MOVEMENT IN KOREA AND MANCHURIA
One of the movements which will affect Christianity all over the East
has had its origin in Korea. Just as the suffering and miserable heart
of the individual man is that which Christianity finds most suitable
for its home, so it is with a nation. It is at the moment of national
adversity and humiliation that religious movements most readily rise.
Korea had looked upon herself as the equal of Japan. From Korea came
much of the civilisation which adorned Japan before the great Western
movement. When Prince Ito with the eyes of a statesman was realising
that Japan must either accept the domination of the West or its
civilisation, Korea was immovably entrenched in her belief in her
national greatness and in her contempt for the Western world. So
Westernised Japan has overcome her ancient rival and teacher, and Korea
is humbled to the very dust.
In many ways that humiliation is rendered more poignant owing to the
lack of sympathy between the races. Though they both have taken their
civilisation from China and have a common classical literature, they
are diametrically opposed in many things. The Japanese are essentially
a clean race. {233} They wash constantly; they will not enter a house
with their shoes on their feet. No one who knows them will accuse the
Koreans of excess in cleanliness. On the other hand, the Japanese very
frequently lack modesty. Many are the stories that residents will
tell; and we have seen the Japanese women clothed in the garb of Eve
appear in the public bath and even in the street. On the other hand,
the Koreans may be corrupt and immoral, but they are modest. The women
of Seoul as they walk through the streets cover their faces with their
green cloaks, till one almost thinks one must be in a Mohammedan land.
Those green cloaks are a perpetual reminder of the ancient hostility
between the races.
The picturesque story is worth telling. The Japanese, knowing of the
absence of the Korean armies, determined to surprise Seoul. They
thought they had succeeded, when to their amazement they saw the walls
of Seoul covered with what they took for warlike Koreans. The ready
wit of the women had saved their town. They had dressed themselves in
their husbands' clothes and so deceived their hereditary foes. The
Emperor rewarded them by giving them the right to wear the man's green
coat, which they wear not in coat fashion, but over their heads, the
sleeves partially veiling their faces; and as one wanders down the main
street of Seoul and watches the modest but gaily-dressed crowd of
Koreans--the women in their green coats with red ribbons, the men in
white garments wearing their curious top-knots {234} and quaint
hats--one understands the antipathy they must feel for the short,
muscular, soberly-dressed Japanese who by his courage and daring has
subdued them and now tramples on their national susceptibilities and
ignores their national rights.
There are several missions in Korea, but there is one which, _primâ
facie_, would call for no special remark. It ministers to the
white-robed Koreans in the same way that many another mission ministers
to these Eastern peoples--teaching and preaching. Externally there is
nothing exceptional about the missionaries. I will not say that their
mission is uninteresting, but it is unexciting. They are Americans by
nationality and Scotch by name and blood, and they follow the national
Presbyterian faith with all its cautious teaching, with all its prim
simplicity. No one would regard them as the mission that was likely to
create a great excitement or raise a great enthusiasm, neither indeed
do they so regard themselves. Their conception of mission work was the
sensible and reasonable plan of converting a sufficient number to make
them teachers and preachers, and then having educated them, to send
them out to convert their own fellow-countrymen. In 1906 and the
beginning of 1907 they were filled with dark forebodings for the future
of Korea. The temporary occupation of Korea by the Japanese was
obviously going to be changed into a permanency. The murder of the
Queen had shown what the Japanese would do, and the victory over Russia
had shown what they {235} could do. Korea was at their mercy. Subdued
yet not conquered in spirit, the missionaries, knowing their people
well, foresaw that a bitter friction must arise between the two races;
that rebellions and the consequent fierce repression must bring to
their infant church a time of great trouble; and so, like the wise
Christian men that they were, they took themselves to the Christian's
weapon, namely, prayer. They earnestly prayed that in some way a great
blessing should fall on their converts. That prayer was seemingly
unanswered, the grasp of Japan was not relaxed. Except for the wisdom
and gentleness of the great Prince Ito, there was nothing but
oppression and sufferings for the Koreans. The Japanese army had
learnt not only their military art but their statecraft in Germany, and
the latter is traditionally harsh. Break, crush, and bully are the
maxims which find general acceptance in the Prussian Court. Prince
Ito, however, was a great admirer of English imperial policy with its
maxims of justice to the weak, mercy to the conquered, and reverence
for all national traditions; but Prince Ito could not control the
Japanese soldiers, and the moans of the oppressed Koreans echoed
throughout her land.
