Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/42

36 Lord, or an unwise or unholy life; but he sets up the love of the Lord within his heart, or rather permits the Lord to plant it there, as the source of all true life and holy joy and serene peace—of all truth, wisdom, and intelligence. It is of the fruit of this tree that he eats, and eating lives forever. Not that his material body will live for ages unending on this earthly ball; but his soul, wherever it works, whether in this world or the world to come, will possess that divine gift which can never be taken away, and which, in the language of the Lord, is known as eternal life.

Thus ate the Eden dwellers of old, and thus had they life. Thus may we eat and live; and all mankind may dwell again in Eden if they will. For at almost the very close of the holy Word, with well-nigh the last written utterance our Lord vouchsafes to man. He declares: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life" (Rev. xxii. 14).

So we know that the tree of life is love; that when it is said it grows in the midst of the Paradise of God, it means in the center of the soul; that we eat of it by appropriating it in will and thought and act; or in other words, by obeying the Lord's commands; that so did they who lived in the first Church which the Lord planted on earth, and called by the name Adam; and that