Three Questions by a Christian and their Answers — Page 49
49 or, "The stars are like dots", or, "The moon is hiding in a cloud", or, "Though three morning hours have passed, the Sun has risen no higher than a pole", or when we speak of having eaten a plate of pilau or having drunk a glass of sherbat ; on hearing all these expressions, no one wonders how the moon of the first night can be as thin as a hair, or how the stars can be as small as dots, or how the moon can hide behind a cloud, or how can the Sun—which is so fast that it covers thousands of miles a day—travel no more than the length of a pole in the span of three hours; nor can eating a plate of pilau or drinking a glass of sherbat , lead anyone to think that the plate and glass have also been swallowed; rather, everyone would understand that only the rice and water contained in them have been consumed. Even an opponent, if he is wise, will not like anyone to ob- ject to things that are so obvious. I have myself heard from some fair-minded Christians that people who raise such ob- jections are either totally ignorant or completely biased. When the same metaphors and idioms have been used in Di- vine revelation, would it be fair to take them literally and to make them a target of criticism? In such a case, not a single Divine Scripture would escape unscathed. Do not sailors, when travelling in a ship or a steamer, observe, day after day, the spectacle of the Sun rising from water and setting into water? And do they not describe its rising and setting to one another exactly as they see it? If, during such a discus- sion, one was to start countering them with arguments relating to astronomy and the solar system, he would only be