Nevertheless he found his official position in certain ways very uncomfortable. Some of the reasons of this were casual to the internal administration, and cannot now be appreciated by outsiders, and are not worth airing here. Others were of a more permanent nature, and had to do with the future conduct and character of the institution. The question of English had been for a while hushed to sleep; but it was now awake again, and asserted itself with new vigor. In a letter dated December 19, 1907, he said: “I am strongly in favor of an English School, preferably at Tsinan fu, but I am opposed to English in the college. It would very soon destroy the high grade of scholarship hitherto maintained, and direct the whole output of the college into secular lines.” His fear was that if English were introduced the graduates of the institution would be diverted from the ministry and from the great work of evangelizing the people to commercial pursuits, and that it would become a training school of compradors and clerks. Later the intensity of his opposition to the introduction of English was considerably modified, because of the advantage which he perceived to be enjoyed in the large union meetings, by such of the Chinese as knew this language in addition to their own. He saw, too, that with the change of times a knowledge of English had come to be recognized as an essential in the new learning, as a bond of unity between different parts of China, and as a means of contact with the outside world. Looking at the chief danger as past, he expressly desired that the theologues should be taught English. At any rate he had been contending for a cause that was evidently lost. At this writing the curriculum of the college offers five hours in English as an optional study for every term of the four required years; and also of the fifth year. Dr. Mateer, besides, was not fully in sympathy with a movement that was then making to secure a large gift from the “General Education Fund” for the endowment of the institution. In the letter just quoted he says: “The college should be so administered by its president and faculty as to send some men into the ministry, or it fails of its chief object. I am in favor of stimulating a natural growth, but not such a rapid and abnormal growth as will dechristianize it. I do not believe in the sudden and rapid enlargement of the plant beyond the need at the time. It would rapidly secularize the college and divert it entirely from its proper ideal and work.” These questions were too practical, and touched the vitals of the institution too deeply, to be ignored by earnest friends on either side. Some things as to the situation are so transparent that they can be recognized by any person who looks at it from not too close a point of view. The entire merits of the argument were in no case wholly on one side; and as a consequence it is not surprising that wise and good men differed as they did; and the only decisive test is actual