Sunday Schools
by J. C. Philpot
Education is one of those questions which have
fought their own way into general acceptance. The benefits and blessings of
ignorance have lost their numerous advocates; and though, as Laplanders
wonder how any can live out of Lapland, preferring their own murky sky and
oil-lit snow huts to the suns of Italy and the palaces of Venice, so there
are those still who, in a moral sense, love darkness rather than light; yet
it is a generation scanty in number and weak in influence. The Laplanders
are fast passing away. It is true that there is a party, more numerous,
perhaps, and influential than is generally thought, who, with the
architecture of the middle ages, are seeking to restore the darkness of the
middle ages. Let us not be deceived on this point. It is not merely the
arches and windows, the porches and pillars of bygone ages which the
Puseyites, lay and clerical, are seeking to renew, in all their exact
detail, in the new churches that are everywhere studding the land. These are
but symbols of a yearning after mediaeval times, when superstition debased
the people and exalted the priest; when amid the thick darkness that brooded
over Europe no object was allowed to be seen but the illuminated dome of St.
Peter's; when men were not allowed to look into the word of God for
instruction, or to the Spirit of God for light, but a living oracle was set
up as Christ's vicar on earth, a feeble old man at Rome, cradled in monkery,
and fed up from childhood with the subtle policy of Italian wiles.
The weather-vane is but a piece of tin, but it shows the
direction of the wind; the whirl of dust is but the movement of a few grains
of sand, but it is the herald of the approaching storm. Coming events cast
their shadows before. The barn-like churches and chapels of the last century
showed the ascendency of Protestantism, whose distinctive feature is to
prefer the substance to the shadow, the word of God to form and ceremony.
The recurrence to mediaeval models shows the desire of recurrence to
mediaeval times. Thus, as in the turning vane we behold the changing wind,
and in the whirling dust view the lightning stroke, so may we see in the
tracery of a Gothic window the setting in of a flood of Popery.
It is our wisdom not to disregard the signs of the times.
The child playing on the sands does not see how steadily and stealthily the
tide is rising to engulf him, and gathers cockle shells until escape is cut
off. Thus slowly and stealthily does Popery seem to be advancing, while most
seem unaware of its progress.
But we must acknowledge that at present the danger does
not seem immediate. Against an enemy like Rome it is well to be warned in
time, for far-seeing is her policy, deep-laid her plots, unscrupulous her
measures, innumerable her agents, and undying her determination. That she is
bent upon what she calls the conversion of England is unquestionable, and
that to achieve it she would wade up to her knees in blood is undeniable.
That too she has made great advances of late must be admitted. Many of the
aristocracy, more than is generally known, especially of the female portion,
have already received the wine cup of Babylon from Puseyistic hands, and
though not professedly Catholics are really more bent upon restoring the
palmy days of Popery than many actual Papists.
But admitting all this, if we regard the spirit of the
age, the spread of education, the diffusion of knowledge, and the
power of the press, the conviction is forced on our mind that, things
continuing as they are, a return to the Popery of the dark ages in this
country is impossible. The arrogant pretensions, the lying miracles, the
persecuting spirit, the intolerant bigotry, the priestly ambition of Rome,
as carried out in former days are so diametrically opposed to the spirit of
the times, that it seems next to impossible that Popery, unmitigated Popery,
the Popery of the dark ages, should ever wave its banner over free
Protestant England. The eyes of England must indeed be put out and her noble
heart crushed before she can lick the dust of Rome as in the days when monks
lashed the naked back of our second Henry at Becket's tomb. The light of
ages must indeed be quenched in our native land, her schools closed, her
printing presses burnt, her parliaments silenced, her railways ploughed up,
her armies scattered, her ships sunk, her looms burnt, her factories and
workshops closed, and she a French province, sunk down into Ireland's rags
and Ireland's ignorance, before the proud priest of Rome shall put his foot
on her neck. What England may become we know not. The glory and riches of
the modern Tyre may pass away like those of ancient Tyre. But England as she
now is never can become a Popish country. English freedom and English
intelligence, such as we now see them, must be utterly overthrown before
Popery can be in this country what it is in Spain, Italy, or Ireland.
The danger that more immediately threatens us is from the
other quarter. We are not now threatened with the dethronement of
intellect—but its deification. The peril now before our eyes is
not that superstition should restore the reign of ignorance, but that
education should supersede religion, and the schoolmaster abroad should
strangle godliness at home.
