Nonsectarian Sabbath or Sunday schools served as an important entry point for public schooling in the first decades of the nineteenth century. These schools provided the basic spelling, reading, and writing instruction often required for admission into public schools. Singing was also an essential component of Sunday schools, and basic instruction in singing and reading music was included by the late 1820s. This study compares two early Sunday school psalm books, Thomas Hastings' "Juvenile Lyre" (1827) and Lowell Mason's "Juvenile Psalmist" (1829), noting several ways that the two volumes and the Sunday School Movement in general anticipated the introduction of public school music education in the United States.