Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/76

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54
OREGON LITERATURE.

divided into three books, the first of which pursues the following argument:

BOOK I.—There is one God of whom mind is an offspring through division; Wisdom and Death are personified; man represents the evil nature ajid woman a nature that was "slain" by her faith in the Word of God, while Adam of the Covenant fills the figure of Christ, who, as the Voice of God, is the Bow of the Conqueror. As the Forbidden Tree is the sword of the Divider, the records of the Heavenly Garden are of knowledge of which Israel is an allegory, and the visions of St. John, revelations. The first description is of the rise and fall of the first Kingdom of Knowledge, a house that was built on the sand.
BOOK II.—This is a description of the second Kingdom of Knowledge, where man by eating the Forbidden Fruit, awakes from spiritual death, recalls his knowledge of the past, and is born a living soul. The seven angels with the seven trumpets aresymbols of the curses under which man fell and his resurrection.

BOOK III.—Adam, the Temple of the Voice, of which Christ is the finished work, is measured into years from Eden to Calvary; Christ is the figure of the two witnesses of God. The generations of Wisdom are recalled as visions. Mystery is spiritual night, to which the presence of God is the corresponding