sacrificing his salary of £30 for one much smaller, was appointed schoolmaster of Devauden, where he laboured for thirty years, the school-room being his house, sleeping chamber, study, and oratory.

In the course of a few years his labours had wrought a marked change in the place; a hundred children came regularly to school, and he was looked upon as the father of the parish. His salary rose to £20 a year, to which he added by cultivating a garden and keeping pigs. To these sources of income a very small endowment was ultimately granted at a subsequent period, and these made the limit of his worldly resources. It seems at first sight impossible that such a man in such circumstances could do much in acts of philanthropy beyond the expression of kindly sympathy and the care of his school. But he did. In hard times he fed the hungry and most neglected children at the schoolhouse; he carried food and wine to the sick; and when he could not afford to buy a blanket, he borrowed one from his own bed until he could.

Devauden had its school, and the school flourished, but Davies could not rest satisfied until it had its church also; so he set to work to see what he could do, and by dint of gardening and bacon-selling and self-denial, he was able to contribute £30 towards the object. Somehow the church was built, and it was a happy day for the earnest, simple-minded man when he saw "the flock gathered, and his own lambs among them," as he stood up for the first time in the capacity of clerk.

One day a neighbouring clergyman sent him some papers describing the work of the Church Missionary Society, and the good man was alarmed when he found that there were people numbered by millions in a worse case than the people of Devauden before he commenced his work among them. The very next morning, by daybreak, he was at the house of the clergyman, and entered his subscription of 12s. a year, and ld. a week in addition. Never did "a little go a long way" more than in his case; he provided suitable books for the Sunday school teachers, he gave every farm-servant among his fellow-parishioners a Bible, and wherever he saw a determination to know and to learn he assisted such determination by gifts of useful books. Not content with this, when the time came round for him to take his month's holiday in the summer, he would start out with a large stock of Bibles, Prayer-books, and pamphlets, giving them to those who had not such things in their possession, and receiving nothing for them but thanks.

"In one of these rounds he visited a parish fifteen miles from his home, called Llangattock. It was the scene of some of his earliest recollections; he was born in a farmhouse on its borders, he had played in the churchyard when a boy, and for lack of a school-house had conned some of his childish lessons within the old church itself. Seventy years had gone by; resident gentleman or resident clergyman the parish knew not; and school-house, up to 1847, there was none. His heart yearned over the place; now eighty-two, but hale and hearty like a man in middle life; and, hero as he was, he proposed to the Archdeacon, who revered his character and loved to second his schemes, to move to Llangattock, to be the schoolmaster without pay, and to supply the school with books during his life, if funds could be raised to build a school, offering five pounds himself as a beginning. 'God had kept him alive, perhaps,' he said, 'on purpose that he might go and do a little good there before he died. Another teacher

he was

of better abilities might succeed him at Devauden. For his living he had £100, a present from a generous friend, given to support him in old age on the day that Devauden Church was consecrated. At the rate of £20 a year this would maintain him for five years, besides providing books for school purposes and for gifts among his neighbours; and how could an old man like him expect to live longer?' Such an offer was irresistible; men who had slept before woke up to a sense of their responsibilities; a letter of the old man's to a clergyman, giving his reasons for removal in his own plain way, was printed without his knowledge, and raised £300. The work thus begun was finished in a few months. The school was called after his name; he laid the first stone on his knees, surrounded by the children whom he came to teach, and another year of life was given him in his new sphere of labour. He taught one morning in the school as usual, and, before the time of assembling on the next day, was gathered to his rest, as a 'shock of corn fully ripe.'

What Guthrie said of John Pounds may be said with even greater emphasis of James Davies, for his labours were confined to a small area, while those of the latter were destined to a world-wide influence. "Thousands have time, talent, money; he had not. Though dead, he yet speaks, and who shall gainsay the speech I put in that old dead cobbler's mouth? If I without name, without influence, without wealth, with the sweat of labour standing on my brow, earning by these hands my daily bread - if I could do, and by God's help have done this, you can do as much. Go, then, and do likewise.'"

Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools, was born at Gloucester in 1735. His father was a journalist, and printed and published the Gloucester Journal. That good man lived in advance of his time, and thought it could be no evil to report in his paper some of the proceedings of Parliament. But Parliamentary reporting was in those days strictly forbidden, and for his offence Raikes, senior, was brought to the bar of the House of Commons, where, upon bended knees, he was severely reprimanded, but was ordered to be discharged out of custody upon paying his fees.

To the profession of journalist Robert Raikes was dedicated, and on the death of his father the Gloucester Journal, with all rights and interests vested therein, fell to his inheritance, together with the printing and publishing business.

At that time there were two gaols in Gloucester, one for the county and one for the city, and both in the disgraceful state which characterised most prisons before the great work of John Howard was accomplished. There was in each but one court for all prisoners; the apartments were in ruinous dilapidation and reeking with foulness; no provision was made for the food or clothing of debtors; and death, disorder, and vice of every kind prevailed.

The sympathies of Robert Raikes were enlisted on behalf of the unfortunates in the gaols, and most worthily he espoused their cause, providing for the most necessitous, and pleading for all in the pages of his journal. In response to his appeals, contributions were liberally forwarded to him, and these he personally distributed; thus he had the opportunity to speak to the prisoners on subjects connected with morality "God's Heroes and the World's Heroes." Rev. J. Hampden Gurney, M.A.

and religion, backing up his efforts in this direction by the loan or gift of suitable books. It is well to remember that many years before Howard entered upon the labours which resulted in such magnificent reforms in prisons and in prison discipline, Robert Raikes was preparing the way by the energetic use of his pen, and by his untiring labours among the prisoners in his own town.

It was while engaged in these labours that he became interested in the question of establishing Sunday schools. He saw every day the bitter consequences of a course of evil; he saw how almost hopeless it was to preach reformation to those who had been addicted to a life of vice; he saw little children, youths, and maidens drifting slowly but surely into the same evil way, and he felt that the only way in which that course could be checked must be by implanting in the young a strong moral sense and religious feeling as the only effectual means of remedying the evil.

position of Robert He certainly was person who ever

Much useless controversy has taken place with regard to the Raikes and his right to the title of "Founder of Sunday Schools." not the founder of Sunday schools in the sense of being the first established a Sunday school. Who that person was, or where he lived, will never be known; it may have been some father of a family in Apostolic days, who gathered the neglected children of his neighbours to receive with his own children some instruction. from the Bible. Certain it is that long before Raikes's time Sunday schools existed, as certainly as that long before the days of John Howard there were prison philanthropists. Other men laboured, Howard entered into their labours and became essentially the prison reformer; other men laboured, and Raikes entered into their labours and became essentially the founder of Sunday schools, inasmuch as "he raised Sunday teaching from a fortuitous rarity into a universal system. He found the practice local; he made it national. It is upon this ground that admirers of Raikes rest his elaim to the honoured title of 'Founder of Sunday Schools.""

As he had made the cause of the prisoners the theme of his writings in the Gloucester Journal, he now commenced a series of articles on the question of Sunday schools, collecting his information with great painstaking, and concentrating all his force in the urgency of his appeals. He was anxious that his scheme should not originate with any Nonconformist body, lest the Established Church should refuse to join in it; but he felt confident that if originated as a system by the Church of England, all religious bodies would recognise its capabilities for good and adopt it.

Raikes established the first Sunday school in Gloucester; in the morning from ten to twelve, in the afternoon from one to half-past five; the only conditions being that children must come with clean faces, clean hands, and combed hair. Four persons were paid so much a Sunday for their services as instructors, and clergymen came round in the afternoon to hear the children say the catechism. The labours of Robert Raikes were at this time and thenceforward greatly assisted by the co-operation of the Rev. Thomas Stock, the head-master of the Cathedral Grammar School, a man of great literary attainments and sincere and ardent piety.

