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The Fundamentals facts. Sir John Hewett’s account, as Lieutenant-Governor, of the conditions of sanitation in the United Provinces of India, will suffice: “Speaking generally, the death rates recorded in the Provinces in recent years, both in urban and rural tracts, are nearly three times as high as in England and Wales. It is estimated that in India nearly one out of every ten of the population is constantly sick, and a person who has escaped the diseases and dangers of childhood and youth, and entered into manhood or womanhood, has an expectation that his or her life will extend to only 68 per cent of the time that a person similarly situated may be expected to live in England. ...............Infantile mortality is nearly twice as great as it is in England............... I t is lamentable that one out of every four children born should die before he or she has completed a year of life............... The average number of persons per house (which frequently consists of two rooms, or even of only one) is 5.3 in important cities, and 5.5 in the rest of the country. It is estimated that the average superficial area per head of the population is something like 10 square feet, and the breathing space 150 cubic feet—just half what is required in common lodging-houses in England.” Conditions in Chris tian lands are not what they should be, but they are infinitely superior to the conditions in other lands, and in proportion as they are Christian, famine and disease and want are overcome. Are these blessings to be ours alone ? The world needs the social message and redemption of Christianity. Paul tells us that it met and conquered the in equalities of his time, the chasm between citizen and foreigner, master and slave, man and woman. These are the chasms of the non-Christian world still. It has no ideal of human broth erhood save as it has heard of it through Christianity. Not one of the non-Christian religions or civilizations has given either women or children, especially girl children, their rights. There is human affection. The statement of a recent writer regarding China, that “children are spawned and not bom,” is
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