is frequently brutal and even criminal.1 Parental care is in many cases neglected. In fact, the children are sometimes cast off and turned loose in the world under heartless conditions which insure either death, slavery, or shame.2 Child slavery is one of the reproaches of Chinese society.3

In India and Africa.

In India and Burma, and, in fact, throughout all Asiatic countries, the utter neglect of family training seems to be the feature most to be noted in this connection. The children, except those of the higher classes, are left to their own devices to grow up under the influence of their tainted environment. Where the climate will allow they are unclothed, until natural modesty ceases to exist, and are usually unwashed, unkempt, and covered with filth, flies, and vermin. In India "there exists a superstition according to which it is unlucky to wash children until they reach a certain age."4 The "joint family system," as known in India, is a dangerous one to family peace, and attended' with practical disadvantages which are objectionable from many points of view. Its effect upon children is to concentrate the power of evil example and bring them into contact with every aspect of domestic infelicity. A sad aspect of the matter is the prurient precocity of children, who begin their vile language with their infant prattle and grow old in pollution while yet young in years. The average Indian mother

1 Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 213; Turner, "Kwang Tung," p. 154; "Child Life in China," The Sunday-School Times, April 6, 1895.

2 Henry," The Cross and the Dragon," pp. 309–311; Turner," Kwang Tung," p. 154.

3 Woman's Work in the Far East, May, 1896, pp. 15-18; Ball, "Things Chinese," p. 404; Douglas, "Society in China," pp. 347-349.

4 Monier-Williams, "Brahmanism and Hinduism," p. 580.

5 "The redeeming virtues of the family system have been supplanted by vices of abnormal degree and magnitude. Where sincere sympathy was, stolid indifference now exists. Jealousy and hatred have usurped the place of harmony. Discordancy rides triumphant. Deceit and spoliation have seized those who were heretofore the trustees of our honor and property. A sense of distrust has seized each member against every member. Family feuds, litigation, and waste of resources are now every-day occurrences. So that the Hindu family has changed from a convenient social unit into an incoherent and cumbrous mass. Say what our countrymen may, our domestic relations are undergoing a revolution appalling to contemplate. It is not confined to this or that sect, this caste or that caste, but [pertains] to almost every household, Brahman or Sudra. It is only families still in their archaic state which form the exception. In them the patriarch's rule is still dominant."-Mullick, Essays on the Hindu Family in Bengal," quoted in "The Women of India," p. 86. 6 "Even under the most favorable conditions of Indian life, how full of misery is the child's life! The obscene speech of Indian homes is one of its darkest features. It

seems to be all unconscious of the fact that she has anything to do in forming the character of her children.1

In Mohammedan lands the same physical and moral neglect prevails, and the young grow up under the unwholesome culture of surrounding influences. Parental petting alternates with parental passion in the daily treatment of children.

In Africa family life is not very far above the plane of mere animalism, modified, of course, by human instincts; yet there is really no family training. Children run wild and grow up with untamed and grossly tainted natures.2 The mission school is the best gift of heaven to African children, and under its auspices the long, slow process of making over those wild natures has commenced.

3

A word should be said in this connection concerning the abuse of parental authority in Eastern lands-not a new or strange thing in heathenism, as we may read in classical history. In China it is answerable for much brutality and for the sale of children into slavery, while in Japan it often seals the doom of a daughter to a life of misery.4 In all the realms of savagery it suggests a dread possibility in the case of millions of little ones who may at any time become the victims of a sudden whim or a loathsome purpose on the part of those who are the irresponsible masters of young lives.

6. INFANTICIDE.-That the exposure of children in such a way as to insure their destruction was common in classical heathenism is too well known to require more than a passing notice. It is perhaps a less is indeed a ẞábos in this connexion to speak of the misery of the uncleanliness of Indian children. Yet how can it be but inevitable when 'Indian mothers trust largely to superstitious ceremonies to keep their children well, while they neglect sanitary arrangements'? Worse than all is the woe o Indian childhood which befalls the opening mind when, led by their mothers to the Indian temple, their eyes are met with sights, their ears assailed by songs, of such loathsome import that innocency may not sustain the strain, and the child mind perishes in that awful hour." -“Missions or Science, the Maker of India's Homes?" The Church Missionary Intelligencer, November, 1893, p. 807.

1 Thoburn, "India and Malaysia,” p. 365.

2 "Infants and children are usually grievously mismanaged, and the mortality among them is enormous."-Rev. G. M. Lawson (U. M. C. A.), Zanzibar.

3 Storrs,

"The Divine Origin of Christianity," pp. 138-140; Ingram, "History" of Slavery," pp. 16, 28.

The Japan Evangelist, February, 1896, p. 135.

5 Brace,

"Gesta Christi,” pp. 72-83; Storrs, "The Divine Origin of Christianity," pp. 138-141.

familiar fact that this inhuman crime prevailed among the pagan barbarians of Central and Northern Europe as late as the thirteenth century.1

The heathenism of to-day, even in the centres of its most advanced civilization, is still red-handed with the traces of infanticide. Japan is in pleasing and humane contrast with her more barbarous neighbors, the Chinese, as regards this dark and cruel crime. That the custom, although uncommon in China. often practised in secret, prevails in China cannot

Child murder not

be doubted. The united testimony of those who have had ample opportunities to know the facts presents a body of evidence which is irresistibly strong, although the custom is confined almost exclusively to the destruction of girls, unless in case of deformed or weakly infants. It is more prevalent in Central and Southern China, and is comparatively rare in the north. It is said that poverty and the desire to be free from the burden of caring for girls are the chief causes of its prevalence.2 The spirit which seems to reign in the hearts of Chinese mothers is illustrated by a conversation which Miss Fielde reports in "A Corner of Cathay" (p. 72). A pagan Chinese woman, discoursing upon the subject of daughters, remarked, "A daughter is a troublesome and expensive thing anyway. Not only has she to be fed, but there is all the trouble of binding her feet, and of getting her betrothed, and of making up her wedding garments; and even after she is married off she must have presents made to her when she has children. Really, it is no wonder that so many baby girls are slain at their birth!" While the difficulty of obtaining accurate data is recognized by all, and also the fact that statements which apply to certain sections of the vast empire are not representative of the true status in other parts, yet the prevalence of infanticide to a frightful extent is beyond question.3 The author of "Things Chinese " (p. 233) estimates on the basis of special inquiries that in the province of Fuhkien "an average of forty per cent. of the girls were thus murdered." Rev. C. Hartwell, in a paper read at the Shanghai Conference of 1877 (" Report," p. 387), estimates that at Foochow "from thirty to seventy per cent. of the female infants have been destroyed." If the act of destruction is not actually committed, another

1 Lawrence, "Modern Missions in the East,” p. 15.

2 Douglas, "Society in China," pp. 351-356; Williams, "The Middle Kingdom," vol. ii., pp. 239-243.

3 Norman, "The Peoples and Politics of the Far East," pp. 289-291; Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 179; Fielde, "Pagoda Shadows," chap. iii.; Moule, "New China and Old," p. 179.