Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/402

 alone. Mr. Carrington remained at Bangkok, and while acquiring the language gave valuable assistance in the school.

At the Laos mission the brethren had much to encourage them. The king of Cheung Mai had granted them a spacious lot of ground on the river-bank for their homes; the gospel truth they preached was working in the hearts of those who heard it, and one, whose heart had been won before, when the falsity of his own sacred books' scientific teachings had been shown by the fulfillment of the foreign teachers' prediction of the great eclipse, was brave enough to renounce Buddhism and receive Christian baptism. The name of this first convert was Nan Intah. Others too were brought out of darkness into light, till in the first seven months of the year 1869 seven converts were baptized.

But a storm was gathering, soon to burst upon them. The king, a brave warrior, but a narrow-minded, arbitrary, superstitious ruler, who had never comprehended their true errand, though apparently friendly, when he saw they were beginning to draw his people over to the new faith determined to uproot it from his dominions. He first attempted to get rid of the missionaries themselves, forwarding a complaint against them to the authorities at Bangkok and requesting their removal. The nature of the charge so illustrates the superstition of the people and the