~ CENTENNIAL PAMPHLET No. 13 The Bible in Korea OR The Transformation of a Nation GEORGE HEBER JONES, D.D. AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY NEW YORK 1916 Universal Bible Sunday The dominant thought and aim of the Centennial celebration of the American Bible Society is the exaltation of the Word of God. In commemoration of the blessings which have flowed from the Bible, and in gratitude for the good hand of God upon the Society throughout the 100 years during which it has put forth and circu- lated the Scriptures, and which 100 years end on the 7th of May, 1916, it is requested that that day be observed as UNIVERSAL BIBLE SUNDAY In this observance churches of many denominations throughout the United States have indicated their intention to join. It will also be observed by union meetings in large centers, and by special exer- cises in Sunday Schools, Young People's Societies and other church organizations throughout the length and breadth of our great country. As the sun brings light that day to our southern continent, there, too, will be gathered, in observance of this day, those who love the Word of God. Assurances have already been given that in the Is- lands of the Seven Seas, in the far Philippines, in the Land of the Rising Sun, in Bible-loving Korea, in great seeking China, in Siam and India, along the Persian Gulf and the Delta of the Nile, and even in war-smitten Europe, there will be those who will join in this grateful recognition of the blessings from The Book. Will those who read these lines all join in the observance of this day? Literature to assist in such observance may be had from The Secretaries, Bible House, Astor Place, New York City. Centennial History of the Bible Society The Rev. Henry Otis Dwight, LL.D., the Recording Secre- tary of the Society, has for more than a year now been set aside for the one purpose of writing the Society's History. It is a story of intense interest and intrinsic value for all who rejoice in, and watch solicitously, the growth and development of our own country or the growth and development of the Kingdom of God the world over. It will be a volume of about 500 pages, with illustrations, and will be ready in March, l'M6. Cloth bound, it will be $1; paper bound, 50 cents. The Macmillan Company will publish it for the Society. Orders or inquiries may be addressed to The Secretaries, Bible House, Astor Place, New York City. THE BIBLE IN KOREA The Transformation of a Nation BY GEORGE HEBER JONES. D.D.. Editorial Secretary, Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church Twenty-five Years Missionary in Korea AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY NEW YORK 1916 A reprint from The Bible Magazine. October, 1914 3-f GO J"?/ 4 The Bible in Korea OR The Transformation of a Nation The Power of the Bible KOREA, in its religious development, offers a convincing illustration of the transforming power of the Bible. This is indicated by the great change which has come over popular opinion con- cerning the customs and ethical standards of the people. Thirty years ago practices which were re- garded as reasonable in ethics and necessary to social order are to-day believed to be perverse and injurious. Previous to the coming of the ideal set forth by the Bible the lower masses of the people, who con- stitute more than nine-tenths of the entire popula- tion, were in a state of economic peonage to the higher classes, while it is estimated that probably three hundred thousand were held in actual slavery. Plural marital relations, with concubinage on the part of those whose social standing or wealth could furnish support, were regarded as quite the proper thing. Marriage was entered upon at the age of twelve to fourteen years, and for a girl to be un- married at the age of sixteen was regarded as a matter of neighborhood scandal. Woman was re- garded as inferior to man, she had few recognized legal rights, and customary law required her to be in subjection that was both real and oppressive, in childhood to her father, in wifehood to her husband, and in widowhood to her oldest son. One of the customs of the land was the abduction of widows and their forcible marriage to widowers who could raise up a party of men sufficiently strong to cap- 3 473583 ture and carry off the woman. The Penal Code of the land prescribed tortures of the most fiendish character, while prisoners were subject to cruel and inhuman treatment. To-day these and many other things have passed, or are passing, out of Korean life. The position of the common folk has been materially improved, the doors of education have been opened up to womanhood, and to-day she enjoys both customary and legal rights which heretofore were unknown. Among the men of the nation new ideals prevail concerning veracity, personal integrity, purity of life, mercifulness, and neighborliness. The status of the home life and the character of family rela- tions have greatly altered. The treatment of the sick, which in the old days was marked by the use of many loathsome medicines, superstitious prac- tices, and sometimes the abandonment of those taken sick, has been changed by the introduction of modern medical practice. A new value has been placed upon the dignity of labor, leading to an in- creased degree of thrift, frugality, and