Mrs. Baird says, “The night schools in the city were shaken. There were meetings in all the churches for the unconverted and between twelve hundred and two thousand came out at that time for Christ among the Presbyterians in Pyeng Yang alone. At the meetings of the missionaries there were sacred times, all hearts melted in a wonderful solvent of love. Work spreads to the country classes and churches like holy fire.”
The money given by the churches of the Presbyterian missions nearly doubled the amount contributed the previous year.
Pledges for a certain number of days of evangelistic work have become common and at one of the Bible classes held in Seoul, men promised in addition to other Christian work and precious pledges, an average of seventeen days apiece for the coming year,—enough in all to make one man’s entire time for six years, and the rule is that these pledges are more than kept, most of the people exceeding the time promised.
These are simply a few of the results of this great work of God in Korea. In every station and village, in large cities and country districts, the fruits are being gathered. Let those who are permitted a share in it thank God.
Before finishing this very incomplete review, there are several features of it which should be noted.
1st. It was preceded, as has been noted, for a period of three or more years, by a constantly increasing desire and fervent united prayer of missionaries and natives—desire and prayer undoubtedly inspired by Him who intended to give—for the Gift of the Spirit.
2d. It simply fell upon the people waiting before God in insistent, believing prayer, without having been worked up in any way by exciting appeals to emotion.
3d. It came to a people who, during a knowledge of Christianity of some twenty odd years, have never had anything of the kind in their religious life, and have never shown signs of great excitability in their deepest Christian experiences.
4th. It was marked, everywhere the same, by a realization of the awful blackness of sin, consequent upon an acute sense of the immediate Presence of the terrible Majesty of the Most High and followed by agonizing repentance, confession and restitution.
5th. Wonder and regret have been expressed at the kind of sins confessed by some of these native Christian people. It must be remembered that they were Christians who had come out of heathenism with no previous Christian training and breeding, that they were living surrounded by heathenism, but poorly instructed, and some of them, no doubt, had never been more than intellectually converted.