The seminary at Bebek was begun just as the persecution of the evangelicals at the capital was becoming acute. Early in his career Dr. Hamlin was impressed with the fact that the school must succeed in the face of direct opposition from Russia. During his first year in the mission, while he was learning the Armenian language, his teacher was suddenly seized at the order of the Russian ambassador and deported to Siberia. Dr. Hamlin and Dr. Schauffler repaired to the Russian embassy and protested against the high-handed proceeding. The ambassador haughtily replied, “My master, the emperor of Russia, will never allow Protestantism to set its foot in Turkey.” Dr. Schauffler, bowing low to the ambassador, gave the reply which has become historic, “Your excellency, the kingdom of Christ, who is my Master, will never ask the emperor of all the Russias where it may set its foot.” From that day to this, the covert as well as open opposition of Russia to missionary work in Turkey and, most especially, to all educational work, has been unremittingly experienced. Consistently has Russia adhered to the policy thus outlined and the opposition from that source to-day is as bitter as at any other period.
Dr. Hamlin threw himself into the work of the seminary with all his intense and resourceful energy. Thwarted at a hundred points, he immediately changed his plans and appeared even to his persecutors to have gained the victory. For twenty years the work proceeded with emphasis upon industries when industrial persecutions were crushing the people, but always strenuous, and always supremely Christian and evangelical. He saw that a vernacular training was not sufficient for the full equipment of the young men under his care to prepare them for positions of largest leadership. The Jesuit schools taught their pupils French so that all their graduates knew a European language. As yet the Armenian literature was very circumscribed and most inadequate to meet the intellectual and spiritual requirements of intelligent directors of a great national reform movement.
This was the opinion of Dr. Hamlin, shared, as he felt, by the great mass of the Armenian people. But he was not fully sustained in it by his colleagues in the mission. The American Board, under the leadership of its secretary, Dr. Anderson, had declared as its policy that mission schools should not teach English or any other language than the vernacular to their pupils. To Dr. Hamlin this seemed such a backward step that he resigned from the Board and began to work and plan for higher education among young men. The story of the building of the now famous Robert College under an imperial irade from the sultan, and upon the most commanding site along the entire length of the Bosporus, is now so well known that it need not be repeated.
The college became a reality and the scheme of education conceived by Dr. Hamlin and carried out in Robert College represented, within forty years of the time of his resignation from the Board, the fundamental policy of all the higher educational work in the empire carried on in both missionary and independent institutions. For nearly a generation, however, in mission schools little was done in European languages, and most of the education given was imparted through the spoken language of the people.
As early as 1836, four years before the seminary at Bebek was begun, a high school was opened in Beirut in which both Arabic and English were taught. This school was apparently a great success, but four years later the pupils, because of their practical knowledge of English, became so useful to the English officers, then quartered in Beirut on account of political troubles, that the school was broken up. No doubt this unfortunate experience had much influence in leading the Board to endeavor to exclude English from mission schools. In 1848, a seminary upon the purely vernacular basis was opened in Beirut with a view to training its students for useful service among their own people. This school was continued until the change in policy by the Board and the mission, when the English language again took its place in the curriculum.
ROBERT COLLEGE, CONSTANTINOPLE