On the same afternoon four requests for Christian teaching came to the missionaries, each signed by from fifteen to forty men. At all these evening meetings the room was crammed within and without by men, reverent and earnest in manner, some of whom had been shunned for their wickedness even in a city “the smoke of which” in her palmy days was said “to go up like the smoke of Sodom,” but who, transformed by a power outside themselves, were then leading exemplary lives. There were groups in the dark, groups round the candles on the floor, groups in the doorways, and every face was aglow except that of poor, bewildered Im. One old man, with his forehead in the dust, prayed like a child that, as the letter bearing to New York an earnest request for more teachers was on its way, “the wind and sea might waft it favorably,” and that when it was read the eyes of the foreigners[40] might be opened “to see the sore need of people in a land where no one knows anything, and where all believe in devils, and are dying in the dark.” As I looked upon those lighted faces, wearing an expression strongly contrasting with the dull, dazed look of apathy which is characteristic of the Korean, it was impossible not to recognize that it was the teaching of the Apostolic doctrines of sin, judgment to come, and divine love which had brought about such results, all the more remarkable because, according to the missionaries, a large majority of those who had renounced dæmon worship, and were living in the fear of the true God, had been attracted to Christianity in the first instance by the hope of gain! This, and almost unvarying testimony to the same effect, confirm me in the opinion that when people talk of “nations craving for the Gospel,” “stretching out pleading hands for it,” or “athirst for God,” or “longing for the living waters,” they are using words which in that connection have no meaning. That there are “seekers after righteousness” here and there I do not doubt, but I believe that the one “craving” of the far East is for money--that “unrest” is only in the east a synonym for poverty, and that the spiritual instincts have yet to be created. On the Sunday I went with Dr. Scranton of Seoul to the first regular service ever held for women in Phyöng-yang. There were a number present, all dæmon-worshippers, some of them attracted by the sight of a “foreign woman.” It was impossible to have a formal service with people who had not the most elementary ideas of God, of prayer, of moral evil, and of good. It was not possible to secure their attention. They were destitute of religious ideas. An elderly matron, who acted as a sort of spokeswoman said, “They thought perhaps God is a big dæmon, and He might help them to get back their lost goods.” That service was “mission work” in its earliest stage.