THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN
COLBY'S HISTORY
In his History of the Baptists in Maine Dr. Henry S. Burrage has written:
"February 5, 1821, an act was passed by the Legislature of Maine changing the name of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution to that of Waterville College. The reasons for thus giving to the institution a broader character than was at first contemplated were not recorded and can now only be conjectured. In all probability the change was effected by Dr. Chaplin. A college graduate, he knew the value of a collegiate course as a preparation for theological study, and he could not have been long in coming to the conclusion that the work he had been called to do at Waterville could best be performed by giving the institution a collegiate character. There were those among the trustees who deprecated the change, and in many parts of the State, among the churches and ministers, there was not a little disappointment."[1]
In a historical discourse delivered on August second, 1870, President Champlin expressed the same thought when he said:
"The Institution, as we have seen, began as a Literary and Theological School. Those who established it were chiefly ministers of the Gospel, mostly without any regular theological training, and who therefore looked upon it chiefly as a school in which the future pastors of the churches were to be prepared for their work. With them the literary department was preliminary to, but entirely subordinate to the theological department. What must have been their disappointment, then, when in less than three years after it had been set in operation, by its having become a college all this was reversed, and the literary department exalted above the theological, which was depressed more and more, till within a few years it was entirely crowded out of the Institution? I know not under whose counsels this was done, but it has always seemed to me a great mistake."[2]
The views expressed by Dr. Burrage and President Champlin may be taken as representative of those held by many friends of the college for at least a half-century. They may be briefly summarized thus:
I. The purpose of the founders was to establish a theological school.
