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THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION 
 
 OK THE 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 By H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 i AN EXCERPT FROM "YALE LECTURES ON THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL' 
 3Y THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 

THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 BY H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 BEING AN EXCERPT FROM "YALE LECTURES ON THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL' 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES CO. 
 1906 
 
T7 
 
 "NERAL 
 
 Copyright, 1888, by 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: ITS JEWISH ORIGIN AND 
 ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 
 
 1 HH.-U-l 
 
THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : ITS JEWISH ORIGIN AND 
 ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 
 
 Definition of a Sunday-school. — Rabbinical Traditions of its Prime- 
 val Prominence. — Old Testament Light on its Pathway. — Its 
 Mentions in Ancient History. — Its Prominence in the Syna- 
 gogue Plans. — Its Primal Curriculum. — Its Essential Methods 
 of Working. — Its Fundamental Importance in the Jewish Econ- 
 omy. — Jesus as a Scholar in the Sunday-school. — As a Teacher 
 there. — His Methods of Teaching. — His Command to Start 
 Sunday-schools Everywhere. — Apostolic Sunday-school Work. 
 — Sunday-schools as the Basis of the Christian Church. 
 
 The Sunday-school: Its Origin, Mission, Methods, 
 and Auxiliaries ; this is the subject of a series of lec- 
 tures which I am to deliver here at the invitation of the 
 honored Faculty of Yale Divinity School. And, as pre- 
 liminary to an intelligent discussion of the theme, it is 
 important to arrive at a definition of the term " Sunday- 
 school," as that term is to be understood and employed 
 in this discussion. 
 
 A Sunday-school is an agency of the Church, by which 
 the Word of God is taught interlocutorily, or catecheti- 
 cally, to children and other learners clustered in groups 
 or classes under separate teachers ; all these groups or 
 classes being associated under a common head. Herein 
 the Sunday-school is differentiated from the catechismal 
 
 3 
 
4 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 general service, from the expository Bible lecture, from 
 the children's meeting, and from any school for secular 
 instruction on the first day of the week. Its source of 
 authority is God's Church; its subject-matter of study 
 is the Bible ; its form of teaching includes a free use of 
 question and answer; its membership includes children; 
 its arrangement is by groups clustering severally around 
 individual teachers, as component portions of a unified 
 whole. Any one of these particulars lacking, a school 
 held on Sunday fails of being specifically a Sunday- 
 school. All of these particulars being found, a gathering 
 is substantially a Sunday-school, on whatever day of the 
 week it assembles, or by whatsoever name it be called. 
 
 That the Sunday-school in its essential characteristics, 
 as thus defined, was a prominent feature in the economy 
 of the Jewish Church, and that it was included as an 
 integral factor of the Christian Church in the declared 
 plans of the divine Founder of that church, would seem 
 to be evident in the light of the plain facts of history — 
 sacred and secular. It is to those facts that I invite fresh 
 attention just here. 
 
 The origin of the Sunday-school, or of this catechetical 
 Bible-school, like the origin of the synagogue, is not 
 fixed with accuracy in Jewish history. Traditions of 
 both these religious agencies run far back of the trust- 
 worthy records ; but even these traditions have a certain 
 value, as indicative of the earlier existence of the insti- 
 tutions about which they are found already clustering, 
 (with a deeply rooted popular confidence in their verity,) 
 when the institutions themselves have their first distinct 
 record. Hence the multiplied traditions of the promi- 
 nence and the power of the synagogue Bible-school in 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 5 
 
 the earlier ages of the world's story, which are to be 
 found recorded in the Talmud and the Targums, are of 
 interest as giving an air of antiquity to that agency of 
 instruction when first it appears in unmistakable plainness 
 as an established historical fact, surrounded by many 
 myths and legends of its primeval honor and usefulness. 
 
 The Rabbis tell us that Methuselah was a teacher of 
 the Mishna, before the Flood; 1 that, after the Deluge, 
 Shem and Eber had a House of Instruction where the 
 Halacha was studied; 2 that Abraham was a student of 
 the Torah when he was three years old, 3 and that he 
 was afterward under the teaching of Melchizedek in mat- 
 ters concerning the priesthood; 4 that young Jacob as a 
 good boy did go to the Bible-school, while Esau as a bad 
 boy did not; 6 that Dinah the daughter of Jacob came to 
 grief 6 through playing truant from the Bible-school while 
 her brothers were in attendance there; 7 that among the 
 pupils of Moses in his great Bible-school were his father- 
 in-law Jethro and young Joshua, and that the latter was 
 preferred above the sons of Moses, as his successor, be- 
 cause of his greater zeal and fidelity in the Bible-school 
 exercises; 8 that the victory of Deborah and Barak re- 
 opened the schools for Bible study, which had been 
 closed by the Canaanites; 9 that Samuel conducted Bible- 
 schools which were continued to the days of Elisha and 
 
 1 Yalqut on Gen., 12 a. See, also, Delitzsch -Weber's Syst. der Altsynag. 
 Patast. Theol., p. 34. 
 
 *Targ. Jon. on Gen. 22: 19; 24: 62. Bereshith Rabba, ch. 84; comp. 
 ch. 56 and ch. 63. a Bereshith Rabba, ch. 95. 
 
 4 Bereshith Rabba, ch. 43. Yalqut on Gen., 19 c. 5 Bereshith Rabba, ch. 63 
 
 • Gen. 34: 1 ff. \ Qoheleth Rabba, 93 a. 
 
 8 Yalqut on Exod., 76 a ; on Josh., 3 a. Comp. also Berakhoth, 63 b. 
 • Targ. Jon. on Judg. 5 : 2. 
 
6 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 beyond; 1 that wicked King Ahaz had the Bible-schools 
 for children closed in order to exterminate the religion 
 of Moses ; that good King Hezekiah, on the other hand, 
 not only fostered the Bible-school system, 2 but person- 
 ally bore his own children to receive instruction in one 
 of these schools; 3 and finally that the prophecy of Hag- 
 gai concerning the greater glory of the second temple 4 
 had reference to the Bible teaching which was to be 
 carried on there, and which, by means of the synagogues 
 and Bible-schools, was to be extended near and far. 5 All 
 this is mere fanciful tradition, it is true ; but even as tra- 
 dition it has an interest through what it shows of the 
 estimation in which the Bible-school was held by the 
 Rabbis, at the time of the recording of these steadily gath- 
 ering traditions concerning its ancient place and power. 
 
 In the line of gleams of light from the Old Testament 
 text on this pathway of rabbinical tradition, we find, in 
 Genesis, 6 a reference to Abraham's three hundred and 
 eighteen instructed 7 retainers. In the Chronicles, we see 
 
 1 Targ. Jon. on i Sam. 19 : 18 f. 
 
 2 2 Chron. 28 : 24 ; 29 : 3. See Rashi, in loco ; also Molitor's Philos. d. 
 Gesch., Part I., p. 155. 
 
 3 Berakhoth, 10 a, b. Menorath Ha-maor, iii., 2, 2. * Hag. 2: 9. 
 5 Comp. Shir Rabba on Cant. 7: 12, 13 ; Yalqut, in loco ; Erubin, 21 a. 
 
 6 Gen. 14: 14. 
 7 The Hebrew word (chaneekk) translated in our English Bible " trained," 
 includes in its meaning the idea of a training in religion as well as in a use of 
 weapons ; and its use in this place would presuppose a process of school 
 instruction under Abraham's oversight. (Comp. Gesenius's Thesaurus, s. v., 
 with citation from Kimchi ; Fleischer, in Levy's Neuhebr. Lex., s. v. ; Well- 
 hausen's Skizz. und Vorarb., Heft 3, p. 154; Dillmann's Comm. z. Gen., in 
 loco; Buxtorf's Lex. Heb. et Chald., s. v.; Schaff-Lange's Comm., in loco, 
 with citation from Wordsworth : " Abram had trained them in spiritual things 
 in the service of God, as well as in fidelity to himself; see chap. 18 : 19 ; 24: 
 12-49.") Junius and Tremellius, in the Genevan Bible of 1630, say thai 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 7 
 
 that when Jehoshaphat was working reforms in his land, 
 the princes and the priests and the Levites " taught in 
 Judah, having the book of the law of the Lord with 
 them ; and they went about throughout all the cities of 
 Judah, and taught among the people." 1 In Nehemiah 2 
 we have a completer exhibit of actual methods of Bible 
 instruction, in the record of a great open-air Bible-school 
 in Jerusalem, after the return of the Jews from captivity. 
 Ezra was the superintendent in this school. His assist- 
 ing teachers are mentioned by name. The opening 
 prayer, the responsive service, and the details of class 
 teaching, are all described, as if in illustration of the cus- 
 tom in such a gathering then, and thenceforward, in the 
 Holy Land. 
 
 Coming down to a time when we have contempo- 
 raneous records to aid us, at a point where the Bible 
 narrative is lacking in fullness of detail, we find Josephus 
 claiming that, from the days of Moses, it was a custom 
 of the Jews to assemble in their synagogues every Sab- 
 bath, not only to hear the law, but "to learn it accurately," 
 and that so thorough is this instruction of the young in 
 the teachings of the law, that, as he expresses it, " if any 
 one of us [Jews] should be questioned concerning the 
 laws, he would more easily repeat all than his own name." 3 
 This certainly is evidence that these weekly gatherings 
 
 these servants of Abram were M instructed concerning the right of this expe- 
 dition, and concerning religious knowledge." Payne Smith (Ellicott's O. T. 
 Comtn., at Gen. 4: 17) points out that " in old times the ideas of training and 
 dedication were closely allied, because teaching generally took the form of 
 initiation into sacred rites, and one so initiated [or trained] was regarded as 
 a consecrated person." 
 
 1 2 Chron. 17: 7-9. « Xoh. 8 : i-B. 
 
 * Contra Ap., ii., 17, 18. Comp. i., 12; Antiq. t iv., 8, 12. 
 
8 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 for Bible study were not a very new thing in the days of 
 Josephus. We find Philo, also, who even antedates Jose- 
 phus, affirming that the synagogues of the Jews were 
 really " houses of instruction," and that with the help of 
 these agencies the Jews were, " by their parents, tutors, 
 and teachers," instructed in the knowledge of the law 
 " from their earliest youth," so that " they bear the image 
 of the law in their souls." 1 Moreover, with all the unhis- 
 toric character of the Talmud and the other rabbinical 
 writings, there are given in them many items of informa- 
 tion concerning the times of their compiling, and the 
 times just before, which are not to be passed over lightly 
 in an investigation like this. Competent and careful schol- 
 ars of this literature have brought out facts which justify 
 the statements which I now make in this connection. 
 
 According to the Rabbis it was about 80-70 B. C. that 
 Simon ben Shetach, as president of the Sanhedrin, estab- 
 lished — or, as some would claim, he re-established — a 
 system of religious schools in conjunction with the local 
 synagogues throughout Palestine, making attendance at 
 them obligatory. 2 Whatever question there may be as to 
 the personality of this Simon ben Shetach, there would 
 seem to be good reason for believing that this special 
 work which is ascribed to him was wrought by some 
 person or persons as early as the date to which he is 
 assigned. " Eighty years before Christ," says Deutsch, 
 " schools flourished throughout the length and breadth 
 
 1 Vita Mosis, i., 27 (Mang. II., 168). Legat. ad Caium, $$ 16, 31 (Mang. 
 II., S62, 577)- 
 
 a Jerus. Kethuboth, viii., 11. Ginsburg, art. "Education," in Alexander- 
 Kitto's Cyc. of Bib. Lit. Schurer's Hist, of the Jewish People, Div. II., 
 Vol. II., \ 27, p. 49. Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., 672 (note 1), 1102. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 9 
 
 of the land; — education had been made compulsory;" 1 
 and this statement represents the modern view of Jew- 
 ish scholars generally. Additional honor in this line is 
 again ascribed by the Rabbis to Joshua ben Gamla (that 
 is, Jesus the son of Gamaliel), who was high-priest about 
 63-65 A. D., and of whom Josephus makes frequent men- 
 tion. He is said to have "enacted that teachers should 
 be appointed in every province and in every town, and 
 [that] children of six or seven years old [should be] 
 brought to them." 2 This is believed by many to have 
 been a re-enacting of laws of an earlier date, which had 
 fallen into neglect in the progress of time. Certain it is I 
 that, at the latest, in the second century after Christ, the 
 records of the Mishna assume the existence of elementary 
 religious schools in connection with the synagogues ; not 
 as recently established, but as a well-known institution. 3 
 
 Thus, from the evidence of Philo and of Josephus, and 
 from the incidental proofs furnished in the assumed state 
 of things according to the earliest records of the Tal- 
 mud, we have every reason to believe, and none to doubt, 
 that a system of Bible -schools in connection with the 
 synagogues of Palestine was a recognized feature of the 
 Jewish economy at the beginning of the Christian era. 
 Describing the influences which were about a Jewish 
 child at this period, Edersheim says: "There can be 
 no reasonable doubt that at that time such schools 
 existed throughout the land."* Schurer, who is little 
 
 1 Literary Remains, p. 23. Comp. Jost's Allg. Gesch. d. Israel. Volk., Vol. 
 II., p. 13, note. 
 
 7 Schiircr's Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., g 27, p. 49; also Vol. I., \ 23, p. 201. 
 » Ibid., Vol. II., I 27, p. 49. 
 
 * Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, I., 230. Comp. Sketches of Jewish 
 Social Life, p. 118. 
 
IO THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 inclined to give weight to mere tradition, or to accept 
 any point which will bear challenging, says that while 
 the education of Jewish children in the teachings of the 
 law " was, in the first place, the duty and task of parents, 
 it appears that, even in the age of Christ, care was taken 
 for the instruction of youth by the erection of schools on 
 the part of the community." 1 
 
 Ginsburg finds added proof of the growth in promi- 
 nence and favor of these elementary Bible-schools at 
 an earlier date than our era, in their impress upon the 
 Hebrew language of the times. " So popular did these 
 schools [which are ascribed to Simon ben Shetach] 
 become," he says, "that whilst in the pre-exile period 
 
 1 Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., # 27, pp. 48-50. Reuss {Geschichte der Heiligen 
 Schriften Alten Test., p. 677) says of the Pharisees in the days of Christ: 
 " The most powerful lever of their activity was the school." Geikie {Life and 
 Words of Christ, I., 172) says: " It cannot be doubted that boys' schools 
 were already general in the time of Christ." Merrill {Galilee in the Titne of 
 Christ, p. 91) in combating the claim that there was at that time in Palestine 
 any system of popular education, in our modern understanding of the term 
 " education," says : " The only schools were fhose connected with the syna- 
 gogues. The only school-book was the Hebrew Scriptures. A synagogue 
 presupposed a school, just as in our country a church presupposes a Sunday- 
 school. Church and district-school [the New England term for a neighborhood 
 public school] is not a parallel to the Jewish system of things, but church and 
 Sunday-school is." While these pages are being put in type, I see, for the 
 first time, Stapfer's Palestine in the Time of Christ, in which again the sug- 
 gestion is made of a likeness of the ancient Jewish schools to the modern 
 Sunday-schools. " What means of instruction," he asks (p. 142), " were there 
 at Nazareth between the years 4 B. C. and 10 A. D., that is to say, in the time 
 of the Lord's boyhood? Was there already a free school, or class for the 
 townspeople's children, taught by the chazzan? This seems to us extremely 
 likely, though we have no positive proof. Perhaps on the Sabbath day there 
 was a catechising, or what we should now call a Sunday-school." These re- 
 peated references, by writers from widely different standpoints, to this corres- 
 pondence of the synagogue schools with the Sunday-school, give proof that the 
 idea is in no sense a forced one from the mind of a Sunday-school specialist. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 1 1 
 
 the very name of schools did not exist, we now find in a 
 very short time no less than eleven different expressions 
 for 'school.'" 1 These expressions include such mean- 
 ings as "house of instruction," "house of learning," 
 " house of the book," " house of the teacher," " house 
 of the master," "the seat" (where the disciples sat at the 
 feet of the master, or teacher), " an array " (where the 
 disciples were arranged according to their seniority and 
 acquirements), and " the vineyard " (the place of refresh- 
 ing and of fruitfulness). 
 
 That the elementary schools of this Jewish system of 
 public education were Bible-schools, corresponding quite 
 closely in their essential features with our modern Sunday- 
 schools, is a demonstrable fact. Indeed, the chief value of 
 the synagogues themselves, in the estimation of the Jews, 
 was as a means of promoting the study and teaching of 
 the law. "The main object of these Sabbath-day assem- 
 blages in the synagogue," says Schiirer, " was not public 
 worship in its stricter sense ; that is, not devotion, but 
 religious instruction, and this for an Israelite was, above 
 all, instruction in the law!' 1 And of the schools connected 
 with the synagogues, Schiirer says: "The subject of 
 instruction . . . was as good as exclusively the law ; for 
 only its inculcation in the youthful mind, and not the 
 means of general education, was the aim of all this zeal 
 
 1 Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Education." Comp. Deutsch's Literary Re- 
 mains, p. 23 f. 
 
 2 Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., \ 27, p. 54. As illustrative of a common error at 
 this point, Cohen (cited by Geikie, in Life and Words of Christ, I., 566, Notes) 
 claims that while there might have been schools in Jerusalem, there could not 
 have been any synagogues there, " since public worship could be held there, 
 nowhere but in the Temple." In fact, the synagogues were nowhere places 
 for public worship, in its then understood sense, while the Temple yet stood. 
 
12 ' THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 for the instruction of youth. And indeed the earliest 
 instruction was in the reading and inculcatio n orffie text 
 scrip ture '." l 
 From 'five to ten years of age, the Jewish child was to 
 study in these schools the Bible text only. 2 It was not 
 until after a five years' course in the plain teachings of 
 the Bible itself, that he was to venture into the bewil- 
 dering maze of what corresponded with our modern 
 catechisms and commentaries and lesson-helps generally; 
 a custom which is -not without its valuable suggestion for 
 religious teachers of children in our day. And it is a 
 noteworthy fact that the Jewish child's first Bible-school 
 lessons were in Leviticus, 3 rather than in Genesis or 
 Exodus. An arrangement of that sort would provoke 
 no little adverse comment, if it were proposed by an 
 International Lesson Committee of to-day ; all of which 
 goes to show that it is not an easy matter to satisfy every- 
 body in the arranging of a Sunday-school curriculum. 
 From ten to fifteen years of age, the Jewish child's school 
 studies were in the substance of the Mishna, or the yet 
 unwritten Mosaic traditions, with their rabbinical com- 
 mentaries, while still he included the Bible text in his 
 studies. After that age, the youth was privileged to share 
 in those endless discussions of the Rabbis over the details 
 of the Mishna teaching, which later made up the Gemara, 
 or the " completion " of rabbinical exegesis and eisegesis. 4 
 
 1 Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., § 27, p. 50. 
 
 a Buxtorf's Synag. Jud., p. 140 f. Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, 
 p. in. Comp. Ginsburg, in Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Education ; " Edersheim's 
 Life and Times, I., 232; Hamburger's Real-Encyc, I., 340; and Strack, in 
 Herzog's Real-Encyc, IX., 389. s Wayyiqra Rabba, ch. 7. 
 
 * See proofs of all this in Hamburger, Herzog, Edersheim, and Ginsburg, 
 as above. See, also, Van Gelder's Die Volkssch. d. Jud. Alterth., p. 10 f. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 1 3 
 
 Care was taken that the text-books and lesson-helps 
 in these Bible-schools were ample and trustworthy. 1 A 
 library was attached to every school-house, 2 where copies 
 of the Holy Scripture were kept available. Although it 
 was deemed unlawful to make copies of small portions 
 of any of the books of Scripture, an " exception was made 
 of certain sections which were copied for the instruction of 
 children." 3 These selections included the historic record 
 from the Creation to the Flood ; the first nine chapters 
 of Leviticus, and the first ten chapters of Numbers ; 4 
 together with the Shema, 5 which, strictly speaking, was 
 Deuteronomy 6: 4-9, but which frequently embraced 
 also Deuteronomy 11: 13-21 and Numbers 15: 37-41, 
 and the Hallel (Psalms 11 3-1 18, 136). 6 This seems to 
 have been the origin of the Sunday-school lesson-leaf, 
 with its "fragmentary," or "scrappy," portions of the 
 Bible, which is now vexing so many pious minds as a 
 dangerous modern innovation. It was first authorized 
 by the Sanhedrin Uniform Lesson Committee, two thou- 
 sand years or so ago^ Attention was also given to the 
 fitness of the instruction from these lesson-leaves; "that 
 the lessons taught . . . should be in harmony with the 
 capacities and inclinations of the children ; practical, few 
 at a time, but weighty." 7 _/ 
 
 The location and surroundings of the Bible-schools 
 
 1 Pesachim, 112 a. 
 1 Jerus. Megilla, iii., 1. Edersheim's Life and Times, I., 233. 
 8 Edersheim, as above. 
 4 Jerus. Megilla, as above. See, also, Sopherim, v., 1, p. 25^/ Gittin, 60 a; 
 cited by Edersheim, as above. Comp. Ginsburg, in The Bible Educator, I ., 47. 
 6 See Schurer's Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., § 27, pp. 77, 84 f. 
 • Farrar's Life and Work 0/ St. Paul, I., 43. 
 * Ginsburg, in Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Education." See, also, Berakhoth, 
 63 a; Qiddushin, 82 £; Wayyiqra Rabba, ch. 3. 
 
14 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 were deemed not unimportant Ordinarily they were in 
 the synagogue building, or in a building attached to it ; ' 
 but in any event they must not be in a too crowded 
 quarter, nor near an insecure crossing-place of a river. 2 
 School hours were limited, and they were variously pro- 
 portioned according to different seasons of the year. 2 
 Neither health nor safety for the scholars might be dis- 
 regarded with impunity. One teacher must be secured 
 for every twenty to twenty-five children on an average, 
 within the particular school limits. 4 
 
 In addition to these elementary Bible-schools, which 
 
 1 See Vitringa, De Synag. Vet., pp. 133-135 ; also Hamburger's Real-Encyc, 
 II., 1 103. 2 Pesachim, 112 a. Baba Bathra, 21 a. 
 
 3 Edersheim's Life and Times, I., 232. 
 
 4 See Marcus's Paedag. d. Israel. Volk., II., 48. Maimonides (Yad Ha- 
 chazaqa, I., 2) summarizes the rabbinical requirements on the school question, 
 as follows: " 1. Teachers of children must be appointed in every province, 
 every district, and every city. The inhabitants of a city, in which the children 
 are not sent to a teacher, are to be interdicted until they engage a teacher ; 
 and if they persist in their refusal, the city itself is to be put under the inter- 
 dict ; for the world exists only by the breath from the lips of school children. 
 2. The child has to be sent to school, according to its physical strength and 
 constitution, at its sixth or seventh year, but not under six years of age. . . . 
 The teacher must instruct them all day and a part of the night, to accustom 
 them to learn day and night. No vacations are granted to the children, except 
 the afternoon preceding the Sabbath, or the Holiday, and the holidays them- 
 selves. On the Sabbath nothing new must be learned, but rehearsing is 
 permitted. Not even spare hours shall be given them to assist in the building 
 of the holy temple. 3. A teacher, who goes out and leaves the children by 
 themselves, or who stays with them and does some other work, or is lazy in 
 his teaching, is included in the curse pronounced over him * that does the 
 work of the Lord negligently ' (Jer. 48 : 10) ; therefore, only a God-fearing 
 and conscientious man is to be engaged as teacher. 4. Neither an unmarried 
 man shall be teacher (on account of the visits of the mothers of the children), 
 nor women (on account of the fathers, etc.). 5. There must be one teacher 
 for every twenty-five children. For a number of above forty an assistant is 
 necessary ; and for a yet greater number, two assistants. 6. It is allowable to 
 send a child to another teacher, if the latter's care and zeal justify it ; but only 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 15 
 
 were provided for in every community, there were more 
 advanced Bible-schools in connection with every local 
 synagogue; 1 as also, in some cases, in the houses of the 
 Rabbis. 2 It was in these synagogue Bible-schools that 
 the Jewish religious training agency found its more pecu- 
 liar likeness to our best modern church Sunday-schools, 
 The outside Bible-schools were as the primary depart- 
 ment, and the synagogue Bible-schools as the main 
 department of the religious school system. The regular 
 Sahlffih services of the synagog ue inr1ll fW * n <Arfiflfl " n " 
 service of worship and an afternoon serv ice of inte rlocu- 
 tory Bible^study for young and old together, with an 
 intermission between for dinner; apian quite similar to 
 that which prevails in many of our best organized city 
 churches to-day. 3 The forenoon service was known as 
 the Beth-ha-Sepher, the House of the Book ; and the 
 afternoon service as the Beth-ha-Midrash, the House of 
 the Searching, or Study. 4 The study-room was ordi- 
 narily the upper room 5 (not the basement room, as in 
 some of our modern churches) ; and the school service 
 held there was not infrequently spoken of as " the syna- 
 
 when teacher and child live in the same place and no river divides between their 
 houses. Under no consideration can a child be brought into another city, or 
 over a river (even in the same city) except the river be safely bridged over." 
 
 1 Jems. Kethuboth, xiii., i. Lightfoot's Horae Hebraicae, L, 78. See, also, 
 Vitringa, De Synag. Vet., p. 133 ff., and Schiirer's Hist., Div. II., Vol. I., § 25, 
 p. 325; Vol. II., I 27, p. 53. 
 
 * Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., IV., 15 ; also Hausrath's Hist. ofN. T. Times, I., 90. 
 
 » Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., II., 96; IV., 123. 
 
 4 Jerus. Kethuboth, xiii., 1 (the latter is here called Beth-Talmud). Light- 
 foot's Hor. Heb., I., 78. See, also, Megilla, 28 b, cited in Hor. Heb., IV., 280. 
 
 • Jerus. Shabbath, i., 2. Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., II., 96; IV., 14 f. Comp. 
 Succa, 45 a. 
 
1 6 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 gogue," l inasmuch as it was a proper department of the 
 synagogue. 
 
 So important was the Bible-studying service, in the 
 estimation of the Rabbis, that the saying arose: "The 
 righteous go from the synagogue to the school;" 2 or, as 
 we might have it in modern parlance : " The good man 
 goes from the church to the Sunday-school." It was 
 even suggested that this is the idea in Psalm 84 : 7 : 
 "They go from strength to strength [from one source 
 of strength to another source of strength ; and so], every 
 one of them appeareth before God in Zion." He who 
 went from the house of the book (the house of reading 
 or the house of prayer) to the house of study, was said to 
 be worthy of the presence of the Shekinah. 3 And the 
 duty of bringing the children from the one service to 
 the other was explicitly enjoined by the Rabbis. 4 One 
 of the services was not enough by itself (whichever it 
 was), without the other to complement it. 
 
 The sessions of the elementary Bible-schools were daily, 
 except on the Sabbath. 5 The sessions of the synagogue 
 Bible-schools, like the synagogue services, were on Mon- 
 
 * Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., II., 96. Vitringa, De Synag. Vet., p. 133 f. Tay- 
 lor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 65, note 27. Simon's L ' Educ. et V Instr., 
 p. 31. Sepp's Das Leben Jesu Christi, I., 173. Hirsch's Aus d. rabb. Schull., 
 p. 8. That the custom of looking upon the place of social worship and the 
 place of study as one and the same place was a common one among the 
 Jews, is indicated in the survival of the term " school," in designation of 
 the synagogue by Portuguese and German Jews. The same term is similarly 
 employed in Italy, as witnesses the designation in Leghorn of the synagogue 
 street, as Via delta Scuola. 
 
 2 " From the place of prayer to the place of study." Cited in the Qabbal 
 istic book Zohar. 3 Midrash Tehillim on Psa. 84: 7. 
 
 4 Baba Bathra, 21 a. Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., 1103. 
 
 • Comp. Qiddushin, 30 a. Ginsburg, in Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Education.' 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 1 7 
 
 day and Thursday, as well as on the Sabbath, in order 
 that the country people, when they came into town to do 
 their marketing, might have the privileges of religious 
 instruction. 1 For the same reason, sessions of these 
 Bible-schools were also, at times, held in some open 
 square, or by the wayside. 2 Tri-weekly services of the 
 synagogues, and tri-weekly sessions of the accompanying 
 schools, have, indeed, been continued down to modern 
 times in some of the more strict and orthodox Jewish 
 communities. 
 
 Synagogues, with their accompanying Bible-schools, 
 were found in all the towns and villages of Palestine, and 
 in many Gentile cities beyond, where any considerable 
 number of Jews had their temporary home. 3 In some 
 Palestinian cities these training agencies were multiplied. 
 Thus, for example, there were at least thirteen synagogues 
 and schools in Tiberias; 4 and in Jerusalem there were, 
 according to one authority, four hundred and sixty, and 
 according to another, four hundred and eighty. 5 This 
 would give a larger number of Sunday-schools to Jerusa- 
 lem twenty centuries ago, than are to be found to-day in 
 Boston, or in New York, or in Chicago. But the Sunday- 
 school statistics of that day were not even so trustworthy 
 
 1 Jerus. Megilla, iv., i; comp. i., 1-3. Schurer's Hist., Div. II., Vol. II., 
 § 27, p. 83. See, also, Baba Qamma, 82 a; Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., II., 93; 
 Schiirer, in Riehm's Handworterbuch des Biblischen Altertums, II., 1594 £; 
 and Josfs Allg. Gesch. d. Israel. Volk., II., 76. 
 
 * Edersheim's Life and Times, I., 231. 
 
 • Acts9: 2, 20; 13: 5, 14, 15, 43; 14: 1; 15: 21; 17: i, 17; 18: 4, 7, 8, 17, 
 y6; 22: 19; 24: 12; 26: 11. 
 
 4 Berakhoth, 30 b. Lightfoot's Hor. Neb., I., 158. 
 
 * Jerus. Kethuboth, xiii., 1. Jerus. Megilla, iii., 1. Lightfoot's Hor 
 Ueb., I., 78. 
 
IS THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 as those of the present time ; and it is probable that the 
 numbers here given are to be taken symbolically, or 
 gematrially, 1 rather than literally; 2 although Ginsburg 3 
 deems these figures not "at all exaggerated." At all 
 events, they go to show that the Sunday-school agency 
 was at that time not an insignificant one in the great 
 Jewish metropolis. 
 
 In the ordinary conduct of these synagogue Bible- 
 schools, at a later period, and presumably from an early 
 date, the Rabbi (or the superintendent, as we should call 
 him) occupied a seat on a platform, or on cushions, which 
 raised him above the level of the school-room floor. His 
 chaberim, or colleagues, or assisting teachers (assistant 
 superintendents as they were in some cases), were seated 
 a little lower than himself, although still above the floor; 
 frequently in a semicircle at his right hand and his left. 4 
 The pupils were seated cross-legged, in Oriental fashion, 
 on the floor ; literally at the feet of their teachers. 5 In 
 
 1 See Farrar's Early Days of Christianity, Bk. V., chap. 28, £5, 
 
 2 Lightfoot's Hor. Heb., I., 78. 
 
 8 In Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Synagogue." 
 
 4 See Godwyn's Moses and Aaron, p. 30 f. 
 
 8 Joses ben Joezer said, " Let your house be a meeting-house for the wise; 
 
 and powder thyself in the dust of their feet, and drink their words with thirsti- 
 
 ness" (Pirqe Aboth, i., 4). Vitringa understands this as meaning that the 
 
 pupils should drop themselves on the ground which the teachers covered 
 
 with the dust of their feet (De Synag. Vet., p. 168 f.). It is claimed that before 
 
 the days of Gamaliel the pupils stood before their teachers in reverence for 
 
 the law; but that afterward they sat (Gemara Megilla, 21 a; Vitringa, p. 
 
 166). This claim, however, is shown by Vitringa, and by Lightfoot {Hor. 
 
 Heb., III., 46-48), to be not justified by the facts. Comp. Luke 10: 39; Acts 
 
 22: 3. In Sanhedrin, 5, it is said, " In Bitter there were three teachers, in 
 
 Yabneh four, of whom one, R. Shimeon, spoke also in the presence of the 
 
 other three, but seated on the floor;" meaning that while yet a pupil he 
 
 wras permitted at times to teach. R. Eliezer (Megilla, 19} v«. ! 4 r " I never 
 
/7S JEWISH ORIGIN. 19 
 
 the larger schools there were, in addition to the chaberim, 
 or colleagues, assistants known as anwraim, or speakers, 
 or repeaters ; corresponding somewhat to monitors in the 
 English school system. The truth to be taught by these 
 speakers was whispered in their ears by the Rabbi, to be 
 spoken out by them in a loud tone of voice. And here 
 is the force of the expression, " What ye hear in the ear, 
 proclaim upon the housetops." ' In the more primitive 
 and elementary schools, the pupils sat on the ground in 
 a semicircle, facing their sitting teacher. 2 
 
 Although the traditional law, with its expositions by 
 the fathers, rather than the simple text of the Bible, was the 
 more immediate subject of study, or of discussion, in the 
 Beth-ha-Midrash, the Bible text was supposed to be 
 the primary basis of the " searching " here, as it had been 
 the exclusive theme of study in the elementary schools 
 which preceded this. And the Beth-ha-Midrash included 
 the young, as well as older persons, among its pupils. 3 
 
 passed over the heads of the holy nation ; " that is, over the heads of the 
 pupils that sit on the floor of the Beth-ha-Midrash. See note on this subject 
 in Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 28 f. 
 1 Matt. 10: 27. 
 
 * Maimonides (cited by Vitringa, p. 166) says that " the teacher sits at the 
 head, while the disciples surround him in front, like a wreath, so that all of 
 them can see the teacher, and hear his words. And the teacher is not sitting 
 on a seat and his disciples on the ground ; but either all sit on the ground, 
 or all sit on seats." Comp. Isa. 30:20, "Thine eyes shall see thy teacher" 
 (R. V., marg.). Again, in Shir Kabba (on Cant. 6 : 11, 1. c), referring to the 
 pomegranates in the vineyard, it is said : " These are the children that are 
 seated, and occupy themselves with the Torah, who sit in rows like the grains 
 of the pomegranate." For a description of the Oriental schools of to-day, see 
 Lane's The Modern Egyptians, Vol. I., pp. 73-78 ; Ebcrs's Egypt, II., 64-71; 
 Loftie's A Ride in Egypt, pp. 182-194 ; Jessup's Syrian Home Life, p. 48 f. 
 
 * Berakhoth, 17 a. Lightfoot's Hor, Heb., II., 95. Comp. gloss in Shabbath, 
 ;iS a, cited by Lightfoot, III., 101 ; and Hamburger's Eeal-Encyc, II., 
 676, 1104. 
 
20 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 In addition to the opening and closing exercises of 
 worship which always had their place in these Bible- 
 schools, 1 the method of instruction was almost entirely 
 interlocutory and catechetical. The idea of attempting 
 to instruct passive hearers by the teacher's continuous 
 discourse does not seem to have entered the acute Jewish 
 mind. That was a later seduction of the Adversary. On 
 this point the evidence is overwhelming ; and it is impor- 
 tant that it be recognized accordingly, in view of its 
 practical bearing on the whole system of Jewish and 
 Christian Bible-school teaching. 
 "^ Vitringa says : " It was the teacher's [part] to listen ; 
 and the pupil's [part] to question;" 2 not the teacher's 
 part to lecture and the scholar's part merely to hear. 
 Again Vitringa says: "The mode of teaching [that is, 
 one of the modes of teaching] was this : the colleagues 
 (wise men and students) raised a question on this or that 
 subject, while the teacher answered it fully through an 
 interpreter [speaking it low to an amora y who would 
 repeat it aloud to the colleagues] ; or again [as another 
 mode of teaching] the teacher himself began the discus- 
 sion of a theme raised by him." 3 And whether it was 
 the teacher, or a colleague, or a pupil, who began the 
 discussion, it was by the pupil's share in the questioning 
 that the pupil's chief gain as a pupil was made. In Pirqe 
 Aboth, or the Sayings of the Fathers, a tractate of the 
 Mishna, it is declared that in order to make the Torah 
 his own possession, a student must not only listen to it 
 attentively, but must have a part in its discussion, and 
 must ask and answer questions concerning it, and must 
 
 1 Berakhoth, z6 b, vj a. * De Synag. Vet., p. 168. * Ibid., p. 157. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN, 21 
 
 repeat over what he has heard. 1 Lightfoot cites Maimon. 
 ides as saying, that in a city where there are not two wise 
 men, one capable of instructing, and the other competent 
 to hear, and to ask and answer questions, there cannot be 
 a true sanhedrin, " although there were a thousand Israel- 
 ites in that city." 2 In other words, there can be no school 
 without a teacher, and no teaching without questioning. 
 
 Says Ginsburg: 3 "The mode or manner in which 
 instruction was communicated [in these Jewish Bible- 
 schools] was chiefly catechetical. After the master [the 
 teacher] had delivered his dicta or theme, the disciples 
 [the scholars] in turn asked different questions, which he 
 frequently answered by parables or counter questions. . . . 
 Sometimes the teacher introduced the subject by simply 
 asking a question connected with the theme he proposed 
 to propound [as his lesson for the day]; the replies given 
 by the different disciples [or scholars] constituted the dis- 
 cussion, which the master at last terminated by declaring 
 which of the answers was the most appropriate. Thus 
 Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai ... on one occasion wanted 
 to inform his disciples what was the most desirable thing 
 for man to get. He then asked them, 'What is the best 
 thing for man to possess?' One replied, 'A kind na- 
 ture;' another, 'A good companion;' another, 'A good 
 neighbor ; ' another, ' The power to foresee consequences ; ' 
 whilst Rabbi Eleazer said, 'A good heart' Whereupon 
 Rabbi Jochanan remarked, ' I prefer Rabbi Eleazer's an- 
 swer to yours; for in it all your answers are compre- 
 hended.'" 4 "All was life, movement, debate," in these 
 
 1 PirqeAboth, vi., 6. Comp. Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 
 113 f., and Marcus's Paedag., II., 42. * Hor. Ned., III., 48. 
 
 * In Cyc. of Bib. Lit., art. " Education." * Pirqe Aboth, ii., 9-12. 
 
22 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 Bible -schools, says Deutsch; 1 "question was met by 
 counter-question, answers were given wrapped up in alle- 
 gories or parables ; the inquirer was led to deduce the 
 questionable point for himself by analogy." 
 
 Many indications are given in the Talmud of the 
 fundamental importance attached to this interlocutory, 
 or catechetical, method of Bible teaching, as in contrast 
 with passive hearing. Referring to the words in Jere- 
 miah 23: 29, "Is not my word like as fire? saith the 
 Lord," Rabbi Ishmael is cited as saying : " As the fire 
 does not continue to burn on one piece of wood, so 
 also the words of the Torah cannot prosper with him 
 who has and studies them for himself" 2 — all by himself. 
 Again, in answer to the question, " Why is the Torah 
 like wood?" — or a tree (as declared of Wisdom in Prov- 
 erbs 3 : 18, " She is a tree of life to them that lay hold 
 on her " ), it is said, from Rabbi Nachman ben Yitschaq : 
 "As a small piece of wood [when lighted] kindles the 
 greater, so the little ones among the disciples of the wise 
 kindle the greater ones and sharpen their wits." 3 And 
 one who was himself a superintending Rabbi testified: 
 " Much I have learned from my teachers ; more from my 
 colleagues ; but most of all from my scholars." 4 Again it 
 is declared by a Rabbi : " The Torah is acquired only by 
 companionship " (through co-work between two). 5 " Be- 
 rooriah, the celebrated wife of Rabbi Meir, met one of 
 her husband's pupils who studied silently. She, watching 
 him, said, ' That which is designed for all [the members 
 of the body] must be secured by expression, or it will 
 not be secured in the heart.' " 6 Of another pupil it is 
 
 1 Literary Remains, p. 24 f. 2 Taanith, 7 a. 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Ibid. ; also Makkoth, 10 a. 5 Berakhoth, 63 b. 6 Erubin, 54 b. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 23 
 
 said that, not studying aloud, he forgot in three years all 
 he had learned in the school. 1 And Rabbi Joshua ben 
 Levi affirmed: "He who teaches without having the 
 lesson repeated [back to him] aloud is like one who sows 
 and does not reap." 2 
 
 A responsibility was recognized as resting on the 
 Jewish teacher, not only to try to teach, but to teach. 
 Until he had actually taught his scholar, his work was 
 practically a failure, or at the best an incompleted purpose. 
 Rabba Raba said: " If a lesson is not understood by a 
 pupil, the trouble is not so much with the pupil as with 
 the teacher, who fails to make the lesson clear to that 
 scholar." 3 Here is a recognition of the fundamental 
 truth that teaching a thing is not merely telling that 
 thing, but is causing another to know that thing. It 
 was said of Rabba Preda, " He was ready to repeat his 
 teaching a hundred times to his scholars, if that were 
 necessary to their understanding of it." 4 
 
 Such prominence, indeed, was given to repetition, or to 
 reviewing, in the synagogue Bible-schools, that, according 
 to one rule, " On a Sabbath only things previously learned 
 should be repeated, nothing new being introduced at such 
 a time." 5 This would seem to make the Sabbath the 
 review season, or the re-enforcement season for the entire 
 
 1 Menorath Ha-maor, iv., 1, 5. 
 
 * Sanhedrin, 99 a. In many Jewish schools, as in Oriental schools, to-day, 
 the pupils, while studying, rock their heads and bodies backwards and for- 
 wards, not only as a help to memory, but (as It is claimed) in illustration 
 of the spirit of David when he said (Psa. 35: 10), "All my bones shall say. 
 Lord, who is liWunto thee?" 
 
 * Taanith, 8. Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., 672. Comp. Qoheleth Rabtv 
 on Eccl. 10: 15. * Erubin, 54 b. Hamburger, ibid. 
 
 * Yore Dea, 245 ; cited in Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., 674. 
 
24 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL: 
 
 week's Bible-study. V And so possessed were the scholars 
 supposed to be with a living interest in their lessons when 
 they came to the Bible-school, that a proverbial caution 
 of the Rabbis was: " At the coming in of the teacher the 
 scholars shall not overwhelm him with questions;" 1 or, 
 as we should express it, " Don't all speak at once!" 
 
 The ability and readiness to ask questions fittingly, as 
 well as to answer them correctly, were indeed deemed 
 an indispensable qualification of a Jewish teacher. No 
 power of continuous discourse on his part was a substi- 
 tute for that. Of the seven talmudic requisites of an 
 educated man, five of them bear directly on this point. 
 He_jdlloiojj3e_jnjiaj^ he will ask only fitting 
 
 vxpi£SJtians ; he willjjive suitable answers; he will answer 
 the first thing first, and the last thing last; and he will can- 
 jjjjjly q onfess t he limits of his knowledge. 2 It is even 
 asserted by the Kabbis that there are to be Bible-schools 
 in heaven; 3 and that "just as questions are asked and 
 answered in the schools below, so questions are asked and 
 answered in the schools above;" 4 which is only another 
 way of asserting that neither on earth nor in heaven can 
 there be any real teaching which does not secure real 
 learning; that, whi le a man can preach whftnf ^y one 
 breeds , frim or nnt | hp rp nn pt teach unless some one lear ns. 
 
 "Special attention was given to the culture of the 
 memory," in the training of Jewish children, " since for- 
 
 1 Shabbath, 3 a. See, also, Tosephta Sanhedrin, ch. iv. ; cited by Marcus, 
 Paedag., II., 50. 
 
 2 Pirqe Aboth, v., 10. See, also, Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 
 100 f., with note giving the comments of R. Obadiah of Sforno. 
 
 3 Qoheleth Rabba on Eccl. 8 : 10. 
 4 Qabbalist R. Menahem Reqanati, in Comm. on Exod., ch. 18. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 2$ 
 
 getfulness might prove as fatal in its consequences as 
 ignorance or neglect of the law." 1 Even where words 
 were to be memorized in their literalness, the Jewish 
 scholar was not left to study by himself, nor was the 
 teacher contented with a single repetition of the truth 
 he would have learned. Iteration and reiteration on the 
 teacher's part, and responding repetitions on the part of 
 the scholar, were insisted on. 2 
 
 An illustration of the approved method in this line is 
 given in the talmudic account of the way in which Moses 
 conducted his school for the original teaching of the 
 Torah and the Mishna: 3 "Moses repaired to his tent, 
 followed by Aaron, to whom he communicated the re- 
 ceived law and its interpretation. Aaron then rose and 
 removed to Moses' right side ; whereupon Aaron's sons, 
 Eleazar and Ithamar, entered, and received the same com- 
 munication from Moses, after which they took their seats 
 respectively on either side of Moses and Aaron. Then 
 the seventy elders came, and Moses taught them in the 
 same way as he had taught Aaron and his sons. Finally 
 all the people entered — or every one who had a desire 
 for the knowledge of the Lord — and Moses made them 
 also acquainted with these teachings of the Lord. In 
 this way Aaron had heard the law from Moses' lips four 
 times, his sons three times, the elders twice, and the 
 people once. Then Moses rose from among them, and 
 Aaron repeated aloud what he had [now] heard four 
 
 1 Pirqe Aboth, iii., 12. Chagiga, 9 a. Qiddushin, 50 b. See, also, Eders- 
 heim's Life and Times, I., 230. 
 
 * It has been claimiR, indeed, that if every copy of the Talmud were 
 destroyed, " any twelve learned Rabbis would be able to restore it verbatim 
 from memory." (Gfrorer's Jahrh. d. Heils, I., 170; cited in Edersheim's 
 Sketches of Jewish Social Life, p. 129, note.) » Erubin, 54 b. 
 
26 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 times, and he left the tent. Then Aaron's sons, who had 
 by this time heard the law four times (three times by 
 Moses and once by their father), repeated it aloud to the 
 audience, and they left. Thereupon the seventy elders, 
 who also by this time had heard the same teachings four 
 times, repeated it to the people. The people now had 
 heard it four times also — once from Moses, once from 
 Aaron, once from Aaron's sons, and finally from the 
 elders. Thus instructed, they also left the tent, teaching 
 each other what [of the written law] they had learned, and 
 writing it down [for they, also, must repeat it in order 
 to make it their own]. The interpretation [of the law 
 as distinct from the written law itself] they imprinted on 
 their minds, and delivered it orally to their children ; and 
 these again to theirs." And thus it was that the simplest 
 form of teaching by means of memorizing was conducted 
 among the Jews. 
 
 It was not that these catechetical Bible-schools were 
 merely incidental to the Jewish life and polity ; they were 
 reckoned a very part of the religious system itself, essen- 
 tial to the stability and perpetuity of the national existence 
 and character. Many a talmudic proverbial saying might 
 be cited in illustration of this truth. Thus, for example : 
 " The world continues to exist, only by the breath of the 
 children of the schools." 1 "The children must not be 
 
 1 Shabbath, fol. 119 b. Geikie ( The Life and Words of Christ, Vol. I., p. 
 565, Notes) calls attention to the fact that Dukes (in Rabbinische Blumenlese, 
 104) explains this as referring to " the innocence of young children," rather 
 than to the importance of their education. But, even with that meaning, it is 
 clear that the innocent children are, by this talmudic saying, reckoned as sure 
 to be in the schools of the nation. Moreover, Maimonides (cited in note 1, 
 p. 14, ante) explicitly applies this talmudic saying to the importance of the 
 children's education. See, also, on this point, Van Gelder's Die Volkssch. d. 
 fud. Alterth., p. 3. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 2J 
 
 detained from the schools, even though it were to help 
 
 rebuild the temple." 1 " T1 ^ jTUf guardian* nt the ri ty 
 
 are the teachers. " 2 " If you would destroy the Jews you 
 must destroy their schools." 3 " He who learns the Torah 
 and does not teach it, is like a [fragrant] myrtle in the 
 desert, where there is no one to enjoy it." 4 " He who 
 teacheth a child is like one who writeth with ink on clean 
 paper ; but he who teacheth old persons is like one who 
 writeth with ink on blotted paper." 5 " He who teaches 
 the Torah to the child of his fellow-man, is to be looked 
 upon, in a scriptural point of view, as though he had 
 begotten him." 6 " He who refuses a pupil one lesson 
 has, as it were, robbed him of his parental inheritance." 7 
 ■ He who teaches the child of his fellow-man shall occupy 
 a prominent place among the saints above." 8 This last 
 aphorism would seem to be a paraphrase of the promise 
 in Daniel, 9 which, in its marginal reading, is : " The teach- 
 ers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and 
 they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars, for- 
 ever and ever." 
 
 A Bath-Qol (a very voice of God) said to the Jews : 
 " Dearer to me is the breath of the school-children, than 
 the fragrance of the sacrifices on the smoking altar." 10 
 
 1 Shabbath, 120. a Jerus. Chagiga, vii., 7. 
 
 8 Bereshith Rabba, ch. 65. Hamburger's Real-Encyc. II., 1102 f. 
 
 4 Rosh Ha-shana, 23 a. Comp. Buxtorf's Syn. Jud., p. 139. 
 
 6 This maxim, which has come to be the common property of Jewish and 
 Christian educators alike, would seem to be a talmudic rendering of the words 
 of Saul of Tarsus, the pupil of Gamaliel. It is given in Pirqe Aboth (iv., 27) 
 as ascribed to Elisha ben Aboo^kh, the great apostate, who is called in the 
 rabbinical writings acher, that is, "the other one," after Jesus of Nazareth, 
 who is spoken of in those writings as otho ha-eesh, " that man." 
 
 • Sanhedrin, 19. ' Cheleq, 91. 8 Shabbath, 33. 9 Dan. 12: 3. 
 
 10 Qoheleth Rabba on Eccl. 9: 7. Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., 1103. 
 
28 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 And the Rabbis, commenting on the words in the psalm 
 of David, " Touch not my anointed ones, and do my 
 prophets no harm," 1 explained that the Lord's "anointed 
 ones" are the school-children, and his "prophets" are 
 their teachers. 2 God himself is even represented by the 
 Rabbis as teaching little children. " What is God doing 
 in the fourth part of the day [the last quarter of the day] ? " 
 asks R. Acha. And the answer is : " He sits and teaches 
 children the Torah, as it is said in Isaiah 28 : 9, 'Whom 
 will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to 
 understand the message? them that are weaned from 
 the milk, and drawn from the breasts.' " 3 To live in a 
 community where there was no Bible -school was for- 
 bidden to the godly Jew. 4 "A village without a school 
 for children ought to be destroyed," said a talmudic 
 authority; 5 and it was even said, after the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, that that disaster came because the schools 
 there — many as they were — were neglected. 6 
 
 And this was the Bible-school system of the Jews in 
 Palestine, at the time that Jesus of Nazareth was born 
 into that land, to be brought up there as a Jew. Bible 
 teaching was to begin at home. 7 At from five to seven 
 years of age, at the latest, the child was to find his place 
 in the church Bible-school. 8 He was there to memorize 
 
 1 Psa. 105: 15; 1 Chron. 16: 22. 
 
 2 Kethuboth, 103. Shabbath, 119. See, also, Yalqut on Psa. 105: 15. 
 
 3 Yalqut on Isa., 47 a. 4 Sanhedrin, 17 b. 5 Shabbath, 120. 6 Ibid. 
 
 7 " Passing over the Old Testament period, we may take it that, in the days 
 of Christ, home teaching ordinarily began when the child was about three 
 years old " (Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life, p. 129). 
 
 8 Five years of age was the time for an exceptionally healthy and vigorous 
 Jewish child to begin his school study (Pirqe Aboth, v., 24); but with the 
 average child six years of age was counted young enough. " There is both 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 29 
 
 the words of Scripture, and he was at the same time to 
 come to an understanding of its meaning through the 
 process of familiar questioning and answering. Later, 
 he was to be a member of the synagogue Bible-school ; 
 to share there the benefits of that interlocutory teach- 
 ing which was the only process which the Jews deemed 
 worthy of the name of teaching. So far the facts would 
 seem to be fairly established. 
 
 Referring to the elementary Bible-schools, such as have 
 been here outlined, Edersheim says : l " We do not even 
 know quite certainly whether the school-system had, at 
 that time, extended to far-off Nazareth; nor whether 
 the order and method which have been described were 
 universally observed at that time. In all probability, 
 however, there was such a school at Nazareth ; and, if 
 so, the Child-Saviour would conform to the general prac- 
 tice of attendance. We may thus, still with deepest 
 reverence, think of him as learning his earliest earthly 
 [Bible-school] lesson from the Book of Leviticus." 
 
 In the one glimpse that is given us of the childhood of 
 our Lord, 2 he is seen in one of the more advanced Bible- 
 schools of his day, within the temple limits, at the age of 
 twelve years, having a part in its ordinary exercises, in 
 accordance with the customs of that time. " There were 
 occasions," says Edersheim, 3 " on which the temple be- 
 came virtually, though not formally, a Beth-ha-Midrash. 
 
 common sense and sound experience in this talmudical saying (Kethuboth, 
 50 [3]), ' If you set your child to regula^study before it is six years old, you 
 shall always have to run after, and yet never get hold of, it.' This chiefly has 
 reference to the irreparable injury to health caused by such early strain upon 
 the mind " (Edersheim, as above, p. 105). 
 
 1 Life and Times, I., 233. ' Luke 2 : 42-47. • Life and Times, I., 247. 
 
30 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 For we read in the Talmud that the members of the 
 temple Sanhedrin, who on ordinary days sat as a court 
 of appeal, from the close of the morning to the time of the 
 evening sacrifice, were wont on Sabbaths and feast-days 
 to come out upon ' the terrace ' of the temple, and there 
 to teach. In such popular instruction the utmost latitude 
 of questioning would be given. It is in this audience, 
 which sat on the ground, surrounding and mingling with 
 the doctors [the teachers] . . . that we must seek [at 
 this time] the child Jesus." 
 
 There he was, as the evangelist gives the record, " sit- 
 ting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and 
 asking them questions." l It was not that his presence 
 
 1 Luke 2 : 46. This simple incident in the Bible story has been a fruitful 
 theme of discussion among commentators. It has been claimed by some that 
 the child Jesus here took his place as a teacher among teachers, or at least 
 assumed some other position than that of a mere learner (comp. Lightfoot's 
 Hor. Heb., III., 48 ; Bishop Taylor's Life of Christ, p. 156 ; Bengel's Gnomon, 
 in loco ; Strauss's New Life of Jesus, II., 98 f. ; De Wette's Handb. z. N. T. f 
 in loco ; Lange's Life of Jesus, I., 322 f. ; Ewald's Hist, of Israel, VI., 187 f. ; 
 Sepp's Das Leben Jesu Christi, I., 185 ; Ellicott's Life of Christ , p. 95). Others 
 have seen in the narrative only the record of a young learner's method in a 
 Jewish Bible-school (comp. Origen's Opera Omnia, Tom. V., p. 158; Wet- 
 stein's N. T. Graec., in loco ; Rosenmiiller's Alte u. Neue Morgenland, VI., 
 46; Neander's Life of Jesus Christ, p. 30 f. ; Olshausen's Bib. Comm., in 
 loco; Meyer's N. T. Comm., in loco; Alford's Greek Test., in loco; Stier's 
 Words of the Lord Jesus, I., 19 ; Van Oosterzee in Schaff- Lange's Bib. Comm., 
 in loco ; Andrews's Life of Our Lord, p. 102 ; Keim's Hist, of Jesus of Nazara, 
 II., 133 ; Farrar's Life of Christ, I., 74-77 ; Geikie's Life and Words of Christ, 
 I., 226-228 ; Plumptre, in Ellicott's New Test. Comm. for Eng. Readers, in 
 loco). In explanation of the supposed contradiction in the Holy Child's being 
 only a learner, while yet he is singled out as in some way in the midst of the 
 teachers, perhaps no more satisfactory suggestion has been made than that 
 which Godet proffers ( Comm. on Luke, in loco) : " The expression ' seated in 
 the midst of the doctors ' proves, no doubt, that the child was for the time 
 occupying a place of honor. . . . Jesus had given some remarkable answer, or 
 put some original question ; and, as is the case when a particularly intelligent 
 pupil presents himself, he had attracted, for a moment, all the interest of his 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 3 1 
 
 there was exceptional, nor yet that his bearing a part in 
 the ordinary exercises of study was to be wondered at. 
 So far he was simply in the line of a Jewish youth's 
 privileges and duty. 1 But that which was remarkable in 
 the case of the Holy Child was his marvelous knowledge 
 in the realm of God's Word, as compared with the knowl- 
 edge of the teachers surrounding him. "All that heard 
 him were amazed at his understanding and his answers." 8 
 And so important did he himself deem this exercise, that 
 he asked his anxious mother why she had sought him 
 anywhere else than just there, during his stay in the holy 
 city as a child. 
 
 teachers. There is nothing in the narrative, when rightly understood, that 
 savors in the least of an apotheosis of Jesus." This is practically the view of 
 Weiss (Life of Christ, I., 276) and of Edersheim (Life and Times, I., 247 f.). 
 
 1 Josephus ( Vita, ch. 2) claims to have been often called on by the high- 
 priests and elders to give his opinion on points of the law, when he was about 
 fourteen years old. This is commonly spoken of as a proof of his egotism ; 
 but the egotism is in his boasting of a fact which was by no means unique, as he 
 seems to have counted it. See a reference to the enkindling power of young- 
 sters among Rabbis at p. 22, ante. The Rabbis had a saying (Bammidbar Rab- 
 ba, 14) that " the word of God out of the mouth of a youngster is to be received 
 as from the mouth of a wise man, yea, as from the mouth of an assembly of 
 wise men, yea, as from the very Sanhedrin, yea, as from the mouth of Moses, 
 yea, as from the mouth of the blessed God himself." Even in modern times 
 a bright youngster has attracted special prominence by his skill in question- 
 answering. Dr. Rawley, the biographer of Lord Bacon, tells of the promi- 
 nence thus accorded to his hero. " Rawley's story introduces us to a child 
 of singular gravity and adroitness, the future Chancellor and courtier. The 
 Queen ' delighted much then to confer with him, and to prove him with ques- 
 tions ; unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above 
 his years, that Her Majesty would often term hitt ' The young Lord Keeper.' 
 Being asked by the Queen how old he was, he answered with much discretion, 
 being then but aboy, that he was two years younger than Her Majesty's happy 
 reign, with which answer the Queen was much taken." (William Aldis 
 Wright's Preface to Bacon's Advancement of Learning, p. vi. f.). 
 
 1 Luke 2 : 47. 
 
32 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 After this, when our Lord had entered upon his public 
 ministry, he is spoken of again and again as teaching in 
 the synagogues, as distinct from his preaching there. If, 
 indeed, we were wholly unfamiliar with the arrangement 
 and customs of the Jewish synagogues in that day, we 
 might be at a loss as to the difference between these 
 two exercises of "teaching" and "preaching" within the 
 limits of the same sacred structure. But knowing what 
 we do, it would seem fair to infer that our Lord bore a 
 part in the morning service of worship and preaching in 
 the synagogue, and in the afternoon service of worship 
 and teaching in the same synagogue; in other words, 
 that he, according to the custom of the godly Jew, went 
 from the synagogue to the Bible-school. 
 
 The evangelist Matthew, who peculiarly wrote from the 
 Jewish stand-point said, in terms which all Jews would 
 understand, that " Jesus went about in all Galilee, teach- 
 ing in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the 
 kingdom;" 1 teaching by that form of instruction which 
 admitted of free interlocutory play between teacher and 
 taught, and preaching by the distinct heralding of a 
 message from God. And again, by the same evangelist 
 the record stands : " Jesus went about all the cities and 
 the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching 
 the gospel of the kingdom." 2 Mark and Luke, also, 
 repeatedly distinguish between the " preaching " and the 
 " teaching " of our Lord. 3 He is, moreover, represented 
 in all the Gospels as pursuing this work of "teach- 
 ing," wherever he might be; by the wayside, 4 by the 
 
 i Matt. 4 : 23. 2 Matt. 9 : 35 ; also n : 1. 
 
 3 Mark 1 : 14, 21, 22, 39 ; Luke 20 : 1. 
 
 * Mark 6 : 6, 34 ; 10 : 1 ; Luke 13 : 22 ; John 4 : 1-42. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 33 
 
 sea, 1 in the private house, 2 or in the temple court, 3 as well 
 as in the synagogue, 4 — teaching the Jews by that familiar 
 interlocutory and inter-colloquial method with which the 
 Jews were so familiar. 
 
 Jnhp the baptist i g al wa y* represented ^ /fl^faW 5 
 
 never as teaching. Even when he gave particular instruc- 
 tion in the line of personal duty, to the soldiers, to the 
 publicans, and to the Jewish people, he is spoken of as a 
 preacher. 6 But Jesus is represented as a teacher of truth, 
 in addition to his mission as a preacher of righteousness. 
 Thus, for example, when he was at Jerusalem at the feast 
 of the tabernacles, it is recorded of him : " When it 
 was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the 
 temple, and taught [sat as the teacher of a gathered class 
 of pupils]. The Jews the refore marvele d, saying, Ho w 
 knoweth this man letters, having never learned? [having 
 never been the pupil of a well-known Rabbi]." 7 No such 
 question as this seems to have been asked concerning 
 John the Baptist ; for he was only a preacher. It was 
 appropriate concerning Jesus, because he now occupied 
 the place of a teacher, questioning his pupils and answer- 
 ing their questions. 
 
 We cannot suppose that all of the questions asked of 
 or by our Lord, in the progress of his manifold teaching, 
 are recorded in the Gospel narratives preserved to us. If 
 
 1 Mark 2: 13; 4: i, 2. 
 1 Matt. 13 : 36 ; 17 : 25 ; Mark 9 : 33-50 ; Luke 7 : 36-50 ; 10 : 38-42 ; 19 : 5-27. 
 
 • Matt. 21 : 23 to 22 : 46 ; Mark 12 : 35 ; 14 : 49 ; Luke 19 : 47 ; 21 : 37 ; John 
 7: 14, 28; 8:2, 20. 
 
