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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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:

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:

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 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:

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:

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.