Category Archives: Chapter 3

p. 46 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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Education Society had been organized and more than a year before the Trustees located the Institution at Hamilton. Hascall took him into his home and taught him Latin, the instructor’s bedroom serving as a classroom. Before he graduated, Wade became convinced that he should go to Burma as a missionary. After studying Burmese a year he and his wife, a village girl whom he had met at church, were formally consecrated for their work by the leading Baptist ministers of Central New York. No missionary in the denomination, save Judson, achieved greater fame than Jonathan Wade.

Eugenio Kincaid, the second student, also became a well-known missionary to Burma. While teaching school in northwestern Pennsylvania, he became interested in the proper mode of baptism and on learning of a Baptist church at DeKalb, New York, went there to discuss the subject with the pastor. Soon after he joined the church he decided to become a preacher and to study with Hascall at Hamilton, 160 miles away. He set out on foot, his possessions in a handkerchief, and twenty-five cents in his pocket. On the way he chopped wood for his meals and lodging. When he reached Hamilton he found Wade already studying with Hascall and earning expenses by working on his farm, an arrangement he himself had hoped to make. The kind­ hearted Hascall, on hearing his story, responded “My boy, I will take you and we will do the best we can.” Kincaid’s student days were marked by constant struggle with poverty. Often he had to wait three months after a letter from his mother arrived at the post office because he lacked the 25¢ postage. Eight years after graduation, he followed Wade to the Far East.

The experiences of Jabez Swan, Class of 1827, also illustrate the Spartan life of the early students. Coming to the Seminary on horseback from Connecticut in 1824, he soon left for lack of funds, but the next year he came back with his wife. To earn his expenses he worked in the fields in the afternoons and on Sundays preached at a country church. Sometimes he bought standing timber which he converted into firewood for his own use and to sell One day when he and Justus H. Vinton, Class of 1833, were having trouble splitting tough blocks of hard maple, Swan went after a beetle and wedges. Returning, he found Vinton talking to Professor Kendrick who had happened by and split the wood for his students. Vinton, who had been amazed at the professor’s height, strength and skill, some time later remarked, “I never saw an axe lifted so near the heavens before.” Denison, 59-62

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First student Jonathan Wade (p. 45)

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early 19th century were lacking at this Seminary. The prevailing theological tone which emphasized the serious side of life, the poverty of most of the students, and the fact that their average age was about 25, discouraged frivolity and student pranks. Also, the rather delicate public relations between the Institution and its Baptist patrons would not permit kinds of student behavior which would in any way injure the school’s reputation. In earnestness and sobriety, the Hamilton students resembled those at Andover rather than the carefree youths of Brown and Amherst. They were so impressed with the heavy responsibilities of being ministers that many went to groves and woods for prayer and contemplation. The Executive Committee was quick to note:

 

the spirit of industry and zeal for the knowledge and glory of God, and also unanimity, which has been a source of gratification, and a pledge of their future usefulness in the kingdom of God’s grace.*

One graduate wrote of his student days in the early 30’s:

If it be thought there was not in the earliest days as broad and critical culture as in later times, there was a depth of the philosophy of life, an earnestness and self-denial, a courage and faith, a force in execution, a strenuous persistence in the face of difficulties, a philological, critical and prayerful study of the Divine Word, and a clear penetration into the Divine Will, that makes those times as the age of romance.**

Though college boys of today would consider such an environment morbid and gloomy, their predecessors on the Hill, as the campus was affectionately called, found the air filled with inspiration and joy.

From 10 in 1820 the enrollment of the Institution grew to 124 in 1833. The increase had been steady until the revivals of 1831-2 encouraged young men to enter the ministry and hence sent up the number of admissions considerably. Of the 258 students who had entered from 1818 to 1833, nearly two-thirds, 160, came from New York State. Vermont contributed the next largest number, 25; then came Connecticut with 24 and Massachusetts with 11. States with less than 10 were Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Georgia, and New Jersey. England and Wales sent 3; Nova Scotia, 3; Ontario, 4.

Jonathan Wade, the first student, came from Hartford, Washington County, New York, in February, 1818, less than six months after the

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1822, 5.

