THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
managers; it is a voluntary " union " of individual Christians of different churches for promoting the study of the Bible and the Sunday-school cause. It is conducted by a board of officers and thirty-six managers, all laymen. It employs laymen and ministers as missionaries to found Sunday-schools in new communities and in those removed from churches, issues library books, dictionaries, commentaries, maps, records, tickets, primers, teachers' tracts, manuals, lesson helps, and Sunday-school records and requisites in great variety, and also nine periodicals. In five years after its organization, the American Sunday-school Union issued over six millions of copies of Sunday-school works, published 200 bound volumes for libraries in Sunday-schools, started a Teachers' Magazine and two other periodicals, was receiving and expending anunally over $76,000 in promotion of the cause, had in its connection 6,000 schools with 60,000 teachers and over 400,000 scholars, and one-half its schools reported in 1833 that 2,607 teachers and 6,121 scholars had professed Christ in that year alone. Among important measures inaugurated and popularized by this union may be noted: the system of free lending or circulating libraries of religious books, the first American monthly magazine for Sundayschool teachers, 1824; the first weekly folio journal for Sunday-schools, 1831; the employment of missionaries specially to establish Sunday-schools, 1821-24 and continuously since; a world's monthly concert of prayer for Sunday-schools, 1825; a system of selected uniform Bible lessons for Sundayschools, 1826; a national scheme to plant a Sundayschool in every needy settlement in the Mississippi valley in two years, 1830; a similar scheme for the entire south, 1833; proposing and planning the first and second national Sunday-school conventions, 1832, 1833; graded lessons and Union Questions, LS29; a simultaneous invitation, July 4, 1833, to all " suitable subjects of Sunday-school instruction in the United States to attend some place for Bible study, on the following, Sabbath, July 7"; the issue of low-priced illustrated Sunday-school periodicals for children, providing special records and manuals for conducting and improving Sundayschools, establishing and furnishing supplies to auxiliaries (400) in all parts of the land, which were to supply the same to Sunday-schools connected with them, below or at actual cost; and finally, organizing: state Sunday-school unions from 1825; and later, teachers' normal institutes and lectures, to inform and train officers and teachers in better methods of instruction, and also of discipline in, and the conduct of, Sunday-schools.
In the first decade of. the twentieth century (1901- 1910) it founded 24,992 schools, with a membership of 963,412, in which were reported 98,659 professed
conversions, and 1,062 churches of dif-
3. Results ferent denominations following from
Society^ the schools planted, and over 305,000
Work. copies of the Scriptures provided for
those without the Word of God. The Union employed in the ten years 2,594 missionaries, exclusive of superintendents and secretaries, an average of about 260 a year. It expended in benevolent work in the decade, $2,110,000. In eighty-six
years the union claims to have formed in America 121,038 Sunday-schools, with over 655,000 teachers and 4,770,000 scholars. It has preserved a detailed record of every school, its precise location, the name and address of each superintendent, and the number of teachers and scholars in each school, when it was formed and when revisited, for fifty years past. The union, from time to time, enlists students in colleges and seminaries in the work of Sundayschool extension under direction of a regular mia sionary. Thus, it claims to have organized an average of nearly four schools a day for every day of the last 86 years, and to have distributed Bibles and publications to the value of about $15,000,000; having responded to 335,000 requests from schools with over 20,000,000 members for aid and encouragement in the study of God's Word. The union conducts all its operations on a thoroughly systematic plan (financial, publication, including educational, and missionary extension), each feature being under direction of a standing committee. The whole country is divided into great districts with a district superintendent to counsel, aid, and direct the labors of its force of missionaries.
It reports for the year ending Mar. 1, 1910, new schools organized and reorganized, 2,366, with 93,- 527 members, and also 11,198 visited for aid and encouragement, having 739,495 members. Its receipts for 1910 were $224,922 (exclusive of funded bequests and gifts), and its expenditures $218,728. It employed 231 regular missionaries, who reported 9,275 professed conversions for the year, visited 178,587 homes for instruction and prayer, and distributed 40,087 copies of Bibles and Testaments, 21,663 sermons and addresses to public assemblies, 88 new churches as the outcome of these union schools, $6,200 worth of religious books and periodicals given to the needy, besides grants for special objects, as homes, hospitals, and prisons, and issuing devotional commentaries, Bible wall rolls, charts, maps, and lesson helps. The union is supported by voluntary contributions, and has invested funds, amounting to between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000, the income from which is devoted to its benevolent work, including founding and improvement of Sunday-schools, and distribution of religious literature issued by the Society as directed by the donors.
The leading denominations in America also have Sunday-school unions, societies, or publishing departments. The Massachusetts Sunday-school Union, formed in 1825 by Congregationalists, Ruptists, and others, dissolved in 1S32. The
4. Other Congregationalists then started the
societies. Massachusetts sabbath-school Society which, after several changes, is now the Congregational Sunday-school and Publishing Society, and employs secretaries, editors, and agents to promote Sunday-schools in that denomination. The Methodist Episcopal Sunday-school Union was formed in 1827, merged with its Tract Society in 1833, reorganized in 1844, for promoting the movement in that church and publishing and distributing literature through the preachers attached to that denomination, holding training-classes and Sunday-school assemblies, and the Chautauqua (see Chat-tai'QTta Institution) has achieved a world-wide reputation.