RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sunday-Schools
exclusion of all others. This action was stimulated
by a similar plan of instruction exploited by
Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, known as
2. Transi- the Lancastrian system, on which the tion to Sys- British and Foreign School Society was
tematized founded. His plan provided lessons Instruction, from the Scriptures, but excluded lessons in denominational creeds and catechisms. This society was largely sustained by dissenters. These plans agreed in employing monitorial or voluntary teachers, but differed widely on the system of lessons and subjects of study. Lancaster's plans had a decided influence upon the instruction in Sunday-schools in Great Britain and America. Other influences followed, as the vigorous attacks of James Gall of Scotland upon the parish mode of reciting catechisms in Scotch churches. Gall also advocated what he termed the " lesson system " of instruction, which consisted in requiring the scholar to " draw " some practical " lesson " from each sentence or clause in the lesson of the day. Moreover, the Sunday-school teachers' magazines were, for two or more decades, devoting column after column in their journals to explaining and discussing the principles of education suggested by Bacon, Milton, Comenius, Locke, Pestalozzi, Francke, Froebel, Gall, Bell, Lancaster, Jacatot, Stow, and others, and sifting therefrom whatever seemed suitable or helpful in shaping lessons or methods of instruction in Sunday-schools. The diffusion of this knowledge prepared the way for better schemes of lessons, and improved methods of teaching. The idea of a system of " selected lessons " uniform for the entire school seems to have come about the same time into many minds, widely separated, in America and Great Britain. It was first put in practise, as stated in the Appendix to the Report for 1825 of the American Sunday-school Union (issued May, 1826), in several schools in Albany, Utica, and by fourteen schools in New York City, and a list of " Selected Lessons " was published first in a leaflet by the Union. The first year's course comprised forty-nine lessons in the Gospels, " chronologically arranged according to the most approved harmonies." " The selection is divided into four portions, each designed to occupy the Sabbaths of three months, for the convenience of a quarterly examination of the scholars." The projectors hope that this plan will be so systematized, " that every school may be furnished with the same lesson at the same time." Each lesson was limited to from " ten to twenty verses," and among the advantages claimed for the scheme were: " it promotes uniformity," and united study by teachers during the week; aids the teachers' classes " conducted by the pastor " for " expounding the selections," gives the scholar the " same lesson when he moves to another school as would have been assigned him in the school he left." Within a year after this list of " Bible lessons " had been first published, a book of questions in three grades, prepared by Albert Judson on these same " selected lessons," was published, as a help in the study of them. They were so " happily adapted to advance the scholars in an intimate and correct knowledge of the Scriptures " that it was said " the old plan of commit- XI.— 11
ting large portions of Scripture to memory is generally relinquished." About fifteen or twenty ministers in New York City gave weekly lectures on the lesson to teachers; churches were crowded at the public examinations held quarterly in several schools on the " select lessons," and " scholars became acquainted with the general truths of the Scriptures." Judson's questions were soon combined with another similar help, and the joint book called Union Questions issued by The American Sunday-school Union, and the successive volumes (12 in all) of these lesson helps covered the chief books of the Bible. These Uniform Select Lessons with the Union Questions thereon were commended, as the best then known, by the first and the second national Sunday-school conventions, 1832, 1833, and continued to be widely used for more than a generation. Special helps, notes, and explanations on the lessons were issued weekly in the (Union's) Sunday School Journal of Philadelphia, and in book form, the latter being a fivefold form of notes. For instruction in the doctrines peculiar to each denomination, the chief dependence continued to be catechisms; particular Sundays often being designated for this purpose, by schools using the Union Questions and Uniform Lessons. After a time, many large schools began to prepare for themselves a course of Bible-study lessons each year, and some prominent in a denomination advocated or put forth a series of lessons intended to teach the doctrines peculiar to the denomination, which soon drifted into what has been termed the " Babel series " of lessons in America.
In Great Britain about 1842, the London Sundayschool Union issued a double series of Bible lessons (without the texts), one for the morning session of the Sunday-school, and another for the 3. Various afternoon, giving brief explanations,
Systems doctrines, practical lessons, and ques- Tried. tions on each lesson in a monthly tract of twelve pages, duodecimo in size, differing from the American lessons of 1826 and on, by omitting to provide for any review, either weekly or quarterly. The Lesson System of James Gall, the Graduated Simultaneous Instruction by Robert Mimpriss, the "training system" of David Stow, and the " collective system " of the London Union were popular in England about the same period. The great defects of Gall's system were said to be absence of all instruction, save as to meaning of words, and the use of direct catechizing. Mimpriss's was better, but required too much mechanism, and is limited chiefly to the Gospels. Stow's was without a book of explanations, or questions, and required separate rooms for classes, and was fitted in the most part for infant classes only; the " collective system " of 1842 was largely topical, the Bible texts were too long to be mastered, suited better for advanced Bible classes only, and failed to give a comprehensive knowledge of the entire Scriptures. Each of these systems was tried in America, and each laid aside, after it had attained a brief local popularity in different places. Meanwhile the way was being providentially prepared for the international uniform lessons. The uniform idea had been partially lost to sight, though continued in fact, in
Sunday-Schools