BISHOP INGHAM, in a recent paper, vigorously advocates this form of missionary work. He defines his own terms, however. He does not mean by industrial missions the establishment of big mission trading factories, like some on the gold coast, which are open to the charge of secularism and unspirituality. He asks that men and women go out, qualified and enabled to show in practical ways how the faith they preach should operate, so that converts may learn to do their duty in that state of life unto which God pleases to call them. He thinks that even the most theological teachers may be practically equipped like Paul.
In West Central Africa he finds great need of such missions. There is a condition of tyranny and bondage which can not longer find markets in other lands. The success of the evangelist and teacher is his greatest difficulty. Here are peoples who have been bullied into hard labor from time immemorial. They have counted it a virtue to hide from task-masters. To come to them with a book and a cloth is to foster the notion that honest toil is menial and degrading, which is helped by their superstitions. Here is a country with no real industries, the people naturally distrustful and lazy. To put among such people a mission equipped with Bibles and other books, and periodical boxes of clothes from home lands, does harm. Boys and girls thus taught and clad foster a discontent with their surroundings, and try to ape foreign customs, and be "readers" and well clad. Chiefs learn to fear missions that alienate their own subjects from the life of their own land. To see the Alake of Aberkuta buying plows at an agricultural show gave the bishop much encouragement. Merchants deprecate mission work that ruins the labor13market, and sensible observers think mission methods a ludicrous failure that produce a too one-sided development. Missionaries should be prepared to train converts to meet the actual needs of their communities.
A People in Great Need of Industrial Missions.
The Bishop of Mombasa likewise praises the works carried on by the Basel German Mission as creating something better than mere "née Christians." In India, industrial missions are taking a rank unknown before—both fitting converts for definite work, and finding such work for them. From China comes a cry for aid in enabling converts to do carpentry or other work so that they need not compromise themselves with idolatrous customs in seeking a livelihood.
Many missions in India, Malaysia, and Australasia as well as those in Africa, are working along industrial lines.—Missionary Review.
