BISHOP TROLLOPS AND THE FIRST ORDINANDS OF 
THE MISSION. TRINITY, 1914. 



Frontispiece. 




BY THE RIGHT REV. 

MARK NAPIER TROLLOPE, D.D. 

Bishop in Corea 



WITH 
SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 



A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD. 
LONDON : 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W. 

OXFORD : 9 High Street 
MILWAUKEE, U.S.A. : The Young Churchman Co. 



First impression, 1915 



125724 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
COREA, THE LAND AND THE |PEOPLE 1 

CHAPTER II 
ENGLISH CHURCH MISSION TO COREA : 

HISTORY, 1889-1910 26 

CHAPTER HI 

ENGLISH CHURCH MISSION TO COREA : 
PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE 
PROSPECTS -, 83 

CHAPTER IV 
OTHER CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN 

COREA 116 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



BISHOP TROLLOPE AND THE FIRST 

ORDINANDS OF THE MISSION. 

TRINITY, 1914 Frontispiece 

SEOUL Facing page 8 

COREAN CHRISTIAN .... 11 

COREAN FAMILY .. 14 

BISHOP CORFE .... 26 

CHURCH OF THE ADVENT. SEOUL - .... 40 
NEWLY-BAPTIZED JAPANESE, 

CHEMULPO ...... .... 50 

CHURCH OF S. PETER AND S. PAUL, 

KANGHWA CITY .... 62 

BISHOP TURNER ...... .... 70 

JAPANESE WORKERS AT CHEMULPO - ., 74 

CHURCH OF S. STEPHEN, SUWON - ., 78 
BISHOP TROLLOPE AND HIS CLERGY, 

TRINITY. 1914 ..-*,-. .... 82 
THE BISHOP WITH THE COREAN 

CATECHISTS 94 

COREAN CHRISTIAN WOMEN - - .. 103 

COREAN HOSPITAL WORKERS - - 108 
BISHOP TROLLOPE WITH JAPANESE 

CHRISTIANS .. 112 

MAP at end 

ERRATA 

The titles given above as facing pages 74 and 108 
should be reversed. 



THE 
CHURCH IN COREA 



CHAPTER I 

Corea, tbe Xanfc anb tbe {people 

WARS, commerce, and religion have 
all been powerful factors in drawing 
the utmost ends of the earth together, 

and making the most distant na- 
ductory. ti ns mutually acquainted. And 

the process has of course been 
vastly hastened during the last seventy or 
eighty years by the widely extended and 
developed use of steam and electricity. 
Consequently there is at the present time 
hardly any spot on the earth s surface, 
even in remotest Central Africa or Asia, 
of which we can plead the ignorance 
common enough in our grandfathers times. 
All these factors have combined to bring 
into a not too welcome prominence the 

B 



The Church in Corea 



country of "Corea," which used to be 
known as the last of the "Hermit King 
doms," but which during the last twenty 
or thirty years has found itself dragged 
rather unceremoniously into the area of 
world-politics. 

It was Hendrik Hamel, with his crew 
of Dutchmen, shipwrecked in 1653 off 
the coast of Corea, on a trading voyage 
to Japan, who first drew Europe s atten 
tion to the little-known peninsula. Little, 
however, occurred to quicken that atten 
tion during the next two centuries, and 
it was not until the unfortunate country 
became the "storm-centre" of the Far 
East, providing the casus belli for two 
of the greatest wars of modern times 
(between China and Japan, 1894-5, and 
Russia and Japan, 1904-5), that its name 
became really familiar to European ears. 

Still, commerce and religion have played 
their parts, and it is probably true that 
nine-tenths of our knowledge, both of the 
country and the people, have been derived 
from events arising out of the series of 
commercial treaties forced upon them by 
Japan and the European powers between 
1876 and 1886, and from the relations of 
Christian missionaries, who have in recent 
years found it so fruitful a field for their 



Corea, the Land and the People 3 

propaganda. Anyhow, for good or for 
evil, this rather shy and backward mem 
ber of the Far Eastern family of nations 
now stands fairly in the daylight, and, to 
whomsoever the credit of her discovery 
may be due, there is no longer any excuse 
for imagining that "Corea" is the name 
of a South American republic or an island 
in the Greek Archipelago. Moreover, she 
stands in the daylight no longer as an inde 
pendent country, for after a long and 
eventful history of three thousand years, 
during which she had managed to main 
tain a real, if precarious, independence, 
she awoke (in August, 1910) to find herself 
"annexed " as a dependency to the empire 
of her hereditary enemy and neighbour, 
Japan. 

Gorea or, to give it its proper name, 
" Chosen" occupies a mountainous penin 
sula, jutting southwards out of 
Country. tne northern coasts of China, at 
a point where the Chinese and 
Russian Empires meet, and extending to 
within a few miles of the Island Empire 
of Japan. It covers about ten degrees of 
latitude, extending from about 43 to 33 N., 
and rather more than six of longitude, 
from about 124 to 130 E., and has a total 
estimated area of 80,000 square miles. Its 



The Church in Corea 



eastern and western shores are washed 
respectively by the Sea of Japan and the 
Yellow Sea, its southern extremity separ 
ated by the Gorea Strait from the coasts 
of Japan, and its northern boundary 
formed by the Yalu and Tumen rivers, 
which flow west and east respectively 
out of the Long White Mountain-range, 
and form with that range the natural 
frontier between Gorea and its northern 
neighbours, China (Manchuria) and Russia 
(Siberia). 

That which will, perhaps, best help 
the ordinary reader to realize the shape 
and dimensions of the country is to 
be told that in both respects it approxi 
mates somewhat closely to Great Britain 
(i.e., England and Scotland), its greatest 
length from north-east to south-west, being 
about 600 miles, or, roughly speaking, the 
same distance as separates John o Groats 
from the Land s End. The total popula 
tion is now reckoned at a little more than 
14,000,000, among whom are numbered 
about 250,000 Japanese immigrants, i.e., 
about two per cent, of the whole. 

The mountainous character of the 
country, which provides it with some 
of its most characteristic and beautiful 
features although none of the heights 



Corea, the Land and the People 5 

much exceed 6,000 or 7,000 feet may 
be gathered from the fact that over 
seventy per cent, of the superficial area 
is reckoned as unfit for anything but 
afforestation. This might have been 
thought to militate against any great agri 
cultural possibilities. And yet agriculture, 
from time immemorial, has formed the 
backbone of Gorean industry, and pro 
vided far the greatest part of the popula 
tion with employment. The staple crop 
is rice of a good quality, cultivated in wet 
paddy-fields, as in China and Japan. But 
wheat, barley, millet, beans, and potatoes 
are also raised in large quantities ; and 
cotton, upon which the population has 
depended for many centuries for its cloth 
ing, is now grown to a larger extent than 
ever before ; while, under Japanese aus 
pices, an increasing amount of attention 
is being paid to silk culture. Curiously 
enough, the tea-plant, so characteristic a 
growth of China and Japan, is unknown 
in Corea ; the favourite beverage being 
a strong alcoholic spirit brewed from grain, 
which speedily induces intoxication. 

The country possesses a very fine breed 
of cattle (but no sheep), a very unsightly 
breed of pigs, and a very minute breed 
of horses, or rather ponies. Poultry, 



The Church in Corea 



pigeons, ducks, and geese are abundant ; 
and the country-side is simply alive with 
pheasants and (all through the winter 
months) with wild duck, wild geese, and 
every species of wild fowl. Among the 
more notable fauna of the country are 
tigers and leopards, with skins of a fine 
quality ; and there is said to be no lack 
of deer, bears, wild pigs, wolves, and 
foxes, especially in the more mountainous 
districts ; while the coast waters of Gorea 
are so well stocked with fish that its fisheries 
form an important asset in the national 
wealth. There is very considerable mineral 
wealth in the country, the annual output of 
gold alone amounting probably to nearly 
a million sterling. But it is only of recent 
years that any attempts have been made to 
develop the mining industry adequately. 

The more mountainous and thinly-popu 
lated districts are still well covered with 
trees, prevailingly of the pine tribe ; but the 
greater part of the country has been largely 
and rather recklessly denuded of its timber, 
in consequence of th e great demand for wood 
for fuel and for building purposes. For 
Gorean houses are in the main constructed 
of wood, with good tiled and thatched roofs, 
walls of " wattle and daub," neatly papered 
on the inside, windows of wooden lattice- 



Corea, the Land and the People 7 

work covered with white paper, and floors 
ingeniously constructed of stone slabs, the 
surface of which is covered with smooth 
plaster and polished oil-paper ; while a 
system of flues under the floor enables the 
living-room to be warmed by the same fire 
as that which is used for cooking the food. 
It should be added that the rather unkempt 
external appearance of most Gorean houses 
gives the traveller a quite unfair idea of 
the general level of comfort and civiliza 
tion, and that the treeless condition of 
much of the country adds to the general 
impression of poverty and thriftlessness. 

The country is seen at its best during the 
beautiful spring and autumn months, when 
also the climate may be described as nearly 
perfect. The winter is bright and dry, but 
the cold is so severe that most of the few 
big rivers are frozen over during the winter 
months (December to March) solidly 
enough to carry the heaviest traffic on 
the surface of the ice. The summer is 
almost tropical in its heat, the months of 
July and August being rendered specially 
unpleasant by the torrential downpour of 
the rainy season and the plague of mos 
quitoes and other insect pests. 

As already explained, the bulk of the 
population is agricultural, and therefore 



8 The Church in Corea 

lives in small village communities, thickly 
strewn over the country. Outside Seoul, 
the capital, with a population about 300,000, 
there are no really large centres of popula 
tion, though some of the provincial capitals 
like Taiku in the south and Pingyang in 
the north are considerably larger than the 
rest ; and certain of the seaports opened 
by the commercial treaties at the close of 
the nineteenth century show signs of rapid 
development. Of these last the most im 
portant are Chemulpo, the seaport of the 
capital (from which it is distant about 
twenty-four miles), on the west coast ; 
Fusan, which has been the home of a 
Japanese colony since the end of the six 
teenth century, on the south coast ; and 
Gensan (or Wonsan) on the east coast. 

For many centuries the country has been 
divided for administrative purposes into 
eight Do, or provinces (recently subdivided 
into thirteen), the provincial capitals being 
walled and gated "cities," containing the 
residence of the governor and a few thou 
sand houses apiece. Each province is sub 
divided into prefectures, the prefectural 
"towns" standing some fifteen or twenty 
miles apart from each other, and being 
distinguished from the numberless "vil 
lages" which surround them by the pos- 



Corea, the Land and the People 9 

session of a more or less imposing official 
residence for the prefect, and by the fact 
that they contain some few hundreds 
of houses, while the "villages" seldom 
contain more than a score or so. The 
towns, and certain selected village centres, 
are the scenes of busy markets, which are 
held every five days, and in which most 
of the business of the country is done. 

Until quite recently the roads have been 
of the most primitive character, hardly 
amounting to more than pedlars foot 
paths, which, however, quite adequately 
answered their purpose, as there was 
practically no wheeled traffic, and all goods 
were transported on the backs of porters 
or packed on bulls and ponies, travellers 
of the better class being carried in sedan 
chairs. Under the present Japanese 
regime, broad roads are being driven 
through the country in all directions, 
often at the cost of considerable hardship 
to the farmers, to whom they are of 
little use. 

In other respects also means of tran 
sit and communication have greatly 
"improved" of recent years. The first 
railway that connecting Seoul with 
Chemulpo, a distance of about twenty- 
five miles was opened in 1898-9, and the 

c 



10 The Church in Corea 

great trunk line, nearly six hundred 
miles long, running diagonally across the 
country from the port of Fusan in the 
south to Antung on the Chinese fron 
tier in the north, was begun by the 
Japanese shortly after, and hurried to 
completion during the Russo-Japanese 
War of 1904-5. At Antung it now con 
nects with the railway system of South 
Manchuria and, through that, with the 
great Trans-Siberian line, thus bringing 
Seoul within ten or eleven days of 
Moscow and Petrograd, and within less 
than a fortnight of London, while at 
the Fusan end an excellent daily service 
of steamers maintains regular communica 
tion with Japan. Branch lines of great im 
portance, running from the main line to 
the south-west extremity of the penin 
sula, and from Seoul to the north-east, 
have also been recently opened, and there 
are plans for further extension. 

Gorea has been connected with Europe 
and Japan by a single line of telegraph 
for twenty-five years or more, but the 
network of telegraphic and telephonic 
communication with which the country 
is now covered dates only from the 
last few years, and must, like the greatly 
improved! postal system, be put to the 




CORE AN CHRISTIAN. 



Page ii. 



Corea, the Land and the People 11 

credit of the present Japanese regime. 
Unfortunately, side by side with these 
amenities, the price of food-stuffs and 
the cost of living generally is increasing 
at a frightfully rapid pace. 

Of the characteristics of the inhabitants 
of the country it is not possible to speak 

so confidently and freely as it is 
People to s P ea k of the country itself. 

Ethnologically little or nothing is 
known of their origin, though they are 
plainly of the Mongoloid type, and pos 
sibly a guess that their ancestors hailed 
from the plateaus of Central Asia or the 
neighbourhood of Lake Baikal would not 
be far amiss. The people are physically 
a fine race, with a dignified mien and 
good carriage, and in stature head and 
shoulders above their Japanese neigh 
bours. Superficial observers have not 
infrequently spoken of them quite un 
justifiably as dirty and lazy. It is true 
that they do not share the Japanese 
passion for being parboiled every twenty- 
four hours a passion which it is not easy 
to indulge in a country where water is 
so comparatively scarce, fuel is so dear, 
and the winter is so long and rigorous 
as in Gorea. But their simple white 
cotton clothing (padded with cotton wool 



12 The Church in Corea 

in the winter) lends itself readily to 
frequent washing and change of raiment, 
though the readiness with which it gets 
soiled doubtless lends colour to the charge 
of uncleanliness. Indeed the female half 
of the population seems to spend the 
greater part of its time in open-air laundry- 
work. 

As to their laziness, it must be re 
membered that the greater part of the 
population is agricultural, and that the 
life of a farmer is a very strenuous one 
except in the winter months, while the 
capacity and willingness of the Gorean 
porters, or " chiggy-gonn," to carry the 
most astounding weights for impossible 
distances is a well-known feature of the 
national life. Americans and Europeans 
engaged in the mining industry speak 
very highly of the capacity, intelligence, 
and endurance of the Goreans as miners. 

But, although there are plenty of good 
carpenters, smiths, and potters amongst 
them still, they appear to have largely lost 
that pre-eminent skill in handicrafts which 
was so remarkable in the earlier years 
of their history, and made them the in 
structors of the Japanese many centuries 
ago in the arts of architecture, painting, 
metal-work, and pottery. Nearly all who 



Corea, the Land and the People 13 

have to deal with them agree in speaking 
of their charm of manner and sympathetic 
bearing towards strangers, and where 
they have been given the chance they 
have proved themselves excellent linguists 
and apt students of foreign and unfamiliar 
forms of industry. 

While probably not superior to other 
Orientals in what Westerners regard 
as the elementary virtue of veracity, 
and hopelessly unreliable in many de 
partments of "business," they are 
certainly capable both- of feeling and 
eliciting strong affection and of form 
ing faithful friendships. The bravery 
and constancy with which the early 
converts of the Roman Catholic Mis 
sion stuck to their religion in the face 
of death and the most diabolical tortures 
speaks highly for their courage, as does 
the long-drawn-out, but hopeless, guerilla 
warfare carried on from 1907 to 1909, in 
opposition to the occupation of the country 
by the Japanese. Their history, however, 
unlike that of the Japanese, has provided 
them with scant opportunity of developing 
military prowess, and there are practically 
no materials except their devotion to the 
curious and dangerous winter sport of 
"stone-fighting" for forming a judge- 



14 The Church in Corea 

ment as to whether, under capable leading, 
they would make good soldiers or not. 

The fatal feature in the national charac 
ter, and that which has contributed more 
than anything else to the loss of their in 
dependence, is their tendency to split into 
cliques and factions and to let party spirit 
ruthlessly override the higher interests of 
their country. This, coupled with the 
corruption which had crept into Court 
and Government circles, and the practice 
of confining practically all political power 
in the hands of a small number of noble 
clans, led to the unfortunate country 
becoming the prey of first one and then 
another of its more powerful neighbours, 
and finally to its complete downfall. 

The history of Gorea, like that of the 
rest of the Far East, has from time im- 
memorial been overshadowed by, 
and intertwined with, that of her 
great neighbour China, that mighty and 
ancient nation, to which Eastern Asia 
owes as much as Europe does to the 
united influence of Greece and Rome. 
Unlike Japan, whose authentic history 
barely extends farther back than the 
fifth century after Christ, the more or less 
authentic annals of Corea stretch far 
back into the centuries before Him, 




CORE AN FAMILY. 



Page 14. 



Corea, the Land and the People 15 

while legend takes us further back still 
to the year 2332 B.C. (about the time of 
Noah !), when the mythical Tangun 
descended from heaven and formed 
" Corea " into a kingdom of which he 
assumed the sovereignty. Prehistoric 
remains, like the great stone "Altar of 
Heaven" on the mountain-top of Mari San 
in the island of Kanghwa, are still con 
nected with the memory of Corea s 
mythical founder. 

But it is to Ki-ja, the noble-hearted and 
chivalrous exile from China, who emi 
grated to "Corea" in 1122 B.C., that the 
people of the country trace in sober 
earnest their earliest civilization, his tomb 
at the ancient capital of Ping-Yang being 
still the object of great reverence. Among 
other and more serious titles to fame, 
he is recorded to have invented the proto 
type of the curious broad-brimmed hat, 
which (although it is dying out of use 
now) has for so many centuries formed 
such a marked feature in the costume of 
the country ; its breadth of brim and 
fragility of texture being intended, as we 
are told, to act as a safeguard against 
quarrelling and personal violence. 

