The temperature was zero.
The cold had swept down over night from the Siberian and Manchurian plains across the city of Seoul. The capital city of Korea was shivering with cold. But it was vibrant with something else. It was vibrant with a great sense of something impending.
There were those who said that the restlessness in the souls of the Koreans had died down with the terrible days of the March Independence Movement; but I knew that the faith of the people was deeper than that. I knew that the flame of faith was just smouldering.
I sensed this from the conversation of old-time missionaries who had been in Korea from the very beginning. I sensed it in the conversation of young Koreans who had graduated from American schools. It was there; a vibrant, living, pulsing, faith in God and in the justice of their hopes: the Independence of Korea.
The whole thing was summed up for me in a flash. It was a flash of the light of a tremendous faith that blinded mine eyes for a day; but my soul it lighted as with a great eternal light.
A Korean boy stepped into the home of a missionary friend of mine, whose name I dare not use. If I did he would likely be sent home by the Japanese. Men have been sent home for less.
The snow crunched under his feet as he walked up across the yard and the porch. He knocked at the door.
"Come in," said the missionary, kindly.
The boy stepped in. The missionary had never seen him before. The boy was moved deeply as with a great emotion. He seemed to have carried into that quiet missionary home with him some of the tenseness of the outside air and some of the tenseness of the political situation.
"What do you want?" asked the missionary.