"As the fruit of righteousness is wealth and peace, strength and honor, the fruit of unrighteousness is poverty, anarchy, weakness and shame." This is an ancient doctrine, and yet one ever young. The Hebrew prophets preached it in words that are fulfilling themselves around us every day. It is the great root law.

      I come to you from a people who for long ages have been given over to unrighteousness, who are reaping all its bitter fruit. "Their understanding is darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts." And the women of this people know all the depths of shame and suffering experienced in a land where God has been forgotten. For the knowledge of the love of God have I found not at all in the heart of any woman in the land, excepting those few who have received the glad tidings. I would take you to that far country; I would have you see for yourselves her woman, sit beside her even within the dark walls that shut her in from all the beautiful things of life. You will feel the darkness that presses upon her as she gives you glimpses of her sad life.

      Ah! sisters, if you could only know the joy of telling her of Him in whose sight the widow and the fatherless are dear, who gave his life that he might "bear our griefs and carry our sorrows;" if you could only see the light dawn in her darkened mind and hear her eager question, "And you are sure it is for me?" you would desire, above all else, the joy of witnessing for Christ in the midst of such desolation. In Bengal alone there are over four thousand child wives under one year of age. But this marriage is nothing more than a betrothal, you exclaim. Aye, it is more, for of these there are 538 widows under one year old, and that means that if they survive the sore neglect of babyhood they will never know the joys of childhood, and though they live to old age, all the brightness of life is gone. They are even now prematurely old, wedded to sorrow. Of the three hundred thousand pilgrims who come into Puri daily during the great festivals, at least seven-tenths are women, and by far the larger number of these are widows.

      I went one day to visit a queen. She was a sister to the great rajah of Revah and queen over ten thousand subjects. Hers was the largest house in the land, and yet, palace though it was called, it was only a number of dark cells opening upon an inner court. Hers was a low-ceilinged room with no opening for light and air excepting the low doorway. We sat on the veranda

MRS. B. F. MADSEN.

of the court, the high walls about us on every side. She was glad to see a white woman and she did honor to her guest. When she saw that the white stranger came in love, she opened her heart to her and told something of her life sorrow. Though she was a queen, she was a widow, and though she had sons, they cared little for the widowed mother. Then I opened my book, saying, "Sister, there is a precious word here." I read to her, "Let not your heart be troubled," and told her of Him whose message it was; of how he was the loving friend of the weary and heavy laden. The old queen's eyes were filled with tears as she said: "It must be a word of your own. It can not be that a God thinks on our sorrow and would speak comfort words." "Is there any one in your household that can read?" I asked, and she called her grandson. I gave him the book, and said, "Little brother, read this to the mother," and he read slowly, "Let not [69] your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," and the queen's face brightened. "It is there, even as you have said. Leave the book with me, that I may hear more of Him who spoke such words." And we left the book, knowing it was filled with living comfort words. She asked us to come into her kingdom to live near her, that we might teach her and her people. And this was our great desire. But her brother, the great rajah, allows no missionaries in the land, and he refused to make an exception in our case. So the mission home was placed just six miles from the border of her land at Pendra Road. The old queen is dead, but we are remembering her pleading and are striving to reach her people across the border.

      Come with me to the temples, even to the great stone temples of Deogarh. The walls are centuries old. As we look upon them we notice that there are stains on the surface. We look closer. It is the print of hands--of women's hands. They have come, these women, with some great, agonizing prayer in their hearts, have dipped their hands in red and pressed them against the temple wall, that the mark may remain there to remind the stone gods of their prayer when they themselves have trodden the weary miles back to their village. Some of these prints are pitifully small; some the years have nearly obliterated; many are very plain--all are turned upward in supplication. May the remembrance of these hands uplifted against the cold, pitiless walls of stone--these hands of helpless women turned upward--remain in our hearts, that in the name of the great all-Father we may hasten to help them.

      One morning in Deogarh Miss Graybiel sat talking with a company of Hindoos who had gathered under a spreading tree by the roadside. She had been telling them the story of the prodigal son, and when in the course of her story the lost son comes to himself and arises to go to his father, she looked over the little group and asked, "What think you? Would the father receive him?" "No, never," they answered quickly; "why should he? Has he not brought shame on his father's name?" Then an old blind beggar, sitting near Miss Graybiel, called out: "Listen, brothers. His father wouldn't, but his mother would."

      Will the women of this land justify the blind beggar's faith in motherhood?

[CCR 69-70]