prosperity. The fountain head from whence flowed the cur- rents of power which have been most instrumental in producing these changes has been the Bible. In Korea it has shown itself to be not only a social dynamic to overthrow that which is wrong, but also a constructive force, building up better things in the place of those that have been destroyed. The Threefold Presence of the Bible The Bible is in Korea in a threefold sense : (1) By the work of translation it has been intro- duced into the language of the people and has be- come a formative force in the development of their intellectual life. There has been an evangelization of the language of the people, as well as of the life of the people. All that has been brought about in the thought life of other peoples by the translation 4 of the Bible into their language is being reproduced in Korea to-day. The boys and girls of the nation are coming into the possession of moral and relig- ious knowledge through the presence of the Bible in the native language which was denied to their fathers. In the cultural development of the Korean people the Bible has been installed upon a seat of power, and from this place of enthronement it can never be dislodged; except as the new fabric of Korean thought is torn to pieces and destroyed it must, over an ever-widening range of influence, continue to impose and to deepen its impression upon Korean thought life for all time to come. (2) The Bible is in Korea in a material sense. The service rendered by the Bible societies, and in a very conspicuous sense by our own American Bible Society, in giving the Scriptures to the Korean people is immeasurable. To give but an incom- plete exhibit of the extent to which the Bible in a material way has come into circulation in Korea, during 1910 to 1912, inclusive, the total sales in that country were 1,430,491, including the Bible as a whole or in part. The demand for this book grows rather than diminishes. Through the cour- tesy of Dr. W. I. Haven, Corresponding Secretary, I am able to give the circulation of the Korea Agency of the American Bible Society for 1914. This shows a total of 458,694 volumes, including 810 Bibles and Old Testaments, 7,498 New Testaments, and 450,386 portions, an advance of 281,814 vol- umes, which makes the circulation almost treble that of the preceding year. No other book printed in the Korean language anywhere nearly approaches the Bible in circulation. Though I have no exact data at hand by which to test the fact, I am inclined to believe that the circulation of the Bible, with that of the tracts and Christian books intended to interpret its teachings, is greater than the combined circulation of all other literature issued in the Ko- 5 rean tongue. There is much significance in this fact, for it is an indication of the value the Korean people themselves place upon the Bible and Chris- tianity. It should be borne in mind that the Bible is a re- cent introduction into Korea. It belongs to the new life of the present generation. The history of its translation is of interest. The first effort was made by Dr. John Ross and his associates of the Scotch Presbyterian Mission in Manchuria. About the same time, under the auspices of the American Bible Society, the Gospels of Mark and Luke were translated by Rijutei, Korean court historian, who had gone to Tokyo in response to an invitation from the Japanese government to serve as profes- sor of Korean on the faculty of the Imperial Uni- versity. He also prepared a complete Chino-Ko- rean New Testament. This latter with the Gospel of Mark was published by the American Bible So- ciety in 1883. These primitive versions had a wide circulation and helped to familiarize the Koreans with the fact of the Bible. , These translations were necessarily imperfect, so that as soon as missionaries became resident in Korea the matter of Bible translation was taken under advisement. When the little group of pio- neer missionaries, consisting of Underwood, Appen- zeller, Heron, and Scranton, reached Seoul one of the first things they did was to organize a Bible committee, which undertook the work of translation and of provision for the circulation of the Word among the Korean people. This embryonic or- ganization was further developed as other mission- aries arrived. The American Bible Society, the British and Foreign, and the National of Scotland, co-operated very heartily with this committee and sustained it in its work until the time arrived when the 'Societies could open their own Agencies to carry on the work of circulation in Korea itself. 