Sir James Stephen, in his admirable paper, is far from exhausting all the memories of that Clapham Sect. There was another house, not in Clapham, but not far removed—Hatcham House, as we remember it—a noble mansion, standing in its park, opposite where the old lane turned off from the main road to Peckham. There lived Joseph Hardcastle—certainly one of the Clapham Sect—Wilberforce’s close and intimate friend, a munificent merchant prince, in whose offices in the City were held for a long time all the earliest committee meetings of the Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, and the London Missionary Society, and from whom appear to have emanated the first suggestions for the limitation of the powers of the East India Company in supporting and sanctioning, by the English Government, Hindoo infanticide and idolatry. Among all the glorious names of the Clapham Sect, not one shines out more beautifully than that of this noble Christian gentleman.
Perhaps a natural delicacy withheld Sir James Stephen from chronicling the story of his own father, Sir George Stephen; and there was Thomas Gisborne, most charming of English preachers of the Church of England evangelical school; and Sir Robert Grant, whose hymns are still among the sweetest in our national psalmody. But we can do no more than thus say that it was from hence that the spirit of the Revival rose in new strength, and taking to itself the wings of the morning, spread to the uttermost parts of the earth.
CHAPTER X
THE REVIVAL BECOMES EDUCATIONAL.—ROBERT RAIKES.
In the year 1880 was celebrated in England and America the centenary of Sunday-schools. The life and labours of Robert Raikes, whose name has long been familiar as “a household word” in connection with such institutions, were reviewed, and fresh interest added to that early work for the young.
ROBERT RAIKES AND HIS SCHOLARS.
Gloucestershire, if not one of the largest, is certainly one of the fairest—as, indeed, its name is said to imply: from Glaw, an old British word signifying “fair”—it is one of the fairest, and it ought to be one of the most famous, counties of England. Many are its distinguished worthies: John de Trevisa was Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, and a contemporary with John Wyclif, and, like him, he had a strong aversion to the practices of the Church of Rome, and an earnest desire to make the Scriptures known to his parishioners; and in Nibley, in Gloucestershire, was born, and lived, William Tyndale, in whose noble heart the great idea sprang up that Christian Englishmen should read the New Testament in their own mother-tongue, and who said to a celebrated priest, “If God spares my life, I will take care that a plough-boy shall know more of the Scriptures than you do.” The story of the great translator and martyr is most interesting. Gloucestershire has been famous, too, for its contributions to the noble army of martyrs, notably, not only James Baynham, but, in Gloucester, its bishop, John Hooper, was in 1555 burnt to death. In Berkeley the very distinguished physician, and first promulgator of the doctrine of vaccination, Dr. Edward Jenner, the son of the vicar, was born; and from the Old Bell, in Gloucester, went forth the wonderful preacher George Whitefield, to arouse the sleeping Church in England and America from its lethargy. The quaint old proverb to which we have already alluded—“As sure as God is in Gloucestershire”—was very complimentary, but not very correct; it arose from the amazing ecclesiastical wealth of the county, which was so rich that it attracted the notice of the papal court, and four Italian bishops held it in succession for fifty years; one of these, Giulio de Medici, became Pope Clement VII., succeeding Pope Leo X. in the papacy in 1523. This eminent ecclesiastical fame no doubt originated the proverb; but it acquired a tone of reality and truth rather from the martyrdom of its bishop than from the elevation of his predecessor to the papal tiara; rather from Tyndale, William Sarton, and his brother weaver-martyrs, than from its costly and magnificent endowments; from Whitefield and Jenner rather than from its crowd of priests and friars.
Thus Gloucestershire has certainly considerable eminence among English counties. To other distinguished names must be added that of Robert Raikes, who must ever be regarded as the founder of Sabbath-schools. It is not intended by this that there had never been any attempts made to gather the children on the Sabbath for some kind of religious instruction—although such attempts were very few, and a diligent search has probably brought them all [?] under our knowledge; but the example and the influence of Raikes gave to the idea the character of a movement; it stirred the whole country, from the throne itself, the King and Queen, the bishops, and the clergy; all classes of ministers and laymen became interested in what was evidently an easy and happy method of seizing upon the multitudes of lost children who in that day were “perishing for lack of knowledge.”
Mr. Joseph Stratford, in his Biographical Sketches of the Great and Good Men in Gloucestershire, and Mr. Alfred Gregory, in his Life of Robert Raikes—to which works we must confess our obligation for much of the information contained in this chapter—have both done honour to the several humbler and more obscure labourers whose hearts were moved to attempt the work to which Raikes gave a national importance, and which from his hands, and from his time, became henceforth a perpetual institution in the Church work of every denomination of Christian believers and labourers. The Rev. Joseph Alleine, the author of The Alarm to the Unconverted, an eminent Nonconformist minister of Taunton, adopted the plan of gathering the young people together for instruction on the Lord’s day. Even in Gloucestershire, before Raikes was born, in the village of Flaxley, on the borders of the Forest of Dean—Flaxley, of which the poet Bloomfield sings: