Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/63

 of paradise, send forth the sweetest odours, as so many grateful perceptions of celestial joys: but sad indeed is the recollection of lost pleasures, when innocence and wisdom have decayed, and the soul, once a paradise, has become a desert and solitary place.

O my soul, remember that so long as thou shalt cultivate every heavenly affection and thought, and feel a delight to be under the Divine government in all things, acknowledging that life itself, with the very power of using it, are momentary gifts of the Lord, so long thou art indeed eating of the tree of life, and paradise with all its joys will be possessed.

But oh, how sad the contrast when, turning from the Divine government, we lend an ear to the seductive reasonings of the sensual mind and life, denoted by the serpent. It is then that we turn rudely away from God our Father, to the government of self. This leads us to disregard the living voice of God, and to bend our thoughts downward to our own carnal and corrupt reasonings. Whenever we turn from the Divine government, we begin to imagine that the life we possess is our own, and self-derived; and in the pride of our own ignorance commence a kind of self government independent of that of God. Thus, by allowing the dictates of the sensual mind to lead and advise in all things, we listen to the voice of the serpent, and in the language of Scripture, we pluck and eat the fruit of the forbidden tree—the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The love of God, with all the celestial affections of the soul, have lost their virtue; the brightness of wisdom dwindles into shade; it is, with man, the cool of the day, and the voice of God, as an internal dictate, is heard to say—" Adam, where