Morning Calm v.27 no.149(1916 Jul.)

Additional copies of this paper may be obtained by sending a stamped addressed envelope to Miss MERRIMAN 17 ALEXANDEA ROAD, CROYDON.

Supplications, Intercessions and Giving of Thanks FOR THE Diocese of Corea.

JULY 1916.

SUPPLICATIONS: Grant, O Good Lord

SEOUL: 1. The awakening of Christians to the need of spiritual help. 2. A blessing on the Girls' School to be opened under Edea No a Noon Ascension Day.

KANG HWA: 3. God's guidance in opening a Hostel for Christian boys attending the Government School.

ON SOU TONG : 4. Perseverance for a Christian woman discouraged by slander. 5. The spirit of almsgiving. 6. A revival of faith and the fruits of the Spirit in two villages. 7. A blessing on Catechumens and those who were to be baptized and confirmed last Easter. 8. That a blessing may rest upon the removal of the Church Boy’s School and Priest’s house at On Sou Tong.

JAPANESE WORK: 9. A blessing on the country work.

FUSAN: 10. A blessing on the special effort made by the Christians to complete funds for new Church.

TAIKU : 11. A young Christian compelled to marry a heathen : God’s blessing on both. 12. The Grace of the Holy Spirit for the supply of new needs and the overcoming of a new difficulty.

INTERCESSIONS: Lord, be gracious.

SEOUL : 13. Those who were to be confirmed and to make their first Communion at Whitsuntide. 14. Marta Chai and Rachel Cho removed for from Church influence and privileges.

KANG HWA : 15. Sixty-six Christians who have recently made their first Communion.

ON SOU TONG: 16. A youth ruined is worldly prospects by the wasteful habits of an elder brother. 17. A School Teacher in a new and responsible position.

JAPANESE WORK: 18. Two Candidates for Confirmation at Antong. 19. A man at Vongampo and a woman at Pingyang, recently made catechumens.

SEOUL : 20. Candidates for Confirmation 21. Kume San (Deacon) and Kurose San, giving temporary help in Seoul. 22. The sick, especially Elizabeth Imanishi and Maria Fujita. 23. The repose of the souls of Ryozo Hayashi and Andrew Ikuno.

THANKSGIVINGS: We thank Thee, O Lord.

SEOUL: 24. Baptisms at Easter.

KANG HWA. 25. Restoration to Communion of Jacob Yoo and Paul Choo. 26. The Bishop's visit and Confirmation of 32 males and 34 females. 27. For the good observance of Easter in the City and St. Mary's, San Monuhi. 28. The good example and diligent labours of Paul Kang whereby many have been led to believe and repent.

ON SOU TONG: 29. The repentance of some backsliders. 30. Healthy signs of repentance in unexpected persons. 31. The baptism of two heads of Christian families after years of prayer.

JAPANESE WORK: 32. Two adults baptized at Antong and a children baptized at Seisen.

SEOUL: 33. An adult and two children baptized on Easter Day.

FUSAN: 34. Many Communions made at Easter.

TAIKYU: 35. The manifestation of God's power in spirit of the absence of the usual means of Grace.

The Bishop's Letter.

(To the Readers of MORNING CALM.) MY DEAR FRIENDS, -

There is so much to be said in this letter that I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps it will be well first briefly to recount my movements since I wrote last in the middle of April. We had then just dispersed after the Ordination of Ernest Arnold and Charles Hunt to the Diaconate, and I had been busily occupied during the following week in administering confirmation in Fr. Wilson's steadily developing district of Paik-Chun. I was then able to return on the eve of Palm Sunday to Seoul, where as usual I spent Holy Week and Easter Day, giving what help I could to Fr. Badcock and Fr. Chambers in the Corean and English services. I had to leave Seoul at noon on Easter Day and to rush to Chemulpo, where Fr. Drake presented to me twenty-three candidates (including two delightful Chinese !) for confirmation in St. Michael's Church.

There was much else to occupy me in Chemulpo, but "tides wait for no man," and I had perforce to leave at daybreak on Easter Monday morning by steam launch for Kanghwa. There, after pontificatings and preaching at Solemn Evensong on Monday night, in the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, I gave confirmation on Tuesday morning to the sixty-five candidates (ranging in age from ten to sixty-seven years) presented by Fr. Gurney from the various churches and chapelries in the northern half of the island, following the confirmation by a solemn celebration of the Holy Eucharist, at which a large number of communions were made (Easter Day itself had been terribly wet). The same afternoon I was carried off by Fr. Gurney to the delightful little village of San Moun Ni, nestling in a wooded dimple in the mountains about eight miles from the city, where I spent the night and said Mass the next morning in the little chapel of St. Mary for the seventy or more Christians who constitute the very vigorous Church there, and of whom forty odd received Holy Communion at my hands. The next morning my unwearied guide whisked me across the narrow straits to the neighbouring island of Napseum, where again I spent the night and enjoyed an almost exactly similar experience. Then (Thursday morning) we parted company, Fr. Gurney returning to the northern part of Kanghwa Island, to give Easter communion in some of his outlying chapelries there, while I crossed to the southern part and passed into the custody of Fr. Stanley Smith, who is priest-in-charge (vice Fr. Hodges on furlough) of the Church at Onsutong and the various outlying chapelries in the southern half of Kanghwa. Shortly after I had crossed the ferry, he met me with a large party of the Christian villagers from Ankol, where we were to spend the night, and other places in the neighbourhood.

After confirming four candidates and celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Patrick, Ankol, next morning. Fr. Smith and I started off on a glorious ten mile walk along the southern coast of Kanghwa island, threading our way through the little villages (many of them containing little knots of faithful) shut in between the sea and the splendid mountain rampart of Mari San, crowned with its preshistoric "Altar of Heaven."

Then striking inland we reached Onsutong in the early afternoon of Friday, and here I stayed until Sunday midday. You will remember that we moved the Church of St. Andrew, Onsutong, last autumn from its rather desolate position in a lonely corner of the paddy fields to the summit of a little wooded hill adjoining the village. And I must say that I feel more than ever pleased with the change, which the people themselves had urgently desired. They are now busy moving the priest's house and the sarang (church waiting-room), and were only waiting for me to settle on the site of the boys' school to start moving that too.

When all this is done the whole will provide a most compact centre of work, as the girls' school (largely built by Mrs. Hillary or in her memory) already occupies a site at the foot of the hill in question. Naturally the Onsutong people are distressed at the thought of Miss France's not returning, as indeed we all are, since she has been a most indefatigable worker. But there seems to be no way out of the difficulty, as the other two ladies now in Kanghwa, Miss Borrowman and Miss Packer, are both due to go home next spring and do not expect to return (a matter of keen regret to us), and it is quite impossible to ask Miss France to come back and take up her residence alone in Kangwha, with no companions of her own nationality (save a community of bachelor clergy) within a day's journey. And in Kangwha, if anywhere now, the women's work ought to be strong enough to stand by itself, with such help and supervision as it can get from occasional visits paid by the Sisters in Seoul.

At St. Andrew's, Onsutong. on Low Sunday morning I confirmed forty-one candidates (varying in age from eleven to sixty-five years), and then after a solemn celebration of the Holy Eucharist, at which many communions were made, I set off on the ten mile walk into Kanghwa city, hoping to get off to Chemulpo again that night. But the tides served so badly that I could not leave until Monday afternoon (thus being enabled to keep SS. Philip and James Day in the Church of SS. Peter and Paul) and I finally reached Seoul, after a fairly strenuous Easter week, Monday midnight.