Time was when Sunday Schools were unknown, when
the children of the poor ran wild in the streets uncared for by parent and
instructor, and grew up semi-barbarians, without being able to read or
write, or possessing the common elements of education. If ignorance,
according to the Popish saying, be the mother of devotion, how devout must
these uncombed specimens of humanity have been. Devout indeed that
generation was not, but most devoted it was—to cock-fighting, the skittle
ground, the ale-house, and the race-course. Read they could not, but swear
they could; they could not write their own names, but were thorough masters
of the vulgar tongue.
Now, to take these young barbarians into the Sunday
School, subject them to its quiet discipline, teach them to read and write,
accustom them to attend a place of worship, detach them from the gross
sensual vice of their fathers, did no other effects follow, must be
excellent. Kept in its place, limited to its true object, the Sunday
School is a most admirable institution. But when, as is too often the
case, the Sunday School is made the nursery of the church—great evil arises.
It is a great evil to consider the Sunday School the
nursery of the church. Let that principle once pervade a church, and the big
boys and girls will clamor to be let out of the nursery and sit at table
with the family, as much as the growing sons and daughters of the squire at
the hall expect at a certain age to leave the nursery for the dining-room.
Thus is the standard of religion lowered, and the new
birth slurred over, the work of grace tacitly set aside, and that deceptive
thing called "early piety" set up.
The next step is to turn the Sunday School teacher into a
minister the leading feature of whose ministry will be to trace the
beginning of all religion to the Sunday School, instancing himself as a
example of youthful piety, and holding it out as an encouragement to the
elder boys that they, if very pious, may become ministers too. And who shall
say that the taller girls, when they see a well-dressed lady looking up so
admiringly to the pulpit, may not think within themselves, "Was not she once
a Sunday School girl, and why should not I become one day a minister's wife
too?" When such are the rewards of piety, who can wonder that the land
overflows with it?
It has been stated that we are opposed to Sunday Schools.
This is not the case. We approve of them highly when applied to their proper
use. It is their abuse that we are opposed to. No man who has children can
be opposed to the education of children; and no one who is a friend of the
poor can be opposed to what is often the only means of educating the
children of the poor. The last man to depreciate education as education is
he who has known the advantages of it.
But education has its perils as well as its benefits. In
past ages Satan worked by ignorance; in the present he works by
intellect. Before Luther and the printing press, Satan, as an angel of
darkness, shrouded his movements by the diffusion of universal ignorance. In
modern times, as an angel of light, he works by the diffusion of knowledge.
The spread of education presents two sides, both
destructive of vital godliness. On the one hand, intellect working by
secular education threatens to swallow up external revelation by
infidelity; and on the other, working by religious education to
swallow up internal revelation by Sunday School piety. As the church always
partakes more or less of the spirit of the age, the people of God are thus
exposed to two temptations; those whose heads are active and hearts cold to
be seduced into a pursuit of knowledge apart from godliness, and those whose
heads are dull and hearts warm to mistake creature piety for spiritual,
supernatural religion.
Few people, we believe, in a profession of religion have
stronger leanings than ourselves to pursuit after and love for natural
knowledge. But we know its snares and temptations, and how unsanctified
knowledge hardens the heart and deadens the soul. If one lesson more than
another has been impressed on our conscience, it is the spiritual,
supernatural character of vital godliness, and the utter worthlessness of
everything in the kingdom of God but the special teaching of the Holy
Spirit! Natural knowledge is one thing, spiritual knowledge is another.
A wide gulf is fixed between them. Nature at its best is but nature still;
and education, whether elementary as at the Sunday School or learned as
at the University, does not and cannot sanctify the natural heart, or
transmute the old Adam into the new. If this broad line be not maintained,
the Sunday School may produce more harm than good.
What then should the education be that is pursued in the
Sunday School? Should the education be wholly secular and worldly? Should
the children be merely taught to read, and should all religion be discarded?
Should the Bible be set aside, prayer neglected, the voice of singing not be
heard, the name of God not be mentioned? If so, how would the Sunday School
differ from the socialist meeting? Because we cannot regenerate the
children, are we to banish the name of religion, and as it were ignore its
very existence? Is there not a medium, and we believe a scriptural medium,
between fostering hypocrisy and practicing heathenism? Timothy knew the
Scriptures from his youth. Lois, then, and Eunice must have made him read
the Scriptures. This indeed was the express injunction of God in the Old
Testament—"Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently lest
you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from
your heart all the days of your life; but teach them your sons, and your
sons' sons; especially the day that you stood before the Lord your God in
Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will
make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that
they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children."
(Deut. 4:9, 10.)
