USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > History of Andover theological seminary, 1933 > Part 10
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The activity of these home missionary pastors appears in a
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letter from Henry Little, Andover, 1829. Writing from his station in Madison, Indiana, he said : "I hardly know whether I may be most properly called a pastor (on a large scale), evangelist, missionary, or agent. In the Presbyterian church the Lord's Supper is administered once in two or three months, and at those seasons they have preaching two, three, four or more days. A large part of my Sabbaths have been spent at these meetings, and during the season the collection is made for the Home Missionary Society, and very often there has been something to be done in building a meetinghouse, remov- ing an old debt, raising a salary for a pastor, or assistance in a revival of religion. At other times I have been in the woods a week introducing a missionary to his field, preaching every day. Or in gathering a congregation where a church is to be formed or a missionary sent."
Writing from Bedford, Indiana, about the same time, Solomon Kittredge, class of 1832, said: "For twelve years I have occupied a missionary field embracing one entire county and part of the time two . . . a field containing from thirty to forty thousand inhabitants. ... When I came here it was a moral desolation. There were no churches, no Sabbath, nor Sabbath-keeping people. The Sabbath was known or observed only as a holiday-a day for visiting, hunting, horse-racing, and the like. Business houses were kept open, and business transacted as on other days." But when he wrote there were three churches and a quiet village on Sunday.
Real hardship attended the life of the home missionary. He left behind him most of the comforts of the East. He took risks in his journeying. He felt the responsibility of a heavy task. "I commenced my labors in the ministry in 1830," wrote Lucian Farnham, who graduated from Andover that summer. "Late in the autumn of that year I arrived in this state [ Illinois ] where I have labored to this time, in season and out of season -in ceiled houses and log cabins, in school houses, in private dwellings, and in the open air without a house. I have trav- eled many thousands of miles through heat and cold, storm and calm, by night and day, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the prairie, in perils of waters-in hunger and thirst, in
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weariness and painfulness, in watchings and fastings-I have made my lodging in the lone prairie without food or fire- with no shelter but heaven's canopy-no bed but the open wagon-box, and no music but the howling of the wolf. . . . By the grace of God I am what I am. It is wonderful conde- scension that God should give me a place in his vineyard."
One ever-present handicap was the need of becoming accli- mated. Malaria haunted the prairies. Farnham's classmate, Ferris Fitch, found his settlement at Lower Sandusky, Ohio, forty miles by river from Lake Erie. Fitch described his ex- periences in vivid language. "During the summer the water is stagnant, and the land through which the river passes in its passage to the lake is prairie. When the vegetation begins to decay and the north wind to blow in the fall of the year, it rolls up the very quintessence of swamp miasma. In a village of one thousand people I have counted rising of five hundred sick at once. I have spent three months in visiting the sick without asking till Sabbath morning what I should preach. My hearers of course at such a time few. I have had eighty die within the bounds of my parish in one year. I have lived one month without taking off my clothes save for washing, or without lying down on a bed but once, then only for a few hours. I would get a little rest at night on a sofa in a sick room. I was often abroad at midnight, out at all hours. My family were sick, but amidst it all I enjoyed good health, and hardly knew what it was to be weary.".
These dangers and difficulties did not daunt the men on Andover Hill. One class after another sent its quota west- ward. Except once no class failed to be represented until 1858. The classes of 1825 and 1829 sent twenty-three each. The classes of 1832 and 1843 each had twenty in the field. Nine- teen men went among the Indians, ten among the Negroes, ten to work with sailors. Twenty-six different classes sent no less than ten each into home missionary service. They went into thirty-three states from Maine to Texas. Nor was it only in the first part of the century that the interest con- tinued. Sixty-five representatives went from the Hill between 1873 and 1900.
