One of the tasks, and to many one of the trials, of missionary life, is the learning of a new, and often a difficult language. So far as the message of the gospel is concerned, the tongue is tied until the language is learned. I set it down as a first principle, that every missionary should go out with a distinct and fixed determination to learn the language and to learn it well. Let there be no shrinking from it, no half measures with it. Laxity of this purpose in this matter is unworthy of anyone who is called to be a missionary. When I hear a young missionary, after a few weeks or months on the field, saying, “I hate this language; who can learn such outlandish gibberish as this?” my opinion of his fitness for the work at once suffers a heavy discount. Every young missionary should consider it his or her special business to fall in love with the language as quickly as possible. Then he proceeds to lay down certain general principles and thoroughly to elaborate them; insisting that everyone can learn the tongue of a people, not merely well enough to make some sort of stagger at the use of it, but thoroughly; and giving directions as to the best method of accomplishing this result. At the same time he recognizes the fact that by no means all missionaries are able to acquire the language so perfectly that they are competent to contribute to the permanent Christian literature of the country. In his case there were exceptional difficulties as to this preliminary work. Printed helps were few and not very good. Competent native teachers were almost impossible to obtain at Tengchow, and were liable at any time to abandon their work. Besides, so long as the Mateers were hampered by their narrow quarters, along with other missionaries, in the old temple, and while he was compelled to give almost the whole of his strength to the repairs and construction of buildings, for him to accomplish what he otherwise might have done in this line was impossible. Under date of December 24, 1864, almost a year after his arrival at Tengchow, he wrote in his Journal: I have been studying pretty regularly this week, yet to look back over it, I cannot see that I have accomplished much. Learning Chinese is slow work. I do not wonder that the Chinese have never made great advances in learning. It is such a herculean task to get the language that a man’s best energies are gone by the time he has himself prepared to work. It is as if a mechanic should spend half his life, or more, in getting his tools ready. Before I came to China I feared that I would have trouble acquiring the language, and I find my fears were well grounded.