All the Christian women quickly assembled at the house of my hostess, a wholesome farmer’s wife, who came out to the road to welcome me, took both my hands in hers with a long gentle pressure, and a look of gladness as bright as if I had been a radiant angel from heaven, or a returned apostle. Her small rooms were soon filled with Christians and others, who listened while we held a service and talked of the things concerning the kingdom.
Then they, with bounteous hospitality, brought in a store of the best their homes contained of dainties. They feasted my two native companions and myself and all the visitors, both Christians and mere sightseers, and even my chair coolies were given as much as they could eat, which is no mean amount.
One woman said that her eldest son had just returned from Sorai and was urging his father to sell his good farm and home and move there with his family, so that he and his brothers might attend that school and church and learn more about God and his will.
The work in this hamlet all started through the instrumentality of a young girl in Hai Ju, not seventeen years old, who, having formerly lived here, after her marriage into a Christian household in the city, and after her conversion, often returned to her old home and begged her family to believe and accept Christ.
Though they scoffed and reviled at first, after a while they began to listen, and finally one, then another, yielded their hearts. After the manner of Korean Christians, they “passed on the word,” and so at length seven families were trusting Christ.
After seven weeks in Hai Ju we returned to Seoul, having done all that was possible in the matters we had been sent there to look after, and having made it plain that Americans would not stand by and see the natives persecuted and wronged without a strong protest; for while we try not to interfere between them and their rulers (and this is at times extremely difficult), we do not feel the same obligation in the case of French priests. Our hope now is that these outrages will henceforth be somewhat restricted and that Protestants will at least remain unmolested, as the mere advertisement and bringing to the light of the evil would do much to prevent its repetition, the children of darkness having an ancient dislike of the light.
Before we returned from Hai Ju we learned of the death by smallpox of our dear brother, Mr. W. V. Johnson, who had arrived early in February of that year, his consecrated young wife having died on the way to the field, in Kobe, Japan.
We all felt the sweet devoted spirit of the earnest young brother, and knew that these two valuable lives were not given in vain, but that God has accepted their sacrifice as if they had done all they planned, and has chosen to call them to reward a little earlier, because they will better so fulfil his purpose, for, through and in them. Again, only a few months later, we were all called to part with a dear sister, Mrs. F. S. Miller, whose loving sympathy and patient endurance of sickness and pain had endeared her to missionaries and native Christians alike. Not a month before her own death, her hands prepared the casket for the cold little form of one of the dear little missionary babies, of whom so many are now in heaven. And so, as was said at the time of her release, “Korea seems a gate to heaven.” Sure it is good to go from service to the vision of the King.
This little chain of reminiscences is now at an end. Its object has simply been to interest Christian people in this most interesting country, and to show what God is working here.
It has been necessarily limited, mainly to the experience of one pair of missionaries, because the writer has neither the knowledge nor the liberty to speak freely of the lives and work of all, and neither the ability nor the space to write a complete history of mission work in Korea. It is hoped that although so restricted, as to be a mere glimpse of a small fraction of what is being done, it will serve to make plain what grand opportunities are theirs (at present) who would lead a nation out of bondage into liberty, the only liberty worth calling the name, or that sinful mortals can use, “the liberty of Christ.”