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This very antiquity, however, brings out a great difficulty. That which Christianity would supplant is by long centuries of dominance ingrained into the very nature of the people, while we and our views appear to be but of yesterday.

It is not human for age to fall readily in behind the leadership of youth. The Bible is the only sacred book that ever declared, "A little child shall lead them,” and Christ the only teacher who has affirmed, "Out of the mouths of babes hast thou ordained wisdom." But Asia must and will learn the lesson of making a distinction between the gift and the apparent giver, and it will be a happy day when she and the world shall fully appreciate the great truth that, "God is no respecter of persons," either in his gifts or his calls to leadership.

In judging of the true condition of affairs in Korea I believe it well to call attention to the tendency in many quarters to confound material evidences of prosperity with progress itself. To many civilization is representative government, railroads, telegraphs, and steamships, tight-fitting garments, and the English language. A heathen nowadays is a man who wears baggy trousers and cannot speak English. Yet a nation may possess all the above things and still be as heathen as a Hottentot, while, on the other hand, there may be as devoted followers of the lowly Nazarene, who never saw a locomotive, voted for a president, or wore a derby hat, as you will find in America.

A nation is only transformed as its individual members themselves become transformed, and while national wealth and prosperity may outstrip the moral elevation of the people, only that which comprises the latter is permanent. The forces which make for the elevation of the Korean people are slowly making headway, but a great and often discouraging battle is being and must be fought with the opposition before material advancement will be noticeable.

Ten years ago Korea was a forbidden land. Even toward her nearest neighbors, China and Japan, her attitude was one of retirement and actual seclusion. Living in a fossilized state, any change could hardly be short of a miracle. To-day fully twenty thousand foreigners, including Chinese and Japanese, dwell within her borders, so we erect one milestone, for the day of isolation has passed, and the door to the country is open. The old stereotype plate of "seclusion," the traditional view for centuries has been smashed, and instead we have hospitality and welcome.

Again, it was a dreadful thing for a Korean to leave the fatherland for a foreign clime; now we have Koreans in America, Russia, Japan, and elsewhere, and another traditional plate is smashed. Still another stereotype of the ages, namely, that all but Chinese are savages, has been permanently laid by, and we often find traces of humility even in Korea's attitude toward the West.

But it is our aim to speak particularly of the part Christianity is playing in the transformation of the nation.

First, Korea is a Mission Field.

The material monuments which meet the eye are not the only evidences of Korea's antiquity. Of far greater moment than they are the evidences which do not appear to the eye. We are confronted by prejudices and habits which have dominated the people for hundreds of years. The longer certain views are held and certain courses of conduct followed the harder it is to give them up and reform. This in Korea confronts us as a pertinent, ever-present problem.

The sages of Korea taught the nation that woman is inferior to man. Christianity flatly contradicts this, and there is a clash. The sages taught that some men are better than other men, and again we have a discord, for the Church has as warm a welcome for the cooly as for the noble. Polytheism, that dreadful travesty of God's omnipres

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ence fills earth, air, and sea with gods, demons, and supernatural creatures, and opposes with all its force Christian monotheism. Immoral practices have the sanction of antiquity, and challenge Christianity's right of censure. And not only do these views enjoy the sanction of honored and revered names, but from habit they have become second nature. Divine grace alone can save from them.

These views have been systematized in three great cults-ancestral worship, Buddhism, and the heresies.

Ancestral worship is the state religion, and, emphasizing as it does the beautiful trait of filial piety, presents a hard problem to the missionary. It is associated with the tenderest thoughts and most hallowed memories of the Korean. Its rites are obligatory upon him as the last mark of respect and love to father and mother, and to omit them brings upon him the contempt, the censure, and sometimes the violence of neighbors and friends.

Buddhism is languishing in an effete old age, rotting in immorality. The priests and nuns, while looked upon with great contempt by the higher class, yet possess great influence over the lower classes, the women, and the superstitious of every class. Most of these priests are in the monasteries for the rice and clothing it brings them. This sordid aim prevents that creed loyalty which would develop fanatical opposition to Christianity. Doubtless one of these days the devil will lead the cohorts of Buddhism against us, but the personnel of the priesthood will have to change before he can wake them up to fanaticism.

