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

by D. W. Fisher

A part of the furlough he spent in efforts to secure endowment for the Shantung College. In the prosecution of this work he visited various churches, and in Pittsburg he remained for six weeks. It was during this furlough that he sat as a commissioner from his presbytery in the General Assembly at Los Angeles. Among other celebrated spots which they included in their itinerary was the Yosemite Valley. But the part of the furlough that probably afforded them both the most unalloyed pleasure was spent in a visit to the region of the “old home.” His wife, in a letter, tells the story thus:

Ever since our marriage it had been the cherished plan of my husband to take me on a wedding journey when we got to America,—a carriage journey, to see all the spots familiar to his childhood. By planning with this in view we were able to spend the anniversary of our wedding in Mechanicsburg, with Calvin’s cousins. One of these made a feast for us. Many were the reminiscences exchanged,—a happy binding of past and present. In a day or two we started on the long-promised journey, in a “one-horse-shay,” a journey of several days, our stops at noon, and again overnight, always being with friends of his childhood. But the friend to which most of all he wished to introduce me was his beloved old Long Mountain; and as I looked first at that, and then at his glowing face, I saw whence, next to his Bible and catechism, he had drawn his sturdy love of truth and freedom. Either on that journey, or on subsequent trips from Mechanicsburg or Harrisburg, we visited all the localities familiar to his childhood,—his birthplace, where the wall that used to seem so high to him now appeared so low to the white-bearded six-footer,—the brook where the clover mill used to stand,—the Silver Spring church, where he was baptized, and its adjoining graveyard, where lie many of his old Scotch-Irish ancestors, under quaint inscriptions.... It rained hard the day we visited the battle field of Gettysburg. This trip we took in company with an old friend of Calvin’s, a veteran of the war. Not less interesting were the surroundings of his second home, the “Hermitage.” Almost more noteworthy than the house was the big “bank-barn,”—the mows for hay, the bins for grain, the floor where he used to ride on horseback around and around over the grain in order to thresh it, the old workbench, and, above, the swallows’ nests. The rush of memory was so strong that the white-haired missionary could not keep back the tears. He showed me the little old schoolhouse, the stream near by, the old flour mill, within an inner room of which he and his boy companions used to meet on winter evenings around a “ten-plate” stove for debate. Another place of great interest was the old haunted churchyard, the fence of which he had mounted to fight his battle with the ghosts, and from which he got down a conqueror, never more to fear the face of man or devil.

But the most sacred of all the spots which they visited was the grave of his mother, in the cemetery at Wooster, Ohio.

From Seattle they sailed to Japan, and thence after a short season of fellowship with the venerable translator of the Old Testament, Bishop Schereschewsky, and with other friends, they came back to Tengchow.

XV
FACING THE NEW CHINA

“China is a great land, and has a great future before it. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to do what I could to make it what it ought to be. The Church of God is bound to have a great triumph here, with great trials in the process.”—LETTER TO JAMES MOONEY, November 27, 1906.

When Dr. Mateer wrote that letter, the new China had not come. Nor has it yet appeared. The utmost that can be said confidently is that there are signs of a spring thaw in the vast sheet of ice that for so many centuries has held that country in fetters. Some great rifts can be seen in the surface and sounds that are indicative of movement can be heard. People who stand on the shore, and some of those who are on the ice, are shouting, “Off at last!” It seems scarcely possible that the apparent thaw shall not continue until the streams are cleared and the land is warmed into new life by the ascending sun. But how long it will be before this is accomplished it is almost useless for the best-informed men to attempt to forecast. When the ice does really go, will it be with a sudden rush that will carry with it great injury to much that is well worth preserving? Or will the change come so quietly and gradually that the ice will sink without a tremor, and the frost will gently melt away into waters that only freshen the soil? Probably the new China is not far away; as sure as progress is the law of civilization and enlightenment in the world, it cannot be postponed much longer. Dr. Mateer lived long enough to recognize the signs of its approach, and while he was glad because of this, he also was deeply anxious.

His direct acquaintance with the old China extended over the long period of forty years,—from his arrival at Tengchow in 1863 to his return from his last furlough, in 1903. During the five years immediately preceding his death he was face to face with the signs indicative of the China that is to be. He was therefore exceptionally qualified to speak intelligently concerning the present situation in that country; for it is not the man who now for the first time finds himself there, amid the demand for railroads, and telegraphs, and up-to-date navy and army, and schools, who is most competent to interpret the movements of the hour. We are more likely to learn the whole truth if we turn to veterans like Sir Robert Hart and Dr. W. A. P. Martin and Dr. Mateer, who by almost lifelong experience know the real mind and heart of China; which surely, notwithstanding the occurrences of to-day, have not been completely changed. On the one hand, there can be no doubt of the love which Dr. Mateer had for the people of China. To promote their welfare in this world as well as in the next he gave himself to the uttermost all his long time of residence among them, and when death confronted him at last, his only reluctance to obey that call of his Master was because he would be unable to complete what he regarded as perhaps his greatest service for them. As we have already seen, in his explanation of the causes of the Boxer outbreak, notwithstanding his heartbreak and indignation for the horrors and outrages perpetrated, he lays bare the secret of it, as consisting in part of the wrongs done by foreign nations and persons to China and the Chinese. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands in Shantung who revered him as a father, and confided in him as they did in almost no other human being.

I mention this side of his attitude because there is another that must be brought out here so clearly that no failure to see it is possible. He never allowed himself to be blinded as to radical faults of the most serious nature in the Chinese. It was about the same time as his entrance on his missionary work that Americans were set agog by the “Burlingame Mission,” and indulged in very extravagant notions of the civilization of old China and very rosy anticipations of the future. Even missionaries caught the fever of the hour, and for home publication wrote articles that seconded this view. This was so completely foreign to the reality, as Dr. Mateer saw it, that he responded with an elaborate article in which he calmly punctured these current notions. It was the fashion then to regard the Chinese as leading the world in past ages, but in his opinion in none of their boasted achievements do they deserve such credit. Largely they have been imitators; and in the realm of their own inventions and discoveries and organizations they have seldom shown themselves capable of making the applications that ought to have been so patent to them that they could not miss them. Perhaps—writing as he did in reply to overdrawn appreciations on the other side—he may have fallen into the opposite mistake, to some degree. Perhaps also in later years he would not have gone quite so far in the direction he then took; but he never wavered in his opinion that in the lapse of ages during which the Chinese had lived so exclusively within themselves, characteristics that are racial have been developed, some of which must be overcome, and others of which must be immensely transformed, before China can take her place among the advanced nations of the world. Also, ignorance, prejudice and superstition stand in the way, and cannot suddenly be dispelled. He continued to believe that, notwithstanding the present rush to introduce western appliances, the hatred of the foreigner, except among a minority, remains in the heart of officials and people. He believed too that, because of their faithlessness to obligations which they had assumed toward other governments, the apparent aggressions of foreign nations were not always and altogether without a measure of justification. Chinese law he considered to be still so much a mere whim of officials, often corrupt, that the time has not yet come for an American citizen, whether missionary or merchant or mechanic, to be left safely to the uncertainties of a native court.