Chapter III – TEACHING AND LEARNING 1820-1833
Adequate training for ministers, English and American Baptist leaders had insisted, must include a “liberal as well as a theological education.” The Rev. John Ryland, President of the Baptist college at Bristol, England, recommended as background the study of science, history, modern and ancient languages, the “heathen” (classical) writers, and English. John Stanford of New York and William Staughton of Philadelphia agreed with him and carried out his ideas in their instruction of prospective young preachers who had come to live in their parsonages. The Board of the Triennial Convention, too, gave its assent to liberal education as preparation for a theological course.
Because Baptists throughout New York State generally were several steps behind the leaders with regard to educational ideas and because the Seminary at Hamilton depended solely on them for its support, The Institution had to walk cautiously. Until 1829 only a three-year regular course was provided. As the Trustees stated in 1835:
in its infancy, with little experience and less means, it was unable to go far in opening the fountains of science and theology, and in giving to an unexpected number of young men, all that mental culture … desirable. Nor, indeed, were many . . . prepared for anything more than a limited course.*
The first-year class concentrated on Latin and Greek though they gave some attention to English grammar and arithmetic. The second- year class continued Greek, but branched out into geography, natural philosophy, astronomy, logic, rhetoric, and, by 1827, mathematics. The third-year class devoted their whole time to moral philosophy and theology, professional subjects which fittingly climaxed the course.
* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1835, 6.