Page:Hints Relative To Native Schools (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.102605).pdf/100

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
[ 15 ]

compendium of History and Chronology united as should bring them acquainted with the state of the world in past ages, and with the principal events which have occurred since the creation of the world. With the creation it should commence, describe the primitive state of man, the entrance of evil, the corruption of the antediluvian age, the flood, and the peopling of the earth anew from one family, in which the compiler should avail himself of all the light thrown on this subject by modern research and investigation: he should particularly notice the nations of the east, incorporating in their proper place the best accounts we now have both of India and China. He should go on to notice the call of Abraham, the giving of the decalogue, the gradual revelation of the Scriptures of truth, the settlement of Greece, its mythology, the Trojan War, the four great monarchies, the advent of the Saviour of men, the persecutions of the Christian church, the rise of Mahometanism, the origin of the papacy, the invention of printing, of gunpowder, and the mariner’s compass; the reformation, the discovery of the passage to India by sea, and the various discoveries of modern science. Such a Synopsis of History and Chronology, composed on the same plan, that of comprising each event in a concise but perspicuous sentence, would exceedingly enlarge their ideas relative to the state of the world, certainly not to the disadvantage of Britain, whom God has now so exalted as to render her almost the arbitress of nations.

5. Lastly, it would be highly proper to impart to them just ideas of themselves, relative both to body and mind, and to a future state of existence, by what may be termed a Compendium of Ethics and Morality. The complete absence of all just ideas of this kind, is the chief cause of that degradation of public morals so evident in this country. The system of ethics, (if it deserve the name) which pervades India, and indeed nearly the whole of