Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China; a biography

Front matter

q\ Biography DANIEL W.FISHER

Class J^VM^ Book .^ ^fS'

GoipghtU^"

Chapter II

Native Endowments — Influence of the Old Home — A Country Schoolmaster — Hunterstown Academy — Teaching School — Dunlap's Creek Academy — Profession of ReHgion — Jefferson College — Recollections of a Classmate — The Faculty — The Class of 1857 — ^A Semi-Centennial Letter.

Chapter III

Mother and Foreign Missions — Beaver Academy — Decision to be a Minister — Western Theological Seminary — The Faculty — Revival — Interest in Missions — ^Licentiate — Considering Duty as to Missions — Decision — Delaware, Ohio — Delay in Going — Ordination — Marriage — Going at Last.

Chapter IV

Bound to Shantung, China — The Voyage — ^Hardships and Trials on the Way — At Shanghai — Bound for Chefoo— Vessel on the Rocks — Wanderings on Shore — - DeHverance and Arrival at Chef 00 — By Shentza to Tengchow.

V

CONTENTS

Chapter V Page

The Mateer Dwelling — Tengchow as It Was — The Beginning of Missions There — The Kwan Yin Temple — Making a Stove and Coal-press — Left Alone in the Temple — Its Defects — ^Building a New House — Home Life.

Chapter VI

Not a Dreamer — Tenderness of Heart — Regeneration — Religious Reserve — Record of ReHgious Experiences — Depression and Rehef — Unreserved Consecration — Maturity of Religious Life — Loyalty to Convictions.

CHAPTER VII Doing the Work of an Evangelist . . . 105 Acquiring the Language — Hindrances — Beginning to Speak Chinese — Chapel at Tengchow — Province of Shantung — Modes of Travel — Some Experiences in Travel — First Country Trip — Chinese Inns — A Four Weeks' Itineration — To Wei Hsien — Hatred of Foreigners — Disturbance — Itinerating with Julia — Chinese Converts — To the Provincial Capital and Tsai An — Curtailing His Itinerations — Later Trips.

Chapter VIII

The School Begun — Education and Missions — First Pupils — Means of Support — English Excluded — Growth of School — A Day's Programme — Care of Pupils — Discipline — An Attempted Suicide — Conversion of a Pupil — First Graduates — Reception After Furlough — An Advance — Two Decades of the School. vi

CONTENTS

Chapter IX I'age

The Press and Literary Labors . . . .150 Contributions to the Periodicals — English Books — The Shanghai Mission Press — Temporary Superintendency — John Mateer — Committee on School Books — Earlier Chinese Books — School Books — Mandarin Dictionary — Mandarin Lessons — Care as to PubHcations — Pecuniary Returns.

Chapter X

The Care oe the Native Christians . . .173 Reasons for Such Work — The Church at Tengchow — DiscipKne — Conversion of School Boys — Stated Supply at Tengchow — Pastor — As a Preacher — The Scattered Sheep — Miao of Chow Yuen — Ingatherings — Latest Country Visitations — "Methods of Missions" — Presbytery of Shantung — Presbytery in the Country — Synod of China — Moderator of Synod — In the General Assembly.

Chapter XI

"The College of Shantung" — The Equipment — Physical and Chemical Apparatus — Gathering the Apparatus — The Headship Laid Down — The Anglo-Chinese College — Problem of Location and Endowment — Transfer of College to Wei Hsien — ^A New President — "The Shantung Christian University" — Personal Removal to Wei Hsien — Temporary President — Official Separation — The College of To-day.

CHAPTER XII With Apparatus and Machinery .... 236 Achievements — Early Indications — Self -Development — Shop — Early Necessities — ^As a Help in Mission vii

CONTENTS

PAGE

Work — \'isitors — Help to Emplo}TQent for Natives — Filling Orders — A !Mathematical Problem — Exhibitions.

