WHEN first coming out to the foreign field, we fondly believed that we would receive a royal welcome, and be made to feel perfectly at home; but instead we are sometimes made to feel as intruders, and the anti-foreign spirit is often clearly revealed. We have to come close to the people and win them before we can do anything to help them. It means a great deal for these heathen to step out and become well-informed and established Seventh-day Adventists. To live up to the truth of God's word is not so easy as to live up to the nominal creeds of the day. Hence the Sabbath is the test as much here as elsewhere.
The "gentlemen" class, composing about one fifth of the population, will not work, esteeming it beneath their dignity to work with their hands in honest occupation. Others who become Christians, if the bread or the rice does not come to them, after a time turn wherever they find that all-important factor.
THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE AS PROVIDER
According to Korean custom, the head of the family (often the wife does the work) provides for the household and the children's households until the husband's death, when the eldest son becomes heir to all. So it is difficult for the younger members to become Christians and exist with the food supply cut off. Only those who have enough moral backbone to break away from their father's house, and are neither ashamed nor afraid of hard work, and declare themselves independent, are really able to succeed. The other missions have what we might call "community churches," where one well-to-do believer, say a rice merchant, employs from ten to fifty or more persons, only Christians (?), on condition that they attend the church. While he thinks they all believe, yet when he leaves, they all quit the church.
A JOB AS REWARD
These devices have often proved to be a great temptation and annoyance to our poorer brethren. They were told that if they worked on the Sabbath and came to church on Sunday, a job would be the reward. Again the general attitude of the people seems changed and greatly changing since the annexation to Japan. Korea was once the land of promise and missionary enterprise. Now that the natives realize that we foreigners are here only for their spiritual welfare, and not to establish an earthly kingdom, little interest is manifested by many toward religious things.
WATERLOO SCHOOL BUILDING, SIERRA LEONE, WEST AFRICA
Nevertheless we are hopeful and thankful for a part in this grand work. We are glad that there is wheat among the tares. There are precious sheaves to be garnered in before the great day of the Lord comes. We must, however, face conditions as they are, and be brave, and press forward. There is victory ahead. Our faith has never been brighter nor our courage better than this day. These things are to us omens of the coming day.
