Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/159

Rh This state of life is called in his holy Word, the Garden of Eden. He placed in the midst of this garden—in the inmost of man's soul—the tree of life, which was Himself as the only love and life of man. To eat of this tree was to live in love to Him derived from Him. But he also endowed man with the gift of freedom; because, not to be free was not to be man. In his freedom, and thus of his own motion, man, after a long period of happiness, turned from the Lord and his love, and began to live for self and from the love of self. This was eating of a tree, or living from a principle, of which the Lord had bidden him not to eat. It was the sensual principle, under the symbol of the serpent, which seduced him. Then man lost his blissful Eden, because he had departed from the Eden state; and losing that, he lost the spiritual wisdom which belonged to it, and finally all knowledge that it ever was, and even the conception that it could be. So the race for long centuries groped in darkness, all oblivious of things spiritual and divine.

True, the lamp was lighted and kept blazing in the inspired Word. But men's eyes were closed to its heavenly effulgence. The Word was a light shining upon closed and darkened minds that did not comprehend its meaning. "The light shone in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not." Our Lord came upon earth to show man