Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/62

56 sleep which fell upon Adam. To believe that a man called Adam actually went into a deep natural sleep wherein a rib was taken from him which was built into a woman, requires extraordinary credulity. But to think of the sleep into which the early Church fell, as a growing obliviousness to the higher life and the Lord as its center and soul, is an idea entirely consonant with the style in which the Scripture is written, and the purpose for which it was given. To this day when we see an individual or a Church manifesting indifference to religious things, we say it has fallen asleep. So the entrance of mankind into the state of the proprium, was, in comparison with the spiritually wakeful life of the higher state, denominated a deep sleep.

The rib or bone which the Lord took, has somewhat the same meaning as the woman, for it was builded into a woman. It will be seen from the marginal reference, that the proper rendering is not, of the rib "made he a woman," but "builded he a woman." To build, in the Scripture sense, is to raise up that which is degraded. Bones are comparatively dead things; flesh is a living thing. Bones signify what is spiritually dead; flesh what is spiritually alive. The rib means the selfhood, in itself a dead thing; but by closing up the flesh instead thereof, and building it into a woman, is meant the selfhood vitalized, endued