6 As soon as the missionaries acquired a working knowledge of the language the most facile in lin- guistic ability among them were set apart for the work of translation, with the result that to-day we have the entire Bible in the Korean language. This version is largely the work of James S. Gale, Hor- ace G. Underwood, and W. G. Reynolds, whose services in this particular to the cause of Christianity in Korea are of the highest importance. At various times they have been assisted in this work by Henry G. Appenzeller, W. B. Scranton, R. A. Hardie, W. G. Cram, A. A. Pieters, and others. It is a notable achievement that in a language which thirty years ago was unknown to the people of Western lands the Bible has been translated and become the most widely circulated piece of literature in that lan- guage. Now that the translation of the entire Bible into the Korean language has been completed, the name of the Board of Translators has been changed by the Bible Committee of Korea to the Board of Revisers, consisting of Drs. Underwood, Gale, and Reynolds. They are now engaged in revising the proper names of the Old Testament preparatory to a revision of the entire Old Testament as soon as the time can be se- cured for the work. They are also working on the manuscript of a mixed script Old Testament, which will complete the entire Bible in mixed script. The preparation of a reference Bible has been undertaken by Mr. I. C. Lee under the auspices of the Bible Societies, which are meeting the expense involved. The reference New Testament has been completed, and the work of preparing the copy for the references in the Old Testament is under way. (3) In the third place, the Bible is present in Ko- rea in the spirit and life of an ever-increasing num- ber of the Korean people. It is in the hearts of the Christians ; they know its message and honor/- and value it. They memorize its passages to a far 7 greater extent than is the case in America, and some of them can outquote even their missionary teach- ers. They are free from doubts concerning its place of supremacy in the Christian life and determine their own life latitude and longitude by the degree to which they are successful in translating its truths into conduct. The Korean church is a Bible-saturated church. It is read and quoted at all Christian gatherings. No Korean minister would conduct a Christian serv- ice with a closed Bible on the pulpit. The Bible would be there and it would be open significant of the fact that the Bible in the Korean church is an open, not a closed, book. It bulks very largely in sermons, and the spiritual and intellectual life of the church membership is fed from the Bible. It is a guiding force in family worship ; the childhood in the home of the church members of Korea is grow- ing up into young manhood and young womanhood fortified with memories of the daily services when the Bible was opened and its words reverently read at the family altar. The Korean church is as yet free from debate concerning the critical questions that agitate the churches in Western lands. Whereas among us the average of our knowledge about the Bible is much higher than is the case among the Koreans, the Koreans, I think, have a larger knowledge of the Bible itself, its contents, and its direct teachings. Redemption of the Native Alphabet The literary vehicle of the Korean people was, and is to a certain extent even to-day, the Chinese idiograph. All educated Koreans studied Chinese. The bulk of the native literature of Korea is in the Chinese character. The Koreans, however, possess a native alphabetic script invented about four cen- turies ago and known as Unmun. It consisted of twenty-five symbols, or letters, easy to learn both 8 to read and write and admirably adapted to express the Korean language. Because of the superior po- sition of the Chinese, which linked them up with the learned world both in China and Japan, the Korean literati looked upon this native script with disdain, regarding it as fit only for the infmitesi- mally small number of women who were permitted to obtain a knowledge of reading. It had been a practically abandoned literary factor in Korean life until the coming of the Christian missionaries. They immediately discovered its value and pro- ceeded to put it into use. The translation of the Bible is published in this alphabetic script and so is practically all the Christian literature of the present day. This mission of carrying the contents of the Christian Bible out into Korean thought life has re- sulted in the redemption of the native script from the contempt in which the educated native once held it and is regarded as one of the three notable con- tributions of Christianity to Korean advancement, the other two being the elevation of womanhood and the bringing in of the emancipation of the low- caste man. The Chinese is not disregarded, and a translation into what is known as the mixed script is being prepared. This consists of a text in the Chinese ideographs with the grammatical suffixes and inflec- tions in the Korean script itself. During 1912, 35,000 of the Gospel of Mark in mixed script were issued, and 3,230 volumes of various parts of the Bible sold. The preparation of the Old Testament in this mixed script, which was begun in 1912, has been steadily continued. The bulk of our Chris- tian publications, however, are in the native script. As the Korean language is polysyllabic, the entire Bible in the native script makes a very bulky vol- ume and the expense of publishing it is great, but this has been financed by the Bible Societies, our own American Bible Society bearing its full share, 9 thus rendering a monumental service to the up-build- ing of the Christian church among the Korean people. Methods of Distribution. The missionaries at work in Korea are men of positive conviction concerning the value and im- portance of the Bible, and have given a large place in their labors to the work of Bible distribution. The writer well remembers the day in the early his- tory of missionary