
and moves on to the next shop. Over some shop
doors you will see a piece of paper posted, with
an inscription to the effect that a fee has been
paid to the beggars' guild, in consideration of
which that shop-keeper is to have immunity
from their solicitations for the space of twelve
months.

Time fails to tell of the thousand other things
that enter into this amazing and bewildering
conglomerate of life in the streets of a Chinese
city. It is intensely interesting to one who sees
it for the first time and passes on to other scenes.
But as a permanent feature of our missionary
environment it has a tendency to grow monoto-
nous, and to have the reverse of a tonic effect on
missionary nerves.

While the missionaries have their headquar-

58 Lights and Shadows of

ters in the cities, mose of the meiij and some of
the women, sjDend much of their time itinerating
among the smaller towns and villages. There-
fore the available modes of travel become an
important feature of their environment.

In Central China the canals take the place of
roads, and the principal means of locomotion is
Modes of the house boat. By carrying your
own chair and bed and provisions,
and something to read and a supply of penny-
royal and insect powder, one can enjoy life fairly
well on a house boat, provided he is not restless
on the score of speed. A rice boat is a smaller
but speedier craft, and is not to be recommended
for a rainy night, such as the one Mr. Paxton
and I had for our trip from Sinchang to Soo-
chow, a distance of sixty miles, which we made
in sixteen hours. Its covering is a piece of
bamboo matting, open at both ends, and usually
well supplied with holes, so that you can get full
benefit of both the rain and wind. We asked
the boatman if he had any bugs on board. He
said, ^'Yes, a couple, but they are family bugs,
and will not draw nigh you." ^^Any mosqui-
toes?'' Answer, ^^None, if you keep moving;
but if you stop, one and a half." Our faith in
his assurances was not great, but we did keep
moving, and if either the two bugs or the one

Mission Work in the Far East. 59

and a half mosquitoes did draw nigh iis, it was
while Ave were asleep, and they did not succeed
in waking us.

But when a boat will not take you where you
wish to go, then the problem of locomotion be-
comes like that in the case of the Arkansas trav-
eller, who was told, you remember, that which-
ever Avay he went he would not go far before he
would wish he had gone some other way. In
the region from Tsingkiang-pu north they have
the ^^mule litter" and the famous two-wheeled
cart drawn by two mules tandem. Being pre-
vented by want of time from visiting this part
of our field, I did not have the opportunity of
becoming acquainted by personal experience
with these two phases of missionary life. But
of the cart I was told that the wheels were usu-
ally only partially encompassed by the tire, and
that in combination with Chinese roads it is the
most perfect device yet framed by man for dis-
covering the exact location of every joint and
bone in the human body. The wheel-barrow I
had a very small experience of, but, small as it
was, I have not since felt the slightest ambition
to have it enlarged. The Chinese never lubri-
cate their wheel-barrows, because, they say,
"noise is cheaper than oil.'' You sit on the side
of it, with one foot extended in front and the

60 Lights and Shadows of

other supported by a rope stirrup. To maintain
one's position with dignity when the driver
pushes you in his energetic way across a gully,
requires the most rapid power of adjustment,
as Avell as forethought and presence of mind. As
a device for teaching one to appreciate the lux-
ury of walking, the Chinese wheel-barrow is in-
comparable. In all the Orient to-day, as in the
days of Isaac and Jacob, the donkey is a favorite
instrument of transportation. I rode one from
E'ankin five miles out to the Ming Tombs ; but
going back I preferred to Avalk through the broil-
ing sun. Toothing in China is exactly like what
the same thing is anywhere else in the w^orld.
Whether it be man or animal, the power of
heredity working through millenniums of isola-
tion, wdth no modification from foreign admix-
ture, has developed in every case something that
is peculiar to China. The donkey is no excep-
tion to this rule. His gait is a rough jog, in-
stead of an easy amble. Our American donkey's
bray, we know, is a unique phenomenon in the
realm of sound. But that of the Chinese donkey
has a quality all its own. It was that, even more
than his gait, which distressed me and made me
rather walk than ride him. There are no words
in English to describe the heart-rendering pathos
of it. It was as if an appeal to heaven against

Mission Work in the Far East. 61

the cruelty and oppression of ages were at last
findins: utterance in one lone;, loud, undulatinc;
wail. And when our party of three met another
party of six and all nine of the donkeys began
at one time to exchange the compliments of the
day, one would not have been much astonished
to see the dead coming out of those graves on
the hillside, mistaking it for an announcement
that the day of judgment had come.

The Chinese inn I had experience of had its
name inscribed over the door in a character
which signified ^'Ilouse of excellent felicity."
I have no doubt it was a truthful inscription
from a Chinese standpoint, inasmuch as all
their ideas of felicity, comfort, and convenience
are exactlv the reverse of ours. Its c^uest room
had a door opening without a shutter, through
which the multitudinous Chinese public were
privileged to come in ^.nd inspect us and our be-
lono'ino's to their hearts' content. It had a dirt
floor, and its Avails and roof were frescoed with
dirt and cobwebs. It had one piece of furniture,
in the shape of a platform in one corner, with a
piece of ragged and dirty straw matting spread
over it for a bed. Such as it was, Mr. Haden
and I were tired enough to take a refreshing
nap on it, and then went on our way rejoicing — ■
to leave it behind

62 Lights and Shadows of

Missionary ^^ Sliakespearc could have visited

homes. {^L soiiie of the missionary homes in
China, he Avonld have had a new conception of
a thing to describe as "shining like a good deed
in a naughty world." It is the wise policy of
most missions to build comfortable western-style
houses for their members, and with the nice
tableware and hric-a-hrac ornaments that are to
be had in the Orient for a trifle, it is easy with a
small outlay to make a sweet and attractive
home. Such homes all missionaries ought to
have, if possible, to which they may go when
their day's work is over and find rest from the
nerve strain that one can see must be incident
to work in such conditions as I have described.
But it is not always possible to have such homes.
In opening a new station it usually takes a year,
or sometimes two and three years, of negotiating
and battling with the authorities to buy a piece
of ground. After that comes the experience of
the leisureliness with which Oriental carpenters
carry out a building contract. During this time
the missionary, glad to get a foothold of any
kind, contents himself with such accommoda-
tions as he may be able to secure. I saw in the
outskirts of Kiasliing the little three-roomed
mud hovel where Dr. Venable and Mr. Hudson
spent one whole winter without kindling a fire,

Mission Work in the Far East. 63

except under the dirt overij because there was no-
where else to kindle it. In the spring Mrs. Ven-
able joined them and lived there several months.
Afterwards they moved into a five-roomed hovel,
and finally into a native house in the city, where
they are now, which has plenty of rooms, but
the rooms are so small and dark and unventi-
lated that they cannot be made either sanitary or
comfortable. At Wusih I found two missionary
families living in ramshackle native houses
fronting on a filthy street eight feet wide, with
the rear windows hanging over a filthy canal.

But, no matter what kind of exterior sur-
roundings nor interior comforts or discomforts
there might be, I found the inside of every mis-
sionary home I visited to be a place of bright-
ness and cheer. So far from complaining of
their physical hardships are they that, as we
know, when they come back to us, lest they
might seem to be complaining, they shrink from
even telling us the facts of the case. Xeither are
they unhappy on account of them. They are ab-
sorbed and happy in their work. And it is evi-
dently true with most of them that, by emptying
their hearts of worldly ambitions and the care
for worldly comforts, there has only been made
the greater room in them for the blessings of
that kingdom which ^^is not meat and drink, but

64 Lights and Shadows of

righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost.'' One thing I think they crave to know
of ns who remain at home — that we cherish
them in our hearts, that we remember them in
our prayers, and that we are resolved to support
them in the work which is ours as well as theirs,
and yet is neither ours nor theirs — but Christ's.
In closing this chapter let me say a word con-
cerning the genuine and delightful spirit of
brotherhood which I found prevailing among
the missionaries of all denominations in China.
The denominational lines existing here are re-
produced there, as is inevitable. But breaches
rmtyand of Spiritual unity growing out of
Jli' cMnesr thcsc are rare. Presbyterians of all
missions. brauchos co-operate in work to such
an extent as makes them practically one. I can-
not speak authoritatively of others in that re-
spect, but I can say that I received everywhere
the same welcome into the homes of the mission-
aries of other churches as of those of my own,
and the friendships formed with some of them
I count among the most valued trophies brought
back from my visit to the Far East.

Mission- Woek iisr the Far East. 65

CHAPTEE V.

The Missionaky Problem and Work in

China.

The mission of the church in China is not to
civilize the Chinese. They have a civilization
which is very different from ours, but which is
very old and elaborate, and which, having been
evolved contemporaneously with their national
character, suits them in some respects better
than our civilization ever will. Their ancestors
were dressing in silks and living imder estab-
lished government and forms of social life ages
before ours emerged from the forests of north-
ern Europe, where the^ dressed in animal skins,
ate raw meat for breakfast and roots and berries
for dinner, and drank ale at their feasts out of
cups made of the skulls of their enemies slain in
battle. Our mission is not to introduce among
them our western scientific knowledge and the
material comforts and conveniences of our west-
ern civilization. These will find their way to
them in the course of tim.e. But to the extent
that they do so in advance of our gospel work,
they will constitute an additional barrier in-
stead of an advantage to that work.

^^ Lights and Shadows o^

The cliurcli's business in China is to plant
and establish the kingdom of God; and God's
instrument for that purpose there and here and
every where is the preaching of the gospel.
Preaching In China, just as in this country,

in China, ^^iq method of preaching needs to be
adapted to the character of the audience. I at-
tended a Sunday morning service at Hangchow,
where our missionaries have been long enough
to have gathered and trained a church of about
150 members. A native woman trained at our
Hangchow boarding school presided at the
organ. The people sang, with such voices as na-
ture had given them, some of our old church
hymns translated into Chinese to the old fa-
miliar tunes. The preacher was Mr. Dzen, a na-
tive, trained by our mission and ordained as
pastor of the church about three years ago. His
text was, "Enoch walked with God ; and he was
not, for God took him." The outline of the ser-
mon, as given me by Rev. G. W. Painter, w^as,
(1), The meaning of walking with God — con-
stant communion. (2), The conditions — faith;
love ; oneness of mind ; a common interest. (3),
The results — we shall be afraid of sin ; we shall
fear nothing else but sin ; we shall be with Him
at the end and enter with Him into His glory.
Though I understood not a word, yet my heart

Mission Work in the Far East. 67

burned within me as I saw in the faces of some
of the listeners the radiance of the new life and
hope which Christ had brought into their dark-
ened souls; and I felt like saying as I looked
over the little church with its plain wooden
benches and uncarpeted aisles, ^^Surely the Lord
is in this place ; this is none other but the house
of God ; and this is the gate of heaven."

To reach the outside heathen, other methods
have to be employed. The "street chapel" is the
chief reliance for this kind of work in the cities.
A room is rented that opens on some frequented
street and furnished with plain benches and a
table and, sometimes, a cabinet organ. The mis-
sionary and his native helper go to the chapel
and take a stand where they can be seen by the
passers-by. The sight of the foreigner or the
sound of the organ brings in the crowd, and the
missionary begins to talk to any who will listen.
He has a hard problem before him. I^ot only
are the ideas he would convey all new and
strange to his hearers, but there are no words
in their language by which they can be conveyed
without endless explanations and circumlocu-
tions. Their lano:ua2:e, as well as their thou2;ht,
is contaminated by centuries of association with
idolatry. Their idea of God is of Shangti,
whom only the Emperor can worship, and who

68 Lights and Shadows of

has no concern for the affairs of ordinary mor-
tals, or of the god of wealth, or the god of war,
or of Buddha, whose stone image, with its ex-
pressions of idiotic self-complacency, intended
to rejiresent the peace of Nirvana, is the central
figure in all their temples. Their ideas of truth
and morals are all distorted and wrong. They
know not what we mean by salvation. Some, as
they come in, deposit their burdens and take out
their pipes and smoke. Others express audibly
their opinion of the ^^foreign devil," usually the
reverse of complimentary. The expressions of
countenance are various, but are mostly of sup-
pressed rage or amused curiosity or hopeless
stupidity. Into this unpromising soil the mis-
sionary and his native helper throw broadcast
the good seed of the kingdom. Occasionally one
is seen whose face shows that he is wondering if
the foreigner really knows of a God who is the
friend of the poor and the oppressed and of him
that hath no helper. This one will come again,
and as he hears over and over again the story of
Christ and of his love and power, some day he
will learn the joy and peace of believing on him.
This street-chapel preaching is followed up by
conversations by the wayside with any they can
get to listen to their message, and by the distri-
bution of Bibles and Christian books and tracts.

Mission Wokk in the Far East. 69

And so the gospel seed is being sown beside all
waters, and the foundations of the kingdom of
God are being laid in faith and hope, and little
companies of believers are being gathered here
and there, and now, after long years of working
and Avaiting, the sowers and the reapers are be-
ginning to rejoice together.

We are also trying to train up a generation of
native preachers and workers, and for this pur-
pose we have mission schools. Our Southern
Educational Presbyterian Mission has always oc-

work. cupied conservative ground on the
question of schools as an evangelizing agency,
and the w^ork at most of our stations being com-
paratively new, the demand for school work for
the children of Christians has been limited. But
many "Day Schools" are conducted, where any
children who will come and conform to the rules
are taught, and where our lady missionaries go
and teach them the Bible and the catechism and
gospel songs, and then follow them into their
homes. In this way they carry the gospel to the
Chinese women, many of whom could be reached
in no other way. For the training of larger boys
and theological students, other missions have es-
tablished many large high schools and colleges.
Our mission as yet has only an industrial boys'
school, recently established at Sinchang. x\t

70 Lights and Shadows of

Hangchow we have a co-operative arrangement
with our brethren of the Northern Presbyterian
mission, by which we send our boys to their
school and they send their girls to ours. Our
girls' school at Hangchow has been in operation
for thirty years, and now graduates each year
a class who have had an eight years' course in
which the Bible is the leading text-book. The
good that is being accomplished by these gradu-
ates in their work as Bible women and church
workers, and as the makers of Christian homes,
which are the greatest of all needs in China, is
incalculable. This and other such schools also
serve an indispensable purpose in furnishing
our native pastors with educated Christian
wives. By a happy coincidence one of the last
year's graduates v;as married while I was at
Hangchow to a young man wlio was about to be
sent out several hundred miles into the interior
as an evangelist. The ceremony, performed by
the old native pastor, was interesting as an illus-
tration of the thoroughness with which the Chi-
nese Christians have been taught to do their
work. It opened with a four-versed hymn to
the tune to which we sing 'The year of jubilee
is come" ; then followed a long prayer ; then a
reading of all the passages in the 'Nev/ Testa-
ment bearing on matrimony ; then a twenty min-

Mission Work in the Far East. 71

iites' exhortation ; then the pledges ; then another
hymn dealing very minutely with the subject of
reciprocal duties; then another prayer, after
which the services closed with the long metre
doxology and the benediction. As they started
out next day, leaving the little circle of Chris-
tian friends they had been living among, which
had gro^\Ti large enough in Hangchow to en-
courage each other under their trials, to take up
their home and work in a community where
they would only have each other to lean on, it
was pathetic to think of the experiences that in-
evitably awaited them.

Let it be hoped that they have found in Him
whom they serve all needed strength, and that
their lives have been blessed by the mutual love
which is known in Chinese wedded life only by
those who have found it in their mutual love for
Christ.i

^ Through the kindness of Miss E. C. Davidson and
Rev. G. W. Painter we are able to give the following
translation in verse of part of the wedding ceremony
referred to above.

Nature of Obligation as Told by Pastor.
1. God has required the vows they take. The husband,
tliough the head,
Makes promise to revere the wife, nor other woman
wed:

72 Lights ais^d Shadows of

Medical The work of the Medical Mission-

work. (lyy is heing much emphasized of late

years in China as a means of removing the great

Support and comfort with his love, he doth to her

engage,
When youth and beauty yield their place to ugliness

and age.

2. She too takes pledge that while he lives, her will to

his shall bow,
Or strong or weak, or rich or poor, she will not break

her vow.
Both promise make, should God see fit that one should

widowed be.
Their mutual offspring they'll protect, though to

re-wed left free.

Bridal Hymn.

1. To show that unity of heart and virtues was God's

plan.
He made the woman from a rib, drawn from the side

of man.
In duties of the marriage state, there should be full
I accord ;

Whilst mutual honor, trust, and help bring love as

their reward.

2. Assembled thus we all to-day in joyous mood unite,
By public act to celebrate God's holy nuptial rite,

In which this bridegroom and his bride, made one

out of the twain,
In body, mind, and will made one, one household shall

maintain.

3. Since they together from henceforth one path through

life shall tread,
May reverence, faith and mutual aid, by mutual love
be fed.

Mission Wokk in the Far East. Y3

hindrance that exists in the hostility of the peo-
ple to foreigners. Chinese education includes
no knowledge of medicine or anatomy or sur-
gery. Consequently they have no physicians
of their own to relieve the manifold and pitiful

May God the Father's constant help secure them last-
ing peace;

Whilst misery, woe, and carking care from them for-
ever cease.

4. O Heavenly Father! ever grant thine unremitting

care;
May clashing discord never jar this God-united pair:
We furtlier crave thy guardian care for ages yet to

come ;
May their descendants serve thee, Lord; nor to thy

praise be dumb.

5. May blessings from a Father's hand upon their home

descend,

And grace profound in man and wife in like propor-
tions blend.

Deep reverence for their Saviour-Lord, O Holy Ghost,
inspire!

Whilst filial service all through life their single hearts
shall fire.

6. What things we crave, 0 Father dear! wilt not thou

deign bestow?
That man and wife — unsevered pair — to ripe old age

may grow.
Together bear the ills of life, together share its joy.
And after death in heaven's bright halls together find

employ.
— Translated from the Chinese hy the Rev. G. W.
Painter.

74 Lights and Shadows of

forms of disease that spring from the conditions
in which they live. In this case the work of the
medical missionary ansAvers in part the same
pnrpose as the miracles of healing wrought by
Christ and his apostles. Many large hosj^itals
have been established, which bear their constant
and powerful witness to the beneficent character
of Christianity, and become centres from which
gospel light is distributed by those who have
been taught, as well as healed, in them.

Our mission has onl}^ one hospital, the one re-
cently built at Soochow at a cost of $10,000, the
gift of one man who chose the wise plan of giv-
ing his money to this beneficence while he lived,
and who now lives to see and enjoy the fruit of
his Christian generosity. But we have eight
medical missionaries working at our various sta-
tions with such facilities as they can command,
and who last year (1897) ministered to about
40,000 patients. I spent a morning with Dr.
Yenable at Kiashing and saw the little room ten
feet square with a dirt floor which he called his
^^hospital," in which he was treating a poor fel-
low with a broken thigh, avIio already seemed to
have the death pallor on his face, but who, by
the blessing of God on the doctor's skill, came,
through with a good recovery. Mrs. Venable
and her sister. Miss Talbot, spent the morning

Mission Woek in the Far East. 75

in the dispensary, applying antiseptic ointments
and bandages to all kinds of horrible sores and
nlcers which the people contract from drinking
their canal water, and from standing bare-
legged in the rice fields ; and in dispensing medi-
cines prescribed by the doctor. In addition to
the regular prescriptions, every patient was fur-
nished, for obvious purposes, a small jar of sul-
phur and lard. Some of the cases they handled
I scarcely had the nerve to look at. Yet they
were doing their work cheerfully and happily,
finding their compensation in the luxury of do-
ing good.

In serious surgical cases a written contract is
made with the patient's family, in which they
assume all responsibility for the result. It is
often necessary also to perform the operation in
public to prevent scandalous stories as to what
barbarous things the barbarian doctor does with
his patient. Even with these precautions it is
often possible that a fatal result might lead to a
riot. Dr. Worth told me that he once adminis-
tered chloroform to a woman while a crowd of
her friends stood by with an expression on their
faces which plainly meant, '^now, if she does not
come back to life we will make short work with
you." For a moment her pulse did stop beating
and he thought his time had come, but, fortu-

76 Lights and Shadows of

nately, it returned again, and the operation was
a brilliant success. Shortly afterwards another
crowd brought him a dead woman and insisted
that he should try to restore her to life. These
are a few sample illustrations of the medical
mission work. And God is blessing the noble
and self-denying labors of our missionary doc-
tors and of the women that assist them, so that
through them thousands of bitter enemies are
being turned into friends, and the doors are be-
ing opened through which the missionary
preacher can find his way to the ministry of
souls.

Mission Woek in the Far East. 77

CHAPTER VI.
Hindrances.

Wherever the church has been established
in the world it has had to meet and overcome
many obstacles. But nowhere else in the world
to-day do we encounter such a combination of
obstacles as in China, grooving out of the pecu-
liar character, the peculiar institutions, and the
peculiar superstitions of the people.
Character- Physically, the Chinese are very

much superior to any other people in
the Orient ; and if not superior, they are cer-
tainly not inferior intellectually. As between
China and Japan, there was no dispute on that
point so late as a half century ago. Up to that
time all the civilization that Japan had had been
derived from China ; the Chinese sages, Con-
fucius and Mencius, because she had none of her
OAvn, were her teachers in philosophy and mor-
als, and the Chinese classics were the text-books
in her schools.

