What happens when the converts amongst the young men are considerably more numerous than amongst the girls? The time comes for the young men to marry, and they marry heathen wives, because it is unavoidable. Generally speaking, if a woman is a heathen when she marries, she remains so to the end of the chapter. There were in the earlier days, thirty or forty years ago, many instances of this in Ceylon, the results of which are seen to this day, and what we see is admonitory. I remember one, a typical case, of an elderly man, a Christian teacher, whom I knew intimately. He had a heathen wife. “There were none of these Girls’ Boarding Schools when I was young, to train our Tamil girls,” he would say, “and so I married a heathen,” and a great trouble it was to him. She was agreeable enough to live with, but totally illiterate, and a rigid Hindu. Everything was done that could be done for her, but she was, as usual, impervious to all influences, and remained in the Hindu faith till the day of her death. It was very seldom that a woman accepted Christianity _after_ she was married, whereas a few months under Christian instruction _before_ almost always inclined them firmly to the Christian faith. In Jaffna, where we have our largest Girls’ Institution in that mission, where there are always some eighty or ninety girls, the Christian influence is so strong, and the minds of the young are so impressible, that they practically all embrace Christianity within a few weeks of their entrance. There are never more than a few new comers unbaptised, who are only waiting that they may learn a little more, or to obtain the consent of their friends and guardians; and it is the same with all the institutions of the kind in our own, and the neighbouring missions. If missionary experience has proved anything in the East, it has proved that no work is more abiding or more remunerative than work done for girls, from ten to fifteen years of age. Another case in Ceylon was that of a native gentleman, a Christian of good standing and respectable position. He married a heathen wife, because Christian wives were not then to be found. I never knew him, he died before my time, but I knew his family. They are now grown up and in middle life. Under the mother’s influence they were brought up as heathens, although the father was a Christian, and when the boys went to school, they had to be dealt with as other heathen lads. Two of them were happily converted and baptised into the Christian faith, after they were grown up, but the rest of the family are all rigid heathens to this day, and their children also. Experience in such cases amply proves that only when the wife and mother is a Christian before marriage, can the family be relied on as a Christian family. If not, you may expect to have all the work to do over again in the next generation. This is woman’s nature all the world over—