CALVIN WILSON MATEER

C. W. MATEER

Calvin Wilson Mateer

FORTY-FIVE YEARS A MISSIONARY
IN SHANTUNG, CHINA

A BIOGRAPHY

BY DANIEL W. FISHER

PHILADELPHIA
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
1911

Copyright, 1911, by
The Trustees of the Presbyterian Board of
Publication and Sabbath School Work

Published September, 1911

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

It is a privilege to comply with the request of Dr. Fisher to write a brief introduction to his biography of the late Calvin W. Mateer, D.D., LL.D. I knew Dr. Mateer intimately, corresponded with him for thirteen years and visited him in China. He was one of the makers of the new China, and his life forms a part of the history of Christian missions which no student of that subject can afford to overlook. He sailed from New York in 1863, at the age of twenty-eight, with his young wife and Rev. and Mrs. Hunter Corbett, the journey to China occupying six months in a slow and wretchedly uncomfortable sailing vessel. It is difficult now to realize that so recently as 1863 a voyage to the far East was so formidable an undertaking. Indeed, the hardships of that voyage were so great that the health of some members of the party was seriously impaired.

Difficulties did not end when the young missionaries arrived at their destination. The people were not friendly; the conveniences of life were few; the loneliness and isolation were exceedingly trying; but the young missionaries were undaunted and pushed their work with splendid courage and faith. Mr. Corbett soon became a leader in evangelistic work, but Dr. Mateer, while deeply interested in evangelistic work and helping greatly in it, felt chiefly drawn toward educational work. In 1864, one year after his arrival, he and his equally gifted and devoted wife managed to gather six students. There were neither text-books, buildings, nor assistants; but with a faith as strong as it was sagacious Dr. and Mrs. Mateer set themselves to the task of building up a college. One by one buildings were secured, poor and humble indeed, but sufficing for a start. The missionary made his own text-books and manufactured much of the apparatus with his own hands. He speedily proved himself an educator and administrator of exceptional ability. Increasing numbers of young Chinese gathered about him. The college grew. From the beginning, Mr. Mateer insisted that it should give its training in the Chinese language, that the instruction should be of the most thorough kind, and that it should be pervaded throughout by the Christian spirit. When, after thirty-five years of unremitting toil, advancing years compelled him to lay down the burden of the presidency, he had the satisfaction of seeing the college recognized as one of the very best colleges in all Asia. It continues under his successors in larger form at Wei Hsien, where it now forms the Arts College of the Shantung Christian University.

Dr. Mateer was famous not only as an educator, but as an author and translator. After his retirement from the college he devoted himself almost wholly to literary work, save for one year, when a vacancy in the presidency of the college again devolved its cares temporarily upon him. His knowledge of the Chinese language was extraordinary. He prepared many text-books and other volumes in Chinese, writing some himself and translating others. The last years of his life were spent as chairman of a committee for the revision of the translation of the Bible into Chinese, a labor to which he gave himself with loving zeal.

Dr. Mateer was a man of unusual force of character; an educator, a scholar and an executive of high capacity. Hanover College, of which Dr. D. W. Fisher was then president, early recognized his ability and success by bestowing upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in 1903 his alma mater added the degree of Doctor of Laws. We mourn that the work no longer has the benefit of his counsel; but he builded so well that the results of his labors will long endure, and his name will always have a prominent place in the history of missionary work in the Chinese empire.

Dr. Fisher has done a great service to the cause of missions and to the whole church in writing the biography of such a man. A college classmate and lifelong friend of Dr. Mateer, and himself a scholar and educator of high rank, he has written with keen insight, with full comprehension of his subject, and with admirable clearness and power. I bespeak for this volume and for the great work in China to which Dr. Mateer consecrated his life the deep and sympathetic interest of all who may read this book.

Arthur Judson Brown

156 Fifth Avenue, New York City, April 13th, 1911

PREFACE

When I was asked to become the biographer of Dr. Mateer, I had planned to do other literary work, and had made some preparation for it; but I at once put that aside and entered on the writing of this book. I did this for several reasons. Though Dr. Mateer and I had never been very intimate friends, yet, beginning with our college and seminary days, and on to the close of his life, we had always been very good friends. I had occasionally corresponded with him, and, being in hearty sympathy with the cause of foreign missions, I had kept myself so well informed as to his achievements that I had unusual pleasure in officially conferring on him the first of the distinctions by which his name came to be so well adorned. As his college classmate, I had joined with the other survivors in recognizing him as the one of our number whom we most delighted to honor. When I laid down my office of college president, he promptly wrote me, and suggested that I occupy my leisure by a visit to China, and that I use my tongue and pen to aid the cause of the evangelization of that great people. Only a few months before his death he sent me extended directions for such a visit. When—wholly unexpectedly—the invitation came to me to prepare his biography, what could I do but respond favorably?

It has been my sole object in this book to reveal to the reader Dr. Mateer, the man, the Christian, the missionary, both his inner and his outer life, just as it was. In doing this I have very often availed myself of his own words. Going beyond these, I have striven neither to keep back nor to exaggerate anything that deserves a place in this record. All the while the preparation of this book has been going forward in my hands my appreciation of the magnitude of the man and of his work has been increasing. Great is the story of his career. If this does not appear so to any reader who has the mind and the heart to appreciate it, then the fault is mine. It, in that case, is in the telling, and not in the matter of the book, that the defect lies.

So many relatives and acquaintances of Dr. Mateer have contributed valuable material, on which I have drawn freely, that I dare not try to mention them here by name. It is due, however, to Mrs. J. M. Kirkwood to acknowledge that much of the chapter on “The Old Home” is based on a monograph she prepared in advance of the writing of this biography. It is due also to Mrs. Ada H. Mateer to acknowledge the very extensive and varied assistance which she has rendered in the writing of this book: first, by putting the material already on hand into such shape that the biographer’s labors have been immensely lightened, and later, by furnishing with her own pen much additional information, and by her wise, practical suggestions.

D. W. F.

Washington, 1911

I
THE OLD HOME

“There are all the fond recollections and associations of my youth.”—JOURNAL, March 4, 1857.

Calvin Wilson Mateer, of whose life and work this book is to tell, was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, near Shiremanstown, a few miles west of Harrisburg, on January 9, 1836.

This Cumberland valley, in which he first saw the light, is one of the fairest regions in all our country. Beginning at the great, broad Susquehanna, almost in sight of his birthplace, it stretches far away, a little to the southwest, on past Chambersburg, and across the state line, and by way of Hagerstown, to its other boundary, drawn by a second and equally majestic stream, the historic Potomac. Physically considered, the splendid Shenandoah valley, still beyond in Virginia, is a further extension of the same depression. It is throughout a most attractive panorama of gently rolling slopes and vales, of fertile and highly cultivated farms, of great springs of purest water and of purling brooks, of little parks of trees spared by the woodman’s ax, of comfortable and tasteful rural homes, of prosperous towns and villages where church spires and school buildings and the conveniences of modern civilization bear witness to the high character of the people,—all of this usually set like a picture in a framework of the blue and not very rugged, or very high, wooded mountains between which, in their more or less broken ranges, the entire valley lies.

True, it was winter when this infant first looked out on that world about him, but it was only waiting for spring to take off its swaddling of white, and to clothe it with many-hued garments. Twenty-eight years afterward, almost to the very day, he, cast ashore on the coast of China, was struggling over the roadless and snow covered and, to him, wholly unknown ground toward the place near which he was to do the work of his life, and where his body rests in the grave. When he died, in his seventy-third year, the spiritual spring for which he had prayed and longed and labored had not yet fully come, but there were many indications of its not distant approach.

John Mateer, the father of Calvin, was born in this beautiful Cumberland valley, on a farm which was a part of a large tract of land entered by the Mateers as first settlers, out of whose hands, however, it had almost entirely passed at the date when this biography begins. The mother of Calvin was born in the neighboring county of York. Her maiden name was Mary Nelson Diven. Both father and mother were of that Scotch-Irish descent to which especially Pennsylvania and Virginia are indebted for so many of their best people; and they both had behind them a long line of sturdy, honorable and God-fearing ancestors.

At the time of Calvin’s birth his parents were living in a frame house which is still standing; and though, with the passing of years, it has much deteriorated, it gives evidence that it was a comfortable though modest home for the little family.

One of the employments of his father while resident there was the running of a water mill for hulling clover seed; and Calvin tells somewhere of a recollection that he used to wish when a very little boy that he were tall enough to reach a lever by which he could turn on more water to make the mill go faster,—a childish anticipation of his remarkable mechanical ability and versatility in maturer years.

Calvin was the oldest of seven children—five brothers and two sisters; in the order of age, Calvin Wilson, Jennie, William Diven, John Lowrie, Robert McCheyne, Horace Nelson and Lillian, of whom Jennie, William, Robert and Horace are still living. Of these seven children, Calvin and Robert became ministers of the gospel in the Presbyterian Church, and missionaries in Shantung, China; John for five years had charge of the Presbyterian Mission Press at Shanghai, and later of the Congregational Press at Peking, where he died; Lillian taught in the Girls’ School at Tengchow, and, after her marriage to Rev. William S. Walker, of the Southern Baptist Mission, in the school at Shanghai, until the failing health of her husband compelled her to return to the United States; William for a good while was strongly disposed to offer himself for the foreign missionary service, and reluctantly acting on advice, turned from it to business. Jennie married an exceptionally promising young Presbyterian minister, and both offered themselves to the foreign work and were under appointment to go to China when health considerations compelled them to remain in their homeland. Some years after his death she married a college professor of fine ability. Horace is a professor in the University of Wooster, and a practicing physician.

In view of this very condensed account of the remarkable life and work of the children in this household, one may well crave to know more about the parents, and about the home life in the atmosphere of which they were nurtured. Their father and mother both had the elementary education which could be furnished in their youth by the rural schools during the brief terms for which they were held each year. In addition, the mother attended a select school in Harrisburg for a time. Both father and mother built well on this early foundation, forming the habit of wise, careful reading. Both were professing Christians when they were married, and in infancy Calvin was baptized in the old Silver Spring Church, near which they resided. Later the father became a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church to which they had removed their membership. In this capacity he was highly esteemed, his pastor relying especially on his just, discerning judgment. He had a beautiful tenor voice and a line musical sense, and he led the choir for a number of years. Few laymen in the church at large were better informed as to its doctrines and history, and few were more familiar with the Bible. There was in the church a library from which books were regularly brought home; religious papers were taken and read by the whole family, and thus all were acquainted with the current news of the churches, and with the progress of the gospel in the world.

In the conduct of his farm Mr. Mateer was thrifty, industrious and economical. His land did not yield very bountifully, but all of its products were so well husbanded that notwithstanding the size of his family he yet accumulated considerable property. Though somewhat reluctant at first to have his boys one after another leave him, thus depriving him of their help on the farm, he aided each to the extent of his ability, and as they successively fitted themselves for larger lives he rejoiced in their achievements.

Mr. Mateer died at Monmouth, Illinois, in 1875. When the tidings reached Calvin out in China, he wrote home to his mother a beautiful letter, in which among other things he said: “Father’s death was eminently characteristic of his life—modest, quiet and self-suppressed. He died the death of the righteous and has gone to a righteous man’s reward. The message he sent John and me was not necessary; that he should ‘die trusting in Jesus’ was not news to us, for we knew how he had lived.”

DR. MATEER’S MOTHER

By reading the records that have been at my command I have gotten the conviction that the mother was the stronger character, or at least that she more deeply impressed herself on the children. When Calvin made his last visit to this country, he was asked whose influence had been most potent in his life, and he at once replied, “Mother’s.” In his personal appearance he strongly resembled her. If one could have wished for any change in his character, it might have been that he should have had in it just a little bit more of the ideality of his father, and just a little bit less of the intense realism of his mother. Some of his mother’s most evident characteristics were in a measure traceable as an inheritance from her father, William Diven; for example, the place to which she assigned education among the values of life. He was a man of considerable literary attainments, for his day, and for one residing out in the country; so that when in later years he came to make his home with the Mateers he brought with him a collection of standard books, thus furnishing additional and substantial reading for the family. Even Shakspere and Burns were among the authors, though they were not placed where the children could have access to them, and were made familiar to them only by the grandfather’s quotation of choice passages. When his daughter was a little girl, so intense was his desire that she should have as good an education as practicable, that if the weather was too inclement for her to walk to the schoolhouse he used to carry her on his back. It was her lifelong regret that her education was so defective; and it is said that after she was seventy years of age, once she dreamed that she was sent to school at Mount Holyoke, and she awoke in tears to find that she was white-haired, and that it was only a dream. Although it involved the sacrifice of her own strength and ease, she never faltered in her determination that her children should have the educational advantages to which she had aspired, but never attained; and in what they reached in this direction she had a rich satisfaction. Toward every other object which she conceived to be good and true, and to be within the scope of her life, she set herself with like persistence, and strength, and willingness for self-sacrifice. Her piety was deep, thorough and all-controlling; but with her it was a principle rather than a sentiment. Its chief aim was the promotion of the glory of the infinitely holy God, though as she neared the visible presence of her Saviour, this softened somewhat into a conscious love and faith toward him. She survived her husband twenty-one years, and died at the advanced age of seventy-nine. When the tidings of this came to her children in China, their chief lament was, “How we shall miss her prayers!”

When Calvin was about five years old, his parents bought a farm twelve miles north of Gettysburg, near what is now York Springs, in Adams County. It is some twenty miles from the place of his birth, and beyond the limits of the Cumberland valley. Even now it is a comparatively out-of-the-way spot, reached only by a long drive from the nearest railway station; then it was so secluded that the Mateers called the house into which they removed the “Hermitage.” Here the family continued to reside until about the time of Calvin’s graduation from college. Then a second and much longer move was made, to Mercer County, in western Pennsylvania. Still later, a third migration brought them to Illinois. It is to the home in Adams County that Calvin refers in the line quoted at the head of this chapter, as the place where “were all the fond recollections and associations” of his youth.

The farm was not very large, and the soil was only moderately productive, notwithstanding the labor and skill that the Mateers put upon it. In picking off the broken slate stones which were turned up thick by the plow, the children by hard experience were trained in patient industry as to small details. At least the two elder frequently beguiled the tedium of this task “by reciting portions of the Westminster Catechism and long passages of Scripture.” Another really tedious occupation, which, however, was converted into a sort of late autumn feast of ingathering, was shared by the whole family, but was especially appreciated by the children. This was the nut harvest of the “shellbark” hickory trees of the forest. As many as fifty or more bushels were gathered in a season; the sale of these afforded a handsome supplement to the income of the household. Along the side of the farm flows a beautiful stream, still bearing its Indian name of Bermudgeon, and in front of the house is a smaller creek; and in these Calvin fished and set traps for the muskrats, and experimented with little waterwheels, and learned to swim. Up on an elevation still stand the old house and barn, both constructed of the red brick once so largely used in the eastern section of Pennsylvania. Both of these are still in use. Though showing signs of age and lack of care, they are witnesses that for those days the Mateers were quite up to the better standard of living customary among their neighbors. “This growing family,” says Mrs. Kirkwood (Jennie), “was a hive of industry, making most of the implements used both indoors and out, and accomplishing many tasks long since relegated to the factory and the shop. Necessity was with them the mother not only of invention, but of execution as well. All were up early in the morning eating breakfast by candlelight even in summer, and ready before the sun had risen for a day’s work that continued long after twilight had fallen.” In the barn they not only housed their horses and cattle and the field products, but also manufactured most of the implements for their agricultural work. Here Calvin first had his mechanical gifts called into exercise, sometimes on sleds and wagons and farm tools, and sometimes on traps and other articles of youthful sport.

In this home family worship was held twice each day,—in the morning often before the day had fully dawned, and in the evening when the twilight was vanishing into night. In this service usually there were not only the reading of Scripture and the offering of prayer, but also the singing of praise, the fine musical voice of the father and his ability to lead in the tunes making this all the more effective. Of course, on the Sabbath the entire family, young and old, so far as practicable, attended services when held in the Presbyterian church not far away. But that was not all of the religious observances. The Sabbath was sacredly kept, after the old-fashioned manner of putting away the avoidable work of the week, and of giving exceptional attention to sacred things. Mrs. Kirkwood, who was near enough in age to be the “chum” of Calvin, writes: “Among the many living pictures which memory holds of those years, there is one of a large, airy, farmhouse kitchen, on a Sabbath afternoon. The table, with one leaf raised to afford space for ‘Scott’ and ‘Henry’ stands between two doors that look out upon tree-shaded, flower-filled yards. There sits the mother, with open books spread all about her, studying the Bible lesson for herself and for her children. Both parents and children attended a pastor’s class in which the old Sunday School Union Question Book was used. In this many references were given which the children were required to commit. Older people read them from their Bibles, but these children memorized them. Some of the longer ones could never be repeated in after times without awakening associations of the muscularizing mental tussles of those early days.” It was a part of the religious training of each child in that household, just as soon as able to read, to commit to memory the Westminster Shorter Catechism,—not so as to blunder through the answers in some sort of fashion, but so as to recite them all, no matter how long or difficult, without mistaking so much as an article or a preposition.

Stories are handed down concerning the boy Calvin at home, some of which foreshadow characteristics of his later years. One of these must suffice here. The “Hermitage,” when the Mateers came into it, was popularly believed to be haunted by a former occupant whose grave was in an old deserted Episcopal churchyard about a mile away. The grave was sunken, and it was asserted that it would not remain filled. It was also rumored that in the gloomy woods by which the place was surrounded a headless man had been seen wandering at night. Nevertheless the Mateer children often went up there on a Sabbath afternoon, and entered the never-closed door, to view the Bible and books and desk, which were left just as they had been when services long before had ceased to be held; or wandered about the graves, picking the moss from the inscriptions on the headstones, in order to see who could find the oldest. It was a place that, of course, was much avoided at night; for had not restless white forms been seen moving about among these burial places of the dead? The boy Calvin had been in the habit of running by it in the late evening with fast-beating heart. One dark night he went and climbed up on the graveyard fence, resolved to sit in that supremely desolate and uncanny spot till he had mastered the superstitious fear associated with it. The owls hooted, and other night sounds were intensified by the loneliness, but he successfully passed his chosen ordeal, and won a victory worth the effort. In a youthful way he was disciplining himself for more difficult ordeals in China.

II
THE MAKING OF THE MAN

“It has been said, and with truth, that when one has finished his course in an ordinary college, he knows just enough to be sensible of his own ignorance.”—LETTER TO HIS MOTHER, January 15, 1857.

The letter from which the sentence at the head of this chapter is taken was written a week after Mateer had reached his twenty-first year and when he was almost half advanced in his senior year in college. Later in the letter he says: “Improvement and advancement need not, and should not, stop with a college life. We should be advancing in knowledge so long as we live.” With this understanding we may somewhat arbitrarily set his graduation from college as terminating the period of his life covered by what I have designated as “the making of the man.”