China is behind Japan to-day because her
pride and conservatism have beaten back the
impact of our western civilization, which Japan,

78 Lights and Shadows of

having been long accustomed to receive from
others, has admitted and embraced. If these can
be broken down and her students induced to ap-
ply themselves to the acquisition of modern
knowledge, it will not be long until their plod-
ding industry will have placed them in the front
rank among the scholars of the world. In social
morality and reliability, they compare favorably
with other Orientals, and though much addicted
to lying, as all Orientals are, the difference be-
tween them and some Americans in that respect
is not greater than it should be, considering that
China is heathen and America is supposed to be
a Christian land. Many of their characteristic
traits are those which, under the regenerating
influence of Christianity, would go into the
make-up of a great and noble people. They are
sober-minded, industrious, enterprising, peace-
able, and law-abiding. But they have two out-
standing traits which, until they are greatly
modified in some way, will prevent them from
becoming a great and noble people, and cause
them to be in the future as they have been in
the past, the most difficult of all people to reach
with the gospel. These are their monumental
and unparalleled conceit and their preposterous
and paralyzing conservatism. If there is more
hoj^e of a fool than of one wise in his o^vn con-

Mission Work in the Far East. Y9

ceit, what hope is there of a nation of people
who call their country ^The Great, Pure King-
dom/' "The Flowery Kingdom/' 'The Celes-
tial Empire" ; who look on themselves and all
their belongings as absolutely perfect, and on
the most refined and cultivated westerner that
comes to them as a poor, ignorant barbarian
from the far-off fringes of the world, worthy
onlv of their enlightened scorn ?

Their conservatism has its roots in their an-
cestor worship, which leads them to resent any
suggestion of improvement from any quarter as
an insult to these ancestors. The way it works
will appear from the following illustration :
Old and New The first thing that one, going
Shanghai.; fpom this direction, sees of China is
the city of ISTew Shanghai. It is a fine, modern
city, with nimierous factories, run by modern
machinery and lighted by electricity. A wdde
boulevard on the river front is lined with a mag-
nificent row of three and four-story business
houses, of brick and stone. There are several
squares of two and three-story brick flats for resi-
dences, furnished with water and gas and all
modern conveniences. There is one of the most
beautiful of pleasure gardens, with its green
turf and foliage plants and flowers and orna-
mental trees, and red chairs and settees, where

80 Lights and Shadows of

the tired merchants come of evenings and sit and
smoke, and drink in the fresh ocean breeze ; and
graveled walks, where the yonng people prome-
nade and tell their story of love and adventure,
to the accompaniment of moonlight and sweet
mnsic.

One would suppose that all these desirable
things of our western civilization, carried out
there and put right before the eyes of the Chi-
nese, would excite their admiration and awaken
in them a desire to have the same things. Let
us see. Passing through a gate in the wall that
separates Xew Shanghai from Old Shanghai,
we find ourselves in a typical Chinese city, said
to make about the least pretension to decency
and cleanliness of any city in the Empire. Ask
the people of Old Shanghai if they would not
like to have clean streets, and houses with grass
plots around them, and marble-fronted stores
and a pleasure garden. They answer, ^'IN'o, our
ancestors for thousands of years have dispensed
with such things, and shall we set ourselves up
as wiser and better than they ?" I was told that
the municipality of I^ew Shanghai did offer to
extend its waterworks, free of charge, to Old
Shanghai, in the hope of thereby preventing the
pestilences that originate in the foulness of its
streets and canals. They responded by sending

Mission Work in the Far East. 81

a committee to investigate the water that was
offered them. The committee went back and re-
ported that they did not like it. "It has no body
to it," they said, "like the water of our canals.
It has neither taste nor smell." Whether this
story be true or apocryphal, it exactly illustrates
the attitude of China, not only to clean water
and western comforts and conveniences, but to
the western man himself and every thing he
brings with him, Christianity not excepted.
National The proccss of national evolution

evolution, j^^^g i^^^ ^ long time to work itself out
in China along the lines projected by the an-
cient fathers, and the result is as though the
"God of this world" had been the presiding
genius of it, and had been given unlimited op-
portunity to do his worst in the way of making
China hopelessly inaccessible to the gospel.

In government there has been evolved a patri-
archal despotism, in which "the beautiful senti-
ment of filial piety" binds all the people to ab-
ject and unquestioning submission to "the pow-
ers that be," from the Emperor down to the
father of the family, the elder brother and the
mother-in-law.

The governors of provinces and the magis-
trates of cities and to^^Tis are taken from an of-
ficial class composed of those who have passed a

82 Lights and Shadows of

series of examinations in the Confucian classics.
Hundreds of thousands of the young men of
China go up every year to the provincial capit-
als to compete for the degree that puts them in
the line of promotion. These are the so-called
^'Literati/' whose education we might suppose
would make them the friends of light and pro-
gress. But, as a matter of fact, it only fortifies
them in their lofty scorn of anything more mod-
ern than Confucius. And besides, being either
officials or expectant officials, all their personal
hopes and interests are bound up in the system
that now exists, and so they present a solid front
of opposition to anything in the shape of reform
or change. The few who, by luck, or influence
or bribery, reach the coveted goal of office re-
ceive only nominal salaries from the govern-
ment, which they are expected to supplement by
such means as opportunity may throw in their
way. This opportunity they find in pilfering
the public revenues that pass through their
hands, in exacting bribes from all litigants, and
in torturing accused criminals until the last pos-
sible cash has been extracted from them as the
price of their release. If they should become
Christians, they would have to give up their
handsome incomes from these wages of iniquity.
They would also have to resign their offices, be-

Mission Woek in the Far East. 83

cause their official duties require them to engage
in idolatrous rites and ceremonies. Ko wonder
then that the gospel finds in the officials and
literati of China its bitterest opponents, and
any one can see that if Satanic inspiration had
been invoked to devise an official system that
would present the greatest possible obstacle to
our Christian missions, he could not improve
upon the one that now exists.

In the industrial sphere there has been devel-
oped a guild system that holds all trades and
professions in an iron grip. Every merchant or
artisan must belong to the guild, or be boycotted.
Even the beggars and thieves have guilds, the
initiation fee to the beggars' guild in Soochow
being $30 (Mexican). And if anyone attempts
to practice this honored profession without be-
ing a member of the guild, a committee is ap-
pointed, who take their stand on a bridge in the
dusk of the evening and, as the offender passes
by, a knock on the head and a toss into tliQ canal
bring his career to a speedy and inglorious ter-
mination. The guilds as such are taxed to sup-
port the temples and the idol processions. When
one becomes a Christian, he will no longer wish
to help support idolatry. He must therefore
break with the guild and become an industrial
outcast. If we had such a system to contend

84 Lights and S^hadows of

with in this country, it would certainly dimin-
ish the number of our professed converts, even
though it miglit improve their quality. The
religions of China ai^e said to be

Kellglons. '^ ^

Buddhism, Tauism, and Confucian-
ism in the form of ancestral worship. But these
have long been boiling in a pot together until
they have lost their distinctive characteristics,
and the people have them hopelessly confused.
I saw at Shanghai a Tauist priest conducting
Confucian worship in a Buddhist temple. The
residuum from the old religions is a system of
demon worship, which is a veritable reign of ter-
ror, and is the source of untold misery as well as
of mental and spiritual degradation. The peo-
ple believe that earth and air and water are
filled with malignant spirits that pursue them
night and day, and the effort to propitiate them,
or to cajole them, or to dodge them, is the aim
of nine-tenths of their religious observances.
Departed ancestors are kept in good humor by
burning paper money and clothes and horses
and other conveniences at their tombs, which,
being etherealized in smoke, become available
for use in the spirit world. The odor of savory
viands set on tables around their tombs is also
thought to be necessary for their nourishment
and gratifying to their spiritual olfactories.

^[issiON Work in the Far East. 85

The spirits of wind and water are fortunately
supposed to be able to travel only in straight
lines. Hence you will see rectangular brick pil-
lars built opposite a man's front gate, a little
larger than the opening. The spirits coming in
that direction butt against this pillar and are
thrown to the ground. When they get up and
start again, they must still go in a straight line,
and so their entrance into the premises is pre-
vented. Every tiled roof has an upward curve
at each corner. This is to give any vagrant
spirit who might be sliding down the comb of
the roof a slant upward as he leaves it, so that he
will not come gliding through the door or win-
dow of some adjoining house. Fear of the con-
sequences wliich may come to them through the
ill will of these ancestral and other spirits if the
honors due them are in any way neglected, a
fear that often abides long after the mind has
been emancipated from belief in them, is one of
the hardest things to be overcome with those
who are brought to consider the claims of the
gospel.

Then there is the gambling curse, almost uni-
versally prevalent, and the opium curse, the
smell of which is in all the air and the pallor of
it on millions of faces, and many other things
of which there is no more time to speak, which.

86 Lights and Shadows of

taken all together, make up a situation wliich
would seem to render the evangelization of
"China an utterly impracticable and hopeless un-
dertaking. It is no wonder that men of the
world, looking at it from their worldly stand-
point, have so regarded it, and have told us that
the money and the lives of the men and women
devoted to this work are being simply thrown
away. Are they ? Let us see.
^ ,^ Eobert Morrison went as the first

Results.

Protestant missionary to China in
1807. When he died, in 1834, he had only a
half-dozen professed converts to show as the re-
sult of his life work. And some, who forgot
that foundations have to be laid before a build-
ing can be erected, said that he had thrown his
life away. But to-day there is a Protestant
church in China with about 80,000 communing
members, more than half of whom have been
added in the last eight years, and five-sixths of
them in the last twenty years. The rate of pro-
gress steadily increases as the number of trained
natives increases who are prepared to preach
the gospel to their o\vn people. The number is
already great enough to show that human impos-
sibilities and insurmountable obstacles do not
count as such when they come into collision with
the power of God in the gospel.

Mission Woek in the Far East. SY
But, looking to the future of the

Character ' "

of native church in China, the most important
question is not how many native
Christians are there, but what kind of Christians
are they ?

There are some of all classes, but most of
them are of the poorer classes, as was the case
with the church which Christ and the apostles
established. Some have come in from wrong
motives, hoping for employment, or the foreign-
ers' help in law-suits, or some material advan-
tage. This cannot be always prevented, al-
though the greatest possible pains are taken to
prevent it. The great majority of them, how-
ever, have come in expecting on the worldly side
just what they found — disinheritance, boycot-
ting, abandonment of family and friends, and
a thousand forms of persecution. Many are as
to knowledge mere babes in Christ. In symme-
try of Christian character we cannot rightly ex-
pect of them what we do of tliose who have been
born in the midst of Christian environments and
reared in Christian homes. But I bear witness
of what I saw among them, that in simple child-
like faith, in zeal for the cause they have es-
poused and in the patient endurance of persecu-
tion many of them have been, and are now, show-
ing the spirit of the Christians of apostolic days.

