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Chapter 4

"BEHOLD . . . AN OPEN DOOR"

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, discoverer of the Hawaiian Islands, seldom was wrong even in prediction. The Rev. Dr. Hyde, however, was later to allude to one error in Cook's judgment in a sermon to the newly organized Central Union Congregational Church in Honolulu:

In Captain Cook's account of his Voyages to the South Seas, when he has given his description of the people whom he had seen, he says in regard to the probability of their even hearing the Gospel: "It is very unlikely that any measure of this kind should be seriously thought of, as it can neither serve the purpose of public ambition, nor private avarice, and will without such inducements, I may pronounce that it will never be undertaken." What a mistake Captain Cook made in his calculations! How little did he imagine that his published narrative of what he had seen, was one of the divine providences for accomplishing the very thing which he predicted would never be undertaken! It was Carey's reading Cook's Voyages that stirred his heart with the desire to go to the heathen, and so the whole vast scheme of Modern Christian Missions originated.¹

It was the fortuitous placement of a native Hawaiian boy, Henry Obookiah,² in friendly Congregational hands in Connecticut that led to his becoming the first native Hawaiian to be baptized as a Congregational church member, April 9, 1815. He had shipped aboard the Triumph, a trading vessel, in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in 1808. He was sixteen. Befriended by the Captain of the ship, then by students at New Haven's Yale College and by members of New England churches, the young Hawaiian went from total illiteracy to eloquence in English in less than a decade. His short ten years in Connecticut inspired the American Board to an action that would irrevocably involve the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was then familiarly known.

In two contrasting coincidences, young Henry arrived in New Haven about the time of the founding of the American Board and died in Cornwall, Connecticut February 17, 1818, close to the date of the death of Kamehameha I of Hawaii. The first company of missionaries was formed in 1819 and sailed to establish the American Board's first mission in Hawaii.

The mission, supported by sailing after sailing of successive "companies" of missionaries, extended to 1863. In those 43 years³ more than 50,000 natives were received into the church, solid coral stone meeting houses were erected, the Hawaiian language was reduced to writing with an alphabet of its own, the Bible was translated from the Greek. A constitutional monarchy and a public school system were established. Private boarding schools for the native boys and girls were opened on all the islands. The churches flourished with large congregations. The gospel message had reached a large majority of the Hawaiians.

Then "came the time where the islands were to be recognized as nominally a Christian nation and the responsibility of their Christian institutions was to be rolled on themselves."⁴ The Civil War was placing a strain on American Board finances and this, coupled with strong demands for service from all quarters of the globe, hastened a visit to Hawaii by Dr. Rufus Anderson, senior secretary of the American Board.

In June 1863 he met with the Hawaiian Evangelical Association for twenty-one days of debate. The Association agreed to assume the responsibility for self-support and autonomy and no longer look to the American churches for management and control. The mission, as such, was disbanded.

John Erdman, seventy five years later, commented on that "annual Meeting of the Missionaries in 1863 [at which] several momentous questions were decided":

First, should the large parishes handled by the missionary fathers be divided into a number of separate churches and Hawaiian ministers be placed in charge of them? The answer was yes, and this was adopted as a policy so that gradually the original 22 churches, during the next 10-year period, became 58 with only six of them under haole⁵ pastors.

Another great question was, should new missionaries be sent from America to fill vacancies caused by death and withdrawal of the early missionary fathers? The meeting decided that although there was still work to be done by the missionaries, probably the children of the missionaries who knew the Hawaiian language could meet the situation. Previous to 1863 the Hawaiian Evangelical Association had been composed of missionaries only, but now the constitution was amended so as to include Hawaiian ministers and a certain number of deacons, and the language of the meetings became Hawaiian.

This momentous gathering also set up an Executive Board called the Board of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association composed of 18 elected members, six of whom were Hawaiians. This Board was authorized to help needy churches, to send missionaries to other lands, to train ministers for the churches, to train suitable wives for them, and to publish books.

Thus was the whole missionary movement radically altered. Rev. S. C. Damon in the Friend of July 1863 states, "This marks an important crisis in our ecclesiastical affairs. Hereafter we shall refer to 1863 as the period when the Christian Evangelical Community on the Islands attained its majority and assumed the attributes of manhood."

