departure from the true and good. Therefore the Lord drove out the man in the same sense that the sun sends darkness on the world. For as the earth rolls itself away from the sunlight and plunges us into darkness, so the mind turns itself away from the Lord and his influence, and in so doing goes forth from Eden. Thus was it, and thus only, that Adam or the world's first Church, and Eve or the selfhood to which that Church had become wedded, were driven from the garden. They went to no other natural place, they remained, as to natural locality, just where they were. But they fell or went into a lower state, a more and more sensual and selfish state, a state to which nothing celestial adhered, and which could not in any proper sense be called Eden; and in that state they remained.
Let us now glance at another law of Providence which is set forth under the correspondences in the parable. It seems strange to natural thought, that the reason given for man's being sent forth from the Garden of Eden was, "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." Was it not the very purpose of the Lord that he should eat of this sacred tree? Why then send him from the garden lest he should eat of it? The answer is found in the symbols already so often explained.
Eden is a state of love; a garden, a state of
