disease, and thousands of people die through the use of impure water, when the main remedy that is needed is a little disinfectant for the village well. I suppose that almost every district missionary is the means of saving many lives by his simple efforts to help meet diseases and epidemics.

Everyone knows something about that terrible, loathsome disease of leprosy, which rots away its victims' bodies little by little-a living death. Indians fear this disease, yet lepers are allowed to live on in their villages and even in their own homes, exposing others to the dreaded infection. Probably there are 250,000 lepers in India. Missionaries, both medical and nonmedical, try to do what they can to help them. To make their lives happier and to protect their relatives and friends from the disease, leper asylums have been opened in many places, and missionaries try to bring whatever they can of brightness and cheer and love into these refuges. Here lepers are given the wonderful new treatment which may turn out to be a real cure. They are given gardens of their own to work in and opportunities to satisfy other human interests. Even more important, they receive what one of these missionaries calls the "Christ-treatment; something of love and kindness; someone to care for them and bring relief."

In India missionaries are at work in sixty-one leper asylums and homes for the untainted children of lepers. Some of you have heard of Mary Reed, the American missionary, who, when she was in America on furlough, found that she had leprosy. Without a word

to her friends about it, she went back to India and is now in charge of a beautiful leper asylum where she is giving her life for her Indian fellow-sufferers.

It is indeed touching to know how real is the interest of these lepers in others. Their church comes to mean much to them. They give of their scanty money to all sorts of Christian causes. I have never heard a more beautiful story of real Christian experience than that of an Indian leper girl in Sam Higginbottom's asylum at Naini. I first heard Mr. Higginbottom tell the story in India, but anyone may now read it in his book The Gospel and the Plow. Her name was Frances, and she was a refined, educated Christian girl. Somehow she became infected; the unmistakable sores of leprosy appeared on her fingers, and she was sent to the asylum. When she first caught sight of the wrecks of women who were there, she turned in despair and exclaimed, "My God, am I going to become as they are!" But some days later when she had become a little more accustomed to her new life, Mr. Higginbottom proposed to her that she try to use her own education in helping the women and children to read and write and sing. Gradually a change came over the whole life of the asylum as a result of her loving service, and with it a change came in herself. One day after she had begun working for her fellow-lepers some time, she opened her heart to the American woman doctor. She told her that at first she had rebelled against her fate, but that gradually she had come to see that God had brought her there because He needed her to work for the lepers. If she had not become a leper, she would never have discovered

her work. She ended her confession with these wonderful words: "Every day I live now, I thank Him for having sent me here and given me this work to do.”

Sam Higginbottom says: "The disease has worked its way in her. But her face is always radiant, a smile plays about that pain-wrought face. No word of complaint, ever a word of cheer for him that is weary. Most of the women of the Asylum are now Christians, after having confessed their faith in the God and Savior they have learned to know through Frances."

You have seen how poor the people of India are, especially the outcastes. Probably there are sixty million who do not get enough to eat except during the harvest time. Is it part of the missionary's job to try to help them earn a better living? The missionary answers emphatically, "Yes! Jesus fed the hungry, and we would not be true disciples of our Master if we did not try to help men and women and little children to get enough to eat and enough to wear." Our village schools with their 500,000 pupils help. It is not so easy for the money sharks of India, who always prey upon the poor, to get into their clutches men who can read and figure. Moreover, thousands of boys and girls from dark, one-room, poverty-stricken homes have gone through the village school into higher education and are now earning fair incomes as doctors, nurses, clerks, teachers, or workers in other useful callings.

Another way in which the missionaries try to help is through Cooperative Credit Societies. Have you ever heard of a missionary banker? Come to Jalna, and I will show you one who has been decorated by

Dr. Anna S. Kugler working with her clerk at the Guntur Hospital which, under her leadership, developed in fifteen years from a medicine chest to one of the largest and finest mission hospitals in South India, with maternity block, chapel, nurses' home, and dispensary.