First edition of a rare sermon to promote Sunday Schools by the uncle of Thomas Babington Macaulay and brother of the abolitionist Zachary Macaulay.

Macaulay praises the philanthropic campaigns of Hanway and Howard, and charity schools like Christ’s Hospital, but it is of course Robert Raikes, father of the Sunday School movement, who takes the laurels. The Sunday School Society had been founded in 1786, and Macaulay claims here ‘it is supposed that not less than three hundred thousand pupils are now under its care’. Bedford’s schools were founded in 1787 and 300 children attended this sermon.

Macaulay’s later life was occupied with a biography of Melancthon, advertised here as ‘preparing for the press’ but never in fact finished.

ESTC lists four copies only: BL, Cambridge, Lambeth, and Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

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