Sunday Schools.
Zion's Advocate, November 1899, Vol. 38, No. 11.
Sunday Schools were founded by Robert Raikes, a printer in Gloucester, about the close of the year 1781. It had its origin in a plan laid by him to collect and instruct poor children whose parents were unable to send them to school, and who were leading dissipated lives. He engaged four women who were teachers to instruct on Sunday as many of these as he could induce to attend. A number of schools were soon formed on the same plan, and a society was formed in London which expended 4000(L), near $20,000, in fourteen years in payment of teachers. This was the first stage of Sunday Schools. It then had for its chief object the instruction of the poor in the simple rudiments of learning, but the children were taught the Catechism of the Church of England.The idea of free instruction was conceived which spread so rapidly that by the year 1800 the teaching was almost universally gratuitous. A higher class of teachers offered their services and the schools ceased to be filled by the very poorest alone. The Sunday School Union was formed in 1803, which sent out agents, published and distributed tracts, and established branch societies. This was the second stage.
Within the past thirty years the improvement and multiplication of week day schools, and the advancement made in furnishing opportunities for the poorest to educate themselves, has obviated the necessity for teaching branches of learning in the Sunday Schools, so that they have gradually become restricted to instruction in sectarian religion. They are now in their third stage. As fostered by the various denominations the chief aim of each now seems to be to teach the sectarian principles of the particular church that maintains it. It is the object of the Methodist Sunday School to instruct the children in Methodism so that they will become Methodists, and so with all the others. It has come to be regarded as the nursery of the church, where little plants are first sprouted and then transplanted.
It is unnecessary for us to consume time and space in proving this human institution to be without any authority in the bible. It is enough for us to deny its being scriptural and demand the proof, which cannot be produced. Its having originated so recently is sufficient to show that it is not of divine origin. In patronizing that idol, parents send their children from home to be taught by others, thus disobeying the instructions of the bible, which says we should bring our own children up in the way they should go. As to the moral training children get at the Sunday School, we must say that the close observation of thirty years on our part has not produced in us a high opinion of that feature professed for it by its adherents. We have also observed that children learn little about the real teaching of the bible by attending Sunday Schools. But it is now going out of favor even with its own former advocates, and other human institutions are fast taking its place. Some are honest enough to admit it to be a failure and bold enough to speak out against it. There appeared recently in the newspapers an account of a sensational onslaught being made upon the Sunday School by a "Reverend Doctor" whose eyes had been opened to see its evils. The statement has been given in the "Apostolic-Primitive Baptist," but we reprint it for the benefit of our readers.
CHURCH WORK ATTACKED
New York, May 31 --- A sensational onslaught was made upon the
Sunday School before the church club of Brooklyn MOnday. It was the
annual meeting of the church club of the dioceses of Long Island,
and every protestant episcopal church on Long Island was
represented. The topic for discussion was, "How shall we make our
Sunday Schools more beneficial?" The guest of the evening was the
Rev. Dr. Pelham Williams, of Greenbush, Mass.
"Gentlemen," he began slowly, to give each word weight, "I do not
believe in any Sunday School that ever ws, is, or ever will be. My
idea of Sunday Schools is that they are maintained in order to
allow some people to experiment with the souls of other people's
children. They are hopelessly wrong. The worst teachings in the
world are those in the name of God, under the roofs of Sunday
Schools. Sunday School teachers are neither fish, flesh, fowl nor
good red herring.
"You don't allow a man without a diploma to practice on your dog if
he be valuable, yet you turn the souls of your children over to
ignorant and unknown persons. The Sunday School has done much to
destroy parental responsibility and priestly obligations. I believe
the Sunday Schools have been teachers of irreverence in a large
degree. When flippant, frivolous teachers, out of their ignorance,
or out of the commentaries of dissenters, hastily snatched up, mold
the minds and souls of our children, I ask you what are we coming
to? If I am misunderstood I am prepared to say it a little louder.
My idea of a Sunday School is that it exists in order to enable
some people to experiment with the souls of other people's
children. I first thought I was alone until I recognized that I had
the backing of eighteen centuries, before these "blinkings" came
into the church of God. I have talked with bishops and they have
hung their heads in shame whent they spoke of the work of the
Sunday School.
"The Sunday Schools are filled with men, well meaning, but
incompetent, as teachers. This, I may remark, is no Sunday School
story; but it is true. In the dark centuries of Sunday School
teachings -- and by that I mean the time in which this institution
has existed -- the children have learned to know less of the word
of God than in the centuries gone by. One of the dangers is the
joining of amusements to religion. The modern Sunday School simply
is an appendix to picnics and other forms of secular amusements.
The Sunday School is destructive to the church. People have an idea
that if the Sunday School is maintained there is no necessity for
the church. The Sunday School has done much to destroy the respect
of parents for their priestly obligation, and on that it may be
asserted that parents do not feel obligated to see to the personal
training of children, but let them go to Sunday School and they
receive no training at all."
When Dr. Williams had finished three persons applauded. The others
were stunned. The program announced that H. S. Pike, Superintendent
of St. George's Sunday School, New York, would speak next. "I am so
choked and so upset by what we have just heard that I cannot
deliver the address I have prepared," he said. Then came Silas M.
Giddings, President of the Brooklyn Sunday School Union, which
paraded many thousand Sunday School children through the streets of
Brooklyn last week. "I am amazed," said he, "to have a man stand up
in this age and call 3,000,000 men and women numskulls and
ignoramuses. I consider that I have seen in the speaker tonight the
greatest curiosity it is possible to see." (Mr. Giddings snapped
his fingers a few times and paused for thought.) "Yes, even greater
than Dewey," he continued.
The Rev. Mr. Lincoln, pastor of the fashionable St. Barabas church,
also saw much that was not good in Sunday Schools. He spoke of the
Sunday School parade. "What do you really think," he asked, "of the
children parading the streets with brass bands so that they can
show their pretty dresses? You may talk about the work that the
Sunday School does. There are three kinds of falsehoods - lies,
darn lies, and statistics."
We have been disturbed but very little while speaking, but we have
noticed that young people who have been brought up in the Sunday
School are more inclined to indulge in whispering and laughing
during the delivery of a sermon than others, having imbibed the
habit of misbehavior and disrespect for the truth in the disorderly
proceedings of which they had been accustomed.
J. R. D.
Copyright c. 2005. All rights reserved. The Primitive Baptist Library.
