PARTY STARTING OUT IN MORNING FROM THATCHED INN. [PAGE 199]
CHURCH AT SORAI. [PAGE 124]
In the early summer of 1895, Mr. McKenzie wrote, asking Mr. Underwood to go and dedicate the church and receive a number of applicants for baptism. This he promised to do, but just before he was to start, one sad day in July, when a number of us had met to hold a day of fasting and prayer, a messenger came with the news of the deadly illness of our dear brother, Mr. McKenzie. The pitiful letter, written with his own trembling fingers, showing in every sentence the evidence of terrible suffering and of a mind already unhinged, was followed immediately by the shocking news of his death. The blow fell like a thunderbolt. Such zeal, consecration and usefulness cut short so soon!
It was strange, and yet there was a lesson in it for the noblest class of missionaries. And here let me say just a few words of warning to some who may have the foreign field in view, and to some who are perhaps already on the field. There are men and women, who, being John the Baptist sort of people, enter the work with such zeal and enthusiasm and allow themselves to become so overwhelmed with the awful responsibility for these dying millions (which indeed every true missionary feels only too heavily), that they forget the just demands of the body of this death. They forget that a solitary life gradually unseats the intellect, and that a body which has reached maturity, fed on plenty of nutritious food, cannot suddenly be shifted to a meagre, unaccustomed and distasteful diet of foreign concoction, and retain its power to resist disease, and to accomplish the heavy work they mercilessly exact from it, like Egyptian taskmasters demanding brick without straw. They forget that the spirit cannot remain united to the body unless the claims of the latter (in which are included those of the brain) are satisfied, and so they drop, one by one, our noblest and most needed laborers. But even so, they do not die entirely in vain, they leave an example of Christlikeness and devotion which preaches eloquently, and is an inspiration to all their brethren.
And yet if they could only have gone on living and preaching, as they might, had they been able to mix with their enthusiasm and consecration, wisdom and temperance! During my short experience I have seen several illustrations of what Mr. McKenzie’s death brought home so startlingly to us all. We learned afterwards that he had been sick for some weeks, his mind had been somewhat affected early in the history of the disease, the progress of which had not been very rapid, but as he had no companion who could observe the danger signals, and no doctor to help, his invaluable life was lost.
The more intelligent natives urged him to send for a doctor, but he hesitated to call others from their work to undertake a long difficult trip in the unhealthy summer season, lest it should prove to be only a passing temporary ailment. And so he went on doctoring himself (just as any missionary alone in the interior is tempted to do), delaying to call for help, from his very unselfishness and conscientious fear of giving trouble.
“Take care of your head. Don’t work too long in the sun,” he said to an old woman by the roadside, “or you may lose your mind as I have.”
He related to his friend, the Korean leader, accounts of long nights of anguished struggle with Satan, and then again of hours of ecstatic joy with his Saviour. The intolerable agony in his head grew steadily worse, until the end. The Koreans felt the terrible blow deeply, but they have never ceased to love and revere Mr. McKenzie’s memory. They cannot speak of him now after a lapse of several years without tears. Their loving hands prepared him for the grave and covered his bier with flowers. They held a funeral service as best they knew, after our custom, with prayers and hymns, and laid his loved remains in a quiet place, not far from the little church which he had been the instrument in God’s hands of building. His influence is still felt in the village and for miles around. He lived Christ and laid the foundations of that church on a rock. He had a reputation for great courage and prowess, and it is said that his presence alone saved Sorai from invasions of Tonghaks.
This society played a conspicuous part in the opening of the China-Japan war, its name means literally Eastern doctrine, and its aim was in brief, “the East for Easterners,” or “Korea for Koreans.” They declared their desire and intention to down all Westerners, Western ideas, reforms and changes, and to restore and re-establish old laws and customs. The sudden organization and wonderful popularity of this society was doubtless caused by the outrageous conduct of many corrupt officials, who ground down the people mercilessly with unjust taxation and brought about a general feeling of unrest and bitter discontent.