anese treatment of Korean men,
women and children; with murder, rapine, burning of homes, especially
Christian homes; beating of a mother and her twelve-year-old girl from
three in the morning until eight to make them reveal the hiding-place of
their preacher daddy, that the crimson, blood-red sunset I witnessed on
my last night in Korea seemed to me like a "sunset of crimson wounds."
All I know is that it happened in Korea while I was there, and that my
soul had been, for a solid month, stirred to the depths of its righteous
wrath over the things that I had heard first-hand from human lips.

But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber
black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the
edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It
looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of
blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black clouds.

Then suddenly all over the horizon these wounds began to break through
the mass of black clouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits,
and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some of them looked as if a
bayonet had been lunged into the body of that somber cloud and a great
crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big as a house. Then it
looked as if some ruthless Japanese gendarme had taken his sword and
slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and from side to side like a
crescent moon appeared this great crimson wound.

I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there it was. It seemed that
there was back of that great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its
crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of that slate-black mass
until finally the curtain of black began to tear, and the blood poured
through to run along the horizon, and splash against the clouds, and
slit its way like wounds through the clouds of night.

And I thought of something else. I thought how a Man once was crucified.
I thought how dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought how
slate-colored and somber all life seemed, especially to that little
group of disciples. I thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and
side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His crown made, and of the
blood that ran over His face. I could see Him there back of that cloud
in Korea. I could see His Christian people being crucified again
because of their religion. I could see Japanese bayonets thrust into His
side and Japa