Читать книгу A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography онлайн

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We had some arguments, also, on the science of geography, on the shape of the earth, on the nature of eclipses, and the like. What he heard was as foreign to all his preconceived ideas as was the doctrine of salvation from sin by the death of Christ. Just before the great eclipse was to occur I told him of it, naming the day and the hour when it was to occur. I pointed out that the eclipse could not be caused by a monster which attacked the sun, as he had been taught. If that were the cause, no one could foretell the day when the monster would be moved to make the attack. He at once caught that idea. If the eclipse came off as I said, he would have to admit that his teaching was wrong on a point perfectly capable of being tested by the senses. There would then be a strong presumption that we were right in religion as well as in eclipses. He waited with intense interest for the day to come. The sky was clear, and everything was favourable. He watched, with a smoked glass that we had furnished, the reflection of the sun in a bucket of water. He followed the coming of the eclipse, its progress, and its passing off, as anxiously as the wise men of old followed the star of Bethlehem—and, like them, he, too, was led to the Saviour.