all a wilderness, and contrast its present beauty with the roughness
of its former state.

So, in viewing the wonders of divine grace, we need to see its
results in connection with what has been. We can appreciate the
loveliness of the child of God only as we compare him with the child
of wrath he was before. Paul not only recounts the great things
which God had done for the early disciples, but bids them remember
that they were once without Christ; and before he tells them that
God had made them "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,"
he reminds them that they had "walked according to the spirit that
now worketh in the children of disobedience."

In seeking, then, to set forth the great things which God has done
for woman in Persia, let us first look on her as his gospel found
her, that we may better appreciate the grace which wrought the
change.

We can understand the condition of woman in that empire only as we
bear in mind that its government is despotic, and that no
constitutional safeguards shield the subjects of a thoroughly
selfish and profligate nobility. The Nestorians, too, are marked out
alike by religion and nationality as victims of oppression. However
great their wrongs, they can hope for little redress, for a distant
court shares in the plunder taken from them, and believes its own
officials rather than the despised rayahs, whom they oppress. Even
when foreign intervention procures some edict in their favor, these
same officials, in distant Oroomiah, are at no loss to evade its
demands.