e Shunammite was probably so smitten
as he watched his father at work with the reapers. So the promise is
given to God's people more than once: "The sun shall not smite thee by
day." "They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun
smite them." The martyrs who pass through the great tribulation "shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on
them, nor any heat."

There are fewer references in Scripture to the vivifying effects of
sunlight upon vegetation than we might have expected. The explanation is
possibly to be found in the terrible perversion men had made of the
benefits which came to them by means of this action of sunlight, by
using them as an excuse for plunging into all kinds of nature-worship.
Yet there are one or two allusions not without interest. As already
mentioned, "the precious fruits brought forth by the sun" were promised
to the tribe of Joseph, whilst the great modern discovery that nearly
every form of terrestrial energy is derived ultimately from the energy
of the sun's rays gives a most striking appropriateness to the imagery
made use of by St. James.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the Father of Lights, with Whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning."

God, that is to say, is the true Sun, the true Origin of all Lights, the
true bestower of every good and perfect gift. The word rendered
"variableness," is a technical word, used by ourselves in modern English
as "parallax," and employed in the Septuagint Version to denote the
revolutions of the heavenly bodies, described in the thirty-eighth
chapter of the book of Job, as "the ordinances of the heavens." With the
natural sun, therefore, there is "variableness," that is to say, real or
apparent change of place; there is none with God. Neither is there with
Him any darkness of eclipse; any "shadow" caused as in the case of the
material sun, by the "turning" of earth and moon in their orbits. The
knowledge of "the alternations of the turning of the sun," described in
the Book of Wisdom as a feature of the learning of Solomon, was a
knowledge of the laws of this "variableness" and "turning"; especially
of the "turning" of its rising and setting points at the two solstices;
and St. James may well have had that passage in his mind when he wrote.
For Science deals with the knowledge of things that change, as they
change, and of their c