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An interesting experiment was the cooperative work of the bands of students who graduated at the same time from the Seminary. In the class of 1843 at Andover twelve men fell into the custom of meeting in the Library by moonlight for prayer. The need of the frontier people for spiritual help weighed upon their hearts. One of the number, Horace Hutchinson, had spoken a suggestion that was bearing fruit. "If we and some others," he said to two of his classmates, "could only go out together, and take possession of some field, where we could have the ground and work together, what a grand thing it would be!" The prayer group in the darkness was seeking for light on the future. After considering the possibilities of different sections, they decided to plan for a cooperative enterprise in Iowa. A farewell service was held in the South Church in Andover for the eleven young men who had elected to go. Dr. Leonard Bacon preached the ser- mon and the Home Missionary Society gave its blessing through Secretary Badger. Thus graduated into the home missionary ranks Ephraim and Harvey Adams, Ebenezer Alden, James F. Hill, Horace Hutchinson, Daniel Lane, Erastus Ripley, Alden B. Robbins, William Salter, Benjamin A. Spaulding, and Edwin B. Turner.
The Iowa Band marked the beginning of a new growth of Congregationalism in the West. Most of the Congregation- alists who had gone to the prairies, including the ministers, had adopted Presbyterian church relations. Only fifteen Con- gregational churches existed in Iowa when the Band arrived, but its members retained their Congregational polity and changed the course of denominational history. A Congrega- tional historian enthusiastically testifies of them: "The West would be vastly poorer in its religious and educational life but for that timely renaissance, and chief among the agencies to which that recovery was due, is this band of Andover pil- grims, who were directed to the western bank of the Missis- sippi in 1843 with the Pilgrim polity as well as the Pilgrim faith glowing in their hearts."
Twenty-three years after the members of the Iowa Band said goodbye to their friends at the Seminary and the place
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where they had knelt in prayer, other men felt the stirring of events in Kansas and were eager to cast in their lot with those who were settling there. Two of them, Sylvester D. Storrs and Grosvenor C. Morse, were New England born. Richard Cordley and Roswell D. Parker were from the newer State of Michigan. For a year they met for prayer with others of the students in one of the dormitory rooms, with the same earnest purpose which had animated the Iowa Band. They reached Kansas in time to participate in the struggle to keep the Ter- ritory free from slavery. They became religious leaders in the growing centers of population. Storrs in the capacity of State superintendent of missions organized more than one hundred Congregational churches in twelve years. Morse was the means of establishing a State normal college. They had to contend with barbarities of human conduct in the in- tense days of the Civil War. For some time the hardships of a new country were a handicap. Strenuous endeavor was necessary to keep the wolf from the church door. But they hung on and grew up with the country, recognized leaders in church and community.
It seems a bit strange to speak of Maine as home mission territory, yet the development of some parts of it and the decline of once thriving communities presented a field of op- portunity comparable with the Far West when the frontier was on the point of disappearing. It was a realization of this fact that prompted the organization in 1892 of the Andover League for Work in Neglected Places, though it lasted only two years. Those who joined it agreed to give the early part of their ministry to the people of such communities. Relation was established with the secretaries of Maine and New Hamp- shire, and out of it came the Maine Band, composed of five men of the class of 1892. The five were ordained together at Farmington and settled near one another in two rural coun- ties, Edwin R. Smith at Temple, Oliver D. Sewall at Strong, William W. Ranney at Phillips, Edward R. Stearns at New Vineyard, and James C. Gregory at Bingham. They frequently exchanged pulpits and held joint services with two or more of their number.
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The veterans who had gone West in the early days were in- clined to be rather scornful of the later alumni. Chauncy Eddy, who completed his Seminary course at Andover in 1821, was a man who had knocked about the country East and South, and later in life had settled down in Jackson, Illi- nois. He had evangelized on an island off the South Carolina coast until forty-five colored people had organized into a Bap- tist church, and three "females" had experienced religion. He had traveled in the frontier country of New York as an agent of the American Board and of the Western Education Society. He had raised money and had turned one hundred young men towards the ministry. For a short time he was secretary of the New York Colonization Society. Later in life he found settlement in the pastorate at Jacksonville, Illinois. He rejoiced in the freedom of the West, where a man had room to stretch himself, and he closed his letter with a sly dig at the young fellows. "Now I am not occupying any place which the young men coming out of the Seminary want, and so am not in their way. And I have a field of labor here where I can swing my arms as much as I please without hitting anybody, which, after abating all that is reasonable for mud, fleas, etc., etc., is far better than any New England parish. I have concluded if the Lord will to hold on a while longer. There is much to be done out in this central part of creation, which requires something more than such courage and enterprise as that is which of late comes out of seminaries to perform. I hope there are other gray heads at the East who will take their families on their backs and come out to clear up the country and prepare good parishes for the young men." These criticisms of the younger men may have been half in jest, but they were obviously unfair at a time when the Iowa Band had just entered the Mississippi Valley. Eddy himself was back in the Berkshire country of New England a few years later.
