splendidly with us, and we have between three and four hundred thousand children gathered into the schools in India. I may say that we are giving attention to the buildings of our schools, and we have found an architect who will give counsel to our friends in the country as to the best kind of buildings to put up for their money. We make loans without interest to the Sunday-schools, and in this may we encourage the provision of the very best buildings for our Sunday-schools.

We maintain holiday homes for the poor children in the slums. We have a convalescent home for our sick children, that is maintained by our Sunday School Union and our friends, and in that home we nurse back to health many a poor little invalid. Then we are finding the immense advantage of the boys' and girls' Life Brigades. We are getting in the older lads into these brigades. They wear caps and uniform, but carry no rifles. We are an army of peace, and are not going to put weapons of destruction into the hands of our boys. They learn the fire brigade drill and the ambulance drill, to save people from drowning, etc. Then the girls have brigades on similar lines to do similar work. We teach them nursing, music, elocution-anything that will make a girl a bright ornament in the home in which she lives, and we are seeking in this way to keep hold of our older scholars.

May we have your prayers that in the old land of Robert Raikes the Sunday-school may be a power for good, and may become truly the nursery of the Church.

Hungary

BY THE REV. GYULA FORGACS

The Sunday-school is beginning to play a very important part in the new period of Hungarian Protestant Church life. The Church without doubt is awakening, and feeling more and more the great responsibility of being a witnessbearer to the Lord Jesus.

There are more than 3,000 Protestant congregations in Hungary, with about 4,000,000 members. This enormous body "a sleeping lion," in the words of Dr. Duncan, a Scottish missionary-includes twenty per cent of the population.

There is not a better or more suitable method for awakening a church than winning the hearts of the young people; and there are no hearts easier to capture for Christ than those of the children. There are two hundred and three Sunday-schools in Hungary, a very small figure in comparison with the number of congregations. I feel it my duty to give some reasons why there are so few Sundayschools in Hungary. Of course there are difficulties. I may mention three of them.

I. From the general point of view most of the leaders of congregations regard Sunday-school work as an unnecessary thing, seeing that by law every child in Hungary must receive religious instruction in the day-school from a catechist appointed by the denomination to which the child belongs. There are very good handbooks, and doubtless this way of teaching is a great force in the hand of the denominations. This arrangement is in itself a good one, but the working out of other laws has an adverse influence upon freedom of action.

For example, all the children must be brought up in the religion of the parents; boys follow the father, girls the mother, unless a prenuptial arrangement be made by the contracting parties, that all the children will follow either the father or the mother, which, where a Roman Catholic is one of the parties, almost always ends in an agreement that all the children be Roman Catholics. It requires no argument to show that in the case of children of mixed marriages this works adversely against Sunday-schools, especially when it is forbidden that any one pass from one denomination to another between the ages of seven and eighteen.

II. Another hindrance to Sunday-school work is the opposition of a considerable part of the Protestant ministers and elders. These are more powerful enemies than the above-mentioned laws. Many of them oppose this work in the conviction that Sunday-schools, as foreign institutions, develop in the minds of children a kind of looseness toward traditions by teaching new foreign hymns, and are taught by men and women who are not trained professionally as theologians. On the other hand, many of the Reformed and Lutheran ministers accuse this work with being the open door for sectarianism. I must remark that Baptists, Nazarenes and Methodists are regarded in Hungary as sectarians in many religious circles, part of the reason for which can be found in the fact that many look at things only from one side, and notice, for instance, the prosperous spreading of Baptists at places where traditional churches are entirely lifeless, and are not willing to notice the striking brotherly fellowship which exists between evangelical workers of all denominations at places where there is an earnest endeavor on both sides to spread the kingdom of God, which stands above all dogmatical differences.

III. The greatest difficulty of all is in the fact that there are so few really fitted to awaken interest in Sunday-school work. With few exceptions those who teach at present in Sunday-schools did not have the benefit of them in their youth, therefore, the most are only beginners, requiring encouragement, training, and instruction themselves.

Now, how to face it? It is the unanimous opinion that what we need is a traveling secretary. To make this clear, allow me to refer briefly to the development of Sunday-school work in Hungary.

Some seventy years ago, Scottish missionaries settled in the capital of Hungary. They began a Sunday-school, and by their agents spread the idea of this work throughout the country. But after ten years their work was stopped by the same power which put an end to the war of Hungarian