For my part I don’t care much whether we get out of this or not. God knows I could never live as I am.”
“Do you know, Maurice, I find it very hard to believe you are as you claim to be, now that the sunlight has come. In the gloom of the cavern I was able to work myself up to it, but now it is a different thing.”
“I wish to God it was different with me then! If you could only change places with me for a couple of minutes! You’d know all about it if you could.”
“Thank you! I’m bad enough off as I am! You were able to eat that rice though. Last night you told me that your friend Merzilla didn’t like rice.”
“Don’t—don’t, for heaven’s sake, George! Your lightness of speech wounds me dreadfully. Have you forgotten that divine creature who rose up before you last night? George, you and I no longer are as other men. To deny the existence of the spirit now as you denied in our old discussions would be but a sorry stand for a man of your common sense to take. Look at me, George! As God hears me, I never expect to see another earthly sunrise; yet I am happy in the thought, for how much brighter—ah, how much brighter—the rise into the light of the heavenly sun, the Lord of life and light itself; the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end!”
A rapt expression had now come upon his countenance, he stretched his arms open toward the sun, and bowed low before it just as we saw Mr. Mirrikh do on the tower of the Nagkon Wat.
Recalled in a measure to my former mental condition by the allusions to the happenings of those strange moments, I spoke quite calmly, even lightly, in reply.
“What? You haven’t turned sun worshipper, Maurice?”
“We are all sun worshippers on Mars, George. As the natural sun rules the visible world, so does the spiritual sun, which is the creative power of the universe, rule the spheres innumerable of the world unseen. Sun worship was the worship of all primitive peoples, because they possessed knowledge in matters spiritual of which we have no conception. Thus knowing the harmony existing between things natural and things spiritual, they bowed before the natural sun as the visible representation of the universal Creator, and this even while they worshipped his attributes, his differing aspects toward mankind, under a thousand forms.”