The rush back was necessary, as on Tuesday morning I was due to marry one of Sister Cecil's best girls, Phoebe Choi, to Samuel Yi (the son of our good old Seoul catechist), one of the regular servers at the altar of the Corean Church in Seoul. Even apart from the Christian ceremony, a wedding in Corea is a very “weighty affair," what with the traditional dressing up of bride and bridegroom in old court dress and the tremendous marriage feast at the bridegroom's house afterwards. And I think Phoebe must have breathed a sigh of relief when she woke up on Wednesday morning to find it was all over ! Anyhow, they are well married now.

I had hoped to devote all this week to preparation for the tremendously important work ahead of us in the week that followed. And now already two days were gone, and there was yet another big event to be surmounted. The Y.M.C.A-an institution about which at home one has always reasonably or unreasonably felt suspicious - does a great and useful work here among the lads of the city, just as it appears to be doing a great work just now among the soldiers of the British Army. With the aid of generous benefactions from America they have recently added to their already large premises in Seoul a large new gymnasium and a junior department. There was to be a great opening of the new buildings on may 6, and nothing would satisfy the responsible authorities but that the religious ceremony of dedication should be performed by me in the presence of the Governor-General or his representative, the American and British Consuls General, and all the rank and fashion-Corean, Japanese, and European-of the town. After some demur I accepted the invitation, and resplendent in my doctorial habiliments performed my part, I believe, to the satisfaction of the assembled company. I must say that the sight of all those hundreds of young men gathered together filled me with hungry thoughts of the work the Church might be doing, and ought to be doing, among the rising generation of Seoul, if only we had the right man to allocate to that work. But it is not everybody's job!

On Sunday and Monday, May 7 and 8, the clergy gradually assembled for the all-important event for which we had been preparing for a year or more, and for which we had kept "Good Shepherd Week " free -namely, our first Diocesan Synod. But this is a matter of such tremendous importance that I cannot possibly do it justice in the short space at my disposal here. Nor have I got the Acta of the Synod sufficiently into shape to reproduce them here. I propose, therefore, to devote the whole of next month's " letter leaflet "to it, and will content myself with saying here and now that, in spite of the hard work involved, the week provided us with a most glorious and happy experience, and that I believe we have taken a real step forward in the building of the City of God in this land.

Now I have two or three very sad pieces of intelligence for you. First, I am afraid that we are going to lose the services of Dr. and Mrs. Weir. And what that means to us it is difficult to describe in words. But for the war they were to have been back with us last autumn. But Dr. Weir had made himself so indispensable to the Medical Missions Department of S.P.G., and the war made it so impossible to get any substitute for him there, that his return was delayed first till this spring, then till next autumn ; and only six or eight weeks ago I got a letter from him bidding us expect him and Mrs. Weir in September. Then just after my return from Japan last month the blow fell, in the shape of a tremendously urgent letter from Bishop Montgomery, begging that in the wider interests of the Church we would forego our claim on Dr. Weir, of whose services to the Medical Mission Department of S.P.G. he spoke in terms which must have made the doctor's ears tingle. The upshot of it all was that Dr. Weir's departure would practically mean the collapse of that department of their work, and that Dr. Weir himself had undertaken to abide by whatever decision was arrived at. It was not an easy letter to answer, but after giving the matter all the careful thought I could, and taking such advice as was accessible, I came to the conclusion that I could not possibly say "No." And so I am afraid that we have got to face the future without Dr. and Mrs. Weir, though I am sure Corea will always fill a large place in their hearts, as the good doctor and his wife must also always fill a large place in the hearts of those who have known them out here.

One point I had to make quite clear to Bishop Montgomery, and that was that, in acquiescing in his request, I must not be understood as admitting that our hospital work was of no importance, or that we were willing to close down St. Luke's Hospital, Chemulpo. Indeed, in response to our self-sacrifice in giving up Dr. Weir, I claimed that S.P.G. should do its best to place our hospital work, and especially St. Luke's, on a better footing than ever before. True it is that Chemulpo no longer occupies quite the prominent place it once did in Corea. But still it is and must remain the seaport of the capital, with all that that entails, and from the point of view of the Mission, it is an admirable centre for our hospital work. It is the port of departure for Kanghwa (some two hours distant by steam launch), where we have such large interests, and it is easily accessible by rail from Seoul, Su Won, Chunan, and all the other stations on the line which give access to our chief centres of Mission work - the most inaccessible and remote of all, Chin-Chun (some twenty-five miles from the nearest station), having its own excellent hospital under the zealous care of Dr. Laws.

Before saying "Yes" therefore to Bishop Montgomery's request, I ascertained from Dr. Borrow, who has been carrying on St. Luke's since last autumn, and who is now just leaving on at much needed and overdue furlough, that she would be willing to return as medical officer in charge of St. Luke's. And I have moreover pledged myself to do my best to support her in her endeavours to find another colleague as soon as the war is over (for both she and Dr. Weir were quite agreed that St. Luke's was much too big a business for any doctor to run single-handed), and also to improve the present rather inadequate plant and equipment. And you must help me to redeem that pledge, as soon as we are able to get our schemes for the reorganised St. Luke's into shape.

The other sorrowful piece of news is that we are parting company with Mr. Childs-Clarke, who has proved himself so good a friend to the Mission now for so many years. Apart from his indefatigable labours and unquenchable zeal, the link which he provided with St. Paul's Cathedral has been a real boon to us. As many of you know, at the outbreak of the war he was carried off as a Naval Chaplain to Portsmouth. That is now nearly two years ago. And although he has done his best to fulfil his duties to the Mission as well as the R.N., he himself felt that he was now no longer able to do all that he used to do and wished to do for us, and so tendered his resignation, which with great regret I have accepted, throwing on Canon Deede's broad shoulders the onus of finding some substitute. But it will be difficult indeed to find anyone who will be to us all that Mr. Child-Clarke has been, or do all that he has done.

And now I must bring this overlong letter to a close, commending myself and my work once more to your most earnest prayers. MARK,

Bishop in Corea. BISHOP's LODGE, SEOUL, May 14, 1916.

Annual Meeting.

At the Annual Meeting in the Church House on May 22, the chair was taken by the Bishop of London. A preliminary statement was made by the Rev. Canon A. G. Deedes, Commissary to the Bishop of Corea. The Mission had, he said, to report two very serious losses.

The first was the resignation of their Organising Secretary, Rev. S. J. Childs-Clarke, to whom the Mission owed a great debt. He had asked to be relieved of his duties. Their other loss was the retirement of Dr. H. H. Weir from his work as a medical missionary at Chemulpo. He came home, and was granted extended leave in order that he might act as Secretary to the Medical Missions Department at the S.P.G. House. There his services had proved so valuable that Bishop Montgomery had sent a very urgent request to Bishop Trollope asking him to release Dr. Weir from his duties in Corea, in order that he might continue his work for S.P.G. In any case his return to Corea would probably have been difficult, as he was of military age, and had attested under the Voluntary Medical Scheme. He could only add that Dr. Weir had retired from Corea with as keen regret on his own part as on any one else's. He was, however, able to report the addition of one priest and three deacons to the Mission staff, and during the year there had been the ordination of the first native priest in Corea. In the matter of finance, he was very glad to be in a position to say that the contributions for 1915 had only dropped by ₤337 below the total of the previous year, which, when all things were considered, was perhaps better than might have been expected at the present time. The receipts during 1915 were ₤4,008 against ₤4.345 in 1914, taking no account of the S.P.G. grant, which last year was ₤3,904. It was smaller this year because last year's grant was an extra large one. The Mission had reduced its home expenditure by £165, so they hoped to make both ends meet. The scheme under which several contributions of £10 per annum were guaranteed for a period of ten years had now come to the end of its appointed time, and he hoped that special efforts would be made to secure new guarantees, or a renewal of the former ones. He had had news from the Bishop of Corea, who had been spending three months on a visit to Japan, where he had been learning the language and was becoming fairly proficient in it.