$8 Lights and Shadows oV

In our little cliurcli at Soocliow there is a na-
tive preacher by the name of Mr. Leu. When
Dr. Davis was negotiating for the land on which
our hospital is built, Mr. Leu oifered his ser-
vices to act as native "middleman' ' in the pur-
chase. The local magistrate is bitterly opposed
to the foreigners acquiring property, and in a
similar transaction some years ago the magis-
trate in charge revenged himself on the native
who took part in it by arresting him on some
false accusation and throwing him into prison,
where he lay for several years. This was the
probable fate of Mr. Leu. But he did not hesitate
on t'hat account. Tie went out and found an old
man and initiated him into the care of his home,
so that the old man could manage things for him
during the indefinite time that he expected to lie
in prison. lie did not seem to be conscious that
he was doing anything heroic. But, knowing as
he did the barbarities of a Chinese prison, it
seems to me that in this matter this man was a
Christian hero, of the very same spirit with him
who said in the olden time, '^I am ready, not to
be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for
the name of the Lord Jesus."

I am thankful to say that the land for the
hospital was secured, and, by the kind provi-
dence of God, Mr. Leu was saved from the fate

Mission Wokk in tii k Faii East. 89

wliicli he and liis friends anticipated for liini.
And this was the man who stood np in the con-
gregation in Soochow one Snnday morning, in
last October, and responded to my address, ask-
ing me to carry back to the home church a mes-
sage of loye and gratitude from him and his peo-
ple for sending them the gospel, and to ask your
prayers, ^'not," he said, "that we may not. haye
to suffer persecution, for we read in this Bible
that those who will liye godly in Christ Jesus
must suffer persecution, but that God will al-
ways be with us in future as lie has been in the
past, and giye us His grace to make us faithful
unto death.''

For my part, I felt like sitting at that dis-
ciple's feet, that I might learn more of the spirit
of Christ. And this is not a solitary case, but
there are many like him anions: the Christians
of China who are ready any hour to giye the su-
preme test of their fidelity and loye. And we
haye now reached a stage in our work when we
are no longer compelled as Judson was when
asked what was the prospect in Burmah, to point
to the Bible and say, "Bright as the promises of
God." We can point to tlie promises, and also
to the actual yisible results, so large and so rap-
idly increasing in quantity, and some of them
so magnificent in quality, and say, "We are not

90 Lights and Shadows or*

ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation" — even in China.
The power of God will not fail ns. lie is in
China to-day working mightier miracles than
that by which the walls of Jericho were thrown
down. The native Christians there will not fail
ns. They have already been tried in the fire and
their faith found to be of the quality that is im-
perishable. The Protestant missionaries there
will not fail us. The church has never had a
nobler or more self-denying band of workers
than they are. The only cloud on the horizon is
that the church at home seems at present unwill-
ing to give them the support and re-enforce-
ment they need in the ever-widening work that
opens up before them.

Mission Woek in the Far East. 91

CHAPTEK VII.

The Countey and People of Koeea.

In the month of October, 1897, I watched a
Korean sunset from the top of a hill near the vil-
lage of Knnsan, on the southwestern coast. The
sombre effect of the brown rocks of the coast
cliffs and of the little islands in the bay, and of
the brown grass on the hills, was only intensified
by the green of a few scattering, scrubby pines.
The golden clouds and the scarlet waters were as
still as if they had been painted on a canvas.
There was hardly a breath of movement in the
air, and the only things in all the landscape that
seemed possessed of waking life were myself
and a few geese and ducks that were floating
lazily out on the bosom of the ebbing tide.

The scene was typical of that far-away little
kingdom which we insist on calling Korea, but
whicli the natives call Choson, — the ^Tand of
the Morning Calm." It was indeed a land of
"calm," of industrial, social, political, religious,
and every other kind of calm, from immemorial
days of old until about twenty-five years ago,
when its quietude began to be disturbed by visi-

92 Lights and Shadows of

tors from the West^ firing salutes from their bat-
tleships in its harbors and asking the privilege
of extending to it the benefits of their protection
and trade. In recent years it has become the
passive but interested subject of much interest-
ing diplomacy among these visitors, especially
those representing Eussia and England. Rus-
sia's interest was to dominate Korea, not for the
sake of any immediate value to her of the trade
and resources of the country, but with the view
of possessing herself of one of the fine harbors,
notably that of Port LazarefP, on the eastern
coast, both as the long-coveted outlet for her
trans-Siberian trade, and as a place where she
might gradually assemble a navy that would en-
able her to cope with England in the waters of
the Ear East. England's interest was to frus-
trate the designs of Russia. Now that Russia
has secured her outlet in Port Arthur on the
China coast, it is noticeable tliat she is not inter-
esting herself in Korea to the same extent as for-
merly. That she may cease to do so entirely is
a consummation devoutly to be wished, for many
reasons, but especially in the interest of our
Protestant missionary work. Our country has
as yet had no political interests in Korea at all
and has been concerned in none of her recent po-
litical troubles. Eor this reason our mission-

Mission Woek in the Fae East. 93

aries are more welcome there than those of any
other conntry.

The Korean peninsula stretches from the
southern boundary of Manchuria and the north-
east boundary of China southward, between the
Geography thirty-third and forty-fourth degrees
and climate, ^f north latitude. It is traversed
through its whole length by a range of moun-
tains that sends off frequent spurs in both direc-
tions to the sea. These geographical conditions
give it a climate which, excepting the rainy sea-
son, which lasts about two months in summer, is
simply superb. The scenery is picturesque and
the valleys are fertile, and both would be more
so but for the utter denudation of the hills by the
peasants in search of fuel, which is in more
senses than one '^the burning question" in all the
Orient. In the north there is said to be some
fine timbered lands, but in the south, where I
travelled, there is only an occasional patch of
scrubby pines, reserved by the government, and
twisted into every conceivable shape by the
winds.

As in China, the hills are all cemeteries,
though not so thickly populated with the dead as
the hills of China. High up on their sides and
tops are tlie well-kept grassy mounds, the graves
of the well-to-do, generally marked by stone

94 LicjiiTS AND Shadows of

slabs, and regularly visited and put in order once
a year.

Lower dowTi are the nnburied bodies of the
peasants, wrapped in coffins of rice straw, and in
the case of children, mounted on sticks or swung
from the boughs of trees to keep them from be-
ing eaten by the foxes. This objectionable cus-
tom springs, 2:)erhaps, not so much from indiffer-
ence to the bodies of their dead as from the fear
that their burial before the ^^roper place had
been selected by the geomancer would bring dis-
aster to the family.

The staple joroductions are rice and beans and
millet, as condiments to wdiicli a variety of sal-
ads, turnips, and red pepper are grown. I found
the native food uneatable, for reasons both of
taste and of sentiment. Unless by special order,
the rice and beans are cooked together and then
seasoned with pepper until the whole mixture
is red. A flavor as of ancient dish water exhales
from the mixture when hot. If meat is served,
one knows not whether it was killed or died a
natural death. Most likely the latter, but if
killed, the method is usually by strangling, so
as not to lose the weight of the blood. One can
venture on the fish, because they have no blood,
and we ourselves have learned no better as yet
than to let the fish we eat die a natural death.

Mission Work ix tjie Far East. 95

The chief reliance of the missionary and trav-
eller in Korea for food for some time to come
mnst be on canned goods from San Francisco.

With somewhat better conditions of travel and
forage, Korea wonld be the sportsman's para-

^ ^ disc. In the antnmn the grassy hills

are thick with pheasants, and the rice
fields with ducks and geese. Small deer and
leopards are plentiful in many places, and tigers
scarcely inferior to the Koyal Bengal make
themselves altogether too familiar around some
of the villages for the comfort of the Koreans,
who are not supplied with the proper munitions
of war to cope with them. Some of the natives
have old match-lock rifles with which they shoot
ducks and geese sitting, provided they will sit
long enough after the native gets a bead on them
for the old string fuse to burn up to the powder
in the flash pan. With such weapons they can-
not aspire to shoot game on the wing, but they
express their sportsman's instinct by shouts of
delight when they see a foreigner bring down a
flying goose with a breech-loader.

If one wishes to describe the conditions of
interior travel in Korea he may use any de-
rogatory word our language con-

Travel. & ./ o o

tains, or any combination of them,
without the slightest danger of exaggeration.

96 Lights and Shadows ov

There are no made roads and no canals to
take the pLace of them as in China. Short
journeys may be made in comfort in a sedan
chair. Bnt for long jonrneys, requiring much
weight and bnlk of Inggage, the favorite in-
strnment of transportation is that unique, nat-
ural phenomenon, the Korean pony. This ani-
mal possesses the general contour of a horse, but
in other respects he is peculiar, and peculiar to
Korea. He is very small, but is a marvel of
strength and endurance. His face is very much
dished, and his face expresses his character,
which attains perhaps the maximum of com-
bined obstinacy and ferocity possible to horse
flesh, ^ot wishing to do him injustice, I have
made comparison with the observations of other
travellers and find them substantially the same
as my own. Mrs. Bishop pronounces him to
be ^^among the most salient features of Korea,"
and says that, though she dearly loved horses,
she was not able in a whole month to establish
any friendly relations with the one she rode.
Mr. Gale, in his ''Korean Sketches," tells us
that he exists in three stages of development.
He grows wild on a certain island, where a num-
ber of them are lassoed each year and taken to
the royal stables. Here he spends his palmy
days. When he begins to look shaggy and sheepy

, IB

M* '"^' '"^HPI^^^^^^Hf

r v

.'. ~

Mission Work ix ttie Far East. 97

from age he is taken out and used as a pack
pony for the government. This is the second
stage, during which he develops ringbone, raw-
back, stringhalt, spavin and heaves. Then he
is purchased by a dealer, who keeps him to hire
to foreigners. But through all these stages his
spirit remains unbroken, and while he lives he
will yield the palm to no other living horse in
the weight he will carry and the distance he will
travel in a day. My experience of him was on a
journey of 175 miles from Seoiil to Chunju, in
company with ^Ir. Eugene Bell, of our mission,
which we accomplished in five days. The im-
pedimenta for this journey for each pony were
two good boxes of provisions and utensils, a va-
lise, a folding cot, a comfort, a pillow and blan-
ket, besides the rider. Moimted on them, on top
of all this luggage, with no support for back or
feet or hands, our appearance was no less pictur-
esque than our situation was helpless and un-
comfortable. But I soon learned the secret of
this mode of travel. It is to ride until your back
is so tired you cannot possibly endure it longer ;
then walk till you are so wearied that any change
will be a relief ; then mount your pony again. I
found also that in crossing streams on arched
dirt bridges two feet wide, walking was prefer-
able to riding, and also when the road was the

98 Lights and Shadows of

narrow bank between two flooded rice fi.elds.
Onr resting place at night was the Korean inn,
if resting place it conld be called. Its guest room
opens on the enclosed back yard of the premises,
the rendezvous of our ponies and of the land-
lord's dogs and pigs and chickens, and furnished
with earthenware jars, the receptacle of what-
ever can be made available to improve the pro-
ductiveness of the rice fields. The room is nine
feet by six, with a raised floor heated hot by a
flue under it, and no opening except the small
door by which we enter. Our alternative was
to open the door to the incursion of crawling
and hopping parasites from without, or to close
it and take our chances with the stifling air
within. We unwisely chose the latter, with the
result that, after a brief nap, I awoke in a night-
mare, dreaming that I was buried alive. We
then tried it with the door open, and were weary
enough to bid defiance to the animal creation,
large or small, to disturb our slumbers. But
just then there appeared on the scene a Budd-
hist monk with his band of helpers, trying to
exorcise a demon from a neighboring house
where there was small-pox, beating gongs and
blowing something that sounded like a Scotch
bagpipe, and singing tunes, the like of which
I never heard before, and hoped I might never

Mission Work in the Far East. 99

hear again. This benevolent enterprise was kept
np till two o'clock in the morning, with what
success we never learned, as we rose at half-past
fonr and proceeded on our journey. I indulged
the hope on starting that after a day or two we
would toughen to our experiences and find them
less intolerable. This might have been the case,
but for the development of a Korean carbuncle
on the hip joint. As it was, at the end of the
journey I was more than satisfied to be simply
alive. Such is the romance and luxury of mis-
sionary itinerating in Korea. And at present
much the larger part of male missionary life
there is itinerating.

The port of entry to Korea from the west is
Chemulpo, in whose so-called harbor the tide
cities and riscs froui twcuty-five to forty feet.

vniages. When the tide recedes, the bottom
for a mile out is left entirely bared, leaving
junks and small steamers resting on the ooze
till another tide comes in to float them. Fifty-
six miles from Chemulpo up the river Han, and
three miles from the river, lies Seolil, the capi-
tal of the country.

It was up this stretch of river that, in 1872,
Commodore Rogers and Capt. Schley and En-
sign Mitchell Chester, now captain of ^he gun-
boat Cincinnati, attempted to navigate the old

100 Lights and Sjiadows of

Monocacy, the ^'l^oah's Ark'^ of our Asiatic
squadron, to avenge the murder of the crew of
an American schooner that was wrecked on the
northwestern coast. They had the usual experi-
ence of those who attempt this journey, whether
by gunboat, steam launch, or junk, of finding
themselves stuck in the mud a few miles up the
river, and they had to take to the land to ac-
complish their purj)ose. This they did, with dif-
ficulty however, for the Koreans fought desper-
ately from behind their rock forts on the moun-
tain cliffs. But their string-fuse jmgals were
too long in going off, and their old Chinese brass
cannon all went off at once, leaving them help-
less at the hands of the Americans, who shot and
bayonetted toc^ether about six hundred of them.
The American loss was Lieut. McKee and two
marines killed, and eight wounded. Except in
the display of American pluck it was an un-
worthy episode, which the Koreans seem hap-
pily to have forgotten.

In respect of population, Seoill ranks as one
of the great cities of the Far East, containing
about 250,000 inhabitants. But in any other
respect than population it hardly deserves the
name of a city at all. It has no arts nor manu-
factures worth speaking of. As to trade, Mrs.
Bishop says truly that '^it is the commercial

Mission Woek in the Far East. 101

centre of a people whose ideas of commerce are
limited to huckstering transactions." It has no
two-storied houses, except a few built by foreign-
ers, even the royal palaces being of but one story.
A few of the houses are built of wood, and cov-
ered with tiles, but the vast majority of them
are simply mud huts with three small rooms,
covered with thatched straw. Korea is a coun-
try of villages, however, rather than of large
cities, and every village is like every other vil-
lage, a collection of these mud huts, scattered
all over the country at an average distance of
from three to five miles.

The streets of cities and villages alike are nar-
row alleys with open gutters on either side, filled
with malodorous sewage, in which naked chil-
dren play as though they were clear mountain
streams. It must be said for the city of Seoiil,
however, that its street odors are less pungent
and stifling than those of a Chinese city, and it
is distinguished by three fine boulevards, fifty
yards wide, and smoothly graveled, which shine
in the prospect from the city wall with a conspic-
uousness increased by contrast with their sur-
roundings. Thronged with pedestrians of both
sexes, all dressed in white, and topped off with
such a variety of headgear as the ingenuity of
no other people on earth has invented, every pro-

102 Lights and Shadows of

fession, trade, or grade of social life being dis-
tinguished by its own peculiar hat, these boule-
vards present an appearance that can hardly be
matched for picturesqueness in the street life of
the world. Another unique feature of Korean
street and road life is the endless procession of
bulls, covered with enormous loads of grass or
twigs, until only the face and lower part of the
limbs are visible, led by a ring in the nose, per-
fectly docile, and politely turning aside without
suggestion from their drivers to give the right
of way to the passing traveller.

Approaching Korea from the west, about
thirty miles from the mainland we pass through
^^ an archipelago of small rocky islands.

Here we get our first view of the na-
tives, cruising among these islands in their little
brown junks, which they have loaded from the
hulk to the top of the mast with bundles of grass
gathered on the islands for fuel. Our first ob-
servation of them is that they are all dressed
from top to toe in white cotton. This costume is
universal, and indicates one of their most inter-
esting national peculiarities.

Their white dress is a badge of national

mourning. In former years when any member

A nation of ^^ 1^^^ royal family died, the nation

mourners, ^^g required to wear white for twelve

Mission Work in the Far East. 103

months. In later and more troublous times, the
occasion for the white dress came so often, and
the expense and trouble of changing to it was
so burdensome, that they adopted it as the per-
manent national costume, so as to be in readi-
ness for the emergency as it might arise.

When any member of a family dies, the fam-
ily is expected to go into mourning from one to
three years, according to the nearness of the re-
lationship. The badge of this family mourning
for the men is an enormous bamboo hat, of coni-
cal shape, coming do^^m over the face and shoul-
ders like an umbrella, and signifying that
"Heaven is angry with the mourner, and does
not wish to look upon his face." During this
mourning period it is contrary to custom for the
man to marry. And so it often happens that, by
a succession of family bereavements one finds
himself carried on past youth and middle life,
even to old age, and condemned at last to an en-
forced permanent celibacy. This is the most de-
plorable of calamities to an Oriental, because
it means that he shall have no male posterity to
care for his grave and to worship his departed
spirit. Furthermore, with the Koreans it en-
tails the disadvantage that an unmarried man,
though he should live to ninety years of age, is
always regarded and treated as a "boy," entitled

104 Lights and Shadows of

to no respect, and always to be addressed in the
"lowest talk.'' It is in their funeral processions
that monrning is reduced to the finest of the fine
arts. The pall-bearers carry the coffin hoisted
on poles, singing a woeful dirge, and ever and
anon turning and retracing their steps, or stop-
ping and marking time, as though they could not
go uiDon their melancholy errand. Much of this
mourning, of course, is mere form and confor-
mity to custom. But perhaps there is no nation
of people more afflicted with real sorrows than
the Koreans, and none therefore with a deeper
need of, and a stronger claim on, that gospel
which offers the only real comfort that this
world knows to the mourning sons of men.

On landing at Chemulpo, a boy about fourteen
years of age took my two steamer trunks and a
Burden- valisc and piled them on a wooden

bearers. rack,whieh they call a '^chee-kai," and
getting under the burden, walked with it with
apparent ease up a steep hill about two hundred
yards to the hotel Another, of about the same
size, took a cooking stove on his back and did the
same thing. It is said to be not uncommon for a
grown man to carry in this way for several miles
a burden of four hundred pounds. A country-
man will carry one hundred and fifty pounds
of rice on his back from the point of the penin-

TRANSPORTATION KY CHEE-KAI.

Mission Work in the Far East. 105

siila two hundred miles to the capital, and carry
back the same weight of baled cloth. A child
five years old will play all day with one a year
old strapped to his back. In this way the loin
muscles are trained from infancy for their work.
Everywhere one goes throughout Korea he sees
these human beasts of burden stooping under
their loads ; and one thinks of the other burdens
they carry, of unforgiven sins and uncomforted
sorrows, and wonders if there might not be for
them a special meaning and a peculiar sweet-
ness in the Saviour's invitation to those that
^'labor and are heavy laden." May the day soon
come when all of them shall hear it, and when
all of them who will may come to Him and find
rest for both body and soul. To-day, in all the
Orient, the cheapest of all things is man. Only
in the Christ we preach to him will he find again
the value of his manhood as well as the supply
of his spiritual needs.

characteris- ^^^- Ourzou mcutions as oue of the
tics. Oriental traits which he found every-
where in his travels, from India to the farth-
est east, "a statuesque and inexhaustible pa-
tience, which attaches no value to time, and
wages an unappeasable warfare against hurry."
Absence of Porliaps it is auiong the Koreans
b\irry. ^j-^^^ ^j-^-g ^^,^^^ ^^^^ attained its most

106 Lights and Shadows of

extreme development. I encountered it among
my very first experiences in a way not soon
to be forgotten. Attempting to go by the lit-
tle river steamer from Chemnlpo to Seoiil, we
had the nsnal experience a few miles up the
river of finding ourselves deposited on a sand-
bank. Korean sail and row boats were every-
where in evidence, but none of them could be
persuaded to attempt the passage against an
adverse tide. After some hours delay a Japa-
nese sampan was sighted coming down the river,
loaded with Koreans on their way to a market
at some j)lace about two days' journey distant.
We proposed to the Japanese boatman to unload
his Koreans and take us up the river for a con-
sideration of ten dollars. After some parley,
they consented to the arrangement and took
their places on the river bank, where they sat
like sea fowls, perfectly quiet and content, for
eighteen hours until the boatman returned. At
Seoiil we had to hire some ponies, and having
but one day in which to see the sights of the cap-
ital, we sought to expedite this business trans-
action as much as possible. Several times the
dealer brought us |)onies which he knew we
would reject on account of their dilapidated con-
dition. Each time Mr. Bell Avould shout at him,
pointing to the front gate, ^'Go — go, go fast, and

Mission Work in the Far East. 107

bring iis the right kind of ponies/' using all the
additional hurrying words tliat his Korean vo-
cabulary suitable to a missionary contained.
When the trade was finally closed, we found that
we had been engaged in it exactly five hours.
They will not be in a hurry, and woe be to the
fast-going western man that goes out there and
tries to make them be. The lines in which Mr.
Rudyard Kipling describes the fate of the Eng-
lishman trying to do the same thing in India will
also be true of him. Says Mr. Kipling:

" It is not good for the Christian's health

To hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,

And he weareth the Christian down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,

With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, ' A fool lies here,

Who tried to hustle the East.' "

The Koreans are similar to both Chinese and
Japanese in feature and physique, but in some
respects are different from both. In color they
are a lighter shade of yellow than either, and
their hair is frequently of a russet brown color.
They are of good size, but much deteriorated
physically from various blood diseases that orig-
inate in their unsanitary mode of living. They
are very hospitable and polite, and, as compared
with Chinese and Japanese, quite amiably dis-

108 Lights and Shadows of

posed, towards foreigners. The masses are
wretchedly ignorant, as nmst be the case under
such a government as they have, but a few of
them who have gone abroad and been educated
in this country and in Europe, have demon-
strated that they are by no means deficient in
native capacity. Men like Dr. Philip Jaisohn,
editor of the Korean Independent newspaper,
and Mr. Yun, a distinguished graduate of our
Vanderbilt University, and afterwards Minis-
ter of Education in the government of Korea,
both of them also bold and outspoken Chris-
tians, are men who, for character and intelli-
gence would be a credit to any country. Any
country that can produce such men as these is a
country worth trying to save.