And if in the education of children all religion is to be
ignored, what means the New Testament injunction to bring children up in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord? We cannot say with Chillingworth, "The
Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants," for besides the
Bible outwardly we need this blessed Spirit inwardly—but we can say, "The
Bible and the Bible alone is the book of the Sunday School." The children
should be taught that it is the inspired word of the living God—the word by
which they will be judged at the great day. The truths too revealed in the
Bible should be laid before them, such as the immortality of the soul, the
creation and fall of man, the dreadful nature of sin, the certainty of death
and judgment, the Godhead, sufferings, atonement, death and resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the necessity of the new birth, and the awful
consequences of dying in a state of unregeneracy.
A good Sunday School teacher will never be at a loss for
a topic of oral instruction—the main course to be pursued. The parables of
the Lord Jesus, the figures and emblems of Scripture, the customs, manners,
seasons, feasts, rites of the children of Israel, the ancient prophecies,
with their fulfillment, the history of Joseph and his brethren, the
wanderings in the wilderness, the book of Ruth, the account of David and
Goliath—but not to particularize, what a field of instruction is there in
the Bible for the Sunday scholar, from the least to the greatest. Banish the
Bible from the Sunday School! What will you substitute? The history of Tom
Thumb and Jack Hick-a-thrift? Or dreary lessons of dead morality? No!—let
the sacred word of God be the book of the Sunday School. We need not, to
exclude hypocrisy, exclude the Bible—if so, the next step might be to
exclude the Bible from the chapel. Because we cannot treat children as
Christians, we need not treat them as heathens. So let them sing hymns;
their little voices are sweet, and let them use them. But they should not be
taught hymns that are couched in language of appropriation. What more
grating to the ear of one that fears God than to hear the words, "My
Jesus has done all things well," burst forth through the windows of the
Sunday School?
The late Mr. Gadsby, who was a sincere friend to
education, and especially to Sunday Schools; having for many years a large
one in connection with his chapel at Manchester, much felt the impropriety
of allowing the children to sing hymns, which none but believers
can, without hypocrisy, use. He therefore compiled a selection expressly for
Sunday Schools. In the preface to this selection he thus expresses himself.
"As one part of the service connected with Sunday School
Teaching is singing, I have often thought a little Selection of Hymns was
desirable. It is true I have seen several designed for that purpose, but
most of them contain Hymns that do not appear to me to be true, and, as
such, I could not give them my sanction; and all of them which I have
perused lead the children to appropriate some of the truths they contain in
a way which none but true believers can justly do.
"The design of this Selection is to give a statement of
the real truths of God, and yet in such a manner as to be a means, in the
hands of the Holy Spirit (if it be his sovereign will), to impress their
minds with the solemn reality of them, and the essential necessity of being
quickened by, and taught of God, before they can enter into his glorious
kingdom."
This principle, which we consider a sound and scriptural
one, does not involve any serious loss. It is true that there are many hymns
which are thereby, wholly or in part, necessarily excluded from the Sunday
School, but many excellent hymns remain.
And here we may perhaps be allowed to give our views of
what a Sunday School hymn book should be. As the Bible is the Book of
the Sunday School, so should the Bible be the sole foundation and source of
the Sunday School hymn book. Mere dead, dry, moral lessons about cleanliness
and good temper in jingling rhyme, like some of the infant school
sing-songs, should be discarded as worse than useless. Deep are the
impressions; lasting the remembrance of songs learned in childhood; and, as
many of the Lord's people know by painful experience, it is almost
impossible to forget what rhyme and tune have so deeply burned into the
memory. Who does not find some foolish, or worse than foolish, jingle, heard
in ungodly days, haunting the mind? Looking forward, then, to the time when
Sunday scholars will become men and women, the hymns should not be
childish nonsense about clean face and hands, duty to teachers, and
being good little boys and girls, but the solemn truths of the gospel, clear
from the language of appropriation. Such hymns as,
"When Adam by transgression fell;
The fear of the Lord is clean and approved;
Whatever prompts the soul to pride;
The moon and stars shall lose their light;
Happy the men that fear the Lord."
are not only sweet and savory to the children of God, but eminently suitable
for a Sunday School. They contain no language of appropriation which in
unregenerate lips is little short of profanity, and yet clearly and
experimentally set forth blessed truth. Nor should we limit the range of our
vision to the Sunday School as if its present occupants were to be always
children. A few years will make them men and women and send them forth into
the whirlpool of life. The time, then, may come when the Lord may visit by
his grace some of these grown-up scholars.