The BISHOP OF LONDON said that to unthinking people it might perhaps appear strange that with all his ordinary engagements, and the special work which the forthcoming National Mission entailed upon him at the present moment, he should find time to take the chair at a meeting of one of the smallest of our Missionary Societies. To any such questions he was ready to give an absolutely definite reply. The reason the country was at war was because the world was so imperfectly Christianised ; and the penalty to our nation for spending only one million a year on Missions was that we now had to spend five millions a day on war. And therefore he hoped that they would root out of the minds of any of their friends the idea that the missionary efforts of the Church should be in any way interrupted on account of the war. To suppose such a thing was the greatest possible heresy. Then, as to the size of the Mission. It was impossible to judge of the importance of a Mission by its numbers. He believed that there were not a very large number of the Lord's followers in the Upper Room at Jerusalem; yet it had contained the secret of that mighty Church which was evangelising the world to-day. It was true that Corea had only fourteen priests in a country as large as England, yet who could say what influence the Mission might have upon the future of the country? It was quite possible that Christianity might have a very large part to play in averting the "Yellow Peril." against which they had been so seriously warned. What really mattered about any Mission was whether that Mission was according to the Will of God, and whether it was carrying on its work in the right way; and in the case of the Corean Mission there could be absolutely no doubt on either point. That Mission had been blessed with three of the finest Bishops who had ever been vouchsafed to the Church by Almighty God. (Cheers.) Bishop Corfe was known to have been most unselfish, and to have done great things for the Mission in his time. Then there came Bishop Turner, whose work was not half enough known, and who had simply died at his post like any martyr of the Church. And he did not know a more charming Bishop in the whole Church than Bishop Trollope. Those three Bishops were one reason why he was in the chair that afternoon.

The other reason was that he had pledged his word that he would be behind the work of the Mission at home. Since lunch-time that day, he had read the present Bishop's little book, "The Church in Corea," and he hoped that any of those present who had not read it already would do so before the day was over. The Mission was being conducted on definite, clear, unblurred Church lines; and therefore he was glad to stand behind it. (Applause.) They might know the truth of that statement by the fact that Bishop Trollope was at the head of the Mission (Cheers); and it was a great thing to know that the Mission was a sound Church Mission from top to bottom, and people need have no fear about supporting it. And he believed that it was in consequence of that fact that it had gained the respect of people who were not Church people. The idea that a Mission must blur its policy in order to win the approbation of those who differed from it in religion was a fundamental mistake. When people were quite definite about their own belief and acted upon their convictions, they always had the respect of those who differed from them honestly. The world had no respect for a jelly-fish Churchman. It liked backbone, and he believed that the reason why he himself always managed to get on so well with his Nonconformist friends was because he was not afraid to be quite firm and clear about his own belief. Bishop Trollope was quite ready to acknowledge the work that was being done by other Missions in Corea, and had often said to him that it was absurd to expect that a small Mission like their own was going to cover a country as large as England; but he maintained that it had a place to fill there, and an indispensable contribution to bring, and must give it with generosity and with power.

Bishop Trollope had set his heart on having a real Corean Church- not a branch of the Church of England in Corea; but a Corean branch of the one Catholic Church, self-supporting, self-respecting, self-managing, with its own clergy. catechists, and teachers; so that if the Europeans for any reason vanished from their country, the Corean Church would still remain. (Cheers.) It was one of the Bishop of Oxford's theories - and he believed it to be true -that only when the whole world was converted would the full beauty of Christianity be seen. One last point. Bishop Trollope was sensible about finance. He did not expect the Mission to go on for ever depending upon funds from England; but he promised that if the Home Church could help him to lay firmly the foundations of the Church in Corea, he would make it self-managing out there. His (Bishop Ingram's) own belief was that every church out there would give its contribution to the Bishop's Diocesan Fund - not like some of the churches in the Diocese of London, which, he was sorry to hear, had refused to contribute to the Diocesan Finance Scheme. If they considered the absolute insufficiency of fourteen priests, they would recognise that the Bishop's appeal was sound policy; and, if they supported it as it deserved to be supported, there was reason to believe that the seed which they had planted would grow into a great tree, which would give shelter in its branches to many thousands of human souls.

The Rev. C. H. N. HODGES. Principal of the Clergy Training College, Kanghwa, Corea, spoke of his work in the training of men who were to be made Catechists, or ordained to the Sacred Ministry. In 1910 he offered to go to Corea because of the strong appeal which had been put forth for that purpose, as nobody on the spot could be set free for that particular work, and there were no other volunteers from among those who had been out in Corea and had since returned home. They trained both those who were to be catechists and those who were candidates for the ministry in the same place and on generally the same lines. On his arrival in 1911, alter visiting places in China and Japan to see their methods of training, he found some 3,000 or 4.000 Christians, many of them newly baptised. But their numbers seemed likely to swell pretty fast, though hopes that were entertained on that point at the time had not, he thought, been since altogether realised. For some months before the Easter Baptism the drive on the foreign clergy was very hard, and he thought that 1911 must have seen a downward turn in the numbers of catechumens. There were more infant baptisms; whereas when he went out the candidates for baptism were chiefly adults. With so many converts to instruct for baptism there was no time for training the catechists; and unless the catechists were trained it was impossible for the work of the Mission to be well done, whether they were men or women. The training of the women catechists was the work of Sister Edith Helena, and it was one of the chief features of the Mission; she had organised it in a marvellous way. During the first three years that he had spent in the country he had had to learn the language, and during that time was able to see what sort of work was being done, what the Corean Christians were like, what sort of men the catechists were, what they were up against, and where they specially needed strengthening. In regard to ordinations, it was only fair to the Bishop or to any of the clergy to say that it was not in an ordinary way that a catechist was ordained priest in six months. But Mark Kim and Barnabas Kou were exceptional cases. Mark Kim had been priested in 1915, and he was going to make as good a priest as anyone in the Diocese of London, with his special spiritual qualifications and natural gifts.

There were nine men who had come through the whole way, and they were now out at work as students, being tested to see whether it was worth while sending them back for further training. He thought that most of the students had at first been extraordinarily disappointed at the College buildings - he was rather under the impression that they had expected to see something like the American Mission buildings, with everything Western and quite up-to-date. Instead they had found a converted Corean donkey-shed, and they had to light their own fires. There was nothing to make them discontented with their own homes when they went back to them, or to lead them to expect large salaries. It was difficult to make them understand the need of discipline in their lives - they had never been used to it.

It was a great help when the Mission began to expect manual work from them. They had shown considerable aptitude in that direction, and some of them had made quite decent carpenters. The Coreans did not like manual labour; they thought much of their dignity as students, and there was a good deal of grousing and kicking at first. But the way that Father Smith had handled those men was simply excellent. They were not only submissive, but working well; and they had discovered that they were able to pray better because their bodies were not quite so slack as they would have wished them to be.

