Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/64

58 on the principle of the Hindu Nirvana, swallowed up in the all-engulfing infinitude of God; but that, at the first, with a clear perception of his own identity and freedom as a finite being, he had so full a consciousness of the Lord as the life power of his soul, and of the Lord's influence as thrilling his entire existence, that his life was raised in all things above the selfhood, and that he did not recognize this last as a motive or element at all entering into the joy of living.

Would we could return to that state! We may—under different conditions, indeed; for the fall of the human race has rendered us of a different genius from that of our remote progenitors; but to all it is given to rise above the proprium. To aid us in this, is the true object of religion or religious teaching. To succeed in it, is to attain the truly Christian life. There is nothing else worth living or striving for. Happy they who can see this truth and live in the light of it!

It is true that this portion of the parable is less easy of comprehension than some others; that its meaning does not lie quite so close to the surface. To some the explanation may seem abstruse. But it must be remembered that, as the history of Eden is purely symbolic, it must be so in all its parts. As it is a history of minds and states, the sleep and the rib and the woman must denote internal and mental conditions. The law of