The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Religion
The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.
Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Sunday schools
Samuel Slater opened a school for his operatives in Pawtucket, Rhode
Island, in 1797. The Broadway Baptist Sabbath-school, in Baltimore,
was established in 1804, and it is said to be still in operation. Mrs.
Amos Tappan (Miss Buckminster) opened a Sabbath-school in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, in 1803. We do not learn that the Churches and
organized Christian bodies took hold of the Sabbath-school movement in
this country, so as to _produce_ permanent and efficient _action_,
until 1809, when we find an elaborate constitution and plan of action
from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1810 a Sabbath-school was organized
in Beverly, Massachusetts, and in Boston in 1812. Soon after this
there began to be a more general and awakened interest in the Churches
in behalf of Sabbath-schools, and the years 1814, 1815, and 1816 were
years of most triumphant progress, so that in 1817 Sunday-schools were
organized in most of our flourishing churches and Christian
communities throughout this country.
Early in 1816 the New York Sunday-School Union was established, and is
the first and oldest Union in our land, having just celebrated its
semi-centennial. The American Sunday-School Union was organized in
1824, to provide a juvenile Christian literature (and from whence our
public school district libraries borrowed their first idea) and to
plant a Sunday-school wherever there is a population.
Surely, if any work in our land needs to be hastened, it is that of
the religious instruction of the neglected children and youth of this
nation by means of Sabbath-schools. Not to mention the various modern
denominational movements, the above we believe to be a correct history
of the Sunday-school progress, and we suppose it to be sufficiently
full for practical purposes in this work. We have ample materials on
this subject to fill a large volume, but this may here suffice.
There are other questions, however, which ought to be here recorded in
connection with the progress of the cause. In Great Britain the work
is embarrassed from the fact that as a general rule only the children
of the poor and middle classes attend their Sabbath-schools. In the
early stages of the Sabbath-school movement in this country the same
custom prevailed here, and it is certainly worthy of record by what
means the change was effected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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