The heresies embrace all outside the two great cults. They comprise the superstitious notions of the people, the parasitic encumbrances of the two other cults with' the myths of the aboriginal Koreans. These comprise ghosts, demons, monsters, and genii, the inventions and self-deceptions, of a sinful and fearful imagination, unmoored from the true God, and adrift in darkness for thirty centuries and more.

At this very point the preciousness and glory of the deliverance in Christ shines out beautifully. The Christian is surrounded on all sides by the omnipresent God and Father, whose character is known, whose love and providence are boundless, and who is one and unchangeable. The unconverted Korean moves amid the myriad creatures of his imagination; they frequent the walls, ceiling, and floor of his room, the gate by which he enters, the brook flowing by, the trees about, the mountains in the distance, and the air above; their characters are of ten thousand varieties; their demands upon his time and resources unlimited. Nowhere is Christ's declaration, "Whom the Son maketh free is free indeed," better appreciated than in Korea.

These systems have given rise to the customs and modes of life among the Koreans. Filial piety is a marked trait. The power of the parent is absolute, the submission of the child hearty and genuine. The respect paid by youth to age shames the West, America especially. Indeed, the status of age in Korea is a pleasant thing to see.

Loyalty and devotion to the king is another marked trait of the Koreans, who view

his majesty as the national father rather than as a despot.

From the same source, however, the state creed, comes the injustice done woman. The dualism which dominates a Korean's every conception has placed her in the same category with darkness, weakness, inferiority, and iniquity. Viewed as inferior to the man, her lot is one of subjection. From the father she passes under the control of the husband; after whose death she is virtually subject to the eldest son. She enters the marriage state during the age of fourteen to seventeen, this being absolutely obligatory if she would retain the respect of her people. Ancestral worship being based on the possession of male posterity, places its sanction on plurality of wives, and in thus destroying the true home life opens the way for great immorality. The true

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wife is often deserted for some favorite concubine or mistress, and no stigma of disrepute occurred.

Another custom which we find it hard to explain and harder to encounter is that of caste. Three divisions of high, middle, and low class exist, well defined and separate, based possibly on the Hindu idea, though far from being so rigid. This, however, has given rise to a code of etiquette, degrading alike to all. It cannot but produce pride and arrogance in the upper classes, and crush out ambition and self-reliance in the lower classes. The noble meets the cooly in our services as an equal, and when they become members of a church, as a brother. While most awkward at times, nevertheless it often becomes a test of conversion, for those who refuse to show humility at this point soon fall.

The evil of this custom is that it denies the right of every man to freedom and creates a class standard of blood and ancestry instead of merit. It shuts up the cooly to that development of his faculties which would fit him to fill a higher station in life. It places the low man at the mercy of his superior, who may act toward him in a manner which would put him in prison in the States, and yet the cooly can obtain no redress.

It cheapens human life, for while custom secures the noble the posessesion of his goods, immunity from torture, and a regard for his person, not so the luckless low man. Guilty of an actual offense, or it may be has incurred only the displeasure of an aristocrat, he is liable to be dragged off to prison by the hair of the head, stamped upon with hobnailed shoes if he falls by the roadside on the way; subjected to the most horrible and vile tortures a foul heathen imagination can invent, and finally dispatched by a bloody and painful execution.

This cheapness of human life and disregard of the sacredness of the human body is, after all, not so much a result of the caste idea as a direct effect of heathenism itself, for the same spectacle horrifies the missionary in lands where class privileges do not prevail as they do in Korea. One of the greatest triumphs of Christianity has been its victory over cruelty and torture. A heathen may well sigh for the privilege of being born in a Christian land.

Second, Christian Work in Korea.

The Roman Catholics enjoy priority of entrance in Korea. They claim that a priest and a large number of Japanese converts were in the army which invaded Korea in 1592. They date their work, however, from the latter part of the eighteenth century, when a Korean, converted in Peking, began work among his fellow-countrymen upon his return to the peninsula. Foreign priests arrived in the country about 1835, and since then large numbers have been converted to "the Church." They have suffered three severe persecutions, in which several bishops and priests and thousands of converts lost their lives. They are said to number about twenty thousand members now. Roman Catholicism has proven herself ever to be an impotent agent. Yea, more, a clog almost in the regeneration of a nation. She claims a thousand years in China, and yet when Protestantism first entered China the people were as heathen as ever. So in Korea no visible effect can be seen for her century of work. Her emissaries do not lack in devotion and heroism, but even martyrs can accomplish little with a lifeless creed.

