The English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has already been mentioned. Besides their work in Seoul they have evangelistic and medical missions at Chemulpo and Kang Wha and a substation at Su Won. Their workers are fine, earnest and efficient people and we only regret that they are so few and that we have not been able to get their statistics in time for these chapters. We hope that although our forms of worship are so different they and we may at no distant date be able to enter into the same union in which we believe every true church of our blessed Lord must come.
A few incidents have been related to show the attitude and characteristics of the native Christians, and the manner in which the gospel is being carried among the Koreans. One point which is very marked is that they consider the work their own. They do not depend on missionaries or leaders alone to preach and spread it abroad, but each man, woman and child feels that it is his or her business as far as possible to “pass on the Word.” While some of these people are ignorant, some are well educated and some are brilliant young men who have refused various inducements to accept high positions in the political and mercantile world and who are devoting their best strength and much or all of their time at tremendous sacrifice to serve their Saviour.
The attitude of the Christians everywhere is that of joy and triumph. Purified in the cleansing fires of the Holy Spirit during the great revivals of a year ago, they are going forward with new enthusiasm, devotion, consecration, aroused faith, as one man, to win and save all their countrymen. The missionaries, too, were never so much one in heart, thought and action, never so fully aroused and alert, never so full of assurance and gratitude. Not a man or woman but thanks God that they are privileged to live at this day and work with Him in this place and see the glorious things that He is doing. Not one but feels certain God has far greater things in store in the future than in the past. Not one but believes more than ever in the power of prayer, but believes that through prayer Korea may be, shall be won for Christ in the near future. Pulses are quickening, blood is tingling with the wonder and the glory of it and we ask ourselves how it is that we, we are permitted to see and hear these things. “For the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
In the days of Moses God led His people out of Egypt and through the desert with a series of awful judgments and wonderful miracles, and established them in Canaan, under His own divine laws, as an object lesson to the age of His mighty power and of His ideal of a nation, a symbol and example to His Church. And it looks altogether possible and probable that now, when faith seems to be growing cold, when sceptics are so openly questioning the power of God’s pure Gospel, He is intending to use one of the weakest and most despised of the peoples to illustrate what the Gospel pure and simple can do to evangelize a whole nation. One of the men of the New Theology asked me anxiously whether we “were teaching the Koreans a theology that would soon need revising.” Thank God the theology the Koreans are being taught is not man made or man revised. Thank God He is vindicating the “old time religion,” the old time theology, the old time Bible, as good enough for Korea, powerful to the pulling down of heathen strongholds, powerful to change wicked men into good men, heathen communities into righteous, pure and good ones. Unto Higher Critics—a stumbling block, unto liberal New Theologians—foolishness, but to those who take Him simply as little children and His Word—the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, the weakness of God is stronger than men, and He is choosing the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is choosing the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, and He is saying to the men who stand as the Jews and Greeks of our Western Churches, “Here is base, despised Korea. Behold what the old Bible, the old Gospel, with the teaching of the Spirit, received and believed, can do for her.”
It is in this way the finger of God is pointing, it is in this way He is leading, and we are following after, if we may apprehend that for which we were apprehended by Christ Jesus; reaching forth, we press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God for the whole nation of Korea in Christ Jesus.[15]
[15] All the facts and statistics given in this chapter are taken from “The Call of Korea,” by H. G. Underwood, “The Korea Field,” and personal letters, and recollections and Mission Official Reports.
CHAPTER XIX
Pentecostal Blessing—Special Meetings—Prayer Answered—Confession of Sin—Revival in Schools—Great Meetings—Bible Study—Effects of Blessings—Transforming Power—Holy Spirit Revival—Comparative Statement of Growth—Features of the Great Work—Union of Christians in Korea.
The story of “How the Spirit Came to Korea” reads more like an extract from the Acts of the Apostles than an account of what could have happened in our modern matter-of-fact world. More than twenty-four years ago mission work was begun in this country, but before we relate that story of first beginnings, let us turn to the last page and look a little, as best we may at a distance, and see how God had been crowning and perfecting His work of grace there.