The obvious difficulty which met the staff at once was to discover how much the men knew. In England it was safe to take it for granted that even a fairly thick-headed man knew a few elementary things. Not so with the Corean. His existing knowledge was very limited indeed, and from our point of view simply nil. Their methods were those of the Chinese. They had read up to a certain stage in the classics; but they had never thought of thinking for themselves. They had a tremendous lack of originality: they wanted to find out what their teacher thought, and waited to be given something that they could take out to others. He thought that in the case of one or two they were beginning to be made to think for themselves, and that was one of the most hopeful signs in the work. The absence of books produced one good result -they were obliged to get back to the Bible as a text-book. It was the only one that they possessed, and that was all to the good. They were keen to learn- the Oriental liked to be taught, and he respected his teachers. Whether they were so keen to work he could not say. Again, there was the danger of emotionalism to be guarded against - such things, for instance as "revivals" in religion. It was difficult for the Coreans to get any hold on the intellectual aspect of the Faith; but they were men of very simple and sincere faith. They were inclined to lean back on other people's opinions. They moved very much as a family, or clan, or race; they had not developed to any extent the sense of the individual “I.”

The rush into the Church had stopped. The falling off in the numbers of the converts was affecting the work of training catechists. He felt that though the last five years of intensive work had been well spent, they now needed to break ground in new places, so that in that way the numbers of converts might be extended.

The Bishop of London being at this point obliged to leave for another engagement, his place as Chairman was taken by Bishop Corfe. The Rev. M. CARPENTER-GARNIER, Assistant-Priest at All Saints', Margaret Street, said that he must first of all explain that he knew nothing about Corea, and he had only one speech on the subject, which several of those present had no doubt already heard. There were some things which Father Hodges had not told them about what he had done in Corea - for instance, how he had grappled with the language. They were going to be exceedingly kind and encouraging to him during the coming autumn. Father Gamier then went on to relate some of his personal experiences as a visitor to Corea. One Saturday morning they packed up their bags and went to a village seven miles off. On the way they were met by Daniel, one of the students. He was told before he started that they were going to one of the most luxurious houses in the district. When they arrived he found that it was a nasty little shanty, with two nasty little rooms, and the only furniture that it possessed was one table and one chait. Daniel's grandfather came to see them, said two sentences, smoked his pipe, looked at them, and there was an awful silence. The work of the Mission was most inspiring. The proper procedure was to have one service late at night, and on Sundays, very early in the morning, the Holy Eucharist. There was intense reality in the work of the Mission: They were truly making people converts to the truth of Jesus Christ. They were propagating the Faith, and teaching people the right way to God. They were just a few people taken out of the black mass of heathenism around them; but the visitor came back to the truth that the real thing was there as well as in any cathedral or beautiful parish church in Europe, because they were pleading there the adorable sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and were offering true worship. It was because the Mission had got at reality in leading souls into truth, and in showing men the right way to Heaven, that they at home were going on supporting that noble Mission in their work for the souls that God had committed to their care.

BISHOP CORFE said that the day had been one of great delight to him. Mr. Hodges was subsequent to his own time, but he had wondered much about him, and the way in which he had managed to add to the five hundred communicants whom he (Bishop Corfe) had left in Corea. He had entered into all his difficulties, and could only hope that he would enjoy his furlough, and would return to Corea with renewed vigour, and give them some more of those native clergy, so that the Mission might do away with one and all of those reluctant English priests, who seemed to think that Corea was too far off for them.

His Lordship then closed the meeting with the Blessing.

THE SERVICE AT CHRIST CHURCH, LANCASTER GATE.

AT the Sung Eucharist the following morning, at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, the sermon was preached by the Rev. C. H. N. Hodges, on the subject of "Vision."

Taking for his text Habukkuk ii. 3, "For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry," Father Hodges spoke of the need of vision in the Church and in the world; the need of men and women who would respond to the cry "Lift up your eyes to the hills," who would realise the promise “Thine eyes shall behold the King in His beauty," who would respond to the call in every Mass, "Lift up your hearts: We lift them up unto the Lord." They wanted vision, because vision brought calmness, enthusiasm, patience. It was vision that had upheld the prophets of old. Ezekiel ministering to a people who had lost their independence. Isaiah, who saw God upon a throne, high and lifted up: and it was the vision of the majesty of God that inspired him in the life that he had to live as a leader of the people and a social reformer, rebuking social vices, always seeing before him the sight of God's glory, and so being able to take his line in whatever work lay before him. It was not only to the Bible that they must turn for prophetic inspiration, but all down the ages it was vision that had inspired men and women. It might be perhaps one-sided such as visions of social life, or national life-or it might embrace the whole world, or sweep right on to the beyond. It might be a vision which perhaps centralised and particularised on one place, as they were now doing with respect to Corea - a vision which saw a Christian and redeemed nation; a Church, self-governing, with its own native clergy: or again, a vision which saw a Church united, instead of Christian warring against Christian, a vision of the Church Universal, with a love warm and personal, and looking forward to the time when the Church should be presented to God a really Holy Church, without spot or blemish, or any such thing-a glorious Church- a vision of redeemed humanity when all nations should have brought into it their riches in all their variety. It might be that there were some present in that church to which a more personal vision had come - a vision which had to do with the life that lay in front of them; or again a vision of the time when there should be no more sex war, no more class war, no more warring of evil against good, because the good would have completely triumphed. No more death of purity, honesty, true charity, hope of opportunity in growing boys and girls - no more such death, in individuals or nations, or souls or bodies of men-a vision of the time when life should be fully realized. And as there was need of vision for men and women who would see visions, so there was need that those who saw them should learn patience and humility. There must come a time when their hearts would fail them, when the vision brought to them a crushing sense of their own impotence. It was in the strength of the Son of Man that they found the strength not to be disobedient to the heavenly vision, to wait in patience, ready to learn, seeing more clearly the narrowness of their outlook, fixing their eyes upon the vision, with all enthusiasm Their live very circumscribed, and they needed humility to be ready to adjust and readjust, to make and remake, to harmonise their visions with those of others about them-a patience, humility, and, of course, sincerity. They needed that the vision should be a heavenly vision, that, whatever they aimed at or worked for, consciously or sub-consciously, in times of success or failure, there would be that great vision of the Glory of God-always that end in view, whatever they did- the greater Glory of God. Not their own aims, or their own predilections, or that which seemed most attractive to them- but the greater glory of God, until at last they saw the vision of the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ, who would give harmony, unity, steady purpose in all that was so changing and shifting. He was the great unifier; He who inspired men to work and to vision would bring all on together to the perfect consummation, gathering all things to Himself in the Church which was His body. God grant to them all such vision and grace to work humbly for the fulfilment of the vision, by prayer and sacrament, in union with Him who was with them in that He might strengthen them for His purpose, "to Whom be honour and glory now and from the ages to the ages."

COREAN ANNUAL REPORT.

The Bishop's report (which we are able to print here by the courtesy of the S.P.G., to whom it was addressed) covers the work of the Mission as far as its operations in Corea are concerned, and needs no comment from me, except to emphasise the gains of the past year, which afford indeed much cause for thankfulness. They may be summarised as follows: -

1. The admission to the priesthood of Mark Kim, the first native priest, and the real beginning of the native ministry. 2. The addition of one priest, Rev. E. A. Greene, and two laymen, Mr. Charles Hunt and Mr. Ernest Arnold, who have since been admitted to the diaconate. To these must be added now Rev. George Laurence, who after ordination at home has since proceeded to Corea.