The entrance of our Presbyterian brethren upon the field was synchronous with our own, and the two missions have ever worked side by side in terms of loving and delightful fraternity. Most honorably connected with the opening of our Methodist Mission, and thus with the entrance into Korea of Protestantism, is the name of Dr. Goucher, by whose munificence the mission was started.

The first visit of Methodism was in the person of Dr. Maclay, then Superintendent of the Japan Mission, whose experiences and impressions at that time would be a welcome addition, if published, to the missionary records of the Church. Following close upon this came Dr. Scranton and Brother Appenzeller, the first appointees to Korea, with Mrs. M. F. Scranton, the doctor's mother, to establish a work for the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society.

It is difficult to realize the tasks which confronted these first workers. It was early in 1885 and the agitation of the émeute of December, 1884, were not over. Politically the people were uneasy, and the confusion was increased by the scourge of cholera which soon broke out and swept away thousands in Seoul alone. It is an honorable testimony to these first workers that they remained at their posts in the city, doing what they could instead of seeking to escape the loathsome epidemic by flight.

With aids the most meager, the study of the language was begun, a mission compound secured, native houses being remodeled into dwelling houses, and which have still remained the homes of most of the mission, the only house in foreign style erected yet being that built for Rev. F. Ohlinger. Indifference and suspicion had to be lived down, imposition and fraud guarded against, and the fight was often discouraging.

Under the grace of God success has attended the mission. To medical work especially belongs much of the honor of opening Korea. Medicine took the lead, and in

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pioneer work she has held it. Thousands of suffering ones have been relieved by Dr. Scranton and his later colaborers, and these substantial evidences of love and fraternity have touched the Koreans and done much to wipe away prejudice and suspicion. Dr. Scranton's hospital and work has been the "love of Christ" in tangible shape before the eyes of the Koreans, though they could not at first understand it. Indeed, how could they!

Another efficient agent in rendering our stay in Korea justifiable in the native eye has been our educational work. Brother Appenzeller early began a school, and a few pupils were secured for the study of English. Mrs. M. F. Scranton began a school for girls with one girl, who has since developed into an active Christian worker and has become the wife of one of our first preachers.

By this work two objects were gained: First, we were brought in close contact with the young of the land. Christianity can only make headway against heathenism by securing the children. Institutions for children are an indispensable requisite to missionary success. Second, it immediately gave the missionary the standing of a teacher in the eyes of the community. The Koreans are a literary people. Education, limited largely to the upper classes as it is, is the only qualification for respect and position. The character of teachers established by the opening of a nak dang (school) gave a weight to our words as preachers they might otherwise have

lacked.

Education and medicine have enjoyed the marks of divine favor and sanction in their success as evangelistic agencies. From hospital and schools have come a large percentage of our converts, and while the increase of our native ministry and our foreign force is going to fill our ranks with the spoils of preaching, these two consecrated handmaidens of the Lord will never cease to be genuine aids.

In speaking of actual results, figures are impotent to give any just idea of the progress of God's work, but they are suggestive. In our hospitals it is safe to say that relief has been given to fully thirty thousand different Koreans during our short history, which means that there is that number of natives who feel that the presence of the missionary of the cross is anything but undesirable. From our educational work has come native helpers who are devoting themselves to the work. These are a source of joy to us. But it is also safe to say that all who have come in contact with us in the school have been benefited thereby and cured of narrowness and prejudice.

Connected with this our printing establishment deserves notice. It is a trite remark to say that a sanctified press is a mighty power for good. It was granted to Methodism to lead the way in utilizing this "arm of service" in Korea, and it has done valiantly indeed for the Lord.

Any review of our work will be incomplete which does not notice the grand work for women carried on by Mrs. M. F. Scranton and her corps of noble assistants. No difficulty however great, no discouragement however trying, no opposition however strong, but has been triumphed over. When we realize all they have had to encounter we may well say, "What bath the Lord worked!" Korea strove to guard well its women from the gaze of foreigners. Even the Chinese embassies whenever they passed into Seoul, or through a town on the way, found the streets curtained off to prevent them seeing a Korean woman. But Christian treatment has begotten a confidence Korea might never otherwise have known, and before which the rigid laws of seclusion have had to give way. In the Home thirty-five girls are receiving instruction which will fit them to establish Christian homes for themselves. The work of spreading the Gospel among women has gone on grandly, and a number have been reached, converted, and enrolled as church members.