Combined with great strength of will and an enthusiasm which overcame all difficulties and opposition which stood in the way of the accomplishment of the great and arduous tasks, he was endowed with much tenderness of heart and a devoted loyalty to the gospel. He was a successful educator, a fine administrator, a powerful preacher, and a distinguished scholar; and his removal from amongst us has left a gap which will not soon or easily be filled. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, under whom he had served for forty-five years, adopted an extended and highly appreciative paper. In one of the paragraphs, they say: Dr. Mateer was a man of unusual ability and force of character; an educator, a scholar, and an executive of high capacity.... The Board records, with profound gratitude to God, its sense of the large usefulness of this great missionary educator. It mourns that the work is no longer to have the benefit of his counsel, but it believes that he builded so wisely and so well that the results of his labors will long endure, and that his name will always have a prominent place in the history of missionary work in the Chinese Empire. Secretary Brown, of that Board, in a letter to Rev. Robert Mateer, of Wei Hsien, said: “I regarded him as one of the great missionaries not only of China, but of the world.” Scores upon scores of personal letters, and a large number of articles published in newspapers and periodicals, are available as tributes to his work and character. Necessarily, they repeat what is said in the quotations already given, though almost every one makes some valuable addition. Few of them were meant for publication, and it is not because of a lack of appreciation that any of them are omitted here.