It took all kinds of men to make the West. Pioneers there were among them who liked the rough and tumble life, faith- ful trail blazers who pushed on regardless of obstacles, and refined and cultured graduates of the seminaries who became
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pastors of leading churches and founders of schools and col- leges. Andover had samples of them all. About two hundred and fifty men belong on her roll of honor as home missionaries, and many more who in part belong in that category. They helped to build that interior empire which has become the heart of America, saved to Christianity and a cultured civiliza- tion by the churches and schools that they established. Men of the Middle Border, men of the plains beyond, a few men of the Golden West beside the sea, they labored well and others have entered into their labors.
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CHAPTER VI ANDOVER MEN IN FOREIGN MISSIONS
I T is Andover's pride that her sons were pioneers in the foreign mission enterprise of the American churches. It was they who challenged the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts to find a way to send them as their representa- tives to the pagan peoples on the other side of the world. Out of Andover Theological Seminary went some of her firstborn to plant Christianity in Burma and peninsular India. A few years later others were making Palestine and Syria their goal, planting the banner of the Cross where the Crescent held the right of way. Soon still others were sailing to the heart of the Pacific and wresting Hawaii from grossness and idolatry. So splendid was Andover's contribution that the history of the missions of the American Board for the first quarter of a century is the story of Andover men and their sacrificial service. Repeatedly that service was the surrender of life itself, but as soon as one in the front line fell another was ready to step into his place. No more compelling is the call of the South to the waterfowl when the summer wanes, than was the Macedonian call from heathendom to the dormitories and classrooms on Andover Hill. They became preachers and teachers, writers and translators, advisors and administrators. They entered Asia from the west and from the east and dared the hostility of Turks and Chinese in the hinterland. They risked fevers on the tropical west coast of Africa and cholera in India and Persia. They created civilization in the Sand- wich Islands, and they saw paganism crumble slowly in Ceylon. They planted schools for Greeks and Bulgarians, and healed the wounds of Armenian refugees. They threaded ways that are dark in China, and tried to penetrate behind the polite exterior of Japan. They were all things to all men if by any means they might gain some.
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The missionary motive is as old as Christianity. It was aroused in America by the spiritual awakenings at the turn of the century. It had come in England through the initiative of William Carey, but he had been inspired by the revivals of the middle of the eighteenth century in England and America. The passion for missionary service for Americans abroad was in the heart of Samuel J. Mills as a result of the Evangelical Awakening, and when he went to Williams Col- lege, he kindled the flame among a few of his college friends. It is a familiar story how they talked over the needs of the heathen world, and how they drew up a constitution for their secret society and adopted it under a haystack, where they sought shelter from a sudden shower. To look upon those few paragraphs and the names of the organizers in cipher ; to decode them and to read: "Constitution of a Society of Brethren, Williams College, September 7, 1808"; in imagina- tion to see those humble dreamers storm the walls of con- servatism until they gained the sanction of their older brethren in the ministry ; and then to see them sailing the seven seas on an errand that was to the Greeks a stumbling-block and to the barbarians foolishness, but that was to prove the power of God to the breaking down of the strongholds of darkness- this is to thrill with the courage and faith of those resolute few who in the optimism of youth shrank from no danger and shirked no task.