In the spring of 1907 the Presbyterian Mission held what is called its
country class--that is to say, that the men who had been converted were
summoned from all the country villages to the town of Pyeng-Yang, and
there they attended for several days' instructions in the Christian
faith. This {236} excellent rule enables Christians who believe but
who are ignorant to acquire a more ultimate knowledge of the truths of
Christianity. These meetings are wholly unemotional; they are in no
sense revival meetings, nor even devotional; they are essentially
educational. Their object is to teach and not to excite. For the
Scottish-American has a double national tradition that knowledge is
strength. These meetings had been held one or two days; they had
followed their usual uneventful if beneficial course, and showed every
probability of ending as they had begun, when one of the Koreans rose
from the centre of the room and interrupted the ordinary course of the
meeting by asking leave to speak. As he insisted, permission was given
him. He declared that he had a sin on his conscience that forbade him
listening to the teaching of the missionaries in peace, and that
further he must declare this sin. The Presbyterian missionaries do not
encourage this kind of open confession of sin, but still to get on with
the meeting and to quiet him they gave him leave to speak. He then
declared that he had felt some months ago a feeling of bitterness
towards one of the missionaries, a Mr. Blair, who was our informant.
Mr. Blair assured him that so far from feeling that there was any need
for this confession he regarded the matter as trivial, and hoping again
to bring the meeting back to the point he suggested that they should
say the Lord's Prayer. Hardly had he uttered in Korean the words "Our
Father," when {237} a sudden emotion seemed to rush over all those who
were there present. The missionaries described it as at once one of
the most awful and one of the most mysterious moments of their lives.
They were not revivalists; they had not encouraged it; they did not
believe in it; they disliked an emotional religion with which they had
no sympathy; and here they were in the face of a movement which was
beyond, not only their experience, but that of the greatest
revivalists. They tried to stop it, but unavailingly. The Koreans,
unlike the Chinese, always sit upon the floor, and as the missionaries
looked out over the meeting from the platform on which they stood, they
saw the faces of their converts racked with every form of mental
anguish. Some were swinging themselves forward striking their heads on
the ground, hoping, as it were, to obtain by insensibility peace from
their torturing thoughts; some were in the presence of an awful terror;
some were leaping up demanding to be heard, longing to free their souls
from the weight they felt would crush them; others with set faces were
resolutely determined not to yield to the inspiration of the spirit
which suggested that they should gain relief by frank confession. The
missionaries having failed to bring the meeting to a close, submitted
to what they felt was the will of a higher Being, and the meeting went
on till fatigue produced a temporary and a partial rest. Though the
meeting was closed, the missionaries learnt afterwards that many {238}
Koreans went on all through the night in agonised prayer.
The next day they hoped the thing was over, and that the incident might
be reckoned among those strange experiences which workers in the
mission field must occasionally expect to encounter; but not so--the
meeting next night was the same as its predecessor. They noticed
several interesting facts. One, for instance, was, that the women were
far less affected than the men. The movement did not reach them till
later, and never so fully. Another remarkable thing about this
movement was that though the Methodists are by tradition a revivalist
body, and though they have a vigorous mission working in that town, yet
the revival only spread to their converts after many days, and then
neither with the spontaneity nor the fire with which it had been
manifested in the Presbyterian Mission.
