The careful readers of this chapter will observe from what we have written that the life of their Mohammedan sisters in China is not so hard and prison-like as that of their sisters in North Africa, Persia, etc, where they are secluded for a lifetime in the prison-like harems at the command of their husbands. Nevertheless, their need is just as great, their souls just as precious, their ignorance of spiritual things just as deep, their lives just as much of a blank, their hope for the future just as dark; they live and die "just like animals," they are wont to say; and all the hopelessness, darkness, and lovelessness continues not because of their SECLUSION in harems at the mercy of their husbands but because of their EXCLUSION from their right to the joys and hope of the Christian life by the lukewarm indifference of the Church of Christ to-day, which fails to realize the great responsibility to carry the Gospel to every creature. In our vast parish, stretching one hundred miles from east to west and two hundred and thirty miles from southeast to northwest, comprising six cities, sixteen walled towns, and thousands of villages with a mixed population of Chinese, Mohammedans, Mongolians, Tibetans, and aborigines, my husband and I are left to labor alone. This does not spell seclusion but exclusion from the knowledge of the Way of Salvation for tens of thousands of souls for whom Christ died. When Jesus saw the leper He had compassion on him; when He saw the widow of Nain He said "Weep not"; when the mourners wept at the grave of Lazarus He saw them and wept also; when He looked from the Mount of Olives on the city of Jerusalem and thought of her doom, He wept. Would that in a vision or in a dream of the night, you could behold something of the hopelessness of your less favored sisters; would that you could hear just a few of their plaintive cries and see tears rolling down their cheeks as they unburden their sorrows to the sympathetic ear. Then, methinks, you would not rest till you had accomplished something to make these many dark hearts brighter and sad hearts lighter. XXIII OUR MOSLEM SISTERS IN JAVA (_Translated from the Dutch_) The life of the Mohammedan woman in general here is not that of a being on a par with man, but rather comparable with that of a dumb animal, a creature inferior to and much less worthy than man, which is kept and utilized as long as it performs some services. Fatalism, as taught and nourished by Islam, places the woman in a servile relationship to the man, so much so that she, although considered a creature of no particular value, does not take offence at being accounted a negligible quantity. Maltreatment of women takes place occasionally but is by no means general, because nothing hinders the husband from driving away his wife with whom he may not be satisfied, without even observing the simplest form of a legal procedure.