The Founder of Sunday Schools Two hundred years ago was
born Robert Raikes, a worthy citizen of Gloucester who has gone down to fame as the founder of Sunday schools. He. made. the first experiment in his home city, employing women to give instruction in Bible reading to poor Children who were hard at work on week-days. His example, widely advertised in 1780 in the newspaper which he owned, was quickly followed • in the growing industrial towns. of the north, more; perhaps, with a view to solving .the problem of what to do with Elbe hordes of young children who nn Sunday, and Sunday alone, were released from, factory work, than from pure zeal to instruct them in. religion. But in the nineteenth century the organised Churches gradually took over the movement, and it grew under the combined influences of humanitarian feeling, religious missionary endeavour, and the desire of each church to strengthen its own organisation. Down to the time of the Education Act of 1870 the movement took no small part in giving the rudiments of secular as well as religious instruction to the poor.
* •
Previous page
