Influencing Three Continents and the Islands of the Sea: Cyrus Hamlin
It is sometimes pleasant to trace out the roots of character that show themselves in the life of a man who has accomplished a great work in the world. These roots may be in his ancestry and in the community and region in which he was reared — in what the scientists call “his heredity and his environment.” Dr. Cyrus Hamlin is an illustration of this. He was of Huguenot stock. His ancestors had suffered persecution, and one of them martyrdom, for conscience’ sake. His grandfather and three sons fought in the Revolutionary War from its beginning to its end. Their home was Massachusetts. As showing the individuality of the old colonial patriot, it is said that because of his admiration for Roman heroes and for Roman character he named his first boy Africanus, his second Americus, his third Asiaticus, and his fourth Europus. Then having disposed of the continents he came down to individuals, and his twin boys were named Hannibal and Cyrus.
So marked was the old patriot even among Massachusetts patriots that after the Revolutionary War was over the legislature of Massachusetts granted him a large section of land in the District of Maine, “in consideration of his great sacrifices and faithful services.” Large portions of the “District of Maine” were then a wilderness, prominent among the inhabitants of which were Indians and bears. On his visiting Maine to inspect his gift the veteran found the tract so wild and rocky that, though he had fought bravely through the Revolutionary War, he shrank from the attempt to overcome the enemies in that desert wild, and he begged the Massachusetts legislature to take back its gift.
Finally farms in a better district were given to four of his sons, and the Hamlins moved to Maine. Of the twin boys Hannibal and Cyrus, Hannibal became the father of Cyrus Hamlin, the missionary who did such a work in the world; while Cyrus became the father of Hannibal Hamlin, who was elected vice-president of the United States at the time that Abraham Lincoln became president. The mother of Cyrus was the daughter of a Revolutionary colonel, so that C)rrus came fairly by patriotic and fighting instincts.
In New England education is in the atmosphere and “in the bones “; the appreciation of it and the desire for it are in the atmosphere; everybody values it and everybody wants it; the determination to have it whether one has or lacks the means to get it is “in the bones” of the individual. So young Cyrus Hamlin worked on a farm, and learned a silversmith’s trade, and studied and thought of an education meantime. He went to school and he taught school. For a time he attended Dr. Edward Payson’s Bible class in Portland, — and that was a great deal better than passive listening to sermons. An individual word to him from Dr. Payson when he first saw him was a powerful appeal: “Poor country boy! have you come to this city to be lost, or saved?” The foreign missionary cause was much talked of in New England in those days. Jeremiah Evarts’s foreign missionary magazine, the Panoplist, was read regularly in the Hamlin family circle. When Cyrus was ten or twelve years old he was interested in a special appeal made for heathen children in India, and all through his young manhood the subject of missions was in his mind.
After he united with Dr. Payson’s church in 1825, the thought of being educated for the ministry was pressed on him. As he had no means to secure a college course the church volunteered, in view of his evident ability and character, to supply a thousand dollars for it. He studied at Bridgton Academy, and went through Bowdoin College. Then he entered Bangor Theological Seminary. He was at that time considering the part of the world in which he should labor as a missionary, for the mission field had his heart. There were reasons why he inclined to China. India had been the field that first appealed to him in his boyhood days. But books of travel and other books caused him to desire to labor for the uplifting of Africa, and for a considerable time he felt that his mission was to the Dark Continent. Yet he finally went to a field far away from any one of the three to which he had inclined. That the missionary spirit was prominent in Bangor was shown in the fact that, when young Hamlin graduated, one of the students expected to go to Eastern Asia, one to Africa, and one to Constantinople.
Dr. Hamlin was sent by the American Board to Constantinople, and went with his wife in a vessel bound for Smyrna. They reached Constantinople in January, 1839, where he joined at the mission rooms Drs. Goodell and Schauffler. There were then three good, noble, and strong men together there, and the world has felt the value of their work since then. All three of these missionaries, while doing much of what is by many supposed to be the principal work of missionaries, — preaching to congregations or assemblies in different places, — came to realize, as do very many effective missionaries in all foreign fields, that the most important and most permanent work is done by individual work with individuals, and through securing and distributing the Scriptures in the vernacular of the people sought, and in the education and training of the young. Accordingly Dr. Hamlin was soon at work in the more hopeful lines.
He early learned that the Russian Government and its representatives, political and ecclesiastical, although Greek Catholic Christians, were more determinedly hostile to the efforts of the missionaries to reach the people in Turkey than were the Turkish Muhammadans. It was not long after Dr. Hamlin had begun his missionary work that his tutor in the languages, who was a Russian Armenian, was arrested by order’ of the Russian ambassador, and exiled to Siberia. When the missionaries interceded for this poor prisoner, the ambassador bluntly and coldly replied,” I might as well tell you now, Mr. Schauffler, that the
Emperor of Russia, who is my master, will never allow Protestantism to set its foot in Turkey.” This incident opened the eyes of Dr. Hamlin to the real danger to the missionary cause in Turkey, and he thenceforward kept his eyes open until death closed them.” Christian” Russia was more hostile to Christian missions in the East than was Muhammadan Turkey. Dr. Hamlin’s views on this subject had their influence in three continents.