 • Matt. 13 : 54 ; Mark 6:2; Luke 4 : 15, 31-33 ; 6:6; 13 : 10 ; John 6 : 59; 
 18: 20. 
 
 6 Matt. 3 : 1-12 ; Mark 1:1-8; Luke 3 : 1-9. 
 
 • Luke 3 : 10-18. 7 j ohn 7 \ i 4> 15. 
 
34 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 that had been attempted, " I suppose that even the world 
 itself would not contain the books." 1 But there is no 
 lack of evidence that questioning and counter-questioning 
 entered freely into his ordinary teaching processes. 
 
 Observe, for example, the record of our Lord's latest 
 exercises of teaching in the temple court, as it is found in 
 Matthew's Gospel. 2 " When he was come into the temple, 
 the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto 
 him as he was teaching, and said, [taking their part in 
 the exercise by this question,] By what authority doest 
 thou these things ? and who gave thee this authority ? 
 And Jesus answered and said unto them, [in accordance 
 with a very common method of response in Jewish Bible- 
 school teaching,] I also will ask you one [counter] ques- 
 tion, which if ye tell me, I likewise will tell you by 
 what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, 
 whence was it? from heaven or from men? And [at 
 that question] they [the questioning priests and elders] 
 reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From 
 heaven; he will say unto us, Why then did ye not believe 
 him ? But if we shall say, From men ; we fear the mul- 
 titude ; for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered 
 Jesus, and said, We know not. He also [then] said 
 unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do 
 these things." 
 
 But our Lord's questionings were not merely, as might 
 seem from this illustration so far, for the purpose of 
 avoiding a profitless discussion with his enemies. On 
 this occasion, he immediately followed up his silenced 
 opposers with the parable of the two sons directed to 
 
 * John 21 : 25. * Matt. 21 : 23 to 23 : 39. 
 
ITS JEWISH ORIGIN. 35 
 
 work in their father's vineyard; prefacing it with the 
 rhetorical question, " But what think ye?" and then ask- 
 ing, categorically, " Whether of the twain did the will of 
 his father?" Another parable, also, was then applied by 
 the questions, " When therefore the lord of the vineyard 
 shall come, what will he do unto those husbandmen ? " 
 and " Did ye never read in the Scriptures?" Group after 
 group of his nominal scholars joined in this questioning, 
 and was met according to the spirit of the particular 
 inquiry. Interrupted at this point for the day, the teach- 
 ing exercise was resumed on the following day. It was 
 begun with a parable spoken by our Lord. At that point 
 the Pharisees came to him with their wily question, " Is 
 it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? " Calling for a 
 specimen of the tribute money, our Lord asked, " Whose is 
 this image and superscription?" and when they answered 
 " Caesar's," he added, " Render therefore unto Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's ; and unto God the things that are 
 God's." It was then the Sadducees' turn, with their knotty 
 question about the marriage relation after the resurrection. 
 The question our Lord met directly with an affirmation 
 of absolute truth ; but he followed this with an instructive 
 question concerning the text of the Mosaic Scriptures, 
 which the Sadducees held to be true and conclusive : " As 
 touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read 
 that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the 
 God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 
 And so the record of the questioning and the answering \ 
 in that series of teaching exercises goes on, concerning the 
 law and concerning the Messiah, until it concludes with 
 the declaration, " And no man was able to answer him 
 
$6 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask 
 him any more questions." Can there be any reasonable 
 doubt, in view of such an illustration as this, of the Jewish 
 method of interlocutory teaching employed by our Lord, 
 that when our Lord is referred to as " teaching," as dis- 
 tinct from his " preaching," we are to understand that the 
 term "teaching" applied to the method of his instruction, 
 as well as to its substance? 
 
 Obviously, it is in the light of well-known Jewish cus- 
 toms, rather than only in the light of classic Greek or 
 of modern English, that we are to interpret the terms 
 " teach " and " teaching," in the narrative of our Saviour's 
 life-course. It is in the same light, also, that we must read 
 the Great Commission, as it stands in its one undisputed 
 authentic form, at the close of the Gospel of the King- 
 dom: 1 " Go ye therefore, and make disciples [scholars] 2 
 of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the 
 Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching 3 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you : 
 and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." As the Jews would have understood that charge, 
 
 1 Matt. 28 : 19, 20. 
 
 2 According to the Talmud (Pirqe Aboth, I., 1), one of the three funda- 
 mental duties of the fathers in Israel, as communicated by God to Moses, by- 
 Moses to Joshua, by Joshua to the elders, by the elders to the prophets, and 
 by the prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue, was to " raise up many 
 scholars," or to secure and to train many pupils. Hence, to a Jew, the com- 
 mand of our Lord to go and make scholars of, or from among, all the Gentiles, 
 had a distinct and well-defined meaning. 
 
 3 " This teaching," says Alford, {Greek Test., in loco,) " is not merely the 
 kerugma of the gospel — not mere proclamation of the good news — but the 
 whole catechetical office of the Church upon and in the baptized. . . . The 
 command is to the Universal Church — to be performed, in the nature of 
 things, by her ministers and teachers." 
 
ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 37 
 
 and as we have every reason to suppose that our Lord 
 meant it, the direction therein is, to organize Bible-schools 
 everywhere as the very basis, the initial form, of the Chris- 
 tian Church. Grouping scholars — the child and the child- 
 like — in classes, under skilled teachers, for the study of 
 the Word of God by means of an interlocutory co-work 
 between teacher and scholars ; that is the starting-point 
 of Christ's Church, as he founded it. Whatever else is 
 added, these features must not be lacking. 
 
 And it would seem that this was the way in which the 
 Great Commission was understood by the Apostles and 
 their immediate successors. We find little said in explicit 
 description of the sanctuary services of the Apostolic 
 Church ; partly, doubtless, because so generally the well- 
 known synagogue services were simply adapted to the 
 necessities of the new organization. Schafif sums up the 
 whole case at this point, when he says concisely: "As 
 the Christian Church rests historically on the Jewish 
 Church, so Christian worship and the congregational 
 organization rest on that of the synagogue, and cannot 
 be well understood without it." 1 Fisher says, with like 
 explicitness : "The synagogue served as a model in the 
 organization of churches." 2 It would be strange, pass- 
 ing strange, if the Christian Church, while retaining th^ 
 other main features of the synagogue, had ignored its 
 very chicfest feature, the Bible-school service; especially 
 as the Great Commission laid pre-eminent emphasis on 
 the work therein included. Nor is there reason for seri- 
 ous question just here. There are many indications in 
 the Book of Acts and in the Epistles that " teaching," 
 
 1 SchafTs Hist, of the Christian Church, I., 456. 
 * Fisher's Hist. 0/ the Christian Church, p. 35. 
 
38 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 after the pattern of the synagogue Bible-schools, was a 
 recognized agency for the extension of the Christian 
 Church, and for the upbuilding in the new faith of those 
 who were won to Christ from the Jewish fold or from the 
 Gentile world. 
 
 It is said of "Peter and the apostles" 1 in Jerusa- 
 lem, that, " every day, in the temple and at home, they 
 ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ" 2 
 These apostles were Jews before they were Christians, 
 and it was as Jews that they had learned how to teach. 
 That they realized the distinction between "teaching" 
 and " preaching," is evidenced in their frequent antitheti- 
 cal use of the one term over against the other. " Paul 
 and Barnabas," again, " tarried in Antioch, teaching and 
 preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also." 3 
 The truth taught by these Christian teachers was very 
 different from that which had been there taught as truth 
 before ; but the method of the teaching was in all proba- 
 bility the same. 
 
 Paul had been a scholar in the Beth-ha-Midrash of 
 Gamaliel. 4 He was skilled in the teaching processes of 
 the best Jewish Bible-schools. As he and Silas journeyed, 
 " they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of 
 the Jews : and Paul, as his custom was, went in unto 
 them, and for three Sabbath days [or for three weeks, 
 including the Mondays and Thursdays between Sabbaths, 
 he] reasoned with them from the Scriptures [discussed 
 with them out of the Scriptures in Jewish teaching fash- 
 ion], opening and alleging, that it behooved the Christ to 
 suffer, and to rise again from the dead." 5 At Berea, 
 
 i Acts S : 29. 5 Acts 5 : 42. s Acts 15 : 35. 
 
 * Acts 22 : 3. 5 Acts 17 : 1-3. 
 
ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 39 
 
 again, Paul did a similar work ; and the record stands of 
 his Berean hearers, that " these were more noble than 
 those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word 
 with all readiness of mind, examining [for themselves] 
 the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so. Many 
 of them therefore [as might be supposed] believed," 
 including " Greek women of honorable estate, and of 
 men, not a few." l At Athens, Paul " reasoned [or dis- 
 cussed, in Bible-school manner] in the synagogue with 
 the Jews and the [other] devout persons;" and he did 
 the same thing " in the market-place every day with them 
 that met with him ; " 2 using the interlocutory or the inter- 
 colloquial method of teaching and learning, which was 
 the essence of the Jewish educational system. 
 
 The Beth-ha-Midrash gatherings, and the Beth-ha- 
 Midrash methods, seem to have been the fresh starting- 
 points of the Christian Church in all the earlier apostolic 
 work under the requirements and the authority of the 
 Great Commission. At Corinth, Paul seems to have begun 
 his labors by having a share in the Beth-ha-Midrash 
 exercises of the synagogue. "And he reasoned in the 
 synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded [or sought to 
 persuade] Jews and Greeks." When, however, he made 
 bold to preach the gospel there, " testifying to the Jews 
 that Jesus was the Christ," a breach was made between 
 him and them, and he went out, carrying with him the 
 ruler of the synagogue, and started a new Bible-school 
 in " the house of a certain man named Titus Justus, . . . 
 whose house joined hard to the synagogue." There he 
 continued " a year and six months, teaching the word of 
 God among them." 3 
 
 1 Acts 17: ii, 12. *Actsi7:i7. 8 Acts 18 : 1-11. 
 
40 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 At Ephesus, after a three months' trial of " reasoning 
 [with] and persuading [or of trying to persuade the Jews 
 in the synagogue school] as to the things concerning the 
 kingdom of God," Paul, as at Corinth, went out from the 
 synagogue school, taking with him the Christian scholars; 
 and he gathered the nucleus of a Christian Bible-school 
 in connection with a daily exercise " in the school of Ty- 
 rannus," which "continued for the space of two years." 1 
 Again, for two whole years Paul was similarly occupied 
 "in his own hired dwelling" in Rome; "preaching the 
 kingdom of God, and teaching the things [the 'all things' 
 commanded of Christ] concerning the Lord Jesus Christ" 2 
 That was the way in which our Lord had enjoined it upon 
 his disciples to extend and to upbuild his Church; by 
 making scholars of those who would be learners, and by 
 teaching them that which they had need to know ; and 
 that was the way in which the disciples carried on the 
 work which had been committed to them by our Lord. 
 
 Incidental references to " instruction," 3 as a well-under- 
 
 1 Acts 19 : 1-10. 2 Acts 28 : 30, 31. 
 
 3 The word katecheo (to instruct catechetically) has as one of its meanings — 
 both in its earlier and in its later use — the idea of a sound resounding, or of a 
 sound given back again. Our word " echo " is from this root. So, again, is 
 our word "catechising" in its modern signification of teaching by form of 
 question and answer. (On this point see Thayer's Greek-Eng. Lex. of N. T. ; 
 Liddell and Scott's Greek-Eng. Lex. ; Schleusner's Lex. Grceco-Lat. in Nov. 
 Test., s. v.; with references to Homer, Hesiod, Lucian, etc.). Whether, as 
 has been often claimed by critical commentators from the days of Melanch- 
 thon down, this word, in its primitive meaning, properly suggests a process of 
 teaching which secures an answer back from a sounding question, or whether 
 that idea is an outgrowth of its later uses, it certainly would seem clear that 
 the term katecheo, as used in the New Testament, refers to a method of explicit 
 and systematic teaching with which the Jewish Christians were familiar ; while, 
 as has been shown, the only method of such teaching which we know of as in 
 use by the Jews at this time and earlier, was by means of question and answer. 
 
ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 41 
 
 stood process of technical Christian teaching, are made by 
 Luke in connection with the warm-hearted convert The- 
 ophilus, 1 and of the eloquentand zealous preacher Apollos. 2 
 "Teachers" 3 are named among the recognized workers of 
 the Christian Church ; and their office work of" teaching " 4 
 is given prominence in its place. It is even named as an 
 essential qualification of a bishop, that he shall be " apt 
 to teach." 5 And "children" 6 — as those to whom our 
 Lord gave prominence — are specifically included in the 
 number of those to whom the apostolic epistles were sent 
 as a fresh basis and outline of instruction. Hence there 
 is sound reason for supposing that the best lessons of the 
 Jewish Church, and the specific injunctions of the divine 
 Founder of the Christian Church, concerning the church 
 care of children, and the systematic study of the Scrip- 
 tures through the process of interlocutory instruction, 
 were borne in mind, and were put in practice by the 
 divinely guided leaders of the Apostolic Church. 
 
 That it was the Bible itself, the inspired text of the 
 
 In other words, the form of catechetical instruction in use by the Jews, and 
 again by the first Jewish Christians, is fairly to be recognized as the interlocu- 
 tory form, whether the New Testament word employed for its designation 
 would in itself give proof of this fact, or not. 
 
 1 Luke 1 : 4. Dr. Schaff (Schaff-Lange's Comm., in loco) says, at this point : 
 "Literally, 'catechised,' ' catechetically taught ' — katechethes. The specific 
 word should have been retained here and elsewhere, instead of the more 
 indefinite instruct or teach. Catechising is a primitive and most important 
 institution of the Church, and a preparatory school for full membership. 
 Archbishop Usher says : ' The neglect of catechising is the frustrating of the 
 whole work of the ministry.' " (Comp. also Meyer's Comm. ; Plumptrc, in 
 Ellicott's N. T. Comm. ; and Farrar, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools, — 
 all in loco.) 2 Acts 18 : 25. 
 
 8 Acts 13 : 1 ; 1 Cor. 12 : 28, 29 ; Eph. 4 : 11. 
 
 * Rom. 12:7; Col. 1 : 28 ; 3 : 16. 6 1 Tim. 3 : 2. 
 
 • Eph. 6:1; Col. 3 : 20 ; 2 John 1. 
 
42 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 sacred writings, that was to be the subject-matter of 
 teaching and of study from childhood to maturity in the 
 church Bible-school, is pointed out by Paul, in his counsel 
 to the young bishop of Ephesus concerning the training 
 work to which he was set of God. " Every scripture in- 
 spired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for 
 correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that 
 the man of God may be complete, furnished completely 
 unto every good work." 1 The word here rendered "in- 
 struction " is not katechesis, as in some of the cases noted. 
 " It is, in the Greek," as a modern church historian has 
 pointed out, 2 " paideia, from pais, a child, and signifies 
 an education begun in childhood; or, if we may fall 
 back upon the case of Timothy, 3 in the days of lisp- 
 ing infancy. Those who have encountered Xenophon's 
 Cyropcedia, or the education of Cyrus from his boy- 
 hood, will recognize and catch in a moment the word's 
 signification. Christianity, in its comprehensive plan for 
 a human existence, is a Christo-pedia, is intended [is 
 divinely intended] to begin with a child's first dawnings 
 of reason and conscience ; and to go on with him, step by 
 step, till he learns, and by Heaven's grace fulfills, all his 
 Christian responsibilities, till he is made, not worthy, 
 indeed, but, to use scriptural language, meet for the inher- 
 itance of the saints in light. And the church, with its 
 chief teacher in the pulpit, and its subordinate teachers 
 in the Bible-class and the Sunday-school, is to be the 
 grand instrumentality for keeping God's truth alive and 
 
 1 2 Tim. 3 : 16, 17. 
 2 Dr. T. W. Coit, in " History of Catechising " in The Sunday School Times, 
 April 19, 1879. Corap. " The Office of Catechising," ibid., July 5, 1879. 
 3 2 Tim. 3 : 15. 
 
ITS CHRISTIAN ADOPTION. 43 
 
 predominant in the human mind, and bringing that truth 
 forth to victory for the salvation of the soul." 
 
 And now let us look back and see what we have ascer- 
 tained in the course of our investigations so far. From 
 the days of Abraham, systematic " instruction " had its 
 place in the plans of the chosen people of God. From 
 the days of Moses, the Jewish Church had a measure 
 of responsibility for the religious training of the young. 
 From the days of Ezra, the Bible-school was a recognized 
 agency, among the Jewish people, for the study and teach- 
 ing of God's Word. In the days of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 there was, in the land of his birth and sojourn, a system 
 of Bible -schools, corresponding quite closely in their 
 general features with our modern Sunday-schools. The 
 elementary or primary schools in this system gave chief 
 prominence to the study of the Bible text. The advanced 
 or senior schools in this system were a department of the 
 synagogue ; and in them Bible commentaries, in addition 
 to the Bible text, were a subject of familiar study. The 
 elementary schools were for children only. The senior 
 schools had a place for children as well as for adults. 
 In all the schools the arrangement was that of scholars 
 grouped under a special teacher; and the process of teach- 
 ing was by form of question and answer. Our Lord 
 seems to have been a scholar in schools of this character; 
 and again he was a teacher in such schools. In founding 
 his Church, he made Bible-school work its basis. His 
 disciples recognized the scope and details of his plan, 
 and they prosecuted their labors of evangelizing and of 
 edifying accordingly. The Bible-school was the starting- 
 point of the Christian Church ; and it was by means of 
 
 ^V^JfK 
 
44 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 
 
 Bible-school methods that the Christian Church was first 
 extended and upbuilded. 
 
 And thus it is that we find in the history and the tra- 
 ditions of the biblical age, the Jewish origin and the 
 Christian adoption of the distinguishing characteristics 
 of that agency of religious teaching which is known in 
 our day as the Sunday-school. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: SEVENTEEN CENTURIES 
 OF ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 
 
II 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: SEVENTEEN CENTURIES 
 OF ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 
 
 Christian Beginnings in Gentile Communities. — Questions and An- 
 swers in Catechumenical Instruction. — Questions and Answers 
 in Pulpit Preaching. — Methods of Teaching in Alexandria. — 
 Evangelizing by Mission -schools. — Ritualism Overshadows 
 Bible Study. — The Dark Ages a Consequence. — Gleams of 
 light in Darkness. — Revival of Schools in the Reformation.— 
 Catechisms Multiplied. — Romish Recognition of the School 
 Idea. — Catechisms as a Barrier to Catechetical Teaching. — A 
 Lesson from New England. — Superiority of Teaching over 
 Preaching in the Training Process. — A New Decline of the 
 Bible-school Agency. 
 
 So long as the Christian Church found its new centres 
 of evangelizing in Jewish communities, the character of 
 its sanctuary services and the methods of its training 
 work were, as a matter of course, largely conformed to 
 the plan and practices of the Jewish synagogue. 1 Its 
 Bible-schools were based on the synagogue-school foun- 
 
 1 " It must in the first place be remembered that the original members of 
 the Christian brotherhood were Jews, and were in no haste to abandon the 
 religious customs of their nation. Christ had come ' not to destroy the law 
 but to fulfil,' and the example of the Master strongly inculcated respect for 
 the ancient forms. . . . We should naturally, therefore, be prepared to find 
 in Jewish forms the starting-point of the development of those adopted by the 
 Christians" (G. Baldwin Brown's From Schola to Cathedral, p. 5 f.). 
 
 47 
 
48 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 dation, as seems evident from the indications already 
 pointed out in the Book of Acts and in the Epistles. 1 
 But when the Church gained a foot-hold in purely Gentile 
 communities, and extended its membership among those 
 who had known nothing of Jewish training methods, it 
 necessarily varied its system of instruction, adapting the 
 details of that system to the peculiar needs of its new fields. 2 
 For a long time Christianity had no one land and 
 people which it controlled religiously, as the Jewish 
 Church had had; hence it was unable to enforce a uni- 
 form church-school system in all communities alike, with 
 carefully graded instruction from the primary class to the 
 divinity school. The best that it could yet do was to 
 provide, in every local church gathering, for the cate- 
 chetical instruction of the young, including the children 
 of believers, and all other children who could be brought 
 under its care; and then to establish, at certain large 
 centres, schools for the more thorough instruction in the 
 "all things" which the fully furnished Christian had need 
 to know. And just this it did do, as ecclesiastical his- 
 tory makes clear. Meanwhile individual Christians were 
 forward and active in efforts to reach and to teach the 
 young whenever and wherever they might do so. For 
 this reason they were always ready to be teachers in 
 any school where they might, by the teaching process, 
 impress the truth of God on impressible minds and hearts. 
 "The Apostolic Church," says Baron Bunsen, "made 
 
 1 See pp. 37-41, ante. 
 s Hatch, in The Organization of the Early Christian Churches (Bampton 
 Lectures for 1880) makes clear these two propositions (p. 208) : " 1. That 
 the development of the organization of the Christian churches was gradual. 
 2. That the elements of which that organization were composed were already 
 existing in human society." 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 49 
 
 the school the connecting link between herself and the 
 world." 1 Tertullian's counsels concerning the relation of 
 Christian teachers to heathen literature, 2 while engaged 
 in the work of popular instruction, are illustrative of 
 this truth. 
 
 It was because of the power already obviously gained 
 over the popular mind by Christian teachers, through this 
 catechetical teaching-process, in the schools of the Roman 
 Empire, that Julian the Apostate, in the fourth century, 
 " determined to take the control of education into the 
 hands of the state;" and that he issued his formal edict, 
 designed to shut out all Christian teachers from those 
 schools. The Emperor realized that the continuous life 
 of Christianity pivoted on the school idea, — on the inter- 
 locutory teaching of the young, — and that, if he could put 
 an end to this line of Christian work, he could hope to 
 check the permanent progress of Christianity. As Bishop 
 Lancelot Andrewes, two centuries ago, said of this plan of 
 Julian's : " If he had not been as a cloud that soon pass- 
 eth away, it might have been feared that in a short time 
 he had overshadowed true religion." 3 Or again, as more 
 recently Bishop John Wordsworth has said: "If Julian 
 had lived, and this edict could really have been put into 
 force for any time, it must have been a very dangerous 
 instrument for the injury of the faith." 4 In other words, 
 God's method of extending and upbuilding his Church 
 
 1 Hippolytus and His Age, II., 105. 
 1 Tertullian's " On Idolatry,' ch. x., in The Ante- Nicene Fathers, III., 66 I. 
 8 The Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 7. 
 * Art. *' Julianus-Emperor," in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biog. Cotnp. 
 SchafTs Hist, of the Christian Church, III., 53 f., and Fisher's Hist, of the 
 Christian Church, p. 91. 
 
 4 
 
50 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 was the one effective method, his enemies themselves 
 being judges. 
 
 Our Lord had taught that children and the child-like 
 were to be the foremost object of his people's care, and 
 that interlocutory teaching was the method by which his 
 cause should be promoted and extended in the world. 
 His followers recognized the importance of this twofold 
 truth ; and from the beginning they gave a chief place, 
 in the work of evangelizing, to efforts among children and 
 the child-like; and interlocutory teaching was the method 
 by which they made the truths of the gospel effective 
 upon the minds of those reached by them. Within a 
 century after the apostolic age, Celsus, a prominent and 
 powerful opponent of Christianity, charged Christians with 
 extending their numbers and propagating their views by 
 getting hold of children privately in homes and schools, 
 and influencing them by conversations with them, without 
 the knowledge of their parents or teachers, and thus leading 
 them away from the religion of their parents. In replying 
 to this charge of Celsus, Origen did not deny the main 
 facts of the case as stated by Celsus; but he insisted that 
 the children thus reached by Christians out of Pagan 
 homes were benefited by the lessons imparted to them, 
 and that if their parents were wise and well disposed they 
 would recognize this as the truth. 1 
 
 Not by great sermonizers swaying the minds of adult 
 unbelievers, but by individual teachers reaching and teach- 
 ing children and the child -like individually, were the 
 triumphs of early Christianity mainly won. " It is a re- 
 markable fact," says Schaff, "that after the days of the 
 
 1 Origen's "Against Celsus," Bk. iii., chs. 55-58 ; in The Ante- Nicene Fathers, 
 IV., 486 f. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 5 1 
 
 Apostles no names of great missionaries are mentioned 
 till the opening of the Middle Ages. . . . There were no 
 missionary societies, no missionary institutions, no organ- 
 ized efforts in the Ante-Nicene age ; and yet in less than 
 three hundred years from the death of St John the whole 
 population of the Roman empire, which then represented 
 the civilized world, was nominally Christianized." l And 
 this was because the divinely approved plan of the child- 
 reaching and the child -teaching methods of Christian 
 activity were adhered to by the immediate successors of 
 the apostles of our Lord. 
 
 The catechetical instruction of the Early Church, which 
 finds mention in the New Testament record, 2 grew in 
 prominence and in obvious importance until the very 
 church edifices were constructed with a view to the 
 accommodation of its subjects. 3 Meanwhile the fore- 
 most minds in the Church at large were gladly devoted 
 to the work of catechising ; great preachers as well as great 
 teachers being willing to leave all other work, if necessary, 
 in order to exercise the function of the catechist. 4 
 
 I SchafTs Hist, of the Christian Church, II., 19 f. 
 * Luke 1:4; Acts 18 : 25. See notes, pp. 40, 41, ante. 
 * See art. " Catechumen," in Encyc. Brit. ; also Bingham's Antiquities of 
 the Christian Church, Bk. viii., chs. 3-7. " For the Church," says Bingham, 
 '* ever since she first divided her catechumens and penitents into distinct orders 
 and classes, had also distinct places in the church for them." " The . . . 
 probable numbers of the members of a congregation likely to be in the con- 
 dition of catechumens," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, " may serve to 
 explain in some degree the architectural arrangements still to be seen in some 
 churches of the early centuries [as, for example] . . . the church of St. Am- 
 brose at Milan, and that of St. Clement at Rome, and some others." Thus 
 it would seem that the providing accommodations for the Sunday-school 
 membership in the church-building has the sanction of high antiquity. 
 
 4 Sec De Pressens^'s Christian Life and Practice in the Early Church, 
 
52 THE SUNDAY- SCHOOL : 
 
 It is true — and it is strange that it is true — that there 
 has been some question whether the catechetical in- 
 struction of the Early Church included, as an essential 
 feature, the interlocutory method of teaching. And as 
 an often used argument against the probability of the 
 prevalence of this method, the unbroken form of the few 
 catechumenical discourses preserved to us is pointed out. 1 
 But, apart from the fact that effective elementary teaching 
 by continuous discourse to passive hearers is, and always 
 has been, and ever must be, practically impossible, there 
 is evidence from various sources that the early Christian 
 Fathers no more attempted this false method than did 
 the Jewish Rabbis before them. Nor, indeed, does the 
 form of the early catechetical discourses, any more than 
 a similar form in our modern school text-books, preclude 
 the idea that free questioning on the substance of the 
 text was deemed indispensable as a means of testing and 
 fixing the learner's knowledge of its meaning. The 
 absence of set questions and answers in the text of the 
 catechetical discourses simply shows that the interlocu- 
 tory teaching of the early catechumens was by means of 
 no mere perfunctory questioning with memorized rote 
 answers in reply. 
 
 The fact that the religious teaching of the Jews, through 
 whom the Christians received their religion, was mainly 
 by the approved means of question and answer, renders 
 it most improbable that a less effective method of teach- 
 ing was adopted by the best Christian instructors without 
 
 Bk. I., ch. I, § i ; also Proudfit's " Catechetical Instruction before the Refor- 
 mation," in Home, the School, and the Church, IV., 47. 
 
 1 See, e.g., Von Zezschwitz's art. " Katechetik," in Herzog's Real-Encyc; 
 also Mayer's Gesch. d. Katechumetiats u. d. Katechese, pp. 6, 255, 269, 300. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 53 
 
 any good reason for the change. It is even pretty clear 
 that the preaching, or sermonizing, or homilizing, of the 
 first two or three Christian centuries, was largely in the 
 nature of interlocutory conferences between the preacher 
 and his congregation. 1 Paniel, in his elaborate " Pragmatic 
 History of Christian Oratory and Preaching," throws 
 light on this point. Calling attention to the fact that in 
 the earlier centuries "the public edifying discoursing in an 
 intelligible tongue was still quite generally called didas- 
 kalia" 2 he says: " The didaskalia was from the beginning 
 nothing else than a mode of instruction which arose from 
 the familiar colloquy of the members of the congregation; 
 taking its material from the Gospel narratives, from the 
 Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and from the 
 stories of the life and death of the apostles, of their dis- 
 ciples, and of the martyrs." 3 Its immediate method was 
 the formal dialogue. Its material was suited to the occa- 
 sion and the hearers. 4 "As religious questions were put 
 
 1 See Broadus's Lectures on the History of Preaching, p. 46. The very 
 term " homily," applied to the early Christian discourses, would seem to indi- 
 cate an interlocutory conference between the preacher and his people. Ho- 
 tnilia means " companionship," " intercourse," " communion." See Thayer's 
 Greek- Eng. Lex. of N. T, s. v. 
 
 * Pragmat. Gesch. d. Christ I. Beredsamkeit u. d. Homiletik, p. 79. " The 
 right to teach, however, was not confined to the presbyters or official per- 
 sons, but depended generally on charisma lis didaskalias [the grace, or 
 gift, of teaching]; and in virtue of this charisma [gift] the work of teaching 
 belonged also to ordinary members of the church, 1 Cor. 14 : 26. This, how- 
 ever, did not preclude the possibility of an official obligation to teach (not a 
 monopoly) being laid upon individual members of the church who were quali- 
 fied to teach ; and so those called to this duty became the didaskaloi of tho 
 Church " (Beck's Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, p. 25 f.). 
 
 * Pragmat. Gesch. d. Christl. Beredsamkeit u. d. Homiletik, p. 135. 
 
 * The inspired description of the gathering on the day of Pentecost, when 
 the Christian Church, as such, had its forming (Acts 2: 1-40) illustrates this 
 
54 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 to him, or as the edifying conversation of members of the 
 congregation turned the thought to a particular theme, the 
 preacher entered into explanations and contemplatings, 
 dwelling more fully on one point, and more briefly on 
 another. A methodic development of his own course of 
 thought could be brought out only so far as the charac- 
 teristics of his hearers, and as the questions or objections 
 raised by them, made this possible. The preacher himself 
 was only one of the speakers; even though he was the 
 principal one. The others were the co-speakers, who 
 prompted the chief speaker to his speaking, and who 
 retained the right to interrupt him at any time. Even 
 when the ministry was transferred to a designated class 
 of persons, this right of joining in conversation with the 
 preacher [as he discoursed] was not wholly surrendered 
 by the congregation." x 
 
 In illustration of this latter claim, Paniel points out 2 that 
 " Macarius's homilies show most clearly the intercourse 
 which existed between the preacher and his hearers in 
 the early Christian times. In this regard they are real 
 
 method. Peter was the chief speaker among the disciples, but by no means 
 the only one. From the time that they "all . . . began to speak with other 
 tongues," until the repentant Jews interrupted Peter with their question to 
 him and to " the rest of the apostles, ' Brethren, what shall we do? ' " the 
 occasion would seem to have been a conference, rather than a congregation 
 of passive hearers sitting before a sermonizer. Yet here is where we find the 
 record of what is known as " Peter's Sermon." Justin Martyr's familiar descrip- 
 tion (" Apology," i., 67, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, I., 185 f.) of the ordinary 
 Sunday services of the Christians in his day [the middle of the second cen- 
 tury] is quite consistent with this view of the case. After the reading of the 
 Scriptures by some of their number, the chief one among them, he says, 
 "verbally instructs and exhorts " in the line of the Bible lessons; thus con- 
 forming to the New Testament plan of " teaching and preaching." 
 