The government of Korea is one of the old pa-
ternal despotisms that have been the immemorial
curse of Asia. The kinc;, recently ad-

Governmeiit. . .

vanced to the dignity of Emperor,
although he is a person of very great inter-
national insignificance, is none the less the object
of superstitious veneration by his own people,
who call him "the Son of Heaven," to whom his
will is law, and who belong to him, body and
soul, in fee simple. Local government is in the
hands of a hereditary ruling class called Yang-
bans, in whom we find the apotheosis of the gen-

Mission Work in the Far East. 109

tleman of elegant leisure. Being quite numer-
ons, not all of them can be in office at any one
time. But those who are in know not how soon
they may be out, and those who are out hope
soon to be in, and so they stand by one another,
extending and receiving favors as their mutual
needs and abilities demand and make practi-
cable. The first principle of Yangban political
economy is that no one of his class is ever under
any circumstances to do any work. Even to
light his own pipe would require an altogether
unbecoming amount of exertion, and so he
smokes a pipe with a stem so long that he must
needs have a servant to light it for him. When
out of pocket, he pays long visits to his friends,
using and abusing the hospitality which it would
be a disreputable breach of ancient custom not
to extend.

The second principle of their political econ-
omy is that no one of the common people is to
be allowed to accumulate property. A new gate,
a repaired roof, or any visible sign of improved
circumstances is liable to prove the occasion of
arrest. The charge may be that the man was
heard to speak disrespectfully of his mother.
Xo matter what the charge is, once in the magis-
trate's prison he stays there, being ''bambooed"
every morning at sunrise, until all the available

110 Lights and Shadows oi*

money of the family has been paid in as the
price of his release. The conseqnence of this
system is, of course, the nniversal poverty of the
common people, who not only have no incentive
for trying to accumulate property, but the
strongest possible incentive for not doing so.
There is an average grade of cruelty and oppres-
sion on the part of these officials that is expected,
and if one does not exceed it, perhaps the people
may build a monument to him when he dies, in-
scribed with the praise of his moderation and
virtue. But sometimes when one goes too far
in excess of this average grade, and becomes in-
tolerable, the people give way to their outraged
sense of justice and put him to death. The fact
that they have done this occasionally to individ-
uals gives reason to hope that they may some day
have enough manhood developed in them to rise
up and destroy the system, and thus open the
way for the possible splendid future of their
beautiful and fertile land.

If it be possible for the social and domestic
life of a people to be arranged on a more unde-
sociaiand sirable basis than that of the Ko-
domestic lif e. rcaus, I am unablc to imagine what
that arrangement would be. Polygamy in the
technical sense does not prevail. Only one legal
wife is recognized. But every man takes to him-

Mission Work in the Far East. Ill

self as many "secondary'' wives as he can pro-
vide room for and support. In order that they
may be serviceable in all kinds of work, the
women of the peasantry have the freedom of
the streets and roads and rice fields ; bnt those of
the upper classes live in the back rooms of their
little houses in total seclusion. The unwilling-
ness of the Koreans to let their women be seen
leads to one of the many reversals of our cus-
toms, in that men going on pleasure escapades
go in the day time, while the women go on theirs
at night. When a woman must go out in the day
time she goes in a closed chair. The coolies take
the chair and set it do^vn in the back yard and
retire. When the "coast is clear," the woman
comes out and takes her seat in the chair and
closes all the openings. Then the coolies come
back and carrv her to her destination. Although
they cannot be seen, the number of a man's ^vives
is sometimes revealed to the traveller in a pecu-
liar way. In passing through the villages a
ceaseless plunk, pJiinh, plunh is heard, which
is the sound of the ''ironing" of the gentlemen's
white clothes by beating them on a smooth stone
or piece of wood. The frequency and rhythm of
the beats indicate whether one, two, or more
wives are engaged in the ironing industry. This,
and the preparation of his meals, and the rear-
ing of sons to look after his post-mortem inter-

112 Lights and Shadows of

ests, are what tlie men think the women were
made for. Love, confidence, and companionship
between husbands and wives are ahnost un-
known. Hence there are no homes in Korea.
To carry the light of the gospel into these gloomy
little prisons and transform them into Christian
homes is the work which a trumpet voice of duty
and opportunity is now calling the women of our
country to do.

Excepting the non-existence of Tauism, Korea
is religiously a small replica of China. The edu-
cation of the higher classes is based on

Religions. '^

the Confucian classics, and the Con-
fucian ethics are their substitute for religion.
Confucian ancestor worship prevails among all
classes. Buddhism was transplanted from China
in the fourth century and soon gained the nomi-
nal adherence of the people, but it seems never
to have taken very strong hold of the popular
mind, and is now far gone in dilapidation and
decay. Its temples are few and mean, and its
priesthood in such disrepute that, until since the
late war, one was not allowed to enter the gates
of the capital. Demon worship is universal, but
owing to the less serious turn of the Korean
mind, it is not quite such a reign of terror as it
is in China. Yet it is bad enough, and probably
costs the country each year as much as would be
necessary to evangelize it from one end to the

Mission Work in the Far East. 113

other. As a defensive apparatus against the
demons, we see wooden posts set up on the roads
leading into villages, with ugly heads carved at
the top, the lips, cheeks, and eyebrows being
smeared with red and white paint. StraAv ropes,
old rags, and wooden figures of birds are hung
in the boughs of trees for the same purpose.
When, in spite of these obstructions, the demons
get into the village, bringing sickness and ill-
luck to the people, then the witch doctor comes
to the rescue. His equipment consists of vari-
ous and effective noise-producing instruments,
and witch broths, brewed of toads, snakes, lizards,
ground-up tigers' teeth, and all the horrible and
forbidding things the country affords. These
he administers by the bowlful to people with
typhoid fever or cholera or small-pox. He also
carries a long, sharp needle, which he inserts
into whatever part of the victim's body the pain
gives evidence of the demon's location, to make
a hole to let the demon out ! These are success-
ful practitioners to the extent that in a fair pro-
portion of cases they succeed in letting the de-
mon out along with the spirit of the patient.

Such are a few items in the long list of human
and Satanic oppressions that afflict this interest-
ing people. May the day soon come when they
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
them free.

114 Lights and Shadows of

CHAPTEE VIII.

Mission Work ix Korea.

The history of Protestant mission work in
Korea is brief but glorious. Althongli only fif-
teen years have elapsed since the work began, a
Christian clmrch already exists, containing sev-
eral thousand members, a church full of life,
vigor and aggressiveness, and showing both the
disposition and the ability to support and propa-
gate itself.

The first missionaries anticipated much dif-
ficulty in carrying on their work from the lethar-
Difflcuif ^^^ character of the people. But the
enterprising spirit manifested by
those who have become Christians indicates that
this lethargy is rather a temporary product of
their environment than an innate and ineradi-
cable trait.

The language is also said to be more difficult
of acquisition than either the Chinese or Japa-
nese, with the added difficulty that there are
almost no competent native teachers of it avail-
able. The native reads the written language

Mission Work in the Far East. 115

with a dreadful and discordant tune, which no
foreigner could learn if he would or would learn
if he could. Consequently, the process of learn-
ing to read is slow and toilsome to the last de-
gree. Learning to talk is even more slow and
toilsome, because of the multitude and confu-
sion of honorifics, the misuse of which subjects
the speaker to misunderstanding and ridicule.
One must indicate to which one of the many
social grades the person spoken to belongs by
using a different termination to the verb for
each grade. The use of ^^ligh talk" to a coolie
would be as absurd in his estimation as the use
of ''low talk" to a Yangban would be insultino;.
Patience and perseverance, however, for about
the space of three years, will serve to loose the
tongue of any missionary of average linguistic
ability, and these difficulties are of small ac-
count compared with some that have to be en-
countered in other fields.

Three things especially combine to make Ko-
rea one of the most interesting and hopeful of
Encoi^mging ^^^1 missiou fields to-day. One is the
features. ^^.^y the people live, in villages rather
than in large cities, rendering them more easy
of access and more susceptible of being influ-
enced. Another is the disposition they have
shown to help themselves and support their own

116 Lights and Shadows of

work. The third is their comparative friendli-
ness to the foreigner. Instead of calling him
^^foreign devil/' like the Chinese, they look up
to him with respect and address him as Tai-in
— ^^Great man" — and, although at first some-
what offish and afraid, by a little kindness they
are easily won to confidence and friendship.
This friendly attitude is perhaps largely due to
the fact that from the beginning the medical
work has gone hand in hand with, or rather in
advance of, the preaching work.

