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II.

THE TWO TREES.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.— Gen. ii. 9.

HE very first principle in our consideration of whatever relates to the Garden of Eden, lies in the truth that it is a state and not a place; that the entire narrative is an allegory, and not a literal history. Eden is in the heart. The garden is of the mind. The second chapter of Genesis describes not a natural occurrence which took place in a particular earthly locality, but the spiritual condition of the most ancient Church. Adam means not one individual, but all mankind. The garden was a symbol of the intelligence in which they lived; Eden, of the sphere of love and joy amid which they moved. And Adam in the Garden of Eden, is an allegory of the state of love, happiness and spiritual intelligence in which the Lord placed the early fathers of the human race. This was the lesson we drew from the text in our last discourse. This is the plain inference to be deduced from what the Scripture elsewhere affirms of its own method of interpreta-