The kingdom founded by Ki-ja appears 
to have lasted for nearly a thousand years 



16 The Church in Corea 

until the second century B.C. But it must 
not be supposed that it was conterminous 
with " Gorea " as we now know it, or that 
the peninsula was in those days peopled 
by a homogeneous race or ruled by one 
sceptre. This archaic kingdom of Chosen 
appears to have occupied only the northern 
part of the present "Corea," and to have 
extended far over the Yalu and the Tumen 
rivers into Manchuria. From the first 
century B.C. onwards the area of the 
peninsula was covered by three inde 
pendent kingdoms, Ko-ku-ryo (the de 
scendant of Ki-ja s kingdom) in the north, 
Paik-chei in the south-west, and Silla in 
the south-east. After some centuries of 
mutual independence and internecine 
strife, Paik-chei and Ko-ku-ryo disap 
peared, and practically the whole country, 
as we know it now, was united in the 
seventh century after Christ under the 
sway of the King of Silla, whose descen 
dants ruled it until they were displaced 
by a new dynasty about A.D. 935. 

The new rulers moved the capital to 
Song-do, and renamed the country Ko- 
ryo a name, which in the Latinized form 
"Corea," given to it by European navi 
gators in the sixteenth century, has clung 
to it ever since on the lips of foreigners, 



Corea, the Land and the People 17 

in spite of subsequent changes of dynasty 
and name. The Ko-ryo dynasty, under 
whose regime the country suffered ter 
ribly from the invasion of Kubla Khan s 
Mongols in the thirteenth century, lasted 
until 1392, when it fell before Yi-tai-jo, 
whose descendants governed the country 
from that date until its "annexation" by 
the Japanese in 1910. Yi-tai-jo moved the 
capital to Hanyang, the present Seoul, 
and again renamed the country Chosen 
a title which it bore until the China-Japan 
War of 1894-5, when the sovereign, to 
mark his independence and equality with 
the rulers of China and Japan, assumed 
the title of "Emperor," and again changed 
the name of the country to Tai-Han. 

In 1907 the twenty-sixth ruler of the 
Yi dynasty abdicated in favour of his son, 
who was himself deposed on the annexa 
tion of the country by the Japanese in 
1910. Both "ex-Emperors" still survive 
and continue to inhabit two of the ancient 
royal palaces in Seoul, being officially 
known as Prince Yi Senior and Prince 
Yi Junior, but all executive and adminis 
trative power has passed into the hands 
of the Japanese Governor-General, sup 
ported by a large military force and an 
enormous staff of civilians, by whom the 

D 



18 The Church in Corea 

country is now administered as "The 
Province of Chosen in the Empire of 
Japan." 

The Yi dynasty has produced some 
able monarchs, whose names deserve 
to be handed down to posterity, notably 
Yi-Tai-jong (1401-19), who caused the 
first movable metal printing type to be 
founded, thereby effecting a vast improve 
ment in the age-long Chinese system of 
printing from wooden plates, and ante 
dating Gutenberg and Caxton by half a 
century or more. Yi-Sei-jong, who suc 
ceeded him (1419-50), placed his people 
under an even greater debt of gratitude 
by inventing, and encouraging the use of, 
the simple Corean alphabet, or On-man, 
as a substitute for, and auxiliary to, the 
use of the cumbrous Chinese characters, 
which had hitherto provided the only 
script in use. By universal consent, this 
alphabet, or syllabary, composed of 
twenty-six letters, is one of the best and 
most convenient that the world has seen, 
although, like the less convenient Japanese 
Kana, it serves its purpose best as an 
auxiliary to the Chinese characters or 
ideographs, whose usefulness in almost 
every walk of life is only equalled by 
their difficulty and inconvenience. 



Corea, the Land and the People 19 

Two monarchs of the dynasty, Yi Son- 
jo (1567-1608), and Yi In-jo (1623-50), will 
always be remembered by the terrible 
disasters which befell Corea during their 
reigns, in the shape of the appalling 
Wai-ran, or Japanese invasion of 1592-1600, 
and the Ho-ran or Manchu invasion of 
1636-7. The former, which was due to 
the megalomania of the great Japanese 
regent and commander Hideyoshi, was 
but the culmination of the unfriendly 
relations which had existed between Japan 
and Gorea for centuries, and, after inflicting 
an untold amount of misery, served no 
purpose except to seal Gorea hermetically 
against the Japanese for nearly three 
centuries, and to intensify the hatred of 
the Goreans for their island neighbours. 

The Manchu invasion arose out of the 
immemorial relations of Corea with her 
great neighbour China. China, unlike 
Japan, has not enjoyed the continued 
rule of one unbroken imperial dynasty 
throughout its history ; and Corea, which 
always until the China-Japan War of 
1894-5 had stood in a vassal relation to 
the "Middle Kingdom," not unnaturally 
suffered from the political vicissitudes of 
her suzerain. After bearing as well as 
she could the dominion of the Yuan 



20 The Church in Corea 

dynasty founded by the Mongol Kubla 
Khan, which lasted from about 1260 to 
1360, she had welcomed the accession to 
the throne of China of the famous Ming 
dynasty, which was to last from 1368 to 
1643. 

For some years previous to the latter 
date, however, the Mings had been 
tottering to their fall, before the rising 
power of the Manchus, who were to 
succeed them as the Ghing dynasty and 
to maintain their hold on the throne of 
China, until they made way for the 
Republic in 1912. And in 1636-7 the 
unhappy Coreans were made to feel the 
wrath of the Manchu chieftains for the 
fidelity with : which they clung to the falling 
Mings. Their submission once made, how 
ever, the Coreans suffered little further 
trouble from the new dynasty, who inter 
fered but little with their nominally vassal 
state, and were content with a more or 
less formal recognition of their suzerainty, 
until it disappeared altogether in 1895, as 
the result of the China-Japan War. 

" As for religion," Hendrik Hamel had 

said in the seventeenth century, "the 

. Coreans have scarce any." The 

bed-rock of the natural religion 

of the Coreans consists of that strange 



Corea, the Land and the People 21 

jumble of nature-worship, hero-worship, 
spirit-worship, and fetish-worship which 
lies at the root of Shintoism in Japan, 
and which has in China strangely man 
aged to identify itself largely with a 
system so radically different from itself 
as Taoism. On the top of this, Gorea 
imported from China, together with her 
social and political ideals, such religious 
ideas as China then possessed the whole 
being codified and systematized in the fifth 
and sixth centuries B.C. by the great 
Chinese teacher Kang-fu-tse (known to us 
in the Latinized form Confucius) and his 
disciples. And from that day to this it 
has been the pride of Corea to describe 
herself as a devoted follower of that great 
master s teaching. 

But Confucianism, as has been often 
pointed out, is not strictly speaking a 
religion at all. In the ordinary accepta 
tion of the terms, Confucianism pro 
vides no priesthood, no temples for 
popular devotion, no preaching, no forms 
of public and general worship. It is in 
its essence a code of morals, and of social 
and political duties, and the term Con- 
fucianist denotes the scholar who devotes 
himself to the study of the ancient classics, 
and the attempted performance of the 



22 The Church in Corea 

moral precepts and the proprieties therein 
inculcated. The only form of worship 
which enters at all largely into his daily 
life is one which is much older than Con 
fucianism, and by no means peculiar to 
China, Corea, or Japan viz., the so-called 
"worship" of ancestors and even this is 
a purely domestic matter. 

In Corea, however, as in China and 
Japan, this hereditary cult is so firmly 
established, and is so surrounded by a 
fixed ritual of traditional observances, 
that it has always presented itself, and 
probably will continue to present itself, 
to the Christian missionary as one of the 
most serious obstacles to the acceptance 
of his message. To any one visiting 
Corea after seeing the many-templed lands 
of China and Japan, the absence of any 
external signs of religious observance must 
be sufficiently striking. It was not, how 
ever, always so, since for more than a 
thousand years (392-1392), Corea had been 
one of the most fruitful fields of Buddhist 
missionary effort. And although now for 
over, five hundred years Buddhism has 
been a proscribed and despised cult, 
evidences may be met on all hands of the 
extent to which it once dominated the 
country. 



Corea, the Land and the People 23 

Of the Buddhism of Corea it will suffice 
to say that it is of the Mahayana or "North 
ern " School, that strange hotch-potch of 
pure Buddhism, Manicheism, and Gnos 
ticism (mixed apparently with not a few 
elements borrowed from mediaeval Nes- 
torian Christianity) which is so little like 
the Southern Buddhism of Burmah, Cey 
lon, and Siam, but which for fifteen 
hundred years and more has exercised 
such a potent sway throughout Central 
and Eastern Asia. It appears to have 
entered the Corean peninsula from China 
in the fourth century after Christ, and 
it was from Corea that the first Bud 
dhist missionaries, some hundred and 
fifty years later, found their way to 
Japan. In the days of the Silla and 
Ko-ryo dynasties it played a tremendous 
part in Corean history. Indeed, it was 
apparently the intolerable interference of 
the Buddhist hierarchy in the affairs of 
the kingdom under the Ko-ryo kings 
which led Yi-tai-jo, on founding his new 
dynasty in 1392, practically to proscribe 
the profession of Buddhism, or at least 
to exclude it from his capital, relegate its 
temples and its priesthood to the most out 
landish parts of the country, and otherwise 
penalize its votaries ; and from that ban 



24 The Church in Corea 

it has never recovered, although most of 
the restrictions placed upon it have been 
removed in the last decade or so. 

Of the language of Corea one word must 
be said before this chapter is brought to 
T a close. Dominated as it has 

Language. . 

been for so many centuries by 
China, it is little to be wondered at that 
Corea is, like Japan, one of the countries 
which has fallen under the spell of the 
marvellous, but cumbrous, Chinese sys 
tem of writing in ideographs or "charac 
ters." And to this day the script of China, 
in Corea as in Japan, is that which is used 
in all official, polite, and literary circles, 
though the "On-man or vulgar script" 
(mentioned above), and the "mixed 
script," formed of a combination of the 
two, have now an increasing vogue. The 
spoken language of Corea, like that of 
Japan (to which it only bears the vaguest 
resemblance) is wholly dissimilar to that 
of China. It belongs presumably to the 
Turanian family, and is agglutinative in 
character, being possessed of an elaborate 
grammatical system, which is further com 
plicated by an intricate scheme of "honor- 
ifics." For many of its root- words, and 
practically for all technical terms, it has 
again like Japanese to fall back on the 



Corea, the Land and the People 25 

Chinese characters, though, as the sound- 
values of the characters differ greatly in the 
three countries, this helps very little to 
wards the mutual understanding of the 
three languages. Since the annexation, 
Japanese has been officially declared the 
"national language" of Gorea, although 
it is not spoken by more than four or five 
per cent, of the population, including the 
Japanese immigrants. But every effort is 
being made to further its use by making 
it a compulsory subject of study in all 
schools, and using it almost exclusively for 
official and governmental purposes. 

Although, however, a considerable part 
of the population may, in process of time, 
become bilingual, the chances of the new 
"national language" ousting the mother 
tongue of Goreans are not great. The 
study of English and other foreign lan 
guages by the Goreans is not greatly 
encouraged by the Japanese Government, 
although English is taught in almost all 
schools in Japan itself. 



CHAPTER II 

Cburcb rtMeeton to Corea. 
, 1889-1910 



FIRST BISHOP CHARLES JOHN CORFE, 

1889-1904. 

SECOND BISHOP ARTHUR BERESFORD 
TURNER, 1905-10. 

THE Mission of the English Church 
to Corea was founded by Arch 
bishop Benson on All Saints Day, 1889, 
Earlier when he consecrated Charles 
Missions in John Corfe in Westminster 
China and Abbey as bishop in charge of 
the new venture. It sprang 
out of the older Missions of the Church 
of England to the neighbouring empires 
of China and Japan. And, considering 
the leading and (when we think of opium), 
it must be confessed, not always credit 
able part which Great Britain had taken 
in forcing those old-world empires of the 
Far East to open their doors to Western 
trade and intercourse, it was but natural 
that the Church of England should desire 
to lend a hand in bringing the Gospel of 

26 




BISHOP CORFE. [Russell & Sons. 



Page 26. 



English Church Mission to Core a 27 

Jesus Christ to the teeming millions who 
inhabit them. The annexation by Great 
Britain of Hong Kong in 1842 an annexa 
tion which set the fashion for all the 
subsequent shameless invasions of the 
integrity of China by other countries- 
gave a reasonable pretext, and in 1849 
the first Bishop of Victoria (Hong Kong) 
was consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral, 
this action having been anticipated in 
1844 by the consecration of an American 
bishop, who established himself at the 
more northerly treaty port of Shanghai. 
From that day to this the Missions of 
the Anglican Church (English, American, 
and Canadian) in China have grown until 
there are at the present time eleven 
missionary dioceses, now consolidated 
into "the Church of China" (Chung 
Hua Sheng Kung Hui), with a follow 
ing of probably not less than 20,000 
native Christians. Similarly in Japan, 
at the doors of which the American 
Commodore Perry had first knocked in 
1852-3, access had been won for British 
trade by the Treaty of 1858-9, forced 
by Lord Elgin on a none too willing 
Government and populace. And here 
too commercial and diplomatic enterprise 
was followed at no long interval by 



28 The Church in Corea 

missionary activities on the part of the 
sister Churches of England and America, 
although it was not until 1874 that an 
American bishop was definitely assigned 
to Japan as distinct from China, and not 
until 1883 that the first English missionary 
bishop was sent there. 

As in China, so in Japan, the missionary 
work of the Anglican Church (English, 
American, and Canadian) has gradually 
developed, until it now boasts seven 
missionary dioceses, consolidated into the 
" Church of Japan " (Nippon Sei Ko 
Kwei), with a following of something 
over 15,000 Christians. 

The opening of Corea to foreign trade 
and intercourse by the series of com 
mercial treaties, concluded between 1876 
and 1886, had naturally drawn the atten 
tion of the Church authorities to this 
little-known land, which formed, as it 
were, a bridge or link between its two 
great neighbour empires. And as far 
back as 1880 efforts had been made to 
open work there by our missionaries in 
Japan, while in 1885 the C.M.S. Mission 
in South China had sent two Chinese 
catechists to settle in the port of Fusan. 
(These were withdrawn on the arrival 
of Bishop Corfe.) In 1884 the three 



English Church Mission to Corea 29 

English bishops in China had sent home 
proposals for the foundation of a Mission 
in Gorea, and in 1887 the English bishops 
of North China and Japan visited Corea 
and forwarded a report to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, in which they begged 
His Grace "to take steps to ensure the 
sending of a mission from the Church 
at home without delay." The answer 
to that came in the consecration, already 
referred to, by Archbishop Benson, of 
Bishop Corfe as missionary bishop to 
Gorea on All Saints Day, 1889. Both 
by reason of his previous knowledge of 
the Far East and of his splendid record 
of over twenty years service as chap 
lain in the Royal Navy, it was felt that 
the selection of the new bishop was a 
peculiarly happy one. The Mission was 
founded with an annual grant of 600 
from S.P.G. 

Bishop Gorfe landed in Corea on 

Michaelmas Day, 1890, having been 

busily engaged since his conse- 

^ r " v " 1 cration in making the needs of 

of Bishop ,,. . 

Corfe, 1890. the new Mission known, and 
in endeavouring to gather a 
staff round him. The archbishop was 
very anxious that the Mission should 
proceed on the principle of trying to 



30 The Church in Corea 

create " white-hot foci" rather than "a 
scattered pastorate." In pursuance of this 
ideal it was hoped that a small body of 
picked clergy priests who would resign 
their benefices or fellowships as the new 
bishop had resigned his brilliant prospects 
in the Navy might be formed into a 
small community who would live to 
gether under a simple rule, while making 
a profound study of the manners and 
customs, and the language and literature 
of the people, in preparation for such 
active work as God might in the course 
of time lead them to undertake. 

The answer to the challenge on the 
part of the English clergy was disappoint- 
ing, and when the new bishop 
landed in Gorea in the autumn of 
1890, he landed almost alone. He was, 
however, accompanied by two medical mis 
sionaries, Dr. Wiles and Dr. Landis, and 
had, before he left England, secured the 
services of one priest, the Rev. M. N. 
Trollope, and three missionary college 
students, who all followed him in the 
course of the next six months. Of these, 
however, one (J. H. Pownall) was in 
valided home in 1893, and died in 1894 ; 
a second (M. W. Davies) retired in 
1895 before any active work was begun ; 



English Church Mission to Corea 31 

and the third, the Rev. L. O. Warner, 
also retired in 1896, but not before he 
had done some vigorous pioneer work, 
of which the Mission has since reaped 
the fruits. On his way across Canada 
the bishop had been joined by a priest 
of some experience, the Rev. R. Small, 
and a young theological student (S. J. 
Peake), of whom the latter returned to 
England a year later, after performing 
the useful work of putting the mission 
printing-press into working order, while 
the former was recalled within a few 
months to resume his work among the 
Indians of the Diocese of New West 
minster. An ex-bluejacket and old ship 
mate of Bishop Gorfe s (John Wyers), 
who a year or so later left the Mission 
to become constable of the British Con 
sulate, completed the original staff. 

The work of the Mission since its 
foundation naturally falls into three 
sections corresponding with the episco 
pates of the three bishops to whom its 
fortunes have been entrusted. And the 
first and longest of these, Bishop Corfe s 
episcopate, which extended over fourteen 
years from the date of his arrival in 
1890 to that of his resignation in 1904, as 
naturally falls into two periods of seven 



32 The Church in Corea 

years each. Between these two periods 
the Baptism of the first two adult Gorean 
converts in November, 1897, forms the 
natural dividing-line. 

It must be remembered that the Gorea 

in which Bishop Gorfe and his colleagues 

settled in 1890-1, was a very 

State of diff eren t place from the Gorea 

Gorea 

in 1890. ot the present day. It was still 
the Gorea of " ante-bellum " days, 
before the fountains of the great deep 
were broken up by the China-Japan 
War of 1894-5, and except for the recent 
intrusion of a few "foreigners," the 
country had changed but little from the 
days when Yi-tai-jo had founded the reign 
ing dynasty. Railways and regular posts 
were unknown, Seoul was still a mediaeval 
city, hardly boasting a single "foreign" 
building, and still girdled by its ancient 
walls, whose ponderous gates were locked 
every night as the old city bell tolled the 
curfew, warning all men to retire to their 
homes while the ladies walked abroad, 
and the nightly beacon fires carried from 
hill-top to hill-top all over the land and 
to the king in his palace news of the 
welfare of his country. 

