Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/147

 

IX.

THE RESTORATION.

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. . . . Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.— Rev. xxii. 1, 2, 14.

S the Word of God, in recording the spiritual history of man, begins by placing him in the Garden of Eden, so it ends by restoring him to that beautiful dwelling-place from whence, through sin, he was driven. Eden is the first blessing and the last promise which the Lord offers to man. It is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, of the divine alphabet of human holiness. It embraces all things delightful and pleasant, all things wise and true, all things loving and good, all things innocent and pure. But as the Lord looks especially to man's eternal good and not to his temporal success—to that other world which is spiritual and whose joys are unending, and not to this which