The Oahu College at the Sandwich IslandsPunahou School
History
The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands
Punahou School
Education -- Hawaii -- History; Punahou School -- History -- 19th century
1. The College is essential to the development and continued existence
of the Hawaiian nation. It is so because the missionary portion is
really the _palladium_ of the nation, and because a College is essential
to that part of the community. The religious foreign community cannot
otherwise long continue to perform its functions. It must have the means
of liberally educating its children on the ground. Without a College,
its moral, social and civil influence will tend constantly to decay.
This most precious Christian influence, now rooted on the Islands, now
no longer exotic, needs only the proper culture to perpetuate itself.
The cheapest thing we can do for the Islands and for that part of the
world, is to furnish this culture. It is better to educate our ministry
there, than to send it thither from these remote shores. Indeed we are
shut up to this, as our main policy. The providential indications are
perfectly clear. Through the grace of God and the gospel of his Son, all
the means, excepting such as are pecuniary, for perpetuating
Christianity at the Islands, are already there. Mr. Armstrong, the
Minister of Instruction at the Islands, writing to one of the
Secretaries of the American Board under date of January 2, 1856, bears
this remarkable testimony:--
"During the year 1855, just closed," he says, "I visited all the
Islands, and every missionary station, in the course of my official
duty, and had good opportunities for seeing how the brethren conduct
the affairs of their respective stations, and the success that has
crowned their labors. I found them all at their posts, hard at work,
watching for souls, and promoting the welfare of their people in various
ways. As a class, they are very laborious and self-denying, and the
advancement of their people in knowledge, industry, civilization and
religion, is the best evidence of their success. I have lived for weeks
on weeks among the natives, lodging with them in their huts, partaking
of their homely fare and sleeping on their mats; and the more I see of
them, the more I bless God for what he has done for them. I do not
believe there is a community on earth, of the same number, more entirely
pervaded by the blessed gospel. In the remotest corners of the land, I
find a Bible and Hymn-book in nearly every house, if there was nothing
else."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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