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III.

THE WOMAN.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.—Gen. ii. 21, 22.

E have arrived in the two previous discourses at certain definite conclusions, based upon reason and proved by Scripture. Among these are the conclusion that the narrative of the Garden of Eden is not a literal history but an allegory; that Adam is not the name of an individual, but a Hebrew term signifying man, or mankind in general, including both sexes; that the Garden of Eden was not a paradise of visible groves, lawns and flowers, but the state of love, innocence, spiritual intelligence and delight in which the people of the world's young morning dwelt; that the tree of life was not a vegetable production planted in the geometrical center of a literal garden from whence hence man drew his natural support, with ability to exist on earth forever, but was love or the Lord as the controlling element of the mind, with a perception that all life is from Him: that the tree of knowledge was not a natural tree which bore material fruit,