Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/149

Rh and Jerusalem were literal localities; but they are used as the symbols of interior states of purity, wisdom and love. The restoration of Zion and Jerusalem so often described under glowing imagery, is but the restoration of Eden under another name. It is not natural cities in their pride of numbers and outward glory concerning which the Lord is solicitous, so much as it is a spiritual state of his Church. The kingdom of heaven which Jesus preached, and into whose courts He invited his followers, was only Eden again under another name. It was a thing of the heart, and He so distinctly stated. "Neither," said He, "shall ye say, Lo, here! or Lo, there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Charts could not place it nor geographies describe it, for it was of the spirit. And, given this kingdom of heaven fully established in the minds and hearts of men, then was the whole prophecy fulfilled, the kingdom restored to Israel, the glory to Zion, and Jerusalem rebuilt; and this, though the children of Israel according to the flesh, were dispersed to the uttermost parts of the earth, the natural Jerusalem a heap of ruins, and the literal Zion razed to its foundations.

It is even so with the Holy City, New Jerusalem, which was to descend out of heaven from God. As heaven in the Scriptural view is a spiritual realm, whatever descends from thence must