As illustrating the value of individual work with individuals, Dr. Hamlin found, one hot July day, a poor sailor lying in the open air against the wall of the Galata custom-house. His pitiable condition and his disgusting profanity, as he was apparently in the advanced stage of cholera, appealed to Dr. Hamlin’s Christlike spirit. He had him taken up and cared for. In body and in spirit he was made whole. He realized his salvation through Christ’s representative. Three years afterwards Dr. Hamlin received a scrawl from him in New York State. In “phonetic spelling” he said, “Thank God I still survive the ded.... I am here work in and blowin the gospel trumpet on the Eri Kanal.” When Dr. Hamlin showed this note to good Dr. Goodell, he clapped his hands on reading it, and he wanted to begin the letter in reply, which he did in the words: “Dear Mr. Brown: Blow away, brother, blow! Yours in blowing the same gospel trumpet, William Goodell.” Twenty-five years later, at the great Exposition in Paris, a stranger introduced himself to Dr. Hamlin, saying, “I am just from Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. I have known a man there by the name of Brown, a man who has done a great deal of good among the sailors; can go anywhere and everywhere with the Bible; and he told me how he was once dying, ‘a blasphemous dog,’ as he expressed it, in the streets of Constantinople, and you picked him up and saved him soul and body.” Who can say when and how we are doing the greatest good while we are doing faithfully what God has for us to do in the present hour?
Dr. Hamlin’s educational work was begun in his missionary field in 1840, when he started the Bebek Seminary, where Dr. Van Lennep was for a time a teacher, in a huge old building which had been occupied as a private residence. It was on the European side of the Bosphorus, a conspicuous site. The Armenian Patriarch and the Armenian bankers were disturbed, and sought determinedly to break up the new seminary. Back of the Armenian foes was the Russian Church, but God was with the missionaries, and the seminary was preserved, and it prospered. The limited rooms first given it were soon filled with youths from fourteen to twenty years old. Then came the work of improving the language in popular use. “Bebek Seminary had no small influence in the introduction of a purer style of speaking and writing the modern Armenian.” Of course, this took time. But the language was renovated, and the Bible and the religious literature of the people were adapted to the new conditions.
So did the good name and influence of the missionaries extend that the people came to them for instruction in Bible truth and personal duty. After two or three years of the educational work, the missionaries had nearly or quite a thousand such seekers after truth come to them from without in a single year. And many of these seekers were made finders through the conferences. From Sir Stratford Canning, the English ambassador, the American missionaries had substantial sympathy and assistance, and they fully appreciated this. Dr. George W. Wood, who had for some years been in New York as assistant secretary of the American Board, and whom I had frequently heard and met, returned to Constantinople, and was thenceforward a helper in the mission. A new and larger building was secured for Bebek Seminary, and this afterwards became the cradle of Robert College. And Robert College became a great centre and radiator of Christian influence and the life monument of good Dr. Cyrus Hamlin. Its origin and history deserve chief interest.
Dr. Hamlin generously awards to others the suggestion of the idea of a college at Constantinople. He tells of the plans in this direction of an English Church missionary who was in that field for a time, and of the sons of the veteran American missionary. Dr. H. G. O. Dwight. Moreover, in 1856, just at the close of the Crimean War, Mr. Christopher R. Robert, a wealthy gentleman of New York City, was, as a tourist, on .the Bosphorus, and incidentally, or providentially, he met Dr. Hamlin near the site of Bebek Seminary. Out of that meeting there came as a result of that interview the founding of Robert College. Mr. Robert had his own ideas of missions and missionaries, and he had his own way of giving and doing. He was not urged to build or to endow a Christian college at Constantinople. On the contrary, when he learned in his conversation and in his subsequent correspondence with Dr. Hamlin the possibilities and the importance of such an institution, he took upon himself the entire lead in the great undertaking. He had before this adopted and was educating a daughter of Dr. Miron Winslow, who had been deprived of her mother, and he had quietly picked out and was bearing the expense of educating actually scores of young men to be ministers and missionaries. He had thus aided some two hundred students. And when he saw this new need he undertook this new work.
