SUNDAY SCHOOLS 



5628 



SUNDIAL 



numbers given above tell a story of a wonder- 

 ful development, for the Sunday School as we 

 know it to-day is the outgrowth of a movement 

 that began late in the eighteenth century, and 

 is hardly older than the American republic. 



It was a movement inaugurated by a benevo- 

 lent publisher of Gloucester, England, named 

 Robert Raikes (which see). Moved by the for- 

 lorn condition of the children of the poor in his 

 town, he conceived the idea of gathering them 

 together on Sundays and hiring women to teach 

 them. His first so-called "Ragged School" was 

 started in 1780. The interest shown by the 

 children and the good accomplished more than 

 justified the experiment, and when such work- 

 ers as John Wesley and George Whitefield, 

 and even the queen herself, gave their. support 

 to the work, the movement spread rapidly. 

 When Raikes died, in 1811, there were about 

 400,000 children in Sunday Schools. 



In America the Methodists began the organi- 

 zation of Sunday Schools on a definite plan 

 soon after the conclusion of , the Revolutionary 

 War, and other denominations followed their 

 example. In 1824 a voluntary union of Chris- 

 tian workers of different denominations was or- 

 ganized in Philadelphia under the name of the 

 American Sunday School Union. Through mis- 

 sionary workers sent to all parts of the United 

 States this organization has established thou- 

 sands of schools, especially in rural communi- 

 ties, and has circulated millions of dollars' worth 

 of Bibles, Testaments and other religious publi- 

 cations. An average of about four new Sunday 

 Schools a year has been maintained by the or- 

 ganization since its foundation. In many cases 

 the schools have become organized churches. 



In the year 1872 American Sunday Schools 

 of all denominations began using a uniform 

 system of lessons, designed to complete the 

 study of the Bible in six years. This move- 

 ment became international in 1875, and in 1889 

 it became world-wide. The organization which 

 publishes the lessons is known as the Interna- 

 tional Sunday School Association. In recent 

 years the need of a graded system of lessons 

 has been felt, and in many Sunday Schools this 

 idea has been successfully carried out. A well- 

 organized school is divided into different de- 

 partments, each having its own superintend- 

 ent. The pupils are arranged into classes ac- 

 cording to age and mental capacities, much as 

 in the secular schools, and each department has 

 a course of lessons especially adapted to the 

 pupils of that division. Other features of mod- 

 ern Sunday School work are classes for teach- 



ers, Sunday School workers' institutes, conven- 

 tions and circulating libraries. 



Religious instruction in the Roman Catholic 

 Church is given to all children who attend the 

 parochial schools, and those who do not attend 

 them are required to attend Sunday classes 

 held in the schools. A.C. 



' Consult Lawrence's How to Conduct a Sunday- 

 School ; Pattee's Elements of Religious Peda- 

 gogy; Brown's Sunday School Entertainments. 



SUN'DERLAND, a seaport and coaling sta- 

 tion of England, in Durham County, situated 

 on the northeastern coast at the mouth of the 

 Wear River, about fourteen miles northeast of 

 the city of Durham and 261 miles northwest 

 of London. Sunderland is one of the most im- 

 portant shipbuilding centers in the kingdom, 

 and one of the world's great coal-shipping ports, 

 and it has a fine harbor defended by bat- 

 teries. One of the coal mines in the vicinity, 

 the Pemberton, is 2,286 feet deep, and is re- 

 puted to be the deepest known. Among the 

 interesting features of the town is Saint Peter's 

 Church, which retains portions of an old sev- 

 enth-century monastery, in which the Venerable 

 Bede was a student. The industrial establish- 

 ments include marine engine works, glass and 

 pottery works and cable and rope factories. 

 Fishing is an important occupation of many 

 of the inhabitants. Population in 1911, 151,159. 



SUNDEW, sun' du, a group of interesting 

 plants found in bogs and marshes, so called be- 

 cause they secrete drops of sticky fluid which 

 glitter like dew in the sunlight. The sundews 

 belong to that class of plants which entrap and 

 devour insects (see CARNIVOROUS PLANTS). A 

 common American species is the round-leaved 

 sundew, the leaves of which spring from the 

 root. They are borne at the ends of slender 

 leafstalks which radiate from the root like 

 spokes from the hub of a wheel. The leaves 

 are covered with stiff, short hairs, each of which 

 ends in a knob covered with a sticky liquid. 

 When an insect lights on one of these knobs it 

 is liable to be held there, and then the hairs 

 close over it and imprison it. After the cap- 

 tive dies its soft parts are absorbed by the leaf, 

 which pours out a juice that digests them. The 

 plant has a tall, slender flower stalk, on which 

 the small, white flowers are borne in rows. 



SUNDIAL, the oldest known device for meas- 

 uring time. The earliest mention of it is in the 

 Bible (Isaiah XXXVIII, 8) : 



Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the 

 degrees, which is gone down in the sundial of 

 Ahaz, ten degrees backward. 