Under the treaties, missionaries and 
other foreigners only enjoyed a restricted 



English Church Mission to Corea 33 

right of residence in Seoul and the three 
recently opened treaty ports ; while travel 
in the interior was forbidden on pain of 
deportation, without a passport which dis 
tinctly specified " trade or pleasure " as 
the only two grounds on which such 
journeys were allowed, and as distinctly 
forbade the dissemination of any litera 
ture "displeasing to the Government" 
a prohibition aimed directly against 
Christian missionary enterprise. Helps 
to the study of the language were few 
and far between, and there was no avail 
able Christian literature. Even the Bible 
was as yet untranslated: a recently at 
tempted version of part of the New 
Testament in Corean, undertaken by a 
Presbyterian missionary in Manchuria, 
who had little or no first-hand aquaint- 
ance with the language, having fallen 
still-born to the ground. The first task, 
therefore, of Bishop Corfe and his staff 
was to attempt to gain some knowledge 
of the languages (Corean to speak, and 
Corean and Chinese to read and write), 
with a view to some day providing the 
Christian literature which was an abso 
lutely essential pre-requisite to any active 
missionary effort. 
Slender as was the staff at Bishop Corfe s 



34 The Church in Corea 

disposal, a further heavy strain was put upon 
it during the first ten years of the Mission s 

existence by the addition of the 
churia. large province of Shing King in 

Manchuria (North China) to the 
bishop s jurisdiction early in 1891. In those 
days its chief interest from the Church 
point of view lay in the fact that this 
province included the important treaty port 
of Newchwang, with a very considerable 
population of English and other Europeans, 
who had hitherto been under nobody s 
spiritual jurisdiction. Although Manchuria 
adjoins Corea to the north (and since 
the Russo-Japan War of 1904-5 has been 
brought within twelve hours of Seoul by 
rail), in those early days it was only acces 
sible by a long round-about sea voyage, 
and that only during the summer months, 
the approach by sea being rendered im 
possible by ice throughout the three months 
of winter. Great as was the inconvenience, 
however, Bishop Corfe opened work there 
in Easter, 1892 ; and so gallantly did he 
and his staff serve it during the next decade 
that, when the readjustment of the North 
China Dioceses made it possible to hand 
over Manchuria to Bishop Scott of Peking 
in 1901, Newchwang boasted a handsome 
little permanent church and parsonage, a 



English Church Mission to Corea 35 

goodly number of communicants, and a 
sound Church tradition. But the necessity 
of ministering to this far-away outpost in 
another land added greatly to the difficulties 
of the Gorean Mission in these early years. 
For the first two or three years of its 
history the members of the Mission hardly 
~ .- . - stirred except on occasional 

Opening of 

the Mission trips ot exploration outside 

in G ,o!? ul " Seoul the capital, and Chemul 
po, loVU. - f 

po the seaport (some twenty- 
four miles distant), save when one or other 
was temporarily detached to take duty at 
Newchwang. In Chemulpo, immediately 
on his arrival, Bishop Corfe had rented 
a small house for himself and Dr. Landis, 
the keen young Pennsylvania doctor who 
had attached himself to the bishop on his 
journey across America. One room in this 
house was transformed into a temporary 
chapel, in which English services were 
held from the outset for the handful of 
Europeans living in the port ; while 
another room, fitted up as the doctor s 
temporary dispensary, soon became a 
centre of attraction for large numbers of 
patients. 

Later in the year (1890) the bishop 
was able to secure two very serviceable 
plots of ground, one just inside and the 



36 The Church in Corca 

other just outside the "Foreign Settle 
ment " of Chemulpo. On the former 
was built, before the year was out, the 
little brick church of S. Michael and All 
Angels, together with a very modest par 
sonage erected out of " the few remaining 
bricks," and a small building adjoining 
which was first used as a temporary dis 
pensary for Dr. Landis while his hospital 
was in building, and afterwards as a school 
and parish room. " For twenty years and 
more S. Michael s Church has borne its 
witness to God and the things of God in 
Chemulpo ; and now (1915), Sunday by 
Sunday, it is used turn and turn about 
as indeed it has been for a good many 
years by three relays of worshippers, 
who offer to God " the sacrifice of praise 
and thanksgiving" respectively in the 
Corean, Japanese, and English tongues. 

On the latter of the two sites mentioned 
above, just between the "Foreign Settle 
ment " and the Corean town, was built 
about the same time the predecessor of 
the present Hospital of S. Luke, the land 
being practically a gift from the Corean 
Government, and the building fund sup 
plied by those naval friends of Bishop 
Corfe s who have throughout the history 
of the Mission done so much for its hos- 



English Church Mission to Corea 37 

pital and medical work. For more than 
seven years "the little doctor" worked 
hard at his hospital and dispensary, and at 
the many other Gorean interests linguistic, 
literary, scientific, and historical which 
filled up his busy life, and then, on April 
16, 1898, he was called to his rest, to the 
unfeigned grief of all. 

In Seoul meanwhile the Mission had 
acquired two properties one in the west- 
ern quarter of the city, called 
Chong Dong, which adjoined 
in Seoul, the British Consulate, and one 
Nak Tong. m tne southern quarter known 
as Nak Tong, about a mile 
distant from the first. The latter was 
from the outset the head-quarters of the 
mission staff, who lived a quasi-com 
munity life there, and was intended to be 
the centre of its work among Coreans. 
To it was attached the Hospital of S. 
Matthew (for men), the erection of which, 
in 1892-4, was largely made possible by 
the generosity of Surgeon-General Wiles, 
a splendid old specimen of the army 
doctor, who had volunteered to give his 
honorary services for two years, to inau 
gurate the work of the Hospital Naval 
Fund in Gorea ; and who, after prolonging 
his stay a year beyond his original promise, 



38 The Church in Corea 

handed the work over to Dr. E. H. Bal- 
dock, his successor, in 1893. 

For close on twelve years, under Dr. 
Baldock s care, S. Matthew s Hospital did 
a splendid work. And it was not until 
1904 that the difficulty of staffing and 
financing hospitals both in Seoul and 
Chemulpo, coupled with the troubles of 
the Russo-Japan War, and the knowledge 
that the munificently-supported hospitals 
of the American Presbyterians in Seoul 
were fairly covering the ground, induced 
Bishop Gorfe, much against his will, to 
close our Seoul hospitals and concentrate 
in Chemulpo. Shortly after Bishop Tur 
ner s arrival in 1905, the Nak Tong pre 
mises, having been quite swallowed up in 
the Japanese quarter, and so become 
wholly unsuitable for Corean work, this 
work was transferred to Chong Dong on 
the other side of the city, and Nak Tong 
became the residence and working centre 
of the priest-in-charge of the Japanese 
work and his lady assistants. And five 
years later, the increasingly commercial 
and industrial character of the neighbour 
hood having rendered it wholly unfit as 
a place of residence and centre of mission 
work, it was decided to let the whole 
property as a building site, and with part 



English Church Mission to Corea 39 

of the rents to acquire more suitable prem 
ises for the Japanese work of the Mission 
in a district known as Ch ang Dong or 
Gh ang Kol, a good deal nearer the south 
gate of the city. Here this important part 
of the Mission s work is still carried on, 
and here at present (1915) the bishop as 
well as the priest-in-charge of the Japanese 
work has his temporary residence. 

At Ghong Dong, on the other side of 
the city, adjoining the British Consulate, 
a small room was opened as a 
Dong. ng temporary church for English 
services on Christmas Day, 1891, 
next door to the little thatched cottage in 
which Dr. Wiles then lived, and which 
afterwards for years served as the "Bishop s 
Palace," and from that day to this the 
small number of English Church folk 
living in Seoul has been unfailingly sup 
plied by the members of the Mission 
with opportunities of worship and with 
the means of grace. This small tem 
porary church room was supplanted at 
the close of 1892 by a more roomy and 
church-like structure (almost fifty feet by 
twenty-five), built on Corean lines which, 
as "The Church of the Advent," has become 
so endeared to the English-speaking resi 
dents of Seoul that it is difficult to get 



40 The Church in Corea 

them to view with any enthusiasm the 
plans for erecting a more commodious 
"Central Church," in which our Corean, 
Japanese, and English brethren may at 
least worship God within the same four 
walls and under the same roof, even though 
the " strife of tongues " makes it practically 
impossible for them ever to join in common 
prayer and praise together. 

In October, 1891, the Mission forces were 
strengthened by the arrival of Dr. Louisa 
Cooke and Miss Heathcote. They settled 
in a small house on the Chong Dong 
property previously occupied by the 
bishop and shortly after (1892), with the 
ever-ready and generous assistance of Dr. 
Wiles, opened there a small hospital and 
dispensary for women. This, which was 
known later as the " Hospital of S. Peter," 
and which was greatly improved by the 
erection, in 1895, of two spacious wards 
generously presented by Mrs. (Isabella 
Bird) Bishop, the famous traveller, re 
mained under the care of Dr. Louisa 
Cooke until she retired from the Mission 
in 1896, when the work was taken up with 
no less skill and vigour by Dr. Katherine 
Allan, who subsequently married Dr. 
Baldock. In 1904, S. Peter s Hospital, like 
S. Matthew s and for the same reasons, 



English Church Mission to Corea 41 

was closed, the "Bird-Bishop Ward" 
being turned into a temporary church for 
our Gorean worshippers (a duty which 
it still fulfils), and an amende honorable to 
the memory of Mrs. Bishop being made 
by the subsequent transfer of a consider 
able sum of money from the ordinary 
mission funds as a contribution towards the 
erection (1908) of the new women s ward 
in the Hospital of S. Luke, Chemulpo. 

In the autumn of 1892, the Ghong Dong 
property in Seoul had to be enlarged, by 
the purchase of a large rambling old 
Gorean house, adjoining the original 
property, to provide the accommodation 
for the party of Sisters of the Community 
of S. Peter (Kilburn), who arrived in 
November of that year. The party con 
sisted of four choir Sisters (Sisters Nora, 
Rosalie, Margaretta, and Alma) ; one lay 
Sister (Lois), and an associate, Nurse 
Webster. 

In their earliest years in Corea the 
Sisters devoted themselves almost entirely 
to the work of nursing in the Hospitals of 
S. Matthew and S. Peter in Seoul. But 
bit by bit this work devolved more and 
more on "secular" nurses, who came out 
as associates of the community, while the 
Sisters were set free for more definite 



42 The Church in Corea 

"mission work." As will be seen by and 
by, a branch house of the Community of 
S. Peter was opened at Kanghwa in 1901, 
and transferred to Su-won in 1908. The 
head-quarters of the community are still in 
the original house on the Ghong Dong site, 
which was again enlarged by the purchase 
of another large rambling Gorean property 
in 1896. This ultimately became the Or 
phanage under the care of the Sisters, and 
so continued until, in 1913, it was moved to 
other premises adjoining the Sisters branch 
house at Su-won. One other considerable 
addition was made to the Ghong Dong 
property, by the purchase in 1909 of an 
adjoining site, on which it is hoped before 
long to erect an official residence for the 
bishop and Seoul clergy. When this has 
been done and the new " Central Church " 
erected (partly as a memorial to Bishop 
Turner) on the ground till recently 
occupied by the Orphanage, Chong Dong, 
with which this mission has been so closely 
associated now for nearly twenty-five 
years, will become in fact, as well as in 
name, the head-quarters of the English 
Church Mission to Corea. 

It should be mentioned that the arrival 
of the Sisters in Corea in November, 1892, 
was followed within a few days by that 



English Church Mission to Corea 43 

of the Rev. F. W. Doxat and his wife. 
He had already been chaplain to the Sisters 
in their Woking home, and continued to 
fulfil that office in Gorea, combined with 
that of priest-in-charge of the Church of 
the Advent and pastor of the English- 
speaking flock in Seoul, until the end of 
1893. He then went to Newchwang to 
undertake the chaplain s work there, thus 
setting the rest of the staff free from the 
rather exasperating duty of travelling to 
and fro between Corea and Manchuria. 
And there he remained until he returned 
to England in 1897. 

While the members of the Mission were 

still busy with their study of the language, 

the printing-press, presented to 

Mission Bishop Corfe by his brother naval 

Printing- ,,.,,, i 

Press. chaplains, had been set to work 
in the Nak Tong Mission House. 
As already mentioned, the preliminary 
work of starting it in 1891 had been done 
by Mr. Peake, who had come from British 
Columbia in Bishop Corfe s wake. When 
he went home his place was taken in 1892 
by Mr. J. W. Hodge, who greatly de 
veloped both the work and plant and 
continued to work as the Mission printer 
until 1900. During these eight or nine 
years the Mission press had done very 



44 The Church in Corea 

useful work at a time when printing- 
presses in Gorea were very scarce, turning 
out in creditable fashion such books of 
general interest as Mr. James Scott s 
Corean Manual and Corean Dictionary, as 
well as the simple religious works, which 
were the first - fruits of the translation 
efforts of the bishop and his clergy. 

The first and most important of these 
was a so-called "tract" (it really was a 
rather large book) published in 1893, on 
the Life of our Blessed Lord, intended to 
form the basis of our earliest teaching and 
preaching, there being as yet no available 
version of the Holy Scriptures in the 
Gorean tongue. The book, which went 
by the name of Lumen, or Lumen ad Reve- 
lationem Gentium (being the Latin render 
ing of the Gorean title Cho Man Min 
Kwang) was printed in alternate paragraphs 
of Chinese characters and Gorean On- 
man, or vulgar script ; and was composed 
of ten chapters, in the words of Holy 
Scripture, illustrating the Incarnate Life 
of the Son of God, from the Annunciation 
to the Ascension, with S. Paul s sermon at 
Athens as preface, and a postscript describ 
ing Pentecost, the Acts of the Apostles, 
and the foundation of the Holy Catholic 
Church. 



English Church Mission to Corea 45 

This served its purpose well until, 
some years later, and bit by bit, a 
translation of the whole New Testament 
appeared under the auspices of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society, in the produc 
tion of which members of the Mission took 
only a small part. Lumen was followed by 
Catechisms and Litanies, which were based 
upon the larger work, and then, as the 
needs of the Mission grew greater, by an 
increasing number of works of instruction 
and devotion, a small volume of prayers 
for catechumens, a systematic catechism 
for their instruction, an office of admission 
to the catechumenate, and then (one by 
one) the Baptism and Confirmation Ser 
vices, the Litany and Communion Service, 
and such other portions of the Prayer Book 
as made their need imperatively felt. But 
to this day no complete version of the 
Prayer Book has been issued. 

It has already been mentioned that, 

except for occasional trips of exploration 

in the interior, the members of 

Kanghwa. in*.. ,. 

the Mission were practically con 
fined to Seoul and Chemulpo for the first 
few years of its existence. The most 
valuable of these journeys of exploration 
were those undertaken at the bishop s 
direction in 1892-3 by Mr. Warner, to 



46 The Church in Corea 

investigate the river systems of Gorea, 
as possibly providing a more conve 
nient method of access into the interior 
than the ordinary roads. He spent 
the winter of 1892-3 in a little hired 
cottage in the river suburb of Mapo, 
about four miles from Seoul, where the 
Mission subsequently acquired a consider 
able property. It was hoped that this 
might be the head-quarters of the river 
Mission work ; but, as the work ultimately 
developed along different lines, it has 
actually never yet fulfilled a higher func 
tion than that of rest-house and retreat 
for members of the Mission living in Seoul. 
As a matter of fact, the most important 
result of Mr. Warner s river trip lay in 
the "discovery" of the island of Kanghwa, 
which was shortly after adopted as a Mis 
sion centre, and has since played such 
a prominent part in the Mission s 
activities. Seoul, it must be explained, 
stands on the banks, or within three or 
four miles of the banks, of the great river 
Han, which, after being joined by the 
river Im-jin, falls into the sea some thirty 
odd miles to the north-west of the capital. 
The estuary is screened and almost blocked 
at this point by the populous and fertile 
island of Kanghwa, from the lofty hill-tops 



English Church Mission to Corea 47 

of which the seaport of Chemulpo is visible 
some twenty miles to the south. And, in 
those pre-railway days, the little steam- 
launches which plied precariously on the 
circuitous route of sixty miles between 
Chemulpo and Seoul, running along the 
shores of Kanghwa and up the mouth of 
the Han, provided the only alternative to 
a walk or ride of twenty-four miles between 
the capital and the port. 

The island of Kanghwa is about the size 
of the Isle of Wight, and occupies about as 
important a position vis-a-vis the capital 
as the Isle of Wight, would have done if 
Winchester, and not London, had been 
the capital of England. It was absolutely 
virgin soil so far as missionary effort was 
concerned, and had, moreover, this advan 
tage over the Isle of Wight, that it was 
only separated from the mainland by a 
strip of water a few hundred yards wide ; 
though, owing to the racing tide and the 
masses of ice-floes with which it is choked 
in winter, this narrow strip of water has 
often proved to have terrors enough. 
Kanghwa, moreover, had always been an 
important centre of government, and had 
played a leading part in more than one 
crisis in Corean history. Indeed, for some 
years in the thirteenth century the old 



48 The Church in Corea 

walled city in the centre of the island had 
been the capital of the country, what time 
the King and his Court fled there from the 
face of Kubla Khan s Mongol troops who 
were then ravaging the peninsula. And 
at this particular juncture, in 1892-3, the 
Gorean Government had just decided to 
make it the scene of their new "Naval 
Academy," which was opened shortly after 
under the charge of three British officers 
and instructors. This venture, however, 
speedily collapsed on the outbreak of the 
China-Japan War in 1894. 

Here, then, Mr. Warner secured a pre 
carious footing in the autumn of 1893 in 
a tiny cottage in the village of Kapkotchi, 
on the banks of the narrow arm of 
the sea which separates the island from 
the mainland. And here he maintained 
his foothold, gathering a few inquirers 
round him, until he went home in 1896, 
although the suspicions of Government 
officials, the lack of vernacular litera 
ture, and his own still imperfect know 
ledge of the language, which was shared 
by all the other members of the Mission, 
rendered impracticable all schemes for 
much in the way of aggressive Mission 
effort for the time being. Matters in 
these respects became a little easier as time 



English Church Mission to Corea 49 

went on. And when, at Christmas, 1896 
a few months after Mr. Warner s de 
parture from Gorea the first catechumens 
of the Mission were enrolled and regular 
Gorean services were instituted, three 
Kanghwa inquirers were among the num 
ber of those thus definitely accepted as 
candidates for Holy Baptism. And two 
of these, who were baptized in the follow 
ing November, were actually the first-fruits 
of the Mission s long "work of faith and 
labour of love and patience of hope in 
our Lord Jesus Christ." 

