The Garden of Eden (Doughty)/Chapter 2

by John Doughty

 

 

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 interpretation; from what the Lord's Word elsewhere testifies concerning Eden and the garden that bore its name.

This method of calling certain conditions of life or states of mind by, as it were, local names, is a characteristic of all Scripture, and has been followed by the poets of all time as peculiarly beautiful and expressive. A verse in Moore's Lalla Rookh, illustrates this poetic peculiarity, borrowed from the age of symbolism.

"There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told,
When two, that are linked in one heav'nly tie,
With heart never changing and brow never cold,
Love on through all ills and love on till they die.
One hour of a passion so sacred, is worth
Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss;
And, oh! if there be an Elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this."

How the force of this passage would be destroyed were we to imagine Elysium as used here, to be a particular province or town in which all young lovers dwelt. It is descriptive, on the contrary, of a state of love and bliss. But should we substitute, in place of the idea of a sentimental passion between two young hearts, that of a condition of perfect love to the Lord, with all the joy, peace and innocence with which that state is so closely bound, and close a couplet poetically descriptive thereof with the exclamation,

"And, oh! if there be an Eden on earth,
It is this, it is this,"

we would get the precise idea of the manner in which Eden is to be understood in Scripture. This is a conception that must be thoroughly imbedded in our minds and naturalized to our thoughts, if we would read this portion of the Bible aright. So thinking and so intuitively grasping the spirit of the narrative, we are prepared to follow its details to their legitimate conclusion.

Now in this view it becomes evident that, as Eden is not a place nor the garden a locality, the two trees which play so important a part in the narrative must be something other than their literal import would indicate. If the Garden of Eden is a phrase indicative of the state of the people of the Lord's first Church on earth, these trees must, in some way, be further descriptive of that state. Their very names indicate this. A tree of life—a natural tree that would bear fruit, the eating whereof would render our existence on earth one of endless duration—is a thing that we cannot comprehend. To suppose that any natural fruit could nourish our souls to eternal life, in the higher spiritual meaning of that term, would tax our credulity still more largely. But as this garden is of the mind, to find some mental attributes of which these trees are symbolic, or to which they correspond, were not so very difficult.

That in ancient times the tree of life was used in a figurative sense, is evident from the manner in which it was employed by Solomon. Thus he says in his Proverbs, "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom; . . . she is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her" (iii. 13, 18). And again, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life " (Ib. xiii. 12). The wise man, in accordance with the usage of his day derived from a higher antiquity, applied this term to anything that gave new life or vigor to understanding, heart, thought or desire. A tree of life was that, whatever it might be, from which mental or moral life refreshed or renewed itself. We have no warrant for believing that the term in olden times was ever thought of except as a symbol. Certainly all references to it in the Bible disagree with the literal idea and sustain the figurative. But this use of the term, as seen in the quotations from Solomon, was on a somewhat lower plane than that in which the Lord uses it in the books He has given in his own name. What He says, while it has a mental and moral, has also a spiritual import. The whole Word of God in its inward meanings, announces spiritual truths.

This meaning may be gathered from the book of Revelation. Here it is our Lord who commands John to write, and who dictates what he shall write; and the words convey strictly divine meanings in all their forms of expression. And He commands this to be written to the Church of Ephesus: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (Rev. ii. 7). Here the tree of life clearly indicates something high and holy. He that is entitled to partake of this tree, is he that has overcome. Overcome what? Why, the flesh and the world, self and sensuality, pride and passion; who has, in fact, trodden under foot everything, of whatever nature or description, which impedes the perfect life—sin in act, in thought, in desire. He who does this, is he who lives in love of the Lord; who lives in the Lord and from the Lord; who has the Lord's life inscribed on the very nerves and tissues of his spirit. Such an one is a living embodiment of God's law and love. He knows that it is he who hath the Lord's commandments and doeth them, that loveth Him. And He has and does, and therefore loves.

