Thus we find in Deuteronomy, nearly four thousand years ago, the great Sabbath-school principle foreshadowed and embodied; and where, we may ask, can be found in all the Bible a more definite authorization or _divine appointment_ for any of the great denominational Christian Churches which now so bless our land than is here found for the Sabbath-school? It is ordained and blessed of God. The Sabbath-school is simply the Church of Christ putting forth its legitimate effort in its most inviting field of action. It is _the_ regular systematic working department of the Christian Church--not an outside auxiliary, but an inside,--the Church itself in action; and as such let it be carefully guarded and cherished. The same Divine lips which said "Go preach," said also and equally to his disciples, "Go _teach_." Says the Rev. J. H. Vincent: "There is just as much divine authority for the Sabbath-school as there is for the sanctuary--no more." Our Divine Lord and Master himself repeatedly astonished his own disciples by his particular notice of and care for little children, and with sore displeasure he rebuked his followers for hindering them from being brought to him. It was not until nearly the close of the second century, or, according to Tertullian, in the year A.D. 180, that the Christian Church felt compelled, in order to check the defection of heathen converts, to set about the establishment of those celebrated catechumenical schools, of which Origen was one of the catechists, for the systematic religious instruction by the Church of Christ of the children and youth. So useful and necessary, however, did this work prove itself to be, that very soon similar schools were universally established. They continued to flourish until near the close of the sixth century, when they declined and became obscured for ten long centuries in the gloom of the Dark Ages, with only an occasional prince, or pastor, or layman in the spirit of the Master, to teach the children the way of life. In the sixteenth century, however, on the dawn of the Reformation, Martin Luther established his celebrated Sunday-schools at Wittemberg in the year 1527; and soon after John Knox inaugurated the Sunday-schools of Scotland, "with readers," as the history of Scotland informs us, in 1560; so that on the incoming of the Reformation the children were again "taught of the Lord." In the year 1580, Borromeo, the pious Archbishop of Milan, established a system of Sunday-schools throughout his large diocese in Lombardy.