One other department of the Mission s 

works in Corea needs to be touched on, 

in speaking of the things be- 

Work among gun j the fi t half f Bishop 
Japanese in * / 

Corea. C,orte s episcopate, viz., the 

work among the Japanese 
residents in Corea. The Japanese settle 
ment in Fusan was an old one, dating back 
to the beginning of the seventeenth cen 
tury. It was not, however, until the con 
clusion of the first commercial treaty 
between Japan and Corea in 1897 that the 
inhabitants of the island empire began to 
settle in Corea in any numbers. But their 
number has been continually growing, side 
by side with the gradual increase of their 
political and commercial importance in the 

H 



50 The Church in Corea 

country until, now that Gorea has become 
a Japanese dependency, the census shows 
that there are not less than a quarter of 
a million of them scattered over the penin 
sula. 

Apart from the language difficulty, there 
always have been, and probably always 
will be, two great obstacles in the way 
of carrying on work among the Japanese 
immigrants. One is that they are so 
widely scattered all over the country 
that it is difficult for any priest even to 
keep in touch with those of them who 
are already Christians ; the other is that 
they are so largely "birds of passage" 
moving about from place to place, or 
returning to their native land just as the 
priest is beginning to count on them as 
regular members of his flock in Gorea. 
Still, as far back as 1891, Bishop Gorfe 
had endeavoured to secure the services 
of a Japanese Christian doctor to open 
work in Fusan, and did actually succeed 
in importing a Japanese catechist to 
Chemulpo, whence, however, he was 
shortly recalled by family affairs to Japan. 
Such work as the Mission did in those 
early years among the Japanese arose 
out of a small night-school for teaching 
English, which was started by Dr. Landis 




NEWLY-BAPTIZED JAPANESE, CHEMULPO. 



Page 50. 



English Church Mission to Corea 51 

in Chemulpo in 1891, and carried on by 
Mr. W. H. Smart, who had come from 
England for the purpose, during the years 
1892-4. The school was perforce then 
closed owing to the excitement of the 
China-Japan War, and Mr. Smart went 
to Japan, to qualify for work as a lay- 
reader among the Japanese in Corea, by 
devoting a year to the uninterrupted study 
of their language. 

Returning in 1895, he definitely began 
Mission work among the Japanese in 
Chemulpo (while occasionally visiting 
those elsewhere), and carried it on in 
domitably, and with no little success, for 
the next five or six years, in spite of the 
great difficulties attaching to his position 
as a layman. The work was greatly 
helped from time to time by visits from 
the Rev. A. F. King, the Rev. L. B. 
Cholmondeley, and the Rev. J. T. Imai 
and other clergy from Japan, while some 
of the clergy of the Mission over and 
above their Corean studies learned to 
read enough Japanese to be able to 
administer the Sacraments in that tongue. 
The Baptism and Confirmation of five 
Japanese adults in Chemulpo in Septem 
ber, 1896, was but the first-fruits of a 
considerable harvest which Mr. Smart was 



52 The Church in Corea 

privileged to gather in there during those 
three years. 

Nor were the other Japanese settle 
ments neglected, particular attention 
naturally being paid to the old Japanese 
colony of Fusan, where a temporary 
mission-house was at length acquired, 
and a Japanese catechist settled at the 
end of 1900 (though the latter did not 
remain long), and where, a few months 
earlier, Bishop Gorfe had confirmed two 
Japanese Christians and celebrated the 
Holy Communion for the first time. 

In 1901 Mr. Smart left Corea to take 
up work in Japan, where he was ordained 
to the diaconate by the American Bishop 
of North Tokyo, under whom he worked 
for the next twelve years. His place in 
Corea was filled by the Rev. Christian 
Steenbuch, who had recently come out 
from England, and who, after being 
ordained to the diaconate in Seoul 
by Bishop Corfe in September, 1900, 
had gone to spend a year in Japan for 
purposes of language study. Returning 
to Corea at the end of 1901, he settled 
in Chemulpo, was ordained priest in 
1902, and carried on the work among 
the Japanese there and in Fusan and 
elsewhere until 1904, when he too trans- 



English Church Mission to Corea 53 

ferred his services to Japan. And it was 
not until 1905 that the work among the 
Japanese was placed on a more solid and 
satisfactory footing by the establishment 
of the Rev. S. H. Gartwright in Seoul, 
as priest-in-charge of the Japanese work 
all over the country, with, later on, two 
lady workers to assist him. 

In giving the foregoing rapid sketch of 
the main events in the mission s history 
during the first few years of its existence, 
it has seemed best to anticipate to some 
extent what follows by tracing also in 
outline the subsequent developments to 
which they led. But, to prevent confu 
sion, it will now be best to revert to the 
chronological order. 

In the summer of 1894 Mr. Trollope 
was dispatched to England by the 
^,, bishop on the business of the 

Changes .* 

in the Mission. And not only was his 
Qi return retarded (until January, 
; 1896), but the whole work of the 
Mission was a good deal hampered by the 
confusion arising out of the China-Japan 
War, which broke out just after his depar 
ture. He reached Corea again in March, 
1896, accompanied by Messrs. J. S. Badcock 
and R. F. Hillary, who had been trained 
by the Society of the Sacred Mission, and 



54 The Church in Corea 

who were ordained to the diaconate by 
Bishop Gorfe in December of that year. 

In December, 1896, the Mission received 
fresh reinforcements in the persons of 
the Rev. A. B. Turner (subsequently 
bishop) and Brother Hugh Pearson, of 
the Society of the Sacred Mission, and 
was further strengthened in the spring 
of 1897 by the arrival of Mr. G, A. 
Bridle (ordained deacon in 1897 and 
priest in 1900) and Dr. A. F. Laws, who 
also hailed from the same society. 

In passing it should be mentioned that 
this society, to which not only the Gorean 
Societ Mission but the Church at large 
of the owes such a great debt of grati- 
Sacred tu( je, had its origin in the Rev. 
H. H. Kelly s offer of himself 
to Bishop Gorfe as far back as 1890. He 
was already on fire with those ideals to 
which he has since given such fruitful 
expression, and, instead of carrying him 
off to Gorea, Bishop Corfe asked him 
to remain in England and to devote 
himself to the training of some of the 
many young men who were then offering 
themselves for work in the mission-field. 
How well he did that work, and how God 
has prospered it, all the Church knows. 

Beginning in Vassall Road, under the 



English Church Mission to Corea 55 

shadow of S. John the Divine, Kenning- 
ton, the Gorean Missionary Brotherhood, 
as it was then called, ere long developed 
into the Society of the Sacred Mission, 
and, after a sojourn at Mildenhall, settled 
into its present quarters at Kelham, near 
Newark-on-Trent. In 1898 it sent to 
Gorea the Rev. Father Drake, and later 
in the same year Brother H. H. Firkins, 
who was ordained to the diaconate when 
Messrs. Badcock and Hillary were raised 
to the priesthood in Lent, 1900. 

Rather unfortunately, but inevitably, 
the earlier members of the society in 
Gorea found it difficult to keep pace with 
the more highly developed life of Kelham, 
and in process of time it seemed best that 
they should be released from their obe 
dience to the society, while remaining in 
the service of the Mission. More un 
fortunately still, the health of two of 
the remaining members, Brother Hugh 
Pearson and Brother Firkins, gave way 
so seriously that the latter had to leave 
Gorea in 1901, and the former in 1904, 
when, with the withdrawal of Mr. Drake 
(who, however, returned to Gorea in 1911, 
after seven years in South Africa), the 
direct connection of the society with the 
diocese ceased, though the mutual benefits 



56 The Church in Corea 

derived from that connection during so 
many years will not readily be forgotten. 

As already mentioned, on Christmas 
Eve, 1896, Bishop Gorfe had the happiness 
p. rst of solemnly admitting to the 

Corean catechumcnate half a dozen 
i897 tisms Corean inquirers the first-fruits 
of the harvest for which the 
Mission had been so long preparing. From 
that day onwards regular Gorean services 
were carried on in Seoul and Kanghwa, 
though Chemulpo did not become a 
centre of organized Corean work and 
worship until some years later, in Novem 
ber, 1900. Moreover, of the six cate 
chumens then admitted, two were baptized 
(by immersion, a practice which the 
rigours of the climate and other incon 
veniences have made it impossible to 
continue) in the Church of S. Michael, 
Chemulpo, nearly a year later, in Novem 
ber, 1897, and were confirmed as they 
came up out of "the laver of regeneration " 
by Bishop Scott of Peking, who was then 
on a visit to Corea. One of the two men 
then baptized (who both came from 
Kanghwa) was in delicate health, and died 
not long after ; the other has been a pillar 
of the Church in Corea ever since, and 
was ordained deacon in 1914. 



English Church Mission to Corea 57 

The admission of these two neophytes 
to the fold in 1897 may be fairly held to 
mark the close of the first half of Bishop 
Gorfe s episcopate, and the opening of 
the second and even more important 
chapter, in which we mark the gradual 
growth of the Church thus brought to 
the birth. 

Bishop Gorfe himself was, unfortunately, 
not present at these first baptisms, as he 
left Corea in March, 1897, to attend the 
Lambeth Conference. And so exacting 
were the demands made on him in England 
that it was October, 1898, before he re 
turned to Corea. 

The diocese was administered in the 
bishop s absence by the Rev. M. N. 
Trollope, whom he had appointed his 
vicar - general, and who resided usually 
in Kanghwa, while the Rev. A. B. Turner 
had charge of Seoul and Mapo, and 
Chemulpo was served on Sundays, as far 
as was practicable, by clergy from one or 
other of these stations. In Kanghwa 
during the summer of 1897, the head 
quarters of the Mission were moved from 
the waterside village of Kaphotchi to more 
spacious premises, recently vacated by the 
English instructors of the defunct Naval 
Academy, in the city of Kanghwa itself, 



58 The Church in Corea 

where also a small boarding school for 
boys was at the same time opened. 

When, therefore, Bishop Gorfe returned 
to England for the Lambeth Conference 
in 1897, he was able to point, in 
spite f the vicissitudes through 
which the Mission had passed, 
to the following substantial results of the 
work of the previous seven years (over 
and above the well-established chaplaincy 
in Newchwang) : 

(o) Churches erected in Seoul and Che 
mulpo, and regular services provided 
for the small congregation of English- 
speaking residents. 

(b) Three well-found hospitals in full 

working order viz., one in Chemulpo 
under the care of Dr. Landis ; and in 
Seoul, one for men under the care 
of Dr. Baldock, and one for women 
under the care of Dr. Katherine 
Allan, the two last being supplied 
with nurses by the Sisters of the 
Community of S. Peter. 

(c) A printing-press in full work, and the 

completion of a good deal of the 
translation work, necessary for 
aggressive missionary operations 
among the Coreans. 

(d) The substantial beginning of Mission 



English Church Mission to Corea 59 

work among the Japanese, under 

Mr. Smart s care in Chemulpo. 
(e) The beginnings of regular Mission 

work among the Goreans in Seoul 

and Kanghwa. 

The whole being under the charge of a 
staff of four English clergy, which was 
increased to six early in 1898 by the arrival 
of Father Drake and Brother Firkins, 
S.S.M. 

The year 1898, however, brought a great 

disaster in the death from typhoid of Dr. 

Landis, and within a few weeks 

S??" ^ *" s deat h the Mission suffered 
1904. a further loss in the death after 
prolonged illness of Nurse Web 
ster, who had been working with the 
sisters ever since their arrival in the 
country in 1892. The death of Dr. Lan 
dis necessitated the closing of S. Luke s 
Hospital, Chemulpo, just as plans were 
in hand for the erection of a substantial 
brick building (made possible by a grant 
from the S.P.G. Marriott Bequest) in 
place of that which had done duty hitherto. 
And though the buildings were proceeded 
with, and Dr. Garden arrived in September, 
1898, to take charge of the work (which 
he continued to superintend until 1902), 
it meant a complete break with the past, 



60 The Church in Corea 

and beginning all over again with a new 
doctor, who had to start afresh in acquiring 
that knowledge of the Gorean language 
and Gorean customs in which Dr. Landis 
had become such an expert. 

The absence of the bishop, and the death 

of Dr. Landis, led to some little dislocation 

of work in the various stations 

Gorean during 1898. But in 1899 that 

Baptisms, , 

1899. work started with renewed 

vigour ; and at Whitsuntide in 
that year our first big batch of adult 
Gorean converts (eighteen in number) 
was baptized in Kanghwa, in the presence 
of the bishop, who confirmed them im 
mediately afterwards. In the work of 
preparing the women among these can 
didates much help had been given by a 
visit from one of the Sisters, accompanied 
by Miss L. Nevile, who had lately arrived 
from England to help the Sisters in their 
work, and who remained with them until 
1903. 

In Seoul, on the Feast of S. John the 
Baptist, 1899, there was a large Baptism of 
Goreans (by a coincidence exactly equal 
in number to those baptized in Kanghwa), 
who were also confirmed by the bishop 
immediately after the Baptism. 

The year 1900 witnessed a development 



English Church Mission to Corea 61 

of the work in Kanghwa, where the south 
ern half of the island was formed into a 
separate district, and placed in charge of 
Father Drake, assisted by his S.S.M. breth 
ren (the Rev. H. H. Firkins and Dr. A. F. 
Laws) of whom the latter promptly opened 
a dispensary, destined, as years went on, to 
do a great work in the island. 

The head-quarters of this new station 
were fixed in a village called On Su Tong 
(about ten miles from Kanghwa City) which 
subsequently became widely known among 
friends of the Mission as the scene of the 
indefatigable labours of the Rev. F. R. 
Hillary between 1901 and 1910. 

The sudden outbreak of the Boxer trouble 
in China during the summer of 1900 made 
Boxer itself felt in Gorea, whence, at 
trouble the urgent invitation of the re- 
I900 hina> s P nsible authorities, Dr. A. F. 
Laws and three of the Mission 
hospital nurses (Miss Cameron, Miss Un- 
win, and Miss Mills) were sent to Wei- 
haiwei to help temporarily in the task of 
caring for the soldiers and sailors who had 
been wounded in the hastily-organized 
expedition for the relief of the Peking 
Legations. The same summer witnessed 
the return to Corea of the Rev. S. J. 
Peake, who had spent a year with the 



62 The Church in Corea 

Mission in 1891, and who had since not 
only been ordained both deacon and priest, 
but also qualified as a doctor. Unhappily, 
his sojourn in Gorea was as short as before, 
and in September, 1901, he returned to 
England, afterwards devoting himself to 
Mission work in South Africa. 

But the great event of the year was the 
dedication, by Bishop Corfe, of the big 
Church of SS. Peter and Paul in 
Kanghwa City on November 15, 
and Paul, 1900. The congregation there 
Kanghwa ha( j j on g out g rO wn the accom- 
modation of the temporary 
church room, which had been several 
times enlarged. And a handsome gift of 
500 from the Marriott Bequest Fund in 
the hands of S.P.G. had made it possible 
to erect this striking building, which, albeit 
the most prominent structure in the old 
city, harmonizes well with its surround 
ings, a fairly successful endeavour having 
been made to adopt the old Corean style 
of architecture to the purposes of a Chris 
tian Church. 

The first six months of 1901 were spent 
by the bishop on a second visit to England, 
the development of the Mission having 
made it necessary to complete its home 
organization, and to place its financial 



English Church Mission to Corea 63 

matters on a more satisfactory footing. He 
had hoped that it would be possible for his 
Visit of vicar -general, Mr. Trollope, 

Bishop Corfe during his absence, to make 
a s i mu l taneous beginning of 
diocesan organization in Gorea, 
by summoning a diocesan conference at 
Eastertide. A variety of circumstances, 
however, unhappily combined to frus 
trate this latter intention, to the great 
disappointment of the bishop. On his 
return in July he found that it had been 
necessary to send Father Drake to New- 
chwang (where he remained until that 
post was definitely transferred to the 
North China Diocese in October, 1901), 
as Mr. Turner had been sent home on 
sick leave to England, whence he was 
unable to return until November, 1902. 

The straits to which the Mission with 
its rapidly-developing work was reduced 
in the latter part of 1901 may be imagined, 
when it is remembered that in August 
Mr. Trollope had been sent home on 
what it was hoped would be a short 
furlough, while in September Mr. Peake 
also left, in company with Brother 
Firkins, S.S.M., whom the doctors pro 
nounced to be unfit for further service 
in the Far East. Mr. Trollope had only 



64 The Church in Corea 

been in England a few weeks when he was 
asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
become the Bishop of the new Diocese 
of Shantung, recently severed from the 
jurisdiction of Bishop Scott in North 
China. After prolonged consideration he 
found himself unable to accept the offer. 
But for a variety of reasons, which he did 
his best to explain to the friends of the 
Mission in the pages of its Magazine, the 
Morning Calm, he also came to the con 
clusion that he ought to ask Bishop Corfe s 
permission to " suspend indefinitely " his 
return to Corea. And on this permission 
being granted he accepted the wholly- 
unexpected offer of the Vicarage of S. 
Saviour s, Poplar, recently vacated by 
the death of Father Dolling. Thus, after 
over ten years service in the Mission to 
Corea (broken only by his furlough in 
1894-5), he found himself engaged again in 
parochial work in England, where (except 
for a visit to Corea in 1908) he remained 
as Vicar, first of S. Saviour s, Poplar, and 
then of S. Alban s, Birmingham, until ten 
years later, in 1911, he was called upon to 
return to Corea as bishop, on the death of 
Bishop Turner. 

In May, 1901, the Sisters of S. Peter had 
opened their branch house in Kanghwa, 



English Church Mission to Corea 65 

where it was of inestimable service to 

the growing work. And it is hardly too 

much to say that, with the rapid 

Develop- development of the work here, 

ments, . 

1901-4. the centre of gravity of the 
Mission had practically shifted to 
this station. After the departure of Mr. 
Trollope, the charge of Kanghwa City 
had devolved upon Mr. Badcock, assisted 
by Brother Hugh Pearson, S.S.M., who 
was busy with the printing, bookbinding, 
and other industrial departments of the 
school, while at On Su Tong, in the south 
of the island, Mr. Hillary had charge of 
the growing work, in which he was much 
helped by Dr. Laws and his highly-valued 
dispensary. 