The church work had been set up and geared to minister to a homogeneous people speaking one language, living a simple life. But that people in the next four decades rapidly diminished in number from 67,000 in 1860 to less than 38,000 in 1900. Rulers and chiefs who had been influential sustainers of the Christian movement were replaced by others . . . Great economic development with its concomitant influx of masses of aliens changed the whole tenor of life. The total population more than doubled, from 70,000 in 1860 to 154,000 in 1900. Instead of being practically the single element in the population, the Hawaiian people became a small minority group. Inevitably this seriously affected the Christian movement.

These ministers, devoted men as they were, had not the background nor the training to adjust themselves, nor lead their people to cope with the rapidly changing conditions. These pastors of the numerous Hawaiian churches found that the formerly substantial churches were rapidly decreasing in size through death and dissension and could no longer provided adequate salaries. Some of them were compelled to take time out of pastoral work for raising their own food and catching their own fish. Others entered the field of politics and were elected to the legislature. In either case, economic necessity proved a handicap to vigorous church work.⁶

Biographer Henry Hyde summed up the serious question of the American Board's decision to cut the Hawaiian mission loose upon itself:

After events have seemed to call in question the wisdom of this action; though at the time circumstances seemed to render such a course imperatively necessary. While the success of the Gospel had been marvelous in its transforming power, it was almost too much to expect that a nation, but one generation removed from barbarism, should acquire in that length of time the stability and persistence of ideals to be found in older Christian Communities.⁷

Dr. Hyde gave his views of the unhinging impact of the withdrawal after he had been on the scene for some time:

It seems to me that the radical mistake made in 1863 was the giving over of everything into the hands of the Hawaiians so completely, without checks and balances. It might have been all right in theory; but its application of self support to mere children has proved a fatal error in practice. How now to redeem the past, and retrace and retake the lost ground is the question of the hour. . .⁸

This sense of misjudgment would never leave him. Two years later he again expressed himself:

I hope the Board will not abandon any other Mission as summarily as they did the Sandwich Islands. Words do not mean the same things in the Board Rooms at Boston as the realities out in this mid-Pacific. A national life cannot be manufactured to order and the prophesy about a nation being born in a day cannot be construed into constituting a nation Christian by vote of a Mission Board.⁹

Long before these pronouncements, however, the Prudential Committee of the American Board had convinced itself that a limited reentry in the Hawaii field was necessary. It decided to amend the 1863 agreement which basically had established an autonomous church in Hawaii, largely staffed and operated by native Hawaiians.

In Hawaii also, the local people had already attempted helpful adjustments and measures of their own. Classes of hopeful theological prospects had been recruited from among the natives and instructed in the details of parish work and in principles of exposition and homiletics. It was specifically in this area where, in the wisdom of the Prudential Committee, the remedy should be applied.

The American Board's decision to re-enter the mission field in Hawaii was recorded in the proceedings of its annual meeting at Hartford in October, 1876 with a decision to send a man who could give leadership to the native pastors.¹⁰ In attendance were two Hydes: Uncle William Hyde of Ware, a corporate member of the American Board and highly regarded among the commissioners and Dr. Hyde, who had suspended his history writing at Lee, for the week of missionary talk and action at Hartford. The latter was registered as an Honorary Member since he had no pastorate at the time, but he was a delegate.

The proceedings placed him on the Mission Committee for Madura and Ceylon. His name was not linked to the stated proposal to reactivate the mission work in Hawaii. There was no doubt of his acquaintance and popularity as a coming Congregational minister for he was already known and respected for his labors in the pastorates at Brimfield and Haverhill. He had some inquiries about possible pastorates but was too engrossed in the immediate pressures of the history work to think of taking on a new assignment. He returned to Lee.

New England ministers largely with the New England Congregational stamp upon them had dominated the evangelization of the Hawaiian Islands since 1820. It was natural that the Prudential Committee would look for its Hawaii man from among such as these. Needed was an able pastor, a parish specialist, an educator, and one whose bearing and being would lend themselves to counseling weak and struggling churches.

In the remaining weeks of 1876 the Prudential Committee weighed the possible prospects and as the search progressed the finger pointed more and more to Dr. Hyde. Finally, on the first day of the new year, 1877, Hyde had a caller: the Rev. E. K. Alden, one of the secretaries and, in this instance, an emissary of the American Board.