Against these gains must be set the losses of which the Bishop speaks, Dr. and Mrs. Weir, and Miss France, under circumstances which are fully set out in the Bishop's monthly letter. It is only necessary to add here with regard to Dr. Weir's withdrawal, that it will not necessitate the abandonment of any of the medical work which he has carried on with such devotion for many years, nor does it deprive Conan men of such medical treatment as they have come to look for from the Mission, and which they have been receiving at the hands of Dr. Borrow since she took over the charge of the hospital. If there has to be a temporary suspension of the hospital work during her furlough, it will only be a prelude to increased activity on her return with a colleague, whom she hopes to take out with her. Moreover, it is intended to refit and reconstruct the hospital in such a way that it will make more adequate provision for the needs of the Coreans than has been possible before.

As far as the Home Organisation is concerned it is a matter for sincere congratulation that the Mission has suffered financially much less than might have been expected under the circumstances. It is, however, necessary to sound a note of warning. The three years' challenge of a country curate has now worked itself out, and this will involve a serious diminution of income, unless the appeal which has been made for a renewal of the pledge meets with a generous response. It would indeed be a grievous pity if the splendid impetus which this challenge gave to the work of the Mission were now allowed to die down, and were to make any retrenchment inevitable. We are sure our supporters will not allow this to happen.

The withdrawal of Mr. Childs Clarke, together with his assistant Miss Folkard, really belongs to the history of 1916, not 1915, but it is impossible to pass it over without placing on record that all those connected with the work of the Mission at home do most heartily endorse every word which the Bishop has said in his letter. Never has a Mission had a more energetic and devoted organiser than Mr. Childs Clarke, or one who managed to inspire more enthusiasm in others in his cause at a very critical time in the history of the Mission. To say more than this would I believe he distasteful to him. His successor will have a high ideal to live up to, but he will also find a good and solid foundation on which to build. At the present time no successor has been appointed, and the necessary secretarial work has kindly been undertaken by Miss C. Trollope, to whom any contributions should be sent, or any letters on Mission business should be addressed until further notice at 184 Ashley Gardens, S.W. ARTHUR G. DEEDES,

Bishop's Commissary. Whitsunday, 1916.

The Bishop's Report.

EVERYTHING seems to show that the period of almost miraculously rapid expansion in Corea is past. And in any case the financial uncertainty and the difficulty of manning stations, consequent on the war, would have rendered the gamering of an extensive harvest during the past year impossible. Happily the return of Mr. Hewlett from furlough at the end of the year, with health and strength renewed after his serious illness, and the fact that he was accompanied by a new priest and two candidates for the diaconate brings this period of strain to a close. And we can now look forward to a full twelve months during which, barring accidents, each of the stations may count upon the services of its own priest-in-charge.

But if lengthening of cords has been out of the question, there has been some strengthening of stakes. The ‘native ministry’ has taken root, and the ordination of one Japanese and two Corean deacons in 1914 was followed by the raising of one of them, Mark Kim, to the priesthood-our first Corean priest-on St. Thomas' Day, 1915. And side by side with this it is gratifying to note that the Christians are steadily maintaining their endeavours to create such a Native Clergy Sustentation Fund as will save the Church in Corea from the shameful expedient of making its clergy dependent on subsidies and grants from England. There is, moreover, good reason to hope for further ordinations in 1916.

The gradual development of the Japanese Government's educational schemes for Corea makes it abundantly plain that there is no great future for Missionary schools here. We are, however, doing our best to make use of the excellent but wholly secular educational facilities offered by the Government, and to supply its deficiencies by gradually extending our system of hostels for Christian boys and girls attending the Government schools.

The Women's Work among Coreans tends to revert more and more into the hands of the Sisters of St. Peter's, who are already fairly well occupied with the charge of the Orphanage at Su Won and the Hostels for girls and women in Seoul, besides fulfilling a number of other useful functions. Miss Bourne and Miss France both left on a well-earned furlough after Easter 1915, and this necessitated the closing of the Ladies' Home at Paik-Chun, and concentrating the two remaining ladies, Miss Borrowman and Miss Packer, in Kanghwa, One cannot speak too highly of the work done by all these ladies - and perhaps without being invidious one may single out for special remark Miss France's indefatigable labours in Kanghwa during the past five years: but there are signs that it will be a matter of some difficulty to continue this work when the two remaining ladies go home on furlough.

Miss Pooley in Seoul, Miss Elrington in Fusan, and Miss Grosjean in her rather lonely post at Taikyu have continued to do yeoman's service among the Japanese women, and have provided most efficient helpers to Mr. Simpson, who came over from Tokyo to take charge of our Japanese work when Mr. Sharpe went home on furlough. At a time when the work among Coreans has shown signs of shrinkage, or at least of being stationary, it is a pleasure to record that the work among the Japanese, in Mr. Simpson's capable hands, shows signs of being more healthy and vigorous than ever before.

MARK NAPIER TROLLOPE, Bishop in Corea.

Association of Prayer and work for Corea.

ONE is thankful for the unceasing enthusiasm for Missions shown in many of our A.P.W. centres, and for an increase in the number of branches during 1915, five new ones having been added to the Association. On the other hand, there has been a considerable drop both in the number of new members and in the amount of money received through County and Local Secretaries. The A.P.W. statement of accounts shows that this last amounted to £987 10s. 4d., which (if we exclude the £62 received from the Horticultural Hall Sale) is nearly £200 less than the receipts of 1914. It is most difficult to criticise, owing to the unparalleled times in which we are living. We can truly say that the falling off is owing to the war, but the point for us to consider is whether it is a necessary falling off. We, who are A.P.W. Members, must brace ourselves to fresh efforts, remembering that, not in spite of the war but because of it, we need to put more zeal than ever into our Prayer and Work for Missions. MAUD I. FALWASSER, General Secretary.

Hospital Naval Fund.

The year under review has been one of waiting for better times, but we have been keeping our end up as well as possible. Last July we held our hundredth meeting, which means that a quarter of a century has passed since we started to help our friend Bishop Corfe, with Admiral Ryder as our Chairman and Mr. Harbord as our Hon. Secretary. Those of us still remaining continue our faithful efforts for the hospital work in Corea. The difficulty is to make new friends for this branch of the Mission, especially now we have fewer ships on the China Station, whose officers may see for themselves what is being done and report to others. The strengthening of the spirit of true religion due to the war should help missionary work when it is over. When men like Admiral Beatty are not diffident in acknowledging the efficacy of prayer, it shows that there is a good side to set against the crying evil of the war. We can congratulate ourselves in that we still have Mr. Childs Clarke as Hon. Organising Secretary of the H.N.F., and right well he helps us by keeping in touch with the chaplains of our fleets. We regret very much that Dr. Weir is not returning to look! after St. Luke's Hospital, for the present at all events, and hope Dr. Borrow will keep us well informed of what is being done there, as the Hospital Report in MORNING CALM is always a matter of great interest to readers. C. E. BAXTER, Hon. Sec. Ex. Com. H.N.F.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDING

DECEMBER 31, 1915.

A.P.W Children's Branch.

DURING the past year it is satisfactory to note that no branch has been given up and that several new branches have been formed, and that though a good many of the children have left they have been transferred to the adult branch. In this way the numbers have been well maintained. Amongst the new branches are those at St. John the Divine, Kennington, per Miss Maud King: Verwood, Wimborne, per Mrs. Brown; Three Cross, Wimborne, per Rev. C. B. Howell; Hednesford, Staffs, per Rev. J. H. Darby: and Londesborough, per Mrs. Foster. The funds collected are £18 14s. MABEL. SEATON.

St. Peter's Community Foreign Mission Association Report, 1915.

