MANUAL LABOR AS MISSIONARY WORK.
INDUSTRIAL work is the outgrowth of close observation of the needs of the Indian people. It has received a new impulse since the recent famine, when over 3,000 children were left upon our missions for training and protection. It was imperative that the most of these children should be taught to do something with their own hands in order to show them the true dignity of labor, to afford the discipline that such training gives, to provide them with a means of earning a living when they were set adrift to care for themselves, and also to enable them to help, in a measure, to provide for their expenses while still in the orphan homes. It is also evident that the people of India as a class, in order that they may be independent and self-supporting, need to be instructed in various lines of industry. Carpentry, cabinet work, brass hammering, blacksmithing, weaving, rug-making, stone-cutting, farming, tinsmithing, lace-making, and embroidery are among the industries taught with marked success in many parts of the field. Many of the orphan children have already become self-supporting, and the thrift which this department of mission work engenders is of great permanent value to the entire Christian community. These missions present a wide-open field into which we are invited to enter, even the non-Christian or Hindu communities joining in the invitation. The Hindus urge us to open more schools, build more hospitals, send more missionaries, and do more Christian work, for they have learned to respect the Christian faith, and to admire the life that it produces.—Corr. Missionary Herald.