There was consternation among the women of the temple when it was discovered that Moothi was gone, but the mother gave no sign, and it was finally concluded that some one had stolen her because of her beauty, and such things are too common in a heathen land to cause a disturbance. As Moothi grew and developed into a beautiful Christian woman and earnest worker, the missionary often wondered whence came the God-given trust so strangely sent. Now and then, but less frequently as the years pass on, a woman, growing increasingly old and bent, was seen near the school, whom they associated with Moothi, but no one knew until upon her deathbed she sent for the missionary and told her story. Only a heathen mother, degraded and heart-broken, parted from her only joy in life, watching hungrily in the distance for a sight of the loved face. Can we not believe that the Christ of love was revealed to her heart also?[84] What Christian mother will make it possible that some other heart-broken heathen mother may hear the Gospel message, and may find a place of refuge for her sweet, innocent child? [Sidenote: Heathen mothers and their dead children.] While our hearts go out in tenderness to the heathen mother deprived of her living child, what can we do or say to comfort the mother whose little one is cold in death? Our statistics of infant mortality in Chapter I give some slight idea of the vast multitudes of mourning mothers for whom there is no hope, no knowledge that,--“around the throne of God in heaven, thousands of children stand;” no vision of Him who “shall gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom.” Nowhere but among Christians do hope and faith and self-control and comfort abide in the house where death has come, and none but the Christian cemetery is a place of order and beauty and peace. Among the Thonga Tribe of South Africa, the mother who loses a baby is considered deeply contaminated with the defilement of death. She must bury the child alone, not even her husband helping her. Mrs. George Heber Jones said recently that in all her many years of life in Korea she had never seen any funeral service for a child of non-Christians. The baby is buried anywhere at the back of the house as a dog would be, or put up in the branches of a tree for the vultures to find. Do the mothers have hearts and feelings? Listen to the experience of Mrs. U. S. G. Jones of India, and answer the question for yourselves.