Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/83

 

V.

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.—Gen. iii. 6.

S we familiarize our minds with the idea that this narrative of the Garden of Eden is purely allegorical, we experience less and less difficulty in grasping its real meaning, and in satisfactorily applying the laws of symbolism to its interpretation. The different events begin to group themselves naturally around the central truth, that Adam was the whole Church of the early age of the world, and not a single individual. We learn from the allegory that these people lived in the Garden of Eden, that is, in innocence and peace, in the very presence of the Lord and under his holy and immediate influence; that they remained in this state for a long period, eating of the tree of life in the midst of the garden, that is, living from the Lord as the inmost principle of thought and love; that they began to desire to feel the spiritual life as more their own and less the Lord's in them; that they inclined more and