SUNDAY - SCHOOL, according to Schaff, "an assembly of persons on the Lord's day for the study of the Bible, moral and religious instruction, and the worship of the true God. It is a method of training the young and ignorant in the duties we owe to God and to our neighbor." Sunday-schools may be said to have passed through three distinct phases: (1) Early Christian catechetical schools, for the preparation of converts for church-membership, and the instruc tion of the young and ignorant in the knowledge of God and of salvation. The scholars committed passages of Scripture to memory, and their books comprised parts of the Bible in verse, Jewish an tiquities, sacred poems, and dialogues.
(2) Schools of the Reformation Pe riod: Luther founded schools for cate chetical instruction in 1529, and this cus tom spread wherever the Reformation gained a foothold. In the Roman Church St. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, about 1560 introduced into his diocese a system of schools which con tinues to the present day; and in 1699 the Venerable de la Salle opened a Sun day-school (ecole dominicale) at St. Sul pice. Sunday-schools were opened in Scotland about 1560 by Knox; at Bath, in 1650 by Joseph Alleine; in Roxbury, Mass., in 1674, and at many other places in Great Britain and America between that date and 1778.
(3) Modern Sunday-schools: These date from 1780 or 1781, when Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, England, began to collect a few children from the streets of that city on Sundays, and paid teachers to instruct them in religious knowledge. The improvement in the conduct and morals of the children was so marked that, when Raikes published an account of his success, his example was followed in several other places, and in 1785 a society was formed for the establishment and maintenance of Sunday-schools in all parts of the kingdom, a large sum being expended in the payment of teachers. In
1803 the Sunday-School Union was formed to secure continuous instruction by unpaid teachers, and to publish books and tracts for the benefit of the cause. The first Sunday-schools united secular with religious instruction, as did those of Borromeo and La Salle; but the spread of elementary education has to a large extent removed the necessity of teaching reading and writing on Sundays. The Society of Friends has, however, retained the practice in its large Sunday-morning schools, with great benefit as regards in fluence over the working classes above the age of childhood, and in some of the Wesleyan Sunday-schools, classes for ele mentary instruction are held early in the morning. Sunday-schools were intro duced into Scotland, Ireland, and Amer ica in the years immediately following their establishment in England; the Scotch Society for Promoting Religious Instruction among the Poor was formed in 1796, and the Irish Sunday-School Society was founded in 1809, though a system of Sunday teaching had prevailed in Ireland for some years previously. In later times Sunday-schools have rapidly increased in connection with all Protes tant Churches throughout the world. In 1920 there were in the Sunday-schools of all Protestant denominations over 200,000 Sunday-schools, over 2,000,000 teachers, and over 20,000,000 pupils.