The Sabbath-School Index Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.

THE SABBATH-SCHOOL.

It is a place where the churches of Christ meet with the children and youth for the worship and service of God. It is the Church of God caring for the children on the Sabbath day. Every song of praise, as well as every prayer and reading and study of the Word of God, together with every exhortation, address or sermon, should rise to a high and holy act of simple, life-like, child-like devotion. The place should be comfortable, attractive, light, airy and cheerful. It should be dry and well warmed. The walls may be covered with prints, hymns, and Scripture mottoes; or, as some of our wealthy congregations have done, they may be frescoed beautifully with illuminated texts or paintings representing Scripture scenes, to attract the children to the house of God--to their Sabbath Home. Especial care should be taken that the seats provided are adapted in size, height, and form, to all ages and sizes, from the wee ones in the infant classes up to the larger scholars and the members of the adult classes. The three-sides-of-an-octagon form of seat is found to answer well, and is much cheaper than the circular seats. Infant classes will need a room by themselves, and sometimes raised seats are to be preferred. A good blackboard and crayons, with good maps, should be furnished to every room, together with a well-selected library, both for teachers and scholars. Keep on file a few good Sunday-school papers and magazines. It would be well also to have a few reference Bibles and a Bible Dictionary. But the glory of the Sabbath-school is the open Bible, the living Teacher, the Church Militant and aggressive. Said De Witt Clinton: "The Sunday-school is one of the three great powers by which the moral world is to be moved." Says the Rev. Dr. Daggett: "The Sabbath-school is to do vastly more than all other agencies of the Church." Said John Angell James: "In a few years we shall look upon all the past progress of the Sunday-school but as the beginning, as a kind of first-fruits, an earnest of the future of this great institution of the Christian Church." Said the Rev. Dr. Campbell, of the British Banner, London: "With respect to countless multitudes, it is mainly the work of the Sunday-school teacher to carry out the command of our Lord to preach the gospel to every creature. The Sunday-school, for the individual, for the family, for the Church, for the nation, and for the world, is one of the principal mottoes to be inscribed on the banners of the faithful; and many well-meant but feeble agencies on which much religious activity is now frittered away, will, we believe, at length be merged in this grand institution. The conviction is strong in our mind that the Sunday-school Union, as a great central source of light, life, and power, is on the threshhold of a glorious career of usefulness, and will speedily become, in the hands of the great Master, an agency for good to an extent beyond all present appreciation by the Christian Church."

II.

HISTORY AND PROGRESS.

The history of Sabbath-schools is nearly allied to the onward progress of the Church of God in the earth. In all ages, whenever pure religion has been revived, it would seem that especial attention has always been given to the early religious instruction and training of children and youth by the Church of God; and herein lies the grand SUNDAY-SCHOOL IDEA. Says a Scotch divine: "Vital religion, and the godly upbringing of the young, have ever gone hand in hand." The soul is diseased, and a Bible education is the only remedy. In that wonderful BOOK, which extends its record over the long period of four thousand years of this world's history, there is throughout a wonderful regard for children. Of the patriarch Abraham, nearly four thousand years ago, it is written: "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." Gen. xviii. 19. With what wonderful power does the history of the childhood of Joseph, and Moses, and David, and Samuel, and Daniel, illustrate the value of the instruction and religious training of children.

When Moses, the great lawgiver of Israel, received the law amid the thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes of Mount Sinai, he called "ALL Israel" together (Deut. v. 1), and by divine direction his words were (Deut. vi. 6): "Hear, O Israel.... These words, which I command thee this day, shall be (1) in thine heart: and (2) thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children," etc., i. e., the Church's children--not parents exclusive, but inclusive of course. "Israel," that was called upon by Moses, was the Church of God upon earth, and it is her express duty to the end of time to see that all her children shall be "taught of the Lord." It is true that parents are the divinely-appointed guardians and instructors of their children, and this obligation rests upon them; and yet they are, alas! too often incapable of the religious instruction of their own children or of any other, besides being often indifferent; and the Church of God, by her catechetical or Sabbath-school instruction, has always had, and probably will always have, to supply the lack of unfaithful parents. There is no agency which so supplies the lack of mothers as a good Sabbath-school.