We use this term love a great deal. What does it mean? It means that the love or affection from which a person does his daily work, not only tinges the whole character, but gives color and quality to the entire life. As Swedenborg expresses it, "Love is the life of man." One may do a good act from a bad love. He may live an outwardly good life from inwardly bad motives. He may be gentle and kind and give freely to charitable purposes, and be honest in business, and say many prayers, because he seeks honor and praise from men. He may do many good things from the love of approbation, or from the love of advancement, or from the love of money, or from any other selfish love. Now a good act done from an unworthy love, so far as the man is concerned, is spurious. The love from which he speaks or acts, stamps the character of the word or deed, rendering it good or bad according to the quality of the love.

But when our Lord said: "If ye love me, keep my commandments;" and "he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me," He told the whole story of love to God, and gave the expression its true definition. The Lord's commandments teach the pure and perfect life. They are instinct with honesty, sincerity, truthfulness, generosity, unselfishness, purity, spirituality. They ignore base and low motives; they exalt that which is noble and lovely. They do not debar us from all sensual gratification, but they place sense and self under the absolute control of the spiritual faculties. Love to the Lord is love of all things good and true, because these constitute his very Self. He taught us this kind of life in a thousand precepts, and commanded us to keep them. If we love the Lord's teachings, we love Him. If we love his commandments and practice them in our daily lives, we love Him. If we love his character and example, we love Him. If we love to have, his spirit in the heart as a prompting motive in all we speak and do, we love Him.

Love to the Lord is good as a sentimental emotion; but if it is nothing more, it is comparatively worthless. In truth it is a very practical thing. It is something that lives in the life, gives tone to the character, buys and sells, works in the hands, renders the muscles vigorous, energizes the faculties, imparts truthfulness to prayer and sincerity to worship. When love to the Lord is the principle from which we live and work, then life is genuine. "We live righteously because from the love of right, and do good works from the love of good. God is righteousness itself—goodness itself; and he who loves the right and the good for their own sake, loves God—loves Him who infills the soul with their spirit. If all men had this spirit, the world would again be an Eden, and all would be living on the fruit of the tree of life. For Eden, as we have learned, is this state of love; but the tree of life is that love as the very life of the heart. Eden is the state of peace, innocence and joy with which the soul is suffused, and which it carries with it in all the circumstances and vicissitudes of life, in all its labors and burdens, in all its duties and amusements. But the tree of life is that love as the fountain within the heart whence spring the spirit of goodness and purity of motive which give the life this state and tone.

The tree of life! Love to God! Let us understand this fully. Is not the Lord as a sun to the spirit? Does not the Scripture tell us this distinctly? Flows He not in with an influence on mind and heart, with the spirit of understanding and the warmth of love, in a manner similar to that in which the natural sun operates upon the earth with his light and heat? Do we not speak of the light of truth and the warmth of love as real things? Yea, the Lord, as the central Sun of the world of spirit and mind, flows in with his light into the understanding and with his love into the will. Then when it is said, "The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory," we cling to the sentiment in no merely metaphorical sense; we recognize the unseen Divinity as the fountain whence pour, as real things, the grace of love into the heart and the glory of spiritual wisdom into the understanding.

If, then, love is an implantation of the Lord's own spirit within the heart—true love, I mean—we see what a glorious tree of life it is as it takes root in the ground of the spirit, growls in vigor and expands in strength, until the whole life feeds upon its fruit and nourishes itself with its invigorating juices. For "out of the ground," it is said, made the Lord God to grow these trees; and out of the ground of man's spirit is it, that the tree of life and its opposite spring forth.

It is noteworthy that this tree of life whereof the Apostle John wrote to the Ephesian Church, and of which it is declared that he who overcometh shall eat, is said to be "in the midst of the Paradise of God." Paradise is Eden. In the midst of Paradise, is in the center of the heart. Observe, it is not spoken of here as a matter of the past—not as a thing of six thousand years ago—but is predicated of the present and future. The Ephesians were after Christ's time. Had Eden been a locality of earliest geography, no Ephesian could ever have been there. Literally viewed, Eden has gone into oblivion forever; it is obliterated from the face of the earth; and the tree of life exists no more. But Eden, or the tree of life in its midst, was promised to an Asiatic Church. Eden is in every heart that overcometh; and he that overcometh, to-day and forever, is in Paradise, the Eden of God. And he eats of the tree of life nutriment—or in other words, he draws his spiritual, his disinterested, heavenly life—from the love of the Lord planted in the midst of the garden of his mind. It is not from Paine or Voltaire or Ingersoll that he draws the nourishment which feeds his mind and invigorates his heart; from such sources he gathers the food of doubt or denial of religion and its God. It is not from the world and its mean morality or sensuous pleasure; not from self with its soul-seducing conclusions, and cold, hard, iron logic, that he gathers the nutriment for his spirit's life; but it is from the love of God and goodness, and the Word of God which reveals them. The purity, the sweetness, the innocence, the unselfishness of the life which the Lord commands and gives, are so grateful to his obedient heart and receptive thought and willing hand, that he will have no other fruit to appropriate to the life of his soul.

That is to say, it is not in the garden of doubt, nor in that of denial, nor in that of merely sensuous thought, that he truly lives; not in the garden of worldliness or selfishness or mere sensuous pleasure that he dwells; but it is in Eden, the Paradise of God, the garden of love, with its intelligence and joy. And he eats not, nor nourishes his soul with the fruit, of any tree that teaches or produces or strengthens a denial of the Lord, or an unwise or unholy life; but he sets up the love of the Lord within his heart, or rather permits the Lord to plant it there, as the source of all true life and holy joy and serene peace—of all truth, wisdom, and intelligence. It is of the fruit of this tree that he eats, and eating lives forever. Not that his material body will live for ages unending on this earthly ball; but his soul, wherever it works, whether in this world or the world to come, will possess that divine gift which can never be taken away, and which, in the language of the Lord, is known as eternal life.

Thus ate the Eden dwellers of old, and thus had they life. Thus may we eat and live; and all mankind may dwell again in Eden if they will. For at almost the very close of the holy Word, with well-nigh the last written utterance our Lord vouchsafes to man. He declares: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life" (Rev. xxii. 14).

So we know that the tree of life is love; that when it is said it grows in the midst of the Paradise of God, it means in the center of the soul; that we eat of it by appropriating it in will and thought and act; or in other words, by obeying the Lord's commands; that so did they who lived in the first Church which the Lord planted on earth, and called by the name Adam; and that we like them, so far as we love the Lord and live in and from Him, shall dwell in Eden too.

And now, ye who honestly doubt the Bible as the Word of God, because this narrative in Genesis is inconsistent as literal history, are you not mistaken in your criticism? Is not this which I have briefly set forth, the real meaning of Eden and its tree, viewed in the light of other portions of the sacred Volume?

But there was another tree which grew in this wonderful garden, and it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

There is no mention of this by name in any other portion of the Scripture. But when we come to understand the nature of the tree of life, can we doubt concerning this? Whatever the one is, the other is evidently its opposite. And if we have dwelt long and critically upon the nature of the one, it is not time wasted; for we have but to turn our backs upon the tree of life and look the other way, to behold that of the knowledge of good and evil. To eat of the tree of life, was to live from the Lord and heavenly love. To eat of the forbidden tree, was to live from self-love and the self-intelligence thence derived. The tree of life grew heavenly fruit; the tree of knowledge infernal fruit. The tree of love gave clear perception of what was good and true; the tree of knowledge filled the soul with the evil and false. The tree of life was the way to eternal life; the tree of knowledge was the path to spiritual death.

We observed in the former discourse that trees symbolize perceptions of the mind. The different kinds of trees are symbolic of the different phases of perception. The tree of life, therefore, to use a more definite phrase, was love perceived as the very life of the soul. It embodied the idea of a keen perception, on the part of the Eden dwellers, of the fact that the Lord constantly flows into them with his love, as the sun flows to earth with its warmth; that thence the tree of life sprung up in their inmost hearts as the governing principle of their existence; and that, therefore, they lived and loved, and were wise and intelligent, and thought and spoke, really from the Lord. The tree of life was then love as a conscious perception of the Lord in their own lives. Under this perception there could be but one result. Spiritual truth would be as clear to them as the sun in its shining. As it is sufficient to say that honesty is right and truthfulness to be commended, for one to see intuitively that it is so, with them any truth of a spiritual nature, such as the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, his goodness, his mercy, his eternal providence, the life of absolute trust in Him, the belief that all his ways are right—these and all other true spiritual enunciations would be received without a doubt or question, and perceived intuitively. This is the highest faith known. It is the only testimony which admits of no discussion. When man loves God above all things, this faith is his. It is ours so far as we are in Eden, no further. Love perceived as the wisdom of life, and perceived as implanted by the Lord for that purpose, is the tree of life. With this planted in the soul, all argument is ended. We know because we love.