The first resident missionary was Dr. 11. ^N".
Allen, of the I^orthern Presbyterian Board.
Medical Soon after his arrival, in 1884, he

missions, -yy^g called in to sew up some gashes
in the person of Mr. Min Yong Ik, a cousin of
the Queen, made during a riot at the Palace. In
appreciation of this service the king established
a hospital, of which Dr. Allen was put in charge.
This opened the way for Dr. H. ^. Underwood,
who came soon after, to begin his evangelistic
work. And from that day to this Dr. Allen,
Dr. Avison, Dr. Scranton, of the Methodist
Episcopal church, and other physicians at Seoiil,
have, by their ministrations of mercy to the
thousands of snfferers who have come to them
for help, been constantly making friends for the
gospel and securing the government toleration

Mission Work in the Far East. 117

ana protection, which have enabled us to carry
on our work everywhere, with one or two excep-
tions, without let or hindrance. Among our
pioneer band of Southern Presbyterians is Dr.
A. D. Drew, who worked with the other physi-
cians at the capital for the first three years while
getting his tongue loosed, and has since been
working in the southern provinces where the
Southern Presbyterian stations are. He is now
kno^^Ti all over the country, and by reason of his
work has, I believe, more influence than any
other man, native or foreign, in southern Korea.
While I was at his home in Kunsan two men
came to be treated by him, both of whom had
walked from their homes, more than a hundred
miles distant. As the result of his unremitting
and self-denying labors, and those of other be-
loved physicians, the way now lies wide open all
over southern Korea for our gospel work.

I saw at Seoiil a neat church, seating about
two hundred people, which the native Presbyte-
Native ^^^^ Christians there had built en-

enterprise. tircly by their OA^Ti exertions and sac-
rifices. The men wrought with their hands, the
women sewed, one man pawned his spectacles,
and most of them tithed their incomes of from
two to five dollars a month twice over for the
cause. In the work of the Northern Presbyte-

118 Lights and SiiiU.)Ows of

rians in the northern provinces thirty-five
chnrches have been built in this way, many self-
supporting schools established, and many native
workers are spreading the gospel news far and
wide, nearly all of them entirely supported by
their own people.

The work at our southern stations is in a less
advanced stage, but is being conducted on the
same self-supporting basis, and is opening up in
a way that gives promise of the same kind of suc-
cess. At Chunju I found Mr. and Mrs. Rey-
nolds, and Mr. and Miss Tate, and Mr. Harri-
son and Miss Ingold living, not in the palatial
residences that certain Oriental travellers on
the steamer going over told me the missionaries
akvays lived in, but in the regulation mud huts
of the natives, with their little rooms of from
six to nine feet square. Here they had been for
two years. And yet they seemed as happy as
any of the people I know who live in two-story
brick houses in this country. At Kunsan I found
Dr. Drew and Mr. Junkin with their families
and Miss Linnie Davis living not only in the
thatched mud huts, but also in the mud when
it rained, for they were down in the valley, right
among the natives. They were happy also, ex-
cept that some of them were suffering in health
from their surroundings. If all our church at

Mission Woek in the Far East. 119

home could have communicated to it some of
their heroic and self-sacrificing spirit, the whole
Korean peninsula would soon be resounding
with what I heard at the Sunday morning ser-
vice at Kunsan. About forty men were seated
on the floor of the little native dwelling that
served for a church. About the same number of
women were present. They were required by
Korean custom to be invisible, but were permit-
ted to hear and participate in the service through
a piece of cheese cloth stretched over the door of
an adjoining room. When Mr. Keynolds
preached I was impressed by their reverent at-
tention. When he led in prayer they leaned over
until their foreheads rested on their hands laid
upon the floor. When they sang their words were
strange and their voices unmelodious, but I rec-
ognized the tune as Coronation, and I knew they
were singing in their Korean tongue,

" All hail the power of Jesus' name,
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem,
And crown him Lord of all."

Dear reader, we cannot tell what changes the
future may bring, but we know that this is the
day of the church's opportunity in Korea. God
has set before us there an open door, which He
will permit no man to shut if we will only enter

120 Mission Work in the Fae East.

it. It is in the hope that it may contrihute some-
thing towards awakening those who read it to
the need of the gospel, and to the obligation rest-
ing on us to make it kno^vn in Japan, China, and
Korea that this little volume is sent forth.

Appei^dix.

REPORT TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF

FOREIGN MISSIONS, BY THE SECRETARY,

^ ON HIS VISIT TO CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN,

1897.

To the Executive Committee of Foreign Missions:

I hereby present to you the report of my visit to
our missions in China, Korea and Japan. This
visit was made in accordance with the advice of the
General Assembly sitting at Charlotte, N. C, and
with the instruction of the Executive Committee
given at its meeting held on June 8, 1897.

The advice of the xVssembly was given on condi-
tion that the expense of the visit should be pro-
vided for without drawing on the Foreign Mission
treasury. The committee's instruction was given
on receipt of information that a contribution of
$100 had been offered from a friend in the city of
New Y^ork, not connected with our church, and
that other contributions, believed to be sufficient,
had been offered from other private sources, which
could not in any way affect the regular contribu-
tions to our treasury. I am glad to report on my
return that the expense of the visit was thus fully
met.

Leaving home on July 26th, I sailed from San
Francisco on August 5th, and reached Shanghai
on September 1st. The plan of the visit included

122 Lights and Shadows oi?

an absence of five months, allowing two months for
the outward and return voyage, and three months
for work in the different fields. Of this time it
was arranged to give six weeks to China and three
each to Korea and Japan.

In China I visited all the stations of what is
known as "The Southern Circuit/' except Lingwu,
which I was prevented from reaching by continu-
ous rains during my visit to Hangchow. On ac-
count of detention by sickness and the impos-
sibility of securing prompt transportation, I was
compelled to forego the pleasure and profit of visit-
ing the three northern stations of Tsing-kiang-pu,
Suchien, and Chuchow-foo. In Korea I visited
Seoul, where the headquarters of the mission are
still temporarily located, and the two stations in
the southern provinces, Chun-ju and Kunsan, the
only ones as yet regularly occupied. In Japan I
visited all the stations except Takamatsu/ where,
at present, we have no resident missionary.

On the ninth day of December I took passage on
the Pacific Mail S. S. China, reaching San Fran-
cisco on December 23d and Nashville on December
2Sth.

At every point visited, with two or three excep-
tions, I preached to the native Christians through
an interpreter, and also, as opportunity offered, in
the street chapels to congregations of unbelievers.
Everywhere the native Christians received my visit
as an evidence of our special interest in them, and
everywhere I was charged by them with messages
of love and gratitude to the church at home, and
with requests for our prayers in their behalf.

^ Since occupied by the Revs. W. C. and W. McS. Buch-
anan.

Mission Wobk in the Fae East. 123

Two weeks of the time given to China were occu-
pied with the exercises of the Thirtieth Anniver-
sary Conference of the Mission, and of the regular
annual mission meeting, held at the same time. I
also attended the annual meeting of the Korean
mission held at Kunsan, and an adjourned meeting
of the Japan mission held at Kobe. I participated
freely in the deliberations of all these meetings, on
the understanding that no advice or opinions I
might express concerning matters falling under
the jurisdiction of the missions were to be taken
as official declarations, or to have any other weight
than that to which their wisdom might entitle
them. I was thus enabled to gain much valuable
information concerning the details of the work.
These meetings also furnished the opportunity of
becoming personally acquainted with many of the
missionaries who were previously known to me
only through correspondence, and for establishing
bonds of personal affection, which I accoimt as
among the most valuable of the results to be at-
tained by my visit to them.

So far from feeling qualified by so brief and
hurried a visit, to speak with authority on those
questions of method and policy concerning which
both missionary societies at home and missionaries
on the field have been divided in opinion, I only
realize the more how difficult and many sided many
of these questions are, and am more than ever con-
vinced of the wisdom of that feature of our revised
manual, which devolves on the missions a larger
share of responsibility than they formerly had for
the management of the work in the field.

In stating certain conclusions to which I was led
by my observation of the work, I will speak first of
some which concern all of the three missions alike.

124 Lights and Shadows of

Missionary Salaries.
In 1895 the salaries of our missionaries in the
East Avere fixed on the basis of a report made by
Rev. J. L. Stuart, in April, 1893, after a visit and
careful investigation made by him as to the con-
ditions and cost of living in the three fields, as
follows:

Single Married

Missionaries. Couples.

China, $500 $ 800

Japan and Korea, GOO 1,000

Salaries in Japan have since been reduced, ac-
cording to estimates sent from that field, to $500
for single missionaries, and $950 for married
couples, and in China to $450 for single mission-
aries, and in Korea $550. These salaries are lower
than those of any other missionaries in those fields
receiving a fixed salary. (The China Inland Mis-
sion, the Christian Alliance, and possibly some
others pay a pro rata of the funds received — ^the
salaries being thus contingent as to amount.) Do
they now admit of any further reduction consist-
ently with the idea of giving our missionaries "a
comfortable and economical support?"

On the one hand, since the date of Mr. Stuart's
report, the movement of the rate of exchange has
been in favor of the missionaries. The Mexican
dollar, then worth about sixty-two and a half cents,
is now worth about forty-eight cents, and the Jap-
anese yen, then worth seventy cents, is now worth
fifty cents.

On the other hand, the movement of prices,
especially in the last two 3^ears, has been against
them, about in the same degree, except in the in-
terior of China. There the rise in prices has been
steady, but less rapid than in Japan and Korea.

Mission Wokk ix the Fak East. 125

¥ov example, Mr. Stuart reported silver prices of
leading staples in 1893 as follows: Flour, $9 per
barrel; beef, 19 cents per pound; butter, 56 to
60 cents; soft coal, per ton, $4.50 to $6 in Japan,
$6.50 to $8.50 in China and Korea.

The prices of these staples at the time of my
visit were: Flour, $13 to $16 per barrel; beef, 35
cents to 45 cents per pound ; butter, 60 cents to 65
cents in China and Japan, 80 cents to 85 cents in
Korea; soft coal, Japan $8 to $10, according to
location; China, $10 to $13, according to location;
Korea, $17, at Seoul. Prices of other staples have
increased about in proportion to these. All the
missions are compelled to order a considerable
part, and the Korean mission especially a large
part of their supplies from San Francisco.

In Korea and some parts of China it is impossi-
ble to know whether meat offered for sale in the
native markets has been killed or died of disease.
In Korea beeves are usually strangled, instead of
butchered. Xearly all the children have to be fed
on condensed milk, something in the climate seem-
ing to interfere with the ordinary course of nature
in that respect. The transport charges on these
foreign goods constitute a heavy item of expense,
amounting in Korea to from 30 per cent, to 40 per
cent, on the original cost. Along with the rise of
prices of food supplies there has been, and is now
going on, a rise in the price of native labor.
Woolen goods are cheap, but cotton goods and
other things entering into the make-up of wo-
men's outfits are costly. Most of the single women
also find it necessary in the interest of their work,
to keep house rather than to board. Native ideas
of propriety also require them to have a female
companion in travelling. For these and other rea-

126 Lights aj^d Shadows of

sons the cost of living is fully as great, if not
greater, for single women than for single men.

Dentistry is enormously high, in China the for-
eign dentists at Shanghai being the only ones ac-
cessible. In Japan there are native dentists who
work at reasonable rates, but foreign dentists
charge about the same as in Shanghai, and to have
work done satisfactorily, it is necessary to employ
foreign dentists.