He bore the invitation to go to Hawaii as a paid employee of the American Board to reorganize the Theological Seminary,¹¹ and set up and conduct a program of theological education for natives as pastors in Hawaiian churches and outpost stations of Micronesia.

Although he was aware that he was being considered, he was surprised, even stunned, that New Year's Day. Now the decision was in his hands and the American Board was in a hurry! His strong inclination to accept was restrained by the state of unfinished business (the histories) and his family circle. The one he could pass over to other hands; the family situation was the one which almost wrestled him down.

His letter of acceptance gives the details of the ordeal of decision:

When Dr. Alden, two weeks ago today, asked me if I would go to Honolulu, I had just begun to think out a sermon I was preparing to preach the next Sunday, from the text: "Behold, I have set before thee an open door."

The work to be done, as Dr. Alden represented it to me, seemed a grand opportunity to do important service for Christ around the world. It was in the line of my own cherished plans and preferences. "Yet," I said to myself, "it is not an open door to me." For my family relations and circumstances are such that work in a foreign land seemed impracticable. I had had two pleasant pastorates in New England and hoped to do such pastoral work for several years more either here or in some other part of the home field. Several times since I resigned the pastorate of the Haverhill Church, I have declined opportunities offered to me to engage again in pastoral work, or in some more general service for the Master. "Now again," I thought, to myself, "God is strangely presenting to me in his providence an opportunity for Christian service which I shall have to decline." But, most unexpectedly, I found encouragement where I had thought there would be only insuperable obstacles. Friends whom I consulted approved of the project. My wife's aged mother, who long ago gave herself and her children to Christ, gave her hearty consent to any sacrifice that the service of Christ might seem to demand. My wife expressed not merely a willingness, but an earnest desire to engage in such work as she would find to do at one of the outposts of Christian civilization.

So that now in regard to this Special Service, it seems as if the Master were saying to me, "Behold I have set before thee an open door." Step by step, the way has been opened for me to signify to you now my readiness to engage in the work that needs to be done at Honolulu for the islands of the Pacific if the Board sees fit to appoint me to take charge of it. From the earliest years of responsible life it was a conviction often impressed upon my mind by providential indications, rather than by direct utterance, of my parents, that my work in life was to be the work of a New England Congregational pastor, such as my grandfather of venerated memory had been long years ago. "When," (as Paul says of the time of his conversion), "it pleased God to reveal His Son in me," this desire was clarified and intensified. Before I left Theological Seminary I had to consider and settle the question whether I should not. . . (work) in some Seminary in the foreign mission field. For family reasons I could not then go abroad. During my first pastorate my parents and my sister had a home with me. I still am under obligations, in connection with my youngest brother, for my sister's support. But my wife's mother and sister propose to go with us and to help make home, and New England home-life, a power for good in Honolulu.

Both my wife and myself are in full vigor of health. We have always been and are now in fullest sympathy with the spirit and regulations of the Board.

In the experiences of life hitherto I have found myself strangely guided and controlled in all the evidently crisis hours of decision as to plans and preferences. And in view of all these circumstances and considerations, in regard to the work of training Hawaiian pastors and Pacific Islands missionaries I am ready to give myself to it heartily and unreservedly, hoping that in this work I shall find fulfilled in the Master's special promise, "Lo, I am with you always."

Yours in the fellowship of the Gospel

Chas. M. Hyde¹²

This was a typical Hyde letter, tender in restraining concern for his family and resolute in answering a spiritual summons. He remained at Lee for almost two months after the Alden call, working not only on preparations for the journey to Hawaii but on the two histories which he wanted to be able to deliver in such shape as could readily be completed by successor hands.

