was shown to them because teaching was thought to be a form
of Sabbath breaking. His first Sunday School was in 1787. Wilberforce,
Charles Grant, John Thornton and his son Henry, were among the
philanthropists who contributed to his funds; in 1798 the Sunday School
Society (established 1785) extended its operations to Wales, making him
its agent, and Sunday Schools grew rapidly in number and favour. A
powerful revival broke out at Bala in the autumn of 1791, and his
account of it in letters to correspondents, sent without his knowledge
to magazines, kindled a similar fire at Huntly. The scarcity of Welsh
bibles was Charles's greatest difficulty in his work. John Thornton and
Thomas Scott helped him to secure supplies from the Society for the
Promotion of Christian Knowledge from 1787 to 1789, when the stock
became all but exhausted. In 1799 a new edition was brought out by the
Society, and he managed to secure 700 copies of the 10,000 issued; the
Sunday School Society got 3000 testaments printed, and most of them
passed into his hands in 1801.

In 1800, when a frost-bitten thumb gave him great pain and much fear for
his life, his friend, Rev. Philip Oliver of Chester, died, leaving him
director and one of three trustees over his chapel at Boughton; and this
added much to his anxiety. The Welsh causes at Manchester and London,
too, gave him much uneasiness, and burdened him with great
responsibilities at this juncture. In November 1802 he went to London,
and on the 7th of December he sat at a committee meeting of the
Religious Tract Society, as a country member, when his friend, Joseph
Tarn--a member of the Spa Fields and Religious Tract Society
committees--introduced the subject of a regular supply of bibles for
Wales. Charles was asked to state his case to the committee, and so
forcibly did he impress them, that it was there and then decided to move
in the matter of a general dispersion of the bible. When he visited
London a year later, his friends were ready to discuss the name of a new
Society, and the sole object of which should be to supply bibles.
Charles returned to Wales on the 30th of January 1804, and the British
and Foreign Bible Society was formally and publicly inaugurated on March
the 7th. The first Welsh testament issued by that Society appeared on
the 6th of May 1806, the bible on the 7th of May 1807--both being edited
by Charles.

Between 1805 and 1811 he issued his Biblical Dictionary in four volumes,