work among the Koreans that the definite policy of sowing the land from end to end with the Bible was entered upon by the mis- sionaries then at work. This policy has been con- tinued to the present time, and to this widespread, wisely directed, and diligently followed policy must be attributed much of the great harvest of the present. To accomplish this work the missionaries have taken the oversight of Bible colporteurs in the em- ploy of the Bible Societies, this resulting in an inti- mate and practical form of co-operation between the main arm of missionary effort and the great auxiliary forces of the Bible Societies. The ladies attached to the various missions have given much time and strength to the direction of the activities of Bible-women. In the early days a missionary starting on a tour into the interior would always carry along with him a pony load of Gospels and other portions of the Bible, as well as various other Christian books and tracts. He has been succeeded now by the native colporteur. The ob- ject of all colportage work is to put the Scriptures into the hands of the people, with the ultimate end of bringing the people to personal knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ as the true Word of God. The colporteur is a pioneer, a forerunner of those who will come after him and cultivate the good work begun by him. Scores of village churches now in existence in Korea were brought 10 into being by the visit of the Bible colporteur and his initial work of putting the Bible in the hands of the villagers, he working under the direction of some foreign missionary. To the success of this work personal testimony is borne by members of every one of the missions in Korea, and by such auxiliary missions as that of the Salvation Army. Speaking about the work of the American Bible Society's colporteurs, a mis- sionary says: " In four district meetings definite results were obtained, apart from the business transacted. In one it was souls won ; in another it was drifting ones restored to the joy of the Lord ; in another men gave themselves unto the Lord for life service. The colporteur is the father of eight churches, and has worn out one New Testament and rigorously used another." Every month these col- porteurs return to the missionary superintendents, reporting places opened to Christianity by their visits, souls seeking the truth through the words of their testimony, and hundreds of copies of the Gos- pels, the New Testament, and the Bible left in the homes and in the villages to become the means of ever-increasing harvests. This colportage work necessarily involved the follow-up work by the evangelist and pastor. Some- times the attack of all three lines of work is com- bined. "Dynamiting the rock" is the way this combined attack is described. The following in- stance, related by the British and Foreign Bible Society, well illustrates this : " The colporteur's work is that of pioneer, pre- paring the way for others to reap where he has sown. The Rev. W. N. Blair, of the Presbyterian Mission, writes: 'We have been trying for ten years to start a church in West An Ju County, the largest unreached section in my northern circuit. This year I determined to try dynamite on the rock which has so long withstood us. Pastor Kim Chan 11 Sung agreed to join two Bible Society colporteurs and myself in a direct attack on this heathen fastness during the last week of November, 1912. We sent word to all the Christians to pray for us, and later several other workers joined us. We secured two rooms in one of the largest villages, and spent the entire time for one week praying together and preaching from house to house. At first only a few could be persuaded to attend the night meetings, but interest grew as the days passed, and before we left thirty-three men, besides a number of women and nearly all the boys in the neighborhood, had decided to become Christians. The owner of the house where I lodged was a gambler, and went off every evening with friends to a neighboring saloon. We preached to him con- tinually, and he was evidently deeply impressed with our words, but could not break with his old habits and companions. On Thursday, however, he came to me with a radiant face and informed me that he had settled all his gambling debts, and from that time onward meant to live as a Christian. That night and the next night his old companions tried hard to persuade him to go with them to the saloon ; we heard them outside in the dark urging him to go, but his decision held. From that day he joined us in our evening meetings, and before we left he offered his house to hold services in until the new company of believers could secure a church building for themselves. To the two Bible Society colporteurs is due a large measure of the success of this effort. They preached and sold books with untiring zeal. The success of the West An Ju campaign encouraged us to hold similar meetings in other parts of the circuit, a colporteur and as many workers from neighboring churches as were able to join him spending one week preaching night and day in a district. In each instance we have succeeded in 12 gathering a company of new believers, with every promise of establishing permanent churches.' " < It is probable that during this first generation an average of a