He was told by Alden that there would be a "Missionary Convention" in Chelsea, Mass., March 21, 1877. He closed up at Lee, March 12, took a horse and carriage on the two-day trip to Brimfield, where he continued final preparations. He wanted to sell his Brimfield home but was finding no market. "It is a poor time to sell," he said, "and property off the line of the railroads is very unsaleable." He was writing to Alden from Brimfield and went on to say, ". . . If you do not find an opportunity for me to preach next Sunday, I shall stay here till Monday. Is there anything expected of me at the meeting in Chelsea? Has the order of service been arranged? Do you wish Mrs. Hyde to be with me there? . . .We already talk of Honolulu as 'home' and are planning and eager for the life work we anticipate there."¹³

He also wrote to his seminary confidante of Princeton days requesting a copy of the course of theological study for possible application in Hawaii. "I have many pleasant memories of my year at Princeton and hope that I may succeed in impressing upon others, as deeply as was impressed upon my own mind, the necessity of thorough Bible study, and the supreme authority of the Bible as every preacher's standard of truth and righteousness."¹⁴

Finally, after the many weeks of negotiation, Rev. Hyde was commissioned to the Hawaii mission as "head of this school of the Prophets." The official commissioning service was held at the First Congregational Church of Chelsea, March 21. The farewell exercises were those customarily held prior to departure for the field. This day there were ten missionaries of the American Board who would immediately leave for their respective fields. Dr. Hyde was one of the ten—his destination, Hawaii.

It was decided that the Hyde family, which now included two growing boys, Henry K., and Charles K., as well as Mrs. Hyde's sister and mother, Eunice B. Knight and Mrs. Thirza W. Knight, would all go to Hawaii.

The party of six did not need to suffer the long perilous voyage around Cape Horn. The travelers could get across to San Francisco in six days following the newly completed composite route by rail. Ten additional days, more or less, would land them in Honolulu.

Dr. Hyde in his usual painstaking way wrote back to the Rev. N. G. Clark, one of his correspondents on the American Board, as the party traveled westward. At Oberlin he preached at a fund raising service. He preached at Brimfield, Indiana, a town undoubtedly named for his former residence in Massachusetts. By May 14 the party was in Salt Lake City and in a few days had arrived in San Francisco where the departure of the S. S. Zealandia for Honolulu was awaited.¹⁵

The ocean leg of the journey forced a letup in literary activity, but Dr. Hyde conducted church services aboard ship. Finally, the Hawaiian islands came into view. He wrote his impressions of the physical beauty of the islands while still aboard. He finished with a description of the reception at dockside and the immediate details of settling in, the first free moment allowed him on land. This would constitute his first Hawaii letter to the American Board correspondents. The arrival portion of the letter can speak for anyone who has come to the islands by ship:

On the morning of the Eighth day out, Thursday, May 30, we came in sight of the islands, whose romantic history has interested many hearts most deeply, and in whose future destiny, spiritually, we had come to take a strong personal interest. As we neared the island of Oahu and the dim cloudy outline of the distant view unfolded, more and more clearly, the scene before us was one of enchanting beauty. Above the jagged outlines of the sharply serrated volcanic peaks, lay a mass of clouds repeating in soft vaporous folds the forms of solid majesty below. The morning sunlight brought out in bold relief the brown slopes of the mountainsides in sharp contrast with the intensely black shadows that marked the valleys which furrowed the ridges. Turning Cocoa [sic] Head, still lovelier scenes met our gaze. The bright soft brown of the steep slopes, was varied with patches of a bright, soft mossy green. The white fringe of breaking waves, dashing on the coral reef, was topped by a line of tall cocoa palms, whose graceful outlines served as a heading to the fringe. Diamond Head stood boldly out, its broad, serrated, hollowing top making it look like a solitaire, set with clasping circulets of gold. Passing this we had our first view of Honolulu.¹⁶

The ship's approach had been "announced" from a Diamond Head lookout so that unbeknownst to the passengers the welcomers with great anticipation were hastening to the dock from all parts of town to greet the newcomers. Their arrival had actually been looked forward to for several months. His letter continues:

At the head of the recess of a broad mouthed roadstead lay a low lying mass of greenery over which towered here and there, steeples and flags. Beyond, stretched up the steep mountainside a shady cleft, looking dark and cool, which we knew must be the famed Nuuanu Valley,—"valley of the cool ascent." A rounded summit of barren brownness on the right was evidently Punchbowl Hill. To the left, westward, the irregular outline of the Waianae's shadowy peaks closed in the view. The long roll of the open ocean was changed to short dancing waves. The deep blue of the outer water changed to green and then to brown the nearer we approached the shores. The pilot was in the offing, ready to guide us through the narrow channel, where the coral reef is divided by the fresh water of the stream flowing down Nuuanu Valley and finding its way ocean-ward, making it impossible for the coral insects to build up their barrier-home, where its water flows.