Thus we find in Deuteronomy, nearly four thousand years ago, the great Sabbath-school principle foreshadowed and embodied; and where, we may ask, can be found in all the Bible a more definite authorization or divine appointment for any of the great denominational Christian Churches which now so bless our land than is here found for the Sabbath-school? It is ordained and blessed of God. The Sabbath-school is simply the Church of Christ putting forth its legitimate effort in its most inviting field of action. It is the regular systematic working department of the Christian Church--not an outside auxiliary, but an inside,--the Church itself in action; and as such let it be carefully guarded and cherished. The same Divine lips which said "Go preach," said also and equally to his disciples, "Go teach." Says the Rev. J. H. Vincent: "There is just as much divine authority for the Sabbath-school as there is for the sanctuary--no more." Our Divine Lord and Master himself repeatedly astonished his own disciples by his particular notice of and care for little children, and with sore displeasure he rebuked his followers for hindering them from being brought to him.

It was not until nearly the close of the second century, or, according to Tertullian, in the year A.D. 180, that the Christian Church felt compelled, in order to check the defection of heathen converts, to set about the establishment of those celebrated catechumenical schools, of which Origen was one of the catechists, for the systematic religious instruction by the Church of Christ of the children and youth.

So useful and necessary, however, did this work prove itself to be, that very soon similar schools were universally established. They continued to flourish until near the close of the sixth century, when they declined and became obscured for ten long centuries in the gloom of the Dark Ages, with only an occasional prince, or pastor, or layman in the spirit of the Master, to teach the children the way of life.

In the sixteenth century, however, on the dawn of the Reformation, Martin Luther established his celebrated Sunday-schools at Wittemberg in the year 1527; and soon after John Knox inaugurated the Sunday-schools of Scotland, "with readers," as the history of Scotland informs us, in 1560; so that on the incoming of the Reformation the children were again "taught of the Lord." In the year 1580, Borromeo, the pious Archbishop of Milan, established a system of Sunday-schools throughout his large diocese in Lombardy.

In our own land our Pilgrim Fathers early entered upon the work; for Ellis, in his History of Roxbury, Massachusetts, says: "In 1674, 6th 11th month, is the first record of a Sabbath-school." The records of the Pilgrim Church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, inform us that a Sabbath-school was there organized as early as in 1680. Joseph Alleine, the author of the "Alarm to the Unconverted," opened a Sabbath-school in England in 1688, and many others might be mentioned in both countries in succession. But the first Sabbath-school of which we have any authentic, definite, and detailed account, extending over a period of a quarter of a century, was that established by Ludwig Hacker in Ephratah, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, as early as the year 1747. It was continued uninterruptedly during a period of more than thirty years, until the building was taken for a soldiers' hospital in the time of the Revolutionary War. It enjoyed precious seasons of revival, and had its children's meetings, and we are informed that many children were hopefully converted to God. We have before us a long letter from Dr. Fahnestock to the Rev. W. T. Brantley, D.D., of Philadelphia, written in 1835, detailing many interesting facts connected with the history of this Sabbath-school, drawn from living pupils and records.

Robert Raikes instituted not only, but organized, the SYSTEM of Sabbath-schools, and popularized them in England, in Gloucester, in February, 1781. All benevolence was single-handed until such men as Robert Raikes and William Wilberforce organized it, and sent it forth systematized on its errand of love, mercy and salvation throughout the world. Before this, as we have seen, there were isolated occasional Sabbath-schools, but their influence was confined mainly to one city, one town, or one church, and expired with an individual. But Robert Raikes "founded Sabbath-schools for the Church universal." John Wesley preached and organized. George Whitefield preached, and did not organize. Robert Raikes organized Sabbath-schools, but his predecessors did not do so. And we can in both cases see the important difference. Within the short space of four years from the period when Mr. Raikes established his first Sabbath-school in Gloucester, England, more than one-quarter of a million of children in England were enjoying the blessing of Sabbath-school instruction. All honor, then, to Robert Raikes!

To Bishop Ashbury appears to belong the honor of first introducing Robert Raikes's idea of Sabbath-schools into this country, in Virginia in 1786. How long the school was continued, or what was its influence in Virginia, we are unable to state.

The first "Sunday-school Society" was formed in London, September 7, 1785. This was on the system of paid teachers, but when the plan of voluntary, unpaid teachers had become established, this society gave place to the present "London Sunday-School Union," which was organized to meet this change on the 13th of July, 1803. Both of these societies were formed on the union plan, including the various denominations, the first including an equal number of Churchmen and Dissenters in its management.

The First-day or Sunday-School Society in Philadelphia was organized in 1791, and Bishop White was its first president.