Bible, or a portion of a Bible, for every living Korean has been sold or distributed throughout that land. In connection with the Mil- lion Campaign of a few years ago the chief cam- paign document which was selected by the mission- aries and the Korean Christian leaders as the most practical and convincing evangelistic tract to put into the hands of inquirers was the Gospel of Mark, and at least seven hundred thousand copies of it were sold or distributed among those who be- came interested in the Christian faith. After all this wide circulation of the Bible the present shows no diminution either in the efforts of the Christian forces to circulate it or in the demand for it among the Korean people themselves. It is reported that there is an increasing call for the Scriptures, espe- cially among the nation's non-Christian constitu- ency, and there is a growing demand for the Bible in English, Japanese, and Chinese versions. Bible Study Among the Koreans The Korean church has been marked by definite methods of Bible study. These methods aim to make a knowledge of the Bible a part of the mental equipment of all Christians. They begin with the individual Christian. Before baptism he is expected to read the life of Christ as recorded in one or more of the Gospels and to be so familiar with the facts as to be able to stand an examination. Many a Korean, especially among the women, has got a start in education because of this requirement, for when a person cannot read he must necessarily learn to do so in order to prepare for this r exami- nation. I believe that this requirement of reading the Gospels has been one of the primary factors in raising the percentage of literacy among the Ko- 13 rean Christians to a much higher level than is the case in any other area of Korean society. I re- member well the case of an old man seventy-two years of age who, ignorant of letters and feeble with advanced age, learned to read the native script in order to be able to peruse the Bible for himself. The Bible has been made the central book in the training and equipment of the laity of the Korean church. For this purpose Bible Classes and insti- tutes have been held continuously throughout Korea for many years. On these occasions the officiary of the local churches have withdrawn themselves from their usual vocations and given themselves ten hours a day for a week or ten days to an inten- sive study of the Bible. Thus they have sought the proper training for their responsibilities and have entered upon their official duties in the local churches moved not only by impulses growing out of the local demands, but also animated and pene- trated by a spirit which comes from being saturated with the Word of God. It is, therefore, not sur- prising that the rank and file of the membership in the church in Korea constitute a strong, evangelis- tic agency. The Bible has played a large part in the training of the native ministry. It is the central text-book in our theological schools. An instance from per- sonal experience will illustrate the position of the Bible in theological instruction. It was the writer's privilege to teach Systematic Theology in the the- ological school of his mission. The time came when we wished to give instruction to our theolog- ical students in theism. The great modern writers of the West on that theme, Bowne, Flint, Shedd, Pope, Miley, Curtis, Hodge, and Clarke, were all studied and many valuable things obtained,' but they did not fit our situation, for they were not free from the difficulty which the Christian instructor of 14 Asiatics found himself confronted with in all our Western statements of theology. This difficulty is a fundamental one, for these statements are pro- jected from the standpoint of the philosophical doubt, the intellectual situation which prevails only in Western lands. The Korean knows, nothing about these philosophical doubts and intellectual debates. What he wants to know is: "What's wrongs with idolatry ? What's the matter with po- lytheism? Why is it wrong for a man to own slaves and have three wives?" Now these are practical difficulties from which the West has long ago been swept because of its development in Christian civilization, and the theological books of our day do not discuss them. The most convinc- ing and positive statements on these points are found in the messages of Moses and the Law, in Isaiah and the Prophets, which are made clear and explicit in the teachings in the Gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles. It is therefore not surpris- ing that it was these books of the Old and the New Testament that were placed in the hands^of the Korean students for the ministry in order that they might acquire a knowledge of theism which would be intelligible to them from their own standpoint. I would not be understood as claiming that there is no value in the great messages that have been delivered by the modern fathers of our Western church, but their writings, because of racial and civilizational limitations, necessarily bear the stamp of a kind of theological provincialism and do not quite occupy, in the Korean church, the place of primacy which is accorded them in the West. That place is filled by only one book the Bible. The Bible in the Sunday School in Korea The eager thirst of the Korean