•* NeiD-Clmrch Popular Series, [No. 9. TKE GARDEJ^ of EDE]^: GIVING THE SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION AND TRUE MEANING OF THE STORY. BY Rev. JOHN DOUGHTY, Author of "The #okld Feyond." ' PHILADELPHIA- SWEDEXBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 900 Chestnut Street. * f r t ' f f c « c c • c COLLINS, PRINTER. G4FTOF iiancrott LIBRARY PREFACE. [JJ^T the present day there is not much openly vfe^ avowed infidelity in Christian lands. But '^^^^^ there are reasons for believing that there exists a vast amount of it in a latent form, and no inconsiderable portion even in the churches them- selves. And since it prevails among some of the most thoughtful and honest people, the questions, What is the cause of it ? and How is it to be effectually remedied? deserve the serious consideration of every friend of mankind, and especially of every teacher of the Christian religion. The chief cause undoubtedly is, the mistaken idea in regard to the Sacred Scripture and the method bv which its true meaning is to be elicited, which has become so prevalent through- out the bounds of Christendom. This idea is, that the written Word has but one meaning, and that, the meaning conveyed to the natural under- iv Preface. standing- by the natural or sensuous interpretation of the words of Scripture. By this false but prevalent^method, the Bible is reduced to the level of a human composition, is robbed of its Divine spirit and life, and much of it made to teach what every rational mind sees to be very unreasonable — some of it unintelligible and even puerile. No wonder, therefore, that questions like the following", which Mr. Ingersoll is reported to have asked in a recent lecture, should arise in many thoughtful minds : " Is there any intelligent man or woman now in the world, who believes in the Garden of Eden story [literally interpreted] ? " " Does any human being now believe that God made man of dust, and a woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the middle of it ? Was n't there room outside of the garden to put his tree if He did n't want people to eat his apples ? If I did n't want a man to eat my fruit, I would not put him in my orchard." What, then, is the remedy ? We know of but one ; and that is, to teach people the real nature and purpose of Holy Scripture — to show them wherein its divinity consists, what is the law that Preface. "^ governs in a truly divine composition, and what the method therefore by which its true meaning is to be unfolded. All of which is so fully and clearly revealed in the writings of Emanuel Swe- denborg, that every one who carefully and prayer- fully examines these writings, is sure to see it. And the Christian ministers who refuse or neg- lect to do so, are left without excuse,— and will continue, however unintentionally and uncon- sciously, to foster the growing skepticism of our times. The purpose of this little volume is, to lift the reader's mind above the sensuous plane of thought, and to show him, by a method of interpretation applicable alike to all other parts of Scripture, the spiritual and true meaning of that old Garden of Eden story. 1* CONTENTS. I. PAGE The Garden 9 n. The Two Trees 26 III. The W03IAN 44 lY. The Serpent 61 V. The Forbidden Fruit 77 VI. The Curse 94 YII. The Expulsion 110 YIII. The FLA3IING Savord 126 IX. The Eestoration 141 vu The Garden of EdeiN^. I. THE GARDEN. And the Lord God planted a garden cast- tvard in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had formed.— Gen. ii. 8. JHE figures of the Bible put together by the rigid rules of arithmetic, inform us that the world was created about six thousand years ago ; but science with its unanswerable logic fixes the time of its creation some hundreds of thou- sands of years earlier. The letter of Genesis de- clares that it was spoken into existence by the fiat of an almighty God, and completed in seven days ; but science asserts that countless ages elapsed from the beginning of the earth to the period when it became fit for human life. The Bible seems to teach that we are all, of whatever color or conformation, descendants of the one man, Adam; but science casts a doubt upon this ap- parent teaching, which almost amounts to cer- tainty. Hence religion and science are in con- flict ; and the skeptical mind which is born to 9 10 27^6 Garden of Eden. dcnbt, and bap f!(5u(;a;tesl itself to deny what is not scientifically prO'VeCi, condemns religion and sides with scienbe, and floats Off, full often honestly enough, from its own standpoint, into the un- known seas of unbelief and the dark ocean of infidelity. And common sense comes in to have its say. The Bible seems to hinge the whole fate of the human race, for countless ages, on the eating of the fruit of a single tree by one human pair. It seems to place our heavenl}^ Father in the posi* tion of having set a snare for the first created man and woman, which they were not endued with strength to resist. It presents to us a talk- ing serpent with powers of apt persuasion. It affirms that the man and his wife were so blind that they could not even behold their own naked- ness until the eating of the forbidden fruit brought it to their sight. It makes sorrow and toil and pain and death for all mankind, even into the un- known ages, dependent on a single act of two untutored individuals, of which their myriad chil- dren were all innocent. Thus the narrative of the Garden of Eden be- comes so confused and incredible, that common sense is either forced to give way to a childlike faith in what is written, or to throw to the winds all confidence in Bible history. But can true sci- ence and true religion ever part company ? Can The Garden, 11 common sense and revelation be really at variance ? Would the God who made all science, have given a religion which denies its plainest propositions and ignores its most unquestioned truths ? Or would He who endowed his creatures with Avhat- ever common sense they may possess, have re- vealed a written Word which could not stand the test of common sense ? Skeptics and believers alike will answer, No ! The trouble usuallv arises from a mistake on the part of both scientists and theologians. Be- cause he cannot find the name of God as the Maker written plainly on the face of the stars, the scientist doubts the existence of an intelli- gent Creator. And because he finds the conclu- sions of scientific research to be at variance with some literal statements of the Bible, the theologian denies the plainest propositions and facts of sci- ence. The scientist wants to find material proofs for spiritual things, or sensuous evidence for that which is above the realm of sense ; and the theo- logian would have spiritual evidence for that which is merely natural, or proof from revelation of that which is plainly written on the rocks or disclosed by the movements of the stars before his eyes. Both these classes have a lesson to learn. Astronomy and geology and cosmogony are taught in the volume of nature, not in the writ- ten Word. Immortalitv and heaven and God are 12 The Garden of Eden. revealed in the Bible, and not in the rocks and stars. The scientist need not doubt the Scrip- ture, because its natural science is at variance with earthly knowledge ; the theologian need not fear the progress of science, lest it should overturn revelation. The Bible is purely spiritual. Its spiritual teachings are in harmonj'' with all true science and philosophy ; but in itself, its object, and the genuine intent of all its statements, it is purely spiritual. Man can gain natural truth by the use of his eyes and his natural understanding. But he can obtain spiritual truth only by revela- tion and that inner consciousness of the verity of spiritual things, which intuitively grasps its teach- ings when they come before the mind in the form of revelation. If, then, the Bible in its intent and meaning is purely spiritual, why does it profess to give us a scientific account of the creation and a historic record of the earth's earliest events? The Bible does not anywhere profess to teach science, phil- osophy, or history as natural things. Its object was well expressed by Paul, who commended Timothy for his knowledge of the holy Scriptures, because they were able to make him wdse unto salvation, and added: ''All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, or reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- eousness ; that the man of God may be perfect, The Garden. 13 thoroughly furnished unto all good works " (2 Tim. iii. 16, It). The Bible professes to teach righteousness and salvation, and all truths about heaven and God that lead to these. If there is more than this it is incidental. True, the Bible is replete with the history, tradition and laws of the Jews. But then how often it is asserted that these are types of spiritual things. It recounts, for example, the story of the building of the temple ; but our Lord says that the temple was a tjj3e of his humanity. It tells how the wife of Lot looked back to burning Sodom, and became a pillar of salt ; but He says that this is a type of the fate of those who, having put their hand to the plough in religious life, look back to the world and self. It repeats the tale of Jonah ; but Jonah being three days and nights in the belly of the fish, was a type, says Christ, of his own entombment and resur- rection. It sets forth how Israel was fed in the wilderness by manna ; but the story of the manna, according to Jesus, shows forth the lesson how the Lord will, at all times, feed the spiritual Israel, his Church, with goodness and with grace. The serpent was lifted up in the wilder- ness ; but this was a type of the elevation and glorification of the Son of Man. These things our Lord plainly says and posi- tively sets forth ; and we thence learn that all 2 1-i The Garden of Eden. Biblical history is typical, symbolical, represen- tative or correspondential of the Lord, of his wavs with man, of his work for man's salvation, and of human regeneration. Paul also tells us much concerning these repre- sentations, and gives many explanations of their typical nature. We may only refer to the fact here, as leading up to and pointing out the truth, that whereinsoever the Scripture does not directly and in plain language teach spiritual truth, its histories and narrations are given as types and symbols of spiritual things, as parables or alle- gories of spiritual life. This is wherein the holiness of Scripture consists. It may use for this purpose the history, the traditions, or the natural science of the people to whom it was first given. Whether these be strictly true or not, is a question in no wise pertinent to the issue. When Paul asserts, for instance, that the life of Abraham and his family as set forth in the Biblical narrative, is an allegory (Gal. iv. 22-31), the question is not whether there is any historical error in the account, but whether it is perfect as an allegory of spiritual life.- And w^hen the same apostle declares that the tabernacle to the most minute details of its construction, and the Levitical law with all its sacrifices, offerings, and curious commands, were shadows of heavenly things (Heb. vii., viii., ix., x.), it is not the ques- The Garden^ lb tion whether anythino- was left out of the Mosaic narrative, or whether there were inconsistencies therein which modern ingenuity fails to harmo- nize, but whether they are perfectly expressed as typos and shadows of good things to come in a spiritual way, for men of a later and more spiritual age. The Xew Church takes its stand upon this ground : that the Scripture of God is given for purely spiritual purposes ; that it is written throughout as a parable of spiritual things and an allegorical code of spiritual instruction, in types, sacred figures, or correspondences ; that it is mainly true in its historical details, but that, as it was not given to teach history or science, scientific inaccuracy, or any other objection which may be raised on the purely natural plane, no more mars its perfection as the inspired Word of God, than would it invalidate the spiritual authority of the parable of the Prodigal Son, could it be incontestably proven that no such individual ever lived, behaved riotously, fed swine, repented, or returned. In this view it is proposed to take up the his- tory of the Garden of Eden. This narrative has been given as a spiritual allegory. Its construc- tion, its peculiarities of diction, and the difficulties which surround the assumption that it is the record of actual facts set down concerning a 16 The Garden of Eden. historical man and woman, point to it as a spec- imen of divine parable, beautiful in its simplicity, perfect in its symmetry, harmonious in its state- ments. It is of no consequence how inconsistent or inaccurate it may be as a historical record ; as a parable it is perfect, and that is enough. The Divine Mind here as in other parts of the Word, seeks to teach not natural but spiritual history ; not the outward actions of races, but the inward workings of hearts. It treats not of changes of locality, but of alterations of state ; not of the loss of a natural abode, but of the forfeiture of a spiritual home. The outer husk of the narrative is temporal and carnal ; its inward life is moral and spiritual. The first thought that suggests itself in the consideration of this topic, is in reference to the etymology of the word " Eden." It is a Hebrew expression signifying delight or happiness. And when we consider that the term garden is often applied in the Scripture to man's state of spiritual intelligence, or to that frame of mind in which he readily comprehends and accepts spiritual things, that this peculiar state of mind is alluded to as a garden, likened to a garden, called a garden, we have no trouble in arriving at the truth that the Garden of Eden was man's spiritually intelligent state of love and happiness in the early age of the world. For was it not said in reference to The Garden. 17 the Jews, spiritually unfertile and dry as their religious state was, '* Ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water " (Isa. i. 8) ? — that is, as an intelligent mind not fertilized by any conception of spiritual truth ? And when the restoration of the Church was foretold, and its promised fertile and fruitful condition set forth in glowing figures, was it not said by the Lord, '' Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, Avhose waters fail not " (Isa. Iviii. 11; ? Eden is also mentioned in other parts of Scrip- ture. It is generally used, however, in reference to a spiritual condition, and not as a place. Thus the Lord, through Ezekiel, rebukes the prince of Tyre for his arrogance, and for his assumption of the honors of divine worship. He holds up before him the perfectness of his walk with God until iniquity lay hold upon him ; and how much lower would be his fall, because, having been once perfect, he has now, in his pride, proclaimed him- self a god. In reference to his first state the Lord says, '* Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God" (Ez. xxviii. 13). Now the prince of Tyre had never been in any literal garden called Eden. But he had followed the Lord ; he had loved and worshiped Him ; he had feasted on spiritual in- telligence ; he had been, spiritually speaking, in Eden, the garden of God. Eden was his religious 2- B 18 The Garde7i of Eden. state ; it was his state of love for God ; it was, if you please, the kingdom of God in which he once had dwelt— not locally, but as to mind and heart. This same figure is used by the Lord in speak- ing of Assyria, as again given in the prophet Ezekiel. He extols the Assyrian for what he had been, as a people, and condemns him for what he then was. Depicting, in the language of correspondence, his former high spiritual estate. He says: "Behold the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and of high stature. Not any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches ; so that all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied him" (Ez. xxxi. 3, 8, 9). The whole description, and much more too voluminous to quote, is purely symbolic. The cedar tree is the Assyrian man or mind, with its peculiarly rational tone as it was in its highest and best religious state. The trees of Eden are those men or minds who were in the love of the Lord ; and the garden of God in which they were planted, is that state of spiritual intelligence in which are all who love the Lord, his ways, his truths, and his life. And therefore it is that Isaiah, in proph- esying concerning, the future spiritual condition of the Church, declares that the Lord '' will make The Garden. 19 her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord ; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody " (li. 3). How beautiful a description of the wonderful change that shall transform the reli2,'ious wilderness of Judaism into the Eden of Christianity — the desert of reli^-ious ignorance into the garden of spiritual intelli- gence ! He who attains this state of superabounding love, is in Eden ; he w^ho can see spiritual truth as clearly as he understands natural truth, is in the Lord's garden. Eden, as a sacred symbol, is love, with all the blessings that follow in its train ; a garden, as a sacred symbol, is spiritual intelli- gence, with all the joys that follow its possession. And our early ancestors — no matter where they lived, nor bv the side of what rivers, nor in what meridian, clime or zone — were in the Garden of Eden ; not because they were here or there, but because they were in a state of love and inno- cence and joy and bliss that no tongue can ex- press ; because they were in a state of conscious- ness of the Lord's presence, of comprehension of the things of divine wisdom, and of conception of all that pertains to eternal life and its joys, of which none but dwellers in that garden can form the least idea. Perhaps they were simple in what we call worldly ways ; illiterate in what 20 The Garden of Eden. we term letters ; without the luxuries which we have learned to love ; and innocent of the very knowledge of evil ; good in all the Lord calls good, and wise in the wisdom of holy life, beyond all that this world, as it now is, can imagine. But was not Adam a single individual ? Care- ful consideration does not so read the Scripture. Adam is the Hebrew term for man ; not man a male individual, for there is another Hebrew word for that ; but man collectively -as a class or race. Adam means mankind. It could not mean an individual, for in the original it is a collective noun. True, the translators of the Bible, having imbibed the old tradition of Adam as the sole progenitor of the human race, have sometimes translated it as though it were the name of an individual. But they have been compelled in other places to give the real meaning, or spoil the sense of the text. Thus, when it is said in the first chapter of Genesis, ''And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness " (Gen. i. 26), the original Hebrew word is Adam. But it would not do to translate it Adam there, as the name of an individual, because the text proceeds thus : "And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea," etc. And the next verse continues in the same strain : " So God created man," literally, "God created Adam, in his ov/n image, in the image of God created He The Garden. 21 him ; male and female created He them. And God blessed them ; and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it." Adam, then, is a collective noun. Adam was created male and female ; and there were a num- ber of them, for the term them certainly means more than one. Adam was the primitive race. He was placed in Eden, not as a single man in a solitary garden, but as a race of men originally broufrht into the kino'dom of God. His state or condition was called Eden, because he was loving and therefore happy ; a garden, because he was truly intelligent and spiritually wise. Adam (that is, the human race) would be in Eden to- day, if all men loved the Lord supremely, and perceived and appreciated the heavenly intelli- gence with which their Maker seeks to endow them. The history of Eden is, therefore, an account, in allegorical form, of the spiritual condition of the early inhabitants of earth. Each word in the narrative is a symbol, and a perfect one. Inconsistencies in the letter disappear when their spiritual meaning is discerned. Briefly let us glance at a few of the attributes of this wonderful garden. It was planted east- ward in Eden. In sacred symbolism the east is where the Lord is. Spiritually, we are looking 22 The Garden of Eden. eastward when we look to Him. The garden w^as, therefore, said to be planted eastward in Eden, because the religion of those people all centered in the Lord. Their love, their innocence, their joy and gladness were recognized as from the Lord, were rejoiced in as the Lord's, were manifested as the Lord's life flowing through them. The g^arden, therefore — their spiritual wisdom and intelligence — was planted in Eden, their love and spiritual joy, eastward, in the full consciousness of their possessing both from the Lord and in his presence. ''And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." Our Lord very often, when on earth, likened the ground to the mind. It is another sacred symbol. When He likened himself to a sower sowing the seeds of Gospel truth, the shallow soil was the shallow mind, the stony ground w^as the callous mind impervious to spiritual ideas, the good ground was the fruitful mind. The ground here out of which the trees grew, was the ground of the mind. The trees are the mind's perceptions. Sometimes this word is used for the man himself or the mind itself; but it really means the mind's religious percep- tions. "■ Every tree that bringeth forth good fruit " of which our Lord spake, means not only every man or every mind, but specifically every The Garden. 