Such is the interest felt in the gatherings and the thirst for more light, that many who are not invited, and who hold no office in the church, travel many miles, bringing their own rice, to attend these classes, which are often crowded to overflowing. The church leaders are rarely paid any salary, even by the natives. Each missionary engaged in evangelistic work is allowed one paid helper, at five dollars a month. This man employs his whole time in this way, and some missionaries who have a large field under their care are allowed two such assistants.
Mr. Underwood has always had a good many men, who freely gave the greater part of their time to the work, or who were paid by the native Christians, or were provided by him with some means of gaining their living which would admit of their giving much time to the work. Some would peddle quinine, at sufficient profit to make a good living. Each bottle is wrapped with a tract, and pains were taken to insure only the best article being placed in the hands of these dealers. Some of these men are placed in charge of little book shops, without any salary, some in charge of a chapel or dispensary, the privilege of occupying the house their only pay. There are always a number of young men around him glad and proud to be asked to serve on a special mission here or there, and the young men’s missionary societies band themselves together for systematic gospel work, so that they each week visit some village, distributing tracts and preaching. All these, with the leaders, who are always at his disposal for work in their own vicinity, form a valuable corps of helpers. This plan, or something like it, I believe, is carried out by all the evangelistic missionaries in the Presbyterian missions. Mr. Underwood, also, copying from the Methodists, established a circle of class meetings among the Christians under his care in and around Seoul.
The class leaders meet with him once a week, each bringing his book, make a report of attendances, absences, sickness, removals, backslidings, deaths and conversions. The class leader, being, as far as we know, the best man in his class, and in a way responsible for it, becomes again a very useful helper.
During the spring of 1895 the Presbyterian church in Chong Dong, Seoul, decided to build themselves a place of worship. The people were all of them poor, even according to Korean ideas, paper-hangers, carpenters, small retail shopkeepers, farmers, policemen, soldiers, interpreters, writers, copyists, even chair coolies, gardeners and peddlers, the richest of them rarely earning more than five dollars in gold a month. So we missionaries decided to raise the most of the two thousand yen necessary among ourselves, encouraging the natives to give as much as they could.
Mr. Underwood, however, in trying to impress them with the duty of supporting the Lord’s work liberally, was met one day with the remark, that this was called a foreign religion, and so it was difficult to convince natives that foreigners should not pay its way. “And so it will continue to be regarded,” said my husband, “just as long as you allow foreign money to be used in carrying it forward. When you build and own your churches, send out your own evangelists, and support your own schools, then both you and others will feel and realize it is not a foreign affair, but your own.”
“Then,” said the deacon, “we will build the Chong Dong church ourselves.” Mr. Underwood was astonished. “How can you build such a church?” said he. The deacon replied, “Does the pastor ask such a question of what relates to God’s work? With God all things are possible.” Nothing, of course, remained to be said. The missionaries decided that it would be wiser for them to own the land, in case of possible political complications, but the building itself would cost the whole of one thousand yen. The people went to work with a will, the pastor and one or two other missionaries took off their coats and lent a hand at the work, boys hauled stones, Korean gentlemen, scholars, and teachers who had never lifted anything heavier than a pen, set themselves to work on the building, carpenters gave their skilled labor every alternate day, working for their own living only one out of every two, women saved a little rice from each bowl prepared for the family until enough was laid aside to be sold, and gave the money thus earned, and so in manifold ways the money came in and the work grew. At length, however, there were no more funds and the building came to a standstill. No one was willing to go into debt, even to borrow of the missionaries, and it was decided to wait until the way opened.
Just when everything seemed hopelessly blocked, the epidemic of Asiatic cholera broke out. Why Koreans do not have this every summer raging through the whole country is one of the unsolved problems. All sewage runs into filthy, narrow ditches, which are frequently stopped up with refuse, so as to overflow into the streets, green slimy pools of water lie undisturbed in courtyards and along the side of the road, wells are polluted with drainage from soiled apparel washed close by, quantities of decaying vegetable matter are thrown out and left to rot on the thoroughfares and under the windows of the houses. Every imaginable practice which comes under the definition of unhygienic or unsanitary is common. Even young children in arms eat raw and green cucumbers, unpeeled, acrid berries and heavy soggy hot bread. They bolt quantities of hot or cold rice, with a tough, indigestible cabbage, washed in ditch water, prepared with turnips and flavored with salt and red pepper. Green fruit of every kind is eaten with perfect recklessness of all the laws of nature, and with impunity (and I must say, an average immunity from disastrous consequence) which makes a Westerner stand aghast. Any of us would surely die promptly and deservedly if we presumed to venture one-tenth of the impertinences and liberties with Dame Nature which a Korean smilingly and unconcernedly takes for granted as his common right.
The only solution I have ever reached, and that I hold but weakly, is, that in accordance with the law of the survival of the fittest, none but exceptionally hardy specimens ever reach adolescence, or even early childhood, and that having survived the awful tests of infancy, they are able to endure most trials which befall later.
But even these, so to speak, galvanized-iron interiors are not always proof. It takes time, but every five or six years, by great care and industry, a bacillus develops itself, so hardened, so well armed, so deeply toxic, that even Koreans must succumb, and then there is an epidemic of cholera. Eight years before, in 1887, the plague swept through the land, and thousands fell. Christians, both missionaries and natives, united in prayers that God would stay the scourge. Physicians pronounced it contrary to the laws of nature that it should stop before frost came to kill the bacilli, but, in wonderful justification of faith, the ravages of the plague were abruptly checked in the midst of the terrible heat of the last days of August and the first of September.