The Garden of Eden (Doughty)/Chapter 1

by John Doughty

 

 

The Garden of Eden.

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I.

THE GARDEN.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.—Gen. ii. 8.

HE figures of the Bible put together by the rigid rules of arithmetic, inform us that the world was created about six thousand years ago; but science with its unanswerable logic fixes the time of its creation some hundreds of thousands of years earlier. The letter of Genesis declares that it was spoken into existence by the fiat of an almighty God, and completed in seven days; but science asserts that countless ages elapsed from the beginning of the earth to the period when it became fit for human life. The Bible seems to teach that we are all, of whatever color or conformation, descendants of the one man, Adam; but science casts a doubt upon this apparent teaching, which almost amounts to certainty. Hence religion and science are in conflict; and the skeptical mind which is born to doubt, and has educated itself to deny what is not scientifically proved, condemns religion and sides with science, and floats off, full often honestly enough, from its own standpoint, into the unknown seas of unbelief and the dark ocean of infidelity.

And common sense comes in to have its say. The Bible seems to hinge the whole fate of the human race, for countless ages, on the eating of the fruit of a single tree by one human pair. It seems to place our heavenly Father in the position of having set a snare for the first created man and woman, which they were not endued with strength to resist. It presents to us a talking serpent with powers of apt persuasion. It affirms that the man and his wife were so blind that they could not even behold their own nakedness until the eating of the forbidden fruit brought it to their sight. It makes sorrow and toil and pain and death for all mankind, even into the unknown ages, dependent on a single act of two untutored individuals, of which their myriad children were all innocent.

Thus the narrative of the Garden of Eden becomes so confused and incredible, that common sense is either forced to give way to a childlike faith in what is written, or to throw to the winds all confidence in Bible history. But can true science and true religion ever part company? Can common sense and revelation be really at variance? Would the God who made all science, have given a religion which denies its plainest propositions and ignores its most unquestioned truths? Or would He who endowed his creatures with whatever common sense they may possess, have revealed a written Word which could not stand the test of common sense? Skeptics and believers alike will answer, No!

The trouble usually arises from a mistake on the part of both scientists and theologians. Because he cannot find the name of God as the Maker written plainly on the face of the stars, the scientist doubts the existence of an intelligent Creator. And because he finds the conclusions of scientific research to be at variance with some literal statements of the Bible, the theologian denies the plainest propositions and facts of science. The scientist wants to find material proofs for spiritual things, or sensuous evidence for that which is above the realm of sense; and the theologian would have spiritual evidence for that which is merely natural, or proof from revelation of that which is plainly written on the rocks or disclosed by the movements of the stars before his eyes.

Both these classes have a lesson to learn. Astronomy and geology and cosmogony are taught in the volume of nature, not in the written Word. Immortality and heaven and God are revealed in the Bible, and not in the rocks and stars. The scientist need not doubt the Scripture, because its natural science is at variance with earthly knowledge; the theologian need not fear the progress of science, lest it should overturn revelation. The Bible is purely spiritual. Its spiritual teachings are in harmony with all true science and philosophy; but in itself, its object, and the genuine intent of all its statements, it is purely spiritual. Man can gain natural truth by the use of his eyes and his natural understanding. But he can obtain spiritual truth only by revelation and that inner consciousness of the verity of spiritual things, which intuitively grasps its teachings when they come before the mind in the form of revelation.

If, then, the Bible in its intent and meaning is purely spiritual, why does it profess to give us a scientific account of the creation and a historic record of the earth's earliest events? The Bible does not anywhere profess to teach science, philosophy, or history as natural things. Its object was well expressed by Paul, who commended Timothy for his knowledge of the holy Scriptures, because they were able to make him wise unto salvation, and added: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, or reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). The Bible professes to teach righteousness and salvation, and all truths about heaven and God that lead to these. If there is more than this it is incidental.