On the other hand, although the two 
Mission hospitals in Seoul (S. Matthew s 
for men and S. Peter s for women) con 
tinued to flourish until they were closed 
in the summer of 1904 under the care of 
Dr. and Mrs. Baldock and the Sisters, 
the evangelistic and pastoral work, both 
there and in Chemulpo, with its rather 
tiresome duplication of English and Gorean 
services, was from one unavoidable cause 
or another so constantly changing hands 
between the Rev. Father Drake, Mr. 
Bridle, and (after his return in November, 



66 The Church in Corea 

1902) Mr. Turner, that much steady pro 
gress was not to be looked for. Meanwhile, 
the staff of the Sisters helpers was increased 
at the close of 1902 by the arrival of Nurse 
Hudson (whose health did not allow her to 
remain more than a year) and Miss Alberta 
Pooley (who is still, in 1915, at work in the 
Mission) ; but the necessity of closing the 
Hospital of S. Luke at Chemulpo in the 
autumn of the same year, owing to the 
difficulty of finding a successor to Dr. Gar 
den, was a bitter grief and disappointment 
to the bishop and all concerned. 

Partly with the earnest desire to fill up 
the serious gaps in his staff, both clerical 
and medical, and partly with the view 
of placing the finance of the Mission 
hospitals, so long supported by his naval 
friends, on an assured footing, Bishop Gorfe 
felt bound to pay another visit to England. 
Leaving the diocese, therefore, to be admin 
istered by Mr. Turner, he left in February, 
1903; and only returned, after a year s 

heart-wearing search for men, 
ese S War^904. in February, 1904, to find 

the whole Far East thrown 
into confusion by the outbreak of war 
between Russia and Japan. After the 
first few weeks, however, the tide of war 
rolled so far north into Manchuria, that 



English Church Mission to Corea 67 

it made little difference to Gorea, except 
so far as the rapidly-growing predominance 
of Japan in the internal affairs of the 
country altered existing conditions. 

Two or three months before the bishop s 
return the hearts of all members of the 
Mission had been gladdened by the arrival 
(December, 1903) of the Rev. W. N. 
Gurney ; and a few weeks after his return 
the bishop had been able to welcome Dr. 
and Mrs. Weir, who set to work to 
restore the fallen fortunes of S. Luke s 
Hospital, Chemulpo. These were indeed 
worthy fruits of Bishop Gorfe s last visit 
to England. Mr. J. S. Badcock and Mr. 
G. A. Bridle were thus enabled, after 
respectively eight and seven years work 
in the country, to get away to England 
for a short furlough, though their absence 
sorely taxed the powers of those remain 
ing behind. Father Drake went to take 
up the work left by Mr. Badcock in 
Kanghwa City, where he had, therefore, 
the companionship of his S.S.M. lay brother 
Hugh Pearson, until both retired on the 
withdrawal of the society from the diocese 
in the autumn of 1904. 

Meanwhile, however, Bishop Gorfe, 
feeling that the strain of the Mission, for 
which he had been responsible for nearly 



68 The Church in Corea 

fifteen years, was more than he could 
continue to bear especially in view of 
Resignation *" s inability to master the spoken 
of Bishop language had in a letter of sin- 
< p rfe gular dignity and pathos, dated 

from Chemulpo on S. James s 
Day, 1904, announced the fact that he 
had tendered his resignation to the Arch 
bishop of Canterbury. Shortly afterwards 
it became known that the resignation was 
accepted, and that the archbishop had 
selected the Rev. A. B. Turner to be his 
successor. 

The resignation of Bishop Corfe and the 

appointment of Bishop Turner as his 

successor brings us to the close 

18^4904. f another chapter in the history 

of the Mission. And it is just 

worth while to glance summarily at the 

position which had now been attained. 

(a) The chaplaincy of Newchwang had 

been handed over in 1901 to the 

Bishop of North China, but both 

in Seoul and Chemulpo regular 

services had been maintained for 

the English-speaking residents, whose 

numbers, small enough as a rule, 

had frequently been swollen for 

months together by the presence of 

a guard of British marines in Seoul. 



English Church Mission to Corea 69 

(^) The two hospitals in Seoul had been 
kept in thorough working order until 
the spring preceding Bishop Gorfe s 
resignation, when with great regret 
they were finally closed, partly in 
consequence of the difficulty of 
replacing Dr. and Mrs. Baldock 
who left in 1904, after giving re 
spectively twelve and eight years 
devoted service to the Mission, 
partly in consequence of the impossi 
bility of properly financing these 
hospitals (which would also have 
required rebuilding) as well as the 
hospital at Chemulpo. This last, 
which had led a chequered existence 
for the last six years, had taken a 
new and vigorous lease of life, which 
has since been well sustained under 
the inspiring guidance of Dr. and 
Mrs. Weir, who arrived just as 
Dr. and Mrs. Baldock were leaving 
in 1904. 

(c) The Mission printing-press, though 
carried on on a smaller scale than 
heretofore and worked as a depart 
ment of the boys school in Kanghwa, 
had continued to supply the Mission 
with the vernacular literature re 
quired, until it was closed on the 



70 The Church in Corea 

retirement of Brother Hugh Pearson 
of the S.S.M. at the close of 1904. 
Printing - presses having greatly 
multiplied in recent years in Gorea, 
the costly expedient of maintaining 
a separate Mission press was no 
longer necessary. 

(d) The work among the Japanese, 
especially in Chemulpo and Fusan, 
had been carried on with increasing 
vigour, and showed now a list of 
some sixty Christians, with thirty 
communicants. 

(tf) The work among Coreans, which had 
started with two adult Christians in 
1897, had so developed that in 1904 
the number of the baptized was over 
two hundred, including some hundred 
communicants. Of these, however, 
nearly three-fourths were in the 
two Kanghwa stations, the churches 
in Seoul and Chemulpo having 
suffered seriously from lack of con 
tinuous supervision and encourage 
ment, owing to the constant change 
of clergy. 

Arthur Beresford Turner was con 
secrated second missionary Bishop of 
Corea in Westminster Abbey on the 





BISHOP TURNER. [Elliott & Fry. 



Page 70. 



English Church Mission to Corea 71 

Feast of the Conversion of S. Paul, 
1905, having returned to England for that 
Bisho purpose. He reached Corea 

Turner s again in May, and took over 



05-?0 Bte ^ e c ^ ar ^ e f ^ e diocese from 
Bishop Corfe, by whom it had 
been administered pending his arrival. 
His all too short episcopate of a little 
over five years, of which we now proceed 
to give some account, witnessed a great 
development of the work of the Mission. 
Doubtless the rapidity of this develop 
ment which carried its own dangers with 
it, was largely connected with the changes 
political and other through which the 
country was passing. The close of the 
Russo-Japanese War in 1905 had left 
Corea at the mercy of Japan, who 
promptly proceeded to make her suzer 
ainty a reality, taking complete control 
of all foreign relations and, to an ever- 
increasing extent, undertaking also the 
direction of the internal affairs of the 
peninsula. The Emperor of Corea main 
tained a precarious hold of the throne 
until 1907, when he was forced to abdicate 
in favour of his son, who was himself 
deposed when the country was formally 
"annexed" by Japan a few weeks before 
Bishop Turner s death, in 1910. 



72 The Church in Corea 

These events, and much which went 
before and followed them, created a 
profound feeling of discontent and "un 
rest" among the Goreans. And for at 
least two years, 1907-9, the country was 
the scene of a miserable guerilla warfare, 
and of rather ruthless punitive expedi 
tions. In the general break-up of the 
old political and social organization, there 
was a widespread movement towards 
Christianity on the part of the Goreans 
which, while it brought much encourage 
ment with it, also sowed the seeds of a 
vast crop of difficulties. 

Side by side with the political upheaval, 
Corea also witnessed at this time the 
strange work of religious "revival," 
which attracted so much attention and 
to which reference was made in the series 
of letters contributed to the Times by Lord 
William Gascoyne Cecil, on the occasion 
of his visit to the Far East in 1907. 
This movement, however, chiefly affected 
the northern parts of Corea (in the neigh 
bourhood of Ping Yang) and the Ameri 
can and Presbyterian Missions which are 
very strongly represented there. 

Last, but not least, it is not too much to 
say that the country was practically 
transformed by the laying of the great 



English Church Mission to Corea 73 

Trunk Line Railway (running from north 
to south through the whole length of the 
country), which was opened about this 
time, and which, a few years later, brought 
Gorea into direct railway communication 
with China, as well as with Russia and 
the rest of Europe, at one end, and by 
an excellent daily service of steamers 
with Japan at the other. It was, there 
fore, practically a new Gorea or at least 
a new Gorea in the making in which 
Bishop Turner was called upon to work. 

Naturally the work amongst the Japanese 
under these altered circumstances, claimed 
Work a large part of the new bishop s 
amongst attention, and claimed it early. 



I90?-lo e ^ e nea d-Quarters of the Japan 
ese work were fixed in Seoul, 
where part of the old Nak Tong pre 
mises were adapted for the purpose, 
and where Mr. Cartwright was joined in 
1907 by two English lady workers, Miss 
Grosjean and Miss Elrington, as well as 
by a Japanese mission woman. A cate- 
chist was established in Fusan, to be 
replaced in 1910 by a Japanese priest, 
the Rev. A. N. Shiozaki, and thither 
too, at about this latter date, Miss Elring 
ton removed. 

Before Bishop Turner s death a suitable 



74 The Church in Corea 

site for the Mission premises was pur 
chased here and occupied by a temporary 
"church room" as well as by residences 
for the workers, while plans were made 
and a fund was opened for the subsequent 
erection of a permanent church. About 
the same time a residence was built for 
a Japanese catechist, adjoining S. Michael s 
Church in Chemulpo, and shortly after 
it was found possible to place both a 
catechist and a Japanese mission woman 
there also, while Miss Pooley, who was 
acting as dispenser at S. Luke s Hospital, 
prepared herself by the study of Japanese 
to devote herself to this branch of the 
work. On Mr. Cartwright s death, in 1909, 
his place was filled temporarily by the 
Rev. H. Walton of Yokohama, and then 
by the Rev. A. L. Sharpe, who had also 
been engaged in Mission work in Japan. 

Although the work still largely retained 
its sporadic character, which prevented 
any very rapid development, by the time 
of Bishop Turner s death the number of 
Japanese Christians had risen to over 
one hundred and fifty. 

The hospital work, meanwhile, which 
had now been concentrated at S. Luke s, 
Chemulpo, prospered greatly under the 
guidance of Dr. Weir, who had arrived 




CORE AN HOSPITAL WORKERS. 



Page 74. 



English Church Mission to Corea 75 

shortly before Bishop Corfe s resignation. 
This work rapidly developed, and by 
1908 it had become both necessary and 
possible to add a women s ward to the 
original building. When Dr. Weir went 
on furlough in 1908, his place was tempor 
arily filled by Dr. Laws, who had spent 
the two years since he went home in 
studying for a degree in the Medico- 
Ghirurgical College of Philadelphia. On 
the return of Dr. Weir in 1909, Dr. Laws 
removed to Chin Chun, the most recently- 
opened station in the interior (about 
eighty miles south of Seoul), where he 
was enabled shortly after to erect a 
hospital and to build up a hospital dis 
pensary practice, which has proved of 
great service to the Mission. Just before 
Bishop Turner s death the Mission had 
also secured the services of a lady doctor, 
Dr. Borrow, who, however, was not able 
to begin active work until after the arrival 
of his successor. 

The clerical staff, meanwhile, was 
strengthened by the arrival, at the end 

Additions of 1905 > of . th e Rev. F. Wilson, 
to Mission who, having been ordained 
190?-10. deacon before he left England, 
was ordained priest in 1906, and 
who spent the greater part of the next 



76 The Church in Corea 

seven years in Kanghwa, working first 
under Mr. Badcock and then under 
Mr. Hillary, until after the arrival of 
Bishop Trollope in 1911 he was put 
in charge of the newly opened Mis 
sion station at Paikchun, on the main 
land to the north of Kanghwa, from 
which it was an off-shoot. 

During the year 1908 Mr. Trollope, 
then Vicar of S. Saviour s, Poplar, 
came out and spent six months in 
Gorea, while Bishop Turner went to 
England for the Lambeth Conference ; 
and at the end of that year the Mission 
staff received a further accession in the 
person of the Rev. A. G. Cooper, till 
then assistant curate of S. Oswald s, West 
Hartlepool, who immediately went to 
the help of Mr. Bridle in the newly- 
opened station of Suwon. 

Again, later in October, 1909, the Rev. 
F. Weston arrived and went to give 
needed help in Kanghwa, while in 
December the Rev. G. E. Hewlett 
also came, and having been ordained 
deacon, went to assist Mr. Gurney 
in his newly-opened station at Chin 
Chun. The Rev. G. H. N. Hodges and 
the Rev. G. S. Dallas, who had been 
accepted for work in Gorea during Bishop 



English Church Mission to Corea 77 

Turner s lifetime, did not arrive until 
after his death. The same was true of 
the Rev. F. R. Standfast and his wife, 
who, moreover, had to return to England 
before the arrival of the new bishop, 
owing to the difficulty of supporting the 
largely increased staff out of the limited 
funds at the disposal of the Mission. 
The Community of S. Peter had suffered 
a serious loss by the death, in Kanghwa, 
in May, 1906, of Sister Alma, and by the 
retirement through ill health of Sister 
Margaretta in 1909. Its forces were, how 
ever, increased by the arrival of Sisters 
Cecil and Edith Helena in 1907, and 
Sister Constance Irene in 1908, a year 
which was also made memorable by a 
prolonged visit from the Reverend Mother 
of the Community. 

The responsibilities of the Mission were 
largely increased in October, 1905, by the 

opening of the new Mission 
Mission centre of Suwon, an important 
Station provincial city, some twenty 
1905 UWO m il es south-west of Seoul, with 

a station on the Seoul-Fusan 
Railway. Mr. Bridle was placed in 
charge, being moved from Chemulpo, 
which for the next eight years lacked the 
services of a resident priest, Dr. Weir 



78 The Church in Corea 

adding the duties of lay-reader to those 
of medical officer, while Bishop Turner 
and the other clergy visited the post at 
intervals for the administration of the 
Sacraments. At Suwon, where Mr. 
Bridle was joined by Mr. Cooper 
in 1908, the work grew by leaps and 
bounds, stretching forty or fifty miles 
down the railway line into the next 
province, where the work developed 
to such an extent that it became ulti 
mately necessary to form another and 
separate Mission district with its centre 
at Chunan. 

At Suwon itself a temporary church was 
opened at Christmas, 1905, to be replaced 
by a more permanent structure in 1908, 
in which year also it was found possible 
to open both a boys and a girls school, 
the latter being in charge of the Sisters of 
S. Peter, who had recently moved their 
branch house thither from Kanghwa. A 
number of district chapelries were also 
opened between 1905 and 1910 in the 
same district, which at the time of Bishop 
Turner s death numbered, in its then 
undivided state, over 700 Christians and 
nearly 500 communicants. 

Meanwhile, in our older station of 
Kanghwa the work had been extending 



English Church Mission to Corea 79 

with almost equal rapidity. Mr. Hillary, 

greatly helped until 1906 by Dr. Laws 

and his dispensary, still had 

Progress in charge of the southern half 

Kanghwa, - , . . . . , . , , 

1905-10. of the island, with its head 
quarters at On Su Tong, where 
in November, 1906, Bishop Turner dedi 
cated the handsome Church of S. An 
drew, a worthy companion to its com 
peer, the Church of SS. Peter and Paul 
in Kanghwa City, ten miles to the north. 
In the city Mr. Badcock, assisted by the 
Sisters of S. Peter, remained in charge 
until he was recalled to England by 
family affairs in the summer of 1907. 
Bishop Turner then placed both halves 
of Kanghwa Island under the charge of 
Mr. Hillary, who was assisted by Mr. 
Wilson, as well as later on by Mr. Wes- 
ton, and shortly after the Sisters were 
removed to Suwon, leaving the women s 
work in Kanghwa to be taken in hand 
by Mrs. Hillary, who had originally come 
out as Miss Robinson to work with the 
Sisters in Seoul. 

In August, 1909, the work suffered a 
great blow in the death of Mrs. Hillary, 
but before long lady workers were found 
to take her place in the persons of Miss 
France, Miss Bourne, and Miss Borrow- 



80 The Church in Corea 

man, who all arrived during the year 1910. 
During these five years nearly a dozen 
chapelries were built in Kanghwa to serve 
districts some distance removed from the 
central Churches of SS. Peter and Paul 
and Andrew, and at On Su Tong very 
useful schools were opened for both boys 
and girls. The result of all this develop 
ment was that Kanghwa, which had started 
with two Christians in 1897, numbered at 
the time of Bishop Turner s death, in 1910, 
a roll of over 1,100 Christians, of whom 
about 750 were communicants, while the 
work had spread not only to neighbouring 
islands but to Tong-chin on the mainland 
to the east, and to Paikchun on the main 
land to the north. And in this latter place 
the work throve so well that on the arrival 
of Bishop Trollope, in 1911, it had to be 
created an independent station with a 
resident priest in charge. 

In Seoul, as heretofore, the Corean work 
continued to suffer from the constant 

change of priest and the burden- 
Progress in some necessity of duplicating 
1905-10. services for English and Corean 

worshippers. Both in Seoul and 
the surrounding country Mr. Gurney did 
some vigorous work during the years 
1906-8, at the end of which time he 



English Church Mission to Corea 81 

handed the charge on to Mr. Badcock. The 
women s work meanwhile was well looked 
after by the Sisters, whose little orphanage 
continued to thrive in the shadow of 
S. Peter s Mission House, under the ex 
cellent care of Sister Nora and Lay Sister 
Barbara ; but, for the reasons above given, 
so slow was the progress of the general 
Mission work in Seoul, as compared with 
the country districts, that at the time of 
Bishop Turner s death the total number 
of Gorean Christians was still under two 
hundred, with about fifty at Chemulpo, 
of whom also the priest in charge of Seoul 
had the oversight. 