 1 Pragmat. Gesch. d. Christ/. Beredsamkeit u. d. Homiletik, p. 135. 
 8 Ibid., p. 400. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 55 
 
 'homilies;' yea, they, together with some similar ser- 
 mons by Ephraem Syrus, by Isaias Abbas, and by Marcus 
 Asketes, are the only existing ' homilies ' of the oldest 
 forms." ' If, indeed, the Christian Fathers felt the need 
 of this interlocutory method of instruction in the pulpit, 2 
 and yet ignored it in the teacher's chair, they must have 
 been as contrary-minded in their processes of instruction 
 as Herodotus says the Egyptians were in their religious 
 and social customs. 3 But the free use of the question 
 and answer form of statement in the commentaries and 
 other religious writings of the Christian Fathers, even 
 where those writings were not designed for elementary 
 
 1 This statement of Paniel needs modifying, in view of the light recently 
 thrown on the so-called " Second Epistle of Clement," which is shown to be 
 an ancient homily by an unknown author — the oldest homily preserved to us. 
 This homily, it is true, lacks the interlocutory form ; but there is a reason for 
 this in the fact that, probably, as Lightfoot claims (S. Clement of Rome, Ap- 
 pendix, p. 306,) " it was not an extempore address, but was delivered from a 
 manuscript," and was afterward made use of by being " read publicly to the 
 Christian congregation at Corinth from time to time." In short, it is a record 
 of the main points made by a teaching-preacher in one of his discourses, rather 
 than an exhibit of his method of teaching. 
 
 1 While these Lectures are passing through the press, I have a private letter 
 from Professor Dr. M. B. Riddle, who is editing an edition of Chrysostom's 
 works for the Post-Nicene Fathers ; and in this letter he says: "In editing 
 Chrysostom I have been struck by the frequency with which he introduces 
 objections or queries (phisin ['He says'] is his word). While his homilies 
 are continuous, there is a constant ideal interlocutory process. See passim 
 his Homilies." The descriptions preserved to us of the freedom in conversa- 
 tion, and in the showing of approval or disapproval of the preacher, on the 
 part of Constantinople audiences, in the days of Chrysostom, would indicate 
 pretty clearly that the preacher was yet only the chief speaker — and not always 
 that — at the regular services of the church. Sec, on this point, a scholarly 
 article on "Constantinople in the Fourth Century," from the Quarterly Re- 
 view, reprinted in Littell's Living Age for November a8, 1846, p. 431 f. 
 
 » Hist., ii., 35. 
 
56 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 religious instruction, 1 shows how familiar this method was 
 to them as an element in the ordinary teaching process. 
 
 The imperfect records which are left to us of the great 
 catechetical school at Alexandria would, however, seem 
 sufficient to prove that the teaching methods which had 
 before been found effective in the schools both of Jewish 
 religion and of Grecian philosophy, were made use of 
 at their best in that school of the Christian faith — and 
 presumably in similar schools elsewhere. To begin 
 with, the influence of the thought and teachings of Philo 
 Judaeus — mediator as he was between Moses and Plato — 
 on the founders of the great Christian school at Alex- 
 andria, is admitted on all sides. 2 The commentaries of 
 Philo on the Pentateuch, as preserved in their Armenian 
 fragments, are arranged in the form of question and 
 answer much on the principle of the modern larger cate- 
 chisms of the different branches of Protestant Christianity; 
 except that in Philo's work it is the pupil who asks the 
 question, and it is the teacher who answers it. 3 These 
 interrogative commentaries of Philo are shown to have 
 been made a basis of the early Pentateuchal teaching of 
 the catechumens at Alexandria and beyond, as late as the 
 
 1 See citations from Basil and Athanasius in Proudfit's article, as above ; also, 
 articles "Apollinaris " and " Theodoretus " in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biog. 
 Basil's Greater and Lesser Monastic Rules, as well as his second book on 
 Baptism, are in the form of question and answer. Apollinaris the Elder, aided 
 by his son of the same name, adapted the Gospels and the Epistles of the New 
 Testament " to the form of Socratic disputation." Theodoret's commentaries 
 " upon the historical books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles, 
 are in the form of question and answer upon the more difficult passages." 
 " Fourteen books of questions and answers [on the Bible text] form the first 
 volume of Schulze's edition of Theodoret." 
 
 3 See Bigg's The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, passim. 
 8 Opera, VI., VII. Comp. Vitringa, as cited at p. 20, ante. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. $? 
 
 days of Ambrose and Augustine; 1 and it is certainly fair 
 to presume that their substance and method were also 
 found available all the way between these times. 
 
 Clement, who was at the head of the Alexandrian 
 school before the close of the second century, tells in 
 his Stromata ("Miscellanies") of his indebtedness as 
 a teacher to the methods of his former instructors, — 
 presumably Tatian, Theodotus, and Pantaenus. 2 And 
 these methods, as indicated by Clement, recognize the 
 fundamental idea of the learner's need of mental effort 
 as a means of receiving and retaining truth. Thus, for 
 example : " By teaching one learns;" 3 " Use keeps steel 
 brighter, but disuse produces rust on it;" "Wells, when 
 pumped out, yield purer water, and that of which no one 
 partakes turns to putrefaction." "In a word, exercise 
 produces a healthy condition both in souls and bodies." 4 
 It is certainly fair to assume that the methods of teaching 
 which Clement recognized as the best, were not neglected 
 by him in his work as a teacher. 
 
 Origen, yet more distinctively than Clement, was a 
 representative teacher of the catechumens ; as he was the 
 representative scholar of his age. Origen is, indeed, 
 characterized by Dr. Bigg, in his recent study of " the 
 Christian Platonists of Alexandria," as " the first great 
 preacher, the first great commentator, the first great dog- 
 matist" of the post -Apostolic Church. 5 The teaching 
 
 1 See, e.g., Harris's Fragments of Philo Judeeus, p. 3; also Harris's The 
 Teaching of the Apostles, p. 63. 
 
 * See Clement's Works in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, II., 301 f. 
 • This is a repetition of Cicero's aphorism, Docendo discimus, — " By teaching 
 we learn." Impression is made in expression. 
 
 4 The Ante-Nicene Fathers, II., 302 a. 
 6 The Christian Plat, of Alex., p. u$. 
 
58 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 methods of Origen are, therefore, to be recognized as the 
 best known methods of his day ; and they, fortunately, 
 are not obscure. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who was a 
 pupil of Origen, sounded the praises of his teacher as a 
 master in the Socratic method of instruction ; " and for 
 the way in which this teacher probed his [the pupil's] 
 inmost soul with questions." 1 Neander, in treating the 
 history and methods of the school at Alexandria, says : 
 " The patience and skill which must be exercised by these 
 Alexandrian teachers, in answering the multifarious ques- 
 tions which would be proposed to them, is intimated by 
 Origen [in his notes on our Lord's manner of meeting 
 captious questioners 2 ] when he requires of the Christian 
 teachers [or catechists] that they should follow Christ's 
 example, and not show a fretful spirit, if they should be 
 pushed with questions propounded not for the sake of 
 learning, [from the teachers,] but for the purpose of put- 
 ting them to the proof." 3 
 
 Johann Mayer, the eminent Roman Catholic historian 
 of catechetics, who argues against the idea that the inter- 
 locutory method was the prevailing one in the Early 
 Church, 4 — even he recognizes the fact that in the treat- 
 ment of unevangelized pupils the teaching process involved 
 the freest use of question and answer. He shows by the 
 testimony of Eusebius, 5 and by the statements of Origen 
 in his controversy with Celsus, 6 that no attempt was made 
 to win and train young heathen without full and thorough 
 
 1 Art. "Gregorius Thaumaturgus," in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biog. 
 
 2 Matt., Tom. XIV., g 16. 
 
 8 Gen. Hist, of the Christian Religion and Church, I., 528. 
 
 4 Gesch. d. Katechumenats u. d. Katechese, pp. 6, 255, 269, 300. 
 
 6 Hist. Eccl., v., io. 6 Contra Celsum, iii., 52; vi., 10. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 59 
 
 interlocutory instruction. In this line he says that the 
 catechist " paid due regard to the individuality, to the 
 age, to the sex, and to the rank of each person [thus dealt 
 with], with the most generous considerateness," — on the 
 teacher's part. And thus it was, as he thinks, that " Origen 
 devoted himself to the instruction of one person at a time, 
 or of a few persons who were alike in spirit and in acquire- 
 ments, or who were united in bonds of friendship." l But 
 the proving of this proves more than this. If, indeed, the 
 interlocutory teaching process was employed in the win- 
 ning and training of the heathen because it was found to 
 be the best method, it is hardly to be supposed that a 
 poorer method was employed in the instruction of young 
 Christians. 
 
 Origen, indeed, places the interlocutory method above 
 the hortatory or didactic method, as a means of edifying 
 the hearer. " We put the gospel before each one, as his 
 character and disposition may fit him to receive it," he 
 says; " inasmuch as we have learned to know 'how we 
 ought to answer every man' [each one, individually]. 2 
 And there are some who are capable of receiving nothing 
 more than an exhortation to believe, and to those we ad- 
 dress that [exhortation] alone; while we approach others, 
 again, as far as possible, in the way of demonstration, by 
 means of question and answer." 3 That is to say, in hope- 
 ful cases teaching was the method ; in other cases, ex- 
 horting was all that could be attempted. 
 
 Augustine, again, would seem to put this matter of 
 methods with catechumens beyond all reasonable doubt. 
 In his book, " Catechising of the Uninstructed," prepared 
 as a guide to a catechist at Carthage, he details the several 
 
 1 Gesch., p. 255. * Col. 4:6. » "Against Celsus," vi., 10. 
 
6o THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 steps in the process of wise catechising. He insists that 
 each pupil should be treated according to his individual 
 needs ; and that to this end the catechist should examine 
 him by preliminary questioning as to his motives and as 
 to his attainments, with a view to making the pupil's 
 present error or lack the starting-point of his particular 
 instruction. 1 Similarly, all the way along in his teaching, 
 the pupil, according to Augustine, must be watched and 
 questioned, and carefully dealt with individually ; so that 
 he may be caused to know rather than merely be caused 
 to hear the truth which is, for the time being, the sub- 
 stance of the catechetical instruction. Every effort to 
 secure both free questioning and frank answering by the 
 pupil himself, is to be made by the catechist, step by step, 
 in his course of catechetical teaching. 2 It is the individual 
 pupil who is to be taught ; not the assembly which is to 
 be harangued, in the instruction of catechumens. 3 That 
 is the point which Augustine emphasizes. 
 
 In a specimen discourse to catechumens on the Creed, 4 
 Augustine seems to illustrate his method of questioning 
 by his frequent introduction of questions, to which he 
 appends his own answers ; as if this were in the line of 
 his habit of teaching. Thus: "What next? . . . 'was 
 crucified, dead, and buried.' Who? What? For whom? 
 — Who? God's only Son, our Lord. What? Crucified, 
 dead, and buried. For whom? For [the] ungodly and 
 sinners." And so on in this discourse, which was to be 
 the basis of instruction in the meaning of the articles of 
 the Creed. By all these glimpses of the current of events 
 
 1 " Catechising of the Uninstructed," ch. 5; in Nicene and Post-Nicene 
 Fathers, III., 288 b. » Ibid., chs. 8, 13. " Ibid., ch. 16. 
 
 4 " On the Creed," §7, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, III., 371. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 61 
 
 in the Early Church, it would seem clear that the process 
 of religious teaching was much the same under both 
 Jewish and Christian instructors, in whatever form the 
 text of the teaching matter was presented. 
 
 In short, as Kraussold, a recent and very high German 
 authority concerning the history of catechetics, sums up 
 the case in the matter of the early Christian catechumen- 
 ical schools: "The method of instruction was at first 
 declaratory. That, at the same time, the interrogatory 
 method was employed, is self-evident." 1 In other words, 
 even if the teacher declared in advance what he intended 
 to teach, when he came to attempt the teaching of that 
 which he had declared, he used the ordinary and proper 
 teaching method, which includes question and answer. 
 That is " self-evident." 
 
 This much we know of the early Christian catechumen- 
 ical and other catechetical schools, as illustrated by the 
 great one in Alexandria, and by less prominent ones 
 elsewhere ; they included in their membership children 
 and adults of both sexes; 2 among their teachers were 
 laymen and women; 3 the scholars were taught individu- I 
 ally; 4 the interlocutory method of teaching was used 
 freely; 5 and the subject-matter of instruction began with 
 the Old Testament story of creation, and went on to the 
 most practical details of the Christian life. 6 And this is 
 
 1 Die Katechetik fur Schule u. Kirche, p. 18. 
 * See Bingham's Antiquities, Bk. ii., ch. 22, g 9 ; Bk. x., ch. x, \ 4. 
 » Ibid., Bk. ii., ch. 22, g 9 ; Bk. hi., ch. xo, gg 2, 3 ; Bk. viii., ch. 7, g 12; 
 Bk. xiv., ch. 4, § 5. * Ibid., Bk. x., ch. 1, gg 3, 6; ch. 2, \ 5. 
 
 » Ibid., Bk. x., ch. 2, g 7; Bk. xiv., ch. 4, \ 26. 
 • Ibid., Bk. x., ch. 1, gg 6, 7. Comp. De Pressense's Christian Life and 
 Practice in the Early Church, Bk. i.,ch. 7. See, also, articles on "Catechet- 
 ics" and " Catechumens," in Herzog's Real-Encyc; Smith and Cheetham's 
 
62 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 in itself a description, or a delineation, of the Sunday- 
 school of to-day, in its main and essential features. 1 
 
 As the Christian Church gained in the scope of its 
 power as an organization, and came to have control of 
 extended communities, provinces, or nationalities, and as 
 it reached out for the evangelizing of new countries, its 
 formal recognition of the value of the church Bible-school 
 corresponded yet more nearly with the ancient Jewish 
 polity in the land of Palestine. When, for example, at 
 the very beginning of the fourth century, St. Gregory, 
 the Illuminator, entered upon his work of christianizing 
 Armenia, he adopted a compulsory system of Bible- 
 schools for the children in every city there ; and by this 
 means it was that Armenia was built up in the Christian 
 faith. 2 And it would seem that at that period, as also 
 earlier, there were public schools for the training of both 
 heathen and Christian children in the knowledge of the 
 Scriptures, in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Egypt, and else- 
 where. 3 Bingham, indeed, calls attention to a specific 
 
 Diet, of Christian Antiq.; Encyc. Brit.; and McClintock and Strong's 
 Cyc. of Bib., Theol., and Eccl. Lit.; and article on " Catechetical Instruction 
 before the Reformation," in Home, the School and the Church, IV., 46 f. 
 
 1 " In the Primitive Church, not only men and women, but children, were 
 encouraged and trained up from their infancy to the reading of the Holy 
 Scriptures ; and the catechumens were . . . obliged to learn the Scriptures 
 as a part of their discipline and instruction, . . . [moreover] children were 
 trained up to the use of the Holy Scriptures. And of this we have undoubted 
 evidence from many eminent instances of their practice \e. g., Eusebius, 
 Socrates, Sozomen, and Gregory of Nyssa, are here quoted in illustration of 
 this custom]. . . . And it is observable, that as there were many catechetical 
 schools in those times for explaining the Scriptures to the catechumens, so 
 there were also schools appointed in many churches to instruct the youth in 
 the knowledge of the Scriptures " (Bingham's Antiq., Bk. xiii., ch. 4, \ 9). 
 . * Ibid., Bk. xiii., ch. 4, § 9. 
 * Ibid. ; also Bk. viii., ch. 7, g 12. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 63 
 
 " canon attributed to the sixth General Council of Con- 
 stantinople [A. D. 680], which promotes the setting up 
 of charity schools [Robert Raikes' Sunday-schools] in 
 all country churches;" 1 as practically they were already 
 to be found in the cathedral churches generally. 2 
 
 In all these Christian church-schools, as in the earlier 
 Jewish church-schools, it was the Bible text itself which 
 was the primary subject of study and of teaching. Very 
 young children were taught to memorize the Scriptures, 
 and at the same time to understand them. 3 Illustrations 
 abound in ecclesiastical works of the fourth and fifth cen- 
 turies, of persons who had become so familiar with the 
 Scriptures as to be able to recite large portions of them 
 — in some cases the entire Old and New Testaments — 
 without the aid of a book. 4 Yet this memorizing of the 
 Bible text was but incidental to the Bible-school teaching; 
 it was not itself deemed the teaching. 
 
 Thus it is clear that the early Christian Church was 
 not unfaithful to its trust, nor unmindful of the duty 
 imposed upon it by the Great Commission. It organized 
 Bible-schools far and near, as a means of instructing its 
 converts, and of training its membership. And so it 
 continued to do, so long as it wisely followed the injunc- 
 tions of its Divine Founder. But as it grew in worldly 
 prominence and lost in spiritual life, changes came in the 
 methods of its training work. Its ritual services were 
 expanded, and its teaching exercises were diminished. 
 " Teaching gained in proportion as ritualism lost," says 
 De Pressense; 8 and conversely, teaching lost as ritualism 
 
 1 Antiq., Bk. viii., ch. 7, \ 12. ' Ibid., Bk. iii., ch. 10, J 4. 
 
 » Ibid., Bk. x., ch. 1, fy 6, 7 ; xiii., ch. 4, g 9. 
 • Ibid., Bk. xiii., ch. 4, \ 9. 6 TJU Apostolic Era, Bk. ii., ch. 6, \ 1. 
 
64 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 gained. Or, as Proudfit represents it, when " the ecclesi- 
 astical spirit overcame the evangelical, and the church 
 grew . . . worldly and material in all her institutions and 
 instrumentalities, . . . making more of a splendid ritual 
 than of a pure faith, and magnifying church orthodoxy 
 above vital piety, . . . catechetical instruction, of course, 
 declined." 1 
 
 In the recently issued valuable work of Mr. Henry C. 
 Lea, on the history of the Inquisition, it is shown con- 
 1 clusively, by that impartial historian of the religious his- 
 tory of the Middle Ages, that the decline of the spirit- 
 ual life of the Church was attributable to the neglect, by 
 the Church, of its educational function. 2 It is also shown 
 £>y Mr. Lea, as it has been shown by so many other 
 historians before, that the gleams of a purer life, and the 
 struggles toward a better state of things, meantime, were 
 among and on the part of those who studied and taught 
 the Bible, and who sought to secure Bible instruction for 
 the people generally. 
 
 It stands out most clearly in the ecclesiastical history 
 of the Middle Ages, that where the Christian life was 
 purest, in those times of general decline, was where the 
 Bible-school idea was adhered to most closely as a means 
 of religious instruction and training. 3 Peculiarly was this 
 
 1 See Proudfit's article, as before cited. 
 8 Hist, of the Inquisition, Bk. i., chs. 1-6. 
 
 * The earlier form of " catechism," or manual for elementary religious in- 
 struction, consisted of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Command- 
 ments, with or without explanation and comment. In this form it shows itself in 
 the work of " Kero, monk of St. Gall (about 720) ; Notker, of St. Gall (d. 912) ; 
 Otfried, monk of Weissenbourg(d. after 870), and others" (Schaffs Creeds oj 
 Christendom, I., 246). " One of the earliest — in fact, the first known cate- 
 chism in the English language — was written by Wyclif. A copy of it, in the 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 6; 
 
 the case with the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Lollards 
 or Wiclifites, the Bohemian Brethren or Hussites, and the 
 Brethren of the Common Life. 1 Not the pure liturgy, nor 
 yet the faithful pulpit, but the divinely appointed Bible- 
 school — in its more primitive elements — was the dis 
 tinctive means of their preservation from the wellnigh 
 universal defection. 2 
 
 British Museum, bears the date of 1372. . . . It was designed ' to teach simple 
 men and women the right way to heaven.' The first three of the thirteen 
 sections into which it is divided, contain catechisms on the Creed, the Lord's 
 Prayer, and the Commandments." (See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's article 
 on " Catechisms of Old and New England," in The Sunday School Times for 
 September 8, 1883.) The " Primer," as " a manual of primary instruction in 
 religious truth and practice," finds mention, at about the time of Wiclif, in 
 Piers Plowman's Vision, and in Chaucer's The Prioresses Tale. Maskell 
 {Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesia Anglicanoe, II., xlv) says of the Primer, that 
 it " may have been well known in the early days even of the Anglo-Saxons; 
 ... for there never was a period, in the history of the English Church 
 when care was not taken to enforce upon all priests the duty of teaching their 
 people the rudiments of faith, in the vulgar tongue, and to provide books fitted 
 for that purpose." (See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's article on " The New 
 England Primer and its Predecessors," in The Sunday School Times for 
 April 29, 1882.) 
 
 1 Schaff says {Creeds of Christendom, I., 569) : "The Waldenses formed 
 at first no separate church, but an ecclesiolain ecclesia [' a churchette within 
 a church '], a pious lay community of Bible readers. They were well versed 
 in Scripture, and maintained its supremacy over the traditions of men ; they 
 preached the gospel to the poor, allowing women also to preach " — or rather, 
 perhaps, to teach in this " lay community of Bible readers ; " as women taught 
 in the catechumenical school at Alexandria, and as they teach in the Sunday- 
 schools of to-day. The Waldensian Catechism presents important phases of 
 Scripture truth. It " must have been written before 1500 ; while the Bohemian 
 [Catechism] in the form in which it was presented to Luther, first appeared 
 in print in 1521 or 1522. . . . Palacky brought to light (1869) a similar Cate- 
 chism, which he derives from Hus before 1414" (Schaff, as above, I., 572). 
 
 * See Schaff s Creeds of Christendom, I., 246 ; art. " Catechisms," in Schaff- 
 ;s Encyc. of Relig. Know I. ; art. "Catechumen" and art. "Educa- 
 tion," in Encyc. Brit.; and art. " Catechetics " and art. "Catechisms," in 
 McClintock and Strong's Cyc. of Bib., Theol., and Eccles. Lit. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 An admirable illustration of this truth is furnished in 
 the recorded testimony of Reinerius, an emissary from 
 Rome to the Waldenses, in his report concerning the 
 Bible-teaching prevalent among that people in the thir- 
 teenth century. " He who has been a disciple [in their 
 fold] for seven days," he said, " looks out some one whom 
 he may teach in his turn; so that there is a continual 
 iftcrease [of them]. If any would excuse himself [from 
 learning] they say to him, ' Only learn one word every 
 day, and at the end of the year you will have three hun- 
 dred [words] ; and so [you will] make progress.' ... I 
 have heard one of these poor peasants repeat the whole 
 Book of Job by heart, without missing a single word ; 
 and there are others who have the whole of the New 
 Testament by heart, and much of the Old ; nor . . . will 
 they listen to anything else, saying that all sermons which 
 are not proved by Scripture are unworthy of belief." ■ 
 The Waldenses, by the way, came originally from Lyons, 
 where the cathedral catechetical school had long been of 
 exceptional efficiency in securing religious instruction, 
 however intermingled with error, to the young. 2 
 
 From the beginning, in short, all the way down the 
 centuries, the history of the Christian Church shows that 
 just in proportion as the church Bible-school — the Sun- 
 day-school, as we now call it — has been accorded the 
 place which our Lord assigned to it in the original plan 
 of his Church, has substantial progress been made in the 
 extending of the membership, and in the upbuilding — the 
 "edifying" — of the body of Christian believers in the 
 
 1 Cited in Henderson's The Vaudois, p. 102. See, also, Latrobe-Cranz's 
 Hist, of the Brethren, p. 15 f. 
 
 2 See art. '* Waldenses," in Schaff-Herzog's Encyc. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 67 
 
 knowledge of God's Word and in the practice of its pre- 
 cepts. And just in proportion as the Sunday-school 
 agency, or its practical equivalent under some name or 
 form, has been lacking, or has been ignored, has the 
 Church failed of retaining and continuing the vital power 
 of its membership. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me here. Every great reform, 
 in the Church, or in nominally religious communities, 
 since the days of John the -Baptist and of Peter, has been 
 brought about by preaching. Christians have been aroused 
 from their sloth, and sinners have been startled in and 
 from their sins, by the clarion voice of the herald-preacher. 
 Preaching has been, and is, and is to be, the pre-eminent 
 agency for the warning and calling of sinners, and for the 
 exhorting and directing of saints. But the religious train- 
 ing of any people has been attained, and the results of 
 any great reformation have been made permanent, only 
 through a process of interlocutory, or catechetical, teach- 
 ing; such as forms the distinguishing characteristics of 
 the technical Sunday-school. 
 
 A few representative illustrations of this universal truth 
 are as good as more. It was by preaching that the great 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century was brought about; 
 but no one of the chief reformers of that period was unwise 
 enough to suppose that preaching was to retain and to 
 build up in the pure faith of God's Word those who, 
 through preaching, had been rescued from the embraces 
 of error. Luther saw the need of a system of Bible-schools 
 in the new Protestant world, as plainly as Simon ben She- 
 tach saw that need in the ancient Jewish world. " Young! 
 children and scholars are the seed and the source of the 
 Church!" rang out the warning voice of Luther. " For 
 
68 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 the Church's sake, Christian schools must be established 
 and maintained," he added ; " [for] God maintains the 
 Church through the schools." 1 Luther even went so far 
 as to say that a clergyman was not fairly fitted to be a 
 preacher unless he had first been a teacher ; that, in fact, 
 a bishop ought to give proof, before being a bishop, that 
 he had aptness to teach. " I wotdd that nobody should 
 be chosen as a minister if he were not before this a school- 
 master," 2 was Luther's putting of this opinion. 
 
 Luther personally prepared two catechisms, a Larger, 
 and a Smaller, as helps to religious teaching ; and his co- 
 workers and successors prepared others. Calvin took a 
 similar view of the duty of the Church to instruct the 
 young and the ignorant by interlocutory teaching ; and 
 he also prepared two catechetical lesson-helps, or lesson- 
 guides, first in French, and afterwards in Latin. These 
 catechisms by Luther and Calvin were translated into 
 various languages, and were used widely among the 
 Protestants of Europe and of Great Britain. Zwingle and 
 Beza in Switzerland, Knox in Scotland, Cranmer and 
 Ridley in England, and Usher in Ireland, and many other 
 representative leaders in the Reformation, were alive to 
 the importance of the revival of the primitive church- 
 school idea, as the hope of stability and growth for the 
 Church of Christ. Just so far, in fact, as this divinely com- 
 manded method of religious training was newly adopted 
 and adhered to, were the best fruits of the Reformation 
 preserved and transmitted ; and where there was chiefest 
 lack in this direction, the influence of the Reformers and 
 of their work gradually diminished, or faded away. 3 
 
 1 Cited in Schumann's Lehrb. d. Paedag., p. 144. » Ibid. 
 
 » See articles " Catechisms " and " Catechetics," in Schaff-Herzog's Encyc, 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 69 
 
 Indeed, had it not been for the rising up at that time, 
 in the Roman Catholic Church, of a new apostle of the 
 church-school idea, and for the wonderful effectiveness of 
 his work of restoring to that Church this primitive agency 
 of religious teaching, it would seem that the power of the 
 Church of Rome as such would have been permanently- 
 broken, or hopelessly hampered, by the labors of the 
 reformers. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society 
 of Jesus, with Lainez, Aquaviva, Xavier, and others of 
 his immediate associates, despairing of turning back the 
 tide of battle against Rome and her institutions, as then 
 waged under the pulpit leaders of the opposing host, con- 
 ceived the plan of reaching out after the children of the 
 combatants, and of rearing up in them a new generation 
 of lovers and defenders of Rome. 
 
 The first great work of the Jesuits was the establish- 
 ment of religious schools for the young, which were an 
 advance in their methods on anything then known to the 
 world. The very ideas which prevail in the management 
 of our best modern Sunday-schools, church and mission, 
 seem to have been carried out by the Jesuits in these 
 schools of their forming. 1 And it was by this means that 
 the Jesuits, in a single generation, according to the testi- 
 mony of one of their chief historians, becoming " masters 
 of the present by the men whom they had trained, and 
 disposing of the future by the children who were yet in 
 their hands, realized a dream which no one till the times 
 
 and in McClintock and Strong's Cyc. See, also, Porter's The Educational 
 Systems of the Puritans and Jesuits Compared, pp. 26-35. 
 
 1 See Steinmetz's Hist. 0/ the Jesuits, I., 346-350; Karl von Raumcr's Gesch. 
 i. Paeaajr., 1., aSSf.; Ranke's Hist, of the Popes, I., 415-418; and Quick'* 
 Essays on Educational Reformers, pp. 2-20. 
 
70 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOQL -: 
 
 of Ignatius had dared to conceive." ' The verdict of his- 
 tory on this point is summed up by President Porter, in 
 his suggestion that Catholic and Protestant historians are 
 agreed that it was by this religious school machinery that 
 the Jesuits " arrested the Reformation in its onward and 
 apparently triumphant advances," and that "the dividing 
 line was fixed between the Protestant and Catholic sec- 
 tions of Europe, to remain till now almost precisely where 
 it was drawn thirty years after Luther had broken with 
 Rome." 2 It was practically by the Sunday-school agency 
 that the Protestant Reformers hoped to make permanent 
 the results of the Reformation. And it was by a more 
 adroit and efficient use of the Sunday-school agency, in 
 its improved forms, that the Church of Rome stayed the 
 progress of the Reformation. That is the plain lesson 
 of history. 
 
 Nor has the Church of Rome ever forgotten the lesson 
 learned in that crisis hour of her history. The Council 
 of Trent recognized the peril of the Church of Rome 
 through the Protestant use of catechetical teaching, and 
 it gave chief prominence to wisely planned efforts at meet- 
 ing that peril. " The heretics have chiefly made use of 
 catechisms to corrupt the minds of Christians," 3 was the 
 declaration of that Council. Therefore "the Holy Synod 
 rightly decreed that both [the] pestilent preaching and the 
 writings of the false prophets must be met by opposition ; " 4 
 and felt it " necessary, even after so many written treatises 
 
 1 Cr^tineau Joly's Histoire Religieuse, Politique, et Litteraire de la Com- 
 fagnU de Jesus, I., 5 ; cited by Porter, in Educ. Systems, p. 23 f. 
 2 Porter's Educ. Systems, p. 4. 
 8 Preface to The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Question vi. 
 * Ibid., Q. vii. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. J\ 
 
 of Christian doctrine, to put forward a new catechism for 
 pastors, by the care of an (Ecumenical Council, and the 
 authority of the Sovereign Pontiff." 1 All pastors were 
 specifically charged by the Council of Trent with the duty 
 of instructing the young in the primary elements of the 
 Christian faith. 2 And from that day to this the Church 
 of Rome has never, as before, neglected the divinely 
 appointed agency of Christ's Church for discipling and 
 training the young ; nor has it, since then, given a second 
 place to children in the ministrations of its priesthood. 
 
 It was in consequence of this lesson that St. Francis 
 Xavier (who is credited with the saying, " Give me the 
 children until they are seven years old, and any one may 
 take them afterwards ") gave the young and the ignorant 
 the first place in his evangelizing in India ; going through 
 the streets of Goa ringing a bell, and entreating parents 
 and householders to send their children and their slaves 
 to him to be instructed. 3 It was in consequence of this 
 lesson that St. Carlo Borromeo devoted his energies so 
 largely to the gathering and teaching of children in Sun- 
 day-schools in his cathedral at Milan, and in his parish 
 churches near and far; leaving at his death, in 1584, 
 seven hundred and forty-three of these Sunday-schools, 
 comprising more than three thousand teachers and forty 
 thousand scholars. 4 It was in consequence of this lesson 
 that Cardinal Bellarmine, while Archbishop of Capua, a 
 little later than Borromeo's time, aroused himself to the 
 determination of securing elementary religious instruction 
 
 1 Preface to The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Question viii. 
 » Ibid., Q. xi. 
 * Sec Mithode de Saint- Sulpice, dans la Direction des Catechismes, pp. i-ia. 
 */6id. 
 
72 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 to every child in his arch-diocese, he setting an example 
 to his under pastors by going personally into the parishes, 
 and gathering about him the children and their friends 
 for their familiar teaching ; preparing meanwhile, as an 
 aid in this work, simple catechisms, 1 one at least of which 
 is an approved text-book in the Roman Catholic Sunday- 
 schools of England and the United States to-day. 2 It is 
 in consequence of this lesson that the policy of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, far more than that of the Protestant 
 churches, has from that time to this been in the direction 
 indicated by these labors of Loyola and Xavier and Bor- 
 romeo and Bellarmine. 
 
 This policy it is that was illustrated by the recorded 
 conversation of a Roman Catholic priest with one of our 
 Protestant Episcopal bishops in the United States, some 
 years ago, when the priest said to the bishop, in sub- 
 stance : " What a poor, foolish people are you Protestants ! 
 You leave the children, until they are grown up, pos- 
 sessed of the devil ; then you go at the work of reclaiming 
 them with horse, foot, and dragoons. We Catholics, on 
 the other hand, know that the children are plastic as clay 
 in our hands, and we quietly devote ourselves first to 
 them. When they are well instructed and trained, we 
 have little fear as to their future." And this policy of 
 the Church of Rome, resulting as it did from this lesson 
 in the history of that Church, has been recognized by 
 many a wise Protestant scholar and thinker — all along 
 these last three centuries — as worthy of more extensive 
 
 1 See Methode de Saint- Sulpice, dans la Direction des Catechismes, pp. 1-12. 
 
 * " In 1870, the (Ecumenical Council recommended the general use of the 
 Schema de Parvo, a small catechism, which is little more than an abstract of 
 Bellarmine's " (art. " Catechism," in Encyc. Brit.). 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 73 
 
 imitation by all lovers of God's truth, and all lovers of 
 divinely indicated methods of working. 1 
 
 Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, of the Church of England, 
 for example, learned as he was in the Bible text and in 
 ecclesiastical antiquities, writing on this subject within a 
 century after the Reformation, pointed back to the teach- 
 ings of Scripture and of Christian history in proof of the 
 fact that interlocutory religious teaching was the hope, as 
 it was the duty, of the Christian Church. It was by this 
 means, he said, that Christianity made all its earlier con- 
 quests; "and when catechising was left off in the Church, 
 it [the Church] soon became darkened and overspread 
 with ignorance. The Papists, therefore, acknowledge that 
 all the advantage which the Protestants have gotten of 
 them [since the Reformation], hath come by this exer- 
 cise [of catechetical instruction] ; and it is to be feared 
 that if ever they get ground of us, it will be by their more 
 exact and frequent catechising than ours." 2 A century 
 and a half later, these words of Bishop Andrewes seemed 
 like fulfilled prophecy. 
 
 It is not that the various Protestant churches did not, 
 at the time of the Reformation, realize the importance of 
 the Sunday-school idea ; nor yet that they did not form 
 plans for the prosecution of certain phases of the Sunday- 
 school work ; but it is that various causes combined, as 
 can be shown, to render the formed plans insufficient, or 
 ineffective, for the purpose in view, and finally to bring 
 
 1 A valuable treatise on the religious instruction of children by the Church 
 from the Roman Catholic stand-point, is the " Mithode de Saint- Sulpice, dans 
 la Direction des Catichismes, as above cited. It treats of the history, literature, 
 and methods of the subject, quite fully. Incidentally it gives proof of the 
 prevalence of the Sunday-school idea in the schools which it represents. 
 * The Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 8. 
 
74 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 them into neglect. All the representative Reformed 
 churches were explicit, at the start, in recognition of the 
 divinely ordained mission of the church-school, or Sun- 
 day-school. The views of Luther, on this point, have 
 been already cited. 1 In the Heidelberg Catechism, where 
 the question is asked, " What doth God require in the 
 fourth commandment ? " the answer comes, " First, that 
 the ministry of the gospel and the schools be main- 
 tained." In the Scotch Book of Discipline there stands 
 the acknowledgment that " one of the two ordinary and 
 perpetual functions that travel in the word is the office of 
 the doctor, who may be also called . . . catechiser ; that 
 is, teacher of the catechism and rudiments of religion." 2 
 And this, in fact, was the Protestant position generally. 
 
 The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in 
 the first year of its existence, provided that while there 
 should be two public services on every Lord's Day, the 
 first service should include worship and sermonizing, and 
 the second should be given to worship and the cate- 
 chising of the young and ignorant. 3 Again, a canon in 
 the Church of England, which dates back to 1603, and 
 which has never been repealed, requires that " every par- 
 son, vicar, or curate, upon every Sunday or holy day, 
 before evening prayer, shall, for half an hour and more, 
 examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of 
 his parish in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the 
 Belief, and in the Lord's Prayer ; and shall diligently hear, 
 instruct, and teach them the Catechism set forth in the 
 
 1 See p. 67 f., ante. 
 * See Abridgment of the Acts of the General Assemblies of the Church of 
 Scotland, p. 76 f. 
 
 3 See Hetherington's History of the Church of Scotland, p. 55. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 75 
 
 Book of Common Prayer." 1 The minister who fails of 
 attention to this duty is, on his first offense, by the pro- 
 visions of this canon, to be reported to his bishop and to 
 receive a reprimand. A second offense is to subject him 
 to suspension ; and on the third offense he is, if deemed 
 incorrigible, to be excommunicated. It would seem, 
 indeed, as if the Reformers realized that the hope of the 
 future pivoted on the continued and faithful ministry of the 
 Church to the young ; and yet that the plans of the Reform- 
 ers to secure the continuance of this ministry were practi- 
 cally a failure. And here is a mystery worth looking into. 
 
 A primary cause of the decline of the Sunday-school 
 work in Protestant churches generally, after the new 
 prominence given to it by the Reformers, seems to rest 
 in the widespread perversion of the very means designed 
 for its prosecution. It was in order to promote inter- 
 locutory teaching that catechisms, presenting truth in 
 the form of question and answer, were prepared in such 
 fullness and variety by Protestant church leaders. 2 But 
 the use of those catechisms widely degenerated into a 
 perfunctory service of asking rote questions with the pur- 
 pose of securing memorized rote answers in reply, apart 
 from any necessary interchange of thought or of knowl- 
 edge between teacher and pupil. And thus it came to 
 pass that catechism using stood in the way of catechetical 
 teaching; the stepping-stone becoming a stumbling-block. 
 
 So, again, the sermon, or the homily, was brought 
 by the Reformers to its earlier place as an adjunct of 
 
 1 Canon lix., of 1603. See Gibson's Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, 
 tit. xix, cap. 1, p. 453. 
 
 * See List of Catechisms in Mitchell's Catechisms of the Second Reformation, 
 pp. lxxxv-xci. 
 
76 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 all principal services of worship, as a means of popu- 
 lar instruction in religious truth. But the sermonizing 
 being wholly separated from catechising, under the new 
 arrangement, lost its primitive place in a conference be- 
 tween teacher and taught, and degenerated widely into a 
 continuous discourse to passive, and often to inattentive 
 and unintelligent hearers. It is so much easier, on the 
 one hand, to preach than it is to teach ; and, on the other 
 hand, to hear than it is to learn ; it is so much easier to 
 tell what one knows or thinks, or what one thinks he 
 knows, than it is to find out another's spiritual lack and 
 needs and capabilities, and to endeavor to supply them 
 wisely, — that it is hardly to be wondered at, however 
 much it is to be regretted, that preaching (especially 
 under the pressure of the seeming needfulness of polem- 
 ical discourses 1 ) gradually overshadowed teaching in the 
 work of the ministry in Protestant churches ; the children, 
 meanwhile, having practically only a form of religious 
 instruction without its power. And thus it was that 
 the teaching of the young wellnigh died out from the 
 churches of Protestantism through the misuse and abuse 
 of the agencies devised for its promotion. 
 
 All this was, however, an evil of administration rather 
 than of primary purpose and plan ; for it is evident from 
 the records of history that the Reformers had no thought 
 of overshadowing Bible-school teaching by pulpit preach- 
 ing, nor yet of making the reciting and hearing of the 
 
 1 In the Church of England, very soon after the enactment of the Canon of 
 1603, enjoining catechising, controversial preaching on dogmas usurped the 
 place of catechising ; and, in 1622, King James directed that catechising take 
 the place of afternoon sermons. Archbishop Laud again enforced catechising 
 instead of sermonizing on Sunday afternoons. (See Perry's History of tht 
 Church of England, pp. 398, 415). 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 77 
 
 catechism a chief element in catechetical teaching. The 
 catechism was, in every instance, prepared, not as the 
 lesson itself, but as a lesson-analysis, a lesson-guide, a 
 lesson-paper, duly authorized, for the time being, by a 
 Church Lesson-Committee. It outlined the subject of 
 study, but it was not designed to be the object of study. 
 No prominent compiler of a catechism in the realm of 
 religious truth, from the days of Philo Judaeus to the 
 Westminster Divines, can, in fact, have supposed that his 
 work would be followed in the blind and mechanical 
 fashion which subsequently prevailed so widely for the 
 making of catechism teaching a thing of dread to the 
 child, and of unconcern to the teacher. 1 
 
 Luther made himself clear on this point. In his Pref- 
 ace to his Smaller Catechism he enjoined it upon teachers 
 to see to it that their scholars not only knew what was 
 said in the catechism answers, but knew what was meant 
 by them ; " to take these forms [of statement] before 
 them, and explain them word by word." 2 And as show- 
 ing that these answers, even when thus explained and 
 understood, were in no sense to be the limit of the pupil's 
 teaching, Luther claimed that every child under cate- 
 chetical instruction ought to know the truths of the entire 
 gospel, the facts of the whole life and work of our Lord, 
 by the time he was nine or ten years of age. 3 "Not only 
 must they learn the word [of God] by heart," again he 
 
 1 " May we not have just reason to fear," said Dr. Isaac Watts, ( Works, III., 
 214,) in speaking of the use of the Westminster Catechism, " that the holy 
 things of our religion have not only been made the aversion of children, but 
 have been exposed to disreputation and contempt, by teaching them such a 
 number of strange phrases which they could not understand?" 
 * See Kostlin's Life of Luther, p. 369 f. 
 ■ See Karl von Raumer's Gesch. d. Paedag., I., 169 L 
 
7$ THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 said, . . . "but they must be asked, verse by verse, and 
 must answer, what each [verse] means, and how they 
 understand it." 1 Luther's Larger Catechism was not 
 even arranged in the form of question and answer, but it 
 was none the less a "catechism," in name and in fact, 
 for being in the form of the lesson-guides of the Early 
 Church catechumens. 
 
 Even before the Reformation there were formal injunc- 
 tions in force in the Church of England, requiring all 
 curates to explain to their hearers every sentence of the 
 substance of the primers which those hearers were to 
 memorize. Thus, in 1536-38, an injunction to the 
 curates ran: "Ye shall, every Sunday and Holy -day 
 throughout the year, openly and plainly recite to your, 
 parishioners, twice or thrice together, or oftener if need 
 require, one particle or sentence of the Paternoster, or 
 [of the] Creed, in English, to the intent [that] they may 
 learn the same by heart : and so from day to day [ye are] 
 to give them one little lesson or sentence of the same, till 
 they have learned the whole Paternoster and Creed in 
 English by rote. And as they be taught every sentence 
 of the same by rote, ye shall expound and declare the un- 
 derstanding of the same unto them." 2 
 
 And when a " Catechism for Children " was given its 
 place in the Prayer Book of Edward VI., 3 that catechism 
 
 1 Luther's Deutsche Messe (1526) ; cited in Gieseler's Eccles. Hist., IV., 562. 
 
 2 Quoted from Burnet's History of the Reformation, in Procter's History oj 
 the Book of Common Prayer, p. 390. Comp. Burnet's Hist, of the Ref, I., 
 3 6 4> 5°7- 
 
 3 " When the great hindrance to reformation was removed by the death oi 
 Henry, the instruction of the young and the ignorant was among the first par- 
 ticulars to which the advisers of Edward directed their efforts, in the Injunc- 
 tions of 1547 ; and as soon as a Book of Service was prepared, a Catechism 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 79 
 
 was by no means understood as covering the substance 
 of a Christian child's religious instruction. On the con- 
 trary, it merely covered the points at which the child was 
 to be examined by the bishop, when brought to him for 1 
 confirmation. 1 Various other catechisms were in use, 
 more or less widely, in the Church of England, in the 
 days of Edward and of Elizabeth ; 2 and in order to secure 
 uniformity in the religious teaching of the young, the 
 Convocation of 1 562 took steps for securing a catechism 
 that should be the standard of religious instruction in all 
 the schools. 3 This catechism was prepared by Dean 
 Nowell, of St. Paul's, although it made free use of the 
 material of earlier authors, including the work of Bishop 
 Poynet. 4 Delayed in its issue by various causes, it was 
 
 was placed in it, that the exposition of these Christian elements might not 
 depend on the care or ability of the curates " (Procter's Hist. 0/ Book of Com. 
 Prayer, p. 390). 
 
 1 " The end and purpose of catechism [of catechising] is, in good and natural 
 order, fitly applied to serve the good use of confirmation by the bishop, at 
 which time the bishop doth not teach but examine " (Thomas Norton in his 
 Preface to the English translation of Nowell's Catechism, in 1570 See Parker 
 Society's edition of No-welts Catechism, p. 109). 
 
 *See Procter's Hist, of Book of Com. Prayer (p. 392), with citation from 
 Cardwell's Documentary Annals. 
 
 * " One considerable thing more passed the hands of this Convocation 
 [1562] ; . . . viz., the Catechism in Latin for the use of schools, and also for 
 a brief summary of religion to be owned and professed in this reformed 
 Church. And this is the same with that which is commonly known to this 
 day by the name of Nowell's Catechism " (Strype's Annals of the Reformat 
 Hon, Vol. I., pt. i., p. 525 f.). 
 
 4 "An intention was formed in the time of Edward and Elizabeth, to have 
 another authorized Catechism [besides that in the Prayer Book] for the instruc- 
 tion of more advanced students, and especially those in public schools. . . . 
 The original of this work is ascribed to Poynet, who was Bishop of Win- 
 chester during Gardiner's deprivation. It was published in Latin and in 
 English in 1553, and is supposed to have had the approval both of Cranmer 
 
80 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 finally issued in 1570. Originally written in Latin, it was 
 translated into English and Greek ; ! and several abridg- 
 ments or condensations of it were made. While entitled 
 Catechismus Puerorum ("Children's Catechism ") 2 it was 
 specifically designed " to be a guide to the younger clergy 
 in the study of divinity, as containing the sum and sub- 
 stance of our reformed religion." 3 In other words it was, 
 like every other true catechism, an indication of the lines 
 along which the clergyman or schoolmaster should teach 
 the children and youth of his charge. In 1571 a canon 
 enjoined the exclusive use of Nowell's Catechism — in one 
 or another of its forms — in the work of religious instruc- 
 
 and also of the Convocation which sanctioned the Articles in 1552 " (Procter's 
 Hist, of Book of Com. Prayer, p. 391 f.). Comp. Strype's Memorials of Abp. 
 Cranmer, p. 294. " Nowell informs the Bishops that he had not scrupled to 
 avail himself of the labors of others who had preceded him in this department 
 of theology, both as regarded arrangement and matter. . . . The Catechisms 
 of Poinet and Calvin are, perhaps, those with which Nowell's is most fre- 
 quently and verbally coincident" (Corrie's Memoir of Nowell, in Parker So- 
 ciety's edition of Nowell's Catechism, p. vii). In drawing up his catechism, 
 Nowell " made much use of the Catechism set forth toward the latter end of 
 King Edward's reign " (Strype's Annals of the Ref., Vol. I., pt. i., p. 525 f.). 
 
 1 See Strype's Annals of the Ref, Vol. I., pt. i., p. 525 f. ; Corrie's Memoir 
 of Nowell, in Parker Soc. ed. of Nowell's Catechism, p. vii ; Procter's Hist, 
 of Book of Com. Prayer, p. 393. 
 
 2 Corrie (Memoir, as above, pp. v, vi) shows that the Catechismus Pue- 
 rorum approved by this lower house of Convocation March 3, 1562, was the 
 same as that published by Nowell in 1570. 
 
 8 " Besides this [Prayer Book Catechism], there was a Catechism set forth 
 by Edward VI., that is often mentioned in our accounts of the Reformation ; 
 which King Edward, by his letters patent, commanded to be taught in ail 
 schools, and which was examined, reviewed and corrected, in the Convocation 
 of 1562, and published with these improvements in 1570, to be a guide to the 
 younger clergy in the study of divinity, as containing the sum and substance 
 of our reformed religion " (Gibson's Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, 
 tit. xix., cap. 1). 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 8l 
 
 tion by clergymen or schoolmasters; 1 and its use in this 
 way was continued for years. 2 In incidental proof that 
 catechising was understood to require more ability than 
 is involved in merely hearing the catechism recited, an 
 order of Convocation of 1588 is to the effect that "no 
 unlearned unable person to catechise shall be admitted to 
 any cure;" that is, no person so unlearned as to be unable 
 to teach the truths outlined in the catechism, shall have a 
 place of curate. 3 
 
 The recently published discussions of the Westminster 
 Assembly of Divines over the form of the Shorter Cate- 
 chism issued by that body, show that the idea of having 
 the answers in that lesson-help blindly memorized by 
 children was not in the minds of its framers, save as an 
 evil to be guarded against religiously. Some of the more 
 prominent divines, including Palmer, who was called 
 "the best catechist in England," and who presided over 
 the Assembly's Committee on the Catechisms until his 
 death, 4 desired to insert a series of minor, or subordinate, 
 questions and answers with each principal question and 
 answer, as a means of making the meaning of that main 
 answer clear to the common mind. 5 The objection made 
 
 1 See Cardwell's Synodalia, I., 128. 
 
 * " This Catechism [of Nowell's] was printed again [after 1570] in the year 
 1572; and in Greek and I^atin in 1573 ; and so from time to time had many 
 impressions ; and it was used a long time in all schools even to our days ; and 
 pity it is, it is now so disused " (Strype's Life of Abp. Parker, p. 301). 
 
 * Cardwell's Synodalia, II., 572. 
 4 See Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Herbert Palmer, in Mitchell's Cate- 
 chisms of the Second Reformation, pp. li-liii ; also p. x. See, also, Hethering- 
 ton's History of the Westminster Assembly, p. 259. 
 
 * See Palmer's Endeavor, etc., in Mitchell's Catechisms, as above, pp. 93-118. 
 See, also, Dr. Briggs's article ** The Westminster Assembly," in The Presby- 
 Urian Review, for January, 1880, pp. 155-162; Mitchell'* Tht Westminster 
 
 6 
 
82 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 to this plan was not that the main answer was in itself 
 sufficiently simple and clear, but that if the necessary 
 helps to its simplifying were given in set form, this might 
 lead to an undue dependence on them, and so to the 
 neglect of the essential interlocutory process of teaching, 
 which every teacher must choose for himself according 
 to the requirements of his particular scholar. The fear 
 was that the catechism lesson-outline might thus come 
 to be deemed self-explanatory, and its answers memorized 
 just as they stood ; and so, as one of the divines expressed 
 it, these misguided "people will come to learn things 
 by rote, and can answer as a parrot, but not understand 
 the thing." 1 
 
 Assembly, pp. 407-441 ; and Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assem- 
 bly, pp. 91-94. 
 
 1 See Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly, pp. 91-94; 
 also Mitchell's The Westminster Assembly, pp. 409-420. In advocating the 
 introduction of minor explanatory questions as a help to the understand- 
 ing of the answers to the main questions in the Catechism, Rutherford said: 
 " [It is] said [that] the Apostles did not use such a way. I think they did 
 use it." As to the proper method of catechising, he said: "It should 
 be in the plainest and easiest way. It is a feeding of the lambs." And in 
 enforcement of his claim that the Catechism could not explain itself, he added : 
 " There is as much art in catechising as in anything in the world. It may be 
 doubted whether every minister do understand the most dexterous way of 
 doing it." What would Rutherford have said to the modern claim, that for a 
 teacher or parent to hear a child repeat the main answers to the Westminster 
 Catechism, is to teach the Catechism ! Seaman, also, insisted that while " the 
 greatest care should be taken for the answer" to every question in the Cate- 
 chism, in order to have it present truth accurately, yet that answer was "to 
 be formed not to the model of knowledge that the child hath, but to that 
 [which] the child ought to have." In other words, each Catechism answer 
 was designed to define a truth to which the child was to be led up by wise 
 teaching, not to present a statement of truth which the child should repeat 
 unintelligently. Mr. Delmy opposed any set form of simple explanatory 
 questions, because the catechiser needed " to inquire into the measure of 
 the knowledge of the party " catechised, and to frame his own questions 
 accordingly. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 83 
 
 The opinion of the Westminster Assembly on the point 
 of a blind and unintelligent memorizing of the answers 
 to its catechism by children, was expressed by Gillespie, 
 when he said, in the discussion over its framing: "It 
 never entered into the thoughts of any to tie to the 
 words and syllables in that catechism." l As to the neces - 
 sity of a free interlocutory method in the teaching of 
 truth, his conclusion was that which is the conclusion of 
 the best teachers of the ages ; namely, that " the light 
 of nature and natural reason leads men this way in the 
 explanation of things." 2 It would seem, in short, that 
 the very method of "learning" the Westminster Cate- 
 chism, which has been more common than any other 
 in the last two centuries, and which even has many 
 advocates and admirers to-day, is a method which the 
 Westminster Divines themselves stigmatized as "parrot" 
 learning, and as contrary to "the light of nature and 
 natural reason." 3 
 
 1 Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly, p. 93. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
 • If there is one fundamental principle in the teaching process, on which 
 all modern masters in the theory and art of teaching are agreed, it is that the 
 true order of learning involves a knowledge of the thought or thing as prece- 
 dent, in the child's mind, to the memorizing of the words which express that 
 thought, or which declare that thing. Roger Ascham, earliest of great Eng- 
 lish teachers, protested against the method of blind memorizing, by which the 
 learners' knowledge " was tied only to their tong and lips and neucr ascended 
 vp to the braine and head, and therefore was sone spitte out of the mouth 
 againe " ( The Scholemaster, p. 88). Comenius, whose pioneer teaching work 
 was hardly less prominent on the continent of Europe than was Ascham's in 
 England, was equally positive on this point. " In teaching," he said, " let the 
 inmost part, i. e., the understanding of the subject, come first ; thin let tin- 
 thing understood be used to exercise the memory" (cited in Quick's Essays 
 on Educational Reformers, p. 57). John Locke showed his wisdom in a like 
 declaration : " I hear 'tis said," he wrote, " that children should be employed 
 
84 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 The more eminent contemporaries and immediate 
 successors of the Westminster Divines were at one with 
 them in holding that true catechising is a very different 
 matter from adhering to the mere letter of the catechism. 
 Richard Baxter, in his " Reformed Pastor " and other 
 works, pressed the importance and explained the methods 
 of catechising; which he deemed the divinely approved 
 plan of discipling those whom Christ's ministers can reach. 1 
 He insisted that catechising is a more difficult, as it is a 
 more important, work than sermonizing; and he cited 
 Archbishop Usher's opinion to the same effect. 2 Baxter's 
 illustrations of catechising along the lines of the West- 
 minster Catechism, and of simpler catechisms than this, 3 
 consist of the simplest inter-colloquial as well as inter- 
 in getting things by heart, to exercise and improve their memories. I could 
 wish this were said with as much authority of reason as it is with forwardness 
 of assurance, and that this practice were established upon good observation 
 more than old custom." Of the use of the memory, he added: " Charging 
 it with a train of other people's words, which he that learns cares not for, will, 
 I guess, scarce find the profit answer half the time and pains employed in 
 it" ("Thoughts Concerning Education," in Locke's Works, III., 80 f.). 
 Pestalozzi, the father of modern education in Europe, was emphatic and un- 
 qualified in his assertion that "nothing should be learned by rote without 
 being understood " (See Barnard's Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, p. 25). 
 "Words which are the signs of things," he said, " must never be taught the 
 child till he has grasped the idea of the thing signified" (Quick's Essays, p. 
 190). And so it has been held by all our later students of the theory and 
 practice of teaching. As Dr. John S. Hart has expressed it : " This is the 
 true mental order. Knowledge first, then memory. Get knowledge ; then 
 keep it. Any other plan is like attempting to become rich by inflating your 
 bags with wind instead of gold ; or, attempting to grow fat by bolting food in 
 a form which you cannot digest " {In the School-Room, p. 58). 
 
 1 *' The Reformed Pastor," in Practical Works, XIV., 246-354. 
 2 Ibid., p. 318. 
 h Baxter prepared at least three elementary catechisms, after the publication 
 of the Westminster Catechism (see his Practical Works, Vols. XVIII., XIX.). 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 85 
 
 locutory instruction in the truths of the catechism, as 
 adapted to the needs of the particular pupil in hand. 1 
 
 Dr. Isaac Watts was an enthusiast in the work of teach- 
 ing children catechetically, and a radical in his hostility 
 to the unintelligent memorizing of the Westminster Cate- 
 chism by children. " The business and duty of the teacher 
 [of children]," he said, "is not merely to teach them 
 words, but [to teach them] things. Words written on 
 the memory without ideas or sense in the mind, will 
 never incline a child to his duty, nor save his soul. The 
 young creature will neither be the wiser nor the better 
 for being able to repeat accurate definitions and theorems 
 in divinity without knowing what they mean." 2 In rebut- 
 
 1 Practical Works, XIV., 316-322. " Why is not catechising more used by 
 pastors and parents ? " asks Baxter (ibid., XV., 76). And then he adds by way 1 
 of explanation : " I mean not the bare words unexplained without the sense, 
 nor the sense in a mere rambling way without a form of words ; but the words 
 explained." Of the difficulties of wise catechising he says : " I must say that 
 I think it an easier matter by far to compose and preach a good sermon, than 
 to deal rightly with an ignorant man [by the interlocutory method of teaching] 
 for his instruction in the necessary principles of religion " (ibid., XIV., 318). 
 Giving illustrations of questioning as a test of the learner's knowledge, in the 
 study of catechism truths, Baxter says : " So contrive your question that they 
 may perceive what you mean, and that it is not a nice definition, but a neces- 
 sary solution, that you expect. Look not after words, but things, and there 
 [thereto] leave them [if you can do no better] to a bare yea or nay, or the 
 mere election of one of the two descriptions which you yourself shall pro- 
 pound" (ibid., XIV., 322). Comp., also, #*'</., II., 99; V.,53of.; XIX., 4, 12. 
 
 * Works, III., 208. Watts claimed that the Westminster Assembly did not \ 
 design the Shorter Catechism for blind memorizing by young children, but 
 prepared it as an outline of doctrine by which teachers shouTcT be guided in 
 their work of instruction. " The Assembly's Larger Catechism," as he said, 
 " w:is not composed for children, but for men ; to give them a large and full » 
 view of all the parts of our holy religion. The Shorter Catechism is but an 
 ab ridge ment of the Lir^cr. ... A multitude of the same Latinized and 
 theological terms are used in it as in the Larger" (ibid., III., 210). He re- 
 marked that more than twenty persons " who had a most high esteem for the 
 
86 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 tal of the even then common suggestion that there is a 
 possible gain to children in the unintelligent memorizing 
 of statements of doctrine which it may be they will live 
 to know the meaning of, Dr. Watts said, pithily: "Words 
 are but as the husks of this divine food, whereby the 
 souls of children must be nourished to everlasting life. 
 Though the food is divine, it is possible the husk may be 
 too hard for them to open. 1 Is it the best method for 
 feeding and nourishing the bodies of young children, to 
 bestow upon them [uncracked] nuts and almonds, in 
 hope that they will taste the sweetness of them when 
 their teeth are strong enough to break the shell ? Will 
 they not be far better nourished by children's bread, and 
 by food which they can immediately taste and relish?" 2 
 This thought of Dr. Watts suggests the telling title of 
 Dr. Bushnell's sermon on a kindred theme: "God's 
 thoughts fit bread for children." 
 
 Even those simpler forms of catechism which Dr. Watts 
 
 Assembly's [Shorter] Catechism, and a great and just veneration for it," had 
 already, before himself, prepared elementary catechisms designed to precede 
 the use of the Assembly's. One of these writers he quoted, as saying: 
 " When the venerable Assembly composed this form of instruction, it seems 
 that few of themselves thought it designed or fitted for babes " {ibid., III., 
 211). Watts argued, as modern educators would argue, that to cause a child 
 to memorize the Catechism without understanding it, is to raise in that child's 
 mind an added barrier to his subsequent understanding of the Catechism ; 
 hence " whatever catechisms are impressed on the memories of children in 
 their most tender years, they [the children] should be taught the meaning 
 of them, as far as possible, as fast as they learn them by heart" {ibid., 
 HI., 215). 
 
 1 "I have been informed," says Watts, {ibid., III., 249,) "of one child 
 who was asked what the chief end of man was, and he answered, ' His head ; ' 
 another being asked the same question answered ' Death ; ' neither of them 
 taking in the true idea or meaning of the words." 
 2 Ibid., III., an f. 
 