The organizers of the Brethren scattered upon graduation from college, but the Society of the Brethren was transferred to Andover, where it continued for sixty years until it admitted to its membership Joseph Neesima and Robert A. Hume, one to go back presently to Japan and establish Doshisha Univer- sity, the other to make missionary history in India. At An- dover the Society was joined by Adoniram Judson from Brown, Newell from Harvard, and Nott from Union College. The first record of the Society at Andover is dated Septem- ber 14, 1810, when the Brethren chose their officers for the year. Andover became the seed bed of missionary propaganda. Branches of the organization were formed at other seminaries, which reported to the parent society at Andover, but only a
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very few students were interested. Andover students en- couraged the others and sent out the largest number of mis- sionaries. The original records continued to be kept in cipher until Pliny Fisk decoded them in 1818, with the constitution and a historical sketch of the Society. These were entered in a small black book, which served the Society throughout its existence.
The spirit of the members was deeply devotional. Every student who joined was required by the constitution to read and pray in order to determine his duty, whether he should spend his life among the heathen. Special devotions were observed on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings, and the second Tuesday in January was kept as a day of fasting and prayer for the missionary cause.
Samuel J. Mills continued to be the inspirer of the move- ment. Between his graduation and his going to Andover he was for a time in New Haven. Under date of December 20, 1809, he wrote to Gordon Hall at Andover, telling him about Henry Obookiah, the Hawaiian, who had been brought to America, and when the captain of the ship would no longer give him aid had been taken in by the big heart of Mills and made his protégé. "Here I intend he shall stay until next spring," wrote Mills, "if he is contented, and I trust he will be. Thus you see he is likely to be fairly fixed by my side. What does this mean, Brother Hall? Do you understand it? Shall he be sent back unsupported to attempt to reclaim his countrymen ? Shall we not rather consider these South Sea Islands a proper place for the establishment of a mission? Not that I would give up the heathen tribes to the westward. I trust that we shall be able to establish more than one mis- sion in a short time, at least in a few years. I mean that God will enable us to extend our views and labor further than we have before contemplated. We ought not to look only to the heathen on our own continent. We ought to direct our atten- tion to that place where we may to human appearances do the most good, and where the difficulties are the least. We are to look to the climate, established prejudices, the acquirement of languages, means of subsistence, etc., etc. All these things I
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apprehend are to be considered. The field is almost boundless, for every part of which there ought to be missionaries."
Farther on in the same letter Mills continues : "With regard to Andover two of the Brethren are there. I think it not likely I shall go there myself soon, or within four or five weeks. I had previously heard of Mr. Judson. You say he thinks of offering himself as a missionary to the London Society for the East Indies ? What ! is England to support her own mission- aries and ours likewise? O for shame! If he is prepared I would fain press him forward with the arm of a Hercules if I had the strength. But I do not like this dependence upon another nation, especially when they have done so much, and we nothing. As far as I am acquainted with his circumstances (indeed I scarcely know anything about him), I should think it would be better for him to remain where he is, or preach in our present field of missions for a time."
For the purpose of getting missionary information so that they might decide intelligently about their life work, the stu- dents at Andover organized the "Society of Inquiry on the Subject of Missions," January 8, 1811. Its expressed pur- pose was "to inquire into the state of the heathen; the duty and importance of missionary labors; the best manner of conducting missions and the most eligible place for their establishment ; also to disseminate information relative to these subjects ; and to incite the attention of Christians to the im- portance and duty of missions." One of the Brethren who had entered the Seminary the year before, speaking of the deep interest in missions, said: "I found that this subject lay with great weight upon the minds of a number. They were anxious to know what was their personal duty. The spirit of missions was there. I thought at the time, and have often thought since, that God then sent his spirit into the Seminary to convert the student to the subject of missions." The question of a man's duty was insistent. Said Dr. DeWitt S. Clark in his Centen- nial address : "It fronted him on every side-in the conver- sation of his companions, in his study of the Scriptures, in papers and discussions, in letters of travelers, in addresses, sermons and ordinations of those who had responded to the
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call. .... That famous haystack at Williamstown was no more the seat of missionary consecration and outlook than the round hillock in the thick wood just below this spot, where Mills and his little band gathered from time to time to renew their pledges of loyalty and talk together of the great world beyond, into which they longed to go as soldiers of the Cross."
