The position of Ingham was peculiar. He was a clergyman without a charge; he resided at Aberford, in Yorkshire; he appears to have been a man of considerable means; and now he devoted all his powers to the moral and spiritual upliftment of the working-classes in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His sphere was the district between Leeds and Halifax. For ignorance and brutality these Yorkshire people were then supposed to be unmatched in England. The parish churches were few and far between. The people were sunk in heathen darkness. Young Ingham began pure missionary work. He visited the people in their homes; he formed societies for Bible Reading and Prayer; he preached the doctrine of saving faith in Christ; and before long he was able to say that he had fifty societies under his care, two thousand hearers, three hundred inquirers, and a hundred genuine converts. For numbers, however, Ingham cared but little. His object was to bring men into personal touch with Christ. "I had rather," he said, "see ten souls truly converted than ten thousand only stirred up to follow." His work was opposed both by clergy and by laymen. At Colne, in Lancashire, he was attacked by a raging mob. At the head of the mob was the Vicar of Colne himself. The Vicar took Ingham into a house and asked him to sign a paper promising not to preach again. Ingham tore the paper in pieces. "Bring him out and we'll make him," yelled the mob. The Vicar went out; the mob pressed in; and clubs were flourished in the air "as thick as a man's leg." Some wanted to kill him on the spot; others wished to throw him into the river. "Nay, nay," said others, "we will heave him into the bog, then he will be glad to go into the river and wash and sweeten himself." A stone "as big as a man's fist," hit him in the hollow of the neck. His coat-tails were bespattered with mud. "See," said a wit, "he has got wings." At last the Vicar relented, took him into the Vicarage, and thus saved him from an early death.