Back of all else lay his native endowments of body and of mind. Physically he was exceptionally free from both inherited and acquired weaknesses. In a letter which he wrote to his near relatives in this country on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, he said, “I have not only lived, but I have enjoyed an exceptional measure of health.” At no period was he laid aside by protracted sickness. At the same time, this must not be understood to signify that he had one of those iron constitutions that seem to be capable of enduring without harm every sort of exposure except such as in its nature must be mortal. In that part of his Journal covering portions of his college and seminary work he often tells of a lassitude for which he blames himself as morally at fault, but in which a physician would have seen symptoms of a low bodily tone. Bad food, lack of exercise and ill treatment on the voyage which first brought him to China left him with a temporary attack of dyspepsia. Occasionally he had dysentery, and once he had erysipelas. At no time did he regard himself as so rugged in constitution that he did not need to provide himself with proper clothing and shelter, so far as practicable. Nevertheless it was because of the sound physique inherited from his parents, and fostered by his country life during early youth, that without any serious breaking down of health or strength he was able to endure the privations and the toils and cares of his forty-five years in China.

As to his native mental endowments, no one would have been more ready than he to deny that he was a “genius,” if by this is meant that he had an ability offhand to do important things for the accomplishment of which others require study and effort. If, as to this, any exception ought to be made in his favor, it would be concerning some of the applied sciences and machinery, and possibly mathematics. He certainly had an extraordinary aptitude especially as to the former of these. While he himself regarded his work in the Mandarin as perhaps the greatest of his achievements, he had no such talent for the mastery of foreign languages that he did not need time and toil and patience to learn them. In college his best standing was not in Latin or Greek. In China other missionaries have been able to preach in the native tongue after as short a period of preparation; and the perfect command of the language which he attained came only after years of ceaseless toil.

Such were his native physical and mental endowments: a good, sound, though not unusually rugged, bodily constitution; and an intellect vigorous in all of its faculties, which was in degree not so superior as to set him on a pedestal by himself, yet was very considerably above the average even of college students.

Concerning the qualities of his heart and of his will it is best to wait and speak later in this volume.

In the making of a man native endowments are only the material out of which and on which to build. Beyond these, what we become depends on our opportunities and the use to which we put them. The atmosphere of the old home had much to do with the unfolding of the subsequent life and character of Mateer. Some of his leading qualities were there grown into his being.

Other powerful influences also had a large share in his development. About three quarters of a mile from the “Hermitage” stood a township schoolhouse, a small brick building, “guiltless alike of paint or comfort,” most primitive in its furnishing, and open for instruction only five or six months each year, and this in the winter. The pressure of work in the house and on the farm never was allowed to interrupt the attendance of the Mateer children at this little center of learning for the neighborhood. Of course, the teachers usually were qualified only to conduct the pupils over the elementary branches, and no provision was made in the curriculum for anything beyond these. But it so happened that for two winters Calvin had as his schoolmaster there James Duffield, who is described by one of his pupils still living as “a genius in his profession, much in advance of his times, and quite superior to those who preceded and to those who came after him. In appearance Duffield was awkward and shy. His large hands and feet were ever in his way, except when before a class; then he was suddenly at ease, absorbed in the work of teaching, alert, full of vitality, with an enthusiasm for mastery, and an intellectual power that made every subject alive with interest, leaving his impress upon each one of his pupils.” Algebra was not recognized as falling within the legitimate instruction, and no suspicion that any boy or girl was studying it entered the minds of the plain farmers who constituted the official visitors. One day a friend of the teacher, a scholarly man, came in at the time when the examinations were proceeding, and the teacher sprang a surprise by asking this friend whether he would like to see one of his pupils solve a problem in algebra. He had discerned the mathematical bent of the lad, Calvin Mateer, and out of school hours and just for the satisfaction of it he had privately been giving the boy lessons in that study. When an affirmative response was made by the stranger, Calvin went to the blackboard and soon covered half of it with a solution of an algebraic problem. Surprised and delighted, the stranger tested the lad with problem after problem, some of them the hardest in the text-book in use, only to find him able to solve them. It would have been difficult to discover which of the three principal parties to the examination, the visitor, the teacher, or the pupil, was most gratified by the outcome. There can be no question that this country school-teacher had much to do with awakening the mathematical capabilities and perhaps others of the intellectual gifts which characterized that lad in manhood and throughout life.

When Calvin was in his seventeenth year, he started in his pursuit of higher education, entering a small academy at Hunterstown, eight miles from the “Hermitage.” In this step he had the stimulating encouragement of his mother, whose quenchless passion for education has already been described. His father probably would at that time have preferred that he should remain at home and help on the farm; and occasionally, for some years, the question whether he ought not to have fallen in with the paternal wish caused him serious thought. As it was, he came home from the academy in the spring, and in the autumn and also at harvest, to assist in the work.

The first term he began Latin, and the second term Greek, and he kept his mathematics well in hand, thus distinctly setting his face toward college. But his pecuniary means were narrow, and in the winter of 1853-54 he had to turn aside to teach a country school some three miles from his home. In a brief biographical sketch which, by request of his college classmates, he furnished for the fortieth anniversary of their graduation he says: “This was a hard experience. I was not yet eighteen and looked much younger. Many of the scholars were young men and women, older than I, and there was a deal of rowdyism in the district. I held my own, however, and finished with credit, and grew in experience more than in any other period of my life.”

When the school closed he returned to the academy, which by that time had passed into the hands of S. B. Mercer, in whom he found a teacher of exceptional ability, both as to scholarship and as to the stimulation of his students to do and to be the best that was possible to them. In the spring of 1855 Mr. Mercer left the Hunterstown Academy, and went to Merrittstown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where he took charge of the Dunlaps Creek Academy. Calvin, influenced by his attachment to his teacher, and also by his intention to enter Jefferson College, situated in a neighboring county, went with him. Here he made his home, with other students, in the house occupied by the Mercers. For teaching two classes, one in geometry and one in Greek, he received his tuition. For the ostensible reason that he had come so far to enter the academy he was charged a reduced price for his board. All the way down to the completion of his course in the theological seminary he managed to live upon the means furnished in part from home, and substantially supplemented by his own labors; but he had to practice rigid economy. It was while at Merrittstown that he made a public profession of religion. This was only a few months before he entered college. He found in Dr. Samuel Wilson, the pastor of the Presbyterian church, a preacher and a man who won his admiration and esteem, and who so encouraged and directed him that he took this step.

In the autumn of 1855 he entered the junior class of Jefferson College, at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. In those days it was customary for students to be admitted further advanced as to enrollment than at present. I had myself preceded Mateer one year, entering as a sophomore in the same class into which he first came as a junior. One reason for this state of things was that the requirements were considerably lower than they now are; and they were often laxly enforced. Then, because the range of studies required was very limited in kind, consisting until the junior year almost exclusively of Latin, Greek and mathematics, it was possible for the preparatory schools to carry the work of their students well up into the curriculum of the college. Mateer had the advantage, besides, of such an excellent instructor as Professor Mercer, and of experience in teaching. He says: “I was poorly prepared for this class, but managed to squeeze in. The professor of Latin wanted me to make up some work which I had not done; but I demurred, and I recollect saying to him, ‘If after a term you still think I ought to make it up, I will do it, or fall back to the sophomore class.’ I never heard of it afterwards. I was very green and bashful when I went to college, an unsophisticated farmer’s boy from a little country academy. I knew little or nothing of the ways of the world.”

As his classmate in college, and otherwise closely associated with him as a fellow-student, I knew him well. I remember still with a good deal of distinctness his appearance; he was rather tall, light-haired, with a clear and intelligent countenance, and a general physique that indicated thorough soundness of body, though not excessively developed in any member. When I last saw him at Los Angeles a few years ago, I could perceive no great change in his looks, except such as is inevitable from the flight of years, and from his large and varied experience of life. It seems to me that it ought to be easy for any of his acquaintances of later years to form for themselves a picture of him in his young manhood at the college and at the theological seminary. So far as I can now recall, he came to college unheralded as to what might be expected of him there. He did not thrust himself forward; but it was not long until by his work and his thorough manliness, it became evident that in him the class had received an addition that was sure to count heavily in all that was of importance to a student. I do not think that he joined any of the Greek letter secret societies, though these were at the height of their prosperity there at that time. In the literary societies he discharged well and faithfully his duties, but he did not stand out very conspicuously in the exercises required of the members. In those days there was plenty of “college politics,” sometimes very petty, and sometimes not very creditable, though not wholly without profit as a preparation for the “rough-and-tumble” of life in after years, but in this Mateer did not take much part. Most of us were still immature enough to indulge in pranks that afforded us fun, but which were more an expression of our immaturity than we then imagined; and Mateer participated in one of these in connection with the Frémont-Buchanan campaign in 1856. A great Republican meeting was held at Canonsburg, and some of us students appeared in the procession as a burlesque company of Kansas “border ruffians.” We were a sadly disgraceful-looking set. Of one thing I am sure, that while Mateer gave himself constantly to his duties and refrained from most of the silly things of college life, he was not by any of us looked upon as a “stick.” He commanded our respect.

The faculty was small and the equipment of the college meager. The attendance was nearly three hundred. As to attainments, we were a mixed multitude. To instruct all of these there were—for both regular and required work—only six men, including one for the preparatory department. What could these few do to meet the needs of this miscellaneous crowd? They did their best, and it was possible for any of us, especially for the brighter student, to get a great deal of valuable education even under these conditions. Mateer in later years acknowledges his indebtedness to all of the faculty, but particularly to Dr. A. B. Brown, who was our president up to the latter part of our senior year; to Dr. Alden, who succeeded him; and to Professor Fraser, who held the chair of mathematics. Dr. Brown was much admired by the students for his rhetorical ability in the pulpit and out of it. Dr. Alden was quite in contrast to his predecessor as to many things. He had long been a teacher, and was clear and concise in his intellectual efforts. Mateer said, late in life, that from his drill in moral science he “got more good than from any other one branch in the course.” Professor Fraser was a brilliant, all-round scholar of the best type then prevalent, and had the enthusiastic admiration even of those students who were little able to appreciate his teaching. In the physical sciences the course was necessarily still limited and somewhat elementary. His classmates remember the evident mastery which Mateer had of all that was attempted by instruction or by experimentation in that department. It was not possible to get much of what is called “culture” out of the curriculum, and that through no fault of the faculty; yet for the stimulation of the intellectual powers and the unfolding of character there was an opportunity such as may be seriously lacking in the conditions of college instruction in recent years.

These were the palmy days of Jefferson College. She drew to herself students not only from Pennsylvania and the contiguous states, but also from the more distant regions of the west and the south. We were dumped down there, a heterogeneous lot of young fellows, and outside of the classroom we were left for the most part to care for ourselves. We had no luxuries and we were short of comforts. We got enough to eat, of a very plain sort, and we got it cheap. We were wholly unacquainted with athletics and other intercollegiate goings and comings which now loom up so conspicuously in college life; but we had, with rare exceptions, come from the country and the small towns, intent on obtaining an education which would help us to make the most of ourselves in after years. As to this, Mateer was a thoroughly representative student. He could not then foresee his future career, but he was sure that in it he dared not hope for success unless he made thoroughly good use of his present, passing opportunities. He was evidently a man who was there for a purpose.

The class of 1857 has always been proud of itself, and not without reason. Fifty-eight of us received our diplomas on commencement. Among them were such leaders in the church as George P. Hays, David C. Marquis and Samuel J. Niccolls, all of whom have been Moderators of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. In the law, S. C. T. Dodd, for many years the principal solicitor of the Standard Oil Company, stands out most conspicuously. Three of our number have served for longer or shorter periods as college presidents. Of Doctors of Divinity we have a long list, and also a goodly number of Doctors of Law; and others, though they have received less recognition for their work, have in our judgment escaped only because the world does not always know the worth of quiet lives. To spend years in the associations of such a class in college is itself an efficient means of education. It is a high tribute to the ability and the diligence of Mateer that, although he was with us only two years, he divided the first honor. The sharer with him in this distinction was the youngest member of the class, but a man who, in addition to unusual capacity, also had enjoyed the best preparation for college then available. On the part of Mateer, it was not what is known as genius that won the honor; it was a combination of solid intellectual capacity, with hard, constant work. The faculty assigned him the valedictory, the highest distinction at graduation, but on his own solicitation, this was given to the other first honor man.

In a letter sent by him from Wei Hsien, China, September 4, 1907, in answer to a message addressed to him by the little remnant of his classmates who assembled at Canonsburg a couple of months earlier, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their graduation, he said:

It was with very peculiar feelings of pleasure mingled with sadness that I read what was done by you at your meeting. The distance that separated me from you all adds a peculiar emphasis to my feelings, suggestive of loneliness. I have never been homesick in China. I would not be elsewhere than where I am, nor doing any other work than what I am doing. Yet when I read over the account of that meeting in Canonsburg my feelings were such as I have rarely had before. Separated by half the circumference of the globe for full forty-four years, yet in the retrospect the friendship formed in these years of fellowship in study seems to grow fresher and stronger as our numbers grow less. A busy life gives little time for retrospection, yet I often think of college days and college friends. Very few things in my early life have preserved their impression so well. I can still repeat the roll of our class, and I remember well how we sat in that old recitation room of Professor Jones [physics and chemistry]. I am in the second half of my seventy-second year, strong and well. China has agreed with me. I have spent my life itinerating, teaching and translating, with chief strength on teaching. But with us all who are left, the meridian of life is past, and the evening draws on. Yet a few of us have still some work to do. Let us strive to do it well, and add what we can to the aggregate achievement of the class’s life work—a record of which I trust none of us may be ashamed.

In the unanticipated privilege of writing this book I am trying to fulfill that wish of our revered classmate.

III
FINDING HIS LIFE WORK

“From my youth I had the missionary work before me as a dim vision. A half-formed resolution was all the while in my mind, though I spoke of it to no one. But for this it is questionable whether I would have given up teaching to go to the Seminary. After long consideration and many prayers I offered myself to the Board, and was accepted.”—AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH for college class anniversary, 1897.

In the four sentences at the head of this chapter we have a condensed outline of the process by which Calvin Mateer came to be a foreign missionary. In his case it did not, as in the antecedent experience of most other clergymen who have given themselves to this work, start with an attraction first toward the ministry, and then toward the missionary service; but just the reverse. In order to understand this we need to go back again to “the old home,” and especially to his mother. We are fortunate here in having the veil of the past lifted by Mrs. Kirkwood, as one outside of the family could not do, or, even if he could, would hesitate to do.

Long before her marriage, when indeed but a young girl, Mary Nelson Diven [Calvin’s mother] heard an appeal for the Sandwich Islands made by the elder Dr. Forbes, one of the early missionaries of the American Board, to those islands. He asked for a box of supplies. There was not much missionary interest in the little church of Dillsburg, York County, Pennsylvania, of which she was a member; for the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions had not been organized, and the American Board had not attained its majority. Her pastor sympathized with the newly awakened zeal and interest of his young parishioner, when she proposed to canvass the congregation in response to Dr. Forbes’s appeal. The box was secured and sent. This was the seed that germinated in her heart so early and bore fruit through the whole of her long life.

When in her nineteenth year she was married to John Mateer, hers was a marriage in the Lord; and together she and her husband consecrated their children in their infancy to his service. This consecration was not a form; they were laid upon the altar and never taken back. Through all the self-denying struggles to secure their education, one aim was steadily kept in view, that of fitting them either to carry the gospel to some heathen land, or to do the Lord’s work in their own land.

In addition to the foreign missionary periodicals, a number of biographies of foreign missionaries were secured and were read by all the family. Not only did this mother try to awaken in her children an interest in missions through missionary literature, but she devised means to strengthen and make permanent this interest, to furnish channels through which these feelings and impulses might flow toward practical results. One of these was a missionary mite box which she fashioned with her own hands, away back in the early forties, before the mite boxes had been scattered broadcast in the land. Quaint indeed it was, this plain little wooden box, covered with small-figured wall paper. Placed upon the parlor mantel, it soon became the shrine of the children’s devotion. No labor or self-denial on their part was considered too great to secure pennies for “the missionary box.” Few pennies were spent for self-indulgence after that box was put in place, and overflowing was the delight when some unwonted good fortune made it possible to drop in silver coins—“six-and-a-fourth bits,” or “eleven-penny bits.” Most of the offerings were secured by such self-denials as foregoing coffee, sugar, or butter. There was not at that time much opportunity for country children to earn even pennies. The “red-letter” day of all the year was when the box was opened and the pennies were counted.

This earnest-hearted mother had counted the cost of what she was doing in thus educating her children into the missionary spirit. When her first-born turned his face toward the heathen world, there was no drawing back—freely she gave him to the work. As one after another of her children offered themselves to the Foreign Board, she rejoiced in the honor God had put upon her, never shrinking from the heart strain the separation from her children must bring. She only made them more special objects of prayer, thus transmuting her personal care-taking to faith. She lived to see four of her children in China.

This explains how it came about that this elder son, from youth, had before him the missionary work as “a dim vision,” and that “a half-formed resolution” to take it up was all the while in his mind.

When he graduated from college, he had made no decision as to his life work. During the years preceding he at no time put aside the claims of missions, and consequently of the ministry, upon him, and in various ways he showed his interest in that line of Christian service. As he saw the situation the choice seemed mainly to lie between this on the one hand, and teaching on the other. Before he graduated he had the offer of a place in the corps of instructors for the Lawrenceville (New Jersey) school, since grown into such magnitude and esteem as a boys’ preparatory institution; but the conditions were not such that he felt justified in accepting. Unfortunately, there is a blank in his Journal for the period between March 4, 1857, some six months before he received his diploma at Jefferson, and October 24, 1859, when he had already been a good while in the theological seminary; and to supply it scarcely any of his letters are available. In the autobiographical sketch already noticed he says:

From college I went to take charge of the academy at Beaver, Pennsylvania. I found it run down almost to nothing, so that the first term (half year) it hardly paid me my board. I was on my mettle, however, and determined not to fail. I taught and lectured and advertised, making friends as fast as I could. I found the school with about twenty boys, all day scholars; I left it at the end of the third term with ninety, of whom thirty were boarders. I could easily have gone on and made money, but I felt that I was called to preach the gospel, and so, I sold out my school and went to Allegheny [Western Theological Seminary], entering when the first year was half over.

One of his pupils at Beaver was J. R. Miller, D.D., a distinguished minister of the gospel in Philadelphia; and very widely known especially as the author of solid but popular religious books. Writing of his experience at the Beaver Academy, he says:

When I first entered, the principal was Mr. Mateer. The first night I was there, my room was not ready, and I slept with him in his room. I can never forget the words of encouragement and cheer he spoke that night, to a homesick boy, away for almost the first time from his father and mother.... My contact with him came just at the time when my whole life was in such plastic form that influence of whatever character became permanent. He was an excellent teacher. His personal influence over me was very great. I suppose that when the records are all known, it will be seen that no other man did so much for the shaping of my life as he did.

