topic and presented its report at the monthly meeting. Topics ranged from the Burmese missions, Siam, and India to American slavery and the “moral condition” of France. The extensive missionary correspondence of the society and its library supplied a large amount of data for the reports.
The Society for Inquiry, though not ostensibly founded through the influence of the famous Andover society of the same name, which had helped to establish similar groups in American colleges,” nevertheless maintained an active correspondence with these groups. Alike in aims, organization, and procedures, they represent an important phase of the widespread and fervent missionary spirit of the age.
Aside from Wade and Kincaid, only one student had avowed his intention of “preaching the gospel to the heathen” despite the campus interest in missions, In October 1831, however, five disclosed to each other that they too wanted to go to the foreign fields. William Dean, Class of 1833, destined to a great career in China, had opened his heart to his roommate, Grover S. Comstock, also of the Class of 1833, and discovered that he likewise contemplated a similar step. When they found three other students who shared their conviction, they invited them to their room in the northwest corner of the second story of West Hall where each “was requested to relate his exercises.” A week later they organized themselves into the Eastern Association and invited” any person desiring to engage in foreign missionary labors” to join, provided all the members approved.
The purpose of the organization was not only to discuss questions of common interest, but also to steel the members against the influences of their families and friends who might try to keep them from carrying out their intentions of becoming foreign missionaries. At their meetings they uncovered their deeply stirred emotions on “laboring for God in foreign lands.” When Wade returned” to the campus in 1833 to appeal for men to go to Burma, four members of the Eastern’ Association responded. They were, in addition to Dean and Comstock, Hosea Howard, also Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836. After nine months spent studying Burmese and Karen under his and Mrs. Wade’s direction, they sailed with him from Boston for the Far East.
Students who planned to preach in the Mississippi Valley also formed an organization known as the Western Association. Though both the Eastern and Western Associations germinated in the Society
