Page:Our educational policy in India.djvu/4

Rh It was in 1853 that I first saw the injurious effects of the operation of direct education in the higher departments of study by the Government, and the great good that might be effected, by a judicious assistance of independent effort on the part of the natives, by calling forth the liberality of British residents, and encouraging the labours of missionary societies.

The publication of the Education Despatch of 1854 was hailed by the friends of India as the wisest and best solution of a great and difficult question, which, in the circumstances, could be expected, although some ardent and enthusiastic Christians looked for a more decided and even aggressive policy in regard to Christian teaching.

Christian educationists saw that if the provisions for aiding equally, native and mission schools and colleges, as was most explicitly promised and provided for in the Despatch, were faithfully carried out, there would be no difficulty in the way of the rapid and almost indefinite extension of Christian instruction; not by asking any special favour for their institutions over those of the natives; not by any forcing of Christianity by Government authority; but by the natural and laudable method of providing the highest form of education in secular studies, along with the knowledge of Divine truth and the love of God, which commend themselves to the understanding and heart even of the heathen, when taught in a loving and sympathetic spirit.

It was their ardent hope that the moral, social, and political evils which they saw and lamented, as the inevitable outcome of direct Government education without religion, would in a large measure disappear,