It was while priest in charge of Seoul 
that Mr. Gurney undertook the series 
New Mission of missionary journeys to the 
Station at east and south of the capital 
jnChun, w hich finally resulted in the 
opening of the flourishing 
Mission centre at Chin Chun, some 
eighty miles to the south of Seoul. Here 
a property was acquired, and a tem 
porary church dedicated by Bishop Tur 
ner in the winter of 1907-8. But it 
was not until the end of the latter year 
that Mr. Gurney was able to take up 
his permanent residence there. Here 
too the work grew with great rapidity, 

M 



82 The Church in Corea 

and extended over a quite unmanageable 
area of country, necessitating the erec 
tion of a number of outlying chapelries. 
And by the time of Bishop Turner s death 
in 1910, the priest-in-charge was able to 
report a total of over 500 baptized persons, 
of whom over 400 were communicants. 

In the summer of 1910, Bishop Turner, 

whose constitution had never taken kindly 

to the climate of the Far East, 

Death of wag taken seriously ill, and after 

Bishop - ,. . . , 

Turner, some weeks ot lingering sickness 
in S. Luke s Hospital, Chemulpo, 
under the sympathetic care of Dr. and 
Mrs. Weir and their staff, he passed to 
his rest on the Feast of S. Simon and 
S. Jude, to the unfeigned grief of all both 
in and out of the Mission, and was laid to 
his rest in the Mission Cemetery at Yang- 
Wha chin near Seoul thus bringing 
another chapter of the Mission s history to 
a close. During the interregnum, Bishop 
Montgomery, Secretary of S.P.G., paid a 
brief visit to Corea, in the course of which 
he ordained Mr. Weston and Mr. Hewlett 
to the priesthood. And in the following 
May (1911) it was announced that the 
Archbishop of Canterbury had appointed 
the Rev. M. N. Trollope, then Vicar of St. 
Alban s, Birmingham, to be the new bishop. 



CHAPTER III 

jnglteb dburcb fBMssfon to 
Corea : present State anfc future 

prospects 

THIRD BISHOP MARK NAPIER TROLLOPE, 
Consecrated July 25, 1911. 

IN these latter days nothing changes so 
often and so rapidly as the "unchanging 
East." And Corea has now taken its place 

in the kaleidoscope. There is, 
Conditions, therefore, no exaggeration in 

saying that the consecration 
of Bishop Trollope coincided with a new 
epoch in the history both of the country 
and of the Mission. Politically Corea, 
after her long period of unrest, is settling 
down with as much good humour as she 
can muster under the dominion of her new 
masters the Japanese, and at least peace 
and order reign throughout the peninsula. 
At the same time the great religious effer 
vescence which had been such a marked 
feature of the first decade of the twentieth 
century has somewhat subsided. There 

83 



84 The Church in Corea 

is indeed some reason to fear that the 
widespread movement towards Chris 
tianity, which to a great extent coincided 
with Bishop Turner s episcopate, may be 
compensated for by an equally widespread 
reaction during the next decade. At any 
rate everything points to the immediate 
future being a time rather of strength 
ening stakes than of lengthening cords. 
Bishop Trollope inherits the fruits of 
Bishop s Gorfe s fifteen years of patient 
labour in laying foundations, and also the 
results reaped during the period of rapid 
extension, under his immediate predecessor 
Bishop Turner, whose soul God rest. 

Let us, therefore, consider first the 
problem as it presented itself to the new 
bishop, who has now spent nearly three 
years in making a first-hand acquaintance 
with every corner of his diocese, and then 
the materials which he has in hand for 
dealing with the problem. With regard 
to financial support it should be noted that 
in 1911 the S.P.G. annual grant was raised 
to 2,000. 

That Corea is as large as Great Britain, 
and boasts a population of fourteen mil 
lion inhabitants is little enough to our pre 
sent purpose. Nobody supposes that the 
Church of England is going to take in 



Present State and Future Prospects 85 

hand the conversion of the whole of Gorea 
single-handed any more than she is likely 
to compass a similarly impossible task in 
Africa, India, China, or Japan. Be this, 
however, as it may, she can certainly look 
forward to forming a very useful factor in 
the future Christianity of this and other 
similar countries if she makes the best 
use of the forces at her disposal. 

A glance at the map at the end of the 
book will show what is more to the 
point viz., that apart from its sporadic 
work among Japanese immigrants all over 
the country, the energies of the Mission do 
not extend beyond a periphery enclosed 
between the 36th and 38th degrees of lati 
tude North, and the 126th and 128th degrees 
of longitude East, practically co-extensive 
with the two central Do or provinces 
of Corea (Kyong-ki Do and Chung- 
Chong Do) with a population of about 
three millions. In other words, if Corea 
is about equal in size to Great Britain 
(England and Scotland), the English 
Church Mission is endeavouring to carry 
on a fairly concentrated work over an 
area roughly speaking equal to Wales, or 
the eastern counties of England beween 
the Humber and the Nore. Compara 
tively "concentrated," however, as the 



86 The Church in Corea 

work is, it is more than enough to exhaust 
the energies of the exiguous staff of clergy, 
at its best never numbering more than 
ten or twelve, at the bishop s disposal. 
Outside these limits, therefore, it would 
seem unwise for the Mission, at least 
under present circumstances, to wander. 
There is nothing gained by trying to cover 
the whole world with a thin layer of 
Anglicanism, whereas a pinch of such 
Catholic salt as an English Church Mis 
sion can provide may be of real service 
if applied within a judiciously limited 
area. 

Leaving on one side, then, for the present 
the fact that the bishop is confronted with 
a double-barrelled task, that of ministering 
to the native Coreans as well as the immi 
grant Japanese who are widely sundered 
both by difference of language and lack 
of racial sympathy we will confine our 
selves in the first instance to the work 
among the Coreans, who are after all the 
natives of the country, and of whom there 
are nearly fourteen millions, as compared 
with only two to three hundred thousand 
Japanese. The Corean Christians attached 
to the English Church Mission now (1915) 
amount to well over five thousand souls 
men, women, and children for the most 



Present State and Future Prospects 87 

part living in small villages scattered over 
the area above described. They are 
mostly dependent upon agriculture for 
their livelihood, and but slenderly pro 
vided with this world s goods. 

For purposes of diocesan administration 
it has been found necessary to divide them 
into seven mission districts, each with a 
resident priest in charge. These districts, 
called after the name of the central towns 
in which the priests in charge severally 
reside are as follows : 
1. Seoul (opened 1891), the capital, where 
for a variety of reasons our work has 
always been weakest, the Gorean 
Christians attached to this station at 
the present time barely numbering 
400 souls (225 communicants). An 
early endeavour should be made to 
amend this weakness, which reacts 
badly on our country work. Possibly 
the erection of a central church or 
"pro-cathedral " for which plans are 
now being prepared partly as a 
memorial to Bishop Turner together 
with a modest but adequate resi 
dence for the bishop and his "head 
quarters staff," may help to mitigate 
the extremely poor figure which the 
Mission at present cuts in the capital, 



88 The Church in Corea 

as well as to give our scattered coun 
try work the cohesion and support 
which it at present lacks. But plainly 
what is even more needed is more 
continuous and uninterrupted pastoral 
and evangelistic work than the 
single - handed priest - in charge, has 
ever yet been able to devote to 
the Gorean work in Seoul and its 
neighbourhood. The head -quarters 
of the Sisters of the Community of 
S. Peter are also located in Seoul, as 
well as the residence of the priest-in- 
charge of Japanese work, and that of 
the bishop and his chaplain, by whom 
regular English services are kept up 
in the "Church of the Advent" for 
the small English speaking com 
munity. 

2. Chemulpo (opened 1890), the sea 
port, distant about twenty-four miles 
from the capital, shares the weakness 
of the Corean work in Seoul. This 
is doubtless partly due to the fact that 
for eight years (1905-13) it had no 
resident priest-in-charge, and could 
only be served rather irregularly by 
visits from the bishop and clergy in 
Seoul. The number of Christians 
there all told does not amount to one 



Present State and Future Prospects 89 

hundred and fifty at present, but an 
improvement is hoped for now that a 
priest the Rev. Father Drake, S.S.M. 
has taken up his residence there, 
charged not only with the care of the 
poor, but also of the Christians in the 
smaller islands lying off the coast. 
His presence is the more called for 
as the chief hospital of the Mission 
(S. Luke s), founded in 1890, is located 
in Chemulpo, and provides many 
openings of work, and until last year 
the doctor has had perforce to do the 
work of lay-reader as well as medi 
cal officer. The little Church of 
S. Michael, Chemulpo, is used for 
Corean, Japanese, and English ser 
vices, and there is a resident Japanese 
catechist, for work amongst Japanese. 
3. Kanghwa (opened 1893), our oldest 
and most flourishing country station, 
about thirty-five miles north-west of 
Seoul, started with two Christians 1 
in 1897, and has now nearly 1,700, of 
whom close on 1,000 are communi 
cants. It boasts two handsome 
churches, both built in Corean style, 

1 Of these one died not long after his Baptism, the 
other, after seventeen years faithful service as a cate 
chist, was ordained to the diaconate, at the first ordina 
tion of native clergy, on Trinity Sunday, 1914. 



90 The Church in Corea 

one in Kanghwa City (SS. Peter and 
Paul), the other (S. Andrew) in the 
village of On Su Tong, some ten miles 
distant, besides ten or twelve out 
lying chapelries, which have to be 
served by the priest-in-charge, Mr. 
Gurney. There are small but good 
schools for boys and girls at On Su 
Tong, and a house accommodating 
two or three lady workers in the city. 
In 1914 there was started in tem 
porary buildings in Kanghwa City our 
college for training native clergy and 
catechists, under the care of Mr. 
Hodges, assisted by Mr. Smith, who 
give the otherwise single - handed 
priest-in-charge what help they can 
in his district work. 

4. Suwon (opened 1905) has its head 
quarters in the important provincial 
capital of that name, about twenty-five 
miles south-west of Seoul, with a 
station on the Seoul-Fusan railway. 
Mr. Bridle has been priest-in-charge 
ever since the work opened here. In 
Suwon itself there is a permanent 
brick church (S. Stephen), together 
with the branch house of the Sisters 
of the Community of S. Peter, an 
orphanage which is under their care, 



Present State and Future Prospects 91 

and important boys and girls schools. 
The work spread so rapidly down the 
railway line and into the next province 
that in 1911 it became necessary to cut 
off this lower half, and form it into a 
separate district, with its head-quarters 
at Chun-an, referred to below. The 
priest-in-charge of Suwon, however, 
who alone of all the clergy had for a 
short period an assistant-priest, has still 
eight outlying and widely scattered 
village chapelries to serve, as well as 
the church in Suwon itself, with a 
total flock of nearly 900 Christians, 
including 600 communicants. 
5. Chin Chun (opened in 1907 by Mr. 
Gurney), is our most distant station, 
and serves a large straggling district, 
some 80 to 100 miles south of Seoul, 
with about a dozen outlying chapel 
ries, in addition to the temporary 
Church of S. Paul at the central 
station. There are just over 1,000 
Christians in this district, of whom 
rather over 500 are communicants. 
An important hospital and dispen 
sary were opened in the Mission com 
pound here by Dr. A. F. Laws in 
1909, and these are doing excellent 
work. 



92 The Church in Corea 

6. Chun=an, which was cut off from Su- 

won in 1911, lies directly south of the 
Suwon district, and directly west of 
Chin Chun. No central station has 
yet been created, and the priest-in- 
charge resides at present with the 
priest-in-charge of Chin Chun, being 
thus ten or twelve miles from his 
nearest chapelry and over fifty miles 
from the most distant He has ten 
scattered chapelries to serve, with a 
constituency of over 600 Christians, 
of whom 400 are communicants. As 
soon as it is possible to provide him 
and the priest-in-charge of Chin Chun 
with assistant-priests, a central Mission 
station for this district should be erected 
at or near Chun-an, an important sta 
tion on the Seoul-Fusan railway, about 
sixty miles from Seoul and thirty-five 
from Suwon on the same line. 

7. Paikchun, about sixty miles north 

west of Seoul, lies on the mainland to 
the north of Kanghwa, from which it 
was originally served, having been 
made a separate district only in 1912, 
owing to the growth of the work and 
the difficulty of access. There is 
usually a priest-in-charge, who has 
flock of over 250 Christians (of whom 



Present State and Future Prospects 93 

150 are communicants) and a temporary 
church in the central station dedicated 
to All Saints, with a small house for 
two or three lady workers adjoining. 
As an experiment a hospital and dis 
pensary were opened here by Dr. 
Nancy Borrow in 1912. But, although 
they did an excellent work for a year 
and a half, they had to be closed in 
1914, when Dr. Borrow who had 
recently been joined by Nurse Cars- 
well took the place of Dr. Laws (on 
furlough) at Chin Chun. 
Now the first thing to be remarked about 
the above is that, in almost every case, the 
priest-in-charge is single-handed. 
f And this is P lain ly an intolerable 



cergy. 

state of affairs ; intolerable for 

the priest, who is almost bound to break 
down under the strain of loneliness and 
the heavy responsibility imposed upon 
him ; and intolerable for the people, who, 
as the priest must be always on his rounds, 
cannot count on finding services maintained 
and the means of grace accessible at the 
central church and who, in the not im 
probable event of the priest s break-down 
through illness, or of his absence on fur 
lough or holiday, are deprived of every 
thing. Of course, we recognize that the 



94 The Church in Corea 

Church at home cannot reasonably be 
expected to go on for an unlimited time 
providing English pastors for the flocks 
which, with the help of God, we have 
gathered together in Gorea. They must 
look forward to being shepherded and 
ministered to as soon as possible by priests 
of their own race. But the Church in 
Gorea is yet very young, and the Church 
at home (which holds the purse-strings 
and controls the supply of men) only just 
made it possible in 1914 for us to make 
a beginning in training native catechists 
and clergy. And if that training is to be 
long enough and sound enough to be worth 
much, we are not likely to have many 
native priests at work for five or six years 
to come, at the earliest ; and by that time 
all the priests in charge of stations will 
have sunk into early graves, if they are 
to be allowed to carry on their work 
single-handed. 

In 1913, therefore, a scheme was put 
forth in which the bishop said that, if the 
Church at home would allow him now, 
once and for all, to staff his six stations 
(counting Seoul and Chemulpo as one) 
adequately by placing three priests in 
each, he did not think that, barring acci 
dents of ill health and death, the Church 



Present State and Future Prospects 95 

in Gorea need ever trouble the Church at 
home again for men ! And to this he 
adheres, as he is confident that, with such 
a staff, he could well " hold the fort " until 
the training college began to put forth its 
native priests, when the European clergy 
could be set free to open up fresh work in 
districts of Gorea as yet untouched. He 
asks for three in each station, because he 
regards it as of the first importance that 
the worship of God should be steadily 
maintained and the means of grace readily 
accessible, year in and year out, at all the 
central churches, without in any way 
hindering the constant visitation of the 
outlying chapelries. And two in a station 
is not really very much better (though it 
is, of course, better) than one ; as in the 
event of sickness or furlough the staff is 
reduced to one again, and most probably 
the work in some other station has to be 
dislocated to supply the need. Still, if 
three per station cannot be attained, at 
least let it be two. 

Chemulpo, with its more circumscribed 
area and its chances of being supported 
from Seoul, can conceivably be left single- 
handed ; but in every other station the 
staff ought to be raised without delay to 
two, or, preferably, to three. If the 



96 The Church in Corea 

latter were possible, it would mean (still 
leaving the Japanese work out of count) 
an addition of ten priests to the existing 
staff of eleven of whom two are detached 
for training-college work whereas an 
addition of five would enable us just to 
supply each priest-in-charge with one 
colleague. If the Church at home can 
brace herself to the bigger task, it is likely 
to be the last time she is troubled on the 
point by the Church in Corea. If she can 
only manage the lesser effort, she must be 
content to listen to repeated "appeals for 
men " from Corea as elsewhere. 

This brings us to the question of the 
Native Ministry and the very important 
The Native consideration as to how it is to 
Ministry: be supported. The bishop be- 
the Finance ii eves that he has his clergy 

Problem. , , . . i 

with him in saying that it 
would be disastrous for the native Church 
in Corea to begin by relying, as is done in 
so many other Missions, on annual grants 
from S.P.G. or other home sources for 
the maintenance of the native clergy. 

Simultaneously, therefore, with the 
opening of the Training College for Clergy 
and Catechists, the bishop addressed to 
the priests-in-charge of stations a letter 
in which he called their attention to 



Present State and Future Prospects 97 

the point that, while the creation of a 
native ministry is the primary need of the 
Church in Gorea at the present moment, 
it will be fruitless to spend time, money, 
and labour in preparing men for the minis 
try, if there are to be no funds available 
for their maintenance after ordination. 
Our people must learn from the outset 
that all Christians are bound to contri 
bute, according to their means, to these 
three objects : 

(o) Church expenses : i. e. , repairs, thatch 
ing, papering, furnishing, warming, 
and lighting of churches and chapels, 
together with the cost of the bread 
and wine, candles, incense, and 
other necessaries or accessories of 
public worship, and the provision, 
repair, and washing of necessary 
ornaments, vessels, vestments, and 
linen (except so far as these last 
four items are provided by private 
benefaction). 

(A) The relief of the poor and needy. 
(c) The maintenance of the ministry, to 
which may be added special collec 
tions and contributions for 
(</) Church and chapel building, support of 

schools, missionary work, etc. 
Our people being very poor, their 



98 The Church in Corea 

present " collections " and free-will offer 
ings barely suffice to cover the first head, 
while special "gatherings" are occasion 
ally made to meet the needs comprised 
under the second and fourth. And for 
many years to come special gifts of vessels, 
vestments, linen, and other "ornaments" 
will be welcome and well bestowed on 
those who do so much for themselves. 
But in the meanwhile they have by some 
means or another to be encouraged to 
add to their present offerings, adequate 
contributions to a fund for the mainten 
ance of native clergy. 

And it seems to the bishop that this 
work will best be done by something 
corresponding to the ancient systems of 
"tithe" and "glebe," that is to say, that 
the clergy should be partly supported out 
of free-will offerings made yearly, and 
partly out of invested capital or endow 
ment. Let us assume, therefore, that the 
Church at home will continue to make 
herself responsible for : 

1. The maintenance of all English clergy 

and other workers of " foreign" birth 
whom she sends to Gorea. 

2. The maintenance (as hitherto) of the 

existing unordained and untrained 
native catechists, who will be gradu- 



Present State and Future Prospects 99 

ally reduced in number as their places 
are taken by ordained clergy of native 
birth. 

3. The actual cost of training candidates 
for the ministry and (where necessary) 
of maintaining them during training. 
The native Church, relieved from 
anxiety on these points, has to address 
herself to the task of raising sufficient 
funds to maintain her native clergy after 
ordination. 

