A good many men came from distant villages one afternoon to ask for Christian teaching, and in the evening one after another got up and told how a refugee from Phyöng-yang had come to his village and had told them that they were both wicked and foolish to worship dæmons, and that they were wrongdoers, and that there is a Lord of Heaven who judges wrongdoing, but that He is as loving as any father, and that they did not know what to think, but that in some places twenty and more were meeting daily to worship “the Highest,” and that many of the women had buried the dæmon fetishes, and that they wanted some one to go and teach them how to worship the true God.
A young man told how his father, nearly eighty years old, had met Mr. Moffett by the roadside, and hearing from him “some good things,” had gone home saying he had heard “good news,” “great news,” and had got “the Books,” and that he had become a Christian, and lived a good life, and had called his neighbors together to hear “the news,” and would not rest till his son had come to be taught in the “good news,” and take back a teacher. An elderly man, who had made a good living by sorcery, came and gave Mr. Moffett the instruments of his trade, saying he “had served devils all his life, but now he knew that they were wicked spirits, and he was serving the true God.”
On the same afternoon four requests for Christian teaching came to the missionaries, each signed by from fifteen to forty men. At all these evening meetings the room was crammed within and without by men, reverent and earnest in manner, some of whom had been shunned for their wickedness even in a city “the smoke of which” in her palmy days was said “to go up like the smoke of Sodom,” but who, transformed by a power outside themselves, were then leading exemplary lives. There were groups in the dark, groups round the candles on the floor, groups in the doorways, and every face was aglow except that of poor, bewildered Im. One old man, with his forehead in the dust, prayed like a child that, as the letter bearing to New York an earnest request for more teachers was on its way, “the wind and sea might waft it favorably,” and that when it was read the eyes of the foreigners[40] might be opened “to see the sore need of people in a land where no one knows anything, and where all believe in devils, and are dying in the dark.”
As I looked upon those lighted faces, wearing an expression strongly contrasting with the dull, dazed look of apathy which is characteristic of the Korean, it was impossible not to recognize that it was the teaching of the Apostolic doctrines of sin, judgment to come, and divine love which had brought about such results, all the more remarkable because, according to the missionaries, a large majority of those who had renounced dæmon worship, and were living in the fear of the true God, had been attracted to Christianity in the first instance by the hope of gain! This, and almost unvarying testimony to the same effect, confirm me in the opinion that when people talk of “nations craving for the Gospel,” “stretching out pleading hands for it,” or “athirst for God,” or “longing for the living waters,” they are using words which in that connection have no meaning. That there are “seekers after righteousness” here and there I do not doubt, but I believe that the one “craving” of the far East is for money—that “unrest” is only in the east a synonym for poverty, and that the spiritual instincts have yet to be created.
On the Sunday I went with Dr. Scranton of Seoul to the first regular service ever held for women in Phyöng-yang. There were a number present, all dæmon-worshippers, some of them attracted by the sight of a “foreign woman.” It was impossible to have a formal service with people who had not the most elementary ideas of God, of prayer, of moral evil, and of good. It was not possible to secure their attention. They were destitute of religious ideas. An elderly matron, who acted as a sort of spokeswoman said, “They thought perhaps God is a big dæmon, and He might help them to get back their lost goods.” That service was “mission work” in its earliest stage.
On returning from a service in the afternoon where there were crowds of bright intelligent-looking worshippers, we came upon one of the most important ceremonies connected with the popular belief in dæmons—the exorcism of an evil spirit which was supposed to be the cause of a severe illness. Never by night or day on my two visits to Phyöng-yang had I been out of hearing of the roll of the sorcerer’s drum, with the loud vibratory clash of cymbals as an intermittent accompaniment. Such sounds attracted us to the place of exorcism.
In a hovel with an open door a man lay very ill. The space in front was matted and enclosed by low screens, within which were Korean tables loaded with rice cakes, boiled rice, stewed chicken, sprouted beans and other delicacies. In this open space squatted three old women, two of whom beat large drums, shaped like hour-glasses, while the third clashed large cymbals. Facing them was the mu-tang or sorceress, dressed in rose-pink silk, with a buff gauze robe, with its sleeves trailing much on the ground, over it. Pieces of paper resembling the Shinto gohei decorated her hair, and a curious cap of buff gauze with red patches upon it, completed the not inelegant costume. She carried a fan, but it was only used occasionally in one of the dances. She carried over her left shoulder a stick, painted with bands of bright colors, from which hung a gong which she beat with a similar stick, executing at the same time a slow rhythmic movement accompanied by a chant. From time to time one of the ancient drummers gathered on one plate pieces from all the others and scattered them to the four winds for the spirits to eat, invoking them, saying, “Do not trouble this house any more, and we will again appease you by offerings.”
The mu-tang is, of course, according to the belief of those who seek her services, possessed by a powerful dæmon, and by means of her incantations might induce this dæmon to evict the one which was causing the sickness by aiding her exorcisms, but where the latter is particularly obstinate, she may require larger fees and more offerings in order that she may use incantations for bringing to her aid a yet more powerful dæmon than her own. The exorcism lasted fourteen hours, until four the next morning, when the patient began to recover. A crowd, chiefly composed of women and children, stood round the fence, the children imbibing devilry from their infancy.
I was not at a regular inn in Phyöng-yang but at a broker’s house, with a yard to myself nominally, but which was by no means private. Im generally, and not roughly, requested the people to “move on,” but he made two exceptions, one being in favor of a madwoman of superior appearance and apparel who haunted me on my second visit, hanging about the open front of my room, and following me to the mission-house and elsewhere. She said that I was her grandmother and that she must go with me everywhere, and, like many mad people, she had an important and mysterious communication to make which for obvious reasons never reached me. She was the concubine of a late governor of the city, and not having escaped before its capture, went mad from horror at seeing the Chinese spitted on the bayonets of the Japanese. She carried a long bodkin, and went through distressing pantomimes of running people through with it!
The other exception was in favor of gesang, upon whose presence Im looked quite approvingly, and evidently thought I did.