23 perception of true life which the mind has, that goes forth into good life, or bears spiritual fruit. So all perceptions of the true, which sprang forth in the ground of the minds of those people, which could be pleasant to the sight (mental sight is the understanding ; pleasant to the sight, is agreeable to the understanding) or good for food — good, that is, for spiritual nourishment — were given by the Lord to a people so loving and so true. The river that went out of Eden to water the garden, is a curious expression. How, literalh^, could the river 2:0 out of Eden to water the garden, if, literally, Eden was the garden ? Nat- urally, it could not ; spiritually, it could. The river is the symbol of wisdom considered as flow- ing into the mind from the fountain of wisdom, God. It would be pleasant to trace this beautiful symbol through its many phases in the Word. Suffice it here to allude to the river of water of life, which in the Revelation is described as pro- ceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. The river of Eden and the river of the New Jerusalem are one. The spirit of wisdom, its fountain-head being the Lord, proceeds from the love of spiritual things within the mind, and the delight in pursuing them. Without a love for it and a delight in its pursuit, there is no wisdom of anv kind. Hence the river went forth from Eden — wisdom springing from love and its de- 24 The Garden of Eden. light. And it went forth to water the garden, or to give life and vigor to human intelligence. And this river is said to have parted into four heads, and to have watered four regions, Havilah, Ethiopia, Assyria and the land of the Euphrates, — not because any literal rivers went forth to water natural lands, but because the mind has four regions to be influenced by reason and to be guided by intelligence. These are the will, the understanding, the rationality and the memory. They are spiritual lands — lands of the mind and not of matter; and the names of those particular countries are so applied, because they afterwards became sacred symbols in accordance with the predominating genius of their people, and in that sense are elsewhere used in the Scriptures. So geographers may give up their disputes in the effort to find impossible rivers w^atering impos- sible lands and flowing from an impossible Eden ; for Eden is in all places where man is of heavenly mould, and its garden and trees and rivers are simply descriptive, in ancient symbolism, of the minds and hearts of a people beloved of the Lord. Even the gold of Haviiah they may cease to search for, as we are told in the text that the gold of that land was good. For Havilah was the land of the will ; and goodness — good thoughts, good desires and good deeds — was the golden will of those celestial people who lived in olden times. The Garden. 2o To this era, all tradition points. From Egypt, India, Greece and Rome, the oracles of the an- cient chronicles tell us in glowing syllables of the Golden Age. It was the Avorld's young morn of happy innocence. Why is it set forth in Scrip- ture ? To teach the Church what it has been, and what it may again become. That which has been, may be. That which has once been lost, may once again be found. And the life that man has lived, may be lived by man again. We may all dwell in Eden ; and the narrative of the garden of spiritual joy, stands as a hope, a promise, a spiritual prophecy of what may again be realized here on earth. May the time speed on when Christianity shall find its Eden once more, where the sole delight shall be — with love that shall never weary and wisdom that will not die — to dress and keep, in its eternal beauty, that sacred garden of the Lord I 3 II. THE TWO TREES. And out of the ground made the Lord God to groiv every tret that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; tJie tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.— Gen. ii. 9. 'HE very first principle in our consideration of whatever relates to the Garden of Eden, lies in the truth that it is a state and not a place ; that the entire narrative is an allegory, and not a literal history. Eden is in the heart. The garden is of the mind. The second chapter of Genesis describes not a natural occurrence which took place in a particular earthly locality, but the spiritual condition of the most ancient Church. Adam means not one individual, but all mankind. The garden was a symbol of the intelli- gence in which they lived ; Eden, of the sphere of love and joy amid which they moved. And Adam in the Garden of Eden, is an allegory of the state of love, happiness and spiritual intelligence in which the Lord placed the early fathers of the human race. This was the lesson we drew from the text in our last discourse. This is the plain inference to be deduced from what the Scripture elsewhere affirms of its own method of interpreta- 26 The Two Trees. 27 tion ; from what the Lord's Word elsewhere testi- fies concerning Eden and the garden that bore its name. This method of calling certain conditions of life or states of mind by, as it were, local names, is a characteristic of all Scripture, and has been fol- lowed by the poets of all time as peculiarly beau- tiful and expressive. A verse in Moore's Lalla Rookh, illustrates this poetic peculiarity, borrowed from the age of symbolism. "There 's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two, that are linked in one heav'nly tie. With heart never changing and brow never cold, Love on through all ills and love on till they die. One hour of a passion so sacred, is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss ; And, oh ! if there he an Elysium on earth, It is this, it is this." How the force of this passage would be destroyed were we to imagine Elysium as used here, to be a particular province or town in which all young lovers dwelt. It is descriptive, on the contrary, of a state of love and bliss. But should we sub- stitute, in place of the idea of a sentimental pas- sion between two young hearts, that of a condition of perfect love to the Lord, with all the joy, peace and innocence with which that state is so closely bound, and close a couplet poetically descriptive thereof with the exclamation, 28 The Garden of Eden. "And, oh ! if there be an Eden on earth, It is tliis, it is this," we would get the precise idea of the manner in which Eden is to be understood in Scripture. This is a conception that must be thoroughly imbedded in our minds and naturalized to our thoughts, if we would read this portion of the Bible aright. So thinking and so intuitively grasping the spirit of the narrative, we are pre- pared to follow its details to their legitimate con- clusion. Now in this view it becomes evident that, as Eden is not a place nor the garden a locality, the two trees which play so important a part in the narrative must be something other than their literal import would indicate. If the Garden of Eden is a phrase indicative of the state of the people of the Lord's first Church on earth, these trees must, in some way, be further descriptive of that state. Their very names indicate this. A tree of life — a natural tree that would bear fruit, the eating whereof would render our ex- istence on earth one of endless duration — is a thing that we cannot comprehend. To suppose that any natural fruit could nourish our souls to eternal life, in the higher spiritual meaning of that term, would tax our credulity still more largely. But as this garden is of the mind, to find some mental attributes of which these trees The Two Trees, 29 are symbolic, or to which they correspond, were not so very difficult. That in ancient times the tree of life was used in a figurative sense, is evident from the manner in which it was employed by Solomon. Thus he says in his Proverbs, ''Happy is the man that findeth wisdom ; . . . she is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her ; and happy is every one that retaineth her " (iii. 13, 18). And again, " Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life " (lb. xiii. 12). The wise man, in accordance with the usage of his day derived from a higher antiquity, applied this term to anything that gave new life or vigor to understanding, heart, thought or desire. A tree of life Avas that, whatever it might be, from which mental or moral life refreshed or renewed itself. We have no warrant for believing that the term in olden times was ever thought of except as a symbol. 'Certainly all references to it in the Bible disagree with the literal idea and sustain the figurative. But this use of the term, as seen in the quotations from Solomon, was on a some- what lower plane than that in which the Lord uses it in the books He has given in his own name. What He says, while it has a mental and moral, has also a spiritual import. The whole Word of God in its inward meanings, announces spiritual truths. a* 30 The Garden of Eden. This meaning may be gathered from the book of Revelation. Here it is our Lord who com- mands John to write, and who dictates what he shall write ; and the words convey strictly divine meanings in all their forms of expression. And He commands this to be written to the Church of Ephesus : " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God " (Rev. ii. t). Here the tree of life clearly indicates something high and holy. He that is entitled to partake of this tree, is he that has overcome. Overcome what ? Why, the flesh and the world, self and sensuality, pride and passion ; who has, in fact, trodden under foot everything, of whatever nature or description, which impedes the perfect life — sin in act, in thought, in desire. He who does this, is he who lives in love of the Lord ; who lives in the Lord and from the Lord ; who has the Lord's life inscribed on the very nerves and tissues of his spirit. Such an one is a living embodiment of God's law and love. He knows that it is he who hath the Lord's commandments and doeth them, that loveth Him. And He has and does, and therefore loves. We use this term love a great deal. What does it mean ? It means that the love or affec- tion from which a person does his daily work, not only tinges the whole character, but gives color The Two Trees. 31 and quality to the entire life. As Swedenborg expresses it, "Love is the life of man." One may do a good act from a bad love. He may live an outvrardly good life from inwardly bad motives. He may be gentle and kind and give freely to charitable purposes, and be honest in business, and say many prayers, because he seeks honor and praise from men. He may do many good things from the love of approbation, or from the love of advancement, or from the love of money, or from any other selfish love. Now a good act done from an unworthy love, so far as the man is concerned, is spurious. The love from w^hich he speaks or acts, stamps the character of the word or deed, rendering it good or bad according to the quality of the love. But when our Lord said : '' If ye love me, keep my commandments ;" and "he that hath my com- mandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me," He told the whole story of love to God, and gave the expression its true definition. The Lord's commandments teach the pure and perfect life. They are instinct with honesty, sincerity, truth- fulness, generosity, unselfishness, purity, spiritu- ality. They ignore base and low motives ; they exalt that which is noble and lovely. They do not debar us from all sensual gratification, but they place sense and self under the absolute con- trol of the spiritual faculties. Love to the Lord 32 The Garden of Eden. is love of all things good and true, because these constitute his very Self. He taught us this kind of life in a thousand precepts, and commanded us to keep them. If we love the Lord's teachings, we love Him. If we love his commandments and practice them in our daily lives, we love Him. If we love his character and example, we love Him. If we love to have, his spirit in the heart as a prompting motive in all we speak and do, we love Him. Love to the Lord is good as a sentimental emo- tion ; but if it is nothing more, it is comparatively- worthless. In truth it is a very practical thing. It is something that lives in the life, gives tone to the character, buys and sells, works in the hands, renders the muscles vigorous, energizes the facul- ties, imparts truthfulness to prayer and sincerity to worship. When love to the Lord is the prin- ciple from which we live and work, then life is genuine. "We live righteously because from the love of right, and do good works from the love of good. God is righteousness itself — goodness itself ; and he who loves the right and the good for their own sake, loves God — loves Him who infills the soul with their spirit. If all men had this spirit, the world would again be an Eden, and all would be living on the fruit of the tree of life. For Eden, as we have learned, is this state of love ; but the tree of life- is that love as The Two Trees. 33 the very life of the heart. Eden is the state of peace, innocence and joy with which the soul is suffused, and which it carries with it in all the circumstances and vicissitudes of life, in all its labors and burdens, in all its duties and amuse- ments. But the tree of life is that love as the fountain within the heart whence spring the spirit of goodness and purity of motive which give the life this state and tone. The tree of life I Love to God ! Let us under- stand this fully. Is not the Lord as a sun to the spirit ? Does not the Scripture tell us this dis- tinctlv ? Flows He not in with an influence on mind and heart, with the spirit of understanding and the warmth of love, in a manner similar to that in which the natural sun operates upon the earth with his light and heat ? Do we not speak of the light of truth and the warmth of love as real things ? Yea, the Lord, as the central Sun of the world of spirit and mind, flows in with his light into the understanding and with his love into the will. Then when it is said, '' The Lord God is a sun and shield ; the Lord will give grace and glory," we cling to the sentiment in no merely metaphorical sense ; we recognize the un- seen Divinity as the fountain whence pour, as real things, the grace of love into the heart and the glory of spiritual wisdom into the under- standing. C 34 The Garden of Eden. If, then, love is an implantation of the Lord's own spirit within the heart — true love, I mean — w^e see what a glorious tree of life it is as it takes root in the ground of the spirit, growls in vigor and expands in strength, until the whole life feeds upon its fruit and nourishes itself with its invig- orating juices. For ''out of the ground," it is said, made the Lord God to grow these trees ; and out of the ground of man's spirit is it, that the tree of life and its opposite spring forth. It is noteworthy that this tree of life whereof the Apostle John wrote to the Ephesian Church, and of which it is declared that he who over- cometh shall eat, is said to be ''in the midst of the Paradise of God." Paradise is Eden. In the midst of Paradise, is in the center of the heart. Observe, it is not spoken of here as a matter of the past — not as a thing of six thou- sand years ago — but is predicated of the present and future. The Ephesians were after Christ's time. Had Eden been a locality of earliest geog- raphy, no Ephesian could ever have been there. Literally viewed, Eden has gone into oblivion forever ; it is obliterated from the face of the earth ; and the tree of life exists no more. But Eden, or the tree of life in its midst, was prom- ised to an Asiatic Church. Eden is in every heart that overcometh ; and he that overcometh, to-dny and forever, is in Paradise, the Eden of The Two Trees. 35 God. And he eats of the tree of life nutriment — • or in other words, he draws his spiritual, his dis- interested, heavenly life — from the love of the Lord planted in the midst of the garden of his mind. It is not from Paine or Yoltaire or Inger- soll that he draws the nourishment which feeds his mind and invigorates his heart ; from such sources he gathers the food of doubt or denial of religion and its God. It is not from the world and its mean morality or sensuous pleasure ; not from self with its soul-seducing conclusions, and cold, hard, iron logic, that he gathers the nutri- ment for his spirit's life ; but it is from the love of God and goodness, and the Word of God which reveals them. The purity, the sweetness, the in- nocence, the unselfishness of the life which the Lord commands and gives, are so grateful to his obedient heart and receptive thought and willing hand, that he will have no other fruit to appro- priate to the life of his soul. That is to say, it is not in the garden of doubt, nor in that of denial, nor in that of merely sen- suous thought, that he truly lives ; not in the garden of w^orldliness or selfishness or mere sen- suous pleasure that he dwells ; but it is in Eden, the Paradise of God, the garden of love, with its intelligence and joy. And he eats not, nor nour- ishes his soul with the fruit, of any tree that teaches or produces or strengthens a denial of the 36 TJie Garden of Eden. Lord, or an unwise or unholy life ; but he sets up the love of the Lord within his heart, or rather permits the Lord to plant it there, as the source of all true life and holy joy and serene peace — of all truth, wisdom, and intelligence. It is of the fruit of this tree that he eats, and eating lives forever. Not that his material body will live for ages unending on this earthly ball ; but his soul, wherever it works, whether in this world or the world to come, will possess that divine gift which can never be taken away, and which, in the lan- guage of the Lord, is known as eternal life. Thus ate the Eden dwellers of old, and thus had they life. Thus may we eat and live ; and all mankind may dwell again in Eden if they will. For at almost the very close of the holy Word, with well-nigh the last written utterance our Lord vouchsafes to man. He declares: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life " (Rev. xxii. 14). So we know that the tree of life is love ; that when it is said it grows in the midst of the Para- dise of God, it means in the center of the soul; that we eat of it by appropriating it in will and thought and act ; or in other words, by obeying the Lord's commands ; that so did they who lived in the first Church which the Lord planted on earth, and called by the name Adam ; and that The Two Trees. 37 we like them, so far as we love the Lord and live in and from Him, shall dwell in Eden too. And now, ye who honestly doubt the Bible as the Word of God, because this narrative in Genesis is inconsistent as literal history, are you not mis- taken in your criticism ? Is not this which I have briefly set forth, the real meaning of Eden and its tree, viewed in the light of other portions of the sacred Volume ? But there was another tree which grew in this wonderful garden, and it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There is no mention of this by name in any other portion of the Scripture. But when we come to understand the nature of the tree of life, can we doubt concerninii' this? Whatever the one is, the other is evidently its opposite. And if we have dwelt long and critically upon the nature of the one, it is not time wasted ; for we have but to turn our backs upon the tree of life and look the other wav, to behold that of the knowledge of good and evil. To eat of the tree of life, was to live from the Lord and heavenly love. To eat of the forbidden tree, was to live from self-love and the self-intellio-ence thence de- rived. The tree of life grew heavenly fruit ; the tree of knowledge infernal fruit. The tree of love gave clear perception of what was good and true ; the tree of knowledge filled the soul with 4 38 The Garden of Eden. the evil and false. The tree of life was the way to eternal life; the tree of knowledge was the path to spiritual death. We observed in the former discourse that trees symbolize perceptions of the mind. The different kinds of trees are symbolic of the different phases of perception. The tree of life, therefore, to use a more definite phrase, was love perceived as the very life of the soul. It embodied the idea of a keen perception, on the part of the Eden dwellers, of the fact that the Lord constantly flows into them with his love, as the sun flows to earth with its warmth ; that thence the tree of life sprung up in their inmost hearts as the governing principle of their existence ; and that, therefore, they lived and loved, and were wise and intelligent, and thought and spoke, really from the Lord. The tree of life was then love as a conscious percep- tion of the Lord in their own lives. Under this perception there could be but one result. Spir- itual truth would be as clear to them as the sun in its shining. As it is sufficient to say that hon- esty is right and truthfulness to be commended, for one to see intuitively that it is so, with them an}^ truth of a spiritual nature, such as the im- mortality of the soul, the existence of God, his goodness, his mercy, his eternal providence, the life of absolute trust in Him, the belief that all his ways are right — these and' all other true spir- The Two Trees. 