Of the reality of the confession of sin there could be no doubt. One
man, for instance, confessed to having stolen gold from a local
gold-mining company, and produced the wedge of gold which he had
stolen, and asked them to treat him as he deserved. The manager of the
company luckily was a European, who wisely refused to punish a man who
had so spontaneously confessed his theft. Many of the sins that were
confessed would not bear repetition. Some confessed even to such awful
sins as that of murder of parents. One man in particular, a trusted
servant of the mission, resisted confession, and day by day {239}
became more and more racked with mental agony, till the missionaries
feared that his health would not endure the terrible strain of such
mental anguish, and they advised him to make a free confession of his
sins. At last he came to them with a sum of money in his hand; he had
raised it by selling some houses which he had bought as a provision for
his old age, and he confessed to the sin that was torturing him. He
had done what is constantly done in the East--he had peculated. His
position had been that of an agent whom the missionaries employ to make
many of their small payments, and out of each of these payments he had
taken "a squeeze." With these he had bought the houses which now he
had sold. He left the missionaries happy in heart though empty in
pocket.
This movement spread more or less over the Presbyterian missions in
Korea, but never with such intensity as manifested at Pyeng-Yang. We
heard it spoken of by a non-Christian Korean, a member of the Court of
the Emperor of Korea. He had heard of it, and said men were saying
this movement is a wonderful thing, for under its influence men
confessed crimes of which even torture would not have induced them to
own themselves guilty. A Chinese merchant also heard of it in
Manchuria. The man came down to Pyeng-Yang, and happened to stop with
the Chinese merchants. He mentioned that there were Christians in
Manchuria, and the Chinese merchants immediately took an interest.
When he asked what {240} they knew of the Christians, they answered,
"Good men, good men." One of them was owed by a Korean twenty dollars,
who would only allow that he owed ten, and the merchant having no means
of redress, had written off the debt; but when this revival took place,
the Korean came with the other ten dollars together with interest, and
what of course would appeal even more to the Eastern mind, with the
frank confession that he had lied. This practical illustration of the
effects of Christianity greatly impressed the Chinese.
When we arrived at Pyeng-Yang the movement was over. We went to some
of their meetings. They were very common-place ordinary meetings. All
that struck us was that there was a tone of reverence, a sense of
reality, which made one feel that Christianity was as sincere in Korea
as it is in our own land.
The movement has spread from Korea to Manchuria. In Manchuria the
movement had not quite the same spontaneity that it had in Korea; it
savoured more of the revival meetings of the West. It needed the
stirring words of a great preacher, Mr. Goforth, to start it, yet there
were one or two curious manifestations of power. One is worth telling.
One brother was heard expostulating with another; he was asking why his
brother had, forgetful of his family dignity or "face," confessed to
sins which brought not only himself but his family into disrespect.
The other answered, "When the Spirit of God takes hold of a man, he
cannot help speaking." {241} Two still more curious instances are worth
recording: one in which two soldiers who were not Christians were so
moved that they confessed their sins; another which seems to prove the
presence of a force exterior to human influence or to the emotions
caused by eloquence or moving hymns. An elder of the Church had
forgotten or been detained from going to one of these meetings; when
the speakers went to inquire next day why he had not been there, he
asked them in return to tell him what they had done at the meeting, and
they told him that many people had confessed their sins. He was deeply
interested, and said: "I was sitting in my house at the hour of your
meeting; I suddenly felt as if all my sins were laid before me, and I
realised as I had never done before my many shortcomings."
And so the movement has spread through Manchuria to China. If it has
lost something of its freshness, something of its force, it still
remains a movement that may accomplish great things. No one who has
read the history of the Wesleyan movement, and of the wonderful
manifestations that accompanied its commencement, will look without
interest and expectation for the work which this movement may
accomplish. Let us hope that it will bring to China a sense of reality
in spiritual things which the present materialist teaching threatens to
eliminate from her national life.
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