The bishop and his clergy in consultation 
with the faithful will have to settle what 
will be an appropriate and adequate 
salary for a native priest. Whatever 
that sum may be (and it is not likely to 
be much under 30 a year), the bishop 
will not agree to ordain any native to 
the diaconate and priesthood where this 
.minimum is not ensured, nor will he, 
except under exceptional circumstances, 
agree to license or appoint any native 
pastor (deacon or priest) to any district 
which cannot provide by yearly contribu 
tions a fair proportion (say two-thirds) of 
the yearly income thus required. This 
will be in the nature of a yearly "tithe." 
To meet the balance (say one-third) he 
proposes to raise a Diocesan Endowment 
Fund (answering to "glebe"), the income 



100 The Church in Corea 

of which may be used to bring the salary 
up to the required figure. In the more 
populous and more well-to-do districts, 
however, it is hoped that less and less 
reliance will be placed on the Diocesan 
Fund, thus setting it free for the smaller 
and poorer districts. 

In order to make a beginning with this 
Diocesan Fund, the bishop issued instruc 
tions that each district should begin in 
Advent, 1913, raising a quota (based on 
the number of communicants), which is 
to be remitted to him quarterly or yearly, 
and for the present to be invested by 
him on behalf of the fund. Each priest 
is informed what the quota of his district 
is, and consults with the leaders of the 
native congregation as to the best way 
of meeting their liability. The money 
so raised year by year will be invested 
until any candidates are ready for ordina 
tion, and be increased by such other sums 
as the bishop is able to raise from other 
sources for the Diocesan Endowment 
Fund. 

As soon as a deacon or priest is ready 
for ordination and appointment, any 
district which is raising a quota amount 
ing to two-thirds or more of the salary 
decided on for a native minister may 



Present State and Future Prospects 101 

claim the use of so much of their yearly 
quota as is necessary to pay the minister 
two-thirds of his salary, while still con 
tinuing to contribute the balance to the 
Diocesan Fund out of which the remain 
ing one-third will be met. This scheme 
has already been started, and as it is 
unlikely that any native ministers will be 
ready for appointment for some years 
there is good reason to hope that, by 
that time, the Diocesan Endowment Fund, 
fed by these yearly contributions and 
increased by special gifts and benefactions, 
will be strong enough to meet the demands 
made upon it, while the people will have 
formed the habit of regularly contributing 
to the Clergy Sustentation Fund. 

A word now as to the Training College, 

which began in 1914, in a very humble 

and tentative way in the old 

he . . x mission-house in Kanghwa City 

I raining f * 

College, (now not required for the resi 
dence of the priest-in-charge of 
the district), under the charge of Mr. Cecil 
Hodges, assisted by Mr. Stanley Smith. 
The two first students were our two oldest 
and most respected catechists, of whom 
one is the first adult who ever received 
baptism at the hands of the Mission clergy. 
Standing in a special position as they did, 



102 The Church in Corea 

they were ordained on Trinity Sunday, 
1914, if not exactly per saltum, at least 
with a far shorter and less exacting course 
of training than will be required of the 
ordinary students ; and as one is being re 
tained for service as assistant tutor in the 
college, and the other attached to the 
personal staff of the bishop for diocesan 
use, and not to any particular locality, the 
question of their support need not con 
travene the general regulations set forth 
above. Meanwhile the priests in charge 
of the several districts had prepared a 
small list of the more suitable young men 
of their acquaintance for entry as ordinary 
students into the college at Easter, 1914. 
These will have a course extending over 
some years, in the middle of which they 
will be sent out for a year or more s 
practical work as "reader" or possibly 
" subdeacon," under the eye of one or 
other of the priests in charge, returning 
later, if suitable, to continue their course 
and prepare for Holy Orders. Moreover, 
each year, beginning with this autumn, 
the existing untrained catechists will be 
brought up to the college for a " summer" 
or " autumn school " of two or three 
months duration, the authorities of the 
college being at liberty to retain and 



Present State and Future Prospects 103 

draft into the class of theological students 
any who are in their judgement suited 
for the purpose. And there can be little 
doubt that out of the ranks of these 
deserving men, who have for years past 
borne the burden and heat of the day, 
some at least (D.V.) will find their way 
into the ranks of the ministry. 

After the men, the women. What is 

the Mission doing or proposing to do 

about women workers ? For it 

Native mu st never be forgotten that the 

Women . _ 

Workers, primary reason tor the presence 
of "foreign" workers in the 
Mission field is not that they (anyhow 
after the first few years) should do the 
work themselves, but that they should 
fit and prepare natives of the country to 
be missionaries to their own people. 

It is now over twenty-one years since 
the first Sisters of the Community of 
S. Peter, five in number, arrived in 
Gorea. Of these five, two are still at 
work there, one was invalided home 
after seventeen years service, and two 
died at their posts. Since those early 
days five others have arrived, bringing 
their number up to seven. In the absence 
of trained workers it was necessary that 
much in the early years should be done 



104 The Church in Corea 

by the Sisters themselves, and as they 
could not compass the whole work, other 
women workers have thrown in their lot 
with the Mission, and four of these (apart 
from those attached to the hospitals or 
working on the Japanese side) are still in 
Gorea, working chiefly in the Kanghwa 
and Paikchun districts. 

Probably each of the priests would gladly 
welcome the presence of a body of Sisters 
or other women resident and working in 
this district. The expense alone, however, 
of such a course would be practically 
prohibitive. Even more than for the men, 
it is necessary to have women living in 
threes together, so that in the event of 
illness or furlough removing one, it need 
not be necessary to remove the other also. 
But there is not the slightest chance of the 
Mission being financially in a position to 
provide even modest salaries and build 
houses for groups of women workers in 
each of our stations. Moreover, the 
larger the "foreign" staff and the bigger 
the "foreign" plant, the more natural 
the conviction on the part of the Corean, 
that the presence of the "foreign" mis 
sionary is an essential and permanent 
factor in the life of the Church. 

In the early days of any Mission a 



Present State and Future Prospects 105 

considerable "foreign" element is neces 
sary, but it requires to be kept in the 
background as much as possible, and 
to be withdrawn bit by bit, as time 
goes on, and the Goreans realize that 
the Church is their Church, and that 
they have to learn to stand upon their 
own feet, and not to be interminably 
" spoon-fed " by the foreign priest and 
women workers. 

It is hoped, therefore, that while for 
some years to come we must continue to 
rely on the direct activity of our Sisters 
and women workers, in the near future 
the Sisters, instead of doing so much work 
directly with their own hands, will be able 
both to train and help the order of un 
trained "Bible women," upon whom we 
have at present to rely, and also to create 
a small band of trained and disciplined 
women, who will live under the shadow 
of S. Peter s Community, busy in Church 
needlework, washing, and similar tasks, 
and ready at all times to assist the Sisters 
and other ladies in their work of teaching 
and training either by travelling about the 
country with them or by taking classes in 
the head-quarters house under their super 
vision. The little Orphanage which the 
Sisters have carried on for years may 



106 The Church in Corea 

produce one or two such (though the 

most probable fate of those brought up 

there is to become wives and mothers), 

and any school work that the Sisters may 

be able to carry on for girls would 

naturally have this as one of its objects. 

The Mission, now that it is face to face 

with this task of training native men and 

women workers, is feeling acutely 

aidonal ^ ^ ac ^ ^ any educational plant 
Work, of any size. Small schools for 
boys and girls we have in Kang- 
hwa, Suwon, Chin Chun, Chun-an, and 
Paikchun districts, but not on any suffi 
cient scale. And now that the Japanese 
Government is undertaking the work of 
education in Corea, it is not too much to 
say that, while they show no desire to 
suppress existing schools, they offer no 
very effusive welcome to any new venture. 
Indeed it has now been publicly and 
officially stated that the Government only 
tolerates mission and other private schools, 
pending the completion of its own edu 
cational system. More and more, there 
fore, our educational efforts will have to 
take the form of making all possible use 
of the Government schools by providing 
hostels for our own children to live in, 
and confining ourselves, so far as special 



Present State and Future Prospects 107 

schools are concerned, to our Clergy 
Training College and Institute for training 
women workers under the Sisters. For 
the latter we have no pledged support 
at all, for the former only the interest 
on a grant of 3,000 from the Pan-Anglican 
Offering Fund (amounting at the outside 
to 180 a year), and a small number of 
studentships generously granted by the 
S.P.C.K. and other friends. 

It remains to say a word about our 
hospital work, which has formed such 

Hospitals a P romment P art f tne Mission s 
activities, ever since Bishop 
Corfe started out with the motto, "Preach 
the Kingdom of God and heal the sick," 
and persuaded his old sailor friends to 
help him to such good purpose to carry 
out the latter part of the injunction. What 
has been said above about schools is also 
true to a certain extent about hospitals, 
now that the Japanese have taken com 
plete control of the country. Still, there 
is no reason why we should give up 
attempting to fulfil both sides of our 
Lord s commission. 

Our chief hospital venture is now, and 
has been for years, in Chemulpo, where 
the Hospital of S. Luke has made a name 
for itself, and built up a work under the 



108 The Church in Corea 

able supervision of Dr. Weir and his staff, 
which no competition on the part of the 
Government or any one else seems likely 
to affect. Only second to this is the 
splendid hospital and dispensary work 
which Dr. A. F. Laws has built up in 
more recent years in our most remote 
Mission station at Chin Chun. And there 
seems no reason why both these institu 
tions should not have a long life before 
them. What has become plain is that the 
work of the Chemulpo Hospital is far more 
than one doctor can manage, and that now 
we have a third doctor in the person of 
Dr. Nancy Borrow it will be our wisest 
policy to put two to work together as soon 
as possible, and thus make S. Luke s Hos 
pital, with its men s and women s wards, 
a stronger centre than ever ; and at the 
same time mitigate, if not wholly obviate, 
the difficulty arising from absences on fur 
lough or holiday or in consequence of 
illness. 

We must now turn to consider the other 
side of the Mission s activity, viz., the work 

among the Japanese. Always 
the jL^ese. highly important, owing to the 

proximity of Japan and the 
growing influence of the Japanese, that 
importance has become enormously en- 




JAPANESE WORKERS AT CHEMULPO. 



Page 1 08 



Present State and Future Prospects 109 

hanced now that Corea has been abso 
lutely annexed as a dependency to the 
Japanese Empire, while the number of 
Japanese resident in Corea has gradually 
increased until the census shows that it 
exceeds a quarter of a million souls. It 
ought indeed to be accounted for right 
eousness to the English Church Mission in 
Corea that, unlike the other Missions in 
the country, from the outset it kept the 
importance of this work in view, and did 
its best to minister to the spiritual needs of 
Japanese immigrants, among whom, of 
course, were found from time to time 
some who had entered the fold of the 
Church in Japan. It is probably, how 
ever, true that quite fifty per cent, of 
the Japanese members of the Church 
in Corea of whom there are now over 
three hundred owe their conversion and 
their Baptism, under God, to the clergy 
and their workers labouring in connection 
with the English Church Mission in that 
country. 

The work is very difficult, owing to its 
sporadic character Japanese being now 
found in every corner of the country 
and to the fact that so many of the immi 
grants are " birds of passage," constantly 
moving about from place to place, and then 



110 The Church in Corea 

returning to their native land. Moreover, 
the Japanese language being totally distinct 
from that of Gorea to say nothing of racial 
differences it has been inevitable hitherto 
that the two sides of the work should 
grow up side by side, finding their only 
point of contact in the person of the bishop. 
Nor, although the Japanese authorities 
are making every endeavour to force 
the spread of the Japanese language in 
Gorea, does there seem to be any imme 
diate prospect of these two sections of the 
Christian family being able to worship 
together still less to take any common 
synodical action. The bishop hopes in 
deed that before very long it may be pos 
sible to print the Prayer Book and other 
works of devotion and instruction in use 
in the Church in Corea, in parallel columns 
of Corean and Japanese, and, when the 
new "pro-cathedral " is built in Seoul, to 
arrange for all our Christians to worship 
within the same four walls if not at the 
same time, and for the chief Eucharist 
to be sung in Corean and Japanese on 
alternate Sundays. At present, not only 
do the Coreans and Japanese worship in 
entirely separate buildings in Seoul, but it 
is impossible to avoid drawing on Japan 
both for our Japanese liturgical and other 



Present State and Future Prospects 111 

literature, and also which is far more 
important for the bulk of our workers 
among the Japanese. This naturally en 
courages a tendency among our Japanese 
Christians, although they have been con 
spicuously loyal hitherto, to be constantly 
looking across the Straits of Tsushima for 
their inspiration and for the centre of their 
spiritual life ; and it will obviously require 
great circumspection to prevent the cleav 
age between the two sides of the work 
from hardening into a positive schism, as 
time goes on. The difficulty is not made 
less by the fact that our Japanese work, 
except in Seoul and Chemulpo in each 
of which places the Mission maintains a 
Japanese catechist lies in districts remote 
from those in which our Corean work is 
centred, being strongest in Fusan and other 
places in the southern provinces. 

Meanwhile all concerned agree that 
Mission work among the Japanese in 
Corea away from their own homes is 
far more hopeful and encouraging than 
in Japan itself, and we are thankful to 
be able to record a steady but slow growth 
all along the line. What is imperatively 
needed is another English priest to share 
with the present priest the oversight 
of this important work ; and two, if not 



112 The Church in Corea 

three, more Japanese priests who will do 
in Ping Yang, Gensan, and elsewhere, the 
same excellent work that the Rev. A. N. 
Shiozaki has been doing since 1910 in 
Fusan, where he has been ably seconded 
by Miss Grosjean and Miss Elrington. 

Closely allied with this question is the 
constitutional future of the Church in 
Corea. At present it forms 
an autonomous missionary 
diocese directly dependent on 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and lying 
between the highly-organized Church of 
Japan on one side and the Church of 
China on the other. It is quite certain 
that any proposals for merging the Church 
in Corea with the Church of Japan 
which is also to be deprecated for other 
reasons would be strongly resented by 
our Corean Christians, and put a great 
strain upon their loyalty. 

Happily the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland with its three mutually 
independent but sister Churches of Eng 
land, Scotland, and Ireland, provides us 
with a model, while the attempts made 
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
to override the independence of the 
Churches of Scotland and Ireland, and to 
direct their affairs from England, provide 



Present State and Future Prospects 113 



us also with a warning. Meanwhile, it 
must be remembered that, both from the 
point of view of area and of the number 
of Christians, Gorea is already as much 
entitled to two or three bishops as Japan 
is to six or seven. There is every reason, 
therefore, why, as the native ministry 
becomes a fait accompli, Gorea should look 
forward to becoming a separate, if small 
province, with a distinct individuality and 
organization of its own as complete at 
least as that of the Province of York 
(which until the Reformation comprised 
only three dioceses), if not as those of the 
Churches of Ireland and Scotland. 

Of the home organization of the English 
Church Mission to Corea the salient 

feature is that it is a child of 
Organization. the S.P.G., which since the 

foundation of the Mission in 
1889 has supplied the block grants, and 
thus provided the backbone of the Mission 
finance. . Bishop Corfe founded shortly 
after his consecration an Association of 
Prayer and Work for Corea, with but one 
rule that of daily prayer for Foreign 
Missions of the Church and with no 
obligatory subscription. Incidentally, 
however, the association which has now 
a large membership, raises a considerable 



114 The Church in Corea 

sum of money which, with contributions 
from other sources, is held by the S.P.G. 
as a "Special Fund" for Gorea. 

An organization of Bishop Gorfe s naval 
friends, known as the Hospital Naval 
Fund, under the patronage of His Majesty 
King George, has ever since the inception 
of the Mission contributed largely to the 
hospital and medical work, in which (as 
well as in educational matters) the S.P.G.K. 
has also constantly given generous help. 

An association of friends of the Com 
munity of S. Peter, known as the S. Peter s 
Foreign Mission Association, supplies the 
funds for the maintenance of the Sisters in 
Gorea, and smaller associations known as 
the "Education Fund" and the "Chil 
dren s Fund " have given considerable 
help to our schools and orphanage. 

The home affairs of the Mission are 
managed by a council and an executive 
committee, of which the Lord Bishop of 
London and C. G. Napier Trollope, Esq., 
are respectively chairmen. The bishop s 
commissaries are the Rev. Canon Deedes, 
Vicar of S. John the Divine, Kennington ; 
the Rev. Canon Ottley, Canon of Christ 
Church, Oxford ; and the Rev. H. Mosley, 
Rector of Hackney. The organizing 
secretary of the Mission is the Rev. S. J. 



Present State and Future Prospects 115 

Ghilds Clarke, 5 Amen Court, S. Paul s 
Cathedral, E.G. The magazine of the 
Mission, known as Morning Calm, is pub 
lished quarterly (3d.) by Messrs. Spottis- 
woode & Co., a "letter leaflet" with a 
communication from the bishop, and heads 
of Intercession being published in the 
intervening months. 



CHAPTER IV 

tber Christian (UMesions in (Torea 

AH the preceding pages are intended to 
deal mainly with the history and 
prospects of the English Church Mission 
in Corea, it has not been thought well to 
cumber the course of the narrative with 
remarks about other Christian Missions in 
the country. It would, however, be most 
unfair and most misleading to leave the 
reader under the impression that the 
English Church stands alone, or even 
stands first, in the endeavour to bring the 
Gospel to the inhabitants of this ancient 
"hermit kingdom." Here, as in India, 
China, Japan, Africa, and practically 
everywhere else, the English Church 
finds herself, whether she likes it or not, 
associated in her missionary endeavours 
with powerful Roman Catholic Missions 
(mostly French) on the one hand, and 
vigorous Presbyterian, Methodist, and 
other Protestant Missions (mostly emanat 
ing from America) on the other, while in 
Corea, as in China, and still more markedly 

116 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 117 

in Japan, the Russian Orthodox Church 
also puts in an appearance as one of the 
evangelizing forces of the world. Of the 
bearing of all this on the burning question 
of the future unity of Christendom, a few 
words will be said at the close of this 
chapter. 

But first let us face the facts facts which 
will force us to realize yet once again that 
the Church of England in Corea, as in 
Central Africa, and elsewhere, can only 
hope to contribute one element or factor 
(and possibly not even the predominant 
one) to the future Christianity of the 
country, and that it is, therefore, of 
supreme importance to see to it that that 
element or factor is a sound one. 

