SUNDANESE LANGUAGE

[s. 728] : This is a difficult and even perplexing language of the Malayan family, and is spoken by about 4,500,000 of the inhabitants of Java, in the Dutch East Indies. It polished than the Javanese, but has long been written, the Javanese alphabet being used Arabic letters are also used for for the purpose. writing Sundanese, and some of the Dutch mis is le have tried to introduce the Roman alphabet for the purpose among the unlettered sections of the people. sionaries SUNDAY SCHOpL UNIONS: The different with few exceptions, Mi ionary Societies, include the organization of Sunday schools as part of their regular work. The M. E. Church Mi ionary Society particularly emphasizes this feature. Early in the 19th century, about the same time as the Bible societies, societies were organized for the specific purpose of extending the Sunday school work. The first of these was The Sunday School Union, formed in England in 1803, which, however, devoted itself distinctively In 1817 a similar society was to home work. formed in Philadelphia, Pa., which developed in 1824 into the American Sunday School Union. That, however, like the English Society, gave its special attention to the home field, and it was left to a layman, Mr. A. Woodruff, to give the impulse for the foreign phase of this branch of Christian effort. As early as 1856 he commenced the efforts which resulted in the organization of the Foreign Sunday School A ociation, incorporated in 1878. Meanwhile, during a visit to England in 1864, Mr. Woodruff pleaded the cause of the Sunday School as a mi ionary agency so effectively before the Sunday School Union that a separate department was created, called The Sunday School Union’s Continental Mi ion. Of these three organizations, the largest, the American Sunday School Union, still does very little for the foreign field except occasionally by grants to Sunday schools or publishing societies on the foreign field. The Sunday School Union’s Continental Mi ion (headquarters, 56 Old Bailey, London, England,) carries on work in Norway, Holland, Belgium, Prance, Germany, Bohemia, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and even to a limited degree in Ru ia. In Sweden its mi ionaries have organized over 2,000 Sunday schools; in Norway one formed 160 schools in four years; in Germany the 750,000 Sunday school scholars are very largely the fruit of the Society’s labor. The Foreign Sunday School A ociation (headquarters, 67 Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A.) is more distinctly a foreign mi ionary organization. emphasizes work It among the Spanish-speaking peoples, and in connection with the foreign mi ion societies, especially a isting in the publication of Sunday school papers. Among them are six illustrated papers for children: Olad Tidings, in Japanese; El Amiga, in Spanish; O Amiga, in Portuguese; La Feuille du Dimanche, in French; Die Sonntag new German; and II Amico, in Italian. Last year 13,000 subscriptions were paid for these papers. Several books have been published. One, Christie’s Old Organ, will illustrate the diffusion of tliis work. First published in 1877, it has been translated into sixteen different languages, and more than 30,000 copies were Schule, in 711 circulated in Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Syria, Japan, Bombay, Ceylon, Bohemia, France, Italy, Asia Minor, and China. 729