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 CHAPTER XXIII.

What Christianity Is Doing for the Village.

order that we may better understand what Christianity is doing for the village, it will be wise to take a hasty review of conditions as they were and are now where the gospel has not been preached. To one reared in a Christian country, surrounded by all the institutions of Christian civilization, it is indeed hard to realize the barrenness and destitution of a village or community into which Christianity has never gone.

If we take the things which we prize most in our civilization and write them down in a column, and then try to find something in our village to write in a column over against them and to fill the same place in the village life that these things fill in our lives, we shall be able to form some idea of the barrenness of village life where it has not been touched by Christianity.

I. The Bible. 2. Sunday. 3. Home. 4. Schools. 5. Literature. 6. Love and courtship. These are not given as a complete list of the things which mean most to us, but are intended only to suggest what our lives would be even if these few things were blotted out.

The Bible. — There is nothing that can take its place in any civilization, and absolutely nothing to be compared with it in the village life of Korea. It is true that there is the philosophy of Confucius, which has had its place in shaping the lives and conduct of millions of Orientals; but it can in no sense be said to fill the place of our Bible. (230)