Corea is unlike most of the countries of 

Eastern Asia in this, that she had to wait 

until the nineteenth century 

The Gospel was we u advanced before the 

first reaches _> . 

Gorea. nrst European missionary set 

foot on her shores to wit 
Mgr. Imbert, a brave French bishop, who 
succeeded in landing there in 1837 and 
who, with his two assistant priests, two 
years later paid for his temerity with his 
life. But the story of the manner in which 
the way had been already prepared for 
the advent of the Gospel, without ap- 



118 The Church in Corea 

parently any human effort being made in 
that direction, is surely unique, and ranks 
high among the great romances of the 
missionary life of the Church. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth 
century when Gorea was, like Jericho, 
" straitly shut up," so that "none came 
out and none went in," and when the old 
Roman Catholic Missions in China had 
been brought to their lowest ebb by the 
suppression of the Jesuits and the general 
upset in Europe consequent on the French 
Revolution the first seeds of the Gospel 
were wafted to Corea by the Spirit of 
God, Who "bloweth where He listeth." 
Only once a year in those early days was 
communication with the outside world 
possible, and that was on the occasion of 
the yearly tribute embassy which carried 
the compliments of the King of Corea to 
his suzerain the Emperor of China, 
holding his Court in the great metropolis 
of Peking, roughly speaking a thousand 
miles away. 

This yearly embassy provided an oppor 
tunity for a considerable interchange of 
commodities between the two countries, 
and on one occasion, towards the end of 
the eighteenth century, it appears that 
some fragmentary treatises on the Christian 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 119 

religion found their way into Corea among 
the baggage of the envoys or their 
attendants, on the return journey. This 
literature, which presumably consisted of 
some of the works published by the old 
Jesuit Missions in China, fell into the 
hands of a small party of literati, who had 
retired, as the Corean literati of those 
days were fond of retiring, for purposes 
of study and recreation, into some moun 
tain retreat, during the period of the great 
summer heat. And they were so pleased 
with what they read that, having passed 
on the good news to others, they proceeded 
before long to organize a sort of Church 
among themselves and their friends, ap 
pointing the observance of every seventh 
day as a holy day, administering the 
Sacraments of Baptism, and (it is said) 
even Penance and the Eucharist, and 
going so far, according to some accounts, 
as to set apart some of their number as 
priests and bishops ! 

Some years elapsed before it was possible 
to get into any sort of touch with the 
Franciscan Mission, then carrying on the 
work which the Jesuits had left behind 
them in Peking. But at length one of 
these neophytes, or would-be neophytes, 
succeeded in getting himself appointed to 



120 The Church in Corea 

some post on the yearly embassy, and after 
being properly instructed and baptized, 
was sent back to his native land, with a 
supply of religious books and objets de piete, 
backed by a promise that a priest should 
be sent to Corea as soon as possible. So 
great, however, were the difficulties of 
the missionaries in China in those days 
that for close upon half a century the 
would-be Church of Corea, "without 
father and without mother," had to 
struggle on as best it could, without even 
the ministry of a priest, saving for one 
short period of seven years (1794 to 1801), 
during which a Chinese priest, dispatched 
from Peking, managed to exercise his 
ministry among the Coreans in the strictest 
secrecy ere earning the martyr s crown. 

In spite of persecution, however, the 
number of Christians and would-be Chris 
tians grew, until at length (in 
Roman jgjjj the urged the famous 

Catholic _, /. , , 

Missions. Parisian Societe des Missions Etran- 
geres to undertake a Mission in 
Corea, and the first vicar-apostolic, Mgr. 
Bragniere, was consecrated. So jealously, 
however, were the frontiers of Corea 
closed against all foreign intercourse that 
he died without ever reaching his sphere 
of labour ; and it was, as already stated, 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 121 

not until 1837 that the first European 
missionary, Mgr. Imbert, succeeded in 
effecting an entry into the country. Of 
his speedy death we have already spoken ; 
and those who would read more in detail 
the romantic story of the endeavours made 
by him and his successors and their col 
leagues, first to enter the country and then 
to carry on their ministry therein, must be 
referred to the pages of Pere Dallett s 
entrancing Histoire de FEglise de Coree. 

During a period of nearly thirty years 
the work of the Mission gradually grew, 
in the face of the most appalling difficulties, 
and then in 1866 partly as an echo of 
political complications between the Chinese 
Empire and the European powers at that 
date a bloody persecution broke out in 
Gorea. In this the French vicar-apostolic 
and his coadjutor, together with seven 
priests, were brutally put to death ; while 
the three remaining members of the mis 
sion staff succeeded in at length escaping 
from the country, which was literally 
deluged with the blood of thousands of 
native Christians. Unhappily, the French 
Government of the day attempted a puni 
tive expedition ; and it is difficult to say 
whether the course of Christianity suffered 
more from the fact that the expedition 



122 The Church in Corea 

ended in a disastrous fiasco or from the 
fact that the native Christians and sur 
viving missionaries acted as spies and 
guides on behalf of the invading force, 
thus lending colour to the suspicion ever 
present to Oriental minds of the political 
character of Christian Missions. In any 
case, the French expedition retired in- 
gloriously, and the French missionaries 
had to wait until the closed doors of the 
"hermit kingdom " were forced open, the 
result, some ten years later, of the joint 
action of Japan and the European powers, 
before it was possible for them effectively 
to recommence their apostolate in Corea. 

During the last thirty years or more, 
however, they have been vigorously at 
work again ; and their converts may prob 
ably be estimated at not less than eighty 
thousand. The Roman Catholic Church 
in Corea has, however, never yet advanced 
beyond the missionary stage, nor have the 
authorities of that Church ever erected 
here or in China a "territorial hierarchy " 
of diocesan bishops, such as has been set 
up, for instance, in India, or more recently 
in Japan. Since its inception the work of 
the Roman Catholic Mission in Corea has 
been superintended by a "vicar-apostolic," 
that is, a missionary bishop who takes his 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 123 

title from an extinct diocese in partibus 
infidelium, of which he is nominally pre 
late. Quite recently his labours have been 
lightened by the division of the vicariate, 
and the appointment of a second vicar- 
apostolic, Mgr. Demange, who superin 
tends the Missions in the south of the 
country, while the original prelate, Mgr. 
Mutel, retains the superintendence of the 
Missions in the centre and the north. The 
total staff of priests attached to the two 
vicariates must now amount to about 
seventy, of whom the greater number 
are French, although since 1896, when 
the first ordinations took place, the native 
priesthood has been gradually growing in 
strength. 

The work of the French bishops and 
clergy is ably seconded by the Sisters of 
S. Paul, whose mother house is at Char- 
tres, in France, and who have met with 
some success in introducing the "religious 
life" among the women and girls of the 
country, and now count a considerable 
number of native sisters and novices. 

In more recent years a colony of Bavarian 
Benedictine monks has been established in 
Seoul, with the view of devoting itself 
chiefly to the work of industrial and tech 
nical education among the Goreans. The 



124 The Church in Corea 

last decade or so has also witnessed the 
erection of rather ambitious-looking for 
eign-built churches in Seoul, Chemulpo, 
and some other centres of population. 

But such laurels as the French mission 
aries have won, apart from their directly 
spiritual work, are hardly so much due to 
their architectural efforts as to the splendid 
pioneer works illustrative of the history 
and language of Corea, such as their great 
(but now rather antiquated) Dictionnaire 
Coreen Franqais and Grammaire Coreene, 
and Pere Dallet s already quoted Histoire 
de I Eglise de Coree, which have formed 
the (not always acknowledged) foundation 
on which most subsequent writers on the 
country have based their literary edifices. 

Of Protestant Missions, the oldest of 

which dates from about 1884, the most 

powerful are those of the 

Presbyte- Presbyterians (mainly Ameri- 

nans and 

Methodists, can, though supported by 
Canadian and Australian auxi 
liaries) and the " Episcopal Methodists," 
which are wholly American in origin. 
Between them they now probably num 
ber nearly as many baptized converts 
as the Roman Catholics, say seventy-five 
thousand, of whom, roughly speaking, 
two-thirds may be assigned to the Presby- 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 125 

terians and one-third to the Methodists. 
Both are very generously supplied with 
men and money from America, and it 
is hardly too much to say that they can 
between them put two hundred mission 
aries in the field, when the English 
Church Mission can put twenty. The 
Presbyterian Mission in particular, how 
ever, has set a splendid example in 
teaching its Christians the lesson of self- 
support, and in encouraging them to rely 
less and less on funds contributed from 
foreign countries, and more and more on 
themselves. 

From the outset both the Methodists 
and Presbyterians have maintained a 
vigorous medical and educational work, 
the latter of which has been of great 
value in enabling them to place a native 
pastorate on the field. And the credit, such 
as it is, of having translated the whole of 
the Old and New Testaments into Corean 
(now printed and published by the British 
and Foreign Bible Society) must be given 
almost wholly to the members of the 
Presbyterian and Methodist Missions. 
The translation is very unequal, and will 
bear a good deal of revision ; but it is 
a creditable performance to have suc 
ceeded in carrying it through at all. 



126 The Church in Corea 

The most vigorous and flourishing of 
the Presbyterian and Methodist Missions 
are perhaps to be found in Ping- Yang 
and the neighbourhood, some two hundred 
miles north of Seoul. And it was in the 
main in this district that the extraordinary 
" revival " took place some seven or eight 
years ago, of which so much has been 
made in a good deal of recent missionary 
literature. 

Of the smaller Protestant Missions, such 

as those of the Salvation Army and the 

Seventh Day Adventists, opened 

Other m mO re recent years, there is 

Protestant , . . 

Missions, not much to chronicle except 
their existence. But any con 
spectus of missionary effort would be 
incomplete which did not include a refer 
ence to the work, largely of a social and 
educational character, of the Y.M.G.A., 
housed as it is in magnificent premises 
in Seoul, which are the gift of an 
American millionaire. The work is, of 
course, professedly undenominational or 
interdenominational, but naturally coin 
cides most easily with the aims and 
methods of the Protestant Missions. 

The Russian Orthodox Church, which 
has such a splendid missionary record in 
Japan, opened work in Seoul at the 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 127 

close of the nineteenth century. Its 

activities were, however, hindered and 

for a long time suspended by 

J he . the Russo-Japan War, and it 

Russian . 

Orthodox, has hardly succeeded as yet in 
establishing itself as one of the 
prominent evangelizing factors of the 
country. 

Upon the arm-chair critic of Foreign 
Missions at home, this view of a number 
The of "jarring sects and Churches" 
Problem all competing for the souls of 
of Re- Goreans is apt to have a very 
depressing effect. And, of course, 
from the Christian Point of view, the divi 
sions of Christendom are a scandal of the 
first order and a scandal of which one is 
glad to think that all Christians, Protes 
tant and Catholic, are gradually becoming 
more and more ashamed. Before, how 
ever, the Church allows herself to be 
hurried into any well-meant but hastily- 
patched-up schemes, which, so far from 
mending the evil, are likely enough to 
"make the rent worse" in this direction 
or in that, it is worth remembering that 
in the eyes of the heathen these divisions 
do not necessarily represent quite the 
stumbling-block that people at home are 
apt to imagine. Apart from the fact that, 



128 The Church in Corea 

in Japan for instance, Buddhism is divided 
into sects and sub-sects before whose 
numbers and mutual antagonisms those 
of Christians pale into insignificance, it 
has also to be remembered that the field 
is so vast and the whole volume of 
Christian effort so small that there is 
very little reason for the various repre 
sentatives of Christianity tumbling over 
one another. Even with all the wonder 
ful advance of recent years, it is extremely 
improbable that the total number of 
baptized folk in Corea, of whatever 
persuasion, much exceeds one or two 
per cent, of the population. And as a 
rule, except in the great centres of popu 
lation, no Corean is under any great 
temptation to puzzle his brains by weighing 
one form of Christianity against another, 
or to play off one against the other, so, 
widely are the various Mission stations 
set apart. While to any thoughtful 
heathen the substantial agreement on so 
many profound and central truths among 
so many professors of Christianity, who 
obviously dislike and distrust one another 
so much, would carry a conviction which 
could hardly be outweighed even by a 
united testimony. Far better, in the 
opinion of the present writer, than any 



Other Christian Missions in Corea 129 

hastily devised schemes for daubing with 
untempered mortar the at present divided 
structure of Christianity, would be a 
determination on the part of all Chris 
tian missionaries to bear their witness 
faithfully and unflinchingly to the truth 
as each has received it, while holding up 
to all the vision of a united Church as 
the goal to be ultimately aimed at, and 
trusting to the Holy Spirit to second 
our honest and charitable endeavours to 
secure the same without sacrifice of 
principle in His own good time. 



INDEX 



Advent, Church of the, 

39, 43. 
American Missions in 

Corea, 28, 72, 116, 124- 

5. 
Association of Prayer and 

Work for Corea, 114-5. 

Badcock, Rev. J. S., 53- 

55, 65, 67, 76, 79, 81. 
Baldock, Dr., 38, 40, 58, 

65, 69. 
Baptisms, Corean, 32, 49, 

56, 60, 70. 

Benson, Archbishop, 26, 

29-30. 
Bible, Corean translations 

of, 33, 44, 45, 125. 
Borrow, Dr., 75, 93, 108. 
Boxer Trouble, 61. 
Bridle, Rev. G. A., 54, 

65, 67, 76-7, 90. 
Buddhism, 22-23, 128. 

Chemulpo, position of, 8 
sqq. ; Mission and Hos 
pital work in, 35 sqq., 
51, 58-9, 65 sqq., 74, 
77, 88-9. 

China, relations of Corea 
with, 14 sqq., 118 ; 
English Church Mission 
in, 26-7. 

China-Japan War, 2, -17, 
32, 48, 53. 

Chin Chun, Mission work 
at, 81-2, 91. 



Chong Dong, 39, 41, 42. 

Chun-an, Mission work 
at, 92. 

Community of S. Peter, 
Sisters of, arrive in 
Corea, 41 ; their work, 
41-3, 58, 79, 81, 103-6 ; 
changes among, 77. 

Confucianism, 21-22. 

Corea, first discovered by 
Europeans, 2 ; geogra 
phy, 3-4 ; products, 5- 
6 ; climate, 7 ; history, 
14 sqq. ; language, 24-5, 
33; opened to foreigners, 
28. 

Corfe, Bishop, consecra 
tion, 26 ; arrival in 
Corea, 28-30 ; episco 
pate, 31 sqq. ; visits to 
England, 57-8, 62-3 ; 
66 ; resignation, 68. 

Drake, Father, 55, 61, 63, 
65, 67, 89. 

Finance Problem in the 

Corean Church, 96. 
Firkins, Rev. H. H., 55, 

61, 63. 
Fusan, Japanese colony at, 

8, 10, 49 sqq. ; C.M.S. 

Mission at, 28. 



Gurney, Rev. W. N., 67, 
80, 81, 90, 91. 



130 



Index 



131 



Hamel, Hendrik, 2, 20. 
Hillary, Rev. R. F., 53, 

55, 61, 79. 
Hodges, Rev. C. H. N., 

76, 90, 101. 
Hospital of S. Luke, 36, 

41, 59, 66, 67, 82, 89, 

107-8. 
Hospital of S. Matthew, 

37, 41. 
Hospital of S. Peter, 40, 

41. 
Hospital Naval Fund, 

The, 114. 

Japan, relations of Corea 
with, 2, 3, 13, 17, 19, 
71, 83, 108-9; Christi 
anity in, 28. 

Japanese in Corea, 4, 8 ; 
Church work among, 
49-53, 73-4, 85-6, 108- 
12. 

Kanghwa, discovery of, 
46 ; position of, 47 ; 
Mission work in, 48-9, 
56 sqq., 70, 76, 78-80, 
89; Training College 
for Clergy, 90, 96, 101- 
2, 107. 

Kubla Khan, 17, 20, 48. 

Landis, Dr., 30, 35-7, 50, 

58-60. 
Laws, Dr., 54, 61, 75, 91, 

93, 108. 
Lumen, 44, 45. 

Manchuria, 4, 33, 34, 43, 

66. 
Methodist Missions in 

Corea, 116, 124-6. 
Morning Calm, 64, 115. 



Nak Tong, 37-8, 73. 
Native Ministry, Problem 
of, 96. 

On Su Tong, Mission 
work at, 61, 65, 90. 

Ordination of Coreans, 
56, 102. 

Paikchun, Mission work 

at, 92-3. 
Pearson, Brother Hugh, 

54, 65, 67, 70. 
Presbyterian Missions in 

Corea, 72, 116, 124-6. 
Printing Press, The, 31, 

43-4, 69-70. 

Reunion, Problem of, 127- 

9. 
Roman Catholic Missions 

in Corea, 13, 120-4. 
Russia, War of, with Japan, 

2, 10, 34, 66, 71, 127; 

proximity to Corea, 3, 

10. 
Russian Church, 117, 126- 

7. 

Salvation Army, 126. 

Seoul, position of, 8-10, 
46 ; state of in 1890, 32 ; 
work of the Mission in, 
37-42, 45, 57, sqq., 68- 
70, 80-1, 87-8. 

Seventh Day Adventists, 
126. 

Society of the Sacred 
Mission, 53-6. 

Society for the Propaga 
tion of the Gospel, sup 
port of the Mission by, 
29, 59, 62, 84. 



132 



Index 



Suwon, Mission work at, 
77-8, 90-1. 

Trollope, Rev. M. N., 
joins Bishop Corfe, 30 ; 
visits England, 53 ; acts 
as vicar-general, 57, 63 ; 
returns to England, 
64-5 ; revisits Corea, 
76 ; appointed bishop, 
82 ; his scheme of or 
ganization, 94 sqq. 

Turner, Rev. A. B., ar 
rives in Corea, 54 ; 



works at Seoul, 57 ; 
returns to England, 63 ; 
administers the diocese, 
66 ; appointed bishop, 
68, 70-1 ; his episcopate, 
71 sqq. ; death, 82. 

Warner, Rev. L. O., 31, 

45-6 ; 48-9. 
Weir, Dr., 67, 69, 74, 77- 

8, 82, 108. 
Wiles, Dr., 30, 37, 39, 40. 

Y.M.C.A. at Seoul, 126. 



Printed by A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd., London and Oxford