While at Beaver he at last decided that he was called of God to study for the ministry, but called not by any extraordinary external sign or inward experience. It was a sense of duty that determined him, and although he obeyed willingly, yet it was not without a struggle. He had a consciousness of ability to succeed as a teacher or in other vocations; and he was by no means without ambition to make his mark in the world. Because he was convinced by long and careful and prayerful consideration that he ought to become a minister he put aside all the other pursuits that might have opened to him. Not long after he entered the seminary he wrote to his mother: “You truly characterize the work for which I am now preparing as a great and glorious one. I have long looked forward to it, though scarcely daring to think it my duty to engage in it. After much pondering in my own mind, and prayer for direction I have thought it my duty to preach.”

On account of teaching, as already related, he did not enter the theological seminary until more than a year after I did, so that I was not his classmate there. He came some months late in the school year, and had at first much back work to make up; but he soon showed that he ranked among the very best students. His classmate, Rev. John H. Sherrard, of Pittsburg, writes:

One thing I do well remember about Mateer: his mental superiority impressed everyone, as also his deep spirituality. In some respects, indeed most, he stood head and shoulders above his fellows around him.

Another classmate, Rev. Dr. William Gaston, of Cleveland, says:

We regarded him as one of our most level-headed men; our peer in all points; not good merely in one point, but most thorough in all branches of study. He was cheerful and yet not flippant, and with a tinge of the most serious. He was optimistic, dwelling much on God’s great love.... He was not only a year in advance of most of us in graduating from college, but I think that we, as students, felt that though we were classmates in the seminary, he was in advance of us in other things. Life seemed more serious to him. I doubt if any one of us felt the responsibility of life as much as he did. I doubt if anyone worked as hard as he.

The Western Theological Seminary, during the period of Mateer’s attendance, was at the high-water mark of prosperity. The general catalogue shows an enrollment of sixty-one men in his class; the total in all classes hovered about one hundred and fifty. In the faculty there were only four members, and, estimated by the specializations common in our theological schools to-day, they could not adequately do all their work; and this was the more true of them, because all save one of them eked out his scanty salary by taking charge of a city church. But they did better than might now be thought possible; and especially was this practicable because of the limited curriculum then prescribed, and followed by all students. Dr. David Elliott was still at work, though beyond the age when he was at his best. Samuel J. Wilson was just starting in his brilliant though brief career, and commanded a peculiar attachment from his pupils. Dr. Jacobus was widely known and appreciated for his popular commentaries. However, the member of the faculty who left the deepest impress on Mateer was Dr. William S. Plumer. Nor in this was his case exceptional. We all knew that Dr. Plumer was not in the very first rank of theologians. We often missed in his lectures the marks of very broad and deep scholarship. But as a teacher he nevertheless made upon our minds an impression that was so great and lasting that in all our subsequent lives we have continued to rejoice in having been under his training. Best of all was his general influence on the students. We doubt whether in the theological seminaries of the Presbyterian Church of the United States it has ever been equaled, except by Archibald Alexander of Princeton. The dominant element of that influence was a magnificent personality saturated with the warmest and most tender piety, having its source in love for the living, personal Saviour. For Dr. Plumer, Mateer had then a very high degree of reverent affection, and he never lost it.

Spiritually, the condition of the seminary while Mateer was there was away above the ordinary. In the winter of 1857-58 a great revival had swept over the United States, and across the Atlantic. In no place was it more in evidence than in the theological schools; it quickened immensely the spiritual life of the majority of the students. One of its fruits there was the awakening of a far more intense interest in foreign missions. I can still recall the satisfaction which some of us who in the seminary were turning our faces toward the unevangelized nations had in the information that this strong man who stood in the very first rank as to character and scholarship had decided to offer himself to the Board of Foreign Missions for such service as they might select for him. It was a fitting consummation of his college and seminary life.

Yet it was only slowly, even in the seminary, and after much searching of his own heart and much wrestling in prayer, that he came to this decision. Outside of himself there was a good deal that tended to impel him toward it. The faculty, and especially Dr. Plumer, did all they could wisely to press on the students the call of the unevangelized nations for the gospel. Representatives of this cause—missionaries and secretaries—visited the seminary, where there were, at that time, more than an ordinary number of young men who had caught the missionary spirit. In college, Mateer, without seeking to isolate himself from others, had come into real intimacy with scarcely any of his fellow-students. He says in the autobiographical sketch, “I minded my own business, making comparatively few friends outside of my own class, largely because I was too bashful to push my way.” In the seminary he, while still rather reserved, came nearer to some of his fellow-theologues; and especially to one, Dwight B. Hervey, who shared with him the struggle over duty as to a field of service. They seem to have been much in conference on that subject.

On the 21st of January, 1860, he presented himself before the Presbytery of Ohio, to which the churches of Pittsburg belonged, passed examination in his college studies, and was received under the care of that body; but he had not then made up his mind to be a missionary. On the 12th of April of the same year he went before the Presbytery of Butler, at Butler, Pennsylvania (having at his own request been transferred to the care of that organization, because his parents’ home was now within its bounds), and was licensed to preach. Yet still he had not decided to be a missionary. He was powerfully drawn toward that work, and vacillation at no time in his life was a characteristic; there simply was as yet no need that he should finally make up his mind, and he wished to avoid any premature committal of himself, which later he might regret, or which he might feel bound to recall.

The summer of 1860 he spent in preaching here and there about Pittsburg, several months being given to the Plains and Fairmount churches; followed by a visit home, and another in Illinois.

When the seminary opened in the autumn, he was back in his place. One of the duties which fell to him was to preach a missionary sermon before the Society of Inquiry. He did this so well that the students by vote expressed a desire that the sermon should be published. In his Journal he notes that the preparation of this discourse “strengthened his determination to give himself to this work.” Before the Christmas recess Dr. J. Leighton Wilson, one of the secretaries of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, visited the seminary, and in conference did much to stimulate the missionary spirit. He found in Mateer an eager and responsive listener. On the 12th of December Mateer wrote a long letter to his mother, in which he expresses feeling, because without warrant some one had told her that he had offered himself to the Foreign Board. He says, “I am not going to take such an important step without informing you of it directly and explicitly.” Then he proceeds to tell her just what was his attitude at that time:

I have thought of the missionary work this long time, but not very seriously until within the last couple of years. Ever since I came to the seminary I have had a conviction to some degree that I ought to go as a missionary. That conviction has been constantly growing and deepening, and more especially of late. I have about concluded that so far as I am myself concerned it is my duty to be a missionary. I have thought a great deal on this subject and I think that I have not come to such a conclusion hastily. It has cost me very considerable effort to give up the prospects which I might have had at home. The matter in almost every view you can take of it involves trial and self-denial. I need great grace,—for this I pray. But even if I have prospects of usefulness at home, surely nothing can be lost in this respect by doing what I am convinced is my duty. Indeed, one of the encouraging features, in fact the great encouragement, is a prospect of more extended usefulness than at home. This may seem not to be so at the first view, but a more careful consideration of all the aspects of the case will, I think, bring a different conclusion.

The letter is very full, and lays bare his whole mind and heart as he would be willing to do only to his mother. It is a revelation of this strong, self-reliant, mature but filial-spirited and tenderly thoughtful young Christian man and prospective minister, to a mother whom he recognized as deserving an affectionate consideration such as he owed to no other created being.

On the 7th of January, 1861, he received a letter from his mother, in which she gave her consent that he should be a foreign missionary, naming only one or two conditions which involved no insuperable difficulty. In a student prayer meeting about three weeks later he took occasion in some remarks to tell them that he had decided to offer himself for this work. Still, it was not until the 5th of April, and when within two weeks of graduation, that he, in a full and formal letter, such as is expected and is appropriate, offered himself to the Board. In his Journal of that date, after recording the character of his letter, he says: “This is a solemn and important step which I have now taken. During this week, while writing this letter, I have, I trust, looked again at the whole matter, and asked help and guidance from God. I fully believe it is my duty to go. My greatest fear has been that I was not as willing to go as I should be, but I cast myself on Christ and go forward.” On the 13th of April he received word from the Board that he had been accepted, the time of his going out and his field of labor being yet undetermined.

So the problem of his life work was at length solved, as surely as it could be by human agency. It had been his mother’s wish that he should wait a year before going to his field, and to this he had no serious objection; but as matters turned out, more than two years elapsed before he was able to leave this country. This long delay was caused by the outbreak of the Civil War, and the financial stringency which made it impossible for the Foreign Board to assume any additional obligations. Much of the time the outlook was so dark that he almost abandoned hope of entering on his chosen work, though the thought of this filled his heart with grief. He was intensely loyal to the cause of the Union, and if he had not been a licentiate for the ministry he almost certainly would have enlisted in the army. He records his determination to go if drafted. Once, indeed, during this period of waiting he was a sort of candidate for a chaplaincy to a regiment, which fortunately he did not secure. For several months he preached here and there in the churches of the general region about Pittsburg, and also made a visit to towns in central Ohio, one of these being Delaware, the seat of the Ohio Wesleyan University. Not long afterward he received an urgent request from the Old School Presbyterian Church in that town to come and supply them. About the same time the churches of Fairmount and Plains in Pennsylvania gave him a formal call to become their pastor, but this he declined. He accepted the invitation to Delaware, I suppose partly because it left him free still to go as a missionary whenever the way might open. At Delaware he remained eighteen months, until at last, in the good providence of God, he was ordered “to the front” out in China.

The story of his service of the church in that place need not be told here except in brief. It must, however, be clearly stated that it was in the highest degree creditable to him. In fact, the conditions were such that one may see in it a providential training in the courage and patience and faithfulness which in later years he needed to exercise on the mission field. The church was weak, and was overshadowed somewhat even among the Presbyterian element by a larger and less handicapped New School organization; and was sorely distressed by internal troubles. For a while after Mateer came, it was a question whether it could be resuscitated from its apparently dying stale. At the end of his period of service it was once more alive, comparatively united, and anxious to have him remain as pastor.

On November 12, 1862, while in charge of the church at Delaware, he was ordained to the full work of the ministry, as an evangelist, by the Presbytery of Marion, in session at Delaware.

On December 27, 1862, he was married in Delaware, at the home of her uncle, to Miss Julia A. Brown, of Mt. Gilead, Ohio. Two years before they were already sufficiently well acquainted to interchange friendly letters; later their friendship ripened into mutual love; and now, after an eight months’ engagement, they were united for life. Mateer says in his Journal, “The wedding was very small and quiet; though it was not wanting in merriment,” and naïvely adds, “Found marrying not half so hard as proposing.” Julia, as he ever afterward calls her, was a superbly good wife for him. In her own home, in the schoolroom, in the oversight of the Chinese boys and girls who were their pupils, in the preparation of her “Music Book,” in her labors for the evangelization of the women, in her journeyings,—hindered as she was most of the time by broken health,—she effectively toiled on, until at last, after thirty-five years of missionary service, her husband laid away all of her that was mortal in the little cemetery east of the city of Tengchow, by the side of her sister, Maggie (Mrs. Capp), who had died in the same service, and of other missionary friends who had gone on before her.

When they were married they were still left in great uncertainty as to the time when the Board could send them out, or, indeed, whether the Board could send them out at all. They went on their bridal trip to his parents’ home in western Pennsylvania, reaching there on Wednesday, December 31. Just a week afterward he received a letter from the Board announcing their readiness to send them to China. The record of his Journal deserves to be given here in full.

Scarcely anything in my life ever came so unexpectedly. A peal of thunder in the clear winter sky would not have surprised us more. The letter was handed me in the morning when I came downstairs at grandfather’s. After reading it, I took it upstairs and read it to “my Jewel.” In less than three minutes I think our minds were made up. Her first exclamation after hearing the letter I shall not forget: “Oh, I am glad!” That was the right ring for a missionary: no long-drawn, sorrowful sigh, but the straight-out, noble, self-sacrificing, “Oh, I am glad!” I shall remember that time, that look, that expression. If I did not say, I felt, the same. I think I can truly say I was and am glad. My lifelong aspiration is yet to be realized. I shall yet spend my life and lay my bones in a heathen land. I had fully made up my mind to labor in this country, and most likely for some time in Delaware; but how suddenly everything is changed! The only regret I feel is that I am not five years younger. What a great advantage it would give me in acquiring the language! But so it is, and Providence made it so. I had despaired of going, and despairing I was greatly perplexed to understand the leadings of Providence in directing my mind so strongly to the work, and bringing me so near to the point of going before. Now I understand the matter better. Now I see that my strong persuasion that I would yet go was right. God did not deceive me. He only led me by a way that I knew not. Just when the darkness seemed to be greatest, then the sun shone suddenly out. How strange it all seems! The way was all closed; no funds to send out men to China; and I could not go. Suddenly two missionaries die, and the health of another fails; and the Board feels constrained to send out one man at least, to supply their place; and so the door opens to me. And I will enter it, for Providence has surely opened it. As I have given myself to this work, and hold myself in readiness to go, I will not retrace my steps now. Having put my hand to the plow, I will not look back. I do not wish to. It is true, however, that preaching a year and a half has bound strong cords around me to keep me here. I cannot go so easily now as I might have done when I first left the seminary. It will be a sore trial to tear myself away from the folks at Delaware. They will try hard, I know, to retain me; but I think my mind is set, and I must go. I must go; I am glad to go; I will go. The Lord will provide for Delaware. I commit the work there to his hands. I trust and believe that he will carry it on, and that it will yet appear that my labor there has not been in vain. Yesterday I was twenty-seven years old. I hope to chronicle my next birthday in China. The Lord has spared me twenty-seven years in my native land. Will he give me as many in China! Grant it, O Lord, and strengthen me mightily to spend them all for thee!

This strong, persistent, conscientious, self-controlled, consecrated man had found his life work at last.

IV
GONE TO THE FRONT

“If there had been no other way to get back to America, than through such another experience, it is doubtful whether I should ever have seen my native land again.”—AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 1897.

The choice of the country to which he should go as a missionary had been with him a subject of earnest consideration and prayer. He says in his Journal, under date of September 12, 1862:

The Board wished me to go to Canton, China, at first. This was altogether against my inclinations and previous plans; but the Board would not send me anywhere else, until in the last letter they offered to send me to Japan; I have long had thoughts of northern India or of Africa; and especially have I wished to go to some new mission where the ground is unoccupied, and where I would not be entrammeled by rules and rigid instructions. The languages of eastern Asia are also exceedingly difficult and the missionary work is peculiarly discouraging among that people.

Two days later, however, he sent the Board a letter saying that he would go to Japan. When his field finally was specifically designated, it was north China. He was to be stationed at Tengchow, a port that had been opened to foreign commerce in the province of Shantung.

The Mateers remained at Delaware until late in April. Until that time he continued in charge of his church. In a touching farewell service they took leave of their people, and traveled by slow stages toward New York.

Going to live in China was then so much more serious a matter than it is now that we can scarcely appreciate the leave-takings that fell to the lot of these two young missionaries. The hardest trial of all was to say good-by to mother and to father, and to brothers and sisters, some of whom were yet small children, and for whom he felt that he might do so much if not separated from them by half the distance round the world.

At length on July 3, 1863, they embarked at New York on the ship that was to carry them far to the south of the Cape of Good Hope, then eastward almost in sight of the northern shores of Australia, and finally, by the long outside route, up north again to Shanghai. They were one hundred and sixty-five days, or only about two weeks short of half a year, in making the voyage. During that long period they never touched land. It needs to be borne in mind that in 1863 the Suez Canal had only been begun; that the railroads across our continent had not been built; and that no lines of passenger steamers were running from our western coast over to Asia. No blame, therefore, is chargeable to the Board of Missions for sending out their appointees on a sailing vessel. The ship selected was a merchantman, though not a clipper built for quick transit, was of moderate size, in sound condition, and capable of traveling at fairly good speed. Accompanying the Mateers were Hunter Corbett and his wife, who also had been appointed by the Board, for Tengchow. There were six other passengers, none of whom were missionaries, and, besides the officers, there was a crew of sixteen men.

At best the voyage could not be otherwise than tedious and trying. The accommodations for passengers were necessarily scant, the staterooms, being mere closets with poor ventilation, and this cut off in rough weather. The only place available for exercise was the poop deck, about thirty feet long; thus walking involved so much turning as greatly to lessen the pleasure, and many forms of amusement common on larger vessels were entirely shut out. Food on such a long voyage had to be limited in variety, and must become more or less stale. Of course, it was hot in the tropics, and it was cold away south of the equator, and again up north in November and December. Seasickness is a malady from which exemption could not be expected. When a company of passengers and officers with so little in common as to character and aims were cooped together, for so long a time, in narrow quarters, where they must constantly come into close contact, a serious lack of congeniality and some friction might be expected to develop among them.

The ship also, on that voyage, encountered distinctive annoyances and dangers. For weeks after they sailed they were in constant dread of Confederate privateers. Once they were so sure that they were about to be captured by a ship which they mistook for one of these destroyers of American commerce that they hastily prepared as well as they could for such a catastrophe. When they sailed from New York, the battle of Gettysburg was in progress and still undecided; and it was not until October 15 when they were overtaken by a vessel which had sailed eleven days after them from New York, that their anxiety as to the result was relieved, and their hearts were thrilled with exultation, by the news that Meade was victorious, and also that Vicksburg had fallen. Out among the islands to the northeast of Australia the ship was caught in a current, and was forced so rapidly and nearly on the wild, rocky shores of an uncivilized island that the captain himself despaired of escaping wreck. Providentially a breeze from the land sprang up and carried them out of danger. They were overtaken by no severe storms. Several times their patience was sorely tested by protracted calms; in the Pacific it once took them seventeen days to make three hundred and forty miles.

All of these things lay beyond the control of the officers and crew, and the missionaries accepted them as trials to which they ought quietly and patiently to submit. But imagine as added to this a half year’s subjection to the arbitrary and autocratic rule of a captain who was ignorant except as to seamanship; who was coarse and constantly profane in speech; who was tyrannical and brutal so far as he dared to be, and yet when boldly faced by those who were able to bring him to account for his conduct was a contemptible coward; who skimped the people on board of food adequate in quantity or decently fit in quality, partly because of stingy greed, and partly from a desire thus to gratify his malignant disposition; who hated missionaries and seemed to have a special pleasure in making their lives on his ship as uncomfortable as possible; who barely tolerated such religious observances as the asking of a blessing at meals, or a service for social worship on the Sabbath in the cabin, and who forbade all attempts to do any religious work, even by conversation, among the crew; who was capable of descending to various petty meannesses in order to gratify his base inclinations; and who somehow yet managed to secure from officers under him a measure of sympathy and coöperation in his conduct. When we have as fully as possible grasped these things, we can understand why Dr. Mateer, half a lifetime afterward, wrote to his college classmates that if in order to reach America it had been necessary to repeat the experience of that outward voyage, it is doubtful if ever again he had seen his native land.