Christians for a knowledge of the Bible precipitated us into certain problems in the organization of Sunday-school 15 work. The Sunday school first came to the knowl- edge of the Koreans as a school for the study of the Bible. This drew to it in the earlier years a very large attendance of adults, with a very small at- tendance of children; as father and mother both desired to be present when the Bible was taught, the natural thing was to leave the children at home to take care of the house. It became necessary, in some places, to organize schools for the children distinct from those for the adults. With the devel- opment of the Sunday-school idea this difficulty found solution and to-day the Sunday schools in Korea have both the adult and the child elements rep- resented in due proportion. It is still true, how- ever, that to a larger degree than is the case in America the adult Christians are attendant upon the Sunday school. Another difficulty grew out of the lesson and its treatment. In the earlier years there was a ques- tion in the minds of the missionaries as to the adaptability of the International Sunday-school les- son system, and in some mission stations indepen- dent courses more adapted to the needs of the Ko- reans than those offered by the great world-wide system of study were used. In the days before we had the entire Bible in Korea there would be sec- tions in the International system for which we had no text available for universal use among our peo- ple. This condition has now passed away with the completion of the work of Bible translation. Much attention is paid in Korea to the develop- ment of the Sunday school along the best lines in- dicated by the experience and wisdom of Sunday- school workers. The World Sunday School Asso- ciation has been able to relate itself in a most help- ful manner to the work in Korea at this point. Again a difficulty strikes us, however, between the situation in Korea and that which prevails in Ameri- ca. The Bible text and the direct study of it, rather 16 than the study of explanatory matter, occupy a larger part in the thought and time of the Sunday school in Korea than is the case in America. There is not the multiplicity of helps, the almost confusing variety of aids, placed at the service of the Korean Christian which is the case here in Amer- ica. As a result the younger generation in Korea now in training in our Sunday schools bids fair to follow in the steps of its predecessor in knowing more 0/the Bible than us, though it may know less about the Bible. The Attitude of the Korean Toward the Bible Possibly we can best indicate this by an incident which happened last year in Korea and is related in the Annual Report of the National Bible Society of Scotland : " A Korean lady of wealth, gowned in shining linen and soft silk, stopped her sedan chair outside a book-store in An Dong. A friend stopped, to speak with her, and she said : ' I have just been buy- ing some books to take home with me to give away to my unbelieving neighbors.' ' Where are they ? ' asked her friend. ' In the chair,' was the reply. And one of the chair coolies, with a very disgusted look upon his face, raised the chair curtain, and be- hold ! the chair was packed full of St. Mark's Gos- pel, tracts, and hymn books. ' But,' said her friend, 4 the chair is full, you cannot get in ! ' ' That's no matter,' she laughed; 'it is only thirty li [ten miles] and I can walk.' The chair coolies were bidden to take up the chair, and they did so rather gruntingly, and the lady followed, walking with her woman-servant, her face beaming with pleasure, and smiling ' Good-by.' Only those who know what riding in a chair stands for among Korean women can appreciate the sacrifice in this story. 'To leave the city of An Dong on foot when she might ride ! ' exclaimed a bystander." 17 We have already indicated in the course of this discussion the reverence and love of the Korean for the Bible. One interesting development has been that it has introduced a modification in the Korean costume. The old Korean dress had no pocket in it. The Korean desired to carry his Bible with him wherever he went. At first he used to carry it, with his hymn book, in a napkin, which he held in his hand or slung over his shoulders. Influenced by the pockets of European costumes, the Korean Chris- tian extemporized a pocket in his jacket to contain the pocket edition of the New Testament, which was early produced by the Bible Societies. Thus was the first pocket permanently introduced into the Korean costume and was popularly known as the " Bible pocket." There are many instances of an inspiring nature of the influence which the reading of the Bible has had over the life of the individual Christian. Act- ing out literally the instructions contained in its pages, the Koreans have been led to make apostolic revelations of devotion and sacrifice. Property, time, and life have been freely laid upon the altar. Possibly I can best close this article with an in- stance which goes to the very heart of the matter and shows how unerringly the Koreans discovered the difference between the Roman and Evangelical forms of Christianity, for, in the estimation of the educated Korean, Evangelical Christianity, because of its free circulation of the Bible, is much more convincing and