ith.

Thus most of the Muhammadan boys in our school have already studied
the Quran in a mosque, and many continue to receive religious teaching
from their Mullah while studying in school. Thus they enter school
at an older age than the Hindu students, who, except in family life,
take little count of their religion, and slight their priests. The
danger is obvious: faith in the old order is lost, and there is
nothing but a conceited and bumptious materialism to take its place.

Here it is that the mission school holds the advantage of the
Government institution. The latter, in the endeavour to be impartial,
excludes all religious teaching, and therewith loses the most valuable
means of moral training. The mission school, on the other hand,
gives special prominence to religious and moral training, which
go hand-in-hand. "I prefer sending my son to the mission school,"
said a Muhammadan father to me once, "because he will be taught the
religious incentives to moral conduct there, and I shall not be afraid
of his character losing its moral balance." And this was said by a man
thoroughly orthodox and zealous in his own religion. There can be no
doubt that a far smaller proportion of the students in mission schools
and colleges lose the religious instinct of their forefathers, and it
is often the loss of this which results in moral instability and ruin.

"I never took an interest in studying my own religion till I was
taught Scripture in the mission school," said a pupil to me; and,
of course, we encourage the boys not only to perform the religious
duties inculcated by their own religion, but to study it thoughtfully,
and see how far it satisfies the aspirations of their souls. A
visitor to our school hostel of an early morning would find the
Muhammadans saying their prayers and the Hindus their devotions,
and we encourage this, and give facilities for it by setting apart
places for its performance, because it is a terrible thing to take
away a boy's faith, even though it be a faith in a mistaken creed,
and I think the man who has argued or bantered a young fellow out
of his faith without bringing him to a higher faith has incurred a
grave responsibility. The real enemy of the Christian faith is not
so much Islam or Hinduism, but infidelity and a gross materialism.

It is not education that is to blame for the unrest, sedition,
and materialism which threatens to engulf India, but the Government
system of education has und