True, the Bible is replete with the history, tradition and laws of the Jews. But then how often it is asserted that these are types of spiritual things. It recounts, for example, the story of the building of the temple; but our Lord says that the temple was a type of his humanity. It tells how the wife of Lot looked back to burning Sodom, and became a pillar of salt; but He says that this is a type of the fate of those who, having put their hand to the plough in religious life, look back to the world and self. It repeats the tale of Jonah; but Jonah being three days and nights in the belly of the fish, was a type, says Christ, of his own entombment and resurrection. It sets forth how Israel was fed in the wilderness by manna; but the story of the manna, according to Jesus, shows forth the lesson how the Lord will, at all times, feed the spiritual Israel, his Church, with goodness and with grace. The serpent was lifted up in the wilderness; but this was a type of the elevation and glorification of the Son of Man.

These things our Lord plainly says and positively sets forth; and we thence learn that all Biblical history is typical, symbolical, representative or correspondential of the Lord, of his ways with man, of his work for man's salvation, and of human regeneration.

Paul also tells us much concerning these representations, and gives many explanations of their typical nature. We may only refer to the fact here, as leading up to and pointing out the truth, that whereinsoever the Scripture does not directly and in plain language teach spiritual truth, its histories and narrations are given as types and symbols of spiritual things, as parables or allegories of spiritual life. This is wherein the holiness of Scripture consists. It may use for this purpose the history, the traditions, or the natural science of the people to whom it was first given. Whether these be strictly true or not, is a question in no wise pertinent to the issue. When Paul asserts, for instance, that the life of Abraham and his family as set forth in the Biblical narrative, is an allegory (Gal. iv. 22-31), the question is not whether there is any historical error in the account, but whether it is perfect as an allegory of spiritual life. And when the same apostle declares that the tabernacle to the most minute details of its construction, and the Levitical law with all its sacrifices, offerings, and curious commands, were shadows of heavenly things (Heb. vii., viii., ix., x.), it is not the question whether anything was left out of the Mosaic narrative, or whether there were inconsistencies therein which modern ingenuity fails to harmonize, but whether they are perfectly expressed as types and shadows of good things to come in a spiritual way, for men of a later and more spiritual age.

The New Church takes its stand upon this ground: that the Scripture of God is given for purely spiritual purposes; that it is written throughout as a parable of spiritual things and an allegorical code of spiritual instruction, in types, sacred figures, or correspondences; that it is mainly true in its historical details, but that, as it was not given to teach history or science, scientific inaccuracy, or any other objection which may be raised on the purely natural plane, no more mars its perfection as the inspired Word of God, than would it invalidate the spiritual authority of the parable of the Prodigal Son, could it be incontestably proven that no such individual ever lived, behaved riotously, fed swine, repented, or returned.

In this view it is proposed to take up the history of the Garden of Eden. This narrative has been given as a spiritual allegory. Its construction, its peculiarities of diction, and the difficulties which surround the assumption that it is the record of actual facts set down concerning a historical man and woman, point to it as a specimen of divine parable, beautiful in its simplicity, perfect in its symmetry, harmonious in its statements. It is of no consequence how inconsistent or inaccurate it may be as a historical record; as a parable it is perfect, and that is enough. The Divine Mind here as in other parts of the Word, seeks to teach not natural but spiritual history; not the outward actions of races, but the inward workings of hearts. It treats not of changes of locality, but of alterations of state; not of the loss of a natural abode, but of the forfeiture of a spiritual home. The outer husk of the narrative is temporal and carnal; its inward life is moral and spiritual.

The first thought that suggests itself in the consideration of this topic, is in reference to the etymology of the word "Eden." It is a Hebrew expression signifying delight or happiness. And when we consider that the term garden is often applied in the Scripture to man's state of spiritual intelligence, or to that frame of mind in which he readily comprehends and accepts spiritual things, that this peculiar state of mind is alluded to as a garden, likened to a garden, called a garden, we have no trouble in arriving at the truth that the Garden of Eden was man's spiritually intelligent state of love and happiness in the early age of the world. For was it not said in reference to the Jews, spiritually unfertile and dry as their religious state was, "Ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water " (Isa. i. 8)?—that is, as an intelligent mind not fertilized by any conception of spiritual truth? And when the restoration of the Church was foretold, and its promised fertile and fruitful condition set forth in glowing figures, was it not said by the Lord, "Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not " (Isa. lviii. 11)?

Eden is also mentioned in other parts of Scripture. It is generally used, however, in reference to a spiritual condition, and not as a place. Thus the Lord, through Ezekiel, rebukes the prince of Tyre for his arrogance, and for his assumption of the honors of divine worship. He holds up before him the perfectness of his walk with God until iniquity lay hold upon him; and how much lower would be his fall, because, having been once perfect, he has now, in his pride, proclaimed himself a god. In reference to his first state the Lord says, "Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God" (Ez. xxviii. 13). Now the prince of Tyre had never been in any literal garden called Eden. But he had followed the Lord; he had loved and worshiped Him; he had feasted on spiritual intelligence; he had been, spiritually speaking, in Eden, the garden of God. Eden was his religious state; it was his state of love for God; it was, if you please, the kingdom of God in which he once had dwelt—not locally, but as to mind and heart.

This same figure is used by the Lord in speaking of Assyria, as again given in the prophet Ezekiel. He extols the Assyrian for what he had been, as a people, and condemns him for what he then was. Depicting, in the language of correspondence, his former high spiritual estate. He says: "Behold the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and of high stature. Not any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches; so that all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied him" (Ez. xxxi. 3, 8, 9). The whole description, and much more too voluminous to quote, is purely symbolic. The cedar tree is the Assyrian man or mind, with its peculiarly rational tone as it was in its highest and best religious state. The trees of Eden are those men or minds who were in the love of the Lord; and the garden of God in which they were planted, is that state of spiritual intelligence in which are all who love the Lord, his ways, his truths, and his life. And therefore it is that Isaiah, in prophesying concerning, the future spiritual condition of the Church, declares that the Lord "will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody" (li. 3). How beautiful a description of the wonderful change that shall transform the religious wilderness of Judaism into the Eden of Christianity—the desert of religious ignorance into the garden of spiritual intelligence!

He who attains this state of superabounding love, is in Eden; he who can see spiritual truth as clearly as he understands natural truth, is in the Lord's garden. Eden, as a sacred symbol, is love, with all the blessings that follow in its train; a garden, as a sacred symbol, is spiritual intelligence, with all the joys that follow its possession. And our early ancestors—no matter where they lived, nor by the side of what rivers, nor in what meridian, clime or zone—were in the Garden of Eden; not because they were here or there, but because they were in a state of love and innocence and joy and bliss that no tongue can express; because they were in a state of consciousness of the Lord's presence, of comprehension of the things of divine wisdom, and of conception of all that pertains to eternal life and its joys, of which none but dwellers in that garden can form the least idea. Perhaps they were simple in what we call worldly ways; illiterate in what we term letters; without the luxuries which we have learned to love; and innocent of the very knowledge of evil; good in all the Lord calls good, and wise in the wisdom of holy life, beyond all that this world, as it now is, can imagine.

But was not Adam a single individual? Careful consideration does not so read the Scripture. Adam is the Hebrew term for man; not man a male individual, for there is another Hebrew word for that; but man collectively as a class or race. Adam means mankind. It could not mean an individual, for in the original it is a collective noun. True, the translators of the Bible, having imbibed the old tradition of Adam as the sole progenitor of the human race, have sometimes translated it as though it were the name of an individual. But they have been compelled in other places to give the real meaning, or spoil the sense of the text. Thus, when it is said in the first chapter of Genesis, "And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. i. 26), the original Hebrew word is Adam. But it would not do to translate it Adam there, as the name of an individual, because the text proceeds thus: "And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea," etc. And the next verse continues in the same strain: "So God created man," literally, "God created Adam, in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it."

Adam, then, is a collective noun. Adam was created male and female; and there were a number of them, for the term them certainly means more than one. Adam was the primitive race. He was placed in Eden, not as a single man in a solitary garden, but as a race of men originally brought into the kingdom of God. His state or condition was called Eden, because he was loving and therefore happy; a garden, because he was truly intelligent and spiritually wise. Adam (that is, the human race) would be in Eden today, if all men loved the Lord supremely, and perceived and appreciated the heavenly intelligence with which their Maker seeks to endow them.

