ROBERT RAIKES by A. S. Hutchins

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

ROBERT RAIKES

By A. S. Hutchins

“Feed my Lambs.” John 21:15.

ROBERT RAIKES.

BY ELD. A. S. HUTCHINS.

How many of the young friends of the Sabbath-school can tell us the connection that the above name holds with the introduction and establishment of the Sunday-school, and give the name of the place where and the time when it originated?

We read of Robert Raikes as the father of the Sunday-school. He was the editor of a newspaper in Gloucester, Eng. He was born in 1736, and started his first Sunday-school in 1780. Nearly twenty years before he commenced the Sunday-school system he had been working among the prisoners, for their physical, moral, and spiritual improvement, by which he had earned for himself the designation, the “Teacher of the poor.”

He appears to have been a man of strength, self-possession, and knowledge of the world. His influence was strengthened by belonging to, and moving in, good society. The king and queen sent for him at 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. In this interview he remarked that his work was “botanizing in human nature.”

“All that I require,” said Mr. Raikes to the parents of the children, “is that they have clean hands, clean faces, and their hair combed.” To many who were bare-footed, and needed clothing, after they had been regular in attendance and earnest in the work, he gave shoes, clothes, etc. He manifested so much kindness that James Montgomery writes thus of him:—

“Like a lone husbandman, forlorn, The man of Gloucester went, Bearing his seeds of precious corn; And God the blessing sent.

“Now, watered long by faith and prayer, From year to year it grows, Till heath, and hill, and desert bare, Do blossom as the rose.”

His Sunday-school interest was early strengthened and promoted by the king and queen, by several bishops, and other men of ability and influence. Within seven years from the rise of this work in Gloucester, it is said that the number of children taught in Manchester alone was not less than five thousand.

One writer says of him: “His portrait suggests Cowper’s well-known description of one of his friends, “‘An honest man, close buttoned to the chin; Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.’”

He died suddenly at his house in Bell Lane in the city of Gloucester, in 1811, in his seventy-sixth year.

Services memorial of this founder of the Sunday-school are to take place in England this year, 1880. But who that knew him, who of the children that sat under his instruction one hundred years ago, will join in these memorial services? Probably not one. They are gone. Like the receding wave, they have passed away. With them life’s record is made.

In these lines I address many lovers of the Sabbath-school; and how great the contrast between the facilities for obtaining a knowledge of Bible truth at the present time, and those afforded the children living one century ago. Your weekly paper, devoted to the interests of religious instruction and the Sabbath-school, the Sabbath-school lessons, books, charts, maps, etc., with the many words of encouragement of writers, superintendents, and teachers, are all calculated to increase your interest in heavenly things, and point you to the Lamb of God, who will cleanse us from all sin if we love and obey him.

Jesus bids us come to him. Oh! come and learn the Saviour’s matchless love. Come, prepare to reign with him above. Come, learn of him. Come, bear his yoke. His gracious words are, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”