The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands

The Oahu College at the
Sandwich Islands, by

Trustees of the Punahou School and Oahu College This eBook is for
the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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Title: The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands
Author: Trustees of the Punahou School and Oahu College
Release Date: February 25, 2007 [EBook #20669]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE

OAHU COLLEGE
AT THE
SANDWICH ISLANDS.

BOSTON: PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN, 42 CONGRESS STREET.
1856.

THE OAHU COLLEGE.
In the year 1841, a school was commenced, for the children of
missionaries, at Punahou, near Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. Five year
ago, it was opened to others besides the children of missionaries. The
number of pupils has varied from thirty to sixty, and the whole number
of pupils, up to September, 1854, was one hundred and twenty-two. In
May, 1853, the Hawaiian Government incorporated twelve persons, all
of them except one either then or formerly connected with the mission,
as a corporate body by the name of "The Trustees of the Punahou
School and Oahu College." It is probable that the legal name of the
institution will be shortened, and that it will be called simply the "Oahu
College."
The charter recognizes the design of the institution to be "the training
of youth in the various branches of a Christian education, teaching
them sound and useful knowledge." It further states, that, "as it is
reasonable that the Christian education should be in conformity to the
general views of the founders and patrons of the institution, no course
of instruction shall be deemed lawful in said institution, which is not
accordant with the principles of Protestant Evangelical Christianity, as
held by that body of Protestant Christians in the United States of
America, which originated the Christian mission to the Islands, and to
whose labors and benevolent contributions the people of these Islands
are so greatly indebted." There is also an additional security for the
institution in the following article, namely,--"Whenever a vacancy shall

occur in said corporation, it shall be the duty of the Trustees to fill the
same with all reasonable and convenient dispatch. And every new
election shall be immediately made known to the Prudential Committee
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and be
subject to their approval or rejection, and this power of revision shall
be continued to the American Board for twenty years from the date of
this charter."
The Sandwich Islands Christianized.
The effort to christianize the Sandwich Islands was begun in the year
1820, and has succeeded beyond any similar efforts recorded in history.
In the year 1853, a little more than thirty years from the
commencement of the mission, the Board was able to make
proclamation in the Annual Report, that the people of the Sandwich
Islands had become a Christian nation. The proofs then adduced of this
fact were beyond all controversy; such as entitled the Hawaiian nation
to the Christian name, if any people on earth might claim it; though
without that intellectual development and social culture, which enter so
deeply into the modern idea of civilization. But even in respect to these
things a vast work had been accomplished.
It was evident to the Prudential Committee, as early as the year 1848,
that the time had come for a change of some sort in the relations of the
missionaries to the people of the Islands and to the Board. They saw
that new and additional motives must be presented to induce the
married missionaries to remain at the Islands, or the greater part of
them might feel constrained to return to this country within a few years,
to make provision for their children. This was not owing simply, nor
chiefly, to the number and age of their children, (for such a result was
nowhere seen in the older missions elsewhere,) but to the novel and
remarkable relations, at that time, of the mission to the people of the
Sandwich Islands.
The problem, as then presented, was, how to give scope to the parental
feelings in missionaries, without increasing burdens and expenses that
could not be borne; though it soon appeared that there was really a
higher problem to be solved, and one that was novel in missions,

namely, how to bring the mission itself, as such, to a termination,
dissolving its relations to the Board,