The history of Eden is, therefore, an account, in allegorical form, of the spiritual condition of the early inhabitants of earth. Each word in the narrative is a symbol, and a perfect one. Inconsistencies in the letter disappear when their spiritual meaning is discerned.

Briefly let us glance at a few of the attributes of this wonderful garden. It was planted eastward in Eden. In sacred symbolism the east is where the Lord is. Spiritually, we are looking eastward when we look to Him. The garden was, therefore, said to be planted eastward in Eden, because the religion of those people all centered in the Lord. Their love, their innocence, their joy and gladness were recognized as from the Lord, were rejoiced in as the Lord's, were manifested as the Lord's life flowing through them. The garden, therefore—their spiritual wisdom and intelligence—was planted in Eden, their love and spiritual joy, eastward, in the full consciousness of their possessing both from the Lord and in his presence. "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food."

Our Lord very often, when on earth, likened the ground to the mind. It is another sacred symbol. When He likened himself to a sower sowing the seeds of Gospel truth, the shallow soil was the shallow mind, the stony ground was the callous mind impervious to spiritual ideas, the good ground was the fruitful mind. The ground here out of which the trees grew, was the ground of the mind. The trees are the mind's perceptions. Sometimes this word is used for the man himself or the mind itself; but it really means the mind's religious perceptions. "Every tree that bringeth forth good fruit" of which our Lord spake, means not only every man or every mind, but specifically every perception of true life which the mind has, that goes forth into good life, or bears spiritual fruit. So all perceptions of the true, which sprang forth in the ground of the minds of those people, which could be pleasant to the sight (mental sight is the understanding; pleasant to the sight, is agreeable to the understanding) or good for food—good, that is, for spiritual nourishment—were given by the Lord to a people so loving and so true.

The river that went out of Eden to water the garden, is a curious expression. How, literally, could the river go out of Eden to water the garden, if, literally, Eden was the garden? Naturally, it could not; spiritually, it could. The river is the symbol of wisdom considered as flowing into the mind from the fountain of wisdom, God. It would be pleasant to trace this beautiful symbol through its many phases in the Word. Suffice it here to allude to the river of water of life, which in the Revelation is described as proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. The river of Eden and the river of the New Jerusalem are one. The spirit of wisdom, its fountain-head being the Lord, proceeds from the love of spiritual things within the mind, and the delight in pursuing them. Without a love for it and a delight in its pursuit, there is no wisdom of any kind. Hence the river went forth from Eden—wisdom springing from love and its delight. And it went forth to water the garden, or to give life and vigor to human intelligence.

And this river is said to have parted into four heads, and to have watered four regions, Havilah, Ethiopia, Assyria and the land of the Euphrates,—not because any literal rivers went forth to water natural lands, but because the mind has four regions to be influenced by reason and to be guided by intelligence. These are the will, the understanding, the rationality and the memory. They are spiritual lands—lands of the mind and not of matter; and the names of those particular countries are so applied, because they afterwards became sacred symbols in accordance with the predominating genius of their people, and in that sense are elsewhere used in the Scriptures.

So geographers may give up their disputes in the effort to find impossible rivers watering impossible lands and flowing from an impossible Eden; for Eden is in all places where man is of heavenly mould, and its garden and trees and rivers are simply descriptive, in ancient symbolism, of the minds and hearts of a people beloved of the Lord. Even the gold of Havilah they may cease to search for, as we are told in the text that the gold of that land was good. For Havilah was the land of the will; and goodness—good thoughts, good desires and good deeds—was the golden will of those celestial people who lived in olden times.

To this era, all tradition points. From Egypt, India, Greece and Rome, the oracles of the ancient chronicles tell us in glowing syllables of the Golden Age. It was the world's young morn of happy innocence. Why is it set forth in Scripture? To teach the Church what it has been, and what it may again become. That which has been, may be. That which has once been lost, may once again be found. And the life that man has lived, may be lived by man again. We may all dwell in Eden; and the narrative of the garden of spiritual joy, stands as a hope, a promise, a spiritual prophecy of what may again be realized here on earth.

May the time speed on when Christianity shall find its Eden once more, where the sole delight shall be—with love that shall never weary and wisdom that will not die—to dress and keep, in its eternal beauty, that sacred garden of the Lord!