Christian Missionary Work
In 1743, he took in a student named Samson Occom, a Mohegan who knew English, and had been converted to Christianity in his childhood. Wheelock's success in preparing Occom for the ministry encouraged him to found a school in Lebanon for Native American Indians, with the purpose of instilling, in the boys, elements of secular and religious education, so that they could return to their native culture as missionaries. The girls were to be taught "housewifery" and writing. The school was to be supported by charitable contribution. His plans to educate the young Native American students in his school, which was called the Moor's Charity School, located on the Lebanon town green, did not progress well however — many of his students became sick and died while some turned profligate and in other ways failed to successfully pursue the charter of missionary work.
Read more about this topic: Eleazar Wheelock
Famous quotes containing the words christian, missionary and/or work:
“... a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself cannot stand upon it.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us.... Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.”
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
“It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)