39 itual enunciations would be received without a doubt or question, and perceived intuitively. This is the highest faith known. It is the only testi- monv which admits of no discussion. When man loves God above all things, this faith is his. It is ours so far as we are in Eden, no further. Love perceived as the wisdom of life, and perceived as implanted by the Lord for that purpose, is the tree of life. With this planted in the soul, all argument is ended. We know because we love. Now the tree of knowledge would be the exact opposite of this. It would begin to grow vigor- ously just so far as we desired to be in our own self- intelligence. The pride of one's own intelligence is a terrible thing. The desire to feel that one is one's own and not the Lord's, the vanitv that would say. This truth I reasoned out myself; the pride that would claim that the integrity I possess is my OAvn, and that the merit of my good deeds belongs to me ; the self-sufficiency that asserts one's self as the origin and center of what he is and feels and acquires, is the tree of knowledge sending its roots down deep VNithin the spirit. It first separates its life from God's life ; then it claims the merit of its goodness and understand- ing ; then it denies God and makes self the center, circumference, and all in all of its own little world. It loses its perception of love to the Lord as the controllino: element of its nature : it loses sight of 40 • The Garden of Eden. the Lord ; it departs from his spiritual wisdom of which it has lost the inward evidence ; it tries to confirm, by sensuous evidence and natural science, that which is above the realm of sense and sci- ence ; consequently it learns to deny that, the evidence of which it has lost the capacity to weigh or understand. Now, as the tree of life was the Lord who is love, perceived as the life principle of the soul, and as a consequence, spiritual wisdom in its broadest sense intuitively perceived, the tree of knovvledge was self and the consequent self- derived intelligence perceived as the all in all of life, and sensuous evidence and natural science the arbiter of spiritual things. Is it strange that the Lord should commend the one and forbid the other ? The one in his eyes was life, the other death. The one was purity, the other passion. The one was love, the other lust. The one was wisdom, the other insanity. The one was hu- mility, the other pride. The one grasped all humanity in its loving arms, the other centered the entire universe in self. The one shot its branches ever upward to heaven, the other sent its roots down deep into hell. That was why the eating of all the trees of the garden was com- mended, save only this. The reason why it is called the tree of knowl- edge of good and evil, is because in eating of The Two Trees. 41 this tree man comes into a practical knowledge of the distinction between the two. Previously he lived the good. Evil to him was only disobe- dience, a mere name for an unknown quantity, a something of which he had no experimental knowl- edge. The good w^as more a life than knowledge ; the evil was neither — was nothino-. But tastinsr of evil, then both the good and the evil came into his experience as a knowledge, as things to be talked over and compared. Good was no -longer a life, but a remembrance ; evil was no longer an unknown quantity, but an experience. And now, why did the Lord plant the two trees in Eden ? Why not the tree of life onlv ? Why was man placed in the way of temptation ? The whole lesson is the doctrine of human free- dom, taught in allegory and applied to the most ancient Church. To put the lesson in other words, the tree of life was obedience to the law of love, the tree of knowledge was disobedience to its divine behests. To love the Lord was life, to depart from that love was spiritual death. jN'ow what intrinsic good is there in obedience, if there is no power to disobey ? Do the locks and bolts and bars of our prisons indicate purity of heart ? Is not he rather the good man who, walking free his way on earth, chooses the good and refrains from evil ? Would divine bars be any better ? Had He said to man, *' You shall not sin ; I will 4* 42 The Garden of Eden. take from you the power of sin," would that have made a perfect man, when true purity is the vol- untary choice of good ? The ox, the lamb and the dove have their gentle natures, but they are beasts and birds. Man is man by virtue of his freedom. He is no brute to live and die without choice or reason. Freedom to obey, involves the power to disobey. Freedom of determination is the highest gift to created intelligence; and it implies the noblest qualities, the greatest happi- ness and the gTandest good the Lord can give; and God could not have made his noblest creature — man, with an angel's destiny — and denied him that which lifts him above the brute and makes him man, the noble gift of freedom. Therefore tlie power of obedience implies the power of disobedience. We have it, and none can deny the fact. If we had it not, the punish- ment of crime would be itself a crime. That we justify our courts and penitentiaries, is a confes- sion of our belief in the moral freedom of man. When, therefore, the Lord commanded man to obey his law of love, and gave him the power to obey, the power to disobey was clearly involved in it ; and He had either to plant both trees in the ground of his mind, or none. He had either to make him man or make him brute. It is for man wisely to use this gift of freedom. It is for him to love and live, not to center his The Two Trees. 43 soul on self and die. We are inheritors of this destiny. Let us heed the lesson well, ponder its great privileges, appreciate its divine excellence, admire its tribute to our heaven-born powers, cling to the tree of life, and win the Eden which awaits all open, receptive and obedient souls. III. THE WOMAN. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to Jail %ipon Adam, and he ulept; and he tool- one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, vhich the Lord God had taken from nvm, made he a yeoman, and brought her unto the man. — Gen. ii. 21, 22. E have arrived in the two previous dis- courses at certain definite conclusions, based upon reason and proved by Scrip- ture. Among these are the conclusion that the narrative of the Garden of Eden is not a literal history but an allegory ; that Adam is not the name of an individual, but a Hebrew term signi- fying man, or mankind in general, including both sexes ; that the Garden of Eden was not a para- dise of visible groves, lawns and flowers, but the state of love, innocence, spiritual intelligence and delight in which the people of the world's young morning dwelt ; that the tree of life was not a vegetable production planted in the geometrical center of a literal garden from vv hence man drew his natural support, with ability to exist on earth forever, but was love or the Lord as the control- ling element of the mind, with a perception that all life is from Him : that the tree of knowledge was not a natural tree which bore material fruit, 44 The Woman. 45 the eating whereof brought sorrow, pain and death into the world, but was self-intelligent and sensuous life, with a perception of self as the only source of existence and the only thing to live for ; that the eating from one or the other of these, was not the act of partaking of natural fruit, l3ut was the drawing of the soul's spiritual sustenance from love of God or love of self; and that the command in relation to the fruit of these two trees, was not a precept concerning what the first man ought or ought not to have eaten as healthful natural food, but taught, in the language of cor- respondence, a lesson setting forth that law of freedom which was planted from the first in human souls, whereb}^ man had the power of choosing to live from the Lord and inherit eternal life, or to live from sense and self in disobedience of God's command. History furnishes no account of the man of this Golden Age. The traditions, however, of many races as well as sacred books unerringly point to it ; mythology throws a glowing radiance of arcadian beauty around its life of simple tastes and quiet happiness; and revelation depicts its loves and joys in divine types and correspondences. And so w^e are taught that the man of this early age was the very embodiment of innocence and purity, with a meekness and humility truly angelic, bask- ins: in the verv sunshine of the Lord's love. Ho 46 The Garden of Eden. could never, it is true, have coped with the world as it is to-day. To place such a man in our pres- ent world, would be almost like placing a lamb in the midst of wolves. Ignorant, as the world now would deem, he unquestionably was. Science and art, learning and skill, luxury and extra\^a- gance, as they permeate all present life, were to him unknown. Without doubt nature was beau- tiful, and the bounteous soil with its spontaneous products supplied his simple wants. It was not necessary for him to be lashed to his daily round of duty by the whip of necessity, nor to work in repulsive fields of labor under the spur of want. Earth was sparsely peopled, and fruitful nature furnished food for all. But ignorant as he was in worldly things, the now hidden mysteries of God and godly conversa- tion, of heaven and heavenly life, made him wise in a wisdom far above that of to-day. His life was a round of spiritual offices to those about him ; his children were reared as heirs, not of the world's wealth and applause, but of spiritual riches and the approval of the Lord. It was in- deed the childhood of the race ; and those people of the past were very children of the Lord, inno- cent, beautiful, guileless, angelic. Godlike, but un- learned in the follies which the world prizes and pursues now, unskilled in all the cunning of to-day. We know that mankind did not remain in that The Woman. 47 Innocent state. The history of the past — so far back as human chronicles extend — is little more than a record of crime ; and the struggles of the present are but efforts to rise from the moral mire into which the world is plunged. So there ha^ been a great change. Celestial innocence has given place to selfishness and sensuality. This decadence occurred in prehistoric times. No earthly chronicler has left us the record of its progress. It could not have been sudden. Great and rapid moral changes are contrary to all ex- perience. Nations decay by successive steps which run through centuries. Egypt, Athens, Sparta, Kome, sunk to effeminacy, indolence, crime and final destruction, by gradual departures, each so small that it was difficult to mark its separate existence ; and their decline was so slow as to make their complete decadence the work of a hundred or a thousand vears. So was it, probably, that the most ancient peo- ple fell. So we read the allegory as set forth in the second and third chapters of Genesis. There was a first step, a second, and — a thousandth. There were also general steps measured by marked peculiarities of retrogression. It was the depart- ure from rectitude of a race, and not that of an individual. That Church of innocence and peace may have lasted many centuries ; how many w^e cannot tell. From that blissful state to its declen- 48 The Garden of Eden. « sion and final fall, probably was a period of many centuries more. The first departure from perfect innocence must have been very slight. Such first departures al- ways are. They begin in things so small that we do not see the evil in them. The first slight in- clination is the preliminary step to a drunkard's grave ; the first boyish cheat at marbles, the small beginning that leads to the forger's cell ; the first fruit surreptitiously obtained from the mother's pantry, the trivial offense that may end in highway robbery. It is plain to perceive the nature of the first mistake of these primitive children of God ; plain, not because it is so on the face of the literal narrative, but because the symbols by which it is related make it so. Up to this time the description is that of the Garden of Eden as it was originally created by the Lord. All that from a spiritual point of view is lovely and lofty, is represented in the corre- spondences employed. By them we determine the character of the people whom they describe. But something new is introduced into Eden now — a feature which was not there when that garden was first planted ; which was not there when man was put into the garden thus divinely formed. The woman is introduced upon the scene. If Eden symbolizes man's state of love, the garden his intelligence, the tree of life the Lord The Woman. 49 and his love perceived as the soul's inmost life, the tree of knowledge, the life of self and sense forbidden and as yet unknown, the woman mast be symbolic also. What was her spiritual mean- ing", and what the part she bore in this history of a celestial state and its final loss ? For we must remember that Adam w^as a people, race, or Church. Adam w^as male and female. The woman, therefore, could not have been the wife of Adam as a man masculine, but must signify something that was adjoined or added to a w^hole people, after they had for indefinite ages enjoyed this state of love and innocence. As Eden, the gar- den, the rivers, and the gold, are all of the mind, so must the woman be also. She must be some principle or attribute which man had not pos- sessed before. Now, w^hat is woman as a representative char- acter, whether in the world, in tradition, or in the Word of God ? Clearly she is the embodiment of that principle of the soul denominated affection. In all mythology, in all the symbolic poetry of the older times, in all the traditions of the ages, when love, devotion, religion — any tender senti- ment of heart or grace of spirit which was born of gentle affections — w^as symbolized, delineated, mythologically embodied, painted, or sculptured, it was alw^ays under the form of woman. We know that the world now is pretty well upside 5 D 50 The Garden of Eden. down, and that nothing remains just as it ought to be ; but the true woman is still devotion, affec- tion, love. That is her distinguishing character- istic as compared with man ; and when she loses that, she loses her sublimest feminine quality and distinctive mark. Of the various noble attributes of soul, that is the noblest of all. There may be masculine women and feminine men, but God did not originally create them so. So is it also in the Bible. The woman sym- bolizes whatever is characteristically feminine. When the Church is spoken of in reference to its affection for the Lord, although composed of both men and women, it is called "the Bride, the Lamb's wife " ; and it is so called, because of the love it is supposed to bear to the Lord as its hus- band. Thus it was likened, in the parable, to ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom, that is, the Lord. It was called, in older Scrip- ture, "the virgin daughter of Zion," and "the virgin daughter of Jerusalem." The woman is the embodiment and representative of the prin- ciple of affection. But there is also a dark side to this. The pas- sions, too, were represented by women. Hatred and pride are feminine. But these are aflTection inverted. They are woman in the opposite of her genuine character. They are the feminine nature as it displays itself when demoralized. The Woman. 51 But woman as a sex had existed in Eden pre- vious to this period of the narrative. In the first chapter of Genesis, where the creation of Adam is spoken of, it is said that " God created Adam in his own image ; in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." And this was before man was placed in Eden. For it appears that after men were made, they were ele- vated, male and female, into the Eden state, and placed in the garden of the Lord. So it was not a wife that was now presented to man. The men of that Church had already each his own. Nor, evidently, could it have been, as a symbol, an affection for the Lord for the first time embodied in those people's lives. They had eaten of the tree of life, and love was alreadv inscribed on their inmost hearts. It was something added to the Eden state.. It was an affection that did not originally belong there. As all was made perfect at the planting of Eden, anything added to it must have been slight indeed, and not known as such, but still the first step on the downward path. We read, indeed, that God said, " It is not good tliat man should be alone," or, according to a closer rendering of the original Hebrew, '' It is not good to man that he should be alone." The implica- tion is, that to man, in his then condition, this being alone did not seem to be a good thing. He began to want something that as yet he did not 52 Pc GtiJrdem «f Hicn. bave. He w^is somewlttt discDntemte^i- And tben h is added tint tbe Jjord said. ''I wHl make a he-^HDeel for Imii.^ But Alios Mcmtanus^ one oi the best authorities in Hefatew idioiiiatie dttnil- ties, gives as tbe exaet translatioii. '" I wiH .make OEte. as it wer>^ himself^ befoie idm.** Tbe prosper reoderiDr of tbe irbole passage, to pat it in idio- matie EnrlisK. septus to lie this : "And the Jjord. God said. It seemeth not sood to man that he shooM be alone ; I will make tm him (me which shall be, as it w«e bimsdC. before him.^ Th^ helps tisnm* in teoB? the .l«ih»ls««. Ad». in bis higb Eden siare. had been allo^^tib^ the Lord's. He Lad no conscioo^-lrred selflbood; s^:* higt and bolr were tbe peofile ci that age ; so ek>se were tber to tbe Lord ; so receptive of tbe Lord's iii^ and inJLaenee : so compleleir nnder tbe eontnol ol' his Spirit, tbat tber bad a distinct pcfteptkm^ a realization firow actual experience and knowledge, tbat tieT wer? simplr firing out 1 The Serpent. 71 dominion of man, and man recognized this. For when it is said that, " Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he v^^ould call them ; and what- soever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof," a very suggestive truth is couched under the svmbolism. It means that Adam, or primitive man, was aware of the ex- istence of the various affections of the mind signi- fied by the different beasts of the field, and of the various forms of thought signified by every fowl of the air. By the Lord's bringing the beasts and birds to him, is meant that in the providence of God his various forms of affection and thought were permitted to arrange themselves before his mind as matters of conscious knowledge and re- flection. But by Adam's giving them names, is signified that he could call them all bv their riaht names, that is, could recognize their comparative value and quality, and assign to each, with quick intuition, its proper sphere. For every name in olden times expressed the character or quality of the object named ; and to name a thing was to designate its character or determine its quality. For S3'mbolism was founded on the verv nature of thin2:s, and the man of that time was able to analyze the attri- butes of his soul, and to name each correctly, and 72 The Garden of Eden. estimate its relative value, and assign to it its proper rank. Thus the lamb and the dove element — the innocence of the soul — would be elevated ; but the serpent element — the sensual nature — would be used as a servant and not as a master. So among the other beasts of the field, to give the serpent its name was to estimate sensuous things at their true value, to understand their office as being simply to enable man to perform his duties in this world, to permit them to testify concern- ing earth as a representative of heaven, and to use them as testimonies to the existence of the Lord, and to his nature, love and care. But that sensuous reasonings should close up the spiritual plane of the mind, cut off the power of spiritual thought, darken the pathway to immortality and heaven, or deny their Creator and Lord, such a thought could not be even entertained. But when man began to incline to his selfhood, to desire to be guided more by himself and less by the Lord, then the power of the serpent began to assert itself. While men were conscious of the Lord as their guide, the serpent could have nothing to say on spiritual subjects. He went his way quietly on his destined earthly round of duty. True, after the inclination to the pro- prium, there was love, and innocence, and peace, still in a modified form, breathing through all the fields of Eden. But self-love or the pt'^^oprium The Serpent 73 in its best form, is an unsafe guide. If it looks to the Lord indeed, it is safe ; but if it looks any- where else it is lost. And it does not look to the Lord except in the case when man is wholly above its influence. We have seen how man departed fi'om his first estate', and inclined to the selfhood. We have followed the allegory as it described the fact. We have found, also, that with his greater self-con- sciousness, he was still endowed with a principle of goodness and innocence. The woman became a symbol of this affection for the selfhood. A new title is used for man, meaning not mankind as Adam did, but man as distinguished from woman. And this term for man is a symbol of the intellectual nature. So the serpent first ap- plied himself to the woman. In other words, the sensuous principle of the mind began its work upon the selfhood. Sensual and sophistical reason- ings about spiritual things, began to be used in place of the celestial perceptions which once had sway ; and they went direct to the proprium as the easiest thing to seduce. Perhaps there were in those days Tom Paines, Yoltaires, and Inger- solls to say to the proprium, " Yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden," to insinuate a doubt whether the words of the Lord were true ; whether the love-life was the best life ; whether the Lord or self was the real 7 74 Hie Garden of Eden. guide ; whether these so-called perceptions were not delusions ; whether the best evidence was not the evidence of the senses ; whether this being- led by self was not a pleasant experience ; whether it was reallv death to the soul ; whether these old ideas of their forefathers were not mere supersti- tions having no foundation in common sense ; and a hundred other similar doubts which the sensual principle is capable of insinuating, and then