William Arthur Noble

Life

Noble was born on September 13, 1866, in Pennsylvania. In Korea he used the name No Bo-eul (魯普乙), and his English-language books appeared under the name W. Arthur Noble. He studied at Wyoming Seminary and Drew Theological Seminary. In 1892 he was ordained at the Wyoming Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In June of that year he married Mattie Wilcox, and on October 17 he arrived in Korea as a Methodist Episcopal missionary.

He first worked in Seoul as a teacher at Paichai Hakdang while evangelizing in the Aeogae area. After being assigned to Pyongyang in 1896, he worked in both Pyongyang and Seoul, concluding his ministry in Korea in 1934. He died on January 6, 1945, in Stockton, California. His son, Harold Noble, later served in Korea as an American diplomat.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Pyongyang mission: Noble made evangelistic tours through Pyongyang and the surrounding Pyongan region with William James Hall, the medical missionary who pioneered the Pyongyang mission in February 1893. During this period they reportedly acquired a traditional Korean house inside Pyongyang's West Gate to serve as a mission base. After Hall died in November 1894, the Methodist Episcopal mission sent the Nobles, together with the medical missionary Follwell and his wife, to Pyongyang in August 1896. A Korean, Kim Chang-sik, was appointed evangelist of the church there. This church later grew into Namsanhyeon Church, from which a number of other churches were established.
• Education: Noble took over the education of boys that Hall had begun in 1894. The Nobles are credited with developing a "day school" for girls into the Jeongjin Girls' School. During the Japanese colonial period, the Methodist Pyongyang mission station operated institutions including Kwangsung School, Chungeui Girls' Higher Common School, and Yohan Theological Seminary.
• Writing: In 1906 he published in the United States an English-language novel set in Korea, Ewa: A Tale of Korea.

Influence on the Korean Church

As the Nobles carried on Hall's work, a Methodist mission station became firmly established in Pyongyang. Methodist missions subsequently spread from Pyongyang to many towns in North and South Pyongan Provinces and Hwanghae Province. In Pyongyang, the Presbyterian Jangdaehyeon Church and the Methodist Namsanhyeon Church became the two centers of Protestantism.

The diary kept by his wife, Mattie Noble, from 1892 to 1934 was published in English in 1993 and later appeared in a Korean edition titled Noble Ilji (The Noble Journals). As an eyewitness record of missionary family life and of events in modern Korean history such as the March First Movement, it is used as a historical source. Around the fiftieth anniversary of Methodist missions in Korea, Noble, who had worked alongside the early missionary William Scranton, also offered reminiscences of Scranton's faith and character.

Assessment

Methodist writings sometimes call Noble "the father of the Methodist Pyongyang mission." However, because it was Hall who first began the Methodist mission in Pyongyang, Noble is often described as the one who inherited and expanded Hall's church and school work. No widely known criticisms of Noble personally have been identified.