But at last this voyage was nearing its end. They might have reached port some days earlier, had it not been that all the crew except three or four had—through lack of proper food and other bad treatment—been attacked by scurvy, a disease already then having been almost shut out even from sailing vessels on long trips. On December 16 they had the happiness of going ashore at Shanghai, where they soon found a welcome in the homes of missionaries and of other friends. Corbett was not well, and Mateer always believed that the health of both Julia and Corbett was permanently injured by the treatment received on that outward voyage.

On the voyage the missionaries warned the captain that they would surely hold him to account for his conduct, when they reached Shanghai. They kept their word. After consultation with the missionaries on the local field, with a lawyer, and with the American consul, they determined to proceed with formal charges against him. Learning of this, he lost no time in coming to them, and, with fear and trembling, he begged that they would have mercy on him. A second interview was appointed, but Corbett was too unwell to see him, and Mateer had to meet him alone. In his Journal he says:

I took the paper which had been read to the consul, and read it to him giving copious comments and illustrations, at the same time asking him to explain or correct if he could. I never in my life gave any man such a lecturing. I just kept myself busy for an hour and a half telling him how mean and contemptible a scoundrel he was. I then offered him as a settlement of the matter a paper which I proposed to publish, stating in it that he had apologized and that we had agreed to suspend prosecution. From this he pled off in the most pitiful manner, saying that he would be ruined by it.

The third day he came again and made such an appeal for mercy that Mateer’s sympathy, and also his desire to avoid detention at Shanghai, led him to agree to accept a private apology, and to refer the matter to the interested parties at New York. Years afterward Mateer, on going aboard a coasting steamer bound for Shanghai, discovered that this man was the captain. He at once cancelled his passage, and went ashore until he could secure a place on another vessel.

Tengchow is distant more than five hundred miles from Shanghai. The only way to reach it was by a second voyage northward along the coast to Chefoo, and thence overland. On January 3, 1864, the Mateers and the Corbetts went aboard the little coasting steamer “Swatow,” bound for Chefoo. They had a head wind, and the ship was almost empty of cargo. They suffered again from seasickness, and from cold on account of lack of bed-clothing. On the evening of the third day out, at about half-past eight, they were sitting around the stove expecting soon to be at Chefoo, when suddenly the vessel struck the bottom and the bell rang to reverse the engine. Bump followed bump, until it seemed as if she must go to pieces. The captain, though not unfamiliar with the route, had allowed himself to be deceived by the masts of a sunken ship, and supposing this to be a vessel at anchor in the harbor of Chefoo, had gone in, and his steamer was now hard and fast on the bottom, about fifteen miles down the coast from his destination. We will allow Mateer in his Journal to tell his own story.

All was a scene of indescribable confusion. The captain lost all self-possession and all authority over his men. Most of his crew and servants were Chinese or Malays, and on such an occasion the worst features of their character shine out. They refused to do anything and went to packing up their few goods and at the same time seizing everything they could get hold of. They went everywhere and into everything, pilfering and destroying. Meanwhile the waves were striking the vessel at a fearful rate, and threatening to break it into pieces. We knew not what to do, or what we could do. The mates and two passengers (a merchant and an English naval officer) lowered a boat and, pushing off, succeeded in landing and in making a rope fast from the ship to the shore. They found that we were much nearer the land than we had supposed. We were now in a great quandary what to do, whether to remain on the ship, or get in the boat and go ashore. We mostly inclined to remain, but the captain urged us to go ashore. While the wind remained moderate we could stay on the ship with safety; but if the wind should increase before morning we might be in danger of our lives. The captain said that he thought that it was not more than eight or nine miles to Chefoo, and he was anxious that word should be sent there. We at length yielded to his advice, and about eleven o’clock got into a boat and managed to get ashore through the surf. It was a bitter cold night, and we loaded ourselves with blankets which we supposed would come into requisition to keep us warm. Our party consisted of nine passengers (we four, Rev. Williamson and wife and child, and Rev. McClatchie—all missionaries—and Mr. Wilson, a merchant, and Mr. Riddle, a naval officer) and six Chinamen. Our hope was to set out in the direction of Chefoo, get a lodging for the ladies and Mr. Corbett by the way, while the rest of us pushed on to Chefoo to obtain assistance. We started off according to this plan, but soon found our way stopped by fields of ice, and we were compelled to turn from our course and seek the hills which towered up in the distance. The walking was very fatiguing; indeed, the ground was covered several inches with snow, and at many places there were large cakes and fields of ice. After long and weary tramping and turning and disputing about the best way, we at length reached the hills. I mounted to the top of the first hill and tried to get the party to go up over the hill and directly inland until we should find a house or village. Other counsels prevailed, however, and we wandered along the foot of the hill the best part of a mile. At length I got in the lead, and persuaded them that no houses would be found unless we went inland from the barren beach. We then crossed the ridge at a low place and retraced our steps on the other side of it, and finally, after much urging, persuaded those who wanted to sit down until morning to follow on inland on the track of some of our Chinamen. We soon came to a village, which was indeed a welcome sight. We were cold, and our feet were wet, and we were very tired, especially the ladies. Our troubles were not over yet, however, for we could not induce any of the Chinese to let us in. It was now four o’clock, and we were suffering from the effects of five hours’ wandering in the snow and cold. Yet they persistently closed their doors and kept us out. Mr. Williamson and Mr. McClatchie could talk to them some, yet they refused to receive us.

At last, after shivering in the cold about an hour, we succeeded in getting into a sort of shanty, which, however, afforded but very poor comfort. There was a heated kang in it, and the ladies managed to warm their feet on this. When it began to get light Mr. Riddle and Mr. Wilson started to Chefoo, thinking the city was only half a mile distant. This was what Mrs. Williamson understood the natives to say. Some time after Mr. McClatchie started, supposing it was three miles. We made breakfast on boiled rice and sweet potatoes which the people brought us.

I started back to see what had become of the ship, and to look after our things. I found the vessel all sound and everything safe. I succeeded in getting several trunks of mine and Mr. Williamson’s landed on the beach, and got some of them started up to the village, which was at least two miles from the ship. Mr. Williamson then went down and succeeded in getting a variety of other things brought off and carried up to the village. It was a beautiful calm day, but we feared that a gale might spring up, as gales were frequent in this region at that time of year. In such a case the vessel must quickly be broken in pieces, and everything destroyed.

We now began to look around for the night, and it was not a very comfortable prospect. Some English people came from Yentai (just across the bay from Chefoo) to survey the wreck of a vessel that had been cast away some time before at the same place, and they very kindly sent us some supper—their own, in fact—and also brought us a supply of furs and blankets. We had one large kang heated, and on this five stowed themselves, covering themselves with the blankets, while I made a bed and slept on the ground. The rest of the little room was filled with trunks and Chinese rubbish of various kinds. We slept very comfortably, however, and as we were very tired and had not slept a wink the night before, our sleep was sweet and refreshing to us. We had great cause to be thankful for even such accommodations in the circumstances.

We made our breakfast on two dozen boiled eggs and some bread which the Englishmen had left us. I started immediately to the ship, intending, as the day was fine, to try and get as much as possible of the goods belonging to us off the ship, and to store them there until they could be taken to Yentai. As I came over the top of the hill and looked out on the sea, I saw a steamer coming which I knew was the English gunboat from Chefoo. My heart bounded with joy at the sight. At last we were to get help, and to reach Yentai without going overland. All our goods also would no doubt be saved.

By land it was twenty-eight miles to Chefoo, instead of the short distance supposed by the men who started to walk, but they had persisted; and at their instigation the gunboat had come to relieve the party left behind. After some failures the gunboat succeeded in pulling the “Swatow” into water where she again floated safely. The party out at the village returned, and the goods were brought back and put on board the gunboat, Mateer remaining over night with the steamer and coming up the next day to Chefoo. He notices in his Journal that although Corbett was in a very weak state, he seemed to suffer little or no bad effects from the first terrible night on shore; nor were the ladies apparently any the worse for their exposure. He mentions also that while some of the natives at the village were disposed to annoy them as much as possible, others of them were very kind, and he adds, “Never before did I feel my helpless condition so much as among those natives, with whom I could not speak a single word.”

Of course, they received a hearty welcome from the missionaries at Chefoo. On the following Wednesday they started for Tengchow, fifty-five miles away, traveling by shentza—a mode of travel peculiar to China, and developed largely because of the almost complete absence of anything like good wagon roads. It is simply a sort of covered litter, sustained between two mules, one in advance of the other; in it one reclines, and is jolted up and down by the motion of the animals, each going after his own fashion over rough paths which lead without plan across the plains and hills. Mateer’s Journal says of that trip:

We rode about fifteen miles and stopped for the night at a Chinese inn. We had brought our eatables along, and, having got some tea, we made a very good supper, and we went to bed all together on a Chinese kang heated up to keep us warm. Next morning it was bitter cold, and we did not get started until about ten o’clock. I made them turn my shentza and Julia’s around [that is, with the open front away from the wind] or I do not know what we should have done. About five o’clock our cavalcade turned into an inn, and we soon found to our chagrin and vexation that we were doomed to spend another night in a Chinese inn; which, by the way, is anything but a comfortable place on a cold night. We made the best of it, however, and the next morning we were off again for Tengchow, where we arrived safely about two o’clock. At last our journeying was over,—set down on the field of our labor.

They had reached the front. This was early in January, 1864.

V
THE NEW HOME

“Our new house is now done, and we are comfortably fixed in it. It suits us exactly, and my impression is that it will suit anyone who may come after us.... My prayer is that God will spare us to live in it many years, and bless us in doing much work for his glory.”—LETTER TO SECRETARY LOWRIE, December 24, 1867.

Tengchow is one of the cities officially opened as a port for foreign commerce, under the treaty of Tientsin, which went into actual effect in 1860. Although a place of seventy thousand or more inhabitants, and cleaner and more healthful than most Chinese towns, it has not attracted people from western nations, except a little band of missionaries. The harbor does not afford good anchorage; so it has not been favorable to foreign commerce.

When the Mateers came to Tengchow, missionary operations had already been begun both by the Southern Baptists and the American Presbyterians, though in a very small way. In fact, throughout the whole of China,—according to the best statistics available,—there were then on that immense field only something more than a hundred ordained Protestant missionaries, and as many female missionaries. There were also a few physicians and printers. The number of native preachers was about two hundred and fifty, and of colporteurs about the same. Few of these colporteurs and native preachers were full ministers of the gospel. There were sixteen stations, and perhaps a hundred out-stations. The Chinese converts aggregated thirty-five hundred.

In all Shantung, with its many millions of people, the only places at which any attempt had been made to establish stations were Chefoo and Tengchow, both on the seacoast. The Baptists reached the latter of these cities in the autumn of 1860. They were followed very soon afterward by Messrs. Danforth and Gayley and their wives, of the Presbyterian Board; and the next summer Mr. and Mrs. Nevius came up from Ningpo and joined them.

The natives seemed to be less positively unfriendly than those of many other parts of China are even to this day; yet it was only with protracted and perplexing difficulties that houses in which to live could be obtained. Not long after this was accomplished, Mrs. Danforth sickened and died, and was laid in the first Christian grave at Tengchow. Then came a “rebel,” or rather a robber invasion, that carried desolation and death far and wide in that part of Shantung, and up to the very walls of Tengchow, and left the city and country in a deplorable condition of poverty and wretchedness. Two of the Baptist missionaries went out to parley with these marauders, and were cut to pieces. Next ensued a period during which rumors were rife among the people that the missionaries, by putting medicine in the wells, and by other means, practiced witchcraft; and this kept away many who otherwise might have ventured to hear the gospel, and came near to producing serious danger. After this followed a severe epidemic of cholera, filling the houses and the streets with funerals and with mourning. For a while the missionaries escaped, and did what they could for the Chinese patients; but they were soon themselves attacked; and then they had to give their time and strength to ministering to their own sick, and to burying their own dead. Mr. Gayley first, and then his child, died, and a child of one of the Baptist missionaries. Others were stricken but recovered. The epidemic lasted longest among the Chinese, and this afforded the missionaries opportunity to save many lives by prompt application of remedies; and so tended greatly to remove prejudice and to open the way for the gospel. Ten persons were admitted to membership in the church, the first fruits of the harvest which has ever since been gathering. But a sad depletion of the laborers soon afterward followed. Mrs. Gayley was compelled to take her remaining child, and go home; Mr. Danforth’s health became such that he also had to leave; the health of Mrs. Nevius, which had been poor for a long time, had become worse and, the physician having ordered her away, she and her husband went south. This left Rev. Mr. Mills and his wife as the only representatives of the Presbyterian Board, until the Mateers and Corbetts arrived, about three years after the beginning of the station by Danforth and Gayley.

When the Mateers and Corbetts came they were, of necessity, lodged in the quarters already occupied by the Mills family. These consisted of no less than four small one-story stone buildings clustered near together; one used for a kitchen, another for a dining room, a third for a guest room, and the fourth for a parlor and bedroom. Each stood apart from the other, and without covered connection. The larger of them had been a temple dedicated to Kwan Yin, whom foreigners have called the Chinese god of mercy. According to the universal superstition, the air is full of superhuman spirits, in dread of whom the people of China constantly live, and to avert the displeasure of whom most of their religious services are performed. Kwan Yin, however, is an exception in character to the malignancy of these imaginary deities. There is no end to the myths that are current as to this god, and they all are stories of deliverance from trouble and danger. To him the people always turn with their vows and prayers and offerings, in any time of special need. Partly because the women are especially devoted to this cult, and partly because mercy is regarded by the Chinese as a distinctively female trait, the easy-going mythology of the country has allowed Kwan Yin, in later times, to take the form of a woman. When the missionaries came to Tengchow, the priest in charge of this temple was short of funds, and he was easily induced to rent it to them. He left the images of Kwan Yin in the house. Just what to do with them became a practical question; from its solution a boy who lived with the Mateers learned a valuable lesson. When asked whether the idols could do anybody harm, he promptly replied “No”; giving as a reason that the biggest one that used to be in the room where they were then talking was buried outside the gate! At first a wall was built around the other idols, but by and by they were all taken down from their places and disposed of in various ways. Mateer speaks of a mud image of Kwan Yin, about four feet high, and weighing over two hundred pounds, still standing in his garret in 1870.

The coming of these new mission families into the Mills residence crowded it beyond comfort, and beyond convenience for the work that was imperative. The Mateers had the dining room assigned to them as their abode, this being the best that could be offered. Of course, little effective study could under such conditions be put on the language which must be acquired before any direct missionary labor could be performed. Under the loss of time he thus was suffering, Mateer chafed like a caged lion; and so, as soon as possible, he had another room cleared of the goods of Mr. Nevius, which had been stored there until they could be shipped, and then set to work to build a chimney and to put the place in order for his own occupation. Thus he had his first experience of the dilatory and unskillful operations of native mechanics. The dining room was left without a stove, and, on account of the cold, something had to be done to supply the want. In all Tengchow such a thing as a stove could not be purchased; possibly one might have been secured at Chefoo, but most probably none could have been obtained short of Shanghai. The time had already come for Mateer to exercise his mechanical gifts. He says:

Mr. Mills and I got to work to make a stove out of tin. We had the top and bottom of an old sheet-iron stove for a foundation from which we finally succeeded in making what proves to be a very good stove. We put over one hundred and sixty rivets in it in the process of making it. I next had my ingenuity taxed to make a machine to press the fine coal they burn here, into balls or blocks, so that we could use it. They have been simply setting it with a sort of gum water and molding it into balls with their hands. Thus prepared, it was too soft and porous to burn well. So, as it was the time of the new year, and we could not obtain a teacher, I got to work, and with considerable trouble, and working at a vast disadvantage from want of proper tools, I succeeded in making a machine to press the coal into solid, square blocks. At first it seemed as if it would be a failure, for although it pressed the coal admirably it seemed impossible to get the block out of the machine successfully. This was obviated, however, and it worked very well, and seems to be quite an institution.

This machine subsequently he improved so that a boy could turn out the fuel with great rapidity.

The house, with the best arrangements that could be made, was so overcrowded that relief of some sort was a necessity. The Corbetts, despairing of getting suitable accommodations for themselves, went back to the neighborhood of Chefoo and never returned,—an immense gain for Chefoo, but an equally immense loss for Tengchow. Mills preferred to find a new house for himself and family, and—after the usual delays and difficulties because of the unwillingness of the people and of the officials to allow the hated foreigners to get such a permanent foothold in the place—he at length succeeded. But that was only a remote step toward actual occupation. A Chinese house at its best estate commonly is of one story; and usually has no floor but the ground and no ceiling but the roof, or a flimsy affair made of cornstalks and paper. The windows have a sort of latticework covered with thin paper; and it is necessary to tear down some of the wall, in order to have a sufficient number of them, and to give those which do exist a shape suitable for sash. The doors are low, few in number, rudely made, and in two pieces. A Chinese house may be large enough, but it is usually all in one big room.

It fell to these missionaries to get in order the house which Mills secured; and to do this in the heat of summer, and during a season of almost incessant downpour of rain. They were obliged not merely to supervise most unsatisfactory laborers, but also to do much of the work with their own hands. Eventually Mills fell sick, and Mateer alone was left to complete the job. Yet he records that on the first day of August his associate had gone to his new residence, and he and Julia were happy in the possession of the old temple for their own abode. Unfortunately both of them were taken down with dysentery. Of the day the Mills family left he says in a letter to one of his brothers:

Julia was able to sit up about half the day, and I was no better. You can imagine what a time we had getting our cooking stove up, and getting our cooking utensils out and in order,—no, you can’t either, for you don’t know what a Chinese servant is when of every three words you speak to him he understands one, and misunderstands two. However, we did finally get the machine going, and it works pretty well.

Here they remained three years; and, here, after they had built for themselves a really “new home,” they long continued to carry on their school work.

But experience soon convinced them that a new dwelling house was a necessity. The buildings which they occupied proved to be both unhealthy and unsuitable for the work they were undertaking. The unhealthiness arose partly from the location. The ground in that section of the city is low, and liable to be submerged in the rainy season. A sluggish little stream ran just in front of the place, passing through the wall by a low gate, and if this happened to be closed in a sudden freshet, the water sometimes rose within the houses. There was a floor at least in the main building, but it was laid upon scantlings about four inches thick, these being placed on the ground. The boards were not grooved, and as a consequence while making a tight enough floor in the damp season, in the dry it opened with cracks a quarter to half an inch wide. The walls were of stone, built without lime, and with an excess of mud mortar, and lined on the inside with sun-dried brick. The result of all this was that the dampness extended upward several feet above the floor, and by discoloration showed in the driest season where it had been. The floor could not be raised without necessitating a change in the doors and windows, and it was doubtful whether this could be made with safety to the house. It is no wonder that, under such conditions, Mrs. Mateer began to suffer seriously from the rheumatism that remained with her all the rest of her life. Added to the other discomforts, were the tricks played them by the ceiling. This consisted of cornstalks hung to the roof with strings, and covered on the lower side with paper pasted on. Occasionally a heavy rain brought this ceiling down on the heads of the occupants; and cracks were continually opening, thus rendering it almost impossible to keep warm in cold weather.