The missionary enthusiasts were well aware that they must depend upon the good will of the Congregational churches. They appealed to the churches for contributions of money to enable them to buy books, and from various sources they ob- tained both money and books to the value of three hundred dollars. Most important was it to interest the ministers in their enterprise. The General Association of Massachusetts met in annual session at Bradford, six miles away, in June, 1810. Six of the Andover students were ready to offer them- selves for missionary service if they could obtain the approval and support of the Association. At a small conference at the house of Professor Stuart, Samuel Newell told the professors and a few others what was in their hearts. The next morning Dr. Spring of Newburyport and Dr. Worcester of Salem drove across country musing and talking about what they had heard, and when four of the six students-more might have been too much of a shock to the Association-told their story, the plan was ready in their minds. By unanimous action the Association forthwith organized the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This was composed of nine men, originally all from Massachusetts, but the next year Connecticut was given four of the representa- tives and within two years the Presbyterians were welcomed to a part in the enterprise.
The Board was cautious and hopeful of ways and means, but it advised the students to continue their studies and wait for the proper time to come when they might go to the lands of their hearts' desire. Meanwhile it appointed a prudential committee and issued an appeal to the public. Judson carried the appeal of the students to England, hoping to get assistance there, but the London Missionary Society preferred that the Americans should respond to the appeal, though the Society
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did not refuse assistance for a time. The result was that Judson, Newell, Hall, and Nott were soon under the appoint- ment of the American Board to go to Asia, and money for their support was forthcoming. One may picture to himself that historic scene when Judson and Newell were ordained in the Tabernacle Church in Salem, of which Dr. Worcester was pastor, and their wintry departure with their youthful wives on the ship Caravan from Salem harbor, and one may follow in fancy their slow voyage to India. Theirs was the flagship of a mighty fleet. Five days after the Caravan cleared from Salem, the Harmony carried out of Philadelphia Nott and his wife with Hall and Rice.
After long voyages both ships arrived at Calcutta only to find the way blocked against the missionaries. The East India Company, which controlled the region, was hostile to mis- sionaries, and the War of 1812 between Britain and America, declared the day after the Caravan arrived, made all Ameri- cans unwelcome. The only opening seemed to be in the island of Mauritius. Another long voyage sapped the strength of Mrs. Newell, and she died soon after arrival there. Hall and Nott escaped deportation to England only by a hurried departure to Bombay, which became the point of departure for the later Marathi mission. The indomitable Hall wore himself out within a few years. Newell, who soon joined them, died still earlier, and Nott returned to America. Judson, the enthusi- astic, intrepid leader of the missionary group, found himself convinced of Baptist principles, and going to Burma became the representative of the American Baptists. Rice, with the same change of denominational affiliation, returned to America to become like Mills a promoter of missions among the churches of America. Strange must have seemed the fortunes of this forlorn hope, when the five pioneers were scattered so soon. Yet the permanent results were incalculable. The Mara- thi mission meant a foothold for the larger work that was to follow in the Indian Empire. Judson's transfer of denomi- national allegiance resulted in the organization of the Ameri- can Baptists for foreign missions, and in Burma Judson with heroic struggle prepared the way for the brilliant missionary
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success among the Karens, first evangelized by George Dana Boardman, a resident licentiate at Andover in 1824.
The year after the War of 1812 ended saw the first Andover men enter Ceylon. Newell had stopped there on his way to join Hall at Bombay and found a favorable situation, so that the next delegation from America was turned in that direc- tion. Five more missionaries, Richards and Warren, class of 1812, Meigs, class of '13, and Bardwell and Poor, class of '14, all married except Warren, took possession of the peninsula of Jaffna for Christ. Bardwell soon was sent on to Bombay to push the work of publication. At Jaffna the missionaries found quarters in an abandoned Dutch mission, and following the educational methods adopted at Bombay, commenced the work of Christian education among 350,000 Tamil-speaking people, whose ancestors had emigrated across from South India. Preaching added effectiveness to the in- struction of the schools. Spaulding and Winslow, both of the class of 1818 at Andover, arrived to reinforce them in 1820, barely in time to be admitted before the Government shut the door against any more American missionaries in Ceylon.
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