Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/129

Rh it. To him who looks to the Lord, the light again comes. The more he looks to the Lord, the larger will become his intelligence. But the full comprehension of divine truths, the living perception 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 understandings 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 proprium or selfhood, and take to ourselves some Eve of selfish affection in a thousand different ways. The serpent comes to us, and we listen to his subtle arguments, and yield our reason to his seductive allurements. The history of all hearts is substantially the same.