of satisfactorily answering to inflated self-conscious- ness and pride. So was it, doubtless, that the serpent talked to the woman ; and the Avoman, touched with the ar- gument, goes direct to the man. That is, self-love being beguiled, in its turn beguiles the intellect. This, perhaps, was not the work of a year, nor of a hundred years. It was the working of the leaven of sensuousnessin the human family for thousands of years, probably, dragging it down to the lower levels of life. And in this we find the true history of the origin of evil. Evil originated, not in the machinations, of a serpent who beguiled a single woman, but in self-love yielding to arguments founded on sensu- ous appearances. Man was created upright, but free. He inclined to self; he listened to the delu- sive whisperings of sense and his sensual nature ; he let go his hold on God and his love, and so brought evil into the world. f The Serpent 75 We leave the subject here to resume it again — for the story of the serpent is yet but half told. But of one thing we may all be conscious. The origin of evil is still in every soul, the whispering of the serpent to the woman. Self-consciousness is to most people their very life. Our love of sensuous things drags us down to the lowest levels. If we deny God and immortality, it is the delusion of sense. If we hesitate or doubt, it is the delusion of sense. If we cannot grasp spiritual thoughts, it is because we are deluded by sense. If we cannot open our understandings to the light that comes only from on high, it is sense that hinders. And through all our denials and doubts, it is sense and its delusions that rule the soul. It comes to us in many forms, deceives in many ways, but it comes always in hatred of that which is holy. It drowns the soul in dissi- pation or overwhelms it in pleasures ; it elates it with ambition ; it makes it in dreams a dcmi-god. It puts self in the center of its little universe, and causes all things to revolve around it. It bends all activities, all beings, all life, to serve one's personal ends, whether of ambition, pleasure or greed. And what is worse than all, it persuades the soul that this is the only right and proper thing to do, that it has the sanction of religion, and that anything else is superstition. This ser- pent is the deluding principle of the universe. It 76 The Garden of Eden. warms itself by every fireside ; it bides itself in every social gatbering ; it conceals itself in work- shop and store, and holds high carnival on change ; it does our buying and selling ; its voice is beard in every passing conversation ; it governs wherever rulers congregate ; and it is insidiously coiled in the very aisles and pews of our churches. It trails its slimy way in highways and byways, homes and hearts, and its poison pervade^ the world. Ah ! could we rise above these delusions of sense, could we but believe in and follow the Lord with half the zeal and energy with which we listen to and serve the serpent, this were a world worth living in. We can — we must. It is the only true salvation. V. THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. And when the woman saw that the tree rvas good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one ^ wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did ^ eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.—GQn. iii. 6. *S we familiarize our minds with the idea that this narrative of the Garden of Eden is purely allegorical, we experience less and less difficulty in grasping its real meaning, and in satisfactorily applying the laws of symbolism to its interpretation. The difterent events begin to group themselves naturally around the central truth, that Adam was the whole Church of the early age of the world, and not a single individual. We learn from the allegory that these people lived in the Garden of Eden, that is, in innocence and peace, in the very presence of the Lord and under his holy and immediate influence ; that they re- mained in this state for a long period, eating of the tree of life in the midst of the garden, that is, living from the Lord as the inmost principle of thought and love ; that they began to desire to feel the spiritual life as more their own and less the Lord's in them ; that they inclined more and 7* ■ 77 78 The Gar den of Eden. more to self-consciousness or the selfhood; and then the sensual principle — the serpent — began to assume control of the mind and to become a con- spicuous figure in this Garden. Sensuousness I have defined as the disposition to limit one's life to the small area of existence which comes within the purview of the natural senses. The principle is broad in its scope, but it invests life with the merely natural, and rejffcts, as a thing undesirable or unknowable, the super- natural. If we are Christians, under the influ- ence of this principle w^e are apt to be very weak or very indifferent ones. If we seem to be earnest in our faith, that faith is based upon what w^e conceive to be a correct historical record of the || coming of Christ, and of the miraculous evidence by ].' which his character was proven. If, however, * we are hurried by its advice, or under the impetus of its insinuations, away from Christianity, it forbids us to recognize God because natural sense has never seen Him; or to believe in another life, because natural law has been unable to prove it ; or even to acknowiedge the existence of the soul, because no dissecting knife has ever suc- ceeded in reaching its seat. It is a harsh term, perhaps, to apply to so eminent a scientist as Tyndall, yet he is a strong type of the sensuous man, when he asserts in substance : I do not deny God, for I know nothing about Him ; yet I do The Forbidden Fruit. 79 not believe in God, for these senses of mine have never seen Him, felt Him or touched Him. I believe only what sense and natural science prove. There may be plenty of undiscovered truths, but I rest my faith only in what I scientifically know. Yery moral men may, after this manner, be sensualists. Bat the effect of such sensuous reason- ing is demoralizing in the extreme. Pride may keep the strong sensual man from moral degrada- tion. But when you efface from the mind spiritual intelligence, and substitute natural reason ; or when you darken those spiritual lights, which are the stars of its higher consciousness pene- trating all dark places with spiritual discernment, vou take awav that which gives this world its only life and hope. Then the man of weak mind, or he who has no stay of pride, sinks into dissipa- tion and debauchery ; this world becomes his all in all ; its money, fame or pleasure, his only hope and joy ; himself and his own gratification the only things worth living for. The Lord, the di- vine Sun, is blotted from his firmament; bevond the grave there is naught for him but darkness ; to make the most of this world is his supreme purpose. So the serpent — type of the sensual nature — as monitor and guide, is the world's ruin. What wonder, then, that in olden times, when he once gained the ear of those who dwelt in Eden, he advised them to their fall. Subtle he 80 The Gardeii of Eden. was and bold ; " More subtle than any wild beast of the field." Is not the sensual nature the most crafty of all the affections of the mind ? What argument so specious as that which insinuates questions like these : Who but a fool would be- lieve in that which is not evident to the senses? Why should you deny yourselves the delights of self, of enjoyments so palpable and abounding, of pleasures so exquisite and close at hand, in the vain pursuit of that phantom called eternal life, that folly of superstitious follies called unselfish- ness ? So to the Eden people of old, it was the sen- suous thought entering into the mind — the serpent trailing his tortuous way into life — which did the mischief that was done. The woman, as the svm- bol of affection in general, here, in view of the manner in which her name is used in the allegory, is made to represent specifically the afi'ection for the selfhood. It was to her, therefore, to the self- hood ever ready to listen to any suggestion which increased its power or pleasure, that the serpent applied itself. " Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not eat of the tree of the garden ? " Was it really true that God had counseled them not to draw spiritual life from any perception of the mind which could grow in such a place as Eden ? Were not its trees all good ? Were not all the perceptions which grew in the soil of innocence, purity and love, genuine The Forbidden Fruit 81 and true ? Why forbid themselves anything that came from so divine a source ? This was sophis- tr}^, the serpent's cunning, in its most unadul- terated form. Without mentioning the tree of knowledge, this reasoning included it — evidently insinuating that it also must be good, because it was one of the trees of Eden. Eden was all good, how could any of its trees be bad ? The Eden state was all purity, how could any perception of the mind be false ? Follow this new dictate, was the insinuation ; it is of Eden in the heart, and it is therefore right. But the selfhood was not immediately satisfied. It had been endowed by the Lord with spiritual life ; it had been elevated into spiritual atmos- pheres ; and even the self-consciousness, in its higher state, was not so easily convinced. So the woman's answer to the serpent's delusive in- sinuation was: '' We mav eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden ; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." It was evident that of all the trees of the garden they might eat, with this single exception. All perceptions of the mind were from the Lord ; all that belonged to the Eden state and was rooted in its soil — perceptions of truth, of good, of love, of God, and whatso- ever intelligence sprang from them — all these F 82 I'he Garden of Eden. i were from the Lord. But the tree of the knowl- edge of good and evil was the idea of self as the origin of spiritual life, and that certainly was not from the Lord. They still saw this ; it was not entirely obliterated from their consciousness. And God had said that not only should they not eat of it, not only ought they not to conceive of the , soul's life as a thing of self, but they must not | touch it, they must not even dream of such a | thing, they must not for a moment come in con- % tact with such an experience. For the consequence of so doing would be that they would die. All relapsing into self is spiritual death. It is not the decease of the body, nor the annihilation of the soul. It is not ceasing to think, will and act. It is the death of good — the death of genuine dis- interested love ; the lapsing into evil and falsity ; the loss of all power to know, appreciate, live, or even comprehend the spiritual side of life, and God as its giver. This is to die in the spiritual =' sense. But the serpent seemed to speak of natural death. He always speaks naturally. And it is of the na- | ture of the sensual principle to lead us away from the true meaning of things, and make^us satisfied to rest in mere appearances. So the serpent said to the woman, that is, the sensual element replied to the doubts of the better selfhood, '' Ye shall not surely die ; for God doth know that in the day ye The Forbidden Fruit 83 eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Now it is a fact that, to this day, so inclined are the large mass of people to take sensuous views of things, that it is generally believed that natural death came into the world because two individuals, Adam and Eve, ate of the fruit of a natural tree. It is not seen that mankind fell, not because of anv natural act of disobedience, nor because of anything heedlessly done on the nat- ural plane, but because they became selfish, worldly and sensual. The first idea so generally accepted, is devoid of all rationality ; the other commends itself to reason and common sense. '' Ye shall not surely die," said the serpent. Instead thereof, " Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." That their eyes would be opened, means that their under- standings would be enlightened. That they would be as gods knowing good and evil, means that their power to distinguish between good and evil would be seen or thought of as a faculty originating in themselves ; and that thus each one would be, as it w^ere, a god unto himself, deciding for himself and from himself, and in the light of his own in- telligence, w^hat was good and what was evil. Now, the effect of such an idea as this, we see plainly enough in the world's present condition. When human reason decides as to what is truth 84 The Garden of Eden. and what is falsity, with the serpent as chief pleader and the selfhood as umpire, spiritual truth has no chance of acceptance. And when human reason is, under the same conditions, the arbiter of good and evil, good becomes whatever panders to the pleasure, profit and aggrandize- ment of one's self, and evil whatever is in opposi- tion thereto. Each man is a god unto himself; each man decides for himself; each man is self- glorified. This was the tendency with our early progenitors. The serpent that now holds high carnival in the world, was then exerting his most seductive influence. We have considered the tree of life as the Lord and his love, and the tree of knowledge, as self and science. Eating of the one or the other sym- bolizes appropriating the one or the other of these principles to the life of the soul. We know that natural eating is for the sustenance and invigora- tion of the natural body. The food, or the life- giving elements of the food, are conveyed by the blood to the various organs of the system, and distributed according to the needs of this or that portion of the body. Its many parts, the brain, the muscle, the flesh, the bone, the nervous fluid, the cuticle, each and all partake of the blessings and the benefits. And the body lives and grows and strengthens by means of the food ivhereof it partakes ; and the condition of the body, whether The Forbidden Fruit 85 healthy or diseased, well or ill, depends very much on the character of its food. Good food makes a sound body ; insufiQcieut or improper food, an unsound one. The correspondence of the natural with the spiritual system and its economy is exact. It is a matter of the greatest consequence whether we partake of nourishing spiritual diet or of that which is injurious. The Word of God every- where reco2:nizes this. It is for this reason that our Lord says by the mouth of his prophet, "Eat ye what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness" (Isa. Iv. 2); and that He said, when on earth, '' Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you " (John vi. 27). Again, " I am the living bread which came down from heaven ; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever" ( John vi. 51). And again, " He that eatcth me, even he shall live by me " (John vi. 57). Say we not well, then, when we assert that the Lord is the veritable tree of life which grows in the midst of Eden ? Draw we then our food from Him, eat we of the fruit of that divine tree, recognize we his influence within our souls, obey we all his commands in their true spirit and intent, love we the higher life proceeding from the Lord who is in the midst of our mental garden, then truly do we live. The 8 86 The Garden of Eden. fruit of the tree of life is all the goodness and wisdom which we receive from the Lord — humbly acknowledging that it is his and not our own — and appropriate to the upbuilding and sustenance of the soul. Eat we of the fruit of that tree, and its life-giving principles flow down into every least thing of the spirit. They give light to the understanding, purity to the desire, sweetness to the affections, wisdom to the thought ; they go down into the labors and works of the hands, and spiritualize every least act of life. They nourish, invigorate, sustain and build up the spiritual man into a glorious image and likeness of God. Life becomes love in its highest sense, and the joy of existence a thing unutterable ! But the tree of knowledge is self and science. Its fruit is error and falsity, evil and crime. We throw aside revelation ; we deny its truth ; we divorce our understanding from its fountain of wisdom ; and we say. Let us rely on science or the senses. We read no more the commandments of God; we relegate those precepts to the realm of the impracticable ; we grow indifferent to the voice of the Lord as it fain would speak to us in the garden .of the mind ; and we say, Let us con- sider self-preservation, and the wealth, honors and pleasures of the world, as the things most near at hand and of most immediate need. Then we eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree. The The Forbidden Fruit 87 Lord did not desire man's spiritual death. He would not have him rest in mere worldly joys when there is a higher life ; nor live merely for self when the well-being of his kind demands his services ; nor study only his interest in this world, when there is an eternal world for which he was placed here to prepare. He would not have him shrivel his faculties, when they were made for wide expansion ; nor invert the law of life when he is capable of enjoying its unspeakable blessings ; nor become a creature of disorder and selfishness, when he was created in the grandest order and for the highest use. He would not have him confine his aims and ends to the bodv and this world, nor his reasoning faculties to natural sci- ence, when by doing so he loses the higher wisdom and fails to attain the higher and purer life. He would not have him wallow in the filthy mire of sensuous delights, when there are sweet fields of heavenly joy wherein to live and take pleasure. He would not have him a mere animal, when He had created him to be an angel. For as the fruit of the tree of life was coodness and wisdom, the fruit of the tree of knowledge was evil and error, crime and insanity. Therefore was it that the Lord commanded man not to eat of this, the for- bidden fruit. God is not possessed of the human passion of pride. He did not utter an arbitrary edict for the sake of enjoying man's servile obedi- 88 The Garden of Eden. ence. He did not make life and happiness to de- pend on refraining from a certain natural fruit. It is only sensuous thought that so drags the Lord down to the level of human frailty. He com- manded man not to live from self, not to draw his mental food from sensuous science, not to place his life in mere knowledge ; because, if he did, his spiritual nature would die. What He commanded was solely for man's own happiness and good. But man ate. He no longer looked to the Lord for the food of his soul, but Xq self. He lost sight of those words of divine beautv, " He that eateth me, even he shall live by me ; " and he made a god of himself instead, and recognized no other source of life. This food he ate, or appropriated as the life of his soul. With this he nourished all his faculties. It went through his whole system ; it permeated his whole character ; it poisoned his affections ; it darkened his understanding ; it nour- ished hatreds, cruelties and revenges ; it rendered him incapable of spiritual perception ; it capaci- tated him for crime ; and it flung the world, as its final outcome, into that seething cauldron of misery, war and unrest, w^hieh is so largely our lot to-day. And so will the world remain until we cease to eat of the forbidden fruit, the source of all our woe, and return to Eden and the Lord. There is an expression introduced into the third chapter of Genesis, which seems contradictory of %] The Forbidden Fruit. 