And in
its desire to furnish this agency the mission, as well as the individual
missionary, eagerly seizes upon every boy and girl who shows any signs of
promise as an applicant to be trained for missionary service. This same
ambition to develop, in intellectual power and in civilizing progress, the
young of an infant Christian community so that they may adorn our faith
and give an honourable status to the community leads many a mission to
expend upon the education of its boys and girls more than it will in its
later and more mature stage of growth.

6. THE INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEM.

During the last two decades there has been a marked and strong tendency in
Indian missions, as in the home churches which support them, to still
broaden the scope of missionary effort by adding to its directly
spiritual, and to its educational and medical, work, schemes for the
industrial, economic and social advancement of the people. This broadening
of the conception of the work of the Church in missionary lands is a most
interesting study. Less than a century ago nothing that was not directly
and intensely spiritual in its character was regarded as, in any sense, a
part of missionary effort. To preach the Gospel to the heathen, to
establish and to train Christian churches and to develop and direct a
suitable native agency--this embraced the whole work of the mission.
Anything beyond this was considered illegitimate. Subsequently the medical
department was introduced,--chiefly because of the example of Christ
Himself as the Great Healer. Soon the educational work was begun, as a
necessity in its elementary stages, and it gradually grew until it has
reached its present manifold character and large proportions. Then a few
missions began to touch the industrial problem and to establish schools
for the training of boys and girls in manual labour. Today that work is
finding much increased emphasis, and missions are beginning to take up, in
all seriousness, Peasant Settlements as a means of lifting the people
economically, and of training them to habits of industry, and to found
villages as separate Christian communities. Schools for the blind and for
deaf mutes also have been established. In fact all forms of philanthropic
effort have now practically been adopted by the missions of India as
legitimate forms of their activities. Indeed, it is extensively
proclaimed, what has long been strenuously denied, that missions are not
founded si