The sailors in the pilot's boat were the first Hawaiians whom I had ever seen. They had the swarthy faces of dwellers in tropic climes but they were bright with intelligence, their features pleasing from an air of intellectual discrimination, apparent in their countenances, as well as the look of generous hearted good nature. We soon neared the lighthouse on the reef, outside of which lay fishermen's canoes, long, narrow, deep, hollowed out of a tree and with curious projecting outriggers. On one of the canoes was piled a mass of nets and the little flotilla was patiently waiting the appearance of some school of fishes, when they would surround and capture them.

The anchorage for vessels between the reef and shore was much smaller in extent than I had fancied. Three Russian men-of-war, and another flying English colors, intimated, how easily the quietness and calm of these Pacific seas, might be broken in upon by the booming of cannon and the crash of the ponderous balls. The islanders had even surmised that the appearance of these war vessels indicated that hostilities had already begun between the Czar of all the Russias, advancing his armies too far Southward to suit English ideas, and the Queen of England, lately proclaimed Empress of the Indies. Strange that a quarrel on the banks of the Danube should inaugurate bloody strife in these far off seas!

A motley assemblage soon gathered on the wharfs at which we were to land. It took more time to turn our steamship in the narrow precincts of the anchorage. Some of our passengers in haste to greet waiting friends, put off in small boats that flitted about. Some, tired of the monotony of the steamer's narrow quarters, went ashore to indulge in a horseback ride about the town before breakfasting on shore at the Hawaiian Hotel. It was just time for the usual breakfast on board the steamer. . .soon we were surrounded by a multitude of friendly visitants, ready to welcome us to our new home and proffer the hospitalities of generous hearted friendliness. Dr. Damon's smiling face and cheery greetings were the only familiar features of the scene.

Introductions to new friends were soon followed by a distribution of our parcels. And then we were escorted ashore and to the carriages in waiting to take us to our temporary homes. We had paid the purser the head money, $2 for everyone over 12 years of age who lands on these islands to spend more than thirty days. These fees form a fund for the support of any sick stranger at the Queen's Hospital.¹⁷

The remainder of this very long letter reviews the maelstrom into which he had been drawn within days, not to say, hours, following disembarkation. The local church workers had saved their concerns!

Charles Hyde had been reared in the narrow cultural pattern of Puritan New England, educated in a small Christian college, trained in strongly orthodox seminaries, and had now arrived in a mixed social confusion utterly foreign to anything he had ever known. The people in the top echelon of the American Board, even though they had visited the islands, and had visits and letters from their missionaries in the islands, could not prepare him for Honolulu.

But here he was! It was June 1, 1877 and he was facing at the age of forty-five, his second career; twenty-two years in Hawaii.

NOTES

1. Charles M. Hyde, sermon, "The Prime Motive in our Missionary Enterprises," Central Union Church, June 10, 1888 (The Friend, July 1888).

2. Obookiah is the phonetic English version of the way he pronounced his name as understood upon his arrival in Hartford. Years later, when Hawaiian speech was reduced to writing, his name was corrected to Opukahaia.

3. The first company arrived in Kailua, Hawaii, April 4, 1820.

4. Henry Knight Hyde, op. cit., p. 30.

5. haole, foreigner, largely applied to Caucasians.

6. John Erdman essay, After the Early Mission, What? Social Science Association, Honolulu, Oct. 4, 1937.

7. Henry Knight Hyde, op. cit., pp. 29.

8. Letter Hyde to the Rev. E. K. Alden, ABCFM, July 31, 1888.

9. Letter Hyde to the Rev. Judson Smith, ABCFM, Apr. 5, 1890.

10. ABCFM, Annual Report, Hartford 1876, Oct. 3-6, 1876.

11. The Theological Institute was renamed the North Pacific Missionary Institute after Hyde's arrival.

12. Letter Hyde to the Rev. N. G. Clark, ABCFM, Jan. 16, 1877.

13. Letter Hyde to Alden, Mar. 13.

14. Letter Hyde to Prof. W. H. Green, Princeton Theol. Sem., Mar. 15.

15. Letters Hyde to Clark, May 1, 14, 23.

16. Ibid., June 19.

17. Ibid.