**[Colgate University], Class of 1836 Fiftieth Anniversary (Utica 1886), 15.

 

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p. 44 – Teaching and learning 1820-1833

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funds. They asked for books in philosophy, history, science, and theology though they gladly accepted any volume offered. The largest single contribution, about ninety books, was the entire collection of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary which came after that institution united with the one in Hamilton. Some can be identified by the bookplate of John Withington who gave them to the New York City school. In 1824 the Institution’s library contained about 400 titles, those in theology and Biblical studies holding chief place. There were also duplicate copies of texts for students too poor to buy their own. Under Hascall’s directions books were first purchased in 1819, but funds for buying books were always inadequate. The students were alive to the situation and in 1829 or 1830 voluntarily gave up using tea or coffee with their meals that the money saved might be “devoted (where it was most of all needed), to the enlargement of the library.” The Executive Committee noted “no sacrifice in  enjoyment” and a great gain “in health and intellectual powers.”* A few volumes bearing on the bookplates “anti-tea books” are still to be found in the University library.

Except in the early 1820’s when “young gentlemen not having the ministry in view, for the time being were admitted by paying reasonable bills for their privileges,” the Institution was closed to all non-ministerial students until 1839. This restriction was reasonable in view of the fact that the school was set up for training clergymen. Only those who could furnish evidence to the churches of which they were members and to the Executive Committee “of their personal piety and call to the gospel ministry” were to be accepted, according to the Constitution of the Education Society. In this way the “founders” and officers could show Baptists prejudiced against educated preachers training those selected by the churches themselves. The Society hoped that the churches would “not be unmindful of their power to guard the Institution from impositions” and cautioned them against recommending young when “of whose piety and call to preach they have any doubts” because, they asserted, the “glare of talents and ambitions in youth should never be substituted in the christian ministry for the one thing needful” [i.e. the call to preach].**

Many of the colorful characteristics of American student life in the

* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report , 1830, 10.

** Baptist Education Society, Annual Reports , 1820, 7; 1822, 6; 1827, 4.

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p. 43 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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New York, and repeated annually for several years; he had given public lectures on chemistry for some years before at the Hamilton Academy. The students, with faculty permission, but again at their own expense, hired a lecturer in astronomy. This makeshift arrangement lasted only until 1833 when Joel S. Bacon joined the faculty as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. It was several years, however, before the necessary equipment was obtained.

It is impossible to gauge with much accuracy the content and quality of instruction but a comparison of the theological work offered from 1829 to 1833 with that available at Andover and Newton reflects credit on the Hamilton enterprise. It must be remembered that at Hamilton both liberal arts and theological studies had been combined into a four-year course, while the New England seminaries expected their students on entering to have had a college education or its equivalent; and hence they could put more emphasis on theological work. They could set up and maintain these standards because the tradition of a well-educated clergy was, of course, older and stronger in New England than in New York.

A comparison of the non-vocational part of the curriculum with similar work given at Brown and Amherst indicates that most of the subjects taught at those colleges were offered at the Seminary. They must have been handled somewhat superficially at the Institution, however, because of being combined with the theological studies in a four-year course. A fairer comparison can be made in the period after 1833, when the real college course was in operation. The minimum essentials, at least, were available and even those took more time than some students, eager to begin preaching, wanted to spend. One of them, Jabez Swan, Class of 1827, a noted evangelist, recalling his student days, wrote, “The great question with me was to learn God’s method of bringing back a revolted world to himself.”*

The Board of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary had declared in 1822: “The formation of a good LIBRARY is deemed of vital importance to the successful progress of any literary institution, but especially of a Theological Seminary,” a sentiment shared by the officers of the school at Hamilton. Liberal donations of books by friends in Boston, New York, Albany, and Philadelphia formed the nucleus of the collection they solicited with almost as much avidity as

*Frederick Denison, The Evangelist… Rev. Jabez Swan (Waterford, 1873),
64-67.

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p. 42 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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and exercising the reason. Acquiring knowledge, the writer
maintained, was secondary to the main purpose of education, teaching
students to think. °
New York Baptist Register, Jan. 20, Apr. 27, May 11, June 1, 1832.

The earliest data available on instruction from the student point of
view comes from the notebook of Daniel Platt, Class of 1825. Entering
the Institution at the age of twenty-four, he supported himself by
making shoes, often with an open book on his bench. The notes, which
relate chiefly to theology, church government, and pastoral relations,
show the Emmons influence in Kendrick’s teaching as, for example, his
use of questions in lecturing and his emphasis on systematic divinity.
In the notebook are also to be found fragments of practical advice
Kendrick gave his fledgling preachers, such as warning against the
delusions of death-bed repentances. He urged them to use common
sense and become acquainted with the world outside their religious
books. He stressed the necessity for cultivating a simple preaching
style, of handling sermon topics in a thorough manner, and of avoiding
those on which “frantick [sic] imagination [s] are apt to run wild &
do violence to … reason [,] common sense [,] & scripture.” °°
Daniel Platt, Notebook, I, passim.

