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Rh God. And he eats of the tree of life nutriment—or in other words, he draws his spiritual, his disinterested, heavenly life—from the love of the Lord planted in the midst of the garden of his mind. It is not from Paine or Voltaire or Ingersoll that he draws the nourishment which feeds his mind and invigorates his heart; from such sources he gathers the food of doubt or denial of religion and its God. It is not from the world and its mean morality or sensuous pleasure; not from self with its soul-seducing conclusions, and cold, hard, iron logic, that he gathers the nutriment for his spirit's life; but it is from the love of God and goodness, and the Word of God which reveals them. The purity, the sweetness, the innocence, the unselfishness of the life which the Lord commands and gives, are so grateful to his obedient heart and receptive thought and willing hand, that he will have no other fruit to appropriate to the life of his soul.

That is to say, it is not in the garden of doubt, nor in that of denial, nor in that of merely sensuous thought, that he truly lives; not in the garden of worldliness or selfishness or mere sensuous pleasure that he dwells; but it is in Eden, the Paradise of God, the garden of love, with its intelligence and joy. And he eats not, nor nourishes his soul with the fruit, of any tree that teaches or produces or strengthens a denial of the