THE FIRST SABBATH-SCHOOL

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 22

THE FIRST SABBATH-SCHOOL.

In view of the coming Sunday-school centenary celebration, we give an item of history which is perhaps not generally known, namely, that a Sabbath [seventh-day] school was established by the German Seventh-day Baptists of Pennsylvania, long before Robert Raikes commenced his Sunday-schools in this country. The late Dr. Fahnestock, in an historical sketch of his people, gives the following account of its establishment:—

“Ludwig Hoecker, or Brother Obed, as he was designated, who was the teacher of the common school, projected the plan of holding a school in the afternoons of the Sabbath, and, in connection with some of his brethren, commenced it, to give instruction to the indigent children who were kept from the regular school by employments which their necessities obliged them to be engaged at, during the week, as well as to give religious instruction to those of better circumstances. It is not known exactly in what year the Sabbath-school was commenced. Hoecker came to Ephrata in the year 1739, and it is presumed that he began soon after he took up his residence among his brethren. The materials for the building were furnished, as is recorded in the minutes of the society, in the year 1749. After the Battle of Brandywine, the Sabbath-school-room, with others, was given up for a hospital, which was occupied as such for some time, and the school was never afterward resumed. Hoecker was at that time sixty years of age. To Robert Raikes is certainly due the honor of having projected and successfully introduced the present general system of Sunday-school instruction, but there is much credit due to the Seventh-day Baptists of Ephrata for having established and maintained in operation, for a period of upwards of thirty years, a Sabbath-school forty years before the first school was opened by the Gloucester philanthropist.”—History of Religious Denominations, by J. D. Rupp, pp. 109–123. See also Bailey’s “History of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference,” pp. 257, 258.—Sabbath Memorial.