Leaders of classes, and individuals pursuing these studies apart from classes, are urged to read the chapter entitled "Teaching Hints," on page 259, before beginning this section Lesson 1 The Sunday-school #1.# The Sunday-school is the Bible-studying and teaching service of the church. It is a _church service_. All the members of the church should be connected with it. It should be under the care and control of the church. Its purpose is to present the Word of God, by the hand of competent living teachers, to every man, woman and child, for the purpose of leading them to Christ, developing their Christian characters, and training them for service. #2. The Earliest Schools.#[A]--Schools for the study of God's Word seem to have existed as far back as the time of Abraham. In Moses' day, schools were maintained for the religious training of the young. These schools were numerous also in Ezra's time. Jesus no doubt attended such a school in his boyhood days. The schools of his time resembled the modern Sunday-school in some of their methods. There were elementary schools for children, and senior schools for both children and adults. These latter schools were connected with the synagogue. It was through these schools, chiefly, that the Christian church was extended and built up. #3. The Raikes Movement.#[A]--The first seventeen centuries of the Christian era witnessed, for the most part, a general decline in the church and in Christian activity. During all this period, the church's life increased or waned in proportion as it attended to or neglected the religious instruction of the young. The seventeenth century, and much of the eighteenth century were dark days for the church. It was toward the close of this period that God saw fit to connect the name of Robert Raikes with the Sunday-school movement of the world. While he was probably not the founder of the first Sunday-school, his name is nevertheless inseparably connected with the beginnings of the modern Sunday-school. In the city of Gloucester, England, July, 1780, this man--the editor and proprietor of the Gloucester Journal--started his first Sunday-school, in the kitchen of a dwelling-house. This room was eleven feet long, eight feet wide, six and a half feet high. "The children were to come soon after ten in the morning and stay till twelve. They were to go home and stay till one, and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to church. After church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till half past five, and then to be dismissed with an injunction to go home without making a noise; and by no means to play in the street." Four women were employed as teachers in this school, at a shilling a day. The early Raikes schools were not connected with the church in any way. [A] The statements in these paragraphs are taken in substance from "YALE LECTURES ON THE SUNDAY SCHOOL" (Trumbull).