language of the text. There was, to use the more exact version above given, "the flame of a sword turning itself, to keep the way of the tree of life." Had this been a literal garden and its sacred tree a literal tree, one would imagine that its obliteration from the earth were sufficient without literal guards or the flame of a literal sword. But as Eden is the state of celestial love and intelligence, and the tree of life, the Lord as their source and supply, spiritual provision is needed to keep from its sacred precincts the sensual and profane until they are prepared to partake of its fruit without profaning. Everywhere in the Word of the Lord, the burning lusts of unregenerate hearts are likened to fire and flame. The flames of hell are but the blazing fires of self-love, of passion and pride, enmity and envy, gluttony and debauchery, whatever burns in infernal breasts. Whatever is of self or self-derived intelligence, flames up as from a furnace of lust within the heart, whenever it is stirred into activity.
The sword, in the symbolism of the Word, is used to denote the divine truth, which, keen-edged and polished in the hands of him who knows how to wield it, cuts its way through error and delusion, and destroys, in its victorious progress, the sophistries of sensuous reason and the armies of infernal persuasions. But in its opposite sense it is the symbol of falsity warring
