Flash-lights From The Seven Seas Part 4

Their very nakedness seemed to fit in with the spirit of the night; a spirit of complete abandonment to beauty and wors.h.i.+p. In their att.i.tudes there seemed to be a mingling of religion and earthly pa.s.sion; but it was so touched with reverence that we felt no shock to our American sensibilities.

All night long we wandered about the terraces of the old Temple.

We wondered how long the Javanese girls would remain.

At dawn when we arose to see Boroboedoer by daylight they were still there as fresh as the dawn itself in their brown beauty, the dew of night glistening in their black hair and wetting their full b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

And across, from Boroboedoer the sun, in its dawning splendor, was transforming belching and rumbling old volcanic Merapi into a cone of gold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON GO BY.]

CHAPTER III

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH

He was an old man; gray-haired, gray-bearded; gray-gowned; and he knew that the j.a.panese Gendarmes would just as soon take his life as light a cigarette. They do each with inhumane impunity. One means as much to them as the other.

He was under arrest for conspiracy in the Independence Movement.

"Do you know about the Independence Movement?" he was asked.

"Yes, I know all about it," was his fearless reply; though he knew that that reply in itself might mean his death; even without trial or further evidence. Just the fact that he had admitted that he knew anything at all about the movement was enough to throw him into prison. He was like an old Prophet in his demeanor. Something about the very dignity and sublime Faith of the man awed the souls of these crude barbarians from the Island Empire.

"Since when was it begun?" asked the Gendarmes.

"Since ten years ago when you j.a.panese first came to Korea," was the dignified reply.

"From whence did it spring?" he was asked next.

"From the hearts of twenty million people!"

"Did twenty millions of people all get together then, and plan?"

"Not together in body but in spirit!"

"But there must have been some men to start it?" the j.a.panese Gendarme said.

"They all started it!" was the old man's reply.

"Is there no one who had charge of this movement from the beginning?"

"Yes, there is one!"

"Do you know him?"

"I know him well!"

"What is his name?"

"His name is G.o.d!" said this seventy-year old, fearless Christian Korean Patriot.

Such faith as I have indicated in the paragraphs above is a common thing in Korea. Never in the history of the world have Christian people been subjected to the same tortures, the same cruelties, the same terrors, for their Faith as the early Christian martyrs; save these; the Koreans.

We had thought that the world had gotten past that day when men would be tortured, crushed, persecuted, and killed because they were Christians but that day is not yet past as almost any American Missionary in Korea will testify.

The j.a.panese officials will say that there is no persecution because of Christianity; but missionaries in Korea know better. They will point to countless incidents when men, women and children have been hounded, and persecuted for no other reason than that they were Christians.

"And when Jesus heard it, He marveled greatly and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel!" might well be said of the Korean Christians every hour, every minute, every second. They know what it means to die for their Faith.

The story of Pak Suk Han is one of the most thrilling ill.u.s.trations of Faith that I have ever heard in Oriental lands. He had been a Christian since he was seven years of age. He was a brilliant speaker and the a.s.sistant Pastor of the First Methodist Church at Pyeng Yang, where, even the non-Christians loved him. He was arrested on Independence Day and sent to prison where a barbarous j.a.panese officer, whom the natives called "The Brute" kicked him in the side because he would not give up his Christ. From that kick and further inhuman treatment running over a period of six months; a disease developed which a most reliable missionary doctor told me ended Pak Suk Han's life.

When he knew that he was about to die he said, "I have been a Christian and have served the church since I was seven years old. I have given my life to Christ, all but the last six months in prison which I have given to my country. I have no regrets. I might have lived had I been willing to deny my nation's rights and give up my Christ. I am going home to my Father's house. Good-by!" No Christian martyrs in the early centuries of the persecutions by Rome ever died with greater glory in their souls; or with deeper Faith!

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 s.h.i.+vering 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 G.o.d 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 j.a.panese. 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.

"I want to talk with you about something very important," he replied in Korean.