Just before this, Mr. Underwood and Mr. Appenzeller had started on a long itinerating trip toward the north, the second Mr. Underwood had undertaken. While they were absent the wrath of the Korean king and cabinet against the Romanists reached the boiling point, and culminated in a decree forbidding the further teaching of foreign religions in the ports. The country was not open to us (as it is not to-day, except by special passports). The Romanists, with their well-known love of chief seats and high places, failing to profit by their former experiences of trouble from similar causes in China, insisted upon choosing as the site for their future cathedral one of the highest points in the city, overlooking the palace, and adjoining the temple holding royal ancestral tablets. The property had been obtained unknown to the king, through the medium of Korean agents, and though he used his utmost endeavors, both with the priests and with the French legation, to induce them to change this for any other site, they remained obdurate, utterly refused to yield, and proceeded to lay the foundation of their church. The decree immediately followed, and the American minister advised, nay ordered, us to recall our missionaries, who most unwillingly returned. There were, indeed, those who asserted that this early attempt to carry the Gospel into the interior had been, at least in part, the cause of the obnoxious decree, which made it look as if our work was, for a time at least, at an end. That this was not so was proved by the fact that Mr. Underwood had hardly returned ere he was waited upon by a committee consisting of high Korean nobles and members of the cabinet, offering him the entire charge of their government school, with a generous salary, and with the full understanding that he would not hesitate to teach Christianity to the pupils. This offer, displaying the great confidence, instead of the displeasure and suspicion which foreigners assured us was the feeling of the Koreans toward our evangelistic workers, was taken into serious consideration, but was finally refused on account of its interference with other work, and for other reasons equally important. It remained to us all to decide upon our course of conduct with regard to the prohibitory decree. Some of our number--the majority--argued, that as it was the law of the land, nothing remained for Christian law-abiding people but to obey it, to stop holding even morning prayers in our schools, to hold no religious services with Koreans, but to wait and pray, until God should move the king’s heart, and have the decree rescinded. By this course they believed we should win favor with the authorities, while defiance or disobedience might cause our whole mission to be expelled from the country.