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

by D. W. Fisher

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.