acceptable than is Roman Catholi- cism. One day two young men came to the mission house asking to be instructed in the tenets of Chris- tianity. I handed them a copy of the Bible in Chi- nese, explained its arrangement and its general character, and asked them to read it. They left me and were gone for two weeks. When they re- turned they had a long list of questions, many of 18 them of a most searching and interesting character. Among these questions was this : " We hear that Christianity exists in two forms, the old [Roman] form and the new [Evangelical] form. What is the difference between these two ? " I replied : " I am not a follower of Roman Christianity, therefore any statement which I might make concerning it would necessarily be open to the charge of being preju- diced, and possibly not fair. I can speak authori- tatively on Evangelical Christianity and will tell you fully the truth as we hold it. But in discussing the other form my tendency would be to point out the things which I believe to be wrong in Roman- ism, and to fail to emphasize in its favor the things which are right. I would prefer that you should go to the Roman Catholic missionary, who is my neighbor, and put to him the same question you have put to me. When you have the two statements before you then you can judge for yourself which is more nearly in accordance with truth." The young men left me and did not return until a month had passed. They reported that they had visited my Roman Catholic neighbor and had held many conversations with him. Their general im- pression was that there were many resemblances, as well as vital differences, between the Roman and Evangelical forms of Christianity. At two points especially they noted a wide divergence. The first was in the spirit manifested. They had asked the Roman Catholic father his opinion of Evangelical Christianity, and he had immediately become very earnest in denouncing it, cautioning them, as they valued their eternal salvation to re- frain from having any dealings with the Evangeli- cal Christians. This stood in such direct contrast with the attitude they had met on our side, where we had refrained from attempting to prejudice them against a contrary view, that they felt that Roman- ism must be of a perverse spirit so to express itself. 19 The other difficulty grew out of their request for a copy of the Bible. The Catholic missionary ac- knowledged that they did have a Bible, but stated that it was of such an intricate and difficult charac- ter that it was quite beyond them to understand it, and that the church reserved it for the use of the priests, who alone were competent to make known its contents to the people. This refusal greatly sur- prised them as Confucianists. They said it was so utterly contrary to the spirit of true scholarship and religion. Confucianism, a religion based on sacred books, compelled all its followers to study and know its sacred books. Evangelical Christianity, on their first approach, had gladly and unreservedly placed its sacred books in their hands for examina- tion. There must be something wrong, therefore, with the sacred books of Romanism, or elsp with Romanism itself, that the authorities of the church should find it necessary to withhold the Bible from its people. As a result these young men became earnest Evangelical Christians. The incident gives us a glimpse of the processes of the Korean mind, and it may afford an explana- tion of the fact that while Romanism entered Korea a half century before the coming of the Evangelical missionaries, to-day its following is only about twenty-five per cent of the entire Christian popula- tion. The movement of the Koreans is into Evan- gelical Christianity, rather than toward Romanism, and undoubtedly the widespread use of the Bible is one of the determining factors in producing this result. - 2, 16: 8m. 20 CENTENNIAL PAMPHLETS SMALL QUARTO (7 1 The Bible, the Book of Mankind, by Prof. B. B. Warfield, D.D., LL.D. 2 The Bible in Europe, by Prof. A. Kuyper, D.D., LL.D., of Holland. 3 The Greek Testament, The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople with the collaboration of the Bishop of Nicea, the Bishop of Sardis and the Bishop of Seleucia. 4 The Hebrew Bible, by Rev. S. B. Rohold, F.R.G.S., of Toronto. 5 The Birthplace of the Bible Society, and other his- torical papers. Centennial Bulletins . To appear at intervals with in- formation about Centennial preparations and plans. SMALL OCTAVO (5x7^) 10 The Bible Among the Nations, by Rev. Henry Otis Dwight, LL.D. 11 Around the World for the Centennial, illustrated, by Rev. William Ingraham Haven, D.D. 12 The American Bible Society in China, by Rev. John R. Hykes, D.D. 13 The Bible in Korea, by Rev. George Heber Jones, D.D. 14 The Bible in the Life of the Indians of the United States, by Rev. Thomas C. Moffett, D.D. 15 The Bible in Brazil, by Rev. Hugh C. Tucker. 16 Mr. Penzotti's Autobiography. 17 Bible Work in the Philippine Islands. 18 A Quarter Century in Siam. 19 A List of Grants-in-Aid in India. Single copies of these pamphlet* may be had, postpaid, for 5 cents each; in quantities of lOor more at 3 cents each. The Secretaries, American Hible Society, Astor Place, New York City, or from Agency Secretaries. THE LIBRARY DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ANGLS