The leaders were tortured and executed, firmly refusing to renounce their faith. Nevertheless the number of converts increased, and ten years after the baptism of Senghoun-i at Peking there were 4000 Christians in Korea. A time of comparative peace followed, and the church was consolidated. At last a priest was sent over from China called Jean dos Remedios, in 1791; but he was unable to penetrate into the country, and was obliged to return to Peking. No further attempt to send a missionary was made for several years. Then a young Chinaman called Tsiou was selected for the perilous task, and during a stormy night he succeeded in crossing the closely guarded frontier disguised as a Korean. Some months later the news of his arrival became known to the authorities, and they ordered his arrest. But the Koreans who had long been asking for a missionary to be sent to them guarded him with the utmost loyalty, and the authorities seized instead the Koreans who had brought him into the country, and after cruel tortures which utterly failed to make them confess his whereabouts, they were put to death. Tsiou, meanwhile, mainly owed his safety to a devoted Christian woman, and continued his labours unremittingly in secret, while she prosecuted an important work in teaching a large number of girls. During the reign of the king at that time on the throne of Korea, the persecution was somewhat limited, but as soon as he died in 1800 it broke out afresh with redoubled energy. Tsiou was at last captured, and with many others laid down his life, not only willingly, but joyfully. He was only twenty-five years of age. The persecution raged till the next year, when the king issued a strange edict, to the effect that he was determined to have done with the matter; that the Christians filling the prisons should at once be judged and executed, and after that no more trials were to be instituted. Many were publicly executed, while others were strangled in the prisons in order to expedite matters. Then followed a lull, and the church had a breathing space, but all its leaders had been put to death, and it was reduced to a pitiable condition. The church sent a fresh appeal to the bishop at Peking to send them another priest, but he was utterly unable to grant their request, for the mission itself was at a low ebb on account of the French Revolution. No missionaries were coming out to the foreign field, and no promise even could be held out to the Koreans of any one coming to them in the future. Again and again their messenger braved untold risks to carry their piteous appeal to China, but in vain. To those who like myself intensely dislike the system and many of the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, while loving and profoundly venerating many of its adherents, this absence of the priesthood may well seem a blessing in disguise.