An appeal was made to the Board for funds for a new dwelling. Happily the Civil War was about over, and the financial outlook was brightening; so in the course of a few months permission for the new house was granted, and an appropriation was made. The first thing to do was to obtain a suitable piece of ground on which to build. Mateer had in his own mind fixed on a plot adjoining the mission premises, and understood to be purchasable. Such transactions in China seldom move rapidly. He bided his time until the Chinese new year was close at hand, when everybody wants money; then, striking while the iron was hot, he bought the ground.

Long before this consummation he was so confident that he would succeed that, foreseeing that he must be his own architect and superintendent, he wrote home to friends for specific information as to every detail of house-building. Nothing seems to have been overlooked. He even wanted to know just how the masons stand when at certain parts of their work.

Early in February in 1867 he was down at Chefoo purchasing the brick and stone and lime; and so soon as the material was on hand and as the weather permitted, the actual construction was begun. It was an all-summer job, necessitating his subordinating, as far as possible, all other occupations to this. It required a great deal of care and patience to get the foundations put down well, and of a proper shape for the superstructure which was to rest upon them. In his Journal he thus records the subsequent proceedings:

When the level of the first floor was reached I began the brickwork myself, laying the corners and showing the masons one by one how to proceed. I had no small amount of trouble before I got them broken in to use the right kind of trowel, which I had made for the purpose, and then to lay the brick in the right way. I had another round of showing and trouble when the arches at the top of the windows had to be turned, and then the placing of the sleepers took attention; and then the setting of the upper story doors and windows. The work went slowly on, and when the level was reached we had quite a raising, getting the plates and rafters up. All is done, however, and to-day they began to put the roof on.... I hope in a few days I will be able to resume my work again, as all the particular parts are now done, so that I can for the most give it into the hands of the Chinese to oversee.

The early part of November, 1867, the Mateers lived “half in the old and half in the new.” On November 21 they finally moved. That was Saturday. In the night there came up a fierce storm of snow and wind. When they awoke on Sabbath morning, the kitchen had been filled with snow through a door that was blown open. The wind still blew so hard that the stove in the kitchen smoked and rendered cooking impossible. The stair door had not yet been hung, and the snow drifted into the hall and almost everywhere in the house. Stoves could not be set up, or anything else done toward putting things in order, until Thursday, when the storm abated.

But they were in their new house. It was only a plain, two-story, brick building, with a roofed veranda to both stories and running across the front, a hall in the middle of the house with a room on either side, and a dining room and kitchen at the rear. Much of the walls is now covered by Virginia creeper, wistaria, and climbing rose. It is one of those cozy missionary dwellings which censorious travelers to foreign lands visit, or look at from the outside; and then, returning to their own land, they tell about them as evidence of the luxury by which these representatives of the Christian churches have surrounded themselves. Yet if they cared to know, and would examine, they would out of simple regard for the truth, if for no other reason, testify to the necessity of such homes for the health and efficiency of the missionaries, and as powerful indirect helps in the work of social betterment among the natives; and they would wonder at the self-sacrifice and economy and scanty means by which these worthy servants of Christ have managed to make for themselves and their successors such comfortable and tasteful places of abode.

TENGCHOW MISSION COMPOUND, FROM THE NORTH

Extreme left, Entrance to Dr. Hayes’ House. Behind this, part of back of Dr. Mateer’s House. Foreground, Vegetable Gardens belonging to Chinese

The Mateer house stands on the compound of the mission of the Presbyterian Board, which is inside and close to the water gate in the city wall. About it, as the years went by, were erected a number of other buildings needed for various purposes. The whole, being interspersed with trees, combines to make an attractive scene.

There was nothing pretentious about the house, but it was comfortable, and suited to their wants; and it was all the more dear to them because to such a large degree it had been literally built by themselves. Here for more than thirty-one years Julia presided, and here she died. After that Dr. Mateer’s niece, Miss Margaret Grier, took charge previous to her marriage to Mason Wells, and continued for some years subsequent to that event. To this house still later Dr. Mateer brought Ada, who was his helpmeet in his declining years, and who still survives. This was the home of Dr. Mateer from 1867 to 1904. It was in it and from it as a center that he performed by far the larger part of his life work. Here the Mandarin Revision Committee held its first meeting.

It was always a genuine home of the most attractive type. What that means in a Christian land every reader can in a good degree understand; but where all around is a mass of strange people, saturated with ignorance, prejudice, and the debased morality consequent on idolatry, a people of strange and often repulsive habits of living, the contrast is, as the Chinese visitors often used to say, “the difference between heaven and hell.” But what most of all made this little dwelling at Tengchow a home in the truest sense was the love that sanctified it. Dr. Mateer used in his later years frequently to say: “In the thirty-five years of our married life, there never was a single jar.” Nor was this true because in this sphere the one ruled, and the other obeyed; the secret of it was that between husband and wife there was such complete harmony that each left the other supreme in his or her department.

Here many visitors and guests received a welcome and an entertainment to which such as survive still revert with evidently delightful recollections. This seems to be preëminently true of some who were children at the time when they enjoyed the hospitalities of that home. Possibly some persons who have thought that they knew Dr. Mateer well, may be surprised at the revelation thus made. One of those who has told her experience is Miss Morrison, whose father was a missionary. He died at Peking, and subsequently his widow and their children removed to one of the southern stations of the Presbyterian Mission. It is of a visit to this new home at Tengchow that Miss Morrison writes. She says:

Two of the best friends of our childhood were Dr. Calvin Mateer and his brother John. We spent two summers at Dr. Mateer’s home in Tengchow, seeking escape from the heat and malaria of our more southern region. It could not have been an altogether easy thing for two middle-aged people to take into their quiet home four youngsters of various ages; but Dr. and Mrs. Mateer made us very welcome, and if we disturbed their peace we never knew it. I remember Mrs. Mateer as one of the most sensible and dearest of women, and Dr. Mateer as always ready in any leisure moment for a frolic. We can still recall his long, gaunt figure, striding up and down the veranda, with my little sister perched upon his shoulders and holding on by the tips of his ears. She called him “the camel,” and I imagine that she felt during her rides very much the same sense of perilous delight that she would have experienced if seated on the hump of one of the tall, shaggy beasts that we had seen swinging along, bringing coal into Peking.

Dr. Mateer loved a little fun at our expense. What a beautiful, mirthful smile lit up his rugged features when playing with children! He had what seemed to us a tremendous ball,—I suppose that it was a football,—which he used to throw after us. We would run in great excitement, trying to escape the ball, but the big, black thing would come bounding after us, laying us low so soon as it reached us. Then with a few long steps he would overtake us, and beat us with his newspaper till it was all in tatters. Then he would scold us for tearing up his paper. I remember not quite knowing whether to take him in earnest, but being reassured so soon as I looked up into the laughing face of my older sister.

Of other romps she also tells at length. Several old acquaintances speak of his love of children, and of his readiness to enter into the playfulness of their young lives. He dearly loved all fun of an innocent sort; perhaps it is because of the contrast with his usual behavior that so many persons seem to put special emphasis on this feature of his character.

In those early days Pei-taiho in the north, and Kuling and Mokansan in the south, had not been opened as summer resorts. Chefoo and Tengchow were the only places available for such a purpose, and there were in neither of them any houses to receive guests, unless the missionaries opened theirs. Tengchow became very popular, on account of the beauty of its situation, the comparative cleanness of the town, and the proximity to a fine bathing beach. As a usual thing, if one mentions Tengchow to any of the old missionaries, the remark is apt promptly to follow: “Delightful place! I spent a summer there once with Dr. Mateer.” Pleasant as he made his own home to his little friends, and to veterans and recruits, he was equally agreeable in the homes of others who could enter into his spheres of thought and activity. He was often a guest in the house of Dr. Fitch and his wife at Shanghai, while putting his books through the press. He was resident for months in the China Inland Mission Sanitarium, and in the Mission Home at Chefoo. Dr. Fitch and his wife, and Superintendent Stooke of the Home, tell with evident delight of his “table talk,” and of other ways by which he won their esteem and affection.

When the summer guests were flown from Tengchow, the missionaries were usually the entire foreign community,—a condition of things bringing both advantages and disadvantages as to their work. On the one hand, the cause which they represented was not prejudiced by the bad lives of certain foreigners coming for commercial or other secular purposes from Christian lands. On the other hand, they were left without things that would have ministered immensely to their convenience and comfort, and which they often sadly needed for their own efficiency, and for their health and even for their lives. This was largely due to the tedious and difficult means of communication with the outside world. For instance, it was six weeks until the goods which the Mateers left behind them at Chefoo were delivered to them at Tengchow. Letters had to be carried back and forth between Tengchow and Chefoo, the distributing point, by means of a private courier. When, by and by, the entire band joined together and hired a carrier to bring the mail once a week, this seemed a tremendous advance. The cost of a letter to the United States was forty-five cents.

But the most serious of all their wants was competent medical attention. How Mateer wrote home, and begged and planned, and sometimes almost scolded, about sending a physician to reinforce their ranks! In the meantime they used domestic remedies for their own sick, or sent them overland to Chefoo, or in case of dire necessity brought up a physician from that city. Mateer soon found himself compelled to attempt what he could medically and surgically for himself and wife, and also for others, and among these the poor native sufferers. One of his early cases was a terribly burnt child whom he succeeded in curing; and another was a sufferer from lockjaw, who died in spite of all he could do; and still another case was of a woman with a broken leg. He tried his hand at pulling a tooth for his associate, Mr. Mills, but he had to abandon the effort, laying the blame on the miserable forceps with which he had to operate. Later he could have done a better job, for he provided himself with a complete set of dental tools, not only for pulling teeth and for filling them, but also for making artificial sets. All of these he often used. On his first furlough he attended medical lectures at Philadelphia and did a good deal of dissection. A closet in the new house held a stock of medicines, and by administering them he relieved much suffering, and saved many lives, especially in epidemics of cholera. The physicians who, in response to the appeals of the missionaries, were first sent to the station at Tengchow did not remain long; and for many years the most of the medicine administered came out of the same dark closet under the stairs of “the New Home.”

VI
HIS INNER LIFE

“I am very conscious that we here are not up to the standard that we ought to be, and this is our sin. We pray continually for a baptism from on high on the heathen round us; but we need the same for ourselves that we may acquit ourselves as becomes our profession. Our circumstances are not favorable to growth either in grace or in mental culture. Our only associates are the native Christians, whose piety is often of a low type; it receives from us, but imparts nothing to us. Mentally we are left wholly without the healthy stimulus and the friction of various and superior minds which surround men at home. Most whom we meet here are mentally greatly our inferiors, and there is no public opinion that will operate as a potent stimulus to our exertions. It may be said that these are motives of a low kind. It may be so; but their all-powerful influence on all literary men at home is scarcely known or felt till the absence of them shows the difference.”—LETTER TO THE SOCIETY OF INQUIRY, IN THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, October 1, 1867.

We have now reached a stage in this narration where the order of time can no longer be followed, except in a very irregular manner. We must take up distinct phases of Mateer’s life and work, as separate topics, and so far as practicable consider each by itself. This is not at all because in him there was any lack of singleness of aim or of persistence. This man, from the time when he began his labors in China until he finished his course, without interruption, put his strength and personality into the evangelization of the people of that great empire. But in doing this he found it necessary to follow along various lines, often contemporaneously, though never out of sight of any one of them. For our purpose it is best that to some extent they should be considered separately.

But before we proceed further it appears desirable to seek an acquaintance with his inner life. By this I do not mean his native abilities, or his outward characteristics as these were known and read by all men who came much into contact with him. It is from the soul life, and especially the religious side of it, that it seems desirable to lift the veil a little. This in the case of anyone is a delicate task, and ought to be performed with a good deal of reserve. In the instance now in hand there is special difficulty. Mateer never, either in speech or in writing, was accustomed to tell others much about his own inward experiences. For a time in his letters and in his Journal he occasionally breaks over this reticence a little; but on November 27, 1876, he made the last entry in the Journal; and long before this he had become so much occupied with his work that he records very little concerning his soul life. Still less had he to say on that subject in his letters; and as years went by, his occupations compelled him to cut off as much correspondence as practicable, and to fill such as he continued with other matters. Nothing like completeness consequently is here undertaken or is possible.

A notion that is current, especially among “men of the world,” is that a missionary is almost always a sentimental dreamer who ignores the stern realities of life. It has been my work to train a good many of those who have given themselves to this form of Christian service, and to have a close acquaintance with a good many more; and I cannot now recall one of whom such a characteristic could be honestly affirmed. I have in mind a number of whom almost the opposite is true. Certainly if to carry the gospel into the dark places of the earth with the conviction of its ultimate triumph is to be called dreaming, then every genuine missionary is a sentimentalist and a dreamer; and Mateer was one of them. But in meeting the experiences of life and in doing his work, he was about as far removed from just accusation of this sort as anyone could be. Indeed, he was such a matter-of-fact man that his best friends often wished that he were less so. I have carefully gone over many thousands of pages of his Journal and of his letters and papers, and I recall only one short paragraph that savors of sentimentality. It is so exceptional that it shall have a place here. In a letter written to a friend (Julia, I suspect), in the spring of 1861, he says:

I have lived in the country nearly all my life, and I much prefer its quiet beauty. I love to wander at this season over the green fields, and listen to the winds roaring through the young leaves, and to sit down in the young sunshine of spring under the lee of some sheltering bank or moss-covered rock. I love to think of the past and the future, and, thus meditating, to gather up courage for the stern realities of life.

This is not very distressingly Wertherian, and surely ought not, ever after, to be laid up against the young man, the fountain of whose thoughts may at that season have been unsealed by love.

But we sadly miss the truth if we infer that, because he was so matter-of-fact in his conduct, he was without tenderness of heart or depth of feeling. Dr. Goodrich in his memorial article in the “Chinese Recorder” of January, 1909, says of him:

I do not remember to have heard him preach, in English or Chinese, when his voice did not somewhere tremble and break, requiring a few moments for the strong man to conquer his emotion and proceed. His tenderness was often shown in quiet ways to the poor and unfortunate, and he frequently wept when some narrative full of pathos and tears was read. The second winter after the Boxer year the college students learned to sing the simple but beautiful hymn he had just translated, “Some one will enter the Pearly Gate.” One morning we sang the hymn at prayers. Just as we were ending, I looked around to see if he were pleased with their singing. The tears were streaming down his face.

This sympathetic tenderness was as much a part of his nature as was his rugged strength.... He dearly loved little children, and easily won their affection. Wee babies would stretch out their tiny arms to him, and fearlessly pull his beard, to his great delight.

His students both feared him and loved him, and they loved him more than they feared him; for, while he was the terror of wrongdoers and idlers, he was yet their Great-heart, ready to forgive and quick to help. How often have we seen Dr. Mateer’s students in his study, pouring out their hearts to him and receiving loving counsel and a father’s blessing! He loved his students, and followed them constantly as they went out into their life work.

A lady who was present tells that when the first of his “boys” were ordained to the ministry he was so overcome that the tears coursed down his cheeks while he charged them to be faithful to their vows.

His mother’s love he repaid with a filial love that must have been to her a source of measureless satisfaction. Julia could not reasonably have craved any larger measure of affection than she received from him as her husband; and later, Ada entered into possession of the same rich gift. One of the things that touched him most keenly when he went away to China was his separation from brothers and sisters, toward whom he continued to stretch out his beneficent hand across the seas.

He was a man who believed in the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit in order to begin a genuinely Christian life. This is one of those great convictions which he never questioned, and which strengthened as he increased in age. When he united with the church in his nineteenth year, he thereby publicly declared that he was sufficiently sure that this inward change had passed upon him to warrant him in enrolling himself among the avowed followers of Christ. But of any sudden outward religious conversion he was not conscious, and made no profession. In the brief autobiographical sketch previously quoted he says:

I had a praying father and mother, and had been faithfully taught from my youth. I cannot tell when my religious impressions began. They grew up with me, but were very much deepened by the faithful preachings of Rev. I. N. Hays, pastor of the church of Hunterstown, especially in a series of meetings held in the winter of 1852-3.

As to his external moral conduct there was no place for a visible “conversion”; he had no vicious habits to abandon, no evil companions from whom to separate himself. It was on the inner life that the transformation was wrought, but just when or where he could not himself tell,—an experience which as to this feature has often been duplicated in the children of godly households.

The impression which I formed of him while associated with him in college was that he lived uprightly and neglected no duty that he regarded as obligatory on him. I knew that he went so far beyond this as to be present at some of the religious associations of the students, such as the Brainard Society, and a little circle for prayer; and that he walked a couple of miles into the country on Sabbath morning to teach a Bible class in the Chartiers church. If I had been questioned closely I probably would have made a mistake, not unlike that into which in later years those who did not penetrate beneath the surface of his life may easily have fallen. I would have said that the chief lack in his piety was as to the amount of feeling that entered into it. I would have said that he was an honest, upright Christian; but that he needed to have the depths of his soul stirred by the forces of religion in order that he might become what he was capable of, for himself and for others. Possibly such an expression concerning him at that time of life might not have been wholly without warrant; but in later years it certainly would have been a gross misjudgment, and while I was associated with him in college and seminary it was far less justified than I imagined.

On October 13, 1856, he began the Journal which, with interruptions, he continued for twenty years. In the very first entry he gives his reasons for keeping this record, one of which he thus states:

I will also to some extent record my own thoughts and feelings; so that in after years I can look back and see the history of my own life and the motives which impelled me in whatever I did,—the dark and the bright spots, for it is really the state of one’s mind that determines one’s depressions or enjoyments.

He records distinctly that the Journal was written for his own eye alone. One in reading it is surprised at the freedom with which occasionally he passes judgment, favorable and unfavorable, on people who meet him on his way. Concerning himself also he is equally candid. Most that he has to say of himself relates to his outward activities, but sometimes he draws aside the veil and reveals the inmost secrets of his soul and of his religious life. As a result we discover that it was by no means so calm as we might suppose from looking only at the surface. In this self-revelation there is not a line that would be improper to publish to the world. A few selections are all that can be given here. A certain Saturday preceding the administration of the Lord’s Supper was kept by himself and other college students as a fast day, and after mentioning an address to which he had listened, and which strongly appealed to him, he goes on to say:

I know that I have not been as faithful as I should. Though comparatively a child in my Christian life, as it is little more than a year since I was admitted to the church, yet I have come to the table of the Lord with my faith obscured, my heart cold and lifeless, without proper self-examination and prayer to God for the light of his countenance. I have spent this evening in looking at my past life and conversation, and in prayer to God for pardon and grace to help. My past life appears more sinful than it has ever done. My conduct as a Christian, indeed, in many things has been inconsistent. Sin has often triumphed over me and led me captive at its will. I have laid my case before God, and asked him to humble me, and prepare me to meet my Saviour aright. O that God would meet me at this time, and show me the light of his countenance, and give me grace and strength; that for the time to come I might lay aside every weight and the sins that do so easily beset me, and run with patience the race that is set before me! There seems to be some unusual interest manifested by some just now; so that I am not without hope that God will bless us and perhaps do a glorious work among us. Many prayers have this day ascended to God for a blessing, and if we are now left to mourn the hidings of God’s face, it will be because of our sins and our unbelief. I have endeavored to keep this as a true fast day; yet my heart tells me that I have not kept it as I should. Sin has been mingled even in my devotions. Yet I am not without hope, because there is One whose righteousness is all-perfect, whose intercessions are all-prevalent. Blessed be God for his unspeakable gift.

