CHAPTER XLIV

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THE ARMENIANS.--EDUCATION.

1872.

The common school is as much a necessity in mission fields, as it is that the people should be able to read the Word of God; and it has everywhere been a primary object of attention; but always, and more especially of late years, with the aim and expectation, that it will speedily derive its support from the parents of the children.

Properly conducted, the tendency of the common school is to development. Teachers are learning all the while; new branches of study are introduced; there is greater thoroughness in the teaching and discipline; till at length the Academy is evolved, and perhaps the College.

This would be the natural order of development, were general education the leading object of missionary societies. But the unevangelized nations must be evangelized, and chiefly by their own people. Consequently one of the first efforts is to raise up teachers and preachers.

Enough has probably been said, in this history, respecting the common schools. So, also, of the Seminary at Bebek, instituted in 1840,[1] and the Girls' Boarding-school in the metropolis, instituted in 1845.[2] The Bebek Seminary was in some respects the forerunner of "Robert College." But however suitable its proximity to the capital may have been, regarding it as an incipient college, the location was not well adapted, on the whole, for a school to raise up young men for pastoral work in the towns and villages of the interior. Hence its discontinuance in 1862, and the opening of a training Seminary in Marsovan, in 1865. The delay of three years was owing to peculiar and unexpected causes. The Girls' Boarding-school at Constantinople was also discontinued for similar reasons, and was reopened at Marsovan in 1865.

[1] See Chapter xxxiii .

[2] See