Page:A modern pioneer in Korea-Henry G. Appenzeller-by William Elliot Griffis.djvu/23

Rh ashamed of what some Americans do, but never ashamed of being Americans" was a famous saying of his. He loved much and honoured many things in their character and civilisation, while despising and abhorring, with a hatred born of his love of holiness, whatever degraded them or his own countrymen — both common sinners before God, and in need of the same grace. His attitude was never that of the Pharisee, but as one who, knowing and appreciating the undeniable graces and virtues of the Korean, ever felt like taking him by the hand and saying "Come brother, let us both together strive to realise in our lives our ideals of what a Christian ought to be."

I have omitted also both the pious stock phrases and the vulgar slang about the "Oriental" and the "Asiatic" — as if human nature was one whit different there or here! To the eye of the scholar and the Christian, who knows the history and evolution from semi-brutality of our own savage ancestors, there is no Orient and no Occident, except as these phrases are as convenient and about as accurate as our commonplaces, "the sun rises" or "the dew falls." The student of history, with the eyes of science and imagination, sees in the colonial America of a hundred, or the Europe of five hundred years ago, pretty much everything that is, or only lately was, visible in China, Korea, and Japan. Human nature and the race are one.

One will quickly find also that I do not accept the alleged Korean history which is only folk lore, or appraised at its traditional and local value the