Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/120

114 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, degradation and spiritual death. This is the forbidden tree. It is forbidden, not because I would deprive you of any true good or pleasure, but because 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 narrative which is its spirit, and the other which is its letter, is marked. The Father is no longer arbitrary 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 tyrannical, but man who is willful; 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 symbolic 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