Kendrick was not only wise in his instruction but also tolerant. Three
members of one of his classes refused to accept his belief in “limited
atonement” even when he examined them publicly before sixty or
seventy visiting ministers. Though he considered them to badly mis-
taken theologically, his kind personal feeling for them did not change.

The faculty assigned to the students what were then standard
textbooks. They could be purchased at the local printing office or in
Utica from the publishers of the Baptist Register. Copies of several are
still to be found in the University Library.

Interest in the study of science first appeared in 1823 when Joel W.
Clark opened a subscription in Boston for $1,000 to purchase a Euro-
pean “Philosophical apparatus.” Though the project fell through and
no equipment was obtained until after 1833, the Executive Committee
repeatedly mentioned the need for it in the Annual Reports. They also
appropriated $25.00 “toward defraying the expense of a course of
lectures in chemistry for the benefit of the students provided they
make up the difference.” They were given in 1831 by Dr. William
Mather, a graduate of College of Physicians and Surgeons at Fairfield,

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p. 41 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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After long deliberations, in which Sears and Whitman seem to have been prominent, the faculty set up a six-year program which the Executive Committee and the Board approved. It provided for four years of college work comparable to that at other colleges and two years of theological study. For those not ready for the program a two-year preparatory department was to be maintained. The shorter “English course” was continued for those who found it impossible to take the entire program. The Executive Committee noted that “provisions for an extended course could no longer be withheld” and pointed out that, even though the curriculum had been expanded, students taking their work at the Institution saved a year over what they could at other seminaries because, by putting Hebrew and New Testament in college work, the theological course was shortened to two years whereas it was three elsewhere.

When ideas for the curriculum had become somewhat well estab­lished, the Baptist Register in 1832 carried a series of articles about the course of study. Written probably by one of the professors, they were designed to justify to the denomination the innovations and to provide information for “the youth who contemplate resorting here for instruction….” Though they contain little that is unique, they are interesting because they show how the faculty interpreted for their own purposes the educational philosophy of the time.

In Greek and Latin courses the writer believed “the character” of the student’s scholarship is formed….” Greek civilization was stressed, he stated, as a means of stimulating a student’s intellectual interest. “For until he burn with an impatient desire to cast a searching eye on everything that meets him in his path, the faculties of his soul will lie slumbering, and the benefit of mental discipline will be lost.” The chief reason for studying Greek, however, was to learn the language of the New Testament. That language mastered, the student went on to Hebrew, Biblical antiquities, interpretation, and exegesis. Thus equipped, he would not have to depend on translations of the Bible by others; he himself could discover the various shades of meaning in its passages and on the basis of sound scholarship he could then build sound doctrine. In the theological courses the students used the Bible as the text, each part of which they were instructed to regard as revelation. The faculty considered mathematics helpful for investigating the sciences, fixing attention, developing the powers of the mind,

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Regular course expanded from 3 to 4 years (p. 40)

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During the early 1820’s many students unqualified for the course took preparatory work elsewhere, often at the Hamilton Academy, and then entered a two-year program from which the classics were omitted. In most cases the shorter curriculum was advised only for older students who felt they could not spend the extra year in school.

By 1827 the Executive Committee was considering setting up a special preparatory department, probably because they found that many students with indifferent preparation were greatly handicapped for either the regular or the shorter course. They had in view a non-sectarian academy, open to any young men, but before they took any definite steps they wanted the approval of the Board of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary. The Board vetoed the project on the ground that such an auxiliary to the Seminary, secular in character, might alienate its friends. Accordingly, since concurrence of the New York City Board had been made a requisite for inaugurating the project, the idea was give up.

To meet the actual situation on the campus, however, the Executive Committee in 1829 did provide for a year’s preparatory work and thus expanded the regular course from three to four years. The two-year shorter English course they retained for “those whose age and circumstances” prohibited the longer one. The preparatory work consisted of English grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, and beginning Latin and Greek. In the first year of the regular course, the classics were continued and rhetoric, geometry, natural philosophy, astronomy, and church history added. In the second, Greek was continued and Hebrew and Biblical criticism begun. The third year was devoted to Biblical criticism, exegesis, logic, and intellectual and moral philosophy; the last entirely to systematic and pastoral theology and homiletics. Throughout the course the students had exercises in composition and declamation.

Because of “the demands both on the part of the community and of the students resorting to this Seminary for a more sound and thorough education” the courses offered in 1830 were enriched and in 1833 a college course introduced. The latter change was a momentous departure since it meant the Institution ceased being solely a seminary and was ready to adapt itself to the patterns of a liberal arts program. Five of the most promising students had already left in order to take a full college course elsewhere and ten more were preparing to follow them.

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p. 39 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

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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.

 

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