purpose of calling attention to the usefulness and desirability of the work until after it had been in operation about three years; in 1783 and 1784, very modestly he commends the system to general adoption. [Illustration: Robert Raikes. ] It is remarkable that in the course of two or three years, several bishops—the Bishop of Gloucester, in the cathedral, the Bishops of Chester and Salisbury, in their charges to the clergy of their dioceses—strongly commended the plan. All orders of mind poured around the movement their commendation; even Adam Smith, whom no one will think likely to have fallen into exaggerated expressions where Christian activity is concerned, said, “No plan has promised to effect a change of manners with equal ease and simplicity, since the days of the apostles.” The poet Cowper declared that he knew of no nobler means by which a reformation of the lower classes could be effected. Some attempts have been made to claim for John Wesley the honour of inaugurating the Sunday-school system; considering the intensely practical character of that venerated man, and how much he was in advance of his times in most of his activities, it is a wonder that he did not; but his venerable memory has honours, certainly, in all sufficiency. He wrote his first commendation of Sunday-schools in the _Arminian Magazine_ of 1784. He says, “I find these schools spring up wherever I go; perhaps God may have a deeper end therein than men are aware of; who knows but that some of these schools may become nurseries for Christians?” Prophetic as these words are, this is fainter and tardier praise than we should have expected from him; but in 1787 he writes more warmly, expresses his belief that these schools will be one great means of reviving religion throughout the kingdom, and expresses “wonder that Satan has not sent out some able champion against them.” In 1788 he says: “I verily think that these schools are one of the noblest specimens of charity which have been set on foot in England since the days of William the Conqueror.”