Up on the mountain slopes of the Hakone District in Japan, is the great children’s god, Jizo, carved centuries ago out of the solid rock. The heathen mother has been taught that, when the souls of her little children pass over the sullen stream of death, they must be saved from the clutches of a cruel hag residing on the banks. She steals their clothes and forces them to the endless task of piling stones at the river side. In order to induce Jizo to save them from the hag, the weary heathen mother climbs the steep paths leading to the children’s god, and there makes her supplication. And the little one tied to her back or led by the hand, with highly strung nerves and weary limbs, shrinks in terror at the sight of the ugly idol, and at the stories of dire vengeance which will befall her unless she worships properly. [Sidenote: Death from fright and exposure.] Many children die from the effects of fright and exposure connected with religious rites, as in the case of some of the African boys whose initiation into ancestor worship was described above. [Sidenote: Soul-stains.] [Sidenote: Temple girls.] Worse than all the results yet mentioned are the deep soul-stains, the utter ruin of all moral and spiritual character, which fall to the lot of countless thousands of innocent children through the direct influence of their religion. One longs to turn away from scenes like these, but we mothers, sisters, and daughters of Christian homes cannot be honest with ourselves and with our God, unless we are willing to know things as they really are, in order to help to make them as they really ought to be. Such conditions exist to a larger or smaller degree in many lands, but to be really understood in their baldest, most revolting form, it is only necessary to visit India. Bishop Caldwell says that “the stories related of the life of the god Krishna do more than anything to destroy the morals and corrupt the imaginations of Hindu youth.” The temple girls, nautch girls, and muralis are living witnesses to India’s need of a pure and holy religion. The nautch-girl often begins her career of training under teachers as early as five years of age. She is taught to read, dance, and sing, and instructed in every seductive art. Her songs are usually amorous; and while she is yet a mere girl, before she can realize fully the moral bearings of her choice of life, she makes her debut as a nautch-girl in the community.