Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/51

Rh the eating whereof brought sorrow, pain and death into the world, but was self-intelligent and sensuous life, with a perception of self as the only source of existence and the only thing to live for; that the eating from one or the other of these, was not the act of partaking of natural fruit, but was the drawing of the soul's spiritual sustenance from love of God or love of self; and that the command in relation to the fruit of these two trees, was not a precept concerning what the first man ought or ought not to have eaten as healthful natural food, but taught, in the language of correspondence, a lesson setting forth that law of freedom which was planted from the first in human souls, whereby man had the power of choosing to live from the Lord and inherit eternal life, or to live from sense and self in disobedience of God's command.

History furnishes no account of the man of this Golden Age. The traditions, however, of many races as well as sacred books unerringly point to it; mythology throws a glowing radiance of arcadian beauty around its life of simple tastes and quiet happiness; and revelation depicts its loves and joys in divine types and correspondences. And so we are taught that the man of this early age was the very embodiment of innocence and purity, with a meekness and humility truly angelic, basking in the very sunshine of the Lord's love. He