[In his recently published "Compendium of Presbyterian Foreign Missions," Robert E. Spear tells of an interview with this devoted man.]
THE first time I saw him, he was coming up the path from the gate to Mr. Lee's house. He did not carry a cane, but felt his way along with his great wooden shoes with turned-up toes. There was no light in his eyes, but on his face was the peace of God, and he brought an air of quietness and rest into the room, where he sat down and clasped his hands and lifted his sightless eyes to the two visitors from a far country who had come thousands of miles to see his people and bring to them the greetings of their fellow-Christians in a strange land.
"Shepherd," said he to the missionary, "it is good that these visitors have come. They have come through many troubles. Our hearts are encouraged by them."
And this was An's story:
"I am twenty-four years old, and lost my sight when I was three years old. For two and a half years I have been a Christian. When I first heard the Gospel I said: 'This is Catholic doctrine. If I believe it, I shall die.' But as I heard it over and over I lost my fear that I would be crazed by it, and soon I awakened to the sense of my sins."
A Native Korean.
"Life is very different now to me. The words of Jesus are very sweet. What ones do I like best? 'Ye can not serve two masters,' and 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.' And of all the incidents of Jesus' life I love most the story of the healing of the man who was born blind. It is in the ninth chapter of John."
"Do you know all your Bible so well?" I asked.
"I know it well," answered An.
"Do you know what is in the fifteenth chapter of Luke?"
"O, yes," he replied; "the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son."
"And do you know in which chapter in Matthew is the story of the feeding of the five thousand?"
"Yes; in the fourteenth," was his instant reply.
"You see," he said, "I think of the gospels all the time. In my little room at the gate others read them to me. Is it possible that anything else could be so sweet to me?"
"And do you have in your mind a picture of Jesus?" we inquired.
"Yes," he answered; "I think of him as a man, but full of color, of brightness and glory."
"Does Jesus help you?"
"If Jesus did not help me, I could not live!"
The evening before we left Pyeng Yang, An came to say good-by. We should never meet again here, he said, but we would above. He had been turned out of his home when he became a Christian, but there was a home of many mansions there. He could not remember the sight of us when we were gone, but he wanted something by which to recall us. So I gave him my card that he might feel that. If he should write to us in America, would we be able to get any one to read it to us?
"What would he wish to see first?" we asked.
"First Jesus," he answered, "then God, then all the believers. I must see Jesus first, for he has been the Mediator between my soul and God."
I see dear An still, as early in the morning of the next day he stood in the path that led down to his little room by the gate, gently waving his hand to us as we walked off southward toward Seoul, and smiling after us with that quiet, patient smile which I hope to see again some day, beaming with new joy, in the land where the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the Lamb is their everlasting light.
