Church Conduct and Practice - Sunday School Affiliation - Elder C. H. Cayce

To the question above, propounded by "A Subscriber," we answer that we do not think it proper for a deacon or any other member of the Primitive Baptist Church to affiliate with modern Arminian Sunday schools. The avowed and expressed object of these schools is to bring children up in such a way as to make Christians of them-to give them such training as that they will accept Christ as their Saviour, and thereby ultimately reach the climes of glory. This object of the Sunday school we know to be an open violation of the teaching of Holy Writ. "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord," says the prophet. The Lord is the teacher. This teaching is in the work of regeneration, and is by a direct and immediate work of the Holy Spirit. For this reason Primitive Baptists should have nothing to do with them.

It is also claimed that the Sunday school is a nursery or help to the church. The church of Christ has no such helps or nurseries; nor does she need them. If the Sunday school had been needed by the Lord's kingdom, then the Saviour would have instituted it. The modern Sunday school was instituted by Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, England, in the eighteenth century, and is, therefore, an institution of man. The ancient Waldenses "held in abhorrence all the inventions of men in the affairs of religion as an abomination in the sight of God," and the Primitive Baptists of today, as a body, do the same thing, and all her members should do so.

The Scriptures teach everything we ought to believe or practice religiously, and a Sunday school is mentioned at no place in the Bible. So we should let it alone. The idea that we are at liberty to practice anything religiously that the Bible says nothing about, we think is erroneous. The Scriptures are given that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works, and therefore teach everything we ought to practice religiously. This being true, we should practice nothing religiously which is not commanded in the Bible.

Other reasons could be given why Old Baptists should not affiliate in the modern Sunday schools of today, but we think these are sufficient. We would be glad for all Old Baptists to "touch not, taste not, handle not the doctrines and commandments of men," and stand aloof from the world in all our religious service, and join not house to house, nor field to field, with the nations around us. It is right and proper for us to be neighborly, friendly and sociable with them in our worldly or secular affairs, but in religious matters we should be a separate people. May the Lord help us to so live as to say by our life that there is a reality in the profession we make, that the Primitive Baptist Church is the true church of Christ, is our humble prayer. C. H. C.