“Yes. But they couldn’t be called lights if they were not like the sun. All kinds of lights must come from the Father of Lights. Now the Father of the sun must be like the sun, and, indeed of all material things, the sun is likest to God. We pray to God to shine upon us and give us light. If God did not shine into our hearts, they would be dead lumps of cold. We shouldn’t care for anything whatever.”
“Then, father, God never stops shining upon us. He wouldn’t be like the sun if he did. For even in winter the sun shines enough to keep us alive.”
“True, my boy. I am very glad you understand me. In all my experience I have never yet known a man in whose heart I could not find proofs of the shining of the great Sun. It might be a very feeble wintry shine, but still he was there. For a human heart though, it is very dreadful to have a cold, white winter like this inside it, instead of a summer of colour and warmth and light. There’s the poor old man we are going to see. They talk of the winter of age: that’s all very well, but the heart is not made for winter. A man may have the snow on his roof, and merry children about his hearth; he may have grey hairs on his head, and the very gladness of summer in his bosom. But this old man, I am afraid, feels wintry cold within.”
“Then why doesn’t the Father of Lights shine more on him and make him warmer?”
“The sun is shining as much on the earth in the winter as in the summer: why is the earth no warmer?”
“Because,” I answered, calling up what little astronomy I knew, “that part of it is turned away from the sun.”
“Just so. Then if a man turns himself away from the Father of Lights—the great Sun—how can he be warmed?”
“But the earth can’t help it, father.”
“But the man can, Ranald. He feels the cold, and he knows he can turn to the light. Even this poor old man knows it now. God is shining on him—a wintry way—or he would not feel the cold at all; he would be only a lump of ice, a part of the very winter itself. The good of what warmth God gives him is, that he feels cold. If he were all cold, he couldn’t feel cold.”
“Does he want to turn to the Sun, then, father?”