On the whole, my conclusion from all I could see
and learn in regard to this matter is that the sal-
aries as fixed in 1895, on the basis of Mr. Stuart's
report, are as low as they can be made without the
danger of subjecting our missionaries to actual
hardship and embarrassment. My conviction is
most decided that no reduction should be made in
the salaries of married missionaries.

Mission Property.

In the matter of mission property our policy has
always been to own as little, in foreign lands, as
the necessities of the work would allow. I saw
nothing that led me to doubt, but much to confirm
my belief in the wisdom of this policy.

In China, while the right to purchase land is
guaranteed by treaty, the actual purchase is often
resisted by the local officials and sometimes be-
comes the occasion of serious trouble. In Korea
we can gain no fee simple title to land except in a
treaty port, and in Japan none at all. But in the
case of missionary residences, in China the alterna-
tive is between the danger of having trouble with,
and perhaps temporarily aggravating the hostility
of the natives, on the one hand, and the certainty
of suffering from climate and environment on the
other. In Chinese cities the dwellings, even of the

Mission Work in the Far East. 12^

better classes, are packed together on densely
crowded streets, and surrounded by indescribable
conditions of discomfort and unhealthfulness. The
ruling idea in their architecture is the exclusion of
sunlight and fresh air. The physical constitution
of the Orientals seems, by the power of heredity,
to be in some degree adjusted to these conditions.
But in the case of Europeans and Americans the
battle is always sooner or later a losing one. Sev-
eral of our missionary families in China are now
living in native houses, and in every such case
there were one or more members of such families
who seemed to me to be suffering in consequence of
it. Moreover, in order to preserve the mental and
physical condition necessary for their best work,
in China especially, our missionaries need homes,
to which they may periodically retire, and find rest
from the nerve strain produced by the ceaseless
pressure of curious, unsympathetic, and hostile
crowds.

In Korea, and in the part of the country occu-
pied by our mission especially, it may be said in
general that there are no native houses, but only
huts, with mud walls and thatched roofs and
rooms the size of our dressing rooms and closets.
Japanese houses and the conditions surrounding
them are better than those of China and Korea,
but their walls are all sliding partitions which
cannot be made tight enough to afford adequate
protection from the winter climate. Leases of
ground may be made in Japan for periods of
twenty (20) years or more. The rents paid for a
native house for ten years will ordinarily be suffi-
cient to build a comfortable foreign style dwelling.
My conviction is, therefore, that in all those fields
our missionaries should be encourasred to obtain

128 Lights and Sh^u^ows o:^

land, with such security of tenure as the case ad-
mits of, and build their own dwellings, rather than
to risk life or health in attempting to live in na-
tive houses.

On the other hand, no matter how much our in-
come may be increased, I trust that no large pro-
portion of it will go into the mission buildings of
which I saw so many in the East, planned on a
scale which the native church can never hope to
rival, producing the impression of unlimited
wealth at the disposal of the missions that build
them, and thus tending to discourage rather than
to stimulate native effort.

SELF-SUPPORT.

For some years past there has been an effort,
more or less united, on the part of the missions
and the societies at home to introduce into the
work more largely than heretofore, the principle
of self-support. I am glad to report that our mis-
sions are among the most strenuous supporters of
this policy, in all the eastern fields. Our China
mission has been noted from the beginning for the
economy with which its work in conducted, which
fact was more than once mentioned to its praise
by members of other missions who took part in
our Anniversary Conference. By pursuing a dif-
ferent policy they could have had more visible re-
sults of their work to show at the present time ;
but the foundations they have been laying would
have been less solid and enduring; and they can
now look forward to a brighter and happier future
than if they had sought to force a more rapid de-
velopment by the lavish use of money.

In Japan, where the opposite policy has been
pursued by all the missions, more than elsewhere.

Mission Work j^ the Far East. 12D

the zeal of our mission in the policy of self-sup-
port has brought its members in some places into
more or less strained relations with leaders of the
native church. It is too much to expect of these
that they should see the matter from our stand-
point, and the problem of changing from the old
to the new plan is one that requires to be handled
with great tact and delicacy. But in my judgment
the change is vital to the future purity and power
of the church, and those who are working to that
end should receive tlie earnest sympathy and co-
operation of their home societies and boards. With
such co-operation, the success of the movement in
behalf of self-support in Japan is already assured.
Our Korean work is being conducted from the
beginning on the "Nevius Plan" of self-support^
and the native Christians there have not learned,
and it is to be hoped, will never learn, that there
is any other plan.

Medical Work.
I was impressed by all I saw of our medical mis-
sion work, with its exceeding value and import-
ance. But so much depends on the work being
done in the best way, that only those should be
sent as medical missionaries who have had the best
training our schools afford, supplemented by some
hospital experience. They should also have a full
and thorough equipment for surgical work. The
amount of $200 allowed by our manual for medical
outfit is insufficient for this purpose. It is the
judgment of all our medical missionaries with
whom I consulted that this amount should be at
least doubled. The dispensary work is valuable,
but does not furnish the opportunity which is so
desirable for spiritua.l work in connection with the

130 Lights and Shadows o-ff

medical work. For this purpose it is necessary
that they be furnished with adequate facilities for
treating "in patients/^ which none of them now
have except Dr. Wilkinson, at Soochow. It is not
the policy of the committee, nor of our missions,
to invest Foreign Mission funds in the building of
large hospitals. But in order to success of the
work, and to securing the best spiritual results
from it, the effort should be made to supply each
medical missionary, as soon as possible, with means
to build some inexpensive rooms where difficult
cases can be properly treated and cared for, and
where the missionary evangelist can have the op-
portunity of reaching them.

It was also a common complaint in the hospitals
I visited that their evangelistic force was insuffi-
cient to follow up the work so as to secure the
largest and best results from it. I think that in
the future development of our medical work we
should look well to this point. The tendency of
all "institutional" mission work is to localization,
whereas, it seems to me, such work, under the
present conditions of the mission problem, is only
justifiable when it is so managed that the institu-
tion becomes a center of radiation.

China.
Notwithstanding the many and great difficulties
that encompass the work in China, in most of the
places occupied by our workers, encouraging prog-
ress is being made. If I should offer any criticism
of our past policy in that field, it would be that
there has all along been too much scattering of the
forces. Stations have been opened faster than we
have been able to man them for effective work,
with the results that new missionaries have often
been pushed into places of responsibility before

Mission Woek in the Far East. 131

they were prepared for it by a mastery of the lan-
guage, and the work of itinerating the country has
suffered.

Most of our centers are in the large cities,
where it is necessary, for many reasons, that they
should be. But good strategy would seem to re-
quire that special emphasis be placed on work in
the country, because there is at present the point of
least resistance, and because among the farmers in
the country villages there is to be found a more
hopeful element out of which to gather self-sup-
porting and aggressive churches than that which
is mainly accessible to us in the cities. To carry
on effective country work from a center in the city,
requires at least three men, besides the necessary
provision for women's work. There are only three
of our China stations having that number of men
who have been in the field long enough t© do regu-
lar work. I would therefore recommend that the
committee veto the opening of any more stations
in China until all those now occupied have been
properly manned.

Japan.

The missionary situation in Japan is in some
respects critical, and contains many elements re-
quiring wisdom and forbearance in those who have
to deal with it. The spirituality of the native
cburch has suffered from the political ferment the
country has been in during and since the war with
China, and from the influences that have come to it
in connection with the opening of foreign trade.
Its orthodoxy has suffered from the elimination
of the reformed symbols from the creed of the
Church of Christ in Japan, and from the importa-
tion from this country and from Europe of ration-
alistic viewsj especially concerning the word of

132 Lights and Shadows of

God and the doctrine of the atonement. Its activ-
ity has been lessened by the too large use of foreign
money in the employment of native workers. On
the other hand, I had the pleasure of meeting
many members of the native church who impressed
me as being sound, earnest and praying men, as
well as men of character and ability. The estab-
lishment of a church of which this can be said, is
one of the successes, and not one of the failures of
mission work, and its future may be looked forward
to with encouragement and hope.

I think it is now generally recognized that, in
Japan, mission work in general, and as a conse-
quence, that of the Japanese church which has
grown out of it, is subject to the criticism of
having been too much confined to one class of the
people. When the feudal system was overthrown,
the feudal retainers, known as "Samurai," found
themselves in the new order of things without a
reason of existence. This event, happening Just
before the country was opened to mission work,
furnished the opportunity of reaching this class,
which proved readily accessible, and out of it the
present membership of the churches has been
largely gathered. The present most urgent need
is the evangelization of the lower classes. And
this is a work which a ministry drawn mainly
from the Samurai class, because of the strong class
spirit in all Oriental countries, and for many other
reasons, cannot reasonably be expected to push
with the energy and sympathy necessary to success.

For this purpose an increased number of foreign
missionaries is needed, until a native ministry
drawn from the lower classes can be raised up.
Missionaries for Japan, however, should be selected
with greatest care. They should if possible be
tried men — men with some degree of maturity, ex-
perience, and approved wisdom. * ♦ *

Mission Woek in tue Fau East. 133

Korea.

Apart from some ominous clouds on the politi-
cal horizon, the whole missionary situation in Ko-
rea is cheering in the highest degree. The people
are much less anti-foreign than other Orientals.
Their friendship is readily won by kind treatment.
The Presbyterian missions working in co-opera-
tion there are unanimous in support of the self-
supporting policy, and consequently there is no
dilliculty in carrying on the work on that basis.
What competent observers have pronounced to be
the most interesting and successful mission work
now being done in the world is that of the N"orth-
ern Presbyterians in the province of Pyeng-Yang.
The work of our mission in the southern provinces,
as yet only two years old, is already yielding re-
sults in hopeful conversions and in large numbers
of inquirers and adherents. * * * There are
few large cities, the people living mostly in vil-
lages, rendering them more easy of access, and
more susceptible of being influenced. If the field
could be at once supplied with a sufficient number
of workers, the church might soon have the joy
of seeing the whole nation evangelized. This re-
sult can be achieved much more easily before than
after the advent of ivestern civilizatian. Unedu-
cated Buddhism and Confucianism are much less
formidable foes than educated atheism.

Political troubles may also complicate the situa-
tion in the future. N'ow the way is open for al-
most unhindered gospel work. While in Korea I
was continually reminded of the Saviour's words
concerning the white fields and the waiting har-
vest, and I could not help from coveting the privi-
lege offered to those to whom God has given the
means that would enable them to say to us, "Find
the men who are willing to 2:0 and do this work,
and we will provide their support.''

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Full text of "Lights and shadows of mission work in the Far East; being the record of observations made during a visit to the Southern Presbyterian missions in Japan, China, and Korea in the year 1897"

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