 ) 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 87 
 
 himself prepared as lesson-helps for children were not 
 designed by him for the children's blind memorizing. In 
 using one of these, as in using the larger ones, " parents 
 and teachers should use their utmost skill," he said, " in 
 leading the child into the meaning of every question, 
 when they ask it, and of every answer when the child 
 repeats it, that the child may not hear and learn mere 
 words and syllables instead of the great things of God 
 and religion." And this seems to have been the pur- 
 pose of all catechism makers of two and three centuries 
 ago. The catechisms were intended as guides in Bible- 
 study, not as substitutes for it, in the religious instruction 
 of children. 1 It was by the perversion of this agency that 
 the help became a hindrance, and that the hopes of the 
 Reformers and their earliest successors for a permanent 
 re -establishment of the primitive Bible -school agency 
 were frustrated. 
 
 In America it was much the same as it was in Europe. 
 The founders of New England had no thought of building 
 up a Christian commonwealth without the Bible-school 
 training agency. But as they looked upon the Church 
 and the State as having a common oversight of this work, 
 and upon the work itself as covering seven days in the' 
 week, their week-day schools were their Bible-schoolsj 
 according to the ancient Jewish theory. Quite naturally, 
 
 1 Principal Currie, while at the head of the Church of Scotland Training 
 College, Edinburgh, expressed himself emphatically on this point. Writing 
 of the manner and method of religious instruction for young children, he said 
 {Early and In/ant School- Education, p. 136) : " An abstract style of teaching 
 w unsuitable, however clear our proofs or simple our phraseology. The 
 ' Catechism ' is the exponent of this style of teaching, and can never, therefore, 
 be the vehicle 0/ instruction by itself. Its forms of expression arc mere words 
 *o the child." 
 
88 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 therefore, they gave the whole of the Lord's Day to wor- 
 ship and sermonizing, upon the presupposed basis of a 
 week's catechetical teaching. 
 
 Nor did they suppose that the memorizing and reciting 
 of catechism answers was catechetical teaching. John 
 Cotton said, on this point: "The excellent and neces- 
 sary use of catechising young men and novices ... we 
 willingly acknowledge; but little benefit have we seen 
 reaped from set forms of questions and answers devised 
 by one church, and imposed by necessity on another." 1 
 Cotton Mather, also, urged that the aim of catechetical 
 teaching was an understanding of Bible truth. In an 
 appeal to his brother ministers, in the dedication of his 
 " Maschiljor, The Faithful Instructor," he emphasized the 
 uselessness of attempting to train the young and ignorant 
 by " well-composed sermons ; " " whereas," he said, " if 
 you will be at the pains (and can any pains be too much 
 for the precious and immortal souls of your neighbors, 
 O ye that have the care of souls ?) to instruct them in the 
 interlocutory way of teaching, which we call catechising, 
 you have the experience of all ages to make you hope 
 that vast would be the consequence, vast the advantage." 3 
 
 But gradually, in New England, the week-day schools 
 became thoroughly secularized. Catechetical teaching 
 there, came first to be limited to a perfunctory teaching 
 of the Westminster Catechism ; and then to drop out 
 altogether. And in this way it finally came about that 
 where the Christian founders of New England had planned 
 
 1 Cited by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull in his article " Catechisms of Old 
 and New England," in The Sunday School Times for September 8, 1883. 
 
 a Cited by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, in his second article, as above, i» 
 The Sunday School Times for September 15, 1883. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 89 
 
 for even more of teaching than of sermonizing, the teach- 
 ing was given up and only the sermonizing remained. 
 An untaught generation — untaught in any form of the 
 divinely appointed Bible-school — was a sure result; and 
 the religious decline of New England was inevitable. 1 
 Here, as elsewhere, was illustrated that truth of ecclesi- 
 astical history which Bishop Jebb as an observant teacher 
 recorded, that all through the Christian centuries, " in 1 
 exact proportion as catechising [free and familiar inter- 
 locutory teaching, as he explained it 2 ] has been practised 
 or neglected, in the same proportion have the public faith 
 and morals been seen to flourish or decline." 3 
 
 Great preachers, also, as well as great teachers, all the 
 way along in the years of progress and of decline after 
 the Protestant Reformation, were as emphatic in their 
 affirmations of the importance of interlocutory teaching, 
 as God's agency of religious training, as they were of any 
 other primitive Bible truth rescued by the Reformation 
 
 1 All the lessons of history would seem to show, that while interlocutory 
 Bible teaching has tended, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, 
 to preserve the religious vitality of the people practicing it, an adherence to 
 the unintelligent or parrot reciting of any set catechism has been followed by 
 a departure from the teachings of that catechism by the people practicing it. 
 
 * " T,et not the common prejudice be entertained, that catechising is a slight 
 and trifling exercise, to be performed without pains and preparation on your 
 p.irt. This would be so if it were the mere rote-work asking and answering 
 of the questions in our Church Catechism : but to open, to explain, and famil- 
 iarly to illustrate these questions in such a manner as, at once, to reach the 
 understanding and touch the affections of little children, is a work which 
 demands no ordinary acquaintance, at once, with the whole scheme of Chris- 
 tian theology, with the philosophy of the human mind, and with the yet pro- 
 founder mysteries of the human heart. It has, therefore, been well and truly 
 said, by I recollect not what writer, that a boy may preach, but to catechise 
 requires a man " (Jebb's Pastoral Instructions, p. 198). 
 ' Ibid., p. 196. 
 
90 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 from the oblivion of the Dark Ages. It seems strange, 
 indeed, as one reads their testimonies and appeals, that 
 they did not have more permanent power over the thought 
 and action of the churches in which these men were rep- 
 resentative leaders. Godly and earnest Bishop Hall said, 
 toward the close of his well-filled life: 1 " There is no one 
 thing of which I repent so much as not to have bestowed 
 more hours in this public exercise of catechisme [of inter- 
 locutory teaching] ; in regard whereof I would quarrel 
 with my very sermons; and wish that a great part of 
 them had been exchanged for this preaching conference. 
 Those other divine discourses enrich the braine and the 
 tongue; this settles the heart; those others are but the 
 descants to this plain song." 2 
 
 Henry More, eminent as a divine, a philosopher, and a 
 preacher, in the Church of England, in the days of Bishop 
 Hall, and Archbishop Usher, and Richard Baxter, was 
 equally explicit with these other men of God on this 
 point. " Concerning preaching," he said, 3 " that which is 
 most remarkable is this, that whereas there are three chief 
 kinds thereof, namely, catechising, expounding a chap- 
 ter, and preaching, usually so called, — whereof the first 
 [catechising] is the best, and the last [preaching, or ser- 
 monizing] is the least considerable of them all, — this worst 
 and last is the very idol of some men, and the others 
 [are] rejected as things of little worth. But assuredly 
 they [the expounding of a chapter, and the catechising] 
 are of most virtue for the effectual planting the gospel 
 
 1 He died in 1656. 2 Cited in Jebb's Pastoral Instructions, p. 367 f. 
 
 3 In The Great Mystery of Godliness (1660), p. 37 f. ; cited by Dr. J. Hammond 
 Trumbull, in his article, as above, in The Sunday School Times for September 
 IS. I 883. 
 
ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 9 1 
 
 in the minds of men; and of the two, as I said, cate- 
 chising is the better because it enforceth the catechised 
 to take notice of what is taught him ; and what is taught 
 him is not so voluminous but that he can carry it away 
 and remember it forever." 
 
 George Herbert, model Christian pastor as he was, put 
 this truth sententiously when he said, in his " Country 
 Parson:" "At sermons and at prayers men may sleep 
 or wander, but when one is asked a question, he must 
 disclose what he is." l And sturdy John Owen was no 
 less positive in his convictions at this point than the most 
 zealous Churchman. " More knowledge," he said, " is 
 ordinarily diffused, especially among the young and igno- 
 rant, by one hour's catechetical exercise, than by many 
 hours' continual discourse." 2 
 
 Churchman and Puritan, great preacher and great 
 teacher, in the days of new foundation-laying in Protes- 
 tant Christendom, were at one in this opinion ; as, indeed, 
 it would seem that every intelligent Bible student and 
 Christian thinker must always be: for in no sphere save 
 in that of religion — where alone interlocutory teaching is 
 
 . * George Herbert's Remains, p. 165. That Herbert had no thought of con- 
 fining catechetical teaching to set questions and answers, is evident when he 
 says (p. 163) : " Many say the Catechism by rote, as parrots, without piercing 
 into the sense of it ; " and, again, when he counsels the varying of the ques- 
 tions according to the capacity of the learner, in order to " draw out of 
 ignorant and silly souls, even the dark points of religion." " Catechising in 
 its true and original sense," said Bishop Law, a century later than Herbert, 
 " implies something more than the bare running over of an old form [even] 
 though that [form] consists of proper questions and answers, and contains 
 whatsoever is needful for faith and practice." Archdeacon Bather, who cites 
 this statement of Law, cites also, with approval, the yet earlier statement of 
 Dean Comber, that " sermons can never do good upon an uncatechised_cojt 
 gregation" (see Hintson the Art of Catechising, pp. 6, 171). 
 ~"^ r ClietTby Dr. Steel in The Christian Teacher in Sunday Schools, p. I at. 
 
92 THE SUN DA Y- SCHO OL : 
 
 divinely enjoined — was there ever attempted the folly of 
 teaching primary truths, to the young and the ignorant, 
 by unbroken discourse. Perhaps the facts and the argu- 
 ments in this entire case have never been put more 
 concisely and tellingly than in the words of the loyal and 
 royal old English preacher, Dr. Robert South. " Nay," 
 he said, " I take schoolmasters to have a more powerful 
 influence upon the spirits of men than preachers them- 
 selves; ... it being seldom found that the pulpit mends 
 what the school has marred. . . . And for my own part I 
 never thought a pulpit, a cushion, and an hourglass, such 
 necessary means of salvation, but that much of the time 
 and labor which is spent about them, might be much 
 more profitably bestowed in catechising youth from the 
 desk ; preaching being a kind of spiritual diet upon which 
 people are always feeding, but never full ; and many poor 
 souls, God knows too, too like Pharaoh's kine, much 
 the leaner for their full feed. And how, for God's sake, 
 should it be otherwise? For to preach to people without 
 principles [without a basis of established convictions] is to 
 build where there is no foundation, or rather where there 
 is not so much as ground to build upon. But people 
 are not to be harangued, but catechised [instructed], into 
 principles : and this is not the proper work of the pulpit, 
 any more than threshing can pass for sowing. Young 
 minds are to be leisurely formed and fashioned with the 
 first plain, simple, and substantial rudiments of religion. 
 And to expect that this should be done by preaching, or 
 force of lungs, is just as if a smith, or artist who works 
 in metal, should think to frame and shape out his work 
 only with his bellows." 1 
 
 1 South's Sermons : Sermon 49, " The Virtuous Education of Youth." 
 

 ITS VARYING PROGRESS. 93 
 
 That the bellows has an important part in the work of 
 bringing the gathered coals to a glow at the spiritual 
 forge, so that they may heat the metal to a fitness for its 
 hammering and shaping, no one will question. But the 
 advantage of other agencies besides the bellows, in pref- 
 erence to a reliance upon that alone, in the proper work 
 of the spiritual forge-tender, is well illustrated in a com- 
 parison of the labors of Whitefield and Wesley, in the 
 English reformation of the eighteenth century, in which 
 they toiled together. Whitefield had the greater bellows 
 power; and the hardest iron softened in the coals which 
 kindled and burned under the breath of his preaching. 1 
 Yet he made little use of any other agency than that ; 
 while Wesley took the pinchers and the hammer of the 
 class-meeting agency, and saw to it that every individual 
 member of the church organization put into operation by 
 him was personally reached and trained through an inter- 
 locutory exercise, week by week, year in and year out. 
 And now that which we know of Whitefield's work is 
 chiefly in the recorded testimony of men who tell how 
 the fires burned when he blew the bellows; while the 
 gleam of new forges are seen all the world over, as a 
 result of Wesley's conformity, in his methods of training, 
 to the divinely appointed plan of church formation and 
 church-life maintaining. 
 
 In spite, however, of the lessons of the Protestant Ref- 
 
 1 This figure of the bellows, as applicable to the preacher, seems to have 
 been in the mind of Whitefield himself, when he wrote to Governor Belcher, 
 concerning a visit to Boston by his friend Gilbert Tennent, as following up 
 his own beginning there : " This week Mr. Tennent proposes to set out for 
 Boston, to blow up the divine flame recently kindled there." See Home, the 
 School and the Church, V., 167. 
 
94 THE SUNDA V- SCHO OL. 
 
 ormation in its progress and in its checking ; in spite 
 of the concurrent testimony of great preachers and great 
 teachers all along the centuries ; in spite of the uniform 
 indications of all ecclesiastical history; in spite of the 
 specific injunctions of the great Head of the Church, — 
 interlocutory Bible-teaching again declined in prominence 
 in the Protestant churches of Europe, of Great Britain, 
 and of America, during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, as it had declined in the universal Christian 
 Church in the eight or ten centuries preceding the six- 
 teenth. Here and there, as similarly through the Middle 
 Ages, there were those who continued faithful to God's 
 plan for the Church teaching of the young ; and who were 
 blessed and were a blessing accordingly. The Mora- 
 vians, for example, lineal descendants of the Hussites, 
 never wholly intermitted this method of working. They 
 continued to give the first place to the Bible, and their 
 first care to the children, in the work of religious instruc- 
 tion. There were local churches, also, in every great 
 body of Protestant Christians, which were distinguished 
 for their recognition of the child-teaching duty of the 
 Church, while that duty was ignored or neglected so 
 widely in their communion at large. But these instances 
 were exceptional. It seemed, indeed, as if, in the varying 
 progress of the Christian centuries, the Sunday-school idea 
 had less prominence in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 than in the third and fourth centuries. And this outlook 
 gave little hope to the Church or to the world. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: ITS MODERN REVIVAL 
 AND EXPANSION. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SUNDA Y SCHOOL : ITS MODERN REVIVAL 
 AND EXPANSION. 
 
 Religious Declension in the Eighteenth Century. — Mid -century 
 Revivals. — Zinzendorfs and Wesley's Work among Children. 
 — The Sunday-school Beginnings of Robert Raikes. — Nature 
 and Progress of this Movement. — Its Influence in England and 
 Elsewhere. — Sunday-schools in America. — Illustrations of their 
 Power. — As Seen by Foreigners. — As Imitated Abroad. — Im- 
 proved Sunday-school Methods. — The International Lesson 
 System. — Growth in Popular Bible Study. — The Sunday-school 
 of To-day. 
 
 In whatever aspect it be viewed, the contrast between 
 the religious life of the Protestant world in the sixteenth 
 century and in the eighteenth, is a sad one. The de- 
 cadence of moral and spiritual power in the Protestant 
 nations of Europe and America, as a whole, despite its 
 partial checks by religious revivals on both sides of the 
 ocean, continued with generally accelerated force to the 
 latter third of the eighteenth century ; with its culmina- 
 tion in the volcanic outburst of the French Revolution, 
 and the accompanying earthquake tremblings of the 
 moral world. 
 
 On this point all historians are practically at one. In 
 Germany the period in question is characterized, by the 
 church historian Kurtz, as " the years of spiritual fam- 
 
 7 97 
 
98 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 ine." 1 Of the rationalistic cyclone which burst over his 
 land at the close of that period, he says: "The storm 
 came from abroad; but it was invested with the mighty 
 power of the spirit of the age ; and it found a dissolution 
 and agitation going on within which brought sympathies 
 and allies to it from all sides, and promoted the transition 
 of the one extreme into the other." 2 De Pressense, 
 writing of the corresponding religious decline in France, 
 ascribes its origin, as does Kurtz, to countries beyond 
 his own; but its effects he finds both at home and 
 abroad. "Nothing is so sad," he says, "as the religious 
 history of the eighteenth century. Piety languishes; 
 science there is none, at least on the side of the defend- 
 ers of Christianity. In England and in Germany a 
 parching wind blows over hearts and minds. There is 
 preached in the Protestant pulpits — in those which are 
 standing — a religion without grandeur, without myste- 
 ries; which has neither the boldness of philosophy, nor 
 that of faith." 3 
 
 Looking at England from the stand-point of whatever 
 historical writer we turn to, we find much the same state 
 of things described there. A historian of English litera- 
 ture says of the middle of the eighteenth century : " It was 
 remarkable for the low tone of manners and sentiment ; 
 perhaps the lowest that ever prevailed in England." 4 A 
 historian of English jurisprudence says of the same period: 
 " The upper classes were corrupt without refinement ; the 
 middle, gross without humor; and the lower, brutal with- 
 
 1 Text- Book of Church History, II., 308. 2 Ibid., II., 277. 
 
 8 The Church and the French Revolution, p. 15. 
 
 * Shaw's Manual of English Lit., p. 315. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 99 
 
 out honesty." 1 Bishop Ryle, with the evangelical sym- 
 pathies of a Low Churchman, says: "The state of this 
 country, in a religious and moral point of view, in the 
 middle of last century, was so painfully unsatisfactory 
 that it is difficult to convey any adequate idea of it. 
 English people of the present day, who have never been 
 led to inquire into the subject, can have no conception of 
 the darkness that prevailed. From the year 1700 till 
 about the era of the French Revolution, England seemed 
 barren of all that is really good. How such a state of 
 things can have arisen in a land of free Bibles and pro- 
 fessing Protestantism is almost past comprehension. . . . 
 There was darkness in high places, and darkness in low 
 places; darkness in the court, the camp, the Parliament, 
 and the bar; darkness in country, and darkness in town ; 
 darkness among rich, and darkness among poor; — a 
 gross, thick, religious and moral darkness ; a darkness 
 that might be felt." 2 
 
 A more recent history of the English Church in the 
 eighteenth century, from the stand-point of a stauncher 
 Churchman, while aiming to show that the state of things 
 in that church was not so bad as is pictured by Bishop 
 Ryle, bears added testimony to the general decline in 
 religion and morals then existing in England. " That lax 
 morality and religious indifference prevailed more or less 
 among all classes during this period," it says, " we learn 
 from the concurrent testimony of writers of every kind 
 and creed. Turn where one will, the same melancholy 
 
 1 Phillimore's History of the Law of Evidence, p. 546; cited in Forsyth's 
 Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, p. 17. 
 
 a The Christian Leaders of the Last Century, p. 13 f. 
 
IOO THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 picture is presented to us." 1 Finally, such impartial and 
 careful historians as Lord Mahon, 2 and Lecky, 3 and Green, 4 
 multiply detailed facts, and citations of contemporaneous 
 opinion, in evidence of a measure of ignorance, of irre- 
 ligion, and of immorality in the English community 
 generally, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 which it is not easy now to realize. As in the case of the 
 French and German historians, the English writers on 
 this period attribute the causes of the decline to influences 
 beyond their own country; and they find occasion for 
 gratulation in the thought that " if England was morally 
 and spiritually in low estate at this period, she was, at 
 any rate, in a better plight than her neighbors." 5 
 
 America shows much the same decline in morals and 
 religion during the eighteenth century as England and the 
 continent of Europe, with a similar attempt on the part 
 of historians to prove that its origin was in an influence 
 which came from abroad. Dr. Dorchester, in connection 
 with his valuable compilation of facts in this line, says : 
 "The corruption of manners, working downward through 
 English society during the reigns of William III., Queen 
 Anne, and the first two Georges, extended to American 
 shores, changing the moral aspects of the people. In 
 the first third of the eighteenth century this deterioration 
 was very plain. The drinking habits, hitherto very mod- 
 
 1 Abbey and Overton's The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, 
 p. 302 f. See, also, pp. 5, 25 f., 303-310. 
 
 2 History of England from 17 13 to 1783, VII., 330. 
 
 5 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II., ch. 9 ; Vol. VI, 
 ch. 23. 
 
 * History of the English People, Bk. ix., chs. 1-4. 
 
 6 The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, p. 311. See, also, Lecky's 
 Hist. ofEng., II., 691. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. IOI 
 
 erate, were increased, though [they were] not as bad as 
 at the close of the century." l Referring to the revivals 
 under Edwards and Whitefield, in 1735-45, he says: 
 " They were an incalculable blessing to the Colonial 
 churches and communities, checking for a time the spread 
 of immorality. But there speedily followed a long and 
 troublous period (1 750-1 800) and its distracting events — 
 the French and Indian wars ; the conflicting agitations 
 preceding the Revolutionary War; the war itself, with 
 the usual depraving influences; . . . the general infusion 
 of European skepticism and manners ; and the spread of 
 New England rum." 2 And he adds that " a detailed 
 statement of American manners in the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century will exhibit a condition of immorality 
 having no later parallel on our shores." 
 
 In his famous funeral sermon on Dr. Nathanael Emmons 
 (which is said to have been read in advance to its subject 
 by its author), the Rev. Thomas Williams expressed him- 
 self in similar terms of the moral aspects of the years 
 following the Revolutionary War. " The scenes and 
 events," he says, " which arose after the establishment of 
 our national independence, in this country, in the Church 
 of God on earth, and among the nations of the world, 
 during his [Dr. Emmons's] ministry, were the most 
 astonishing that have occurred in the records of unin- 
 spired history. In his day, the conspiracy of infidels 
 and atheists against religion, government and humanity, 
 against truth and peace, order and liberty, shook the 
 foundations of kingdoms and nations ; and attempted to 
 destroy from the earth the Church and kingdom of God, 
 
 » The Problem of Religious Progress, p. 173. * Ibid., p. 177. 
 
102 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 and the name and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 
 his day, the 'three unclean spirits, like frogs, were coming 
 from the mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of 
 the beast and from the mouth of the false prophet.' 1 . . . 
 Through their influence impiety, infidelity and inhu- 
 manity, delusion, disorder and wickedness in every form, 
 have arisen in New England, and in other parts of the 
 world, above what was ever before known on earth. 
 Error, folly and vanity, declension, lukewarmness and 
 stupidity, have seized and destroyed many churches in 
 this land; and have reached every church and town, every 
 neighborhood and family." 2 
 
 The first President Dwight, of Yale, in commenting 
 on the sad state of things in this last-named period, says 
 of its immediate causes : " Europe . . . consigned to 
 these states a plentiful supply of the means of corruption. 
 From France, Germany, and Great Britain, the dregs of 
 infidelity were vomited upon us. From the 'Systhne de 
 la Nature ' and the * Philosophical Dictionary,' down to 
 the 'Political Justice' of Godwin, and the 'Age of Rea- 
 son,' the whole mass pf pollution was emptied in upon 
 us as a deluge." 3 A little later Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
 looking back upon this time, said with like emphatic 
 earnestness : " When that mighty convulsion took place, 
 which a second time burst open the bottomless pit, and 
 spread darkness and dismay over Europe, every gale 
 brought to our shores contagion and death. Thousands 
 at once breathed the tainted air, and felt the fever kindle 
 
 1 Rev. 16 : 13. 
 
 1 Discourse on the Official Character of Nathanael Emmons, p. 67 f. 
 
 3 Dwight's Travels, IV., 380. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 103 
 
 in the brain. A paroxysm of moral madness and terrific 
 innovation ensued." 1 
 
 As to Xhcfact of the existing decline in public morals 
 and in religious life on both sides of the ocean in the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century, there would seem to 
 be no room for question ; but as to its primary cause y the 
 reasons generally given by historians are fairly open to 
 challenge. Even though it be shown that influences of 
 evil are at work in the world, is that in itself sufficient to 
 account for the failure of the Church of Christ to maintain 
 its purity and its power ? Is the Church, indeed, depend- 
 ent for the savor of its saltness on the measure of good 
 which it absorbs from the community about it? Or is it 
 its very mission to be at its best when the world is at its 
 worst? Rightly furnished, the Church of Christ is proof 
 against all outside evil. When the Church fails to with- 
 stand evil, and when its spiritual life declines, the cause 
 of trouble is to be sought within the Church, and not 
 beyond it. Then is the time to look for the neglect, or 
 for the misuse, by the Church, of God's appointed means 
 and methods in the line of its legitimate working. 
 
 If the families of Christian missionaries in a heathen 
 land were, one after another, lapsing into heathenism, 
 would it be deemed sufficient to ascertain the precise 
 form of error into which they lapsed, and to locate the 
 geographical direction from which it reached their neigh- 
 borhood? Would not the necessity be recognized of 
 learning what essential guards about those Christian fami- 
 lies had been lacking amid their heathen surroundings? 
 Why then should it be concluded satisfactory to account 
 
 * Sermons Delivtred on Various Occasions, p. no. 
 
104 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 for the low state of the Protestant churches of Europe 
 and America in the eighteenth century, by an enumera- 
 tion of their temptations, and an identifying of their 
 tempters, without giving chief prominence to their so 
 general neglect of the church-school, or the Sunday- 
 school, as God's appointed agency for winning and train- 
 ing the young? 
 
 God has chosen to give power to his Church in and 
 through the means and measures of his pointing out. 
 To the school idea he has assigned a foremost place in 
 the right workings of the Church of Christ Whenever 
 that idea is lost sight of, or is obscured, the Church is a 
 loser in its holding power and in its power of progress. 
 It is only when that idea is kept in due prominence that 
 the Church has a possibility of filling its place and of 
 doing its proper work. That that idea was obscured in 
 the Protestant world, during the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, is 
 a fact which admits of no dispute. Even in England, 
 where the state of things was better than in some other 
 countries, the religious teaching of the young was sadly 
 neglected. Abbey and Overton, the English Church his- 
 torians already cited, say at this point : " In the latter 
 part of the seventeenth and through the earlier years of 
 the eighteenth century, we find earnest Churchmen, of all 
 opinions, sorely lamenting the comparative disuse of the 
 old [and still enjoined] custom of catechising [of the 
 interlocutory teaching of the young] on Sunday after- 
 noons. Five successive archbishops of Canterbury — 
 Sheldon, Sancroft, Tillotson, Tenison, and Wake — how- 
 ever widely their opinions might differ on some points 
 relating to the edification of the Church, were cordially 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 105 
 
 agreed in this." 1 And as to another prominent religious 
 training agency at the same period, these writers say: 
 " If we ask what was the state of the Universities, which 
 ought to be the centres of light, diffusing itself through- 
 out the whole nation, the training-grounds of those who 
 are to be the trainers of their fellow-men, we have the 
 evidence of such different kinds of men as Swift, Defoe, 
 Gray, Gibbon, Johnson, John Wesley, Lord Eldon, and 
 Lord Chesterfield, all agreeing on this point, that both 
 [of] the great Universities were neglectful and inefficient 
 in the performance of their proper work." 2 
 
 " For more than sixty years after the death of [Queen] 
 Anne [17 14]," says Lecky, "the history of education in 
 England is almost a blank." 3 Referring to the latter half 
 of the eighteenth century, Lord Mahon says : " Through- 
 out England the education of the laboring classes was 
 most grievously neglected; the supineness of the clergy 
 of that age being manifest on this point as on every 
 other." 4 And by this neglect of God's appointed training 
 agency, as a means of holding those who were already 
 within the fold of the Church, and of hopefully reaching 
 those who were without, the decline of life and power in 
 the Church, as the controlling force in the community, 
 was assured — and was brought about. Only God knows 
 what would have been the result to the Church and to 
 the world, if the church Bible -school agency had not 
 been revived and made newly prominent under circum- 
 stances which led to its extension and to its expansion in 
 a measure beyond all precedent 
 
 1 The Englifh Church in the Eighteenth Century, p. 469. 
 * Ibid., p. 303. » Hist. o/Eng., VI.. 276. * Hist, of Eng., VI I., 33a. 
 
Io6 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 To begin with, there were remarkable revivals of re- 
 ligion near the middle of the eighteenth century, in 
 connection with the work of Zinzendorf in Germany, oi 
 Wesley and Whitefield in Great Britain, and of Edwards 
 and Whitefield in the United States. But these revivals, 
 and the work of these great men, could, in the very nature 
 of things, have permanent power only as the methods and 
 agencies put into fresh operation by them corresponded 
 to God's appointment, and were, in his providence, suited 
 to the work to which they were applied. As in the case 
 of Luther and Calvin and Knox, and again of Loyola and 
 Xavier, Zinzendorf and Wesley realized that no revival 
 could be permanent in its results, nor could any reforma- 
 tion be an abiding one, except by means of reaching and 
 systematically training the young ; and it was in the light 
 of this fundamental truth that they prosecuted their evan- 
 gelizing and upbuilding work most successfully. 
 
 Zinzendorf and his co-workers preached directly to the 
 children, gathered large numbers of them into the church- 
 fold, 1 and at the same time arranged for the personal 
 training of the converts individually, by clustering them 
 in small classes under special teachers. 2 Wesley followed 
 
 1 In 1727 there was a remarkable revival among the Moravian children at 
 Bertholdsdorf and Herrnhut, which had its beginning in a discourse to th* 
 girls by Count Zinzendorf. (See Cranz's Hist, of the Brethren, p. 119 f.). For 
 evidence of Zinzendorf 's interest in the religious training of children, by the 
 church, see, also, Spangenberg's Life of Zinzendorf , p. 85 f. 
 
 2 In an address delivered July 2, 1747, Count Zinzendorf mentioned that just 
 twenty years before then, [that is, July 2, 1727,] on the day commemorative 
 of the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, the idea came to him of organizing the people 
 of his charge into "bands or societies," or small classes; and he added: 
 " These were established throughout the whole community the following 
 week, and have been productive of such blessed effects, that I believe [that] 
 without such an institution the church would never have become what it now 
 
ERSITY 
 
 
 ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 107 
 
 Zinzendorf in both particulars. 1 He laid great stress on 
 the work among children, and on the class instruction of 
 converts. " Unless ... we can take care of the rising 
 ge?ieratio?i } the present revival of religion," he said, " will 
 be res unius aetatis ; it will last only the age of a man." 2 
 
 is. The societies, called bands, consist of a few individuals met together in 
 the name of Jesus, amongst whom Jesus is, who converse together in a par- 
 ticularly child-like manner on the state of their hearts, and conceal nothing 
 from each other, but have wholly committed themselves to each other in the 
 Lord. ... In each of them a brother or a sister, according to the sex [of the 
 band or class], was commissioned to take particular charge of the rest. When 
 they met they either read something of an edifying nature, sang, and prayed, 
 or else conversed together." It was about this time that Zinzendorf also 
 revived the primitive " love-feast " among his people. (Spangenberg's Life 
 0/ Zinzendorf, pp. 86-89.) 
 
