Part 1 (1/2)
Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School
by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
PREFATORY
IN the preparation of this volume the purpose was to supply a convenient handbook upon the organization, theof the Sunday school, to be read by those desiring inforer part of the work had been prepared a desire was expressed that the ht be employed as a text-book for classes and individual students in the depart It has been the aim of the author not to alter the work so eneral reader; and with this in view the series of blackboard outlines for the teacher, and the questions for the testing of the student's knowledge, have been placed at the end of the book In the hope that both the reader and the student es the book is committed to the public
=JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT=
I
THE HISTORIC PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL MOVEMENT
1 =Magnitude of the Sunday-School Move of the twentieth century the Sunday school stands forth as one of the largest, most widely spread, most characteristic, and lo-Saxon world Wherever the English race is found the Sunday school is established, in the Mother isle, on the American continent, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in Australasia In the United States and Canada it has a following of fourteen ious denomination Its periodical literature has a wider circulation than that of any other modern educational movehest to the lowest; and its largest es the most susceptible to formative forces It is safe to say that this institution has exerted a powerful influence upon thethe character of millions ill be the men and women of to-morrow
2 =A Modern Movement= Great as it appears in our time, the Sunday school is coerious life of the civilized world, the Hebrew people The elemental principle of the Sunday school is possibly to be found in the prophetic guilds before the Exile, and the schools of the Jewish scribes after the Restoration The great Bible class of Ezra (Neh 8) was not unlike a anized institution the Sunday school began with Robert Raikes, the philanthropist of Gloucester, England, who on one Sunday in 1780 called together a group of street boys in a roo woion If Raikes had not happened to be the editor of the tospaper, and in constant need of copy, his Sunday school otten But froraphs which were copied into other papers and attracted attention, so that the Sooty Alley Sunday school becadom and beyond the seas No institution then in existence, or recorded in church history, suggested to Robert Raikes either the naood heart and active mind But since his day both the na have been perpetuated, and every Sunday school in the world is a monument to Robert Raikes, the editor of Gloucester
3 =A Lay Movenificant fact that the first Sunday school was established not by a priest, but by a private land, that its earliest teachers were not curates, nor sisters, but young wohout its history the movement has been directed and carried forward, in all lands and a nearly all denominations, by lay workers[1] This is noteworthy, because in the eighteenth century, far arded as the peculiar function of the clergy, and lay preaching was frowned upon as irregular The earliest Sunday school may have been preserved fronificance; or it y by the fact that all its pupils at the close of the ularly marched to church Whatever the cause may have been, it is certain that under a providence which we hout its history, the Sunday school, although a laymen's movey and the Church
4 =Unpaid Workers= It has been stated that Raikes paid the young woht in his Sunday school a penny for each Sunday But as the iving their service freely; and this has been the prevailing rule throughout the world There are a few Sunday schools wherein a curate or assistant pastor is the superintendent, and a few mission schools that eh the week as a visitor; but it may be asserted that the world-wide army of Sunday-school workers lay upon the altar of the Church their free-hearted, unpaid offering of time, study, and effort This has been and is a noble, a self-denying, a splendid service; but it has also been a potent eleress of the movement Those ould establish a school, alike in the city and on the frontier, have not been compelled to wait until funds could be raised for the salary of a superintendent and teachers If only churches rich enough to pay for workers had established Sunday schools in our country, the Sunday school as an institution would not have advanced ith the wave of population And not only has the unpaid service aided the growth of the ious power The pupils and their parents have recognized that the teachers orking not for pay, but from love for their scholars and their Saviour; and that love has ie a power all its own
5 =Self-supporting= The Sunday school has been froemovement It everywhere involves expense for furniture, for teaching requisites, for song books, for libraries; but for the most part the money toits own members, and not by the church Instances are on record, even, where the church, in fored and received rent for the use of its property by the Sunday school! Such short-sighted practice has been rare, but multitudes of churches have found the Sunday school a source of far greater profit than expense In other words, those who have done the work of the school have also paid its bills, and many families that have received its benefits have been exempt from its burdens It is noteworthy, however, that this condition is passing away, that churches are awakening to their responsibility and opportunity, and are giving to the Sunday school that liberal support which its work requires and deserves In the ratio of investment and return, no department of the church costs so little and rewards so richly as an efficient Sunday school
6 =Self-governing= As a result of being self-supporting, the Sunday school has also been a self-governing institution Paying its oay and asking no favor, it has been al no outside authority It has grown up alnized and unnoticed by the churches Fifty years ago scarcely one of the denonition as an integral part of its syste body of the local church It chose its own officers, obtained its own teachers, s was responsible to no ecclesiastical authority It was generally an ally to, but independent of, the church In this respect a gradual change has taken place Its relations are now much closer, its position is defined; and the institution is sanctioned and supervised by the church
7 =Self-developing= The systeuidance or control froanizing, and has been also self-developing Soht consider the forard it as providential The men and women who laid the foundations of the Sunday school were building under a divine direction of which they were unconscious Working apart from each other, on both sides of the sea, and separated by wilderness and prairie, everywhere they established an institution under the saeneral principles, and with substantial unity in its plans Perhaps one cause for its unity of lo-Saxon race, a people which has instinctive tendencies toward law, syste a Latin people, where ht have been a different foranization, with different aims, with different titles for officers, in every province
But throughout the English-speaking world, which is the habitat of the Sunday school, the institution bears the same name Its principal or conductor is called a superintendent--cu force are known as teachers
8 =Bible Study= The most prominent trait in the Sunday school of the present is that it has become the most extensive movement for instruction in the Sacred Scriptures that the world has yet seen All these ed in the study of one book--the Holy Bible Many of these ently, with narrow interpretations and crude methods; yet in the Sunday schools of the lowest type as well as of the highest soht to the scholars' attention That the Bible is so generally known and so widely circulated, that the de of more than ten million copies every year, is due more to the Sunday school, with all its defects of method, than to any other institution
This concentration of attention upon the Bible has grown gradually in the Sunday school In the eighteenth century Sunday school, both of England and Aious instruction was only one of its aims; and it was instruction in the catechism and forrees the Bible came more prominently to the front, until now the Sunday school is everywhere the school with one text-book He who surveys the Sunday school through the inner eye beholds it on one day in each week covering the continent with its millions of students, all face to face with sohtful observer will reflect that a people whose children and youth co ill not wander far frohteousness
FOOTNOTE:
[1] An exception is to be noted in the Sunday schools of the Ro to religious orders
II
THE CONStitUTION OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL