The Northern Methodists connected with Seoul station have oversight of nearly 100 churches with 4283 members and some 2851 seekers. More than one million people inhabit the territory of this Mission around Seoul and for the care of all these together with charge of their publishing house, which undertakes work for the whole country, and for the schools and Women’s Hospital, they have only six men and seven single ladies.
At Seoul the Southern Methodists have four ordained men and four single ladies. The last statistics of this Mission show 181 churches with 89 church buildings, 4998 members. Before turning to some of the other large centers of Mission work we must not forget to mention the Methodist Mission Press, which is the only mission press in Korea except a small one in Pyeng Yang, and the Y. M. C. A., which is accomplishing great things for the large numbers of young men of wealth and rank as well as for those of poorer families. Early in the history of the work we began to realize the need of some means of reaching the very large class of young men who would not go to the churches or the schools, to provide a pleasant and attractive gathering place where they could find simple and innocent amusement and instruction, to make it all sufficiently attractive to be a means of reaching these young men with the gospel. This of course was its first, last and only raison d’être. Forthwith the Y. M. C. A. in America were approached. Shortly after an agent was sent and from the first this association has been an untold blessing and a great success. Hundreds of young men belong; thousands attend and receive the gospel; the Koreans themselves have given thousands of dollars towards its support. One Korean gentleman from whom we wished to purchase land made a present of it to the Association and last year so great was the number attending one of the meetings that even the new temporary building was insufficient and the great throng were obliged to meet under a tent temporarily put up for the purpose.
It must be remembered that Koreans have no theatres, concerts, operas, lectures, or any other evening entertainments. They haven’t even any attractive saloons or gambling places. They gamble and drink, it is only too true, but in their own homes, so that an attractive place for evening entertainments like the Y. M. C. A. met one of the very most crying needs of the public. There are classes here for the study of music, English and Japanese, and other branches of learning. There are games, newspapers, books and frequent entertainments, musical and literary, and so this institution is reaching out widely among the best families of the land, winning a place and a hearing for the missionary and the gospel he proclaims, reclaiming lost young men, yes, whole families, and bringing them into the true fold. Whether it may or may not be the best thing elsewhere, it is certainly a necessity in Seoul, and it has had so long and far a start of Satan’s man-traps that we believe they will never be able to overtake it in the race. And now let me give a few quotations from the letters of some of the Seoul missionaries before turning to another part of the field.
A Methodist missionary from Seoul writes to “The Korea Field” of 1907. “In the early spring of 1899 I itinerated through the southeastern section of the Kyeng Keui province and baptized a man and two of his family. It was like putting a match to dry prairie grass. Thereafter until the present day it has been a constant hustle to gather in the groups of believers springing up all over the territory and organize them into churches. Before I left on furlough in 1905 the number of believers had already reached into the thousands; since my return last fall it has been a continual struggle to organize the work and man it with efficient leaders and get it ready for a grand rally all over the district. The little group composed of a man and his family baptized in an obscure village was the first of a mighty host, for the work begun there has spread into five provinces and now, as it stands on our rolls, numbers 298 groups, besides a number of those that are not yet counted, enrolling 16,202 believers. Daily new groups are coming into existence and pleading for guidance and instruction. Chapels have been built all over the district by earnest believers who never think of asking for foreign aid (in money). School buildings have been secured and schools are being conducted on a modern plan. In this short while I cannot tell all the wonders that His grace has wrought in this part of the field, when I think of all the things that I have seen during the last six months, my heart grows warm and glad within me. For the best part of it is that people are being saved and are entering into a live experience of redeeming grace.” This district has a second time within two years been deprived of the care of its missionary, the one who wrote this letter having been laid low by violent sunstroke, and now this great district is in the hands of a new young missionary who has not yet learned the language.
Here are a few extracts from the letter of one of the Presbyterian missionaries at Seoul, written to “The Korea Field” of July, 1907. His district is in North Kyeng Keui. “The first place visited was a village twenty miles south of Seoul where no missionary has ever been before. I found a group of over fifty believers, all an outgrowth of the work of native Christians. I was further surprised to find a chapel almost completed. * * * From morning till late in the evening we spent examining men, women and children for admission as catechumens and accepted most of them.”
He continues, “Ten miles north is my Soti group, noted for its missionary zeal. Only a year ago the people built a fine big church with a room adjoining it especially for the use of the foreign missionary on his visits. During the past year, through the efforts of the four leading men and chiefly of deacon Paik three groups of Christians have grown up within a radius of three miles. One of these groups numbers about twenty-five and has already purchased a house to be used for worship. Another group was just started and consists of eighteen adherents, while about forty men and women make up the third group that will soon have a church building of their own. Every Sunday one or two men are detailed from Soti for each of these three groups to lead the morning and afternoon services.” The leading man, deacon Paik, is of untiring missionary zeal and great earnestness. He has been blessed with a big, strong body and does not hesitate to use it for the church. To carry heavy loads of lumber for miles on his back and to spend days in making mortar and plastering when the church was being built, to walk forty miles in the winter to Seoul for the sake of getting material for preparing the church, to start out ahead of me to the next group, ten miles away, to prepare them for my visit, to carry my heavy country boxes himself when no coolie could be found—all these tasks are looked upon by him not as burdensome duties but a pleasant privilege.”
At Tang Mok Kol for several years past there had been but one Christian. Every Sunday he went three miles to the nearest church to worship. A year ago three more men became believers and last winter the gospel began to spread very rapidly among the villages. One of the new converts was especially impressed with the necessity of getting a place large enough to accommodate all the worshippers. Rather than wait until the new converts would be able to build a church he sold his big fine working bull (a bull is a farmer’s chief dependence and most valuable possession) and purchased with the proceeds a meeting place. When I asked him what he would do when farming time came, he told me he had a young animal and by its aid he hoped to manage his work. What would we think of a farmer who would sell all his working teams for the sake of buying a church? And yet no one among the Koreans thought this act very wonderful, even though the giver had been professing Christianity only a few months and was not even a catechumen. The self-sacrifice of this man produced the natural result and when shortly after my winter’s visit the church became too small, the people at once obtained the necessary timber and with their own hands enlarged the building. On this visit I found a house seating sixty people and comfortably filled.”
Mr. Pieters continues, “In another village composed largely of inns a group was formed and shortly after a building purchased for a church. One of the Christians worked so enthusiastically that their numbers grew rapidly. People who had all their lives been making their living by selling whiskey gave up this means of livelihood and turned to farming. Further on, deep in the hills, is an isolated village where a number of men have been led to Christ by a boy. The latter had heard the gospel in one of our churches and by his own words as well as by the aid of Christian books he led his parents to believe. Then he began to invite people to their house, talked and read his books to them until one by one the neighbors accepted Christ.
“All last winter these converts went down every Sunday to the church where the boy had been converted ten miles away but since this spring one of the church members has been sent up there to conduct the Sunday services there. It is quite unusual in Korea for a boy to take the lead, for the Confucian ethics require a boy in the presence of older people to be silently respectful. Thus came true the prophet’s words, ‘A little child shall lead them.’ In my next church there were a year ago only a few believers. The need of a school for their children was felt most keenly and I recommended as the teacher an earnest Christian, an old man. He went for a very meagre salary, but spent his spare time preaching to the people and teaching a number of people to read. The group grew by last winter to about fifty men and women. Most of the winter they met for their services in two rooms and on the open porch of the house of one of the Christians. When the freezing weather came, it became trying to sit for an hour and a half in the open air during the services, and the people decided to build a church. By buying trees in the hills and cutting them and carrying them down, by collecting loose stones, by preparing other materials and doing all the work with their own hands and by other very strenuous efforts, the people succeeded in putting up a fine church that will seat 120 persons. One part was partitioned off and fitted for a school, but it can be thrown open during the services. Four boys of this school, each less than ten years old, came every day a distance of three miles to study. Last winter I met one day the four little figures trudging along the muddy road carrying in their mittless hands bowls of cold rice for their dinner. They were cheerful and seemingly quite content to walk the six miles every day since it gave them the opportunity of study that so many boys did not have.
“The average earning capacity of the majority of families that make up the Christian constituency of this district is about thirty dollars a year for a whole family. Keeping these facts in mind, we can easily see,” says Mr. Pieters, “how a contribution of two dollars, which is quite common here when a church is being built, gives forty-fold measured by standards of values in America. In addition, none of these have been professing Christianity more than two years and none of them are yet baptized. These are the catechumens and adherents.”