Mr. Robert proposed to Dr. Hamlin to resign from the American Board, and to become a missionary in a new way. As a first step Dr. Hamlin was to return to America and secure subscriptions for a college building and its endowing, as completing Mr. Robert’s undertaking. Dr. Hamlin accepted the call of God to this work. Then came the American Civil War with its hindrances and complications, but neither Dr. Hamlin nor Mr. Robert was disheartened in God’s service. Twenty-three sites for the college were in turn examined, and for one reason or another given up. A twenty-fourth site was fixed on and purchased. When the war seemed to turn all thought in America in a new direction, Mr. Robert put ^30,000 in the hands of trustees for the college at Constantinople, and told Dr. Hamlin to return to Constantinople and begin with this; then, he said, as more was needed, it should be forthcoming. Just then came an order from the Turkish Government not to build on the selected site. In this dilemma the site first selected, which is the one on which the college now stands, was offered and was selected. Thus a new blessing came in the guise of a new trial.
When the question of a name for a college came up there was a difficulty. Any distinctive name like Christian, or Protestant, or American College, would incite fresh enmity. Finally some one suggested Robert College, and that suggestion prevailed, for the name avoided the dangers feared. When Mr. Robert heard of the decision he protested, but in spite of his protest the name was given, and “Robert College” has been a blessing to the world. Mr. Robert was a rare good man. My memory of him is a pleasant one. In the spring of 1865, just after the battle of Appomattox Court House, he came to Richmond. Having known of me and my prison and chaplain experiences, he visited me in my tent near Richmond. His pleasant face and his sunny look and his silvery hair are a picture that I love to recall. It was good to talk with him about Christ’s cause before Constantinople and above Richmond, and Robert College has been more real to me ever since. The founder, and the organizer, and the prominent professors in it, I have been glad to know and to have known about.
There were marked and peculiar providences in connection with the building of Robert College. The opposition of the Jesuits and of the Russian officials succeeded in delaying the Sultan’s permission to build on the new and beautiful site promised for the permanent building. When the difficulties seemed to be greatest. Admiral Farragut with his formidable war vessels appeared in the vicinity of Constantinople. When he learned of the existing state of affairs, he expressed regret that Dr. Hamlin was being treated so unjustly, but he said that he had no diplomatic powers and could not interfere. At this. Dr. Scropiana, who was present, said,
“You have only to ask the great pashas, when you dine with them, why this American College cannot be built, — that is all. To-night you are to dine with his highness, Aali Pasha, the grand vizier, and when you dine with the Capudan Pasha, ask him; and with the Scraskier Pasha, and so on.”
The Admiral was ready to do this, and he did it. Although he had no idea of how it would be looked at in the Sublime Porte, it seems that the officials inferred that the great admiral was there with a naval fleet prepared to enforce the just claims of the American missionaries, and in a brief time a note came to the Hon. E. Joy Morris, the American Minister, from his Highness, the Grand Vizier, saying,
“Tell Mr. Hamlin he may begin the building of his college when he pleases. No one will interfere with him. And in a few days an imperial trade will be given him,” etc.
And the imperial t’rade — an irrevocable decree — was forthcoming. Was not the hand of God in all this?
Robert College was builded. Mr. Robert gave ;?2oo,ooo or more. Other donations from other sources were received. It stands as a conspicuous and undeniable ornament above the Bosphorus. Prominent among those who were interested in the upbuilding of Robert College were eminent men in connection with Harvard University, and many whose influence was great in Boston and beyond. Of these were President Felton, Professors Agassiz and Parker, Hon. Edward Everett, Drs. E. E. Hale, James Freeman Clarke and C. A. Bartol, and ex-Governor W. D. Washburn. Harvard University voted the college a valuable donation of law books. May 15, 187 1, the college was transferred from its temporary to its new and permanent quarters. On the Fourth of July the formal opening was observed, it having been postponed until then in order that Hon. William H. Seward, who stopped there on his journey around the world, might have a part in it. Robert College has been the means of practically regenerating Bulgaria, and its graduates have been a power in all the Turkish Empire.
After Dr. Hamlin resigned the presidency of Robert College in 1875, he returned to America. The year following he was chosen Professor of Dogmatic Theology in Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he had gone out as a student forty years before. Three years later he was surprised by a call to be President of Middlebury College, and having considered the matter carefully be accepted that position and remained in it for five years. Again he was called, in 1887, to accept the position, in Hartford Theological Seminary, of Professor of Dogmatic Theology, and for some time he was there. So it seems that God had service for him to perform in one place or another; and he heeded the call and performed the work. I am glad to have known the good man and members of his honored family, as well as to know so much of his great work and to have felt personally the inspiration of his lofty example.
Dr. Cyrus Hamlin’s direct and positive influence for good as here referred to included the continents of Europe, Asia, America, and Hawaii of the Islands of the Sea. And the number is legion of those who as individuals felt that influence for good, and are glad and grateful. The closing years of his earthly life, which were to the last full of activity and usefulness, were in a quiet home in Lexington, Massachusetts. He died in Portland, Maine, August 8, 1900.