The next day, however, among other things, he wrote:

I think that I have never enjoyed a communion season so much.... This day my hopes of heaven have been strengthened, and my faith has been increased; and if I know my own heart, (O that I knew it better!), I have made a more unreserved consecration of myself to God than I have ever done before; and may he grant me grace to live more to his glory!

Surely, the young man who thus opens to our view the secrets of his inner religious life was not lacking seriously in depth of feeling. One is reminded of the Psalmist’s hart panting after the water brooks.

In the seminary he still had seasons of troubled heart-searching and unsatisfied longings for a better Christian life. After reading a part of a book called “The Crucible,” he says:

I have not enjoyed this Sabbath as I should. My own heart is not right, I fear. I am too far from Christ. I am overcome by temptation so often, and then my peace is destroyed, and my access to a throne of grace is hindered. I am ready to exclaim with Paul, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death!” Would to God I could also say with the assurance he did: “I thank God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At the same time there is evidence that he was advancing toward a higher stage of religious experience, and that he was leaving behind him the elements of repentance and faith, and going on toward “perfection.” He reads the Life of Richard Williams, the Patagonian missionary, and then sits down and writes:

He was a wonderful man; had a wonderful life. His faith transcends anything I have ever had. His communion with God was constant and joyous, at times rising to such a pitch that, in his own words, “he almost imagined himself in heaven.” His resignation to God’s will and consecration to his service were complete in the highest. In his life and in his death is displayed in a marvelous manner the power of God’s grace. Reduced almost to the certainty of death by scurvy, in a little, uncomfortable barge or float, with scarce any provisions, far from all human help, in the midst of storms and cold, this devoted man reads God’s Word, prays to him from his lowly couch, and deliberately declares that he would not exchange places with any man living! What godlike faith! What a sublime height to reach in Christian life in this world! I am more and more convinced that our enjoyment of God and sweet sense of the presence of Christ as well as our success in glorifying God depends entirely on the measure of our consecration to him, our complete submission of our wills to his. My prayer is for grace thus to consecrate and submit myself to his will. Then I shall be happy.

I do not think that Mateer had any disposition to follow in the footsteps of Williams by tempting Providence through doubtful exposure of his life and health to danger; it was the consecration to the service of God that he coveted. He seems about this time to have made a distinct advance in the direction of an increasing desire to give himself up wholly to the service of his divine Master, and to submit himself entirely to the will of God. A most severe test of this came to him in the questions of his duty as to foreign missions. First, it was whether he ought to go on this errand, and whether he was willing. Nor was it an easy thing for him to respond affirmatively. He was a strong man, and conscious of his strength. For him to go to the unevangelized in some distant part of the world was to put aside almost every “fond ambition” that had hitherto attracted him in his plans for life. Opportunities to do good were abundantly open to him in this country. Tender ties bound his heart to relatives and friends, and the thought of leaving them with little prospect of meeting them again in this world was full of pain. To go as a missionary was a far more severe ordeal fifty years ago than it is in most cases to-day. Bravely and thoroughly, however, he met the issue. Divine grace was sufficient for him. He offered himself to the Board and was accepted. Then followed another test of his consecration just as severe. For a year and a half he had to wait before he ascertained that after all he was to be sent. There were times when his going seemed to be hopeless; and he had to learn to bow in submission to what seemed the divine will, though it almost broke his heart. When, late in 1862, one of the secretaries told him that unless a way soon opened he had better seek a permanent field at home, he says in his Journal:

It seems as if I cannot give it up. I had such strong faith that I should yet go.... I had a struggle to make up my mind, and now I cannot undo all that work as one might suppose. What is it? Why is it, that my most loved and cherished plan should be frustrated? God will do right, however; this I know. Help me, gracious God, to submit cheerfully to all thy blessed will; and if I never see heathen soil, keep within me at home the glorious spirit of missions.

It was a severe school of discipline to which he was thus sent, but he learned his lesson well.

One cannot think it at all strange that under the conditions of the outward voyage he suffered at times from spiritual depression. November 19, 1863, he made this entry in his Journal:

Spent the forenoon in prayer and in reading God’s Word, in view of my spiritual state. I have felt oppressed with doubts and fears for some time, so that I could not enjoy myself in spiritual exercises as I should. I have had a flood of anxious thoughts about my own condition and my unfitness for the missionary work. I began the day very much cast down; but, blessed be God, I found peace and joy and assurance in Christ. In prayer those expressions in the 86th Psalm, “ready to forgive,” and “plenteous in mercy,” were brought home to my heart in power. I trust I did and do gladly cast myself renewedly on Jesus, my Saviour. Just before dinner time I went out on deck to walk and meditate. Presently my attention was attracted by Georgie (Mrs. B’s little girl) singing in her childish manner the words of the hymn, “He will give you grace to conquer.” Over and over again she said it as if singing to herself. They were words in season. My heart caught the sound gladly, and also repeated it over again and again, “He will give you grace to conquer.” I thought of the parallel Scripture, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” The Spirit of God was in those words, and they were precious. My fears were all gone. I was ready to go, in the strength of this word, to China, and undertake any work God should appoint. I went to my room, and with a full heart thanked God for this consolation. Out of the mouth of babes thou hast ordained strength. I am glad that I gave this season to special seeking of God; it has done me good. Lord, make the influence of it to be felt. I had much wandering of mind at first, but God mercifully delivered me from this. O, that I could maintain habitually a devotional spirit, and live very near to the blessed Jesus!

Though he but dimly understood it then, the Lord was in the school of experience disciplining him in qualities which in all his subsequent work he needed to put into exercise: to rest on the promises of God in darkness, to wait patiently under delays that are disappointing, and to endure in the spirit of Christ the contradictions of the very sinners for whose higher welfare he was willing to make any sacrifice, however costly to himself.

On his field of labor he was too busy with his duties as a missionary to write down much in regard to his own inner life. Nor is there any reason to regard this as a thing greatly to be regretted. The fact is that during the decade which extended from his admission to membership in the church to his entrance on his work in China, he matured in his religious experience to such a degree that subsequently, though there was increasing strength, there were no very striking changes on this side of his character. In the past he had set before himself, as a mark to be attained, the thorough consecration of himself to the service of God, and it was largely because by introspection he recognized how far he fell short of this that he sometimes had been so much troubled about his own spiritual condition. Henceforth this consecration, as something already attained, was constantly put into practice. He perhaps searched himself less in regard to it; he did his best to live it.

In connection with this, two characteristics of his inner life are so evident as to demand special notice. One of these was his convictions as to religious truth. He believed that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, and he was so sure that this is radically essential in the faith of a missionary that he was not ready to welcome any recruit who was adrift on this subject. He believed also with like firmness in the other great evangelical doctrines set forth in the symbols and theologies of the orthodox churches. His own creed was Calvinistic and Presbyterian; yet he was no narrow sectarian. He was eager to coöperate with the missionaries of other denominations than his own; all that he asked was that they firmly hold to what he conceived to be the essentials of Christianity. Because he believed them so strongly, these also were the truths which he continually labored to bring home to the people. In a memorial published by Dr. Corbett concerning him, he says:

Nearly thirty years ago I asked an earnest young man who applied for baptism, when he first became interested in the truth. He replied: “Since the day I heard Dr. Mateer preach at the market near my home, on the great judgment, when everyone must give an account to God. His sermon made such an impression on my mind that I had no peace until I learned to trust in Jesus as my Saviour.” An able Chinese preacher, who was with me in the interior, when the news of Dr. Mateer’s death reached us, remarked, “I shall never forget the wonderful sermon Dr. Mateer preached a few weeks ago in the Chinese church at Chefoo, on conscience.” This was the last sermon he was permitted to preach. Salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, man’s sinfulness and need of immediate repentance, and faith, and the duty of every Christian to live a holy life and constantly bear witness for Jesus, were the great truths he always emphasized. He died in the faith of the blessed gospel he so ably preached for nearly half a century.

Hand in hand with these great convictions went an absolute loyalty to duty. To this he subordinated everything else. The reason why he toiled with his own hands, on buildings, on machinery, on apparatus, was not because he would rather do this than preach Christ, but because he was convinced that the situation was such that he could not with a good conscience refuse to perform that labor. It was not his preference to give long years to the making of the Mandarin version of the Scriptures; he did it because plainly it was his duty to engage in this wearisome task. He fought with his pen his long battle for Shen as the word to be used in Chinese as the name of God; and even when left in a commonly conceded minority, still refused to yield, only because he believed that in so doing he was standing up for something that was not only true but of vital importance to Christianity in China. His unwillingness under protracted pressure to introduce English into the curriculum of the Tengchow school and college, the heartbreak with which he saw the changes made in the institution after its removal to Wei Hsien, were all due not to obstinancy but to convictions of duty as he saw it.

A man of this sort,—strong in intellect, firm of will, absolutely loyal to what he conceives to be his duty,—travels a road with serious perils along its line. A loss of balance may make of him a bigot or a dangerous fanatic. Even Dr. Mateer had “the defects of his qualities.” He did not always make sufficient allowance for persons who could not see things just as he did. He sometimes unwarrantably questioned the rectitude of others’ conduct when it did not conform to his own conception of what they ought to have done. But these defects were not serious enough greatly to mar his usefulness or to spoil the beauty of his character. His wisdom as a rule, his rectitude, his entire consecration to the service of God in the work of missions, his wealth of heart, after all, were so unquestionable that any wounds he inflicted soon healed; and he was in an exceptional degree esteemed and revered by all who came into close touch with him.

Was Dr. Mateer a very “spiritually-minded man”? It is not strange that this question was raised, though rarely, by some one who saw only the outside of his life, and this at his sterner moments. He even did much of his private praying when he was walking up and down in his room, or taking recreation out on the city wall, and when no one but wife or sister knew what he was doing. One had to be admitted to the inner shrine of his heart to appreciate the fervor of his piety.

VII
DOING THE WORK OF AN EVANGELIST

“I have traveled in mule litters, on donkeys, and on foot over a large part of the province of Shantung, preaching from village to village, on the streets, and by the wayside. Over the nearer portions I have gone again and again. My preaching tours would aggregate from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand miles, including from eight thousand to twelve thousand addresses to the heathen.”—AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 1897.

The first thing which Mateer set himself to do, after he arrived at Tengchow, was to acquire the language of the people. The difficulties which the Chinese tongue presents to the foreigner are too well known to need recital here, nor was it easier to Mateer than to other persons possessed of good ability and thorough education. In January, 1902, at the request of Secretary Speer, he prepared for the use of the Board of Missions a paper on the subject of “Missionaries and the Language.” In it he does not profess to be telling his own experience, and yet it is largely an exhibit of what he had himself done. In the introductory paragraph he says:

One of the tasks, and to many one of the trials, of missionary life, is the learning of a new, and often a difficult language. So far as the message of the gospel is concerned, the tongue is tied until the language is learned. I set it down as a first principle, that every missionary should go out with a distinct and fixed determination to learn the language and to learn it well. Let there be no shrinking from it, no half measures with it. Laxity of this purpose in this matter is unworthy of anyone who is called to be a missionary. When I hear a young missionary, after a few weeks or months on the field, saying, “I hate this language; who can learn such outlandish gibberish as this?” my opinion of his fitness for the work at once suffers a heavy discount. Every young missionary should consider it his or her special business to fall in love with the language as quickly as possible.

Then he proceeds to lay down certain general principles and thoroughly to elaborate them; insisting that everyone can learn the tongue of a people, not merely well enough to make some sort of stagger at the use of it, but thoroughly; and giving directions as to the best method of accomplishing this result. At the same time he recognizes the fact that by no means all missionaries are able to acquire the language so perfectly that they are competent to contribute to the permanent Christian literature of the country.

In his case there were exceptional difficulties as to this preliminary work. Printed helps were few and not very good. Competent native teachers were almost impossible to obtain at Tengchow, and were liable at any time to abandon their work. Besides, so long as the Mateers were hampered by their narrow quarters, along with other missionaries, in the old temple, and while he was compelled to give almost the whole of his strength to the repairs and construction of buildings, for him to accomplish what he otherwise might have done in this line was impossible. Under date of December 24, 1864, almost a year after his arrival at Tengchow, he wrote in his Journal:

I have been studying pretty regularly this week, yet to look back over it, I cannot see that I have accomplished much. Learning Chinese is slow work. I do not wonder that the Chinese have never made great advances in learning. It is such a herculean task to get the language that a man’s best energies are gone by the time he has himself prepared to work. It is as if a mechanic should spend half his life, or more, in getting his tools ready. Before I came to China I feared that I would have trouble acquiring the language, and I find my fears were well grounded.

This confession is very notable, coming as it does from the pen of him who subsequently, as one of his associates said after his death, “became not only the prince of Mandarin speakers among foreigners in China, but also so grasped the principles of the language as to enable him in future years to issue the most thoroughgoing and complete work on the language, the most generally used text-book for all students of the spoken tongue”; and it may be added, who was selected by the missionaries of all China, in conference, to be chairman of the committee to revise the Mandarin version of the Scriptures, and who in all that work was easily the chief. The diligence with which he improved every spare moment in the study of the language is shown by a letter of Mrs. Julia Mateer, in which she writes of reading aloud to her husband in the evening while he practiced writing Chinese characters.

Really he was making better progress than probably he himself imagined. On January 14, 1865, he began to go regularly into the school, to teach the children a phonetic method of writing the Chinese characters. He records that on February 7 he took charge of the morning prayers, and adds:

It seemed very strange indeed to me to pray in Chinese, and no less awkward than strange. I found, however, less embarrassment in doing it than I at first supposed. I might easily have begun some time ago, but our school-teacher performs the duty very acceptably, and so I left the matter to him until I was fully prepared. I trust that it will not be long till I will be at home in using Chinese.

Tengchow is the seat of one of the competitive literary examinations for students, and at the season when these are held thousands of candidates present themselves. Under date of March 11, of that year, he says:

A goodly number of the scholars have come to see me, to get books and to hear “the doctrine.” I have had opportunity to do considerable preaching, which I have not failed to embrace. Some of them understood me quite well. I find a great difference between talking to them and to the illiterate people. They understand me a great deal better. Most of them listen with attention, and some of them with evident interest. They all treated me with respect. I gave them books; they promising to read them, and to come again at the next examination.

These occasions continued to offer like opportunity in succeeding years, and he took all the advantage of it that he could. Only rarely did students give him any cause for annoyance. On May 22 he went to a fair that was held just outside one of the gates, and tried his hand at preaching to that miscellaneous audience in the open air. In the forenoon he talked himself tired, and returned in the afternoon to repeat the effort, but with what effect he could not tell. Rain came on and he had to stop. He added in his Journal, “Oh, how I wish that I could use Chinese as I can English,—then I could preach with some comfort!” On Sabbath, June 19, he preached his first sermon before the little Chinese church organized at Tengchow. The notice he had was short, Mills having been taken ill, and sending him word that he must fill the pulpit. He says: “I could not prepare a sermon, and translate it carefully and accurately. I had just to get ready some phrases, and statements of the main points, and depend on my Chinese for the rest. I got on better than I expected I should, though to me at least it seemed poor enough.” We need not follow the process of his acquisition of the language any further, except to say that he never ceased to study it, and to seek to improve in it, although he came by and by to be able to use it, in both speaking and writing, so well that the Chinese often took more pleasure in hearing and reading his productions than if he had been a native.

As the senior missionary, Mills had charge of the church organized at Tengchow, and any preaching that Mateer did in it was occasional. It was not long before a movement was organized for evangelistic work on the streets, and he gladly took part in that method of work. He was anxious also to obtain a room which he could use as a chapel. His first efforts to secure such a building were rendered futile on account of the intense opposition of the people, and the disinclination, or worse, of the officials to enforce his legal rights in this matter, under the treaty. It was not until the middle of April, 1867, that he succeeded in opening a room where he and his Chinese assistant could have a regular place for preaching and selling books. It stood on a principal street, and was, therefore, as to location, well suited for the work to which it was set apart. The opening of it was the occasion for the gathering of a crowd of rowdies who threw stones at the doors, and otherwise created disturbance; but prompt arrest of the ringleader and the haling of him before a magistrate brought the rowdyism to a close. Of course, the school afforded another local opportunity for evangelization, and it was from the very first effectually employed.

Tengchow itself was not very responsive to the gospel. The demand for books was soon satisfied to such an extent that sales became small. The novelty of street preaching and of the chapel services gradually was exhausted. The little church did not attract many on the Sabbath, except the regular attendants. True, a city of so many inhabitants might seem—notwithstanding such limitations as existed—a sufficient field for all the labor that could be put upon it by the little band of missionaries located there. But beyond the walls was all the rest of the province of Shantung, with none to evangelize it save the missionaries at Chefoo and Tengchow. That province is in area about one-third larger than the State of Pennsylvania; and it now has somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty millions of inhabitants, mostly scattered in innumerable villages, though frequently also concentrated in cities. The climate is about that of Kentucky, and the productions of the soil are not very different. Part of the surface of the country is hilly and some of it rises into mountains of moderate height; but most of it is level or slightly rolling. Writing to one of the secretaries of the Board, under date of May 10, 1869, Mateer thus expressed himself as to the strategic importance of Shantung in the tremendous enterprise of evangelizing China:

I think it is almost universally admitted that Tsinan fu [the capital, situated about three hundred miles southwest of Tengchow] offers the most promising field for missionary effort in China. The region in which this city lies is the religious center of China. Here both the great sages of China, Confucius and Mencius, were born. At Tai An, a short way to the south, the great religious festival of China is held, and there are unmistakable evidences that there is a religious element in the people of this province found nowhere else in China. I feel like saying with all my might, Let the Presbyterian Church strike for this province. It has given both religion and government to China in the ages that are past, and it is going to give Christianity to China in the future.

