Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/64

 art thou?" This is a question that penetrates the soul, exploring and defining at once the sad and melancholy fall. The loss of celestial love and wisdom, with all the joys of the heavenly life, through sin and disobedience, is expressed by these words:—"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." When man ceased to eat of the tree of life, he was permitted to eat what was forbidden; and while he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was prohibited from eating of the Tree of Life, to teach us that things celestially good and true must not be mixed with those that are evil and false; nor can angels' food be allowed to mingle with things sacrificed to idols. When we choose evil, we reject the good; we wilfully turn our glory into shame, and lay our honour in the dust. The garden of the soul is exchanged for the desert; the scene is changed, the mind has lost its real joys; wisdom has been bartered for ignorance, light for darkness: from blissful Eden we have taken our solitary way, and all things, both within and without, conspire to tell the melancholy fact, that !

AVING contemplated the blessings that are enjoyed when Paradise is possessed, and the sorrows endured when Paradise is lost, it will now both