 1 One of Zinzendorf s helpers was Peter Boehler, born at Frankfort-on-the- 
 Main, in 1712. He was made a bishop at Herrnhut in 1748. While at Lon- 
 don, as a Moravian worker, early in 1738, he became acquainted with John 
 Wesley, and seems to have put his stamp upon him permanently. Tyerman 
 records that Wesley *' was induced [by Boehler] to become a member of the 
 first Moravian society in Fetter Lane [London]." The rules of that society, 
 framed " in obedience to the command of God by St. James, and by the advice 
 of Peter Boehler," provided that the members " should be divided into bands, 
 of not fewer than five nor more than ten ; and that some one in each band 
 should be desired to interrogate the rest, and should be called the leader. 
 Each band was to meet twice a week." The details of the plan of exercises, and 
 of the scope of management of these bands, would seem to indicate, beyond a 
 question, the origin of the idea of the subsequent system of Methodist class 
 meetings (see Tyerman's Life and Times of John Wesley, I., 195 f.; also 
 Wesley's Journal for May, 1738, Works,!.). In the summer following his first 
 connection with the Moravian society in London, Wesley visited Zinzendorf 
 at Herrnhut. In his journal at that time he describes the methods of Mora- 
 vian church organization and discipline, similar to those which Boehler had 
 disclosed to him. This system impressed Wesley to such an extent that he 
 wrote out its details in full in his journal ; and the future showed the value 
 which he attached to it. (See Wesley's Journal for August, 1738, and for 
 February and March, 1742 [ Works, I.] ; also Tyerman's Life of Wesley, I., 
 377-381.446.463) 
 
 •Tyerman's Life of Wesley, III., 23. See, also. Wesley's Sermons: Ser- 
 mon 94, on Family Religion ( Works, VII., 73). 
 
108 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 And in that statement Wesley touched the truth of truths 
 concerning God's method of giving permanent power to 
 the work of his Church. To his preachers, Wesley fol- 
 lowed this affirmation with the injunction: "Spend an 
 hour a week with the children, in every large town, 
 whether you like it or not. Talk with them every time 
 you see any at home. Pray in earnest for them." ' Lecky, 
 in his careful review of the methods and influence of the 
 Wesleyan movement, says: "The Methodists appear to 
 have preached especially to children;" and he cites the 
 words of Wesley when describing, " among other cases, a 
 remarkable revival among children at Stockton- upon - 
 Tees, in 1784: 'Is not this a new thing upon the earth? 
 God begins his work in children. . . . Thus the flame 
 spreads to those of riper years.'" 2 Moreover, from the 
 beginning of his more active labors, Wesley insisted that 
 all who were brought under his instruction should be 
 gathered in " bands," or "classes," for their personal train- 
 ing. 3 So far the Wesleyan movement included important 
 elements of the Sunday-school agency; and in the same 
 measure that movement had a possibility of continuance 
 and permanency. 
 
 But there was still a lack, and the effect of it was obvi- 
 ous. The methods of the Wesleyans, like those of the 
 Moravians, were limited to those bodies of Christians, 
 even while the influence of their work extended far beyond 
 them. Their evangelizing efforts among children were 
 
 1 Tyerman's Life of Wesley, III., 23. 
 
 2 Hist, of Eng., II., 665. For accounts of Wesley's work among children, 
 see his Journal, for Aug. 19, 1776; Dec. 2, 1778 ; April 5, April 27, June 7, 
 1782; May 18, June 8, 1784, etc. ( Works, IV.). 
 
 * Tyerman's Life of Wesley, I., 379. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 109 
 
 but occasional, as visiting preachers had opportunities in 
 that direction. And the training of converts in their 
 bands, or classes, was mainly in the sphere of Christian 
 experience. There was still needed a revival of the primi- 
 tive church-school agency, to be made use of alike by 
 every branch of the Church of Christ, for the persistent 
 and systematic teaching of children and of the child-like, 
 in the "all things" of the Holy Scriptures. Unless that 
 agency should reappear, the Church of Christ must con- 
 tinue crippled for its divinely directed work, and the best 
 results of the latest revival, like those of former days, 
 must be confined to the lifetime of its chief promoters. 
 It was the timely meeting of that lack which proved a 
 new beginning of good to the Protestant Christian world. 
 
 It was in the city of Gloucester, England, in July, 
 1780, 1 that Robert Raikes, the editor and proprietor of 
 
 1 It is a singular fact, that, for more than three-quarters of a century, the 
 beginning of Raikes's work was understood to be 1781, instead of 1780. The 
 Jubilee, or half-century celebration, of the Raikes movement, was in 1831. 
 The more careful histories of the Sunday-school, such as Pray 'sand Watson's, 
 were positive in fixing its start in 1781; and cyclopedias and modern church 
 histories, generally, accepted this as the correct date. Yet the Centenary of 
 Sunday-schools was observed in 1880; the inscription on the pedestal of 
 Raikes's statue, erected at that time in London, gives 1780 as the date of his 
 first Sunday-school; and, practically, no question now exists that this is cor- 
 rect. Raikes's letter concerning his work, published in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for June, 1784, says that it was "about three years " before that 
 writing that he began his first Sunday-school. Here, perhaps, is the origin 
 of the idea that the beginning was in 1781. But that letter of Raikes is dated 
 " November 25th," hence must have been written as early as 1783. More- 
 over, the date of the beginning of the Gloucester Sunday-schools is given as 
 1780 on the monument of the Rev. Thomas Stock, a co-worker with Raikes 
 in their starting (Pray 's Hist, of Sunday-schools, p. 137); and a Bible pre- 
 sented, at the beginning of this work, to Mr. King, in whose house the first 
 Sunday-school was started by Raikes, bore in it the date of "July, 1780." 
 (See Gregory's Robert Raikes, p. 72.) 
 
1 10 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 The Gloucester Journal, who had already interested him- 
 self in philanthropic efforts at prison reform, gathered the 
 poorer children of a manufacturing quarter of that city 
 into the rooms of a private house of the neighborhood, 1 for 
 their Sunday instruction in reading and in the elementary 
 truths of religion. "The children were to come soon 
 after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve ; they were 
 then to go home and stay till one ; and after reading a 
 lesson they were to be conducted to church. After 
 church they were to be employed in repeating the cate- 
 chism till half-past five, and then to be dismissed, with an 
 injunction to go home without making a noise; and by 
 no means to play in the street." 2 Four women were 
 employed as teachers in the school, at the rate of a shil- 
 ling a day. 3 And this was the beginning of the modern 
 
 , " It was at the house of a Mr. King, in St. Catherine Street, that the first 
 Gloucester Sunday-school was started, in the month of July, 1780. Mr. King 
 was at the time steward to Mr. Pitt, who represented Gloucester in Parliament 
 for some years " (Gregory's Robert Raikes, p. 72). 
 
 2 A letter from Robert Raikes, dated June 5, 1784, in the Appendix to 
 Turner's Sunday Schools Recommended, p. 41. 
 
 • Describing his conversation with a woman of the neighborhood, where he 
 started his first Sunday-school, Raikes says: " I then inquired if there were 
 any decent, well-disposed women in the neighborhood who kept schools for 
 teaching to read. I presently was directed to four : to these I applied, and 
 made an agreement with them to receive as many children as I should send 
 them upon the Sundays, whom they were to instruct in reading and in the 
 Church Catechism. For this I engaged to pay them each a shilling for their 
 day's employment. The women seemed pleased with the proposal. I then 
 waited on the clergyman before mentioned [the Rev. Thomas Stock], and 
 imparted to him my plan ; he was so much satisfied with the idea, that he 
 engaged to lend his assistance by going round to the schools on a Sunday after- 
 noon, to examine the progress that was made, and to enforce order and deco- 
 rum among such a set of little heathen" (Raikes's Letter in Gentleman's 
 Magazine for June, 1784). Gregory {Robert Raikes, p. 72) says that, " prior 
 to the establishment of the school, Mr. Raikes and the Rev. T. Stock went to 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 1 1 1 
 
 Sunday-school movement. This was the revival, under 
 new auspices, of the divinely appointed church Bible- 
 school. This was the starting-point of a new period of 
 life and hope to the Church of Christ, and, through the 
 Church, to the world. 
 
 There seems to have been absolutely nothing new in 
 the Sunday-school plans of Robert Raikes. Schools of 
 a similar character, and apparently with all the essential 
 features of his school, were organized in Upper Egypt, 
 and in Armenia, and elsewhere in the East, more than 
 fourteen centuries before his day. 1 All the way along 
 the intervening centuries there had been repeated revi- 
 vals of this agency of evangelism and of religious instruc- 
 tion, with more or less of success. The seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries had not been without attempts in this 
 direction, in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the 
 United States. 2 But in the providence of God the times 
 
 Mrs. King's house, and engaged the services of Mrs. King as the first teacher, 
 at a salary of is. 6d. per Sunday, of which sum Mr. Raikes contributed a 
 shilling and Mr. Stock sixpence." It is possible, therefore, that Mr. Stock 
 added a sixpence to Mr. Raikes's shilling in the case of one teacher. Indeed, 
 Mr. Raikes wrote on another occasion : " The stipend to the teachers here 
 is a shilling each Sunday, but we find them firing, and bestow gratuities as 
 rewards of diligence, which may make it worth sixpence more " (Raikes's 
 Letter to Mrs. Harris, in Pray's Hist, of Sunday-schools, p. 145). 
 
 1 See p. 62 f., ante. 
 
 * It has already been shown (p. 74, ante) that a form of Sunday-schools 
 was inaugurated by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in 1560, 
 and that as early as 1603 a similar system was in operation in the Church of 
 England. Yet a certain curious interest attaches to the record of sporadic 
 instances of Sunday-school work, in fields where that work was not systemati- 
 cally and generally prosecuted, after its post-Reformation decline, and before 
 its revival by Robert Raikes. Therefore it is that the following instances of 
 such work may properly be mentioned just here ; although it is by no DMMM 
 probable that they stand alone in the history of such undertakings in the 
 
112 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 were now ripe for a revival of the church-school idea in 
 this form, and for its progressive prevalence beyond its 
 extremest limits of a former day. 
 
 Mr. Raikes had a peculiar advantage, in his position 
 as the editor of a weekly periodical, with its opportunity 
 of enabling him to make widely known the good results 
 of his new enterprise. Yet it was not until his experi- 
 ment had had a successful trial of more than three years 
 that he made an announcement of it in his periodical. 1 
 His earliest sketch of his work, thus given to the public, 
 in November, 1783, (without, however, the mention of his 
 own name in connection with it,) seems to have attracted 
 the attention of Colonel Richard Townley, of Lancashire, 
 and to have incited him to a desire to introduce similar 
 
 period and countries covered by them. Sunday-schools are known, or are 
 claimed, to have been conducted in Bath, England, (by the Rev. Joseph 
 Alleine,) in 1665-68; in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1674; in Norwich, Con- 
 necticut, in 1676; in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1680; in Newtown, Long 
 Island, (by the Rev. Morgan Jones,) in 1683 ; in England, (by Bishop 
 Frampton,) in 1693 ; in Berks and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania, (by 
 the Schwenkfelders,) in 1734 ; in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, (by Ludwig Hocker,) 
 in 1740; in Bethlehem, Connecticut, (by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Bellamy,) in 
 1740; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (by Mrs. Greening,) in 1744; in Nor- 
 ham, Scotland, (by the Rev. Mr. Morrison,) in 1757; in Brechin, Scotland, 
 (by the Rev. David Blair,) in 1760; in Catterick, England, (by the Rev. 
 Theophilus Lindsey,) in 1763 ; in Columbia, Connecticut, (by the Rev. Eleazer 
 Wheelock,) in 1763; in Bedale, England, (by Miss Harrison,) in 1765; in 
 High Wycombe, England, (by Miss Hannah Ball,) in 1769 ; in Doagh, County 
 Antrim, Ireland, (by William Gait,) in 1770; in Bright, County Down, Ire- 
 land, (by the Rev. Dr. Kennedy,) in 1774; in Little Lever, near Bolton, 
 England, (by James Heys,) in 1775 ; in Mansfield, England, (by the Rev. 
 David Simpson,) in 1778 ; also, about the same time, in Asbury, England, 
 (by the Rev. Thomas Stock) ; and in Dursley, England, (by William King). 
 
 1 In a letter written by Mr. Raikes, in 1787, to Mrs. Harris, of Chelsea, it 
 is said : " My eldest boy was born the very day I made public to the world 
 the scheme of Sunday-schools, in my paper of November 3d, 1783." See 
 Pray's Hist, of Sunday-schools, p. 147. 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 1 3 
 
 schools into the large manufacturing counties of York and 
 Lancaster. The latter, therefore, applied to the mayor of 
 Gloucester, and through the mayor to Mr. Raikes, for 
 added information on the subject. A letter from Mr. 
 Raikes, dated November 25, in response to this inquiry, 
 was published ** in the Leeds and Manchester papers of 
 December, 1783, and January, 1784;" 1 and in June, 1784, 
 it was given in full in the pages of the influential Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, of London. Another descriptive letter 
 by Mr. Raikes, concerning his Sunday-schools, was pub- 
 lished, a little later, in the Arminian Magazine, edited by 
 John Wesley. Yet again he spoke through the pages of 
 the European Magazine. 2 These accounts of the origin 
 and progress of Mr. Raikes's work were reproduced in 
 various forms in the metropolitan and provincial press of 
 Great Britain, and did much to call public attention to the 
 new undertaking in its importance and its possibilities. 
 It is said, indeed, that " by this means the knowledge 
 and nature of Sunday-schools were 'diffused with the 
 rapidity of lightning throughout the world."' 3 
 
 While this Sunday-school movement began within the 
 pale of the Church of England, it was at first purely an 
 individual, rather than an ecclesiastical, movement; as 
 indeed wellnigh all great movements of progress or of 
 reform have been, from the days of John the Baptist to 
 those of Luther, and of Loyola, and of Knox, and of 
 
 J These facts are given in the Appendix to Turner's Sunday Schools Recom- 
 mended. 
 
 * See Gregory's Robert Raikes, pp. 59, 85. Gregory says that this letter 
 was dated June 5, 1785; but Turner, in his Sunday Schools Recommended 
 (p. 40), as already noted (at p. no, ante), gives its date as June 5, 1784. 
 
 • Pray's Hist. 0/ Sunday-schools, p. 152. 
 8 
 
114 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 Wesley. With the approval of some church dignitaries, 
 and against the opposition of others, 1 it extended itself into 
 the field of all religious denominations throughout the 
 United Kingdom, and afterwards over the ocean. Bishop 
 Porteus, then of the see of Chester, and later of London, 
 was its early and earnest advocate. The bishops of Nor- 
 wich, Salisbury, and Llandaff, and the Dean of Canterbury, 
 followed him in commending it. The earls of Ducie and 
 of Salisbury gave it approval. John Newton, William 
 Cowper, Thomas Scott, and Mrs. Trimmer, were hearty 
 in its support. William Fox and Jonas Hanway secured 
 the organization of a general Sunday-school society, with 
 its centre at London. Ladies of fashion undertook the 
 work of Sunday-school teaching. 2 Then the Queen herself 
 gave fresh impetus to the new movement by adding to it 
 
 1 Speaking of the early days of the Sunday-school movement, Sir Charles 
 Reed said, at the Raikes Centenary, in London, in June, 1880: "When 
 Sunday-schools were first instituted in this country they were fiercely attacked. 
 It is not to be supposed that they had an easy progress. They were attacked 
 by prelates in the pulpit. The Bishop of Rochester notably denounced it 
 [the Sunday-school movement], and urged the clergy not to support it ; and 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury was the first man in that day to call the bishops 
 together to consider whether something could not be done to stop this great 
 enterprise." (See The Sunday School Chronicle, for July 1, 1880, p. 354.) 
 Later, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the Congregationalists of New 
 England, were represented among the opponents of the Sunday-school as it 
 battled its way into deserved favor. 
 
 2 For detailed proofs of the facts here referred to, see, among other works, 
 Lloyd's Sketch of the Life of Robert Raikes, and of the History of Sunday 
 Schools; Pray's History of Sunday-schools (a book which has proved a the- 
 saurus of facts and suggestions for subsequent writers on both sides of the 
 ocean) ; Watson's The First Fifty Years of the Sunday-school ; Watson's 
 The Sunday-school Union : Its History and Work; Gregory's Robert Raikes; 
 Paxton Hood's The Day, the Book and the Teacher; Power's Rise and Prog- 
 ress of Sunday-schools ; and the Centenary numbers of The Sunday School 
 Chronicle, July, 1880. 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 1 5 
 
 the stamp of royal favor. Sending for Robert Raikes, 
 she learned from his own lips the story of his work and 
 its progress ; and, as he reports it, " Her Majesty most 
 graciously said that she envied those who had the power 
 of doing good by thus personally promoting the welfare of 
 society, in giving instruction and morality to the general 
 mass of the common people; a pleasure from which, by 
 her situation, she was debarred." l And so Sunday-school 
 teaching came to be not only reputable but fashionable 
 among the better classes of the English people ; and this 
 in itself was a means of good to those better classes, apart 
 even from any good which came from it to those whom 
 they taught. Thus it was that there was a beginning of 
 better days to the English-speaking Christian world 
 through the re-introduction into church activities of the 
 divinely appointed Bible-school agency. 
 
 It has been so common to ascribe all the quickening of 
 interest in religious and philanthropic enterprises, which 
 characterizes the closing years of the last century and the 
 opening years of this, to the evangelical revival and the 
 Methodist movement growing out of it, that it may be 
 well to consider how little real progress had been made 
 in the more than fifty years of revived Christian life in 
 England which preceded the new beginning of the Sun- 
 day-school, in comparison with the progress made in the 
 twenty years, or even in the ten, which immediately fol- 
 lowed that. It was just after Raikes had started his first 
 Sunday-school, that John Wesley published his " Estimate 
 of the Manners of the Present Time," in which he said of 
 England generally: "A total ignorance of God is almost 
 
 1 Raikes's letter to the Rev. Bowen Thickens, cited in Gregory's Robert 
 Raikes, p. 95. 
 
Il6 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 universal among us. The exceptions are exceeding few, 
 whether among the learned or unlearned. High and low, 
 cobblers, tinkers, hackney coachmen, men and maid ser- 
 vants, soldiers, sailors, tradesmen of all ranks, lawyers, 
 physicians, gentlemen, lords, are as ignorant of the Creator 
 of the world as Mahometans or pagans." 1 A little later 
 he testified again : u There is not, on the face of the earth, 
 another nation (at least, that we ever heard of) so per- 
 fectly dissipated and ungodly [as England] ; not only so 
 totally 'without God in the world,' but so openly setting 
 him at defiance. There never was an age, that we read of 
 in history, since Julius Caesar, since Noah, since Adam, 
 wherein dissipation and ungodliness did so generally pre- 
 vail, both among high and low, rich and poor." 2 With 
 all fair qualifyings of these extreme statements of Mr. 
 Wesley, it is evident that there was much to be done in 
 the way of bringing the community to a good measure 
 of religious life and of common morality, at the time 
 when the Sunday-school element became a factor in refor- 
 matory agencies, after more than fifty years of the evan- 
 gelical revival of the eighteenth century. 3 
 
 Lord Mahon presents a very dark picture of English 
 social life at the time of which Mr. Wesley here speaks, 
 and he points to the Sunday-school beginning as marking 
 a new era of national reform. 4 Green, speaking of the 
 days which followed the close of the American Revolu- 
 tion, just after the beginning of Raikes's work, says: "It 
 was then [not before, but theti\ that the moral, the philan- 
 thropic, the religious ideas which have moulded English 
 
 » Works, XI., 152. 2 Ibid., VI., 424. 
 
 3 See Wesley's Sermons : Sermon 94, § 3 ( Works, VII., 77). 
 
 * Hist. ofEng., VII., 333 f. 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 1 7 
 
 society into its present shape, first broke the spiritual 
 torpor of the eighteenth century." 1 And again Green 
 says specifically: "The Sunday-schools established by 
 Mr. Raikes of Gloucester . . . were the beginning of 
 popular education " — [in England]. 2 Lecky, also, refers to 
 "the establishment of Sunday-schools" as "an important 
 step" in the line of "a revived interest in [popular] edu- 
 cation." 3 As showing the national and social prominence 
 which was quickly gained by the Sunday-school system as 
 a factor in the forces of Christian civilization, it is a note- 
 worthy fact that Adam Smith, with his clear perception of 
 the needs and the hope of society as such, declared of this 
 
 1 Hist, of the English People, IV., 372. * Ibid., IV., 273 f. 
 
 8 Hist, of Eng., VI., 277. At a centenary celebration under the auspices 
 of the Church of England Sunday School Institute, in London, in July, 1880, 
 the Rev. J. F. Kitto, in his formal address from the Institute, to the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, said on this point: " It is very difficult for us in this 
 day accurately to estimate the effect which has been produced upon our 
 nation by the attention which was so forcibly directed at that time [in 1780] 
 to the necessity of the education of the young. We believe that it is scarcely 
 too much to say that the system of national elementary education which has 
 been called into existence during the last hundred years owes its origin in 
 great measure to the persevering efforts of those who were instrumental in 
 the foundation of Sunday-schools. . . . One hundred years ago it was a rare 
 thing for the child of a laboring man to be able even to read, but to-day we 
 can point to the gratifying fact that, amongst all the 20,000 scholars who are 
 assembled here to-day, by Your Grace's invitation, there is probably not one 
 who is in a similar condition of ignorance. Nor is this the only or the chief 
 result of the formation of Sunday-schools. The seed of Christian faith and 
 Christian enterprise which was sown by Robert Raikes and his associates has 
 now borne fruit in almost every parish in our land, and its influence has 
 spread far beyond the confines of our own country, or the limits of our own 
 Church; so that wherever our Christianity extends, the importance of the 
 Sunday-school is recognized as the nursery and training-school of the church ; 
 and the zeal and activity of thousands of voluntary teachers have been en- 
 listed in its behalf ( Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the Church of England 
 Sunday School Institute, 1880-81, p. 47 f.). 
 
Il8 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 agency that " no plan has promised to effect a change of 
 manners, with equal ease and simplicity, since the days 
 of the apostles " l — when, in fact, its prototype was in its 
 pristine prominence. And the pessimistic Malthus was 
 moved, about the same time, to utter a warning against 
 the nation's leaving the entire education of the common 
 people to the Sunday-schools. 2 
 
 John Wesley recognized the potency of the new Sun- 
 day-school agency, and he immediately incorporated it 
 into the policy of his great undertaking. To this fact the 
 Methodist Church organization owes a large measure of its 
 success, if indeed it is not indebted to it for its continu- 
 ance as well as for its steady growth. " I verily think," 
 wrote Wesley, "these Sunday-schools are one of the 
 noblest specimens of charity which have been set on foot 
 in England since the time of William the Conqueror." 3 
 Again he wrote to his brother Charles : " I am glad you 
 have set up Sunday-schools. ... It is one of the noblest 
 institutions which has been seen in Europe for some cen- 
 turies, and will increase more and more, provided the 
 teachers and inspectors do their duty." 4 And well he 
 might think thus. About the time of the opening of 
 Raikes's first Sunday-school, more than fifty years from 
 the beginning of the great revival, the aggregate mem- 
 bership of the Methodist communion, all the world over, 
 was a little more than fifty thousand. 5 Within four years 
 from the public announcement by Raikes of the begin- 
 ning of his work in Gloucester, the Sunday-schools of the 
 
 1 Cited in a letter of Robert Raikes to William Fox, in Lloyd's Sketch of 
 Robert Raikes, p. 55. 2 See Lecky's Hist, of Eng., VI., 278. 
 
 s Tyerman's Life of Wesley, III., 522. * Ibid., III., 604. 
 
 5 Ibid., III., 620. 
 
ITS MODERN iRE VIVAL. 1 1 9 
 
 United Kingdom had a membership of about a quarter of 
 a million; 1 and from that time onward the progress of the 
 Methodists, as of wellnigh every other body of Protestant 
 Christians, was accelerated beyond all precedent. 
 
 At first the Sunday-school had paid teachers, and its in- 
 struction was mainly limited to lessons in reading, and in 
 the Church of England Catechism. Afterward it secured 
 voluntary teachers, 2 and its lessons included the memo- 
 rizing of Bible verses. Gradually its plans and methods 
 were expanded, until they comprised the systematic study 
 of the Bible in limited lessons, week by week, with a 
 classification of scholars in accordance with their ages 
 and attainments. And with this progress in the character 
 of the school itself, there was a corresponding progress 
 in its influence in the direction of securing new agencies 
 for the extension of Christian knowledge. 
 
 That the Sunday-school was not only the beginning 
 of the English system of public school education, but that 
 step by step that system was prompted and promoted by 
 the success of Sunday-school teaching, is evident by the 
 records of history. 3 Penny postage in Great Britain, with 
 all that it has done for the diffusion of intelligence in that 
 realm, is shown to have been specifically urged and advo- 
 cated with a view to its bearing on the newly extended 
 
 1 Sec Raikes's letter to Mrs. Harris, in Pray's Hist, of Sunday-schools, p. 147. 
 
 ' It has been generally understood that the beginning of voluntary teaching 
 was in Bolton, England, in 1785; but at the Raikcs Centenary in London, in 
 1880, Sir Charles Reed claimed this honor for Oldham, England. He said: 
 " In Oldham the first voluntary teacher was found who declined to receive 
 money, and undertook the charge of classes in schools for nothing" {The 
 Sun Jay School Chronicle, for July 1, 1880, p. 354). 
 
 •See Watson's The First Fifty Years of the Sunday-school, pp. 25-40; 
 107-1:2; 118-125. 
 
120 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 correspondence between teachers and scholars in the 
 Sunday-schools, and between those who had been taught 
 to read in the Sunday-school. 1 The British and Foreign 
 Bible Society — first of the societies of that character, 
 which in the aggregate have now sent out into the world 
 more than one hundred and fifty millions of Bibles and 
 Testaments, in at least two hundred and eighty languages 
 and dialects — was immediately the result of an effort to 
 provide Bibles and Testaments for those who had learned 
 in the Sunday-school to use them, and to wish for them. 2 
 The Religious Tract Society, of London, was likewise 
 started in order to furnish good reading to those who, 
 through the Sunday-school, had become interested in 
 good reading. 3 It need hardly be added that the new 
 popular interest in the religious training of the young 
 and the ignorant in our home communities, and the new 
 appreciation of the vital truths of Christianity through 
 personal Bible-study, were a cause of that larger interest 
 in the world's religious needs which led to the new foreign 
 missionary movement for the evangelizing of the world, 
 which, in fact, began with the organization of the London 
 Missionary Society in 1795, and of the Church Missionary 
 Society in 1799 — less than twenty years after the begin- 
 ning of Raikes's Sunday-school work. 4 
 
 In short, it is evident that the great religious decline 
 of the eighteenth century was consequent on a lack of 
 the divinely designated church -school agency for the 
 winning and training of the young ; and that the great 
 
 1 See The [London] Sunday-school Union : Its History and Work, p. 128. 
 
 t See Watson's The First Fifty Years of the Sunday-school, pp. 64-68. 
 
 * See The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society, p. 11 f. 
 
 * See Lecky's Hist, of Eng., VI., 275. 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 2 1 
 
 religious advance of the nineteenth century is consequent 
 upon a revival and expansion of that agency, with its 
 legitimate influence and outcome. To the reintroduction 
 of that feature into the Protestant Church polity we owe, 
 under God, the chief measure of whatever, in our religious 
 life and methods of work, make and mark this century — 
 as superior to the centuries which it follows. 
 
 A recent tribute to the vastness of the work wrought 
 through the Sunday-school in Great Britain, rendered 
 by so competent and impartial an observer as Mr. John 
 Bright, is worthy of notice just here. In a public address, 
 only a few months ago, Mr. Bright said: "In my mind, 
 the Sunday-schools have been the foundation of much of 
 what is good amongst the millions of our people. I my- 
 self am of opinion that — I will not say no attempt has 
 been made, but — no attempt has been at all successful to 
 show the enoi mous gain which our people have received 
 from the institution of Sunday-schools, and from the zeal 
 and continuity by which they have been supported. . . . 
 I believe that there is no field of labor, no field of Chris- 
 tian benevolence, which has yielded a greater harvest to 
 our national interests and national character than the great 
 institution of Sunday-schools." 1 And in this estimate of 
 this evangelizing and educating agency, Mr. John Bright 
 but echoes back, as the verdict of history, the careful 
 measure of its power which was given by Mr. Adam 
 Smith, a century ago, as an utterance of prophecy. 
 
 And now, instead of pursuing the historical course of 
 religious progress in Great Britain and Ireland, where the 
 Sunday-school in its revived form first had prominence, 
 
 1 See The Church Sunday School Magazine, for July, 1887, p. 57a t 
 
1 22 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 it will, perhaps, be better to look at the influence of the 
 modern Sunday-school movement here in America, as 
 illustrative of the share which that movement has con- 
 tributed to the religious progress of this century both 
 here and abroad. The conditions of American life tend, 
 in fact, to bring into clearer exhibit the relative power of 
 the Sunday-school as the agency of agencies in the pro- 
 motion of this progress. 
 
 America has been practically saved to Christianity and 
 the religion of the Bible by the Sunday-school. No 
 country has ever been held permanently to that religion 
 in its perennial vitality, without the aid of the Sunday- 
 school or its substantial equivalent. And no country 
 was ever more difficult of such holding, or was more 
 obviously dependent on this means of its holding, than 
 America. At the time when the Sunday-school was intro- 
 duced as a practical power in the American community, 
 unbelief and error were sweeping away the barriers of 
 sound religious conviction in the older portions of our 
 country ; while an incoming flood of godless immigration 
 was threatening to ingulf hopelessly all vestiges of Chris- 
 tianity as a vitalizing force in the newer communities 
 of our extending border population. The new agency 
 practically stayed the progress of error and unbelief, and 
 rescued the children alike of those who had lapsed from 
 the faith, and those who had never had faith. 1 
 
 It is difficult to realize at this distance of time the change 
 
 1 For the credit of introducing the modern Sunday-school into the United 
 States, there are many claimants. It would seem that in several places, on 
 this side of the ocean, a Sunday-school which was started within a few years 
 after Raikes's beginning in Gloucester, was continued for a time, and then 
 given up, without leaving an immediate successor. Thus a Sunday-school was 
 organized, under the direction of Bishop Asbury, at the house of Mr. Thomas 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 123 
 
 which the Sunday-school quickly wrought in America, in 
 the prevailing sentiment of parents, teachers, and pastors, 
 concerning the religious needs and the religious capabili- 
 ties of children, as objects of church effort and of church 
 care; and the advance which was speedily made in popu- 
 lar Bible knowledge in the community generally. A help 
 to the understanding of the case, so far, may be found in 
 the expressions of joy over this change on the part of 
 those who were personal observers of it. 
 
