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: