If the Sunday-school movement had not assumed some proportions about this time, it would have been necessary to create a practical outlet for the moral energy which dominated the authors of whom we have been writing. Had Robert Raikes not conceived his plan when he did, the ethical impulse would have run riot in a much wilder fashion, and would have done no good at all. For, whatever may be said against the old-time Sunday-school in a critical vein, one cannot ignore that its establishment brought immediate benefit. As it was, the new institution furnished the objective point for which the didactic school was blindly groping, and developed the idea of personal service. The social ideal was beginning to germinate. Robert Raikes (1735 or 6–1811) was by profession a printer. He was of benevolent disposition and met with much to arouse his sympathy for the lower classes, whom he found indifferent to religion and hopelessly uncouth in their daily living. With the religious revival which swept through England around 1770, caused by the preaching of George Whitefield, Raikes began his work in earnest, first among the city prisons, where he was brought in contact with surprising conditions which had long lain in obscurity because of a wide-spread public indifference. His observation thus trained to follow along this particular social line, he soon became attracted toward the children apprenticed to a certain pin factory. He saw that the discipline of work, however exacting, however it denied them the care and attention due to all young persons, was the only restrictive guidance they had. When Sunday came, they ran wild, relieved of duty, and not imbued with any idea of personal control. Their elders were living immoral lives; they had no opportunity or incentive to improve; and their natural inclination was to follow animal impulse and blind desire. To such a religious man as Raikes, the mandate, “Suffer little children to come unto me,” was most naturally suggested by such circumstances. Some means of occupying these children on the Sabbath day must be devised. So it was that on January 26, 1781, the first Sunday-school was opened. Raikes poured his whole energy into organization, and, through the medium of his own paper, the Gloucester _Journal_, spread broadcast his written suggestions about the work to be done, and his descriptions of the particular localities which most needed attention. He was in a position to gain publicity, and his own personal earnestness counted for a great deal. Already we have noted his relationship to Newbery, whose literary connections probably afforded Raikes some assistance.