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