[Image]  [Hi-Res Image]

Page 152

ious instruction were held in connection with Jewish synagogues in every city and important village of Palestine. These schools were part of an extended system of religious instruction. Lightfoot finds four kinds of schools and teaching among the Jews: (1) the elementary school; (2) the teaching of the synagogue; (3) the higher schools, as those of Hillel and Shammai; and (4) the Sanhedrin, which was a great school, as well as the great judicatory of the nation. Some have questioned the prevalence of elementary schools in the time of Christ's childhood; but, according to the Talmud, synagogue schools were of earlier origin, and had then become common. They used the Hebrew Scriptures, and, later, little parchment rolls prepared for children. The Mishna says, " At five years of age let children begin the Scripture, at ten the Mishna, and at thirteen, let them be subjects of the law." In this period a synagogue presupposed a school, as now a church implies a Sunday-school. Hence the Church and Sunday-school, not the Church and districtschool, parallel the Jewish system. The methods in these schools were not unlike those of the modern Sunday-school. Questions were freely asked and answered, and opinions stated and discussed. Such a Jewish Bible school, no doubt, Jesus entered in the temple when twelve years old. Paul was " brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," a phrase which implies the customary posture of Jewish students at a school. The apostolic age was remarkable for the activity of these schools. Every town having ten men, giving themselves to divine things, was to have a synagogue; and every place having twenty-five boys, or, according to Maimonides, 125 families, was compelled to appoint a teacher, and for forty or fifty boys, two teachers. In the apostolic period teachers were a recognized body of workers quite distinct from pastors, prophets, and evangelists (I Cor. xii. 28, 29; Eph. iv. 11; Heb. v. 12). The special work of teachers in the apostolic church was to instruct the young and the inexperienced in religion and in the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.

The Christian schools were founded upon the plan of the Jewish synagogue schools. These schools or catechetical classes were to aid in pre-

incarnation, the resurrection, gnd future rewards and punishments. Their books were portions of the Bible, sometimes in verse, Old-Testament history and antiquities, sacred poems, and dialogues. When the ecclesiastical spirit overcame the apostolic and Gospel teaching, the study of the Bible was largely displaced by ritual ceremonies and priestly confessionals. A few faithful continued to teach the Bible, as the Waldenses and the Lollards.

Classes and schools for the religious instruction of the young were among the agencies recognized

as indispensable by the Protestant Re4. Schools formers. " Christian schools must be in the established and maintained," declared

through the schools." He prepared Biblical catechisms and lessons for such schools in 1529. Calvin in 1536 issued similar catechisms in fifty-eight sections, for teaching the young in Geneva. Alarmed by the spread of the Reformation, which he strenuously opposed, Carlo Borromeo (q.v.), archbishop of Milan, gathered boys and girls for religious instruction. He separated them into two divisions, and grouped them into large classes, with a priest aided by a layman for the boys, and a matron for the girls, that they might be taught the doctrines and discipline of the Roman .Catholic Church. Similar schools were established throughout his diocese by the cooperation of bishops, priests, and the Jesuits, the instruction aiming to hold the people to the Roman Catholic faith and to prevent them from accepting the Reformer's doctrines and instructions from the Bible. The religious instruction in Borromeo's schools was concentrated chiefly upon the Church's decrees and confessions, while that of the Reformers was upon Christ and the Bible. The way was further prepared for the modern Sunday-school movement by the labors of Zwingli, Beza, Melanchthon, Spener, Francke, and Zinzendorf (qq.v.) on the continent; and in Great Britain by John Knox, Baxter (qq.v.), and the English and Scottish Reformers, who recognized the school as a part of the divinely appointed mission of the Church. Luther would " that nobody be chosen as a minister if he were not before this a school-master." The Heidelberg Catechism declared as a requirement of the fourth commandment " that the ministry of the Gospel and the schools be maintained." The first Scottish general assembly directed that the second of the two public services on every Lord's Day be given to worship, and the catechizing of the young and ignorant. The Church of England as early as 1603 required " every person, vicar, or curate, upon every Sunday and holiday, for half an hour or more, to instruct the young and ignorant in the ten commandments, the articles of belief, and in the Lord's Prayer." In America early Protestant settlers regarded it as a duty of the Church and the State to maintain schools wherein religion and the Bible were taught. Some form of catechetical and religious instruction, therefore, widely prevailed in connection with the Protestant and Reformed Churches of Europe and America for more than a century before the origin of the modern popular movement. The religious influence of the schools, it is true, declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth