A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An AutobiographyMcGilvary, Daniel
History
A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography
McGilvary, Daniel
Lao (Tai people); Missions -- Lao (Tai people); Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. -- Missions
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.
Early the next morning he came in to see me. His first words were, “Mên
tê” (It’s really true). “The teacher’s books teach truth. Ours are
wrong.” This confident assurance had evidently been reached after a
sleepless night. A complete revolution had taken place in his mind; but
it was one that cost him a severe struggle. His only hope had rested on
the teachings of Buddha, and it was no light thing to see the foundation
of his hope undermined. The eclipse had started an ever-widening rift.
He began, as never before, to examine the credentials of Christianity.
He soon learned to read Siamese in order to gain access to our
Scriptures. We read the Gospel of John together. He studied the Shorter
Catechism. He had a logical mind, and it was never idle. Whenever we
met, if only for a few moments, he always had some question to ask me,
or some new doubt to solve. When tempted to doubt, he fell back on the
eclipse, saying, “I know my books were wrong there. If the Gospel system
seems too good to be true in that it offers to pardon and cleanse and
adopt guilty sinners, and give them a title to a heavenly inheritance,
it is simply because it is divine, and not human.” While the truth
dawned gradually on his mind, the full vision seemed to be sudden. His
own account was that afterwards, when walking in the fields and
pondering the subject, it all became very plain to him. His doubts all
vanished. Henceforth for him to live was Christ; and he counted all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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