CHAPTER XHI

The !^LA:^T) ARTS' Version . . . , . .252 First IMissionar}' Conference — The Chinese Language — Second JMissionar}^ Conference — Consultation as to New Version of Scriptures — The Plan — Selection of Translators — Translators at Work — Difficulties — Style — Sessions — Final ^Meeting — Xew Testament Finished — Lessons Learned — Conference of 1907 — Translators of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER XIV

Inctdexts by the Way . . . . . .275

Trials — Deaths — The "Rebels" — Tientsin Massacre — ^Japanese War with China — Boxer Uprising — Famine — Controversies — EngKsh in the College — Pleasures — ^Distinctions and Honors — Journeys — Furloughs — Marriage — The Siberian Trip — Scenes of Early Life.

CHAPTER XV

Factng the X^ew China . . . . . -305 The Great Break-Up — Past Anticipations — A ]Maker of the Xew China — Influence of Missionaries — Present Indications — Dangers — Duties — Future of Christianitv.

CIL\PTER XVL

The Last Simimer — Increasing lUness — Taken to Tsingtao — The End — A Prayer — Ser\-ice at Tsingtao — Funeral at Chefoo — Tributes of Dr. Corbett, Dr. Hayes, Dr. Goodrich, Mr. Bailer, Mrs. A. H. !Mateer — West Shantung ^Mission — EngKsh Baptist Mission — Presbyterian Board — Secretary Brown — Biographer — "Valiant for the Truth." viii

INTRODUCTION

IT is a pmilege to comply ^ith the request of Dr. Fisher to vrrite a brief introduction to his biography of the late Cahdn 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 hfe form.s a part of the histor)^ 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, -^i^dth his yoimg wife and Rev. and Mrs. Hunter Corbett, the journey to China occup>TQg six months in a slow and v^Tetchedly uncomfortable sailmg vessel. It is difficult now to realize that so recently as 1863 a voyage to the far East was so formidable an imdertaking. 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 yoimg missionaries arrived at their destination. The people were not friendly; the conveniences of Hfe were few; the loneliness and isolation were exceedingly trying; but the young missionaries were undaunted and pushed their work vdth splendid courage and faith. Mr. Corbett soon became a leader in evangelistic

10 INTRODUCTION

work, but Dr. Mateer, while deeply interested in evangeKstic 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 sufhcing 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

INTRODUCTION 11

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 hfe 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

12 INTRODUCTION

China to which Dr. Mateer consecrated his Hfe the deep and sympathetic interest of all who may read this book.

Arthur Judson Brown

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

Preface

WHEN I was asked to become the biographer of Dr. Mateer, I had planned to do other Kterary 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 ver>^ intimate friends, yet, beginning vdih 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 ^ith 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 sur^'ivors in recognizing him as the one of our number whom we most delighted to honor. WTien I laid down my office of college president, he promptly wTote me, and suggested that I occupy my leisure by a \asit 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 A-isit. ^\^len — wholly unexpectedly — the in\'itation 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

14 PREFACE

to the reader Dr. Mateer, the man, the Christian, the missionary, both his inner and his outer Hfe, 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 telHng, and not in the matter of the book, that the defect Hes.

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. Kirk wood 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, 191 i

" 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 Httle 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 rolhng 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 Hes.

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 strugghng over the roadless and snow covered and, to him, wholly unlcnown ground toward the place near which he was to do the work of his Hfe, and where his body rests in the grave. When he died, in his seventythird 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; WiUiam 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 abiHty. 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 fine musical sense, and he led the choir for a number of years. Few laymen in the church at large were better inform^ed as to its doctrines and history, and few were more famiHar with the Bible. There was in the church a library from which books were regularly brought home; rehgious 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 fives he rejoiced in their achievements.

Mr. Mateer died at Monmouth, Ilfinois, 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 Hved."

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 Hfe, 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 Kttle 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 Kfe. 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 v/here the children could have access to them, and were made familiar to them only by the grandfather's quotation of choice passages.

DR. MATHERS MOTHER

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 untU. about the time of Calvin's graduation from college. Then a second and much longer move was made, to Mercer Coimty, 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 Hving 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 piother 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 twiHght 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 abihty 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 rehgious 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 beheved 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 mo\'ing about among these burial places of the dead? The boy Cahdn had been in the habit of running by it in the late evening mth fast-beating heart. One dark night he went and climbed up on the graveyard fence, resolved to sit in that supremely desolate and imcanny spot till he had mastered the superstitious fear associated mth it. The owls hooted, and other night soimds 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.