Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/142

136 necessarily heart-service, nor is outward profession always accompanied by inward perception. And with lips overflowing with creeds, and memories stored with formulated statements of the highest truths, men may still imagine themselves to be 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 turning 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