Sunday Schools and Modern England.

No. V. RAIKES: HIS OPPONENTS, HELPERS, AND SUCCESSES.

It was soon manifest that Robert Raikes had caught and expressed the spirit of his time. He was its living embodiment; in his keen sense of England's chief need, in the earnestness and tact with which he addressed himself to supply it; and so it came to pass that his work was as opportune as it was humble, and won successes that, at this date, must be regarded as partaking of the character of a surprise. Men and women of kindred spirit were by no means numerous; but there were elect souls on whom had descended the evangelizing fervour so copiously that they were prepared to follow any prophet who could prepare the way of the Lord, and make a highway amongst the Young of Modern England for the Gospel of Christ.

EARLY OPPONENTS.

Of course there were opponents. It could not be expected that a movement fraught with such disastrous issues to the kingdom of evil could be begotten and initiated without vehement efforts to resist it. In 1787 John Wesley, writing to Richard Rodda, a Cheshire Methodist, said, "These schools will be one great means of reviving religion throughout the kingdom. I wonder Satan has not sent out some able champions against them." Wesley's instinct and observation were right; and Raikes had not to wait long for the foe. The signs of the approaching victory of any cause are not complete without the manifestation of violent hostility. Good work is scarcely ever done amongst men without the aid of opposition; and therefore Sunday Schools were not allowed to establish themselves without this ancient and convincing evidence of their Divine descent.

In Scotland Christian people denounced the teaching of children to read the Bible on Sunday as a flagrant violation of the fourth commandment; and in Aberdeenshire several of the pioneers in this iniquitous course were taken before the magistrates as law-breakers. The same curious logic was abundantly used in England. Bad as Englishmen were, imbruted and godless as the mass of men were; dull and apathetic as the church was; yet there was Phariseeism enough left to protest against healing young England on the Sabbath-day, and Raikes and his comrades had to fight, like their Divine Master, against that bitter and rooted prejudice.

So strong was that prejudice that it had not lost its vitality at the end of the century; but is seen, in the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine, exerting its full strength under the direction of a writer who has the temerity to sign himself" A Friend to the Established Church, and a well-wisher to all mankind, though an enemy to everything that looks like mischief or rebellion;" and to suggest that Sunday Schools should be exchanged, if they were to be retained at all, for Saturday Schools, so that the persons entrusted with their management might "be convinced that their employment were not of a worldly but entirely of a religious nature."

But the strongest weapon used against the pioneers of the Reformation of Young England was the perilous use the masses would make of

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the power of reading. "Eusebius," who seems, from internal evidence, to have been a "much afraid" clergyman, discoursed, with much earnestness and energy in the same pages, treating the advocates of Sunday Schools as "pious old women," and schools themselves, as the seed-plots of social and political revolution, organizations expressly adapted to prepare the people for Tom Paine's Age of Reason, and for the destructive ideas of "liberty and equality." "Teach the children to work,” said he. "To the neglect of industry in the lowest classes of mankind may be ascribed all the licentiousness, all the riots, all the beggary, which we meet with in every part of the three kingdoms. Work is the panacea, not Sunday Schools. Industry in the lowest classes of society is better than scholarship; and to give them the latter without the former is to put swords into their hands which may be instrumental to their own destruction."

THE FIRST SUCCESSES.

But the Sunday School hour was come, and all this opposition only seemed to incite to deeper devotion on the part of those who felt themselves urged by the love of Christ and souls to this work. A few workers had been in the field some time. James Hey, better known as "Old Jemmy o' the Hey," had called children together for tuition "by the ringing, not of a bell, but of an excellent substitute, an old brass pestle and mortar." David Simpson had dug out the foundations for his work in Macclesfield. Thomas Stock, afterwards Raikes's fellowworker in Gloucester, had conducted a school at Ashbury, in Berkshire; Sophia Cook, wife of Samuel Bradburn, a Methodist preacher, was zealous for this good work; and so Sunday Schools spread with wonderful rapidity, and in four years time they were established in London and Leeds, Stockport and Stroud, Chester and Manchester. Wales gave them a welcome. Ireland rejoiced in their presence; and Sabbathloving Scotland ventured to hope that they might keep the school, and the Sabbath too, by adopting the Sunday School.