THE year 1915 was marked by continued steady support on the part of the members of S.P.F.M.A., and with their help and the £52 provided by the Corean Stall at the Sale at St. Peter's Home in October, the Secretary was able to remit the sum of £350 without difficulty. Meetings were held at St. Peter's Home, Kilburn; St. Peter's Home, Woking: St. Peter's Grange, and St. Michael's Home, Axbridge; also one of the Sisters on furlough from Corea held various informal talks at small gatherings, which were most fruitful in bringing in fresh members. In addition to the subscriptions and donations to the General Fund, contributed by the eleven branches, help has also been given to the Mission in other ways. Members support children in the Diocesan Orphanage, sums are earmarked for the Training of Native Bible-Women, Girls' Hostel, etc., and the latest development is the small nucleus of a Fund to provide a much-needed X-ray apparatus for St. Luke's Hospital, Chemulpo, in answer to Dr. Weir's appeal for it in December last, in the hope that should a second-hand appliance be available at the end of the war, the necessary funds would be in hand to secure it. SISTER HELEN CONSTANCE, General Secretary, S.P.F.M.A. BALANCE SHEET, 1915.

The Orphanage.

ONE orphan has been married during the past year. Four new children have been admitted, bringing the numbers up to thirty. "Owing to shortage of funds the little Girls' School in the compound has been closed, and fifteen of the orphans go to the Government Japanese school for Coreans. They walk to and fro in good order; it is only four or five minutes' round the hill, and they do not need to go on a road at all. Our great dog sees them safely and sometimes fetches them!"

Association of Prayer and Work for Corea.

News of the formation of an A.P.W. Branch at Verwood (Dorset) reached me just too late to report in the April MORNING CALM. The Branch was inaugurated by the Rev. G. Dallas (lately in Corea), and with Miss Ethel Dowdeswell as Local Secretary it is making a good start. Corresponding Members have been found for the outlying districts, and, above all, the Children's Branch (that most important part of our Association) has already a number of members in Verwood.

I much regret having to record the resignation of Mrs. Share as Local Secretary for Truro, for we are truly sorry to lose one who has been a Local Secretary from the earliest days of the Mission At the same time we are most grateful to her for having carried on her work for so many years, and for having now found us a successor in Miss Corfe. Our new Local Secretary, as niece of the Founder and President of A.P.W., receives a warm welcome. The Leamington Secretaryship, which was lately left vacant owing to the resignation of Mrs. Langley, has been kindly undertaken by Miss L. Stead, who has our thanks and best wishes.

I hope that an account of our Annual Festival will appear elsewhere in this magazine. The meeting and services in London were a great help to many of us, and it is encouraging to know that Corea was especially remembered at the Holy Eucharist in many A.P.W. centres. We are so glad to have the Rev. Cecil Hodges among us this year, to give encouragement and renewed zeal to the various branches which he is kindly visiting The resignation of the Rev. S. J. Childs-Clarke means much to A.P.W., and whilst keenly regretting his loss, we thank him most heartily for all the help he has given us during the time he has been Organising Secretary for the Mission. We shall greatly miss the infectious enthusiasm which he threw into all his work for Corea I am afraid we shall have another loss to chronicle very shortly. i.e. that of our Needlework Secretary, whose help is so valuable. Will anyone offer to take on Miss M. C. Newman's work, or at least write to her (71 Chelsham Road, Clapham, S.W.) for particulars as to what that work would entail? Her report for 1915 is given below. May I remind all the members that it has once more been decided to hold our Stall for Corea at the Horticultural Hall Sale next November, and we cannot too soon begin to consider what part we shall take in helping to make the stall a great success Mrs.Napier Trollope (The Score, Beccles. Suffolk) will gladly give information as to what form of help will be most welcome, and I know that she will be particularly grateful for money contributions from those who in these busy days find little time for work. MAUD I. FALWASSER, General Secretary.

Needlework Report for 1915.

THE Needlework Secretary apologises for this very tardy report. She wishes to thank all those who so kindly made the 160 garments which were sent out to Corea last August. The contributors were Miss Corfe, Miss Cow, Miss H. N. Norris, and Miss S. A. Robertson Working parties - per Miss B. M. Crombie, Miss Casswell, Miss Drake, Miss D. King, Mrs. Poyntz, and Miss Downall, who sent, as usual, a box of excellent things for Sale.

The Needlework Secretary would be glad to receive parcels for Corea before the end of July, and she will be much obliged if contributors will kindly let her know the cost of materials used, as this is necessary for freightage.

Children's Letter.

DEAR CHILDREN, -

Summer time has come round again and some of you may be planning a picnic; and the Corean children will doubtless have their picnics too. The names of these children in the group with the swing are Angela, Theresa, Marcetta, Lucia, Maria, Dinah, Cecilia, Ada, Susanna, Lilian, and Rebecca, all with hair so neatly parted and plastered down, none with the wavy curly hair some of you English girls have.

Some of the grown-ups in China (and I expect it is the same in Corea) think we English are very untidy with our hair certainly it can be said with truth of some, but even naturally curly hair they seem to look upon as being not quite the thing, and that it ought all to be smoothed down.

This letter again will have to have several pictures to interest you, as I have no news from Corea to give you about the children in the Orphanage.

And this other picture is of a catechist and his family at Chin-Chun. And in the background is the picture of a house, and you can see well the thatched roof and the kind of windows. The uprights and cross pieces will be of bamboo, across which paper is plastered, and the frames in summer taken right out of the windows. Some of us living in close towns where it is difficult to get a good blow of air through the house might be glad of this way of building the house, and also in the country it might have its charm, in giving a good wide view of the fields outside. But I do not think paper windows would last long with some of our children. Do you think so?

I hear that a great number of the children from the Newcastle branch have been transferred to the adult branch. It is always cheering to hear that, as it shows the idea of the association and its foundation of prayer has taken hold of their minds, and that they do not belong just as children and then give it up when they leave the school where they may be. In the monthly intercession paper we are asked to pray for some sixty candidates for confirmation. I expect some of them will be from the Orphanage, so I hope you will remember them in your prayers. Have some of you had meetings the last month - I mean at the time of the usual annual service and meetings?

You will see mentioned below the sum of the Lent savings of the children at Newcastle. It seems quite a big sum for them to send and must have meant very real self-denial, I expect, to some who gave.

Believe me, Your sincere Friend,

MABEL SEATON. 61 YORK STREET CHAMBERS, BRYANSTON SQUARE, June 1916.

St. Peter's Community foreign Mission Association.

MEMBERS are specially asked to remember the date of the Corean Stall to be held in the cloisters of St. Peter's House, Kilburn, on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 11, 12.

Some new and attractive small curios, figures in native costume, etc., have been received by post from Corea, and we would impress on friends of the Mission that it will be impossible to secure the necessary funds for the Sisters' work unless the Stall is well supported. Owing to the heavily increased rate of freightage, parcels cannot now be enclosed in the cases to Corea unless a sufficient sum is contributed towards the expenses of shipping, customs, etc.

SISTER HELEN CONSTANCE, General Secretary, S.P.F.M.A.

Hospital Naval Fund.

THE Hundred and Third Meeting was held at the S.P.G., Tufton Street, at 3 P.M. on Wednesday, April 12. Present: Rev. J. C. Cox-Edwards (in the chair). J. R. Clark, Esq., Capt. J.H. Corfe, Commander A. Havergal, C. E. Baxter, Esq. The usual routine having been attended to the Hon. Sec. pointed out that the April MORNING CALM contained no report of Hospital work at St. Luke's, Chemulpo, and he was instructed to write to Dr. Laws and remind him with what interest members look forward to these reports. C. E. BAXTER Hon. Sec., Ex. Com., H.N.F. CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED DURING QUARTER ENDING. MARCH 31, 1915.

