Page:A modern pioneer in Korea-Henry G. Appenzeller-by William Elliot Griffis.djvu/22

14 A Modern Pioneer in Korea to urge Congressional committees to secure by treaty the peaceful opening of the country. In 1 88 1, 1882, and 1885, books treating of Korea were published. Yet in those days it was, as a lady said to me, like talking about a "strange seashell," picked up from an unknown strand in the far Orient.

My neighbour and friend in Boston, Phillips Brooks, used to say that foreign missions were "the last of the heroisms" and so he preached. My friend and correspondent Appenzeller illustrated in his life and final hour Bishop Brooks' thesis. I have endeavoured to tell the story of his work among the people whom he loved. It is not panegyric, but reality that I offer. Appenzeller was a hero, but he hated cant and sham. Hence I have shown the country and the people, as well as the worker. I have left out the word "heathen," because this term is neither in the Hebrew, nor the Greek of the original scriptures, nor, strictly speaking, in the Revised Version. In the languages of Europe — itself once a mission field, the word was and is a term of contempt, and such a feeling toward the Koreans was the last in the breast of this man, their friend and lover. Even when in ripest knowledge of the natives — and he was, both as a scholar and a preacher, ever in living contact with the people — Appenzeller, while he hated what marred and ruined both their bodies and souls, was ever affectionate to them as human beings. He felt about the Koreans as he did about his own countrymen. "We should be