Nor was the enterprise embraced with hesitation or feebleness. Leeds had, within a year, twenty-six schools, and over 2,000 scholars. Manchester was not long before it had enrolled 2,836. Rowland Hill speedily attached a school to Surrey Chapel. Hannah More and her sisters organized and sustained them in the Mendip Hills;† and in all parts of the country there was a positive eagerness to seize and apply this new, simple, and easy invention. Wesley said, "I find these schools wherever I go. Perhaps God may have some deeper end therein than men are aware of; who knows but some of these schools may be nurseries for Christians."

The attention of outsiders was arrested by the rapid and impressive growth of the institution. Adam Smith, the political economist, read the signs of the times, and said, "No plan has promised to effect a change of manners with equal ease and simplicity since the days of the apostles." Bishops began to see their value, and speak in their favour. Royalty itself was interested in the movement, and the founder of Sunday School was "interviewed" by the Queen of England about the origin and character of his work.

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1798. Part I., 30, 31, 33, 34. + Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 68, p. 292.

In these, and other ways, Raikes beheld the fruit of his labours. Parents thanked him for the reformation they saw in their children. Children were grateful for the good they had derived from his work. Philanthropists, like Joseph Lancaster, caught inspiration from his toil and its results, and carried further forward his beneficient idea. Men were led from darkness to light by his hand. Do you wonder, then, that the aged man, coming near the spot where the first school was established, should have said, "Pause here;" and then, with uncovered head, and prayerful spirit, and weeping eye, should say, "This is the spot on which I stood when I saw the destitution of the children, and the desecration of the Sabbath by the inhabitants of the city. As I asked, 'Can nothing be done?' a voice answered, 'Try.' I did try; and see what God has wrought. I can never pass by the spot where the word 'try' came so powerfully into my mind without lifting up my hands and heart to heaven in gratitude to God for having put such a thought into my heart." Robert Raikes planted; his comrades watered; and God gave the increase.

VI. THE FIRST GREAT CHANGE.

The first radical alteration in the Sunday School Idea was born of necessity, that fruitful mother of so many of our improvements. At first Raikes had to pay his teachers for their Sunday work, or go without them. Earnest and devoted as he was, he could not do everything himself; and he could not instantly create a body of fellowworkers capable of appreciating his purpose and doing the work on which he had set his heart. But what he could not do single-handed, he could pay for; and, therefore, he gave eighteenpence a Sunday to each of his teachers for their labour. That plan was not ideally the best; but it was inevitable at the start, and it was wise. It gave an impetus to the Sunday School enterprise which voluntary aid would have taken years to acquire; and yet afforded a theatre for the Sunday School experiment of far vaster dimensions than could, in the nature of things, have been obtained without it. Hence David Simpson paid his teachers in Macclesfield, and Rowland Hill did the same in London; and so obvious was the need of this method, that a society was established for the purpose of obtaining the funds necessary for planting new schools, and providing payment for the teachers; and that society spent £4,000, before the year 1800, in promoting those objects.

But as the Sunday Schools grew, the difficulties of paid tuition increased; and at length became so gigantic that they threatened the progress, if not the vitality, of the movement. Even in Gloucester itself the schools were closed at one time for want of funds: and there is little doubt that the Sunday School Reformation would have been seriously crippled, and might have collapsed, if it had not been regenerated by the introduction of the principle of

VOLUNTARYISM.

Moreover, the difference between the teachers who were paid to continue their week-day work into Sunday, and those who came to their tasks urged by love of Christ and of souls, became so apparent, that on that account there was a growing feeling in favour of voluntary workers. Indeed, James Kemp had wrought on those lives in establishing his

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school at Hoxton from the first. At Oldham and Bolton the Methodists gave their services gratuitously as early as 1785. Macclesfield adopted the principle in 1796; and early in the new century paid agency gave place to the voluntary and loving labour of those whose hearts the Lord had fired with the passion to save the young of England.

We cannot think it was "an error" in the founder of Sunday Schools to give his money as he did for this charitable purpose. He himself was a pure voluntary. The payment was necessary to get the experiment fairly tested. The experiment was made, and served its purpose; and the Evangelizing Spirit, who begot the Sunday School Idea, carried the work forward into the free air of Christian willinghood; and it has had free course and been glorified ever since. JOHN CLIFFORD.

Prayer-Meetings at Home and Abroad.

OF complaint concerning Prayer-Meetings we have more than enough. We hear it every week, and in nearly every church that has the daring to say any honest thing about itself. Ministers, deacons, elders, and "devout women" not a few, have lapsed into a state of chronic and irritating dissatisfaction, and are venting their jeremiads all the year round. Starting from the ancient axiom (an axiom as clear to most, as that two and two are four) that "Prayer-Meetings are the life-pulse of the church," they report the state of the church to be alarmingly low, and proceed to utter their lugubrious prophecies accordingly.

One can scarcely sit a meeting of pastors out without hearing an echo of this widely reverberating lament. They are restless, impatient, and puzzled by their inability to make their meetings for prayer effective, in themselves, and without the adventitious aids of their own oratory, their flowing humour, keen stimulus, and abounding personal energy. Some of them have the goad into the flanks of their churches every week, and yet find the prayer-meeting a burden from which men shrink, rather than a delight they hasten to enjoy. Others who believe the magnetism ought to be in the praise and prayer and not in the man who conducts it, surrender themselves to a state of things in which nineteen-twentieths of the Sunday congregation habitually, and in supreme content, absent themselves from the special gatherings for prayer. Many have given the "prayer-meeting" up altogether, allowing it, in some cases, to survive in the form of two or three prayers added to the usual weekly lecture, but in others making no effort whatever to prolong even the appearance of a meeting chiefly for prayer.

Of course there are exceptions. At a ministerial gathering I was at not long since, I heard of a conspicuously successful meeting. The attendance is very large; and the minister is always there, and is himself the life and the soul of the whole meeting. He is nearly always talking; not only announces the hymn, but freely comments thereon; mentions "special cases" for prayer, and dilates upon them; keeps up a running fire" of comment, and does not shrink from referring to facts and events of a somewhat political character; is not sparing of the

"dramatic" element, but always exercises special care in the choice of those who "lead" in prayer. I need hardly add that we were told that if the minister is away, the attendance bears traces of the absence of so appetising a force.

But when we have made all necessary abatement for such cases as these, it will have to be admitted that the prayer-meeting has not the same place in the life of the church to-day it had twenty, or forty, or a hundred years ago. There is no denying the fact. A quarter of a century since the church met, and met in fair numbers, to pray. It was one of the chief occupations of the saints, as it was also one of their most welcome exercises; and prayer was the chief charm. It was not the preacher's address; for rarely did he do more than read a few verses of scripture. It was not the special excitement of "newspaper cuttings,” pointed and pithy speeches, for these were not heard of. The supreme attraction was in social prayer and praise; the increased glow of gratitude and love; the deepened conviction that blessing was at hand because we were at prayer; the solace and strength derivable from communion with God in concert with fellow Christians. And often we had cause to say to one another, "Did not our hearts burn within us" as we sang the songs of Zion, and communed with our Lord and Leader!

And, no doubt, that same joy is felt, that same power is experienced now. There are meetings, not numerously attended, not loudly announced, not vehemently urged, where a few, quiet, earnest souls gather, and are refreshed and strengthened. They are real, helpful, quiet, solacing, and inspiring; and this not the less because so few are there. I have attended a meeting of that kind for years; its numbers rarely rising above twenty; but its joy and helpfulness indescribable.

But that says nothing as to the validity of the complaint that the Spiritual Life of the Church is low because the "Prayer-Meeting" is so poorly attended. As to that complaint, let us remember that the conditions of Christian life have altered most seriously within the last quarter of a century. The church has exchanged a meditative and devotional attitude for one of eager, incessant, and absorbing toil for the salvation of men. The command to all now is, "Work," "Work;" and in some form or other that command is being obeyed. Where Christians had one thing to do thirty years ago, they have a dozen now. This intense and absorbing practical activity is not free from incidental evils; but at least it will be allowed that the divine life may prove its energy by "going about doing good" as distinctly as by spending a whole night in devotion.

Somebody used to pray to be "delivered from the devil and metaphors;" we are inclined to pray to be saved from the "metaphor" that "the prayer-meeting is the pulse of the church." If it means that you can test a church's life by its "prayer-meeting" as the physician can the life of a man by his pulse, we flatly and unhesitatingly deny it, and brand the metaphor as a pernicious falsehood. The "prayer-meeting," so called, is not the only, or the chief "means," the church has of access to God in prayer and praise. What are the Sabbath services? What is the feeling that pervades the sanctuary worship? What is the "communion" service? Why "praying" is, as George Herbert says, end of preaching;" yea and the end and spirit of ALL the services, from

"the