89 the second. The tree of knowledge is here said to be in the midst of the garden ; whereas previ- ously it was asserted that the tree of life was in the midst of the garden. It is one of those points of which there are many, which infidel writers, reasoning from the serpent's point of view, hold up to prove the inconsistency and foolishness of Scripture. They reason from the standpoint of the letter. If you tell them it is a spiritual alle- gory, they will laugh at you ; and if you attempt to show them that i^is, they will understand you no more than if you spoke in an unknown tongue. Their spiritual understanding is closed to the higher light. But in the spiritual sense of these and all similar passages, the apparent inconsistency van- ishes. The explanation is simply this : In the primitive condition of the people of the first Church, just as they were placed in the Eden state, the tree of life, or the Lord and his love, was in the midst of the garden ; love occupied the central place in the soul ; for it was in the very inmost of the heart, and the central source of the mind's intelligence. Bat after they began to listen to the serpent, the tree of life occupied no more the center, but the tree of knowledge took its place in the inmost of the soul, and self assumed the position which the Lord had previously held. But in explaining these symbols, in order to bring out their meaning in bold relief, we find 8* 90 The Garden of Eden. ourselves sometimes painting the principles repre- sented in their extremest colors. Eating of the tree of knowledge, like all other spiritual habits, is a thing that comes gradually, and becomes a habit only by a slow process. The world at that early age did not change in a day, nor in a year, perhaps not in a hundred years. The serpent's voice, feeble at first, grew strong as time rolled on. Listened to at the beginning but feebly, the atten- tion of the race became more fixed and their incli- nation to obey more strong as listening became a habit. Constant dallying with the subject on the part of man, gradually made the serpent more bold. The woman — the affection for the selfhood — was first approached. It was only by slow de- grees she began to see that this fruit of the tree of knowledge was ''good for food," or began to consider sense and science as things in themselves good. Yielding to this, they became also '' pleas- ant to the eyes," in other words, agreeable to the understanding. And finally they were seen by the selfhood to be things '' to be desired to make one wise ; " that is, that they were really desirable, because they gratified the pride of self-intelligence, and made the man eminently wise in his own eyes. And thus — so runs the narrative — when the w^oman saw these things '' she took of the fruit The Forbidden Fruit 91 thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her hus- band with hei', and he did eat." Man as distinguished from woman, as was ob- served in a former discourse, symbolizes the intel- lect. Thus it was the woman who ate first — the love of self or the proprium. And then she in tarn persuaded the man to eat. When the love of self appropriated as its food the delusions of sense, the intellect soon yielded its concurrence. It is the experience of all time. When we are on the downward path, what we love we are very apt to persuade ourselves is right. Into the arms of whatever evil the heart throws itself, intellect and reason are called upon for their assent, and they soon yield. The fall of each and every man and woman begins and ends in a similar way. But as before observed, we have described the symbols in their more extreme meanings. The fall was gradual, extending perhaps through hundreds or even thousands of vears. The fruit of the tree of knowledge changed its quality as time went on. The first aberration from the primal condition, was in life. From generation to generation the Adamic Church inclined to self and evil more and more. Still the true life would be acknowledged ; but it would become, as one generation succeeded another, more and more a matter of mere faith, and less and less a matter of experience. Then gradually, with many, faith 92 The Garden of Eden. itself would begin to yield, while perhaps with others it would be longer retained. Thus at first the fruit of the forbidden tree w^as faith as the basis of religion. This also would be forbidden, because love is its true basis. Then its fruit became error ; and at last positive falsity. The eating by the woman was a work of centuries ; the offering to the man and his eating a work of centuries more. The letter makes it, in the fall of a man, the work of a day ; the spirit makes it, in the fall of a race, the work of a period of in- definite and unknown length. And so let us still follow the lesson in our hearts, and contemplate all its admonitions as given to make us wiser in our generation. There is only one tree whose fruit is life, for us as well as for our early progenitors. It is the Lord him- self enthroned within the heart. It is that prin- ciple of love, so large, so all-embracing, so divine, that the mind of its possessor is an Eden of intelligence and delight. Its branches are far reaching ; its roots strike deep ; its fruits are all goodness and wisdom, and they nourish the soul from its centers of affection and thought to its extremities of active life and work. Other trees there are in the garden which contribute to life ; other perceptions of the soul which are suggested from within and without ; but this tree is Life Itself. Let us ask nothing of sense and science, 1 The Forbidden Fruit. 93 except that they be willing servants of the Lord and love. Let us eat of no fruit that will exalt sense and drag down the soul, that v/ill magnify self and degrade the Lord. Spiritual life and spiritual death are before us, according to the kind of fruit our souls eat or appropriate. Let us eat of the fruit of the tree of life and truly live ! VI. THE CURSE. And unto Adam he said. Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which "^I com- manded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. — Gen. iii. 17. iHE curses expressed in the Bible are pecu- liar. They bear no similarity to those evoked by human passion. When man, under the influence of a feeling that is born of sin, bursts forth into profane ravings against the neighbor, invoking maledictions on his head, he speaks under the prompting influence of hell. It is anger, or resentment, or revenge, wounded pride or defeated purpose, that would deal damnation and ruin to the offending party. Kesentment in any form is as far from the Lord's nature as it is possible for anything to be. Is it not strange that men will persistently attribute to God that which all condemn in a professed servant of God ? Is it not amazing that they will clothe the Divine Being with hu- man passions, when the whole end and aim of Christianity is to lead man to curb and subdue the same passions ? Who would justify resentments, maledictions or curses in a Christian ? And how 94 The Curse, 95 shall we ascribe those attributes to Him, the recep- tion of whose spirit alone it is that makes one a Christian ? How then are we to understand the Scripture which seems to attribute cursings to God ? The answer is simple. In the literal sense, the lan- guage of the Bible is that of appearance ; in the spiritual sense it is that of reality. And that meaning is generally attributed to it by man, which accords with his own instincts. This last assertion is true of our every-day conversation. If a man is brutal, there is an element of brutality entering into his conception of every word that is addressed to him. If he is sensual, there is to him an element of sensuality which enters into every expression that he hears. If he is essentiall}^ im- modest, his mind instinctively turns the purest words into expressions of beastly sentiment. But if he is spiritual, to him all things are clothed with spirituality ; if pure, all things with purity. To all expressions, therefore, there is a higher import and a lower. The lower the thought, the lower the sense it will attach to words ; the higher the thought, the more elevated the idea, and the more exalted its conception of the meaning which expressions are designed to convey. And this has caused the world's trouble in construing holy Writ. A pagan age has invested its terms with pagan meanings ; a sensuous age with sensuous 96 The Garden of Eden. ideas ; the natural mind with gross natural con- ceptions. Now in this matter of cursings, as human utter- ances they are evil in themselves, and spring from evil in the heart of him who utters them. And men of evil passions instinctively ascribe to the Lord, when they read expressions of this kind, the same fire of passion which they feel within themselves. But the Lord is a Being of infinite love, charitv and mercv. A curse, therefore, when attributed in the Scripture to Him, must be an ex- pression of that love, charity and mercy ; for we cannot think of Him as capable of expressing any- thing else. When the poet says, *' Tlie angry sun on waste Sahara's plain Shone down, blasting all nature with its presence," we do not, in our poetic ardor, literally attribute to the sun a peculiar anger with the desert of Sahara above all other lands, under the influence of which it withers all attempts at herbage, and dries up ruthlessly each bubbling fount or stream. We know that it is but a poetical method of ex- pressing a fact resulting from the atmospheric and climatic conditions of that arid region. We know that it is the same sun which shines so beneficently on our own prolific land. He sends forth the same heat, and the same amount and kind, to America that he does to Sahara. But our position, and our The Curse. 97 atmospheric and climatic conditions are such, that we receive his beams in luxuriant forms of verdure, while Sahara receives them in sterile sands. So with human minds. This sun of everlasting light, the Word of God, sends forth his beams of truth and love with equal force, to the grossest sensualist and the most exalted Christian. How they receive these beams, whether as a sterile desert or as a fertile garden, depends upon them- selves. Yet the light and heat as thev come from their divine source, are the same for all. But as the same sun blasts in some climes and beautifies in others, accordina* to the characteristics or con- dition of the rea-ion which receives it, so the same law of love that gives existence and life to all, if it is received in order and in answering love, renders beautiful the soul of its recipient ; but if received in disorder and hate, its very power of giving life is turned into a means of death. It is on this principle that the divine gift of life received in innocence and joy, lived in its own spirit and reflected back to its Creator in perfect images, is, in the language of holy writ, " the blessing of the Lord ;" but the same divine gift received in a selfish nature, lived in perverted form, and reflected back in hideous distortions, is, in the language of holy writ, ''the curse of the Lord." How perfectly a mirror without any flaw or irregularit}^ in its surface, reflects the human 9 " G 98 The Garden of Eden. countenance ! But you have seen, perhaps, those mirrors which turn the human figure upside down, or distort every feature of the face. The original is perfect enough ; it is the reflection: w^hich is right or wrong. The divine original in the soul of man, is pure and upright. It is the use we make of our God-given faculties — the manner in which the soul receives and reflects the influent life, which renders it beautiful or monstrous in its proportion and form. Life given of the Lord, is a blessing to him who uses it aright, and a curse to him who perverts it. This is the blessing and the curse. It seems as if the latter were of God, and the natural mind so views it. It really is of man ; and the spiritual mind reads of God's curse, as the poet reads of the angry sun. Each one reads according to his nature. But he who follows the Word of God in its spirit, thinks of the curse of the Lord as the angels think of it — as the divine mercy resting with man amid the verv ruins of his nature, and rendering him as happy as possible in the dreary region of life he has sought and found. In other words, God's curse is the divine law of life — a ruin and a wreck through man's perversity, but Divinity still working amid those ruins to save him from a worse desolation even on his chosen plane. Riches are a blessing to him who uses them aright, a curse to him who makes of them the mere instru- The Curse. 99 ments of self-gratification. Health is a blessing to him who nobly works in its strength for life's elevation, a curse to him who uses it for the larger gratification of his love of sensual pleasure. Edu- cation is a blessing to him who develops by its means an enlarged capacity for usefulness, a curse to him who employs it to render himself a greater adept in crime. The great gift of life is a blessing to him who lives in true order according to the Divine intent, but a curse to him who inverts its heavenly purpose and makes it a means of mis- chief to the world. When, therefore, we read in the Word of God, of the Lord's blessings, Vi^e are to understand his gifts of good freely received and Tighteously applied or divinely lived; but when we read of his curses, we are to understand his good gifts misapplied and wickedly perverted to evil purposes and selfish ends. It is this ^iyXe of Scripture from which poetry has borrowed its character, and of which it is a fair exponent oftener than matter-of-fact prose. Having thus enlarged upon the nature of the curse, let us take a rapid review of the spiritual meaning of that portion of the parable at which we have now arrived. The primitive church called Adam, having departed from its pristine innocence, having inclined to the selfhood or j^'^o- prium, having been seduced by the serpent to eat of the tree of sense and science, trended 100 The Garden of Eden, rapidly downward. Then it is said that '' the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." When it had been said, before the temptation, that " they were both naked and not ashamed," it was, in the spiritual sense, a description of their innocence. In that innocent state there was nothing whereof they needed to be ashamed. Now, however, their eyes were opened ; but to what ? Why, to the things of self and sense, in a manner in which their fore- fathers by no means understood them. Their eyes were opened to see that they regarded self and the world as the chief thini>'s in life, and spiritual things as matters of secondar}^ impor- tance; while their progenitors, in the wise inno- cence of their hearts, had regarded spiritual attain- ments as the grand purpose of life, and self and the world as merely instrumental means toward this great end. So they saw" their nakedness ; that is, they became aware that they w^ere un- clothed with spiritual principles, and, therefore, they sought to invest themselves with merely natural good. For, as the vine is the oft-repeated symbol of spiritual good, so the fig-tree is that of natural good. And this clothing the life with merely external or moral virtues, is corresponden- tially described in the statement that '' they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." Then '' they heard the voice of the Lord going Tlic Curse. 101 forth in the garden." The voice of the Lord is any inward dictate which emanates from Him. " Going" forth " is the correct translation, not '* walkino: " as the authorized version h«\s it. It was not the Lord walking it a^nii^MiH gard^n^ and speaking face to face with a raan and wcraan. It was an inward dictate of conscience, the^ voice of the Lord, which those people experienced, going- forth in the garden of the intelligence of which they were yet possessed, calling them to account for the wretched mistake they had made. So thev " hid themselves from the face of the Lord ; " that is, they shut out the divine dictate and the divine countenance from their minds ; and they hid themselves among the trees of the garden, that is, they averted themselves from the Lord or his dictates by withdrawing into the perceptions of their own self-intelligence. It is the usual story, first enacted in the ancient garden. When man wants to do wrong, when he wants to be selfish, when he wants to gorge himself with worldly pleasure, the inward voice of the Lord forbids ; yet he turns from it, shuts out the voice that would counsel and correct — the voice of divine wisdom and virtue — and justifies himself by the delusive sophistry of his self-in- telligence. So did the people of the most ancient times. And when they seriously sought to shut out the suggestions which the Lord would fain 9* 102 The Garden of Eden. make to mind and heart they brought the curse upon themselves. And then as an excuse for this, the reply was made by the proprium — the woman — to the conscience or the Lord's voice, " The ' ;S(prpent beguikd" :ne and I did eat ; " meaning-, " Th^ aensnal principle of my nature has been th^ st rerig-f o'-r-me/anvi i have yielded to it because I could not resist its influence." The excuse, however, is but a lame one, and helps nothing. An effort to rise from the position into which they had fallen, had been far better than a mere excuse for their degradation. It was simply, however, what the man now does every day, who, while acknowledging the abstract holiness of the Lord's instructions, persists in saying, " It is not possible for any one to keep the divine commandments." So the curse followed — the fault of man entirely, and not of the Lord. It was the consequence of departing from the true order of life, and not an arbitrary decree of God. It was the inherent demoralization caused by yielding to the pro- jyrium, and not an edict of divine wrath. ''And th3 Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field." Let us constantly bear in mind that this whole narrative is an allegory. Nothing of it transpired as a literal conversation of the Lord with man, woman, or serpent. When it reads The Curse. 103 that "the Lord God said," it is meant that thus and so the Lord viewed the matter ; or, that thus and so is it in the light of divine truth. Each expression is the statement of a truth couched in correspondcntial language. Thus, in the Lord's view, or in the light of divine truth, the sensual principle or the serpent had become cursed ; and this above all the other affections of the mind, symbolized by the expression, " Above all cattle and above every beast of the field." It had so come to be cursed, in becoming the lowest, the most depraved, the most groveling, of all portions of human nature, j^'othinor is lower than sen- suality. Therefore it is said, " Upon thy belly shalt thou go " — a significant statement of the gross, earthly, corporeal and bestial character of the sensual principle under the conditions to which it had brought itself. It had been a good thing and spiritually erect when in its proper place, as a servant doin^r the biddino* of the hio:her nature — an agent of the latter in its earthly work. But when it assumed to be master and seduced the mind and heart, erect no more it groveled on the lowest earthly plane. It ate or lived upon the mere dust and ashes of life, fed upon corporeal and terrestrial ideas and enjoyments. And another result of the curse, or the degrada- tion of the sensual nature, was expressed in the words, '' I will put enmity between thee and the 104 The Garden of Eden. woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The woman, as we have before shown, represents the afFectional nature. In this connection, as there is enmity between her and the serpent, and as she was the predestined symbol of the Church in its aifectional or emotional aspect, it was a simple statement of the truth, that henceforth there would be Avar between the genuine affec- tion for spiritual things in the Church, and sensualism in all its forms. The seed of the serpent, or the final fruit of sensuality, was in- fidelity. The seed of the woman, or the wonder- ful issue which was to be born of the future Church, was Christ and Christianity. The enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, was a prophecy of the war to be inaugurated by infidelity — whether Jewish, pagan, or modern — in respect to Christ and his religion. Thus the seed of the serpent has bruised his heel, that is, the heel of Christ, both in the crucifixion of his body, and in his crucifixion in every heart which has burned with hatred towards Him and the religion He taught. And the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head in every victory, and on the arena of every heart where true Christianity has gained a triumph over the crafty seductions of infidelity. " Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth The Curse, 105 children ; and thy obedience (the true rendering) shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." The woman is here, as in the former verse, the woman of prophecy ; she is the true Church in its affectional aspect; she is the affec- tion for truth and goodness in the minds of the members of the Church. No allusion is here made to natural conceptions or births. That is the letter ; and the letter is only the basis, sym- bol, or correspondent of the spirit. The allusion is to those things which are born of spiritual affection, to all good feelings, desires and prompt- ings, to all new conceptions of truth, of salvation, of heaven, of the Lord. Again the prophecy is not of w^hat the Lord does, although it is said, '' I will multiply," etc. It is a statement of the inevitable consequence of human degradation and of the unavoidable condition which the human race takes on, in permitting itself to be degraded. Those consequences to the serpent or sensuous nature, we have seen. The consequences to the woman or the affectional nature, are here described. These have no relation to the conceptions and births of natural children. They are the new conceptions of spiritual truth, and the new births of good desires, feelings and promptings. It is of these children of the soul that it is said, ''I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy concep- tion ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children." i^r 106 The Garden of Eden. In the Eden state all the faculties developed into good, naturally, without struggle, pain or sorrow. Now we emerge from natural states into spiritual, through much conflict, through dark temptations, through severe inward combats, through painful losses of things we had set our hearts upon, through many sighs and tears. Then truth came to the mind in lightning flashes, quick, clear and unmis- takable ; to hear spiritual truth, was to grasp it and believe it. Now we have to wrestle with it, reason about it, sometimes almost to agonize over it, in order to its reception. These children of the spiritual affections, are conceived in sorrow and brought forth through much affliction. It is part of the curse. It is the result of a fallen state. It is easy to descend ; but to reascend the mountain of the Lord, is a weary work indeed. It is added, '' Thy obedience shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." The man or husband is the s3'mbol of the intel- lect, as woman is of the will or affection. In true order the intellect is subordinate to the will. It is love for the Lord which renders the truths of the Lord clear. It is the love of the neighbor which teaches all life's proper duties. But another result of the curse is, that the will yields obedience to the intellect. And now in spiritual things we must retrace our steps. Now the intellect must acknowl- edge the Lord, before the heart will love Him ; the The airse. 107 reason must admit an act to be a duty, before we are willing- to do it. It is the only way back to Eden. *'And unto Adam he said." This is the author- ized version, but a mistranslation. It should read, '' Unto the man (^Ish — the man male) he said, Be- cause thou hast hearkened unto thv wife: " because thou, the once God-like intellect, hast listened to the suggestions of the j)ropriu7n, " and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, Thou shalt not eat of it," that is, hast drawn the nourishment of thy soul from self and sense and science — ''cursed is the ground for thy sake" — miserable and wretched and degraded is thy mind ; ** in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; " that is, with trouble and affliction, vexation and disappointment, sin and sorrow shalt thou pur- sue thy way, as the legitimate result of thy selfish life, so long as that state endures ; " thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; " that is, evils and falsities shall be the fruits of thy mental con- dition ; '' and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field," — the smallest and least consequential of s])iritual conception shall be thy mental food ; ''in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground ; " that is, with dis- gust and loathing shalt thou receive the true bread of life offered thee by the Lord, until finally thou shalt fall back completely into thine earthly nature ; .ir_ 108 The Garden of Eden. " for out of it thou wast taken," — out of the earthly- nature the Lord lifted thee when He placed thee in Eden ; '' for dust thou art," — in and of thyself mere spiritual dross ; " and to dust thou shalt re- turn," — by thine own act hast thou abased thyself, and art, therefore, self-condemned. And so the woman, the man and the serpent — the affection, the intellect and the sensual nature — all passed under the curse. Yet it was, on the part of the human race, an act of self-degradation. The Lord seems to say, " I did it ; " but it was not the Lord's will, but his broken law that did it. And so mankind went down, down, until our God-in- Christ came to earth to raise him up again. Now the lesson here taught comes home to all of us. The curse is evil and sin, and it rests upon the hearts of all who cherish evil. It is self and sense, and it abides in every nature over which these twin deceivers hold sway. The woman and the man and the serpent are all in us. They are of every mind. Each one has his emotional, his intellectual and his sensual nature. In the Eden state, these are under the Divine influence ; in a fallen or perverted state, they are under the curse. All human degradation is self-imposed ; each curse that falls is self-originated. But the Lord comes down (if we will permit Him) into the midst of every sorrow, care or pain, and breathes his mercy there. The good Samaritan of the soul, He pours The Cicrse. 109 his oil of love into every wound. He turns, or constantly endeavors to turn, each sorrow into a balm for our healing, each pain into a cure for our hurts. And if we accept his mercy and his love, we rise and walk erect once more. Shall we not take comfort, then, amid the sad- dest of life's pictures ? Shall we not receive solace even when contemplating the ruins of fallen man ? We have looked down ; let us now look up and re- joice in the thought, that even so low as the human race has fallen, so high may it also rise. 10 VII. THE EXPULSION. And the Lord God said. Behold, the man is become as one of us. toknoiv good and evil: and now lest he put forth his iKmd, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for- ever : therefore tlie Lord God sent him forth from, the garden of Eden, to till the ground from u'hence he rvas taken. So he drove out the ma7i.— Gen. iii. 22, 23. ^HE expulsion from" Eden, viewed in its mere surface sense, appears to have been a very arbitrary proceeding on the part of the Lord. Its cause seems to have been wholly inadequate, its consequences not legitimately growing out of the act, and the punishment out of all proportion to the crime. Let us take a supposed case. A father places his child in a garden where there are two kinds of fruit, each of them tempting to the eye and giving outward evidence of being luscious to the taste. The child is informed — without a why or a wherefore, but on the impulse of a mere whim and as a test of his implicit obedience — that he may eat of the one kind of fruit and not of the other. The declared conditions or consequences are : if he obeys he shall live, if not he shall die. It is a severe test, and the punishment altogether dispro- 110 The Expulsion. Ill portionate to the offence to which it is annexed. The child, weak and ig-norant, overcome by curi- osity and overpersuaded by foolish advisers, is led to believe that his father did not really mean what he said, and eats of the tree of which he is forbid- den to eat. Then the parent, entirely forgetful of the penalty he had imposed for disobedience, does not cause the child to die, but banishes him from his presence forever, to get his education and his living as best he may. He is to receive no more love, no more sympathy, no sign or shadow of mercy, from him who too severely tested him, and who was bound by every human consideration to lead him with a loving- hand into wiser ways, instead of casting him off in his weak- ness, ignorance and error. What would we think of such a father ? Would we not consider him unjust, inhuman, heartless ? Even the law which is supposed to be devoid of sympathy and untempered by mercy, would com- pel the parent to step in and take his child in charore ao-ain. But the Lord is better than man, infinitely more kind, tender and loving. Would it be possible for Him to act toward his child in the way the letter of Genesis appears to teach ? How could He who, in the tender language of the Psalmist, is described as "a God full of compas- sion and gracious, long-suffering and plenteous in mercy and truth," who is represented in the T^ 112 The Garden of Eden. Gospel as being " kind even unto the unthankful and the evil " — how could He be unjust, arbitrary, or cruel, devoid of love or forgetful of mercy toward even the most rebellious of his children ? When, therefore, v/e so read or interpret this narrative, accepting the apparent for the real truth, we make a terrible mistake. We must not conclude with the infidel that God's Word is false. Rather let us conclude that we have been mistaken in our interpretation ; that our education or under- standing has been at fault ; and let us seek for an interpretation that will justify the character of God, and in so doing elevate our own minds. In reading the written Word we shall always come nearer the truth by rejecting the natural and seeking the spiritual meaning. For to all utter- ances of divine inspiration, our Lord's words apply, *' It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profit- eth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." And the apostlo spoke in harmony with the Master's words, when he said with reference to Scripture, " The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." We have come now to a point where we can clearly see this. In previous discourses we have treated this Eden history as an allegory of spir- itual truth. We have looked beyond the letter ; we have not impaired the beauty or force of the nar- rative by literal interpretations, but have tried to The Expulsion. 113 reproduce its inward spirit and fill it with vigor- ous life. We have not looked upon it as literal history, but have endeavored to quicken it with that spirit with which the Lord gave it forth. Contrast the spiritual truth thus taught in this history viewed as a parable, with the most un- natural ideas which have been drawm from it as a literal historic narrative. An all-wise Father has created an earth upon which He places the family of man. He has made these children of his, on a finite scale, an image and likeness of what He is infinitely. That is. He has made them beings of love, innocence and goodness, and capable of indefinite degrees of spiritual wisdom. It is his desire that they should pass from this world, prepared for angelic habitations, and live in the highest happi- ness forever. He, therefore, may be considered as speaking to mankind after this manner : You are human because you are free ; and you are free moral agents because you are human. I cannot take away your freedom without reducing you to the grade of the beasts which perish. Now, I place before you heavenly food of every variety, the wisdom of a good life and the goodness of eternal wisdom ; and partaking of the fruit of these, you will have eternal life. I am the source of all good. Draw your nourishment, your food for heart and mind, from me the great Tree of Life, and existence shall be to you exceeding 10* H 114 The Garden of Eden. blissful. Do this, and life is an Eden, a garden of joy to you; and Eden is the bliss of heavenly life. But I place before you also the fact, that the life of self and sense is misery, degrada- tion and spiritual death. This is the forbidden tree. It is forbidden, not because I would de- prive you of any true good or pleasure, but be- cause this is evil and insanity and there is no good in it. I commend the heavenly fruit to you, because it nourishes the eternal life of your souls and places you in heaven forever. I forbid the fruit of self and sense, because it hinders your spiritual growth, makes you heirs of spiritual death, and unfits you for heaven. The contrast between this view of the narra- tive which is its spirit, and the other which is its letter, is marked. The Father is no longer arbi- trary or inhuman. He is tenderness exemplified. All is consonant with what our deepest readings of the Bible show his character to be. It is not the Lord who is tvrannical, but man who is will- ful ; not the Lord in anger shutting man out from happiness, but man shutting himself out by his own willfulness. And all this, as we have seen, is told, and in no ambiguous manner, in the sym- bolic language of this ancient parable. But it is said : " Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden ; " and, it is added : " So he drove out the man." This is the peculiar The Expulsion. 115 style of all divine writings. It is so given with a purpose. Some of the common expressions of our day are similarly fashioned and for the same purpose. The old sayings " The sun rises," and "The sun goes down," are familiar illustrations. These phrases have come down to us from a people whose system of astronomy was all false, and who believed that the sun literally moved around the earth in twenty-four hours ; that at the end of each day it sunk below the horizon : and that at the end of each night it rose again on the eastern side. That is the appearance, but it is not the reality. We all now know that the earth revolves upon its own axis in the twenty-four hours, and turns us in its movement toward and away from the sun. Yet this language of ap- pearance, in this and many other instances that might be mentioned, remains unchallenged. Chil- dren and ignorant people are permitted to use it with a mistaken idea attaching to it, because they could not understand the truth if explained to them. But the educated are in no wise deceived or misled thereby, using themselves the same ex- pressions, with a full conception of the true doc- trine which lies within or behind this language of appearance ; and the same children who, as children, accepted the apparent for the genuine truth, slowly and unconsciously, through educa- tion, come at last to connect only the real truth 116 The Gayxlen of Eden. with the same language. The language of ap- pearance, so large an element in the formulated expressions of conversation, is adapted to children and adults, to the ignorant and wise. It is the highest conception, fallacious as it may be, of infantile innocence and ignorance ; yet it is, to manhood and education, only the apparent form which clothes realities. The Lord, in his dealings with men, follows what is sometimes termed the methods of nature. And what are the methods of nature but the Lord's own methods ? The Bible was given to the Jews who were merely natural men incapable of spiritual ideas. It is read to-day by millions of merely natural men. It is and has been and will forever be read by countless generations of children. It is intended that the natural minded, the superstitious, the spiritually uneducated and children, shall abide in the appearance until they can accept the reality. It is better for them to believe that the Lord chastises, that He is angry with us when we do wrong, that He sends us to hell, that He deprives us of heaven, that He drives the disobedient out of Eden, than that they should not recognize Him at all. The appearance of truth in regard to God, is better than a denial of Him. An acknowledgment of Him in an er- roneous way, is better than no acknowledgment. We ascend to the temple of wisdom by steps ; and The Expulsion. 117 the lowest step, be it never so rugged or soiled by earthly dust, is a foothold by means of which we mount to the higher. Our Lord recognizes this. Therefore the Bible is a series of parables replete with spiritual wisdom. Its seeming is for natural men and children. Its real spirit is for spiritual men and women, and those desiring to be spiritual. The child may say, '^ God punishes me if I am wicked ; '' the natural man may think that the Lord drives men out of Eden for their disobe- dience ; but the higher thought sees in the phrase, " The Lord drove out the man," simply an ex- pression of the consequences which inhere in his own act. Eden was innocence, love and true happiness. When man ceased to love, he was out of Eden ; when he was no longer innocent, he was no longer in Eden ; when he did not enjoy the love of the Lord, nor the purity of purpose, nor the peculiar happiness which constituted Eden, and of which the term itself was a svnonvm, then he left Eden. That is to say, as Eden is a state and not a place, his departure from that state, by the very act of departure, put him outside of the garden. The natural sense reveals the Lord to natural men as the punisher of disobedience. The spirit- ual sense manifests, to those who think spiritually, the great law of the fall, as being in man's own 118 The Garden of Eden. departure from the true and good. Therefore the Lord drove out the man in the same sense that the sun sends darkness on the world. For as the earth rolls itself away from the sunlight and plunges us into darkness, so the mind turns itself away from the Lord and his influence, and in so doing goes forth from Eden. Thus was it, and thus only, that Adam or the world's first Church, and Eve or the selfhood to which that Church had become wedded, were driven from the garden. They went to no other natural place, they re- mained, as to natural locality, just where they were. But they fell or went into a lower state, a more and more sensual and selfish state, a state to which nothing celestial adhered, and which could not in any proper sense be called Eden ; and in that state they remained. Let us now glance at another law of Providence which is set forth under the correspondences in the parable. It seems strange to natural thought, that the reason given for man's being sent forth from the Garden of Eden was, '* lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." Was it not the very purpose of the Lord that he should eat of this sacred tree ? Why then send him from the garden lest he should eat of it ? The answer is found in the symbols already so often explained. Eden is a state of love ; a garden, a state of The Exindsion. 119 spiritual intelligence. The expression, Garden of Eden, is, however, used with a modified meaning- according to the position in the parable in which it occurs. The primitive state of man was such, that his Garden of Eden was a spiritual intelli- gence evolved from his intense love of God. But when he fell from this high state, and became in love with self and the things of sense, he still re- tained much of his knowledcre, vea, acknowledir- ment of spiritual things. So his Garden of Eden would now be an intelligence concerning spiritual things based upon what had been handed down from his forefathers, a tradition concerning the love state, but not an experience of it. For we must remember that we are tracing the spiritual fall of a race through its centuries of decadence. The present generation had much more of an intellectual assent than of an experimental knowl- edsi'e of the wisdom of Eden. ' But as we learn from various other portions of the Word, to acknowledge truth, and not to be in the effort to live in the light of the truth acknowl- edged, is profanation. It is more soul-destroying than any other state. To give a formal assent to spiritual truth without an inward acknowledg- ment, to have a parrot-like memory of phrases without an adequate conception of their meaning, and in neither case to live by them, is compara- tively pardonable : no one can live up to what he mmmm 120 The Garden of Eden. does not intelligently comprehend. But to receive God's law intelligently, and deliberately break it — to accept in the understanding the law of love, and make no effort to bring it forth into life — demoralizes the soul and is spiritually ruinous. Better ignorance, better utter darkness, better anything that sins in blindness and perverts the Lord's law with no knowledge of its existence, than an intelligent conception of its behests and a willful violation of them. By a willful violation, I do not mean the slips which the carnal man is always liable to make, but the deliberate sinning from the pure love of sin, and without an effort to overcome, while the man interiorly acknowl- edges the true nature of the higher life. Therefore it was according to the Lord's provi- dence that man should entirely lose his intelligence concerning spiritual things, rather than acknowl- edge and profane them ; that he should not only go forth from Eden, or the love state, since so he would, but that he should also be driven out from the garden — the spiritually intelligent state. The hand is a symbol of power, as it is man's chief agent in performing the behests of his will. To put forth the hand, here means to exert the intel- lectual powers of the mind. To take of the tree of life, is to acknowledg-e the doctrine of love, and the Lord as its source. To eat is mentally to di- gest and confirm it. And to live forever, is to The Expulsion. 121 live hereafter and to all eternity the life of the propicillin, which is that of spiritual death. For while to live refers to heavenly life when that is the subject treated of, it means infernal life, when the soul is driven forth from Eden. Thus when the Lord said, " Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil ; " that is, when He, in his infinite knowledge, perceived that mankind had eaten of the forbidden fruit, and yet had retained their acknowledgment of the laws of heavenly life approved of the Lord and held by his angels (it is plural, ''one of us"), then came into play one of the eternal provisions of Provi- dence. That provision is, that when the human mind falls into spiritual degradation, it shall lose its power of seeing or understanding spiritual truth. To profane is to sink into the lowest depths of evil ; to sin without profanation of the truth, is comparatively pardonable. This is in consonance with that teaching of our Lord, which savs : " That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." For the merciful Lord, rather than have willful disobedience, has so ordered the laws of mind, that the supreme love of self shall be attend- ed by loss of the capacity to recognize the love 11 122 The Garden of Eden. of God; and that a purely sensuous life shall incapacitate one to perceive the light of heaven. We see the operations of this law all the world over. And now that man has gone forth from Eden, none are permitted to see the light except those who will endeavor to live by the light. In our present low condition we may fail to live in all respects as the truth requires. But this is not the unpardonable sin. If we want to get into the sunlight of the Lord, and to rise above our evils, knowledge is given us adapted to our states ; and the wanting and seeking is a sign that at some time we shall gain what we desire. So, as the Eden of love faded from the hearts of men, the light of spiritual intelligence flickered in its departing struggle, and at last went out. Then the garden state was gone. And forth from the garden of Eden— forth from love and even spiritual knowledge — our early progenitors went. They went forth to '' till the ground ''—to culti- vate the lowest part of their nature ; '' to till the ground from whence they were taken," to culti- vate the sensuous plane on which the race was originally born, but from which untainted as yet by hereditary evil, the Lord had raised them into Eden. But the Spirit of the Lord is ever operating for the salvation of man. There is no state of the heart into which it may not enter if man will per- The Expulsion. 123 mit it. To him who looks to the Lord, the lig-ht again comes. The more he looks to the Lord, the larger will become his intelligence. But the full comprehension of divine truths, the living percep- tion which renders them certain and gives us an unquestioning possession of them, lies in the love and life of them. It is well for us to think of this portion of Scripture as something more, even in its symbols, than a historical description of the first dwellers on earth. We lose the best part of it, unless we take it all home. We have hearts and under- standings as well as they of old. We have our Eden, our tree of life, our forbidden fruit, as well as they. We, too, incline to self and are tempted to our fall. Our Eden, however, is our infancy. Then the best of the Lord's angels are around and near us, and we are guileless, pure and innocent. It is a different condition from that of the most ancient Church ; still it is our Eden. As we grow older we incline to self. The hereditary proclivity is strong, and we lean to our corrupt inheritance. We incline to be wedded more and more to the j)roprium or selfhood, and take to ourselves some Eve of selfish affection in a thou- sand different ways. The serpent comes to us, and we listen to his subtle aro-uments, and vield our reason to his seductive allurements. The history of all hearts is substantially the same. 124 The Garden of Eden. Manhood or womanhood finds us infatuated with the serpent. We are driven out of Eden. Yet there is this to console us, that so long as we live on earth we are privileged to return. It is for the purpose of reading our own heart- histories, that these parables are valuable. For that, they are of inestimable worth ; but they are valueless to us in the degree they fail of that. For in these chapters, whatever they may tell of the olden times, our hearts are also laid bare for our own inspection. When we read them for spiritual instruction, angels quicken us to love them. They infuse the desire to shun the wrong and do the right. Thus we come into communion with an- gelic minds ; we breathe in some degree the atmos- phere of heaven ; we fall in some measure under the influence thus infused ; we grow better and wiser ; we gain more light and life ; and this divine Word shall do more for us, as we better comprehend its spirit and meaning, than men in the past have, in their most hopeful states, dreamed of. If we love this Word, let us not imagine that we may safely be indifferent to its higher purpose. If we reverence it, let us not be content with its lower or sensuous meaning. If we have caught one glimpse of its heavenly spirit, let us take it to our hearts and fill our souls with its delights, and in its every utterance try — as we are trying in this history of the planting and loss of Eden — to read The Ezpulsion. 125 therein of our own changes and chances, and to gain therein the help of the Lord and his angels, to arise like the prodigal and return to the soul's true home — the garden of the Lord. 11 VIII. THE FLAMING SWORD. And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sivord which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.— Gen. iii. 24. ^HERE is no grander subject of contempla- tion than that of the providence of God. People are not indisposed, on great and extraordinary occasions, especially when they have been mysteriously saved from sudden disaster, to admit the existence of a supreme Power turning away evil from their path. But that is a very limited view of an illimitable subject. The gran- deur of the Lord's providence lies in its univer- sality. When we think of it as special in the sense of being uncommon, we limit its operations. Under such circumstances there is always mingled with our acknowledgment of the Lord's goodness, too much of the feeling that we have been singled out to receive a peculiar token of his favor. Awe and egoism are mingled in proportions too nearly equal, to render the sentiment one of the highest type of spirituality. It is not always easy to sep- arate the feeling of pride in being specially favored of God, from that resulting from a humble recog- nition of his protecting hand. That we believe 126 The Flaming Sword, 127 ourselves to be humble does not alter the case. The mind under the control of human weakness, may deem itself humble when the Lord knows it is proud ; and this, because of the fact which too few recognize, that the heart may be proud of its own humility. Herein lies the danger of a belief in special providences of which we imagine that we have been the favored recipients more than others. But when we contemplate the Lord's providence as universal in its character, this danger ceases. The first view is narrow ; this is as broad as the universe itself. The first brings within its pur- view the self-conscious principle ; this loses sight of one's self, except as a mere drop in the ocean of humanity. Under its influence the mind says : The infinite Father loves the whole universe of men as well as He does me. The care that I receive, every one receives. The eye that was watching my way in saving me from disaster, is no less watchful over the goings of each indi- vidual among the countless myriads of the uni- verse. The mercy which hovers over me, is immanent in all the wide domain of human life, everywhere operative, everyAvhere alike tender and lovino". In this thought there is genuine humility. I thus become only one of a vast brotherhood. Xo matter what happens to me, I am neither a pecu- 128 The Garden of Eden. linrly favored nor neglected one. Therefore, whether we live on this side of the great ocean or the other, whether on the earth or on one of the other planets, whether in this solar system or in any other of the myriads which dot the starry heavens, we are all momentarily watched over, guided and guarded by the omnipresent All- Father. True, we cannot comprehend infinity ; that is, we cannot fully comprehend how the knowledge of the Lord can embrace things so minute, or his presence extend so far. This is one of the sub- jects which is beyond our mental grasp. The child fails to comprehend many things which, as a man, he sees quickly and clearly. We are un- able while in the flesh, to see the why of many things which, in the other world, will be simple and plain to us. One of the great delights of men who become angels, will be the constant broaden- ing of their mental horizon, and the ever-enlarging power of their mental grasp. We shall get nearer to this question of how the Lord can supervise the most minute affairs, only as our spiritual understanding develops and our experiences multiply. If we never come into it fully, it will be because we are not gods, and none but the Divine can fully comprehend the infinite operations of the Supreme Mind. Yet we can feel its influence ; we can know its truth ; we can Th. FlcDiiimj Sword. 129 recognize the laws of Providence ; and we can grow beneath their invigorating presence. The sun shines upon us and warms and enlightens us none the less, although we may not be able to analyze his substance, and have no knowledge of how his beams are conveyed to us through such immense space. So the Lord loves us all, sees us all, and is present in ever}^ least act of our lives, although we cannot, with our finite minds, fully grasp the idea of the possibility of the infinite operations of his providence. Little as is the universality of the Lord's presence and providence recognized among men, it is one of the most positively announced teach- ings of Scripture. The Psalmist declares it in the words, " Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter- most parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me " (Ps. vii. 7, 8, 9). Jeremiah proclaims it in the divine interrogation, " Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him ? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord " (xxiii. 24). And our Lord, when on earth, re- iterated the same truth in the declaration : '' Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not I 130 The Garden of Eden. one of them is forgotten before God ? But even the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, ye are of more value than man}^ sparrows " (Luke xii. G, *7). The five sparrows worth only two farthings, are very small things for the Lord to remember. The hairs of the head are very small things to be counted by God, But if even these are under his immediate observation, surely man must be. This was a doctrine that no follower of Christ must denv. So He referred them to the birds of the air, which sow not, neither reap nor gather into barns. He pointed to the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin. Yet the birds are bountifully fed, and the lilies are beautifully clothed, bv Him who is the Father of all. Since each lily and bird, in each moment of its little life, is watched so carefully by the Lord's prov- idence, who shall say that the least of men, in the least act or event of his life, is forgotten by Him ? Such is the divine truth. And the Christian who does not recognize this divine care in each and every least affair of each and every human life, is not penetrated by the philosophy of Jesus. And the Christian who does not know that this doctrine is universally recognized in Scripture as a central truth, has scarcely taken his first lesson in the teachings of Christ or his religion. The Flaming Sicord. 131 Now when the early race of mankind, called Adam, had departed from the state of purity, love, intelligence and happiness, denominated the Garden of Eden ; when, by becoming sensual and selfish they had lost or been driven out of that glorious state of which Eden was the symbol and synonym ; then the providence of God, ever mer- ciful and loving — the same providence which mak- eth his sun to rise on the evil and on the good alike, and sendeth his rain equally on the just and on the unjust, followed them out of Eden and into banishment. Providence is not only in heaven ; it is also in hell. It not only gives good to the good, but it restrains the evil from evil. It has no resentments, no wounded pride, no human passion. It works for all men, and for their greatest good and happi- ness. In Eden or out, it will do for each one that which will make him the best and happiest man it is possible for him to be on his own chosen plane. In Eden its ministries are ineffably tender and sweet. Out of Eden they do not seem so, only because they flow into perverted hearts and minds. Yet, even there, it will so modify and control cir- cumstances, not infrino-inir human freedom, as to lead man to be as good as he is willing to be, and to withhold him as far as possible from sinking into lower depths of iniquity. This providence of the Lord is represented by V 132 The Garden of Eden. the cherubim. The cherubim, as known in ancient symbolism, were figures with human faces, out- spread wings, and bodies either animal or human. They are nowhere specificall}^ described in Scrip- ture, so that their exact form is matter of specu- lation. ' But the figures exhibited for cherubim in the pictures of the old masters — infant faces w'ith wings attached — find no w^arrant in the Bible. From what is there said, we know, at least, that they were perfect though mingled figures ; and that so far from being ludicrous, as tradition w^ould make them, they were sublime in conception and beautiful in form. The cherubim are frequently mentioned in holy Writ, ne^er, however, as a race of supernatural beings, as has sometimes been imagined, but always as symbols. To mention but a single instance. It was com- manded that cherubim should be placed on the mercy seat over the ark, over the curtains of the tabernacle, over the vail and also in the temple, to signify that the Lord had them all in his keeping; that He watched over them continually ; that in all the wanderings and wars of Israel, wherever they w^ent and wherever they stayed, his unwearied charge over them never relaxed. But all these things — the ark which contained the Ten Commandments, the mercy seat upon which the cherubim stood, the curtains, the vail, the tabernacle and temple themselves, mere forms The Flaming Sword. 133 and containants, as they were, of outward wor- ship — were symbolic of the various things of in- ternal and spiritual worship yet to be developed in the Christian Church. But Christian worship in its highest sense is Christian life. Thus the sublime truth was'figured forth in these as representatives, that the provi- dence of the Lord broods, as it were, with beaming countenance and watchful eyes and outstretched wings, over every human life and heart, in all its worship, ways and wanderings. The face of the cherub was representative of the Lord's love and circumspection ; the body, of his power and pres- ence ; the outstretched wings, of his having them, after the beautiful similitude of the birds with their young, under his overshadowing and tender care ; its standing on the mercy seat, the constant pres- ence of the Lord in all human affairs with infinite compassion, gentleness and love. As, therefore, the cherubim are referred to in all other portions of the Word as symbolic forms ouly, and not as supernatural beings, so must it have been in Genesis. In the description of the tabernacle and temple with their furniture and worship, we have an account of things actually made and once historically existent. The cheru- bim were beautifully carved figures placed in the positions to which they v\^ere assigned by divine command as representative of spiritual things, 12 134 The Garden of Eden. But ill the narrative of Eden we have pure alle- gory, with little if any historical basis of literal fact. Yet the cherubim here have the same mean- ing. Their insertion into the divine allegory was for the purpose of shadowing forth the doctrine of an immediate and universal Providence. It was not intended to indicate that any particular race of supernatural beings were detailed, like the picket guards of an army, to protect the natural spot where stood the sacred tree of life. But it was designed to convey the lesson of an ever- watchful Providence. It teaches it on the same principle and after the same manner as did the outspread wings and heavenly countenance which covered over and looked down upon the ark of the covenant. It kept the way of the tree of life by preventing the vicious, the sensual, and the selfish from understanding the doctrine of love, from appreciating the wisdom of a holy life, and from knowing the exquisite nature of Eden's happi- ness ; lest, understanding, appreciating and know- ing, they should profane them, and thereby seal for themselves a yet more bitter doom. And the cherubim still guard the tree of life. It is the same to-day, and so will always be. The profane cannot see God ; the earthly have no relish for heavenly joy ; the intensely selfish do not believe in disinterestedness ; the grossly im- pure contend that purity of heart does not exist ; The Flaming Sword. 135 the sensual admit not for a moment any wisdom that lifts one's view above the senses. The materialist is chained to matter ; the heathen ac- knowledges no Christ ; the idolater is joined to his idols. Brutalism and barbarism have no idea what spiritualit}' means ; if they make pretence of being converted, they accept the name of Chris- tianity only, but do not get the real thing. The Lord's providence allows no man to receive more or higher truth than he is prepared to live. We wonder at the slow progress of the nations from heathenism to Christianity ; it is the cherubim guarding the way of the tree of life. We Wonder that so few accept the higher views of Christianity revealed by the Lord through Swedenborg ; again it is the cherubim guarding the way of the tree of life. The heathen will be converted to Chris- tianity, and Christians' will accept more spiritual views of our religion, as they are seen in the Lord's providence to be ready, at least, to try to enter into its spirit and life. But the cherubim, or Providence and its minis- tries, w^ill hasten slowly in spite of the unrest of man. The tree of life will be guarded from prof- anation for men's own benefit, until they can safelv take of it, and eat of its fruit without danger of profanation. And though we may be nominal Christians, or nominal receivers of the higher views of Christian truth, lip-service is not 136 The Garden of Eden, necessarily heart-service, nor is outward pro- fession always accompanied by inward percep- tion. And with lips overflowing with creeds, and memories stored with formulated statements of the highest truths, men may still imagine them- selves to he eating of the tree of life, while the cherubim stand, with mercy and love, between them and this sacred tree, lest really partaking of its fruit. they should profane. For the purpose of the allegory, a more strictly literal rendering of the Hebrew text is preferable to that of the authorized version. A high authority renders it thus : '' And he [the Lord] made cherubim from the east to dwell at the Garden of Eden, and the flame of a sword turn- ing itself to keep the way of the tree of life." The east is the symbol of the peculiar dwelling- place of the Lord, thus of the Lord himself What is from the east is from the Lord ; what is in the east is spiritually near to the Lord. He who faces the east, faces the Lord ; that is, in his heart he looks to the Lord. So the Lord made cherubim from the east, that is, a providence which is peculiarly his own or from Himself, to dwell, or be perpetually operative, at the entrance of the Eden of the heart, to keep the way of the tree of life, and preserve it from profanation. But there was another provision of Providence to this end, expressed in the correspondential The Flaming Sword. 137 language of the text. There was, to use the more exact version above gh^en, *' the flame of a sword turning itself, to keep the way of the tree of life." Had this been a literal garden and its sacred tree a literal tree, one would imagine that its obliteration from the ' earth were sufficient without literal guards or the flame of a literal sword. But as Eden is the state of celestial love and intelligence, and the tree of life, the Lord as their source and supply, spiritual provision is needed to keep from its sacred precincts the sen- sual and profane until they are prepared to par- take of its fruit without profaning. Everywhere in the Word of the Lord, the burning lusts of un- regenerate hearts are likened to fire and flame. The flames of hell are but the blazinc: fires of self-love, of passion and pride, enmity and envy, gluttony and debauchery, whatever burns in infernal breasts. Whatever is of self or self-derived inicliigence, flames up as from a furnace of lust within the heart, whenever it is stirred into activitv. The sword, in the symbolism of the Word, is used to denote the divine truth, which, keen- edged and polished in the hands of him who knows how to wield it, cuts its way through error and delusion, and destroys, in its victorious progress, the sophistries of sensuous reason and the armies of infernal persuasions. But in its opposite sense it is the symbol of falsity warring 12- 138 The Garden of Eden. against truth and good. This is its meaning here. The flame of a sword turning itself, is self-love blazing forth with its false persuasions, and turn- ing every way for strength and confirmation. For when self-love with its attending satellites, evils of every kind, once finds permanent lodging w^ithin the heart, it soon persuades that heart that all is right. It turns in every direction or to every method of reasoning, to confirm the man in his chosen position. No falsity is too false for its purpose ; no turning from truth can turn too far to accomplish its end ; and no rankling lust of self-love can flame too high or burn too brightly to gratify its passion. Now^ self-love flaming w^ith false persuasions, is used by Providence as one of the most efficient guards to keep the way of the tree of life. The object sought is, that wicked minds shall not in- teriorly comprehend the life and love of God. This is for tw^o reasons : One, as we have shown, is, that to interiorly comprehend and yet to live in willful disobedience, is profanation — the one un- pardonable sin. The sin is unpardonable, how- ever, not through lack of mercy in the Lord, but through its so searing the soul as to leave it in spiritual ruin. The other is, that a confirmed love of evil, with a knowledge of the full measure of happiness lost, would, to the spirit who has sunk beyond recovery, be everlasting misery. The Flaming Sword. 139 Now hell exists because men have chosen wick-* edness ; yet there is mercy there. God is mercy itself, and He descends not into hell with inverted nature. Where there is no reform there is no endless torture. But an appreciation of heavenly joy and an eternal knowledge of an everlasting- loss of bliss like this, would be unceasing pain. A conscience forever torturing itself over what might have been, having a constant and realizing convic- tion of its loss, would be unremitting agony. A devil is a devil because he has lost his apprecia- tion of love, of heaven and of heavenly bliss ; — because his conscience is blasted through willful and continual sin. So the flame of the sword turnino: itself in the heart, self-love and sensualism flaming with false persuasions, keeps man back from reaching for the tree of life and profaning its fruit ; and this, because self-love does not appreciate the tree of life, deeming the fruit of the forbidden tree in all re- spects infinitely superior to it. It is only as self- love ceases to be itself, and that the love of God and good takes its place, that the joy of Eden and heaven is seen and sought. But after death, when conscience is lost and evil is become the rooted love of the soul, the happiness of heaven is a thing impossible to be known ; and if approached it is felt as something repulsive and painful. So no devil could seek to enter the Eden of the m^^wms 140 The Garden of Eden. other world either to disturb its inhabitants or profane its life, because self-love turns him in- stinctively away. He is happier elsewhere. It is, from a heavenly point of view, a wretched kind of happiness ; nevertheless it is his, and the merciful Lord would keep all as happy as He can. So the flame of the sword which turns itself, is made to keep the way of the tree of life. So Providence protects man's Eden everywhere, and the very best is done for all. Such is the lesson of the text. It teaches a doctrine that justifies the ways of God with man. He is infinite mercy and love in all his appoint- ments and doings. He is tender with the meanest human being that forfeits the sublime destiny for v/hich he was created. He is always with us all. He goes with us everywhere. He sympathizes with every noble aspiration and heroic struggle. He tries to turn our errors into wise and useful lessons. If we sink into self, He follows us with healing balms for every wound. If we sink beyond recall. He softens even the saddest fall. If we rise toward heaven. He bears us up with tender hands. If we throw ourselves into his lovino' arms, He will hold us there forever. The cherubim spread their broad protecting wings over all, and even the flame of the turning sword has its lesson of love. IX. THE RESTORATION. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of tiie river, was there tlie tree of life, which hare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of Vie tree were for the healing of the nations. . . . Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have nght to the tree of Ife, aiid may enter in through the gates into the city.— Rev. xxii. 1, 2, 14. (^ S the Word of God, in recording the spir- itual history of man, begins by placing him in the Garden of Eden, so it ends by restor- ing him to that beautiful dwelling-place from whence, through sin, he was driven. Eden is the first blessing and the last promise which the Lord offers to man. It is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, of the divine alphabet of human holiness. It embraces all things de- lightful and pleasant, all things wise and true, all things loving and good, all things innocent and pure. But as the Lord looks especially to man's eternal good and not to his temporal suc- cess — to that other world w4iich is spiritual and whose joys are unending, and not to this which 141 142 The Garden of Eden. is natural and whose pleasures are transient — it is evident that the blessings which Eden comprises must be of a spiritual and not of a v/orldly char- acter. This realm is no Mohammedan paradise of beautiful houris, delicious perfumes, voluptuous music, and other sensual delights. It is that gen- erous, pure and holy state of the soul which rests in the Lord, which takes home to the heart the spiritual life that He has taught, and which JSnds its chief pleasure and delight in doing good. AVe fully understand, now, that Eden is a state of the soul and not a natural locality. Were it not so, we could not approach the closing chapter of Scripture with any just appreciation of its meaning. Like the great I AM who is the only God, and yet is called by many names, Jehovah, Jesus, Christ or Lord, Adonai or Immanuel, so, in a large sense, there is only one spiritual home for man, although it is referred to or spoken of in Scripture under many names. In Isaiah it is called Hcphzibah, the Lord's delight, and also Beulah, the married land. In many places it is called Jerusalem, sometimes Zion ; Jesus preached it as the kingdom of heaven ; John described it as the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. But it is introduced in the early chapters of Genesis as the Garden of Eden Now all these expressions are typical of a spir- itual state of the Church or of man. True, Zion The Bcstoratlon. 143 and Jerusalem were literal localities ; but they are used as the symbols of interior states of purity, wisdom and love. The restoration of Zion and Jerusalem so often described under glowing im- ao'erv, is but the restoration of Eden under another name. It is not natural cities in their pride of numbers and outward glory concerning vvhich the Lord is solicitous, so much as it is a spiritual state of his Church. The kingdom of heaven which Jesus preached, and into whose courts He invited his followers, was only Eden again under another name. It was a thing of the heart, and He so distinctly stated. "Neither," said He, "shall ye say, Lo, here ! or Lo, there ! for behold, the king- dom of God is within you." Charts could not place it nor geographies describe it, for it was of the spirit. And, given this kingdom of heaven full}'- established in the minds and hearts of men, then was the whole prophecy fulfilled, the kingdom restored to Israel, the glory to Zion, and Jerusalem rebuilt ; and this, though the children of Israel according to the flesh, were dispersed to the utter- most parts of the earth, the natural Jerusalem a heap of ruins, and the literal Zion razed to its foundations. »• It is even so with the Holy City, New Jerusa- lem, which was to descend out of heaven from God. As heaven in the Scriptural view is a spir- itual realm, whatever descends from thence must 144 The Garden of Eden. be spiritual in its character. It is not visible to outward sight ; it comes to us within. And the New Jerusalem is but another term for Eden. It is a new dispensation of light and love. It is the doctrine of Eden retaught and the life of Eden restored. If we cannot see this by intuition, there is one fact which shows it clearlv ; it is that the peculiarities of Eden reappear in the New Jeru- salem. When John in vision looked up, he saw a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, pro- ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. Natural rivers do not proceed from visible thrones ; they well up from hidden fountains in the earth. This, therefore, is the same river under a different name, which went forth in Eden. It is the same water of which our Lord spake when He said to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well: ''Whoso- ever shall drink of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." That was the new truth of the Gospel which, inwardly received, would be a well of spiritual wisdom that would so turn the current of the thoughts, affections and desires, as to prove a fount of everlasting life to whomsoever should drink it. Such is the water that comes from above. It is spiritual truth. Such was the water that flowed from Eden. Swch is that which in the New Tlte liestoration. 145 Jerusalem descends out of heaven from God. Can we have any truth which is not his ? Can we have any enlightenment except from Him? The river of spiritual wisdom, in its refreshing- of the understanding and its quickening of the life, flows always from Him. It is the river of Eden, the water of life, w^hose fountaiu-head is the throne of God and the Lamb. It flows to mind and heart ; and it gives to him who receives it the power to live an intelligently holy life, and to perform the duties of existence not only in a rational way, but in the spirit and faith of Him in whose name it is done. This living water is ''clear as crystal." There is nothing so clear to the receptive mind as spiritual truth. The natural mind does not think so ; but that does not alter the fact. The sun is not clearer in its shining-, than the apprehension of divine truth by the spiritually awakened intellect. But as the facul- ties suited to the apprehension of mathematics, or music, or poetry, must be aroused before their higher truths become clear or cognizable, so must it be with truths of spiritual wisdom. Without the proper quickening of the spiritual faculties, these truths will remain obscure or altogether unseen ; with it, they will be pellucid as the mountain spring ; clear as transparent crystal. But in the Holy City was to be reproduced another feature of the Garden of Eden, and a 13 K l USi^ 146 The Garden of Eden. central one. " In the midst of the street of it and of the river, on this side and on that, was the tree of life." I give the literal rendering of the original Greek, as preferable to the authorized version. This tree of life fixes the New Jerusalem as Eden restored. There is but one tree of life. It grew in the midst of the ancient garden, and it will grow again, not only in the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem, but in the midst of its river and on this side and on that. And the promise had already been recorded, '' To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God " (Rev. ii. V). It is not which teas in the midst of paradise, nor which will be there, but which is. The tree of life is of perennial growth. It always is ; it always was ; it always will be. It grows ever ready for the acceptance of man. The gates of paradise are perpetually open for the entrance of all, and the sacred tree forever stands laden with fruit for the sustenance of every hungry soul. But the profane cannot see it, and they think it does not exist. For them it does not ; for the wise and intelligent it does. Paradise is the kingdom of heaven. Call it by what name the Scripture may, Eden or the New Jerusalem, the tree of life grows in the midst of it ; and without that tree, it is not paradise at all. For the tree of life, as we have often said 'rfte Restoration, 147 and shown, is the Lord as the central love and life of the soul. Now, having this and partaking of the fruit of this tree, man is in Eden, in the king- dom of heaven, in the Xew Jerusalem, no matter what the age of the world or where his dwelling place may be. Yet these expressions, though s^monymous in a general sense, in a specific sense, especially as prophetic of different ages of the Church, have a somewhat different meaning. Eden refers, in a strict sense, to that state of innocent perfection of life w4iich was characteristic of the most ancient Church. It was, in its goodness and wisdom, of that peculiarly infantile or tender genius, which is past and gone and which can never on earth be exactly reproduced. The New Jerusalem is more properly that state of heavenly perfection in the Church at large, or in the individual heart, which has been attained through severe conflict Avith evil in emerging from the baptism of hell. It will be compatible with the knowledge and possession of natural science, art and luxury, to which those primitive people were strangers. It will, there- fore, have a broader basis of natural knowledge. The two are similar states, but developed under different circumstances. This truth is alluded to for the purpose of taking note of the fact, that when different expressions are used in Scripture for- a similar idea, though they mean the same 148 The Garden of Eden. thing, they mean it under different phases. Thus while the New Jerusalem is a restoration of Eden, it will be of a different genius from the ancient Eden, because the people of whom it is to be composed yAW be of a different character, though of. equal perfection. Yet it is not improper to use the term Eden, or any other Scripture term for the state implied by it, to describe the state of hearts and lives to-day that have attained to it, because all Scripture is applicable to all ages and to all hearts. This tree of life — the Lord with his matchless love — grows in the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem. The street, or to use a more common phrase, the way or path of life, is the truth by means of which we walk. When our Lord says, '' I will show thee the path of life," He means that He will point out to us the heavenly truths which shall constitute our daily walk, or show us how to live. The street of the New Jerusalem may just as well be translated its path. The tree of life is said, therefore, to grow in the midst of its street, because the Lord as love (or the love of the Lord) is the central principle of life to whomsoever comes to dwell in the New Jerusalem. All his life-Avalk turns to it ; all his desires and af- fections look to it. It is never out of his sight. It is before him whithersoever his steps tend, and in the very midst of his path. • . The Restoration, 149 The tree of life was in the midst of the river also. This is a curious expression from a natural point of view, but a beautiful one spiritually con- sidered ; for it indicates that the Lord as love, is not only the central principle in the mind, and consequently in the path of life, of all the dwellers in the New Jerusalem, but that He is the central point (in the midst or center) of all their spiritual wisdom. The river of water of life, is the wis- dom of life made manifest to the mind as it flows into the understanding from the Lord ; and God and the Lamb — the invisible Divinity and the Divine Humanity — are the center of it. It all comes from the Lord — the glorified Christ ; it all looks to Him ; it regards Him in every turning of the thought. All principles, all truths, are Sowings forth from Him, and bear his image and superscription. The mind which, in all its medi- tations, never loses sight of the Lord as its central light and warmth, is the one in the midst of whose river of water of life, as it proceeds from the throne of God, the tree of life forever stands. And it is '' on this side and on that." It is to the right and the left ; in heavenly considerations and earthly ; in states of light and in those of obscurity ; at church and at work. Under all cir- cumstances the tree of life is before the eyes, forming a part of every thought, entering into every motive, guiding in every act. *' Guiding," 13^ w:suii.-- 150 The Garden of Eden, we say, "in every act," because it bare twelve manner of fruits. Twelve is a symbol employed when it is intended that the expression shall be all-embracing. Twelve manner of fruits is every kind of fruit which the tree of life is capable of producing. The fruits are good works. He in whose heart the tree of life is planted, bearing its twelve manner of fruits, is he who in all his works bears heavenly fruit, and all whose deeds are good. It is he, the entire works of whose life are the fruits of love — of that love whose center and source is the Lord ; of love which is all-embracing in its character ; of love which is holy, pure, un- selfish, overflowing with benevolence to all man- kind. Such a tree when planted in the heart, '' yields its fruit every month ;" because the Lord's love, when it is the soul's animating principle, produces works that are genuinely good in every changing state. " And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Leaves signify the thoughts or rational intuitions of man ; and the leaves of the tree of life, or the thoughts of those in whom the love of the Lord is the ruling prin- ciple, are all good and for the good of all man- kind — for the healing of the spiritual diseases of themselves and all the world. And how beautifully comes in the declaration, " Blessed are they that do his commandments, The Restoration, 151 that they may have right to the tree. of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Is it not wonderful how many different ways have been held as essential to the obtaining of salva- tion ? Yet we have it here in its perfection. Who obtain it ? They who do the Lord's com- mandments. Simple, brief, and clear I Yet it has been said that no one can keep the command- ments ; and that, therefore, faith alone is the way to salvation. But the tree of life is the Lord our love. That is what we need ; that is what we must receive. That is innocence, purity, bliss — the sum of all faith, hope and charity. That is salvation and eternal life. That is Eden, Beulah, Zion, the kingdom of heaven, the New Jerusalem. And the way to it is, doing the Lord^s command- ments. This is only a repetition of the Lord's words, '' He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Paul had grasped the truth when he said, " Love is the fulfilling of the law." Eden Avas lost by breaking the com- mandments ; it will be regained by keeping them. The cherubim guard the tree of life from the hands of the profane. The flame of the sword, or the self-love of man himself, protects it from the touch of sensualism by rendering it unappreciated and unknown. But it is gained again, and our right to it is re-established, by the persistent effort to TT 152 The Garden of Eden. obey the I^ord's commands, or to live the life that He has taught us in his Word. Is it true that we cannot keep the command- ments ? We cannot, indeed, keep them of our- selves, or in our own strength. But it is ours to make the effort, and it is the Lord's to furnish the power. If we make the effort in earnest, the power is always sure to be supplied. If we lift no hand, make no exertion, raise no prayer, no strength comes. The Lord flows always into active, never into passive agencies. Man is like the flowers. As they hold up their modest cups to receive the refreshing dew and the light of the morning sun, so must he look up, open his heart to the sweet influence of heaven, will to do the right as of himself, and then the Lord flows in with invigorating power. We can keep the com- mandments ; yet not in our own strength, for we have none. But we can if we seek the Lord's strength ; for He is the fullness of strength, and is ever ready and waiting to give us all we ask or really need. Briefly to sum up what has been said in these discourses about the Garden of Eden, as viewed in its true spirit and interpreted by the science of correspondences : When the Lord created man at the first. He raised him up into a condition of love, purity, innocence, spiritual intelligence and happiness. TliC Restoration. 158 This state of life is called in his holy Word, the Garden of Eden. He placed in the midst of this garden — in the inmost of man's soul — the tree of life, which was Himself as the only love and life of man. To eat of this tree was to live in love to Him derived from Him. But he also endowed man with the gift of freedom ; because, not to be free was not to be man. In his freedom, and thus of his own motion, man, after a long period of happiness, turned from the Lord and his love, and began to live for self and from the love of self. This was eating of a tree, or living from a prin- ciple, of which the Lord had bidden him not to eat. It w^as the sensual principle, under the symbol of the serpent, which seduced him. Then man lost his blissful Eden, because he had departed from the Eden state ; and losing that, he lost the spiritual wisdom w^hich belonged to it, and finally all knowledge that it ever was, and even the con- ception that it could be. So the race for long centuries groped in darkness, all oblivious of things spiritual and divine. True, the lamp was lighted and kept blazing in the inspired Word. But men's eyes were closed to its heavenly effulgence. The Word was a light shining upon closed and darkened minds that did not comprehend its meaning. " The light shone in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not." Our Lord came upon earth to show^ man 154 The Garden of Eden. the way back, and encourage and assist him to return to his lost Eden. He was received by a few, yet bis teachings were but partial!}" com- prehended and dimly discerned. He has waited with mercy and long suffering for man — waited for him to develop into a. state wherein he could receive the divine words in their true spiritual meaning. Then He raised up a messenger, Emanuel Swedenborg, whom He illumined with his wisdom, to reveal the mysterv of Eden, of the kingdom of heaven, of the New Jerusalem ; to unfold in greater fulhiess the true nature of that wondrous spiritual life set forth in the divine Word for the restoration of man, and to make plain the true spirit of all He had hitherto taught. So we find the New Jerusalem of divine promise, to be but paradise restored. The rivers of Eden break out afresh in its golden streets ; the tree of life is growing by its river of living- water ; all the blessings that man ever enjoyed, shall be his again; all love, innocence, purity, wisdom and happiness, the river pure as crystal that flows from the throne of God, the tree of life with its healing leaves and heavenly fruit, will he but keep the Lord's commandments. The invitation is full and free. ''Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." The water of life is the truth of God's holy Word ;— of the Word as apprehended, not in the obscurity The Restoration. 155 of the letter, but in the clear-shining of the spirit. If it were truth only, mere knowledge and doc- trine, it were not much. But there, in the midst of it, is the life itself. There is the Tree of Life, the Lord our love ; there are its fruits of every hue ; there are its leaves for the whole world's healing. And they are all parts of a heavenly whole. They are all divine. We can spare no portion of them. Doctrine is for our teaching ; but we are taught it that we may live it. Truth is for our enlightenment ; but it becomes our con- demnation if we fail to walk in the light of it. It is only by living or doing as the truth requires, that our hearts are opened to the reception of the fruit of that immortal tree Avhich is forever in the midst of the paradise of God. Well, here is a condition of life we all ardently desire. The New^ Jerusalem is a state of spiritual life and wisdom. It is Eden restored. Its joys are for both worlds, the present and the world be- yond. Its universal attainment will banish v/rong, disorder, unrest, sorrow and sighing, from the earth. Its attainment by each heart, will banish them from thence. And when we ask, Lord, who shall have it ? the answer comes echoing through the corridors of the soul, " Whosoever will ! " If there is a blessino: that is w^orth gainins', it is this ; if a life that is worth living, it is this ; if a peace worth striving for, it is this. Shall we f\. 156 The Garden of Eden, not take the lesson to our hearts, and make it the theme of deep and solemn reflection, and of sin- cere and earnest prayer ? Shall we be thought- less of that which is of so much higher import than any mere w^orldly things ? or indifferent to that which the Lord regards as worthy our su- preme effort ? Let us reflect. Let us do more, — ^ lift up our hearts to the throne of grace, and pray that we may be more earnest, more humble, more devoted — more believing, loving and obedient. ^ f^^^ 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 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