 In 1 8 14, the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher preached and 
 
 Crenshaw, in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1786; yet but little is known of it 
 save its beginning. A minute in favor of organizing Sunday-schools was 
 adopted by the Methodist Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, in 
 February, 1790; yet no record is found of Sunday-schools organized in con- 
 sequence of this minute. In December, 1790, a meeting was called in Phila- 
 delphia to consider the importance of this work; and early in January, 1791, 
 the First-Day or Sunday School Society was formed, for the purpose of 
 securing religious instruction to poor children on Sunday. This society has 
 continued in operation to the present day ; yet its schools, like those of Robert 
 Raikes, had paid teachers during the earlier years of its operation. In 1791 
 a Sunday-school was started in Boston ; in 1793 one was started in New York 
 City, by Katy Ferguson, a colored woman; in 1794 one was started in Pat- 
 erson, New Jersey; in 1797 Samuel Slater secured the organization of one 
 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island; in 1800 one was started in Pittsburgh, Penn- 
 sylvania. In 1803 a Sunday-school was gathered by Mr. and Mrs. Divie 
 Bethune, in New York City ; and subsequently other schools were begun by 
 them. Mrs. Bethune was a daughter of Mrs. Isabella Graham. Mr. Bethune 
 had seen something of Raikes's work in England, and the New York school 
 was started in imitation of that. In the same year with this beginning in 
 New York, a Sunday-school was begun in Portsmouth, New Hampshire ; 
 the year following, one was started in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1809 a sys- 
 tematic Sunday-school movement was organized in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
 The Rev. Robert May, from London, gave a new start to Sunday-schools, in 
 Philadelphia, in 1811, which proved a beginning of permanent progress. A 
 local union for Sunday-school work was organized in New York in 1816; 
 another in Boston the same year; and another in Philadelphia in 1817. 
 These societies became the nucleus of The American Sunday School Union, a 
 national society, organized in 1824. 
 
124 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 published his soon famous sermon on the Waste Places 
 of New England, 1 in which he drew a gloomy picture of 
 the religious destitution in the field of his moral out- 
 look; while at the same time he outlined the possibilities 
 of good to the community through yet unattempted en- 
 deavors at systematic religious instruction by the Church 
 in the homes of church-members and beyond. Fourteen 
 years after this (in 1828) Dr. Beecher republished that 
 sermon; and he added to it this note, concerning his ideal 
 plans of reform in the direction of the church instruction 
 of children: "Since this was written, the system of Sab- 
 bath-schools has more than realized all that at the time 
 [of the sermon writing] had been asked or thought" 2 
 A year later than this testimony by Dr. Beecher, Presi- 
 dent Francis Wayland, in a sermon before the American 
 Sunday School Union, expressed his wonder over the 
 progress in the understanding of children, as well as in 
 their instruction, within the period of a single decade. 
 "Who would have supposed," he said, "that the memory, 
 the judgment, the understanding, and the conscience, of so 
 young a child [as was then under infant-school instruc- 
 tion] were already so perfectly formed and so susceptible 
 of improvement?" "And if I be not much mistaken," 
 he added, "the instruction now given to infants, in these 
 invaluable nurseries [the infant-schools], is more philo- 
 sophical, and does more toward establishing correct intel- 
 
 1 Although the sermon had immediate reference to Connecticut, Dr. Beecher 
 said that his remarks concerning that state were, "with slight modification, 
 applicable to New England generally ; " and it will hardly be questioned that. 
 in that day, the average moral standard in New England was at least up to 
 that of the country elsewhere. 
 
 2 Sermons Delivered on Various Occasions, p. 128. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 1 25 
 
 lectual and moral habits, than was attainable, when T was 
 a boy, by children of twelve or fourteen years of age, in 
 grammar schools of no contemptible estimation." 1 
 
 In similar thought, the Rev. Dr. E. N. Kirk, who 
 was born in 1802, thanked God, in his maturer life, that 
 the dark days of his childhood were "passed, passed for- 
 ever," those days "when indoctritiation and restraint were 
 the highest aims of parents, preachers, and teachers, and 
 [when] amusement [was] the chief aim of authors, who 
 wrote for children!" 2 while the Church of Christ seemed 
 to have no faith in the possibility of an intelligent Chris- 
 tian life by a child as a child. As showing that these 
 men did not misrepresent the ignorance of the child- 
 nature which prevailed among Christians of the age 
 before Sunday-schools, it may be mentioned that good 
 Dr. Doddridge, who was foremost in his time as a worker 
 in behalf of children, coolly said in a published sermon, 
 with reference to a child of, say, five years old: "Without 
 a miracle, it cannot be expected that much of the Chris- 
 tian scheme should be understood by these little creatures, 
 in the first dawning of reason, though a few evangelical 
 phrases may be taught [to them], and sometimes, by a 
 happy kind of accident, may be rightly applied." 3 And 
 here in America, as late as the years 1828-30, one of the 
 subjects of serious discussion in our religious magazines 
 was, " Can Children Reason ? " In support of the affirma- 
 tive of this question, there were proffered the answers 
 
 1 Sermon on Encouragements to Religious Effort (1830), p. 12. 
 
 * Address to the Convention of Sunday-school Teachers, Pittsfield, June 24, 
 •863, p. 6. 
 
 •Sermon on Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children 
 [1736]. (Sermons and Religious Tracts, I., 89.) 
 
126 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 to questions given by children of nine, ten, and twelve 
 years old, which went to show " that children are capable 
 of thinking and reasoning for themselves." 1 
 
 The Rev. Albert Barnes, in 1850, looked back upon 
 the dearth of religious reading for children in the days 
 of his boyhood (he was born at the close of last century) 
 in contrast with the extensive literature for childhood 
 provided by and for the Sunday-school in its first half- 
 century of progress. All that he could have obtained 
 for his boyhood's reading, had he had limitless means at 
 his command, "would," he said, "have required little 
 more than Franklin paid for his whistle ; " but now he 
 found available such treasures in that line as had no 
 parallel in all history in the rapidity of their invaluable 
 accumulating. 2 And even before this review of the half- 
 century's progress by Mr. Barnes, the Rev. Dr. Isaac 
 Ferris, afterwards Chancellor of the University of the City 
 of New York, declared, in 1834, that the candidates for the 
 theological seminary coming from the instructions of the 
 Sunday-school at that time, had "knowledge, on several 
 branches, in advance of the instruction of the seminary 
 itself;" because of the new helps available in the Sunday- 
 school to the understanding of Jewish antiquities, of the 
 geography and the manners and customs of Bible lands, 
 of ecclesiastical history, and of Scripture analysis. 3 
 
 With a better understanding of the religious capabili- 
 
 1 See American Sunday School Magazine, and The Sunday School Visitant, 
 for 1828-29. 
 
 2 Sermon on Christianity as Applied to the Mind of a Child in the Sunday- 
 school (1850), pp. 38-42. 
 
 8 An Appeal to Ministers of the Gospel in Behalf of Sunday-schools (1834), 
 p. 28 f. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 1 27 
 
 ties of childhood, there came, throughout the country, 
 an increase of wise care for the children, in the home, in 
 the school, and from the pulpit. Children were gathered 
 into the church-fold in numbers unprecedented. Bible 
 knowledge was increased among children, and by means 
 of children. Revivals of religion had new frequency and 
 new power; and the ordinary ministrations of the pulpit 
 reached intelligent hearers, where before there had been 
 only hearers who were not sufficiently instructed to com- 
 prehend the forms of truth declared to them. Thus a 
 careful observer of the progress of events, writing in one 
 of the prominent English religious magazines, ascribed 
 the peculiar power of the great revivals in America from 
 1828 to 1832 to the superior methods of Bible study in 
 American Sunday-schools. The progress of infidelity was 
 checked, the sweep of error was stayed. Instead of losing 
 ground steadily, in its relative hold upon the increasing 
 population, evangelical religion began to make gain. So 
 it was in the older portions of our country. So it was 
 in the newer communities, where the pioneer Sunday- 
 school kept pace with the extremest advance of immigra- 
 tion, reaching and teaching the children of parents who 
 of themselves would never have sought the place of 
 religious worship or teaching. 
 
 Just a few illustrative instances of the work which has 
 been going on in all parts of our country for the past 
 three-quarters of a century, may aid in bringing to mind 
 the current of events during that period. In the con- 
 gregation of the old First Church in Norwich Town, 
 Connecticut, some seventy years since, a young girl came 
 out from her family — the first of its members to do so 
 — and confessed her child -like trust in her Saviour. 
 
128 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 Learning something of the Sunday-school work of Divie 
 Bethune, in New York City, 1 she gathered a little Sunday- 
 school in the galleries of her home church. The church 
 authorities deemed this a desecration of God's day and of 
 God's house, and forbade herthe use of the galleries. She 
 withdrew with her little charge to a neighboring school- 
 house. Public sentiment, including the expressed opinion 
 of her own pastor, secured her exclusion from that build- 
 ing also. 2 She tried again on the church steps; and she 
 maintained a footing there until the gallery was again 
 opened to her, and her Sunday-school had gained its 
 right to live. The father and the mother of that little 
 girl followed her into the church -fold. Every other 
 member of her family came there also. She became the 
 wife of the Rev, Dr. Myron Winslow, as a missionary 
 worker in Ceylon. Three of her sisters also became 
 missionaries. One of her brothers died just as he entered 
 the ministry. Another brother went West as a home 
 missionary, and gathered a church and Sunday-school 
 there. A daughter of hers labored as a missionary's wife 
 in India, and died leaving several sons, two of whom 
 afterward entered the ministry. On the occasion of the 
 fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the Sunday- 
 school she had started, I heard the pastor of her church 
 pay a glowing tribute to her memory, as he read aloud 
 the names of twenty-six ministers and missionaries who 
 
 1 See p. 123, ante. 
 
 2 Nearly thirty years ago I was told, on the testimony of an eye-witness, 
 that when the old pastor of the church passed the school-house where this 
 young teacher had her Sunday-school for a season, he shook his ivory-headed 
 cane toward the building, and said in honest indignation, " You imps of Satan, 
 doing the Devil's work! " 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL, 1 2Q 
 
 had already gone out from that Sunday-school as a 
 centre of Bible-study and of Christian influence. And 
 that incident is a fair illustration of the work wrought 
 by the Sunday-school, in the family, in the church-fold, 
 and in the community at large, in the field of our older 
 churches, since the Sunday-school obtained its new foot- 
 hold in America. 
 
 Some years ago I attended the one hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the First Church in Pomfret, Connecticut. 
 Pomfret is one of the many country parishes of New 
 England which have lost much of their ancient promi- 
 nence, as local centres, by the drawing away of population 
 and business into the valleys, along the mill-streams and 
 the railway lines. The pastor of the Pomfret church, in 
 his historical discourse, showed that during the last half- 
 century of the period commemorated, the average con- 
 gregation had dwindled from about ten or twelve hun- 
 dred, to, say, a hundred and fifty or two hundred persons. 
 This would have been a discouraging feature in the 
 church history, but for the Sunday-school addition to the 
 power of that waning congregation. Prior to the settle- 
 ment of the pastor who organized the Sunday-school of 
 that church, it would seem that there had never been 
 any children received into full church-membership there. 
 But he turned his attention to the little ones, and it was 
 said at his funeral that " the children of the Sabbath- 
 school loved him as they did their own eyes." And 
 now, with the Sunday-school in continued operation 
 from his day to the present, there had been more addi- 
 tions to the membership of the church in the last fifty 
 years than in the first one hundred; and this with a 
 congregation of only one-fifth or one-sixth of its former 
 
 9 
 
1 30 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL : 
 
 size. 1 As a listener to that historical discourse said 
 dryly : " It would seem that while fewer people went to 
 church in Pomfret, more went to heaven, after the Sunday- 
 school was started there." Nor is that Pomfret record a 
 better one than we should have a right to look for in a 
 church with, as over against a church without, a Sunday- 
 school in such a town as Pomfret. 
 
 Within my own day, and within my own range of 
 personal observation, a young layman went into one of 
 the back streets of the city of Philadelphia, and gathered 
 a Sunday-school of less than thirty scholars. He has 
 continued in charge of that Sunday-school to the present 
 time. Its membership is now more than two thousand. 
 A church which was organized on the basis of that 
 Sunday-school has a membership of upwards of seven- 
 teen hundred, while another flourishing church has been 
 established as one of its offshoots. And similar instances 
 of church organization on the basis of Sunday-school 
 beginnings could be pointed out in every large city 
 of America. 
 
 In our newer communities a very large proportion of 
 all the churches organized within the past half-century 
 have had their beginning in a Sunday-school — without 
 the influence of which a church could neither have been 
 formed nor have been continued in such a neighborhood. 
 And the magnitude of this pioneer Sunday-school work, 
 with its results of church gathering, is one of the marvels 
 of the century. Take a specimen incident from its history 
 for an example. Some thirty years ago a little girl was a 
 scholar in a pioneer Sunday-school, in a new community 
 
 1 The 150th Anniversary of the Organization of the First Church of Christ 
 in Pomfret, Conn., (1866,) pp. 31-33, 55, 61, 62. 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 3 1 
 
 in Illinois. She induced her father to come with her to 
 that Sunday-school. He, although a man of strong native 
 qualities, was wholly uneducated — even to the limited 
 extent of a public-school training. He was lame, and he 
 had a serious impediment in his speech. There, in the 
 Sunday-school, he submitted himself in child-like trust 
 to the Saviour. Then, full of love for that Saviour, and 
 of gratitude for the Sunday-school agency which had 
 brought to him a knowledge of the Saviour, he, Stephen 
 Paxson, went out and essayed the gathering of other 
 Sunday-schools in needy neighborhoods beyond. He 
 became a missionary of the American Sunday-school 
 Union, and in that service he gathered more than twelve 
 hundred Sunday-schools with an aggregate membership 
 of sixty thousand scholars and teachers. Scores of 
 churches were established on the basis of those Sunday- 
 schools; and when he entered into rest one of his sons 
 was continuing and widely extending his work, which now 
 goes on with increasing volume as the years pass by. 1 
 
 In this way it is that the Sunday-school has become 
 the prime church agency for pioneer evangelizing, for 
 Bible teaching, and for the religious instruction and care 
 of children, in every denomination of Protestant Chris- 
 tians in America, as also among Roman Catholics and 
 Jews, and even among such an anomalous religious body 
 as the Mormons. From an aggregate membership of a 
 few hundreds at the beginning of this century, it has 
 come to include, within the evangelical Protestant bodies 
 alone, from eight to ten millions, or nearly one-fifth of 
 the entire population of the United States. Meanwhile 
 
 l See A Fruitful Life (a memoir of Stephen Paxson). 
 
1 32 THE SUNDA Y- SCHOOL: 
 
 its influence is manifest, in the fact that while, from 1 800 
 to 1880, the aggregate population of this country has 
 nearly ten-folded, the number of communicants in the 
 evangelical Protestant churches has nearly thirty-folded. 1 
 
 Observers from other lands are, perhaps, readier than 
 ourselves to recognize the peculiar value of the Sunday- 
 school in a country like our own, without a state church, 
 without the possibility of systematic religious instruction 
 in the public schools, and with so large a proportion of 
 irreligious families coming to us from across the ocean, 
 to swell our population year by year. For example, on 
 the occasion of our Centennial Exposition in 1 876, the 
 French Government had here a Commission, studying 
 the principles and methods of primary instruction in the 
 United States. Two years later a voluminous report on 
 the subject was published by the French Government, as 
 prepared by Monsieur F. Buisson, the president of that 
 Commission; and it was evident that no department of 
 primary instruction in this country had impressed that 
 careful observer as more important and noteworthy than 
 that of the Sunday-school. "The Sunday-school," he 
 said, " is not an accessory agency in the normal economy 
 of American education; it does not add a superfluity; it 
 is an absolute necessity for the complete instruction of 
 the child. Its aim is to fill by itself the complex mission 
 which elsewhere is in large measure assigned to the 
 family, the school, and the church." "All things," again 
 he said, " unite to assign to this institution a grand part 
 in the American life. Most diverse circumstances co- 
 operate to give it an amplitude, a solidity, and a popu- 
 
 1 Dorchester's Problem of Religious Progress, p. 545. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 133 
 
 larity, which are quite unique. For denominational lead- 
 ers, for those whom above all the interests of their church 
 preoccupy, the Sunday-school is pre-eminently the in- 
 strument of propagandism." * And this is a fairer view 
 of the case than that which is held by many who have 
 had even better opportunities than M. Buisson of study- 
 ing the Sunday-school in its workings and in its influence 
 here in America. Professor Emile de Laveleye, of the 
 University of Liege, Belgium, in his work on popular 
 education, published a few years before M. Buisson's 
 report, spoke with no less warmth of the Sunday-school 
 system of the United States, in its power and in its im- 
 portance. " The Sunday-school," he said, " is one of the 
 strongest foundations of the republican institutions of the 
 United States." 2 
 
 Nearly as many teachers and scholars are in the Prot- 
 estant Sunday-schools of the United States to-day, as are 
 in all the rest of the Protestant world besides, although 
 the Sunday-school has its recognized place and power in 
 every quarter of the globe. 3 The circumstances under 
 
 1 Rapport sur V Instruction Primaire a f Exposition Universale de Phi/a- 
 delphie, en 1876, pp. 464-476. 
 
 1 L 'Instruction du Peuple, p. 358. 
 
 s The estimated statistics of the Sunday-school, in 1887, as gathered by Mr. \ 
 E. Payson Porter, of Philadelphia, show, in round numbers, for the United 
 , one million teachers, and eight million scholars; and, for the rest of 
 the world, one million teachers, and eight and a half million scholars. If 
 these teachers received the per diem allowance for these services which was 
 deemed a fair one, both in England and America, in the early days of the 
 Sunday-school, the outlay for their work would be, in the United Stall ■ 
 alone, about $250,000 a week, or $13,000,000 a year, and more than twice 
 that sum for the world as a whole. In the light of this fact, there is added 
 force in the statement of Lord Hatherly, at the Raikes Centenary, that tin- 
 Sunday-school is an evangelizing instrumentality by which there are secured 
 
134 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL : 
 
 which it was developed in this country, gave to the 
 Sunday-school here a distinctive character, as an agency 
 both of evangelizing and of church-training, which makes 
 it, in a peculiar sense, a pattern for imitation elsewhere. 
 Hence it is that the American Sunday-school as an insti- 
 tution has found a foot-hold in most of the countries of 
 Europe, and is gaining in membership and in confidence 
 there, with the best results to the Church of Christ and 
 to the community at large. 
 
 It is now about twenty -five years since Mr. Albert 
 Woodruff, a Christian layman of Brooklyn, New York, 
 while a traveler in Germany, was moved to undertake the 
 starting of a Sunday-school on the American plan, with 
 voluntary teaching by laymen and women, in the German 
 capital. He saw that with all that was done for the reli- 
 gious instruction of German children, through the family, 
 through the parochial school, as a part of the system of 
 public education, and through perfunctory catechetical 
 teaching in the churches, there was still a sad lack of 
 popular Bible -study as Bible -study, and of voluntary 
 Bible teaching by Christian laymen and women ; and that 
 the consequence of this lack showed itself there, as it 
 shows itself under like circumstances everywhere, in the 
 growth of skepticism and error and unbelief throughout 
 the community — even in the higher institutions of learn- 
 ing. From that humble beginning the foreign Sunday- 
 school work of America has come to be no mean factor 
 in the evangelizing activities and in the edifying labors 
 
 " visiting agents, and good agents, and well-instructed agents, with a mini- 
 mum of expense and a maximum of benefits." Who would think of com- 
 plaining of the trifling expense to the churches of the Sunday-school of to-day, 
 in view of the priceless value of its unpaid workers ? 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 3 5 
 
 of the world at large. The London Sunday-school Union 
 has, from the first, co-operated heartily with American 
 workers in this new movement. 1 And now, in Germany 
 alone, there are some three thousand Sunday-schools, 
 comprising, say, thirty thousand teachers and three hun- 
 dred thousand scholars. " The work is now spread all 
 over Germany," writes one of its more prominent pro- 
 moters ; "and all clergymen who are not rationalists have 
 Sunday-schools. Even the latter have opened children's 
 divine services, without classes; [mainly] because they 
 cannot find teachers [in sufficient number] who, out of 
 love for Jesus, would devote themselves to this work." 
 
 Not only in Germany, but in wellnigh every country 
 of continental Europe, the modern Sunday-school has 
 been making steady progress within the past quarter of 
 a century, from the impulse and under the watchful over- 
 sight of Christian workers, banded together, in the United 
 States and in England, for the purpose of promoting the 
 extension and improvement of this means of evangeliza- 
 tion and of religious training. Meanwhile, in every for- 
 eign field where American or English missionaries are 
 at work, the Sunday-school is growing in prominence 
 as an agency of church extension and of church upbuild- 
 ing. And thus, in a truer sense than ever before, the dis- 
 ciples of our Lord are laboring, all the world over, in 
 
 1 At the Raikes Centenary, in London, in June, 1880, Mr. A. Benham, 
 chairman of the Continental Committee of the London Sunday School Union, 
 said on this point : " ' Honor to whom honor ' is an apostolic injunction, and 
 right cheerfully do we accord to our highly esteemed friend and fellow-worker, 
 Mr. Albert Woodruff, of Brooklyn, the honor of having been the pioneer of 
 this great work. By him was laid the foundation on which has been erected 
 the superstructure ; and for what has been done up to the present time we 
 th?nV God, who has, in his providence, vouchsafed so rich a blessing on the 
 
136 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 accordance with the requirements of his pre-ascension 
 injunction: "Go, make scholars of all nations." 
 
 Nor has the progress of the Sunday-school here in 
 America been less marked and important in the measure 
 and character of its instruction than in the growing 
 magnitude of its numbers. From an unintelligent and 
 unrestricted memorizing of Bible verses as the highest 
 attainment of its earliest Bible-study, it passed, as did the 
 Sunday-school in Great Britain, to the special study of 
 limited lessons from the Bible text, week by week; and 
 finally to the systematic study of the entire Bible as 
 the Bible, in a series of carefully selected lessons for a 
 continuous seven years' course, which is common to 
 Sunday-schools generally, under the designation of the 
 International Lesson Course. And now, under the influ- 
 ence of this course of instruction, the best and freshest 
 work of the best and strongest Bible scholars on both 
 sides of the Atlantic is made available as a help to the 
 ordinary study of the average teacher in his preparation 
 for the weekly teaching of his scholars. 
 
 The International lessons were formally inaugurated 
 at the beginning of 1873, under a recommendation from 
 a purely voluntary and an undenominational assemblage 
 of Sunday-school workers, in a national convention for 
 the United States; that recommendation being subse- 
 quently approved by Sunday-school workers in Canada 
 and in England. 1 At the start, not a single denomination 
 
 labors already expended on this work " ( The Sunday School Chronicle, for 
 July 3, 1880, p. 368). The American workers in this movement are associated 
 under the designation of The Foreign Sunday School Association, with its head- 
 quarters at the home of Mr. Woodruff, 130 State Street, Brooklyn, New York. 
 
 * The best available sketch of the movement which resulted in the Inter- 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 3; 
 
 was, as a denomination, in favor of the International 
 lesson plan. Wellnigh every great religious publishing 
 house was opposed to it; nor could any one of those 
 houses adopt it without rendering useless valuable plates 
 and copyrights of series of lesson-helps. On all sides 
 there was more or less of reluctance to accept the new 
 system in all its essential features, and from some quarters 
 the opposition to it was outspoken and prolonged. Hence 
 that system secured an established position only through 
 its tested merits, and in response to a popular conviction 
 and demand which could not be overborne, nor success- 
 fully resisted. 
 
 One of the chief points in discussion at the time of the 
 adoption of this lesson system, and which is still a point 
 in its criticism, concerns the wiser method of selecting 
 passages from the Bible, in order to its thorough and 
 systematic study. Four plans had, severally, their earnest 
 and conscientious advocates. First, a system of Bible 
 doctrines, as indicated by a common creed of evangelical 
 Christians, or as outlined in the principal catechisms of 
 the churches, was preferred by many as a basis of sound 
 Bible teaching. Second, personal duties, God-ward and 
 man-ward, were thought by not a few to be the most 
 important basis of practical Bible teaching. Third, the life 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ in prophecy and in history, 
 especially as its main features are indicated in the seasons 
 of the Church year, was deemed by a multitude the 
 fitting basis of reverent Bible teaching. Fourth, the Bible\ 
 itself as a book, as the Book of books, with its exhibit J 
 of doctrines, and of duties, and of the life of Christ, was/ 
 
 national lesson plan is Gilbert's The Lesson System ; the Story of its Cbn^in 
 and Inauguration. 
 
138 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL: 
 
 more generally looked upon as pre-eminently the basis of 
 systematic Bible teaching; and this latter plan it was that 
 was adopted as the plan of the International lesson system. 
 
 Steadily this system of Bible-study has won its way in 
 the world. Almost without exception the great denomi- 
 national publishing houses have made its lessons the 
 basis of their course of instruction. While the Episco- 
 palians have adopted it less generally than any other 
 portion of the Protestant community, it is used in many 
 of their Sunday-schools, and by a large proportion of the 
 Sunday-schools of other Protestant Christians in the 
 United States and abroad, including the foreign mis- 
 sionary stations of the world. While it is not easy to 
 ascertain the number of persons who are using these 
 lessons regularly, it can safely be said that at least from 
 five to seven millions are now engaged, week by week, 
 in the study of the same passage from God's Word, in 
 accordance with the plan of the International lesson 
 course. And so it has come to pass that at the very 
 time when the Bible as a single whole is most severely 
 assailed by its opponents from without the Christian fold, 
 and most seriously questioned by its critics from within 
 that fold, a larger number of persons than were ever before 
 engaged in its careful study are becoming intelligently 
 acquainted with its contents as the inspired record of a 
 revelation from God. 
 
 A vast body of biblical literature has been created to 
 meet the demands of the new army of Bible students. So 
 long as there was no one phase of biblical truth which 
 centred the interest of the community generally at any 
 given period, there was no justification in publishing, in 
 periodical or in book form, special helps to the elucida- 
 
ITS MODERN RE VIVAL. 1 39 
 
 tion of any one phase above another of such truth. But 
 when that centring of popular interest was secured through 
 the International lesson course, an immense constituency 
 was already assured to any publication in the line of the 
 studies of that course. Authors and publishers alike were 
 prompt to recognize this new state of things, and they 
 were aroused and stimulated to its meeting. Fresh aids 
 to Bible-study were multiplied, and the demand for them 
 increased even faster than their supplies. Commentaries, 
 cyclopedias, works of biblical research, were called for 
 to an extent before undreamed of. Important works by 
 European specialists which would not have been thought 
 of for popular demand in America, were now issued on 
 this side of the water in rival editions ; and the library of 
 the average country clergyman, or of the more intelligent 
 lay teacher, can now be supplied with volumes which 
 otherwise could have found a place only in the better 
 furnished of our city libraries. 
 
 The foremost scholars of the foremost universities of the 
 world have been summoned to bear a part in the elucida- 
 tion or the illustration or the application of the current 
 lesson themes. Thus, for a single example, the honored 
 President of Yale University is now, and for some time 
 has been, guiding critically the New Testament studies of 
 more than a hundred thousand Sunday-school teachers, 
 week by week, in the line of these International lessons. 
 For several years before him, the venerable ex-President 
 Woolsey led similarly in this line of guidance ; while the 
 universities of Oxford and of Leipsic and of Neufchatel 
 from over the ocean, have contributed of their scholarship 
 to swell the current of Bible learning for the regular sup- 
 ply of teachers in our American Sunday-schools. 
 
140 THE SUNDA Y-SCHOOL: 
 
 Popular magazines and secular newspapers now feel 
 the necessity of recognizing the field and scope of the 
 International lessons in the catalogue of their ordinary or 
 of their special attractions. The very atmosphere of the 
 Christian community is surcharged with the spirit of these, 
 lessons, through their united study and teaching. Biblical 
 theology as biblical theology has a new and a firmer hold 
 upon the minds and hearts of teachers and of taught. And 
 the lines of division between schools of dogmatists, and 
 between denominations of believers, grow dimmer in the 
 brighter glow of the great truths of the Bible which Bible 
 students rejoice in together, as they sit side by side under 
 the teachings of their common Redeemer. 1 
 
 Many a young layman, in one of our better conducted 
 American Sunday-schools, trained under the influence of 
 this system of International lesson study, is to-day more 
 familiar with the Bible as the Bible, than was the average 
 young minister of a generation or so ago. One of the 
 more prominent pastors in the United States, himself not 
 yet past middle life, said to me, not long ago, as he spoke 
 of a young man, still under eighteen years of age, who 
 had received his chief learning in Bible knowledge under 
 the influence of the International lessons, and who was 
 •now to enter college : " He knows more of the Bible, 
 when he enters college, than I knew of it when I left the 
 theological seminary; for he has had advantages in Bible- 
 study such as we knew nothing of in Sunday-school, in 
 college, or in the seminary, in my days there." Yet that 
 pastor was the son of a New England clergyman, a gradu- 
 
 1 It is a noteworthy fact that the increased desire for Christian union, and 
 the increase of apparent readiness for its attainment, has corresponded in its 
 growth and progress with the spread of this system of common Bible-study. 
 
ITS MODERN REVIVAL. 141 
 
 ate of one of the choicest Christian colleges of New 
 England, and an alumnus of one of the more prominent 
 theological seminaries outside of New England. More- 
 over, it was because he had kept himself abreast of the 
 modern Sunday-school movement, with its mighty sway 
 of systematic Bible-study, and knew its practical power, 
 that he spoke as he did of those facts with which many 
 another pastor might be familiar, but is not 
 
 It is even now recognized as a serious question, whether 
 a young man who is in preparation for the ministry can 
 afford to be outside of the direct influence of this Bible- 
 studying movement during his undergraduate years in 
 college and in seminary ; and whether the provisions in 
 these schools of preparation are yet such as to send from 
 them into the ministry men furnished with Bible knowl- 
 edge, and with a knowledge of methods of Bible teaching, 
 in that measure which will bring them abreast, at the start, 
 of the Bible students whom they are likely to find, in the 
 communities to which they go, as the product of the 
 agencies and influences now operative outside of the pre- 
 paratory schools. And it is in the line of the solving of 
 this question that plans for Bible-study in the college 
 curriculum are being discussed with earnestness among 
 instructors in this University, and beyond it, 1 and that 
 the Faculty of Yale Divinity School has shown its readi- 
 
 1 There was never a time when the systematic study of the English Bible 
 had as large prominence as to-day, among the better class of students in 
 American colleges generally. Such a gathering as the " College Students* 
 Summer School and Encampment for Bible Study," under the direction of 
 Mr. Moody, at Northficld, Massachusetts, (where from three hundred to 
 six hundred of the brighter students of the foremost American colleges pass 
 several weeks in this occupation, year by year,) would have been an impos- 
 sibility twenty years ago, or earlier. 
 
142 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 
 
 ness, by inviting this course of lectures, to make available 
 to its students whatever facts or suggestions may be 
 brought to bear upon it out of the experiences or the 
 study of any one who has given it special attention. 
 
 And this is the record and the aspect of the modern 
 Sunday-school movement. In the latter third of the 
 eighteenth century, Bible-study and Bible teaching were 
 a minor factor in the activities of the Christian Church, 
 and the tide of vital godliness was at a very low ebb on 
 the shores of all Christendom. In the latter third of the 
 nineteenth century, Bible-study and Bible teaching have 
 a prominence never before known in the world's history, 
 and vital godliness is shown and felt with unprecedented 
 potency in the life and progress of mankind. This change 
 is due to God's blessing on the revival and expansion of 
 the church Bible-school as his chosen agency for Chris- 
 tian evangelizing and Christian training. 
 
UNIVERSr. 7 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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