St. Luke's hospital, Chemulpo.

FIRST QUARTERLY REPORT, 1916. As explanation is due for the absence of any report of the Hospital's work in the October number of MORNING CALM. At the time when it should have been sent in Dr. Laws and myself had just effected a change of hospitals, he returning with Mrs. Laws to Chin-Chun, his former sphere of work, while I took his place here with Miss Cant and Miss Carswell to help me. It is also probable that the present report may not be home in time for the April issue, but if this be the case, it is to be hoped that the present slowness of transit will receive its due share of blame as well as the dilatoriness of an overworked doctor.

• A report from Dr. Nancy Borrow appears in this issue, in which she alludes to the writing of an occasional () of the work in Chemulpo. -ED. M.C. We have just finished five months of work at St. Luke's, and are thankful to be able to report that, in spite of necessarily restricted grants and other shrinkage in our former sources of income, the work at present is being maintained at full strength, there being, in fact, too much work for one doctor and one nurse to cope with satisfactorily. Up till the New Year we were obliged to close one large ward on the male side in order to save food, lighting, and firing expenses, but this temporary economy enabled us to have it thoroughly done up and repainted before reopening. It has been in use again for some time and filled up very quickly with surgical cases : our numbers are now fairly evenly divided between surgical and medical cases on the men's side, though surgical cases still largely predominate on the women's side. It used to be said that Coreans would let a foreign doctor cut him and cure him, but not dose him for the same purpose. This was undoubtedly true some years ago; but St. Luke's is reaping the reward of long and faithful service, and has most certainly won the confidence of the people here and in the surrounding districts. The large increase in medical cases daily emphasises the necessity for developing our pathological department in order to improve our means of diagnosis. With this end in view we have enlarged our laboratory by knocking down a wall between the old "lab," and an adjacent room; but we are not much farther on at present, owing to the fact that, as long as there is only one doctor working here, there is scarcely any time to spare for pathological work, or for training a Corean to do it. Also, funds for the necessary equipment are not forthcoming at present. As it is, we have to nurse our income very carefully to make it do all it must these straightened times. Drugs are our biggest bugbear, as the prices are simply phenomenal, especially of some of the drugs most commonly in use out here; however, we have just secured a year's stock and so feel easier in our minds for the present, though we hardly dare wonder what will happen if prices continue on the upward grade. We are making great efforts to partially meet our financial needs by raising more money in foes from the Coreans themselves, As we are a Mission hospital our first change must always be the outcasts and those who though sick have no money, which in this country, as far as we are concerned, also covers that very large class of Coreans who, though they may have a little money, have not enough to pay for long continued treatment either at private or at the Government hospitals. But besides these poorer folk, there are plenty of wealthy Coreans who are glad to come to us if we provide accommodation for them. Our staff are always telling us that Coreans think that, unless they pay well for treatment or anything else, what they get is not very good; I have fully proved the truth of this statement by raising our changes to better class patients, and already we are having more than ever came before. We have also introduced two classes of food, as we naturally cannot afford to give our poorer patients anything very superior in the way of diet. On the women's side we have been able to put apart one small general ward for patients who can pay higher fees; we also have single wards at a higher rating still, which are in frequent request. The results of these efforts so far have been most encouraging.

Our women's block is very overcrowded and has been so since the Corean New Year, which fell at the beginning of February this year. The three or four winter months up to the New Year is always our slackest time on the women's side, as during this time they are very busy in their own homes, making first the winter clothes and then the "kimji," as they call their pickles- it is one of their staple articles of diet; afterwards all the new clothes for the New Year have to be made and much food prepared for the great festival. As soon as this is over they are fairly free to amuse themselves by attending to their various aches and pains, and they come in increasing numbers all through the spring months to show their own sicknesses and to bring their children to be seen.

The women's ward is generally more entertaining than the men's, perhaps, as we usually have some small children in as patients, who as soon as they become accustomed to their strange surroundings are almost invariably a source of amusement to us all. Some of these children are with us for months or years even, as they are so often the victims of neglected joint-disease, and their cure is a matter of time and much patience. Some of them are very pitiful when we first see them. One little girl, who has been with us for more than a year, we first saw at Chin-Chun, all doubled up with hip-disease, unable to stand straight and only getting about by jerking herself along on her hands and heels; she has been living in a splint and is nearly straightened out, and now at the age of eleven is learning to walk upright for the first time in her life, with the help of crutches. Another little chap, aged ten, with a tubercular knee, is as bright as a button, and a great pet with us all. At the beginning of the winter, when his condition was more acute, he used to be extraordinarily alive to the condition of his temperature chart. He would look up every evening at the chart above his head to see whereabouts the dot was marked ; it was too high up for his liking he would immediately become very pianissimo, stop his work and play, and would respond to no advances whatever. On his good days he is the life of the ward and leads all the other children, even though he is generally the youngest. A short time ago he was seized with a craze for knitting and infected all the other children with it; it was hard work to keep them satisfied, as wool was getting very scarce and dear. After enriching several of us with knitted ties and belt the fever was transferred to some other occupation : at present they are all very busy studying the Corean equivalent for pothooks, and one is liable to be presented on the daily round with small slips of paper, heavily scored over with ka, kya, ke, kye, etc.

Miss Carswell has recently started a study class for these children, which is taken by our language teacher, who has a very real gift for teaching, a by no means common possession out here, as most of us who have tried to study the language know to our cost. He spends half the lesson time on Bible pictures and stories, and the rest of the time in teaching Corean script; the children are always hugely delighted with their lessons. Small Corean children are as bright as any in the world, and pick up hymns and prayers and Scripture lessons with amazing rapidity, so that we cannot help believing that their long stay in hospital will make a lifelong impression on some of these children-especially. perhaps, on those who are going back to heathen homes in the country where aims and ideals will be so different from those we are trying to teach them in hospital.

I have just been called away to see a very pitiful sight in the hospital-at least it is so out here- viz. a widow with two tiny twin girls. They were brought up by two men as destitute as herself, who had brought her up to us to see if we could do anything for them. A widow without a son is of very little account out here, and girls are always at a discount, but when it comes to two of them, and twins at that -!!!! She looks very sick, and one of the twins is obviously starving: so we have taken them in, although we have not a bed to put them in, but we are hoping that "something will turn up.” Such cases always make us feel that our medical work out here is incomplete for lack of refuges to supplement it: refuges for the blind and the deformed; infirmaries for the many victims of heart disease, chronic bronchitis, advanced phthisis, etc, ad. inf.; also places of shelter for some of these destitute women. The longer one lives out here, the more one misses the beneficent work which is done at home by sanatoria, asylums, and workhouse infirmaries. N. BORROW, M.B., B.S.

Local Notes.

Kanghwa.-The Church on this beautiful island consists of nearly 2,000 souls, but the growth now is rather slow. Once again it is possible to work the island from two centres, North and South, so that it forms -with several outlying islands - two separate districts.

The north of the island contains the city with its very fine Church of SS. Peter and Paul, wherein is a Lady chapel where the daily Mass is offered. In this district (the north) there are three boys' schools and one girls' school, and another girls' school is to be opened (D.V.) on Ascension Day. The Christians are mostly farmers, with a sprinkling of traders and fishermen. We had a visit from the Bishop in Easter week. His Lordship confirmed sixty-six persons, varying in age from 9 to 66, and visited two outlying chapelries as well as the Mother Church. We find it a capital plan to get little girls from country places to come in to the school in the city for a few months, in preparation for their confirmation and first communion. Coreans do not readily interest themselves in their daughters' education, and we have to support them in large measure out of our scanty funds. If they do not come in, many of them can never learn to read, and it is wonderful to see how their minds and souls expand when they are given a chance of developing. Chin-Chun.-Between the first and second Sundays in Lent we held a Mission in Chin-Chun to rouse up some of our Christians who had got very slack. The Mission was conducted by Father Drake, S.S.M., assisted by Kim Barnabas, whom we hope to see made Deacon next Trinity, and three other Corean catechists. Sister Edith Helena came down to help with the women. Father Drake preached every morning at Mass, took a meditation for the women at 10 each morning and a service for boys at 4-30 each afternoon. The general Mission service at 8 was left entirely to the Coreans and was followed by a special intercessory service. All the services were very well attended and a great number of confessions were made. The Rev. Charles Hunt came down after Passion Sunday to help me with Holy Week and Easter and after until the meeting of the Synod. Easter services were very well attended, but unfortunately it rained heavily and made it impossible for many to return to their homes that day. Paik-Chun. - On the Feast of the Annunciation twenty-six men and women were baptised in the Church of All Saints. A few weeks later, on Passion Sunday, eight more were baptised at Tochoul, the first-fruits of the Church in the latter-named place. The following week the Bishop visited this district, holding three confirmations, viz. at Paik-Chun, Tochoul, and Pommory, forty candidates in all being presented for the "laying on of hands." This is the first time that the Bishop has visited for confirmation any place outside Paik-Chun. Although it poured down with rain all Easter Day, yet it did not prevent the Festival being one of the happiest that we have had here. The number of communicants is the largest communion there has ever been since the Church was founded here, and one thing specially to be thankful for was that the number of men and women was exactly the same.

Japanese work.

It is a long time, I believe, since anything appeared in MORNING CALM about the work among Japanese in the northern part of Corea, which includes the settled work in Seoul and Chemulpo, and the occasional visiting of scattered Christians in over a score of other places. During that time the work in Chemulpo has been very stagnant, being under the disadvantage for more than a year of having no resident worker at all, and being dependent on weekly visits by the workers from Seoul. But since December a catechist has been stationed there, who has come over for at least a year from the Kyoto diocese in Japan.

During the same period, in spite of constant changes on the staff, the work in Seoul has been really wonderful: and nowhere, I think, has the flowing tide that has shown itself in many ways and places in work among the Japanese during the last two years been more apparent, the number of our baptised Christians in Seoul rising in a year and a half from under a hundred to over a hundred and forty.

But it is not of this settled work that I wish chiefly to write this time, but of the scattered work; and as an instance of the kind of work let me describe roughly the journey I have just completed since Easter.

Travelling all day by train from Seoul takes you to the Yalu river, the boundary between Corea and Manchuria, also the boundary of the diocese. But for convenience' sake we include the Japanese Christians at Autung, on the northern side of the great railway bridge of which the Japanese are so proud, in the visiting work of this diocese, though strictly speaking they belong to North China.

Last year the Bishop went up there with me and confirmed five people. One of these, a school mistress in the primary school, went immediately afterwards as a governess to the Japanese Consulate; and two of the servants there, led by her, and visited regularly from Seoul for instruction, were baptised this time.

There are one or two English Church people also in Autung connected with the Chinese Customs, and one morning the Eucharist was celebrated in English in one of their houses. Another morning I celebrated in the big railway hospital, for a Christian in from the country who had been very ill, but was much better.

Then from the south side of the river I bicycled down to the town at the mouth of the river, where the postmaster is a Christian; but his children are not baptised, as his wife is an earnest Buddhist; but he received his communion the next morning, after which a young man in the post office, to whom I had talked a long time the previous evening, was admitted catechumen. The way he had been brought to Christianity was rather exceptional; he is the telegraph operator, and such men, when they have transmitted public messages, sometimes carry on private conversations with the operator at the other end. In such a way he had got to know one of our Christians, who is a telegraphist at a neighbouring town. Gradually they had got on to the subject of religion, and this month had thus been brought to study the Bible, without ever having met the man who led him, and is now a very promising catechumen.

That was not the only time on this journey that I was forcibly reminded of the words: "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Coming back a day or two later by rail halfway to Seoul, to Pyeng Yang (the great city in the north, where the Presbyterian work among Coreans is so strong). I celebrated the Eucharist for our Christians there on Sunday morning. After admitting catechumen the wife of one of them, I bicycled out to Seisen, a place forty miles east, right in the heart of the central mountains of the country.

Last autumn, doing this same bit, I lost my way badly (a not unlikely contingency away from the towns in Corea, when you cannot speak a word of Corean), and was treated very kindly by the postmaster of a town on the way, whom I then discovered to be a Christian (not a Churchman). So I called on him again this time, and was told of a woman in the same place, the wife of the gendarme chief officer there, who was not a Christian, but had been taking in a Christian magazine and reading the Bible.

Her knowledge of the New Testament was quite extensive, and she knew a little of what baptism means, but had never read or heard anything about the Church as a present-day fact at all. What is so necessary here as elsewhere is regular visiting for instruction, but under present conditions such a place as that only gets a flying visit perhaps twice a year.

While I was in that house my bicycle had remained at the Little Japanese inn where I had had lunch, and some enterprising Corean tried to ride it, had a bad fall, and bent the pedal crank so badly that the outlook for going on at all was bad. However, in the end a sort of blacksmith hammered it into usable shape, smashing off most of the plating in the process. I was only too thankful not to be held up altogether. I heard afterwards that the crowd of Coreans round the bicycle during the operation, not understanding my objurgations in English, thought I had been much more patient with the offender than any of themselves would have been, and explained the cause as being due to the largeness of my body, which gave room for a large heart!

At Seisen that night I stayed in the house of a sub-officer of gendarmes, whose wife is a Christian. The man himself is not a Christian, but very friendly: two children have been baptised, and the baby I baptised this time. The next morning the mother made her communion before the rest of the family woke. And later I called on the chief officer, who again is a Christian but not a Churchman.

Two days later, a good deal further south down the main railway line, I bicycled out seventeen miles to spend a night with Fr. Wilson at Paik-Chun, and he took me round calling on some of the Japanese who live there. He is hoping to try to get some of them to come to church there. My last night out on that journey was spent at the place from which I had ridden out to Paik-Chun, where we have a young Christian couple, married in St. Paul's, Seoul, last November. They also put me up and were very kind.

This account has been very personal, but a brief description of the kind of things that actually happen will perhaps show how very much this scattered work wants praying for. No description could show the happiness of it; but one thing it does is to throw the worker wholly upon God, because under such conditions all human means are obviously so - more than usually -inadequate.

I am writing this in the middle of Synod week, and next week am off again, to the east coast this time, I shall probably be a fortnight away, during which one of the trials will be total absence of newspapers and consequent wondering what is happening in the war area.

J. B. SIMPSON. SEOUL, May 10, 1916.

Acknowledgments.

KANGHWA-With many grateful thanks: Ciborium and alb from Dorsetshire. ₤2 from Bath towards the education of country girls. Wants. KANGHWA-Priest's surplice, footballs. Address-Reverend Father Gurney, Kanghwa, Corea.

"The Church in Corea,” By BISHOP TROLLOPE, Published by Mowbray's. PRICE 1s. 6d. The profits from the sale of this Book go to the BISHOP TURNER MEMORIAL FUND.