2. As the sun by his returning influences causes clouds and storms and cold to fly before it, so doth Jesus Christ, the cold, tempests, and clouds of the soul.
In the winter season, the heavens are frequently overcast with clouds that hide the pleasing light of the sun; the air is disturbed with winds, storms and tempests, and all things are chilled with frost and cold. The rivers and streams are shut up with ice, the earth is covered with snow, and all things look dreadful; but when the sun returns with its warming influences, the heavens are cleared of dark clouds and the air stilled from tempests, the ice and snow and cold are fled.
So the souls of men in their natural state are like winter, perpetually disturbed with the storms of lust and vice, and a raging conscience; their souls are all beclouded with sin and spiritual darkness. But when Christ comes with his warming influences, things are far otherwise: their minds are calm and serene, warmed with holiness and religion, and the clear sunshine of spiritual comfort.
3. As when the sun returns in the spring, the frozen earth is opened, mollified and softened, so by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness the stony, rocky, adamantine hearts of men are thawed, mellowed and softened, and made fit to receive the seeds of grace.
In the winter, the face of the earth is closed and shut up as a stone, unfit for anything to be sown in it, but is loosened in the spring by the warm beams of the sun; so [is] the heart in its natural state frozen and like the stony ground, so that the seeds of God's Word take no rooting in it, but is as if we should cast seed upon the bare rock.
But when Christ melts the heart by shining upon it, the seed then sinks into it and takes root and begins to germinate and spring forth.
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