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Show THE BIBLE IN INDIA. A curious letter is published in the London Watchman from an educated Hindoo not a Christian, advocating the use of the English Bible in the government schools of India. It is quite long, and the points made by the writer are numerous, so that we can only give a bare summary of them. Educated natives, he says, do not object to reading the Bible in schools as a book of history or literature. They cannot appreciated sufficiently the beauties of the English language or the allusions in other books without a knowledge of it. They now read in the schools chiefly the classic works of the last century with their pompous style, and need the Bible as a foil to them to give them a model of simple direct English, and prevent their talk from being amusing with the seeming affectation of Johnsonianisms. As a book of history, it furnishes satisfactory accounts of the earlier ages of the world, beyond the period of written profane history; and the New Testament gives most interesting allusions to the Roman Empire and to the general state of the world during that particular era of its history. Missionaries were first in the field in educating the natives; and so far as the Hindoo writer knows, not one among the many thousands attending their schools has objected to reading the Bible. Even now with government Bibleless schools by their side the mission schools are as well attended as ever, and at Bangalore are better attended than the government schools. The grandson of a former prince, minister of Mysore, went to one in preference. As a general rule, educated Hindoos keep a copy of the Bible in their libraries to explain the numerous allusions to it which they meet; and in one year 300 copies of the Bible were bought in the city of Mysore by such men for this purpose. Two scholarships which natives founded to perpetuate the name of Gen. Dobbs were assigned respectively to the government and Wesleyan schools. If the contributors had objected to the Bible they would not have founded a Wesleyan scholarship. The introduction of the Bible would dispel prejudice against Christianity, for the natives would learn by it that the religion of Christ is not one to be spread by external means or at the point of the sword. The present conduct of the government makes the natives believe that the Bible is "a most dangerous book, a literary barrel of gunpowder that may at any time explode and cause infinite disaster." The writer approves a remark which was made by the late Sir Herbert Edwards, that if the natives had been acquainted with the Bible the rebellion of 1857 would not have taken place, for they would have been convinced that biting greased cart edges could not possibly have made them Christians. Lastly, the Bible is read in the schools of some of the native states. It used to be, and is probably now, read in Travancore, and also at Indore, the capital of the Maharaja Hulkar's Dominions.-Methodist. |