Christianity was very fortunate in its representatives.  I have seen much of the missionaries of Manchuria and Korea.  A finer, straighter lot of men I never want to meet.  The magnificent climate enables them to keep at the top of form.  They have initiative, daring and common sense.  Those I have known are born leaders, who would have made their mark anywhere, in business or politics.

In the early days they had to be ready to set their hands to anything, to plan and build houses and churches, to open schools, to run a boat down dangerous rapids or face a dangerous mob, to overawe a haughty yang-ban or break in a dangerous horse.  They were the pioneers of civilization as well as of Christianity.

Religion had to be commended by the courage of its adherents.  When there came a dangerous uprising, and every one else fled, the missionary had to stay at his post.  When an epidemic of cholera or yellow fever swept over a district, the missionary had to act as doctor or nurse.  Sometimes the missionary died, as Dr. Heron died at Seoul and McKenzie at Sorai.  Their deaths were even more effective than their lives in winning people.

Dr. Allen gained a foothold soon after his arrival by sticking to his post in Seoul during the uprising against foreigners that followed the attack by the Japanese and the reformers on the Cabinet and their seizure of the King and Queen.  When Min Yung-ik, the Queen’s nephew, was badly wounded, Dr. Allen attended to him and saved his life.  Henceforth the King was the missionaries’ friend.  He built a hospital and placed Dr. Allen in charge.  Women missionary doctors were appointed Court physicians to the Queen.

There were years of waiting, when the converts were few, and when it seemed that the barriers of four thousand years never would be broken down.  Then came the Chino-Japanese War.  Koreans were forced to see that this Western civilization, which had enabled little Japan to beat the Chinese giant, must mean something.  A young man from Indiana, Samuel Moffett, with a companion, Graham Lee, had gone some time before to Pyeng-yang, reputedly the worst city in Korea.  Here they had been stoned and abused.  When the Chinese Army came to Pyeng-yang, and the country was devastated in the great and decisive battle between the Chinese and Japanese, these two men stayed by the Koreans in their darkest and most perilous hours.  Koreans still tell how “Moksa” Moffett put on the dress of a Korean mourner and went freely around despite the Chinese, who would have almost certainly devised a specially lingering death for him, had they discovered his presence.

“There must be something in this religion,” said the Koreans.  Sturdy old John Newton’s belief that the worst sinner makes the finest saint was borne out in the case of Pyeng-yang.  It became in a few years one of the greatest scenes of missionary triumph in Asia.  The harvest was ripening now.  In Seoul men flung into jail for political offences turned to prayer in the darkness and despair of their torture chambers, and went to death praising God.  The Secretary to the King’s Cabinet preached salvation to his fellow Cabinet Ministers.