“I am very conscious that we here are not up to the standard that we ought to be, and this is our sin. We pray continually for a baptism from on high on the heathen round us; but we need the same for ourselves that we may acquit ourselves as becomes our profession. Our circumstances are not favorable to growth either in grace or in mental culture. Our only associates are the native Christians, whose piety is often of a low type; it receives from us, but imparts nothing to us. Mentally we are left wholly without the healthy stimulus and the friction of various and superior minds which surround men at home. Most whom we meet here are mentally greatly our inferiors, and there is no public opinion that will operate as a potent stimulus to our exertions. It may be said that these are motives of a low kind. It may be so; but their all-powerful influence on all literary men at home is scarcely known or felt till the absence of them shows the difference.”—LETTER TO THE SOCIETY OF INQUIRY, IN THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, October 1, 1867. We have now reached a stage in this narration where the order of time can no longer be followed, except in a very irregular manner. We must take up distinct phases of Mateer’s life and work, as separate topics, and so far as practicable consider each by itself. This is not at all because in him there was any lack of singleness of aim or of persistence. This man, from the time when he began his labors in China until he finished his course, without interruption, put his strength and personality into the evangelization of the people of that great empire. But in doing this he found it necessary to follow along various lines, often contemporaneously, though never out of sight of any one of them. For our purpose it is best that to some extent they should be considered separately.