These pioneer missionaries in Shantung as promptly as possible sought, first by itineration, and later by opening new stations, to carry the gospel far and wide over the province. In this they labored under one serious inconvenience from which their brethren in much of south China are exempt. Down there it is easy to travel extensively on the rivers and the numerous canals. In Shantung the one great river is the Hoang, or Yellow, running from the west toward the east; and the one important canal is the Grand, running north and south; and both of these are so far remote from Chefoo and Tengchow that in the itineration of the missionaries from these places they were of little use. As a consequence they had to adopt the other methods of travel customary in that region. Even to-day, though a railway runs from the coast at Kiaochou, across Shantung to Tsinan fu, and another across the west end of the province and passing through Tsinan fu is almost completed, much of the territory is no more accessible than half a century ago. The traveler can hire a mule, or more probably a donkey, and—throwing his bedding across the packsaddle—make his way, with the owner of the animal running along as driver, to the place where, if he proceeds farther, he must hire a second mule or donkey; and so on to the end of his journey. One can also travel by wheelbarrow. These conveyances are considered to be quite genteel, and are much patronized by Chinese women. The wheels are big and clumsy, and, being innocent of oil, creak fearfully, and as the wheelbarrows are without springs the passenger is jolted excruciatingly. They are propelled by a man pushing by the handles, and often with the aid of another, and sometimes a donkey in front, and it may be with a sail to catch the wind. In the hilly regions the shentza, or mule litter, is common. In describing this conveyance Mateer said in one of his Sunday-school letters:

The motion is various and peculiar. Sometimes the mules step together, and sometimes they don’t. Now you have a plunging motion like the shaking of a pepper box, then comes a waving motion like the shaking of a sieve; and then a rolling motion like the rocking of a cradle, and then by turns these various motions mix up and modify each other in endless variety. I have often thought that if a man had a stiff joint, one of these shentzas would be a good thing to shake it loose. You are completely at the mercy of these two mules. If you are sitting up you think that you would be more comfortable lying down, and if you are lying down you think that you would be more comfortable sitting up. There is no relief from incessant shaking but to get out and walk.

The most genteel mode of travel is a two-wheeled cart, provided always that the track called a road is wide and level enough to permit it to be used. I fall back on the Sunday-school letter for a description of it:

A Chinese cart is heavy and clumsy to the last degree. It has no springs, no seat, no cushions, and is only wide enough for one to sit in it. The only way to keep your arms and head from being broken by the top, is to wedge yourself in with quilts and pillows. Passenger carts are usually drawn by two mules, one in the shafts and the other directly in front, hitched by two long ropes to the axle—one passing on each side of the shaft mule. The driver either walks, or rides on the back part of the shafts.... I took one ride in one of these big carts, which I shall remember while I live. We had all gone to a country station, one hundred and twenty miles from Tengchow, to a meeting of Presbytery. After Presbytery we wished to go on to another station forty miles distant. There had been a great rain, and the ground was soft, and we could get no conveyance. At length we got a big cart to carry our luggage and Dr. Mills and myself. For it they rigged up a top made of sticks and pieces of matting. The team consisted of a mule, a horse, and two oxen, with two drivers. Mrs. Mateer had a donkey to ride, and Mrs. Capp had a sedan chair. Dr. Mills and myself took turns in walking with the native elder and assistant. When we got all our effects, bedding, cooking utensils and so forth, in the cart there was only room for one to sit, and the other had to lie down. The first day we dragged through the soft earth fifteen miles, but in order to do it we had to travel an hour after night. It was pitch dark and we had no lantern. We came very near losing our way, and finally had no small trouble in reaching an inn, and when we did reach it what a fuss there was before we got stowed in and got our suppers! We obtained a small room for the ladies, but Dr. Mills and I did not fare so well. We had to sleep on the ground in a sort of shed which had no doors. The next day we got an early start, and found the roads a little better, and managed to make the other twenty-five miles. During the day we crossed a sandy river which was swollen by the rains, and there was some danger that we might stick fast in the sand. The native assistant crowded into the cart. The elder put one foot on the end of the axle, which in a Chinese cart projects several inches beyond the hub, and supported himself by holding on to the side of the cart. The second driver perched himself in the same way on the other end of the axle. The chief driver stood erect on the shafts, astride of the shaft mule. He flourished his whip with one hand and gesticulated with the other, and both drivers hurrahed at the top of their voices. The team got excited, and with heads and tails erect,—with a splash and a dash,—we went safely through.

There is one other mode of travel, and perhaps then still the most common of all, even with missionaries when itinerating, and that is to walk. When the traveler on foot comes to a river if he has long patience he may be ferried across; but if the stream is not very deep he may have to wade. Mateer, however, had a good strong physique and simple tastes, and was entirely free from any disposition to fret over small annoyances. In those earlier itinerating days he cheerfully took his full share in roughing it with other missionaries out in the province. He repeatedly took trips when all the provision he made for eating was a spoon and a saltcellar; the food he ate was such as he got at the inns and from place to place. His experiences in this line of evangelistic efforts had an important influence on his work in the school and the college. Certainly it was a great help toward that remarkable acquaintance with colloquial Chinese which is shown in his literary labors.

His first trip to the country was made on October 14, 1864, and therefore before he had learned the language sufficiently to enable him to do much missionary work. In reality it was just a visit by the entire foreign force stationed by both the Baptists and Presbyterians at Tengchow out to a Chinese Christian residing ten miles away. In a measure, however, it was a typical journey. The roads were execrably bad, and Mateer and another missionary had one mule between them, so that each walked half the way. On August 22 of the ensuing year he, and Corbett,—who had come up for the purpose,—started on a genuine itinerating tour. It was in one particular an unfavorable time. A Chinese inn at any season is apt to be uncomfortable enough to a person who has been accustomed to the conveniences and comforts of western civilization. In the Sunday-school letter already quoted Mateer said:

The inns in China are various in size, but similar in style. You enter through a wide doorway which is in fact the middle of a long, low house fronting on the street. On the one side of this door, or passageway, is the kitchen, which is usually furnished with one or two kettles, a large water jar, and a few dishes, with a meat-chopper and chopping block. Usually there is a little room partitioned off at the far end, which serves for office and storeroom. On the other side is a wide, raised platform about two feet high, made of mud brick. It answers for the muleteers and humbler guests, to sleep on. Inside of this front building is a court or yard with a long shed at one or both sides, and troughs for feeding mules and donkeys. At the further end of this court, and sometimes at one side, are rooms for guests. These rooms contain no furniture but a table and a bench or two, and sometimes a chair, with a rough board bedstead, or a raised brick platform to take the place of a bedstead. No towel, soap, or other toilet necessaries are furnished. They usually have one washbasin, which is passed round, and is used besides for washing the sore backs of mules, and for such other necessary uses. There are no stoves or other means of warming the rooms. Sometimes they build a fire of straw under those brick bedsteads, which invariably fills the room with smoke. Or, you can order a pan of charcoal, which will fill the room with gas. The houses are all one story and have no ceiling. The rafters are smoked as black as ink, and are always festooned with cobwebs. The rooms never have wooden floors. In the more stylish inns the floors are paved with brick, but in ordinary inns the floors are simply the ground. In the summer fleas and mosquitoes are superabundant, and they attack all comers without respect of persons. Every night there is in the courtyard a musical concert which continues at intervals till morning, and is free to all the guests. The tune is carried by the mules and donkeys, and the scolding and swearing of the muleteers make up the accompaniment. Voices of great excellence are often heard in America, but for real pathos and soul-stirring effect there is nothing like a dozen or two Chinese donkeys, when they strike in together and vie with each other for the preëminence. No common table is set, but meals are prepared to order and served to guests in their rooms. They are generally charged for by the dish.

Unfortunately Mateer and Corbett had selected for their first itineration a time of year when the mosquitoes and fleas and other vermin are at their worst, and they suffered accordingly.

They were gone just four weeks; and during that period they traveled two hundred and twenty-five miles. Much of the time it rained. At Laichow fu for this cause they were detained a week; and they had to lodge in a room whose roof leaked so badly that they had to protect themselves with oilcloths and umbrellas. The water was three feet deep on the floor. One day they crossed twenty-two streams, none of them large, and yet often of such a character as to render passage very troublesome. For a while they had a shentza borne by a couple of crowbait mules, one of which was blind and had the trick of suddenly lying down for a rest, and occasionally fell flat into a mudhole, or tumbled its rider over a steep bank. They met with a variety of treatment from the people, but mostly it was not unfavorable to the prosecution of their work. Foreigners were still a curiosity in the region, and that often attracted a crowd to see them, and to ascertain by hearing and by reading what might be the nature of the Christian doctrine. Once it became necessary for Mateer to use force to repel a man who persistently tried to seize a book. Each of the missionaries preached about forty times, and at all sorts of places. Their largest evident success was in disposing of books; these for the most part by sale, the total of pages distributed amounting to two hundred and seventy-seven thousand. The details of the tour are given in Mateer’s Journal. If preserved, they will one day be of extreme interest to the Christians of China, as records of the very beginnings of the teaching of the gospel in Shantung.

Again, the next spring Mateer and Corbett, accompanied by Chinese assistants, went on another tour of preaching and of book-selling. Mateer left Tengchow on April 5, and reached home on May 19. They started with twenty-eight boxes of books, each weighing about seventy pounds; and, because they had exhausted the supply, they had to turn back before reaching the place to which they had originally intended to go. One of the noteworthy things in their itinerary is that it brought them for the first time to Wei Hsien, now one of the largest of the Presbyterian mission stations in north China, and the site of the College of Arts of the Shantung University; and to Tsingchow fu, the site of the Theological College. In both towns the Presbyterians and the Baptists are united. All that Mateer said in his Journal concerning Wei Hsien is:

We did not go through the city, except the suburbs. The streets were full of people, and they were not sparing in their expressions of enmity and contempt. We saw a great number of elegant memorial arches near Wei Hsien and learned that it is a very wealthy place. This was indicated by the many elegant burying grounds around it, and by the good condition of the walls. The country all around, and indeed most we passed through to-day, was very rich. A man on the road who appeared to know told us that one individual, the richest in the city, was worth three million taels [then more than as many million dollars].

Tsingchow fu receives from him a much more extended notice. He speaks of the city—although very much smaller than evidently it once had been—as still large and filled with business. The surrounding country wins from him great admiration. Indeed, at several places he was much attracted by the prospect which spread itself out before his eyes; and some of it reminded him even of the natural scenery of his “Old Home” in Pennsylvania. Of course, it must not be supposed that all the region they traversed was the equal of this; much of it was far less attractive in almost every particular.

On this journey they had a great variety of experiences, some of them far enough from pleasant. Nearly everywhere they went, curiosity attracted crowds of adults and of children. This seems to have been especially true in the neighborhood of Wei Hsien and Tsingchow fu. At the inns where they stopped, privacy was almost impossible; the people peering in at the windows and bolting into the room they occupied. Sometimes they were compelled to expel the intruders with a dash of water or with an uplifted cane. Harder to bear were the opprobrious epithets applied to them. Mateer said:

Every village I come to, the term, “devil!” “devil!” comes ringing in my ears. Not that they always called it at me, but to one another, to come and see. Frequently, however, it was called out most spitefully, for me to hear. I think that within the last two days I have heard it from at least ten thousand mouths. It is strange how such a term could have gotten such universal currency. It expresses not so much hatred to the gospel as it does the national enmity of the Chinese to foreigners.

Happily at the present time foreigners are seldom saluted by this epithet. At Chang Tsau they had two serious disturbances. The first was caused by some sort of soothsayer, in whom the people had much confidence. While Mateer was surrounded by a crowd of men to whom he was selling books, in rushed this man, brandishing an ugly looking spear; and, using the Chinese expression of rage, “Ah! Ah! I’ll kill you!” he drove the spear straight at Mateer’s breast. In those early days of his missionary work Mateer carried a revolver for self-defense when going to places where he might be attacked, believing that he had a moral right to protect himself from assault by evil-minded persons. On this occasion the revolver was drawn instantly. As the man came closer Mateer seized the spear, and warned the intruder of the consequences if he advanced a step farther. The risk was too great for the courage of the soothsayer, and he went away crestfallen, but cursing the missionary, threatening to return and kill him, and launching his anathemas against anybody who bought the books. After the disturbance the people were not so eager to buy, and an official tried to induce Mateer to cease his efforts, but, partly to show the futility of such interruptions, he continued, until at length weariness compelled him to stop.

The other incident occurred in connection with the selling of books at a market. A man took advantage of a moment when the missionary was receiving pay from a purchaser, and snatched away a book, but Mateer seized and held him until the book was restored. This led to an altercation between the Chinese assistant and the thief, and blows were struck. The disturbance began to spread, and several of the crowd seemed disposed to lay hands on Mateer, when a significant reference to the revolver brought the movement to a prompt termination. In order to show the people that the missionaries were doing only what is lawful under the treaty, and that they would not put up with insult or wrong, they sought satisfaction through the official having jurisdiction, and warned him that the case would be brought to the notice of the American consul at Chefoo.

There is no record of any itineration again until the latter part of February, 1869. That trip was not long in duration or very extensive in its territory. Julia and her sister Maggie accompanied Dr. Mateer and were able to reach large numbers of women with the gospel. July 21 of the same year he and Julia went on a tour of twelve weeks, their main objective being Chow Yuen, where Miao, a zealous young convert, was opening a chapel. The story as to him can most appropriately be told in another chapter.

On November 10 of the same year Dr. Mateer and Julia began a journey which lasted twenty-four days, during which they traveled about two hundred and fifty miles, some of the road being very hilly and rough, and the weather cold. Their course was directed to certain localities where there were converts, and where a beginning had been made by these native Christians to give the gospel to their neighbors. One of these places was Laichow fu, at which two of these had been spreading the light around them, one of them having given a commodious chapel, with a guest room attached, in which the Mateers lodged. During a stay of three days they preached to large numbers; and especially on the last day all opposition was swept away, and men and women came in crowds. In a village in the district of Ping Tu they conducted service in a little chapel on the Sabbath. In a letter to one of the secretaries of the Board he said:

The chapel was so crowded that we were barely able to have any regular service for the benefit of the native Christians. We had finally to postpone our principal service till after night. I baptized five, the four who had previously been accepted, and one other who, though not very well instructed, was so earnest in his profession of faith that we did not feel that it would be right to refuse him. After this the Lord’s Supper was administered. The circumstances made it one of the most interesting services of the kind I have ever been privileged to conduct. At the farthest point at which the gospel has yet got a foothold, in a house set apart by a native Christian for the worship of the true God, the majority of the company having never before participated in such a service, the circumstances were altogether such as to make the occasion one long to be remembered.

On February 13, 1873, he and Crossett began a tour that lasted about three months and carried them far into the interior of Shantung. They traveled in all about a thousand miles, and preached and sold books in over a hundred cities and towns. Once a man threatened Mateer with a manure fork, and once he was struck by a stone thrown in a crowd by some unknown miscreant. The usual epithet for foreigners saluted them; but, on the whole, they escaped any serious molestation. On this trip they visited Tai An, the great temple, and the sacred mountain, and ascended the steps to its summit. For a week they remained preaching in the temple to the crowds. They also went to the tomb of Confucius, and to the magnificent temple dedicated to the sage, in that neighborhood. At that date not many foreigners had seen these Chinese shrines; but now they have been so often described that it would scarcely be justifiable to cite the full and interesting record made by Mateer in his Journal as to what he saw and did at these places. Thence they proceeded as far as the capital, Tsinan fu, where Mateer remained for eighteen days, while Crossett went on a journey still a couple of hundred miles farther to the north and west, in company with an agent of the Scottish Bible Society, which had been canvassing the province for six or eight years. At the close of this tour they regarded the work of book-selling for most of Shantung as so far completed as henceforth to deserve a more subordinate place. During part of his stay at the capital Mateer preached and sold books, and part of the time he remained in his hired lodgings to receive visitors, of whom he had not a few. To him one of the interesting sights was the Yellow River. On their return journey they took in Tsingchow fu, and also Ping Tu, where the Christians then were terrified by persecution.

After this he made only one more exclusively evangelistic itineration. The care of the infant churches and other duties called him to continue to go longer and shorter distances from home; and in connection with this he did a great deal of preaching here and there by the way. For instance, in 1881 he attended a meeting of the Mission at Tsinan fu, and incidentally he preached in a hundred and sixty-three villages. It was travel for the specific purpose of carrying the gospel into wholly unevangelized regions that he ceased to perform. In a friendly letter written to his cousin, Mrs. Gilchrist, as early as June 28, 1875, he said:

The first years I was in China I traveled a good deal, and preached and sold books in the streets. I have not done so much of it the last two or three years, having been more closely engaged in my school. The younger men in the mission have been doing it chiefly. I am preparing a number of books for the press, and this has taken a good deal of time, and will take time in the future.

That final evangelistic itineration was made in 1878, and lasted from the middle of October to the middle of November. It was out toward the general region of Ping Tu and Laichow fu. The party consisted of Mateer and Mills, Mrs. Mateer and Mrs. Shaw, and a couple of Chinese assistants. Mrs. Mateer and Mrs. Shaw visited the native Christians while the men went to districts where there were no churches. In a letter to the Board Mateer said:

We each hired a donkey to carry our bedding and books, while we walked from village to village, and preached in the streets. I preached in this way in one hundred and ninety villages, and Mr. Mills in about as many. We went aside from the great roads into villages never before visited by any foreign missionary. We had audiences of from eight or ten, up to two or three hundred. In many cases we had a goodly proportion of women as hearers. Our reception was very various, for which in most cases we have no means of accounting. In some cases many came out to see and hear us. In other cases no one seemed inclined to pay any attention to us, and a considerable time would elapse before we would succeed in drawing a company to preach to. In one village I failed entirely to get anyone to listen. A goodly number saw us, but they passed by without stopping. One boy ventured to ask where we came from, when instantly a man near by at work reproved him for speaking to us. My assistant and I sat and waited about half an hour, and then went on to the next village. We carried a few books in our hands as a sort of advertisement of our business, and to give to such as would accept them. Sometimes the books were readily accepted, and we could have given away any number; but frequently not a soul would accept a book. No doubt some would have liked very well to have a book, but they were ashamed to accept it from the hated foreigner in the presence of so many of their neighbors and acquaintances. Only in two or three cases was any open hostility shown us, and in these it was confined to two or three individuals who failed to carry the crowd with them, so that in spite of their attempts to scatter our audience we still had plenty of hearers.

Then as to the value of this kind of missionary effort he added an estimate from which he never deviated, and which in substance he continued to repeat:

This method of work is very excellent, and at the same time very laborious. It reaches obscure places, and a class of people—those who stay at home—not otherwise reached. To be successful it must be pursued at a time of year when the people are somewhat at leisure.

VIII
THE TENGCHOW SCHOOL

“The object of mission schools I take to be the education of native pupils, mentally, morally, and religiously, not only that they may be converted, but that, being converted, they may become effective agents in the hand of God for defending the cause of truth. Schools also which give a knowledge of western science and civilization cannot fail to do great good both physically and socially.”—THE RELATION OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS TO EDUCATION; a paper read before the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1877.

The Tengchow School in 1884 was authorized by the Board of Missions to call itself a college. For several years previous to that date it deserved the name because of the work which it was doing in its advanced department. On the other hand, it did not cease at that time to maintain instruction of an elementary and intermediate grade. In the present chapter we will for convenience confine our attention mainly to the twenty years lying between the opening of the school and the formal assumption of the name of a college. Beyond the end of that period lies the story of the institution under the title of the Shantung College, for another twenty years at Tengchow; and since then, of the Shantung Union College, at Wei Hsien.

Under date of April 2, 1864,—less than three months after the Mateers arrived at Tengchow,—Dr. Mateer made this entry in his Journal, “We have it in prospect to establish a school.” Their plan at that time was to leave the Mills family in possession of the old Kwan Yin temple, and to find for themselves another house where they could reside and carry on this new enterprise. But when, during the latter part of that summer, they were left in sole possession of the temple, they proceeded at once so to fit up some of the smaller buildings in the court as to make it possible to accommodate the little school. In September the first term opened, with six little heathen boys, not one of whom had ever been to school before; and with quarters consisting of two sleeping rooms, a kitchen, and a small room for teaching. Chang, who was Mateer’s instructor in Chinese, was set to work also to teach these boys; and a native woman was put in charge of the cooking department. To Julia he always attributed the initiation of this entire work. For the first ten years the school was almost entirely hers, he being otherwise at work. In a conversation with Mrs. Fitch, of Shanghai, many years later he said:

When Julia began the boarding school for boys in Tengchow I thought it a comparatively small work; but as it enlarged, and also deepened, in its influence, I saw it was too much for her strength alone. I knew that we must put our own characters into those boys, and I could do nothing less than give myself to the work she had so begun.

Almost half a century ago, when the school was started, and for some time afterward, mission boards and missionaries had not settled down into their present attitude toward education, lower or higher, as an agency in the evangelization of the non-Christian world. There were some very earnest and intelligent workers who insisted that for an ordained minister to engage in teaching a school was for him to be untrue to the calling for which he had been set apart. To sustain their position they appealed to apostolic example, and pointed to the small results as to conversions in the instances in which this method had been tried. Among the advocates of schools also there was a lack of agreement as to the immediate object to be sought by the use of this agency. Ought it to be so much the conversion of the pupils, and through this the raising up of a native ministry, that all other results should be regarded as of small importance? Or, ought the school to be looked upon as an efficient means of preparing the soil for the good seed of Christian truth to be sown later by preaching the gospel? In the paper from which the quotation at the head of this chapter is taken Mateer ably and fully discussed all of these questions, bringing out fairly both sides of them, and then presented his own convictions as he held them from the beginning of his missionary career, and as he unswervingly adhered to them all the rest of his life. He disclaimed any intention to exalt education as a missionary agency above other instrumentalities, and especially not above preaching the gospel; and claimed for it only its legitimate place. As to this he laid down and elaborated certain great principles involved in the nature of the case and verified by experience. Education, he said, is important in order to provide an effective and reliable ministry; to furnish teachers for Christian schools, and through them to introduce into China the superior education of the West; to prepare men to take the lead in introducing into China the science and arts of western civilization, as the best means of gaining access to the higher classes in China, of giving to the native church self-reliance, and of fortifying her against the encroachments of superstition from within and the attacks of educated skepticism from without. On the last of these propositions he enlarged with wise foresight:

So long as all the Christian literature of China is the work of foreigners, so long will the Chinese church be weak and dependent. She needs as rapidly as possible a class of ministers with well-trained and well-furnished minds, who will be able to write books, defending and enforcing the doctrines of Christianity, and applying them to the circumstances of the church in China.... Again, as native Christians increase in numbers, and spread into the interior, they will pass more and more from under the direct teaching and control of foreigners. Then will arise danger from the encroachment of heathen superstition, and from the baneful influence of the Chinese classics. Superstitions of all kinds find a congenial soil in the human heart, and they often change their forms without changing their nature. The multiform superstitions of China will not die easily; and unless they are constantly resisted and ferreted out and exposed, they will commingle with Christianity and defile it.... The day is not distant when the skepticism of the West will find its way into China. The day when it shall be rampant is not so distant as might be supposed. Error is generally as fleet-footed as truth. To repel these attacks, and vindicate the truth in the face of heathen unbelief, will require a high order of education. An uneducated Christianity may hold its own against an uneducated heathenism, but it cannot against an educated heathenism. We want, in a word, to do more than introduce naked Christianity into China, we want to introduce it in such a form, and with such weapons and supports, as will enable it to go forward alone, maintain its own purity, and defend itself from all foes.

In view of these ideals with regard to the object of such schools, he concluded his paper by urging that they should be of an advanced grade rather than primary, though not excluding the primary; that the natural sciences should be made prominent in the instruction; and that the pupils should be of Christian parentage, rather than of heathen. His prophecy as to skeptical books from the West is already in process of fulfillment.

It needs to be recognized that the substance of all this was in his mind when he opened that little elementary school. But he had to begin with something that fell almost pitifully short of his ideal. The first thing that was necessary was to secure a few pupils under conditions that made it worth while, in view of his object, to teach them. One of these conditions was that the parents of the boys should formally bind themselves to leave them in the school six or seven years, so that they might finish the studies prescribed. Otherwise they would stay only as long as suited them or their parents, and they would all the while be exposed to heathen influences that likely would nullify the Christian instruction received. On the other hand, this arrangement made it necessary for the school to furnish gratuitously not only the buildings and the teachers, but the food and lodging and clothes of the pupils. Gradually this was so far modified that the parents provided their clothes and bedding and books. To meet the running expenses of the school the average cost of each pupil was ascertained, and an effort was made to secure from Sabbath schools in the United Stales a contribution of that amount. The plan of designating a particular boy for support by a particular Sabbath school was suggested from home for consideration, but was discouraged, on the ground that it might often prove disappointing, through the uncertainties as to the conduct of the boy; and it was rarely, if at all, practiced. In order to secure these contributions each year a letter had to be carefully prepared, and then duplicated, at first by hand, and later by lithographing process, and sent to the Sabbath schools that shared in giving for this purpose. These letters were of a very high order, taking for the theme of each some important phase of Chinese life and manners or of mission work. They might to advantage have been gathered into a volume; and if this had been done, it would be entitled to rank with books of the very best kind on the same general subject. The preparation of these letters and their multiplication and distribution cost very considerable time and labor; to lighten this for her husband, Julia rendered valuable assistance, even to the extent eventually of taking upon herself the entire work, except the printing.

The average expense of a boy was at first estimated at forty dollars, but with the rise of prices as the years went by, this estimate had to be raised. The scheme worked well enough to enable the school not only to go on, but gradually to increase its numbers as other events opened the way. Nor was there any difficulty in obtaining all the pupils that could be accommodated. At the beginning all were from families who were too poor to educate their boys in native schools, and to whom the fact that in addition to the good education received, their boy was also clothed and fed, proved inducement sufficient to overcome the opprobrium of allowing him to fall under the influence of the hated foreigner. It really meant no little in those early days, and, in fact, in all ante-Boxer times, for parents, even though Christians, to send their boys to the Tengchow school. An honored native pastor who was at one time a pupil there wrote:

When my parents first sent me to school, there was a great protest from all the village. They tried to scare my mother by saying that the foreigners were vampires who could extract the blood of children by magic arts. Nevertheless I was sent; though I must own that I was a little scared myself. When I came home at Chinese New Year vacation, I was most carefully examined by all these prophets of evil; and when they found that not only my pulse was still a-going, but that I was even rosier and in better flesh than before, they said that the three months I had been there were not enough to show the baneful results; only wait! After the Germans took Kiaochow and began the railroad, the rumors in that region became worse. Under each sleeper a Chinese child must be buried. To furnish axle grease for the “fire-cart” human fat must be tried out—anyone could see the great boilers they had for the purpose; and under those great heaps of fresh-turned earth they buried the bones.

At the time of the Tientsin massacre it was currently reported that Mateer was fattening boys for the purpose of killing them, and then taking their eyes and hearts to make medicine with which to bewitch the people.

Nevertheless the numbers were always full, except at brief intervals, when reduced by popular disturbances, epidemics or such causes. The school in its second year had twelve pupils, just double the number with which it began its work. It will be remembered that in 1867 the Mateers built and occupied their new home. This vacated the old Kwan Yin temple premises. In the application to the Board to erect the new home Mateer said:

We do not propose to vacate the old premises, but to appropriate them to the school, for which they would be admirably adapted. We look forward with confidence to an increase of the school. Our present number of scholars, however, occupy all the room we can possibly spare; if we increase we must build not only sleeping rooms, but a large schoolroom. This would not, it is true, cost as much money as a foreign house, but it would not come as far below as perhaps you might suppose. The main building would make one or two most admirable schoolrooms, which will accommodate any school we will likely ever have. One of the side buildings would make a very convenient dining room and kitchen, and the other, with additional buildings made vacant, would with a very little refitting furnish at least ten new rooms besides what we now have. It will probably be many years before we will have more than these.

With all his largeness of vision he did not yet foresee the coming Tengchow college; though he was planning for greater things for the mission as well as for the health and comfort of himself and wife.

Because the language employed was solely Chinese, at the beginning neither Mateer nor his wife could take part in the instruction; all had to be done by the Chinese assistant, who was a professing Christian. It was not long, however, until both the Mateers were able to help; though at no time did he give himself exclusively to teaching. The boys were taught to read and write in their own language, so that for themselves they might be able to study the Bible and other books which they were expected to use. Arithmetic was a part of this course in the elementary department with which the school began, and it was one of the very first of the branches of which Mateer took charge. Mrs. Mateer had a class in geography, and widened their vision of the world by informing them of other lands besides China. Three times a week she undertook the peculiarly difficult task of instructing them to sing. Of course, there was morning worship. This was held in the schoolroom. The service consisted of a hymn, of a chapter in the New Testament read verse about, and a prayer. There was also evening worship. On Sabbath morning all attended the little native chapel. In the afternoon a sort of Sunday school was held, and in it Mateer taught the bigger boys, and Mrs. Mateer the smaller, in the Scriptures. At worship on Sabbath evening he questioned them all in turn about the sermon in the morning. Such was the very humble way in which the school was nurtured in its infancy, and started on the road to become what has been pronounced to be the very best of all the colleges in China.

Three months after the first opening the six pupils admitted were reduced to three, because the fathers of the other boys were unwilling to sign the obligation to leave them in the school the required number of years. A decade after the school was begun Mateer said in a Sunday-school letter:

Our boys are from nine or ten to eighteen or twenty years, and a number of them have been in school seven or eight years. If they have never been to school, we require them to come for twelve years, but take them for a less time if they have already been several years in a native school. We try to get those who have already been to school, as it is a saving both of labor and of money.

At the end of a quarter of a century after the school was begun he said:

During these years we took many boys into the school who came to nothing. Some were too stupid, and we had to send them away after they had learned to read and knew something of the Bible. Others were bad boys, and we had to dismiss them; and some got tired and ran away, or were taken away by their parents because they wanted them at home to work. We sifted out some good ones, who were bright and promised to make good men.

The pupils they retained at the end of the first ten years were culled out of more than twice their number. Of the routine of the school he wrote:

The boys go to school at six o’clock in the morning, and study till eight. Then all meet in the large schoolroom for prayers. After this there is a recess of an hour for breakfast. At half-past nine they go to school again, and remain till half-past twelve. In the afternoon they have another session of four hours. During the shortest days of winter they have an evening session instead of a morning session. These are the ordinary hours of study in the native schools. At first we thought so many hours in school too much for either health or profit, but after trying our plan for several years, we were convinced that for Chinese children and Chinese methods of study the native plan is best. The great business in Chinese schools is committing the classics, which they do by chanting them over rhythmically at the top of their voices, each one singing a tune of his own, and apparently trying to “hollow” louder than the others. The din they make would be distracting to one of us, but the Chinese teacher seems to enjoy it. The exercise it gives the lungs compensates, perhaps, for the want of more play hours. When Mrs. Mateer or I go into the school to hear classes, we, of course, make them stop their uproarious studying, and study to themselves. About half the day our boys devote to Christian and to scientific books. They learn a catechism of Christian doctrine, “The Peep of Day,” Old Testament history, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Evidences of Christianity,” and memorize portions of Scripture. They study also geography, ancient history, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, natural philosophy, and chemistry. They are trained in singing, writing essays, and debating. The native books which they study are composed mostly of the maxims and wise sayings of Confucius and Mencius, together with a large number of poems. These books teach people to be honest and upright. They teach children to obey their parents and elder brothers. They also contain a great deal about the duties of the people to their rulers, and of the rulers to the people. They praise all good and virtuous men, and exhort all to lead virtuous lives; but they offer no motives higher than the praise of men. They teach nothing about God or future life. They are all written in what is called the classical style, which is to a Chinese boy what Latin is to an American boy. These books the boys commit to memory, and recite to their teacher, but without understanding them. When a book has been memorized and a boy can repeat it from beginning to end, the teacher commences to explain it to him. He has neither grammar nor dictionary to help him, but must learn all from the teacher’s lips. When a young man can repeat all these books and give the explanation, and can write an essay in the same style, the Chinese consider him a scholar, and when he can do this, and in addition has mastered all the other branches of study mentioned above, we consider his education finished, and he graduates from our school. A boy must have a good mind, and be very diligent if he gets through in twelve years.

The clothes of the boys, of course, were entirely Chinese as to material and style. Their food was of like character. The dormitories were low rooms with earthen floors and the bedsteads were of dry mud. The letter continues:

Teaching the boys their regular lessons is but a small part of the work to be done in such a school as ours. Ways and means have to be provided to have their food bought and properly cooked. The cook must be prevented from stealing it, and the boys from wasting it. Their clothes have to be made in proper season, and mended and washed, and the boys watched that they do not destroy them. Then each boy’s grievances have to be heard and his quarrels examined into and settled. Bad boys have to be exhorted or reproved, and perhaps punished and every possible means used, and that constantly, to make the boys obedient and truthful and honest. We also strive to train them to habits of industry, perseverance, and self-reliance, without which their education will do them no good. Thus you see that to train up these boys so that they shall become good and useful men requires a great deal of labor, patience, and faith, and prayer.

These are homely details, but we cannot overlook them, and understand the life of the Mateers in its connection with this work.

Discipline in any school composed of so many boys and of such varied age could not be an easy task; in this Chinese school it was peculiarly perplexing. There were some unusual incidents. Falsehood, stealing, quarreling, gluttony, and even sodomy were offenses that had to be dealt with according to the circumstances attending each case. One instance of discipline was so distinctively Chinese that the description of it by Mateer in his Journal deserves a place here. Under date of April 9, 1869, he wrote:

One very distressing thing has happened within a month. Leon Chin Chi was being persecuted by his father in relation to the matter of his marriage engagement with Shang Yuin, when in a fit of desperation he went and bought opium, and took it to kill himself. Some of the boys suspected him, and went to see. They found him lying on his bed evidently in great distress of mind, and refusing to answer any questions save to say that his affairs were all over with. I inferred from this, as also from his saying to one of the boys that he would never see him again, that he had taken poison—most likely opium. I went and got a strong emetic, and mixed it up, but he refused to take it. I then got a stick and used it to such good purpose that in a very short time he was glad to take the medicine. It had the desired effect, and in a very short time he vomited up the opium. He seemed to lay the beating to heart very much. It was evidently a new idea to him to be put through in such a style. After a day or two, when he had gone to school again, I gave him a formal and severe whipping in the presence of the school. I thought very seriously over the matter of whipping him, and concluded that it was my duty to do it. I believe now that it did the boy good. He was called before the session last week, when he manifested a good deal of sorrow and penitence. He was publicly reproved and admonished on Sabbath morning. I am sorry that he had such a weakness; it greatly decreases my reliance on him, and my belief in his genuine Christian character. It must be allowed that there is some little excuse, in the way in which the Chinese all regard suicide. He had not got those ideas all educated out of him.

While Mateer differed in opinion from those missionaries who favored schools simply as effective agents for the conversion of the pupils, he regarded this as one of the leading results to be sought and expected. It was almost two years after the opening of his school when he had the great joy of baptizing one of the pupils. In describing the event to a secretary of the Board, he said:

He is the oldest boy in the school, and is in fact a man in years, though his education is not yet nearly finished. He has been for two or three months feeling that it was his duty to profess Christ, but, as he is naturally modest and retiring, he did not make his wish known. His mother, to whom he was uncommonly attached, died recently, and this brought him to a full decision. His examination before the session was most satisfactory, showing that he has improved well his opportunities of learning the truth. I have great hopes of his future usefulness. He has a good mind, and is a most diligent student, and if he is spared, and is taught of God’s Spirit he may be a great treasure to us in preaching to the heathen.

Three months later he wrote again of this young man as exemplary in conduct and as growing in grace, and added:

I am thankful that I can now say that another has since been baptized. He is the most advanced boy in the school, and is in fact very nearly a man. His conversion was not sudden, but gradual, after the manner of almost all the Chinese. We trust, however, that he is a true child of God, and we have strong hope that if he is spared he will make a very useful man.

The next year three more of the largest boys were received into the church. The session examined two others, but thought it best for them to wait a few weeks; and a number more were hoping to be received, but were advised to defer the matter. Thus the conversion of the boys gradually progressed, until at the time when the school formally became a college, all who had graduated, and nearly all the pupils still enrolled who were sufficiently mature, were professing Christians.

Julia’s sister, Maggie Brown, came out to join the station at Tengchow early enough to render valuable help in the initial stages of the school. In 1871 she married Mr. Capp. One of the necessities which Mateer recognized was that of a girls’ school, his reason being the vital importance of providing suitable wives for the young men whom he was training. After her marriage Mrs. Capp took charge of such a school, and she and her brother-in-law, Mateer, continued to coöperate in that important enterprise. For use in teaching she translated a mental arithmetic, and in this she had his assistance. Dr. Corbett wrote: “In spite of all discouragements in the way of securing permanent and efficient heads, and of the paucity of results, he never wavered in his support of the girls’ school, and always planned for its welfare, because he saw in it an element necessary to the final success of the Christian Church.” When Mrs. Capp died, she left her little all for the erection of buildings to be used by the school which he had encouraged, and to which she had consecrated the maturity of her powers.

Thirteen years went by before any of the young men graduated. The first class consisted of three men who had completed the course, which by that time had been enlarged beyond the curriculum already described so as to include astronomy, the text-book used being a good, stiff one,—no other than a translation of Herschell’s work. Of that first class Mateer said: “They will probably teach for a time at least. There is more call for teachers than for preachers at present.” Under date of May 2, 1877, he wrote as to this first commencement:

We had a communion on the occasion. The speeches made by the young men at graduation were excellent, and the whole effect on the school was most happy. The boys saw distinctly that there is a definite goal before them and their ambition was stirred to reach it.

The report for that year speaks as follows: