RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPED
Sunday-Schools
centuries, but it was partly because the school method was misused or neglected, and greater emphasis was laid upon proclaiming and preaching than upon interlocutory teaching of the Gospel. Religion and morals suffered a sad decline in consequence. Great and godly men saw and lamented their mistakes in this respect. Thus Bishop Joseph Hall (q.v.), Henry More (d. 1687), and George Herbert (q.v.) placed catechizing in the forefront for effectively planting the Gospel in the minds of men. John Owen (d. 1683) declared that " more knowledge is ordinarily diffused among the young and ignorant by one hour's catechetical exercise, than by many hours' continual discourse."
These facts account for the fact that many places claimed to have had Sunday-schools previous to those in Gloucester, England. Among the many worthy instances only a few can be 5. Antici- noticed. It is claimed that Sunday- PM1C>dS °f scnools were begun in Scotland by John S ndav- ^nox about 1560; in Bath, England, school. 1660, by Joseph Alleine; in Roxbury, Mass., 1674; in Norwich, Conn., 1676; in Plymouth, Mass., 1680; in Newton, N. Y., 1683; by Bishop Frampton, England, 1693; in Glasgow, Scotland, 1707; by the Schwenckfelders, in Pennsylvania, 1734; in Bethlehem, Conn., by Joseph Bellamy, 1740; in Ephrata, Pa., by Ludwig Hacker, 1740 — a school giving gratuitous instruction, holding children's meetings and blessed by many conversions, maintained for thirty years among German Seventh Day Baptists, and broken up by the war of independence; in Philadelphia, Pa., by Mrs. Greening, 1744; in Norham, Scotland, by Rev. W. Morrison, 1757; in Brechin, Scotland, by Rev. David Blair, 1760; in Catterick, England, by Rev. T. Lindsey, 1763; by Rev. E. Wheelock, Columbia, Conn., 1763; by Miss Harrison, Bedale, England, 1765; by Oberlin, at Walbach, 1767; by Miss Hannah Ball, High Wycombe, England, 1769; by W. Gait, Doagh, County Antrim, Ireland, 1770; by Rev. J. W Moffatt, Nailsworth, England, 1772; by Dr. Kennedy, Bright, County Down, Ireland, 1774; by Kinderman, in Bohemia, 1773; by A. Crompton, Little Levers, near Bolton, England, 1775; by David Simpson, Macclesfield, England, 1778; and by many others in the decade, 1770 to 1780. These were, in some cases, catechetical schools and classes, giving religious instruction, yet not wholly parallel with the methods of the modern Sunday-school as devoted to the study of the Bible.
2. Modern Sunday-schools: The pioneer schools mentioned above, were isolated, often with catechisms as the chief text-books. They did not arouse popular interest, nor did they come into affiliation one with another, tending toward organized move- . _,, ment or toward a system of religious Raikes instruction, with the Holy Scriptures Schools. as *ne chief text-book. Of this great movement Robert Raikes, Jr. (q.v.), is justly called the founder. He was editor and proprietor of the Gloucester Journal, Gloucester, England, and a strange mixture of the " dandy " and of the reformer. Before he was of age, he began visiting the two prisons of Gloucester, to relieve the horrors of prison life, and to reform the prisoners.
His sympathies were widened, his charity deepened ; his failures in prison reform set him thinking, until he reached the conclusion that " vice is preventable." Twenty-five years later, when he was fortyfour years of age, he began a " new experiment," as he called it, of " botanizing in human nature." Going into the suburbs of the city, where many youths were employed in the factories, his heart was touched by the groups of ragged, wretched, cursing children. He knew their parents, homes, and habits; none ever entered the house of God. It was useless to appeal to such parents. He had tried to reform adults and had failed. George Whitefield had tried to reach the masses in Gloucester, but with meager results. Raikes was moved, therefore, to apply his maxim that " vice is preventable." " Begin with the child, for idleness is the parent of vice," and "ignorance is the cause of idleness"; therefore, " begin by instructing the child." These seem like trite statements now, but they were the result of long, deep thought by Raikes. Here was his mission. And the Rev. Thomas Stock, headmaster of the Cathedral School, whom he met in his walk, was the man to help him. He started his first Sunday-school in Sooty Alley in 1780, paying Mrs. Meredith for teaching the wretched little street children, whom he persuaded to come to her kitchen for instruction. Mrs. Meredith found the boys " terrible bad," and soon the pupils were transferred to Mrs. Mary Critchley's in Southgate Street, whose house extended to Grey Friars, facing the south porch of the St. Mary de Crypt Church. Raikes lived nearly opposite the church. Bad as the boys were, the " girls were worse." The children were required to come with clean hands and faces, hair combed, and with such clothing as they had, though shoes and clothes were sometimes provided. The boys were " strapped " or " caned " by Raikes himself, for misbehavior; the girls were subdued by other means. The children were to remain in school from ten to twelve, then go home; to return at one, and, after a lesson, to be conducted to church; after church service to repeat portions of the catechism; then to go quietly home about five, without playing in the streets. Attentive scholars received rewards of Bibles, Testaments, books, combs, shoes, and clothing. The head teachers were paid a shilling a day. Raikes engaged four women in his schools, and procured other employment for them as rewards of diligence, which " may make it worth sixpence more." The Rev. Thomas Stock " went around to the schools Sunday afternoon," says Raikes, " to examine the progress made, and to enforce order and decorum among such a set of little heathen." The boys were in classes of five, the advanced pupils acting as " monitors," or teachers, teaching the younger pupils their letters. The girls in a separate room, with white tippets on their shoulders and white caps on their heads, were in classes also, with " monitors " or sub-teachers over them. This was nearly ten years before Dr. Bell or Joseph Lancaster introduced the " monitorial systems " into the week-day schools of England, and his biographer, Harris, affirms that Raikes maintained these monitors without change and his schools have continued unto this day.
Sunday-Schools