It seems to the writer, in looking back over the history of events for beginnings and causes, that the beginning as far as can be told was at the conference for prayer and consecration held by all the American missionaries of both Methodist and Presbyterian denominations in Seoul, August, 1904. There had then come upon all present, unexpectedly, overwhelmingly, a powerful impulse toward closer fellowship and entire union in work, and the conviction that the native Church in Korea ought emphatically to be one. Men were swept away with an irresistible tide of enthusiasm. No one wished or attempted to resist the mighty movement of the Spirit. All who were present testified to the blessed sense of the presence of the Spirit of Love. Hearts glowed; brother drew nearer to brother; misunderstandings, differences, divergencies of method, of creed, seemed trifling and insignificant; difficulties vanished away or were brushed aside; and they voted unanimously for a Council of Union of all the missions working in Korea, and for a United Native Church of Christ.
It was a blessed experience, but, as might have been expected, the powers of evil would never quietly submit without interference to a measure so calculated for their overthrow, so in keeping with the Lord’s will, and there forthwith sprang up in the minds of a few, difficulties, doubts, mistrusts and hindrances. Nevertheless, a similar meeting was held in August, 1905. A Union Council was then regularly organized with officers and rules. Plans were made and various committees formed to forward and perfect the organization of one United Native Church of Christ in the near future. Again one Spirit seemed to fill all hearts. One impulse of holy love to our Lord and to each other seemed to move us all to one supreme consummation—obedience to the dying command of the Master, and we all felt that He would follow this with still greater blessings.
In the fall of that same year, Dr. Hardie and other missionaries of Won San received a baptism of the Holy Spirit with power, characterized by a deep and searching sense of sin and God’s awful holiness and majesty. This experience was extended to the native Christians as well, and with deep repentance came a new feeling of peace and a greater zeal and consecration than ever before. To the other mission stations and communities of native Christians the news of this came, as well as thrilling accounts of what God was doing in Wales, in India and in other parts of the world, and a great longing filled all souls. “Bless me, even me, also, oh, my Father,” was the continued cry of their longing hearts.
Dr. Hardie came to Seoul and held meetings with some of the native Christians and the missionaries. Many felt that they had received a blessing, but there was no very marked or general revival.
At the annual meeting of our Mission, 1905, there was one afternoon set apart for a special meeting of the women missionaries for mutual conference as to the best means of bringing Koreans and themselves into closer and fuller walk with God, and to pray for renewed consecration. It was a solemn heart-searching time. They seemed to realize that all their efforts and prayers and desires had hitherto been but half-hearted compared with what they should have been, and ere they parted, they, on their knees, joined in a mutual promise to pray by name every day for the quickening and full sanctification of each other. It is not possible to put into words the deep impression made on the minds of most of the women present by the Holy Spirit, in that little meeting.
Not long after, a little printed pledge to pray daily for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Korea missionaries, on the native Christians and on the heathen communities, was sent by one of the Southern Presbyterians to each missionary in Korea to be signed and kept if he wished. It was simply putting into definite form the leading of the Spirit in all our hearts, a united cry, “Bless me, even me, also, oh, my Father.” It was the cry heard in our little circles of prayer. It was the continued petition of our closets, the principal thought and desire filling our conscious moments. The natives were moved as one man with us. Some of the little churches held nightly meetings of prayer for this blessing. For months, even years, some had been holding these meetings before the foreigners began.
The women in some of the churches met regularly to pray for this. It was the chief theme of their requests at all their services. How they prayed in secret none but God knows, but each man and woman knew how he or she was led to besiege the throne, with a spirit that would not be denied, that with fasting and strong crying, continued in supplication before God. It was prayer divinely led, for even as the blessing was demanded, as it were, the weak flesh wondered how such large things as we were irresistibly impelled to ask could possibly be expected. We prayed that there should be Pentecostal outpourings; that thousands should turn to Christ; that the great class of the nobility, (as yet untouched), so bound down by caste, by custom and social usage, by political requirements and family duties and bonds, should come into the kingdom; that the church should be spiritualized; that Koreans, intellectually converted, should realize the hideousness of sin; and that we, natives and foreigners, might “comprehend with all saints what is the height and depth and breadth and length and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge and be filled with all the fulness of God.”
These were the prayers that had been unitedly offered by all the missions at the conferences held every year since August, 1904, at the churches, native and foreign, at family worship, in little neighborhood prayer-meetings, in the closet and as they walked the streets or went about their work.
As has been said, the first blessings had fallen upon Won San. The next report of which I have note is from Mokpo, where Mr. Gerdine held services in October, 1906, twice a day for a week, from whence the report came, saying:
“The word was like a scalpel, laying bare the secret sins and hidden cancers of the soul. Strong men wept like children, confessing their sins, and as they realized the Saviour’s forgiveness and peace with God, their faces shone and the church rang with hymns of triumph. Men stood six deep waiting to testify of blessing received, sins forgiven, differences healed, victory over self, and baptism of the Spirit. From the beginning the spirit of prayer, intercession and confession was poured out in a remarkable way.”