“A Japanese woman whose husband is a Christian,” writes Miss Ransome, “though she is as yet only an inquirer, said recently that the change for the better had been so marvelous in her husband that she had decided to try to rear her boy in such a way that he would eventually become an evangelist. She wanted others to know of the power of Christianity which could change a quarrelsome, drinking man to a kind, sober, industrious father.” That boy’s chance for a happy, useful life was the direct result of what the knowledge of Christ had done for his father. [Sidenote: Motherhood.] The sacred vocation of motherhood is regarded almost entirely from a commercial or social standpoint in non-Christian lands. The free woman who remains unmarried is wellnigh an impossibility,--she has no chance for winning respect or position in this life, and, according to Mohammedan belief, has a very inferior place in heaven. The woman who marries and has no children needs one’s sympathy almost as much as does her unmarried sister. In many cases she may be divorced after a certain number of years if no child has been born to her, or she lives in dread of having another wife brought into the home, who will make her life miserable with taunts such as Peninnah heaped upon Hannah in days of old. And there is no hope that her lord and master will comfort her as Elkanah comforted Hannah, offering her the devotion of ten sons. [Sidenote: A mother of girls.] But the unmarried woman and the childless wife are not alone in their degradation and distress. Never can I forget my feelings when told of a neighbor in Persia who had just given birth to her seventh daughter. Her husband on visiting the room crossed over to where she lay on her bed on the floor, looked at her with disgust and disapproval, spat in her face and covered it with a cloth to show that she was a disgraced wife. To be the mother of sons is the great wish of a woman’s heart, to have many daughters-in-law brought into the home to serve her and cower before her tyranny is her fondest ambition, and when she attains it her influence is indeed great, and in one respect at least she is queen of her home. [Sidenote: Foundations of family life.]