“’Mid depths of shade gay sunbeams broke
Through noble Flaxley’s bowers of oak;
Where many a cottage, trim and gay,
Whispered delight through all the way:”
in the old Cistercian Abbey, Mrs. Catharine Boevey, the lady of the abbey, had one of the earliest and pleasantest Sabbath-schools. Her monument in Flaxley Church, erected after her death in 1726, records her “clothing and feeding her indigent neighbours, and teaching their children, some of whom she entertained at her house, and examined them herself.” Six of the poor children, it is elsewhere stated, “by turns dined at her residence on Sundays, and were afterwards heard say the Catechism.”
We read of a humbler labourer, realising, perhaps, more the idea of a Sabbath-school teacher, in Bolton, in Lancashire, James Hey, or “Old Jemmy o’ th’ Hey.” Old Jemmy, Mr. Gregory tells us, employed the working days of the week in winding bobbins for weavers, and on Sundays he taught the boys and girls of the neighbourhood to read. His school assembled twice each Sunday, in the cottage of a neighbour, and the time of commencing was announced, not by the ringing of a bell, but by an excellent substitute, an old brass pestle and mortar. After a while, Mr. Adam Compton, a paper manufacturer in the neighbourhood, began to supply Jemmy with books, and subscriptions in money were given him; he was thus enabled to form three branch establishments, the teachers of which were paid one shilling each Sunday for their services. Besides these there are several other instances: in 1763 the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey established something like a Sunday-school at Catterick, in Yorkshire; at High Wycombe, in 1769, Miss Hannah Ball, a young Methodist lady, formed a Sunday-school in her town; and at Macclesfield that admirable and excellent man, the Rev. David Simpson, originated a similar plan of usefulness; and, contemporary with Mr. Raikes, in the old Whitefield Tabernacle, at Dursley, in Gloucestershire, we find Mr. William King, a woollen card-maker, attempting the work of teaching on a Sunday, and coming into Gloucester to take counsel with Mr. Raikes as to the best way of carrying it forward. Such, scattered over the face of the country, at great distances, and in no way representing a general plan of useful labour, were the hints and efforts before the idea took what may be called an apostolic shape in the person of Robert Raikes.
Notwithstanding the instances we have given, Mr. Raikes must really be regarded as the founder of Sunday-schools as an extended organisation. With him they became more than a notion, or a mere piece of local effort; and his position and profession, and the high respect in which he was held in the city in which he lived, all alike enabled him to give publicity to the plan: and before he commenced this movement, he was known as a philanthropist; indeed, John Howard himself bears something like the same relation to prison philanthropy which Raikes bears to Sunday-schools. No one doubts that Howard was the great apostle of prisons; but it seems that before he commenced his great prison crusade, Raikes had laboured diligently to reform the Gloucester gaol. The condition of the prisoners was most pitiable, and Raikes, nearly twenty years before he commenced the Sunday-school system, had been working among them, attempting their material, moral, and spiritual improvement, by which he had earned for himself the designation of the “Teacher of the Poor.” Howard visited Raikes in Gloucester, and bears his testimony to the blessedness and benevolence of his labours in the prison there; and the gaol appears not unnaturally to have suggested the idea of the Sunday-school to the benevolent-hearted man. It was a dreadful state of society. Some idea may be formed of it from a paragraph in the Gloucester Journal for June, 1783, the paper of which Raikes was the editor and proprietor: it is mentioned that no less than sixty-six persons were committed to the Castle in one week, and Mr. Raikes adds, “The prison is already so full that all the gaoler’s stock of fetters is occupied, and the smiths are hard at work casting new ones.” He goes on to say: “The people sent in are neither disappointed soldiers nor sailors, but chiefly frequenters of ale-houses and skittle-alleys.” Then, in another paragraph, he goes on to remark, “The ships about to sail for Botany Bay will carry about one thousand miserable creatures, who might have lived perfectly happy in this country had they been early taught good principles, and to avoid the danger of associating with those who make sobriety and industry the objects of their ridicule.”
From sentences like these it is easy to see the direction in which the mind of the good man was moving, before he commenced the work which has given such a happy and abiding perpetuity to his name. He gathered the children; the streets were full of noise and disturbances every Sunday. In a little while, says the Rev. Dr. Glass, Mr. Raikes found himself surrounded by such a set of little ragamuffins as would have disgusted other men less zealous to do good, and less earnest to disseminate comfort, exhortation, and benefit to all around him, than the founder of Sunday-schools. He prevented their running about in wild disorder through the streets. By and by, he arranged that a number of them should meet him at seven o’clock on the Sunday morning in the cathedral close, when he and they all went into the cathedral together to an early service. The increase of the numbers was rapid; Mr. Raikes was looked up to as the commander-in-chief of this ragged regiment. It is testified that a change took place and passed over the streets of the old Gloucester city on the Sunday. A glance at the features of Mr. Raikes will assure the reader that he was an amiable and gentle man, but that by no means implies always a weak one. He appears to have had plenty of strength, self-possession, and knowledge of the world. He also belonged to, and moved in, good society; and this is not without its influence. As he told the King, in the course of a long interview, when the King and Queen sent for him to Windsor, to talk over his system with him, in order that they might, in some sense, be his disciples, and adopt and recommend his plan: it was “botanising in human nature.” “All that I require,” said Raikes, to the parents of the children, “are clean hands, clean faces, and their hair combed.” To many who were barefooted, after they had shown some regularity of attendance, he gave shoes, and others he clothed. Yes, it was “botanising in human nature;” and very many anecdotes show what flowers sprang up out of the black soil in the path of the good man.
All the stories told of Raikes show that the law of kindness was usually on his lips. A sulky, stubborn girl had resisted all reproofs and correction, and had refused to ask forgiveness of her mother. In the presence of the mother, Raikes said to the girl, “Well, if you have no regard for yourself, I have much for you. You will be ruined and lost if you do not become a good girl; and if you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself on your behalf and make a beginning for you;” and then, with great solemnity, he entreated the mother to forgive the girl, using such words that he overcame the girl’s pride. The stubborn creature actually fell on her knees, and begged her mother’s forgiveness, and never gave Mr. Raikes or her mother trouble afterwards. It is a very simple anecdote; but it shows the Divine spirit in the method of the man; and the more closely we come into a personal knowledge of his character, the more admirable and lovable it seems. Thus literally true and beautiful are the words of the hymn:
“Like a lone husbandman, forlorn,