After the battle of Brandywine, the Sabbath school-room, with others, was turned into a hospital, which it continued to be for some time. The school thus broken up, was never afterwards resumed. The honour of having projected and successfully introduced the present general system of Sunday School instruction, is certainly due to Robert Raikes; but the Seventh-day Baptists of Ephrata had established and maintained in operation for upwards of thirty years, a Sabbath school, nearly half a century before one was opened by the Gloucester philanthropist. In 1777, the Society began to decline, but the declension cannot justly be attributed to the causes which some writers have erroneously stated. Beissel died in 1768, and his successor, Peter Miller, was a man of much higher attainments and more eminent mental powers. Indeed, Miller had the principal management of the establishment during Beissel's time, and to his extraordinary abilities the early prosperity of the institution is mainly imputable. Its decline, however, can be rationally accounted for, without supposing either incapability or degeneracy in those who were intrusted with the direction of its affairs, especially when we take into consideration the great changes in politics and government that transpired, and the consequent alterations in public sentiment. The seventeenth century was prolific in monastic institutions, of which this was one; and the feelings and motives that animated its founders were decidedly European. During the first fifty years from the establishment of Ephrata, a remarkable progress was made in liberal opinions, and with the march of intellect and politics, different opinions with regard to religious institutions were also entertained. It was commenced as a social community, and as such it succeeded admirably, and was adapted to every purpose of life, when surrounded by a howling wilderness, filled with wild beasts, and wilder inhabitants; but when the hand of improvement had turned the forests into fields smiling with plenty, and the neighbouring country became filled with a dense and promiscuous population, it appeared evident to all that it was not compatible with the circumstances of the times, or the spirit of the age. Besides this, its members were exposed to incessant persecutions, and were kept in perpetual contentions and turmoils by their envious neighbours, which, of themselves, were enough to have produced a declension in the Society.