Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/95

Rh the second. The tree of knowledge is here said to be in the midst of the garden; whereas previously it was asserted that the tree of life was in the midst of the garden. It is one of those points of which there are many, which infidel writers, reasoning from the serpent's point of view, hold up to prove the inconsistency and foolishness of Scripture. They reason from the standpoint of the letter. If you tell them it is a spiritual allegory, they will laugh at you; and if you attempt to show them that it is, they will understand you no more than if you spoke in an unknown tongue. Their spiritual understanding is closed to the higher light. But in the spiritual sense of these and all similar passages, the apparent inconsistency vanishes. The explanation is simply this: In the primitive condition of the people of the first Church, just as they were placed in the Eden state, the tree of life, or the Lord and his love, was in the midst of the garden; love occupied the central place in the soul; for it was in the very inmost of the heart, and the central source of the mind's intelligence. But after they began to listen to the serpent, the tree of life occupied no more the center, but the tree of knowledge took its place in the inmost of the soul, and self assumed the position which the Lord had previously held.

But in explaining these symbols, in order to bring out their meaning in bold relief, we find 8*