The school was held in the house of a Mr. King, in St. Catherine's Street, Gloucester, and commenced operations in the month of July, 1780, the services of Mrs. King being

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engaged as the first teacher "at a salary of one shilling and sixpence per Sunday, of which sum Mr. Raikes contributed a shilling, and Mr. Stock sixpence." In the course of a little while, Raikes established two other schools in Gloucester, and two others were started by Mr. Stock in neighbouring parishes, all the teachers in these schools being paid at the rate of one shilling per Sunday.

It was not until three years after the first Sunday school was established that Raikes called public attention to Sunday school work in the columns of the Gloucester

Journal, and then not in any way connecting his own name or his own work with the movement he advocated. At intervals, for years, his paper contained notices of the establishment of schools, and this only incited him to further efforts in their advocacy. Public recognition of the benefits resulting from Sunday schools was given in a unanimous vote of the Gloucester magistrates; the county magistrates handed over to the funds of the schools the fees they received when acting as their own clerks; the Bishop of Gloucester gave the movement his official sanction; the paragraphs from Raikes's newspaper were copied freely into other journals, and the attention of philanthropists throughout the kingdom was drawn to the subject; letters poured in from

all quarters asking for information and advice as to establishing schools. John Wesley preached about it, Cowper the poet wrote about it, Bishop Porteus gave a charge concerning it; then other bishops followed in the same strain, the queen sent for the founder of the schools to explain to her the full scope of the institution, and Mrs. Trimmer and Hannah More wielded their fertile pens on behalf of the movement, and in a short time Sunday schools could be counted by hundreds and Sunday scholars by thousands.

In 1785, two years after Raikes gave publicity to the subject, the "Society for the Establishment and Support of Sunday Schools throughout the Kingdom" was established, with the assistance of Mr. Jonas Hanway, Mr. Henry Thornton, Mr. Samuel Hoare, and other well-known philanthropists, and at the end of ten years "91,915 spellingbooks, 24,232 Testaments, and 5,360 Bibles, which had been applied for, for use in 1,012 schools, containing 65,000 scholars," were distributed.

The great drawback was, how to find funds to pay the teachers for their work in the Sunday schools. In twelve years the Society paid no less a sum than £4,000 in payment of teachers, and then there came a check to the progress of the movement, in consequence of the falling off of funds, which threatened to prove fatal. The reaction came by the introduction of gratuitous teaching. It came a year before the death

of the noble man who had given all the best of his life to the great work, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the only hindrance to the world-wide spread of the system he had inaugurated removed. "Unpaid teaching" was the idea of six young men in Gloucester-heroes every one of them. The story is well told by Mr. Gregory, from whose admirable work, "Robert Raikes, Journalist and Philanthropist," we have already quoted. Lamenting the decline of Sunday schools in the city of their origin, these young men banded themselves together with the determination to revive them. They applied to their minister, the pastor of the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel, for leave to use that edifice for school purposes. No,' said the minister; the children will make too much noise.' Nothing daunted, the young men renewed the application, this time to the trustees. 'No,' said the trustees; the children will soil the place.' The next appeal was to the members of the church. 'No,' said the members of the church; 'you will find no children, no teachers, and no money to pay expenses.' Thus discountenanced on all hands, the young men determined, with the blessing of God, to act for themselves. Gathering one night after business hours around a post at the corner of a lane, within twenty yards of the spot where Bishop Hooper was martyred, they clasped each other by the hand, and with reverently uncovered heads resolved that, come what would, Sunday schools in Gloucester should be re-established. As a fund to start with they subscribed a half-crown each, and then, dividing the city into districts, they canvassed it for scholars. On the following Sunday upwards of one hundred children attended, and from that time forward the work progressed with yearly increasing success.”

And now wherever the English language is spoken, wherever Christianity is preached, Sunday schools flourish, and have done, and are doing, a good work, the importance of which can never be fairly estimated.

Robert Raikes died at the age of seventy-six, and, in accordance with his express desire, Sunday school children followed him to the grave, and each received "a shilling