“Gradually he led the horse, still prancing wildly, away past the throne”
“‘Well done, little stable boy!’ cried the King, stepping from his golden dais and patting the beautiful animal’s neck. ‘But tell me, little friend, why was he afraid?’
“‘Sire,’ said the boy, bending his knee, ‘’twas his own black shadow on the marble floor he feared. I did but turn his face to the sun, and the shadow is behind him, where he sees it not.’
“How do you boys go through your day?” asked the old Bishop, looking at each one with his keen, kind eyes, that twinkled like little blue jewels in his wrinkled face. “Do you go through the day filled with discontent?—trying first to avoid doing this disagreeable thing, and then that one? Afraid of a little trouble, a little pain, a little hardship? Do you pull away every time your conscience says, ‘Tommy, come this way: do that’? Do you jump about and shy, and try and run away, like the white horse, when your mother has told you to do something or other? And are you always nervous—afraid of being ‘found out’? And if you are alone in the dark do you get ‘creeps,’ and think there are bogeys coming after you?”
Some of the Cubs looked down on the ground, and answered nothing. They wondered how the Bishop knew all about them, when he was a stranger.
“Do you know how I know some boys are like that?” he said at length. “You see I have not always been a Bishop, and I have not always been very, very old! Once I was a very naughty small boy, and I can still remember exactly how it felt. I used to do all those things I mentioned to you just now. In fact, I behaved like the white horse; because, you see, I was looking at my shadow—that is, at my ugly little black self, and all I wanted. I couldn’t help seeing myself all the time, and I was always discontented. Why was it the horse saw his shadow?”
“’Cos he’d got his back to the sun,” said one of the Cubs.
“Yes,” said the Bishop, “and so had I—that’s why I couldn’t help always seeing myself. And then, one day, I turned round and faced the sun; that is, I turned and fixed my eyes on God, the great, shining Sun of our life—and my own shadow fell behind me, and I forgot all about what I felt, and I wanted. And I became so happy! And I wasn’t afraid of being ‘found out’ any more. And I didn’t get creeps in the dark. And it became easy to do all the hard things, because I was facing God and doing them for Him.”
. . . . . . . .
“Wish the Bishop would come every week,” said the Cubs, when he had gone, “and we wouldn’t mind if he preached a sermon every time!”