Now the tree of knowledge would be the exact opposite of this. It would begin to grow vigorously just so far as we desired to be in our own self-intelligence. The pride of one's own intelligence is a terrible thing. The desire to feel that one is one's own and not the Lord's, the vanity that would say, This truth I reasoned out myself; the pride that would claim that the integrity I possess is my own, and that the merit of my good deeds belongs to me; the self-sufficiency that asserts one's self as the origin and center of what he is and feels and acquires, is the tree of knowledge sending its roots down deep within the spirit. It first separates its life from God's life; then it claims the merit of its goodness and understanding; then it denies God and makes self the center, circumference, and all in all of its own little world. It loses its perception of love to the Lord as the controlling element of its nature: it loses sight of the Lord; it departs from his spiritual wisdom of which it has lost the inward evidence; it tries to confirm, by sensuous evidence and natural science, that which is above the realm of sense and science; consequently it learns to deny that, the evidence of which it has lost the capacity to weigh or understand.

Now, as the tree of life was the Lord who is love, perceived as the life principle of the soul, and as a consequence, spiritual wisdom in its broadest sense intuitively perceived, the tree of knowledge was self and the consequent self-derived intelligence perceived as the all in all of life, and sensuous evidence and natural science the arbiter of spiritual things. Is it strange that the Lord should commend the one and forbid the other? The one in his eyes was life, the other death. The one was purity, the other passion. The one was love, the other lust. The one was wisdom, the other insanity. The one was humility, the other pride. The one grasped all humanity in its loving arms, the other centered the entire universe in self. The one shot its branches ever upward to heaven, the other sent its roots down deep into hell. That was why the eating of all the trees of the garden was commended, save only this.

The reason why it is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, is because in eating of this tree man comes into a practical knowledge of the distinction between the two. Previously he lived the good. Evil to him was only disobedience, a mere name for an unknown quantity, a something of which he had no experimental knowledge. The good was more a life than knowledge; the evil was neither—was nothing. But tasting of evil, then both the good and the evil came into his experience as a knowledge, as things to be talked over and compared. Good was no longer a life, but a remembrance; evil was no longer an unknown quantity, but an experience.

And now, why did the Lord plant the two trees in Eden? Why not the tree of life only? Why was man placed in the way of temptation?

The whole lesson is the doctrine of human freedom, taught in allegory and applied to the most ancient Church. To put the lesson in other words, the tree of life was obedience to the law of love, the tree of knowledge was disobedience to its divine behests. To love the Lord was life, to depart from that love was spiritual death. Now what intrinsic good is there in obedience, if there is no power to disobey? Do the locks and bolts and bars of our prisons indicate purity of heart? Is not he rather the good man who, walking free his way on earth, chooses the good and refrains from evil? Would divine bars be any better? Had He said to man, "You shall not sin; I will take from you the power of sin," would that have made a perfect man, when true purity is the voluntary choice of good? The ox, the lamb and the dove have their gentle natures, but they are beasts and birds. Man is man by virtue of his freedom. He is no brute to live and die without choice or reason. Freedom to obey, involves the power to disobey. Freedom of determination is the highest gift to created intelligence; and it implies the noblest qualities, the greatest happiness and the grandest good the Lord can give; and God could not have made his noblest creature—man, with an angel's destiny—and denied him that which lifts him above the brute and makes him man, the noble gift of freedom.

Therefore the power of obedience implies the power of disobedience. We have it, and none can deny the fact. If we had it not, the punishment of crime would be itself a crime. That we justify our courts and penitentiaries, is a confession of our belief in the moral freedom of man. When, therefore, the Lord commanded man to obey his law of love, and gave him the power to obey, the power to disobey was clearly involved in it; and He had either to plant both trees in the ground of his mind, or none. He had either to make him man or make him brute.

It is for man wisely to use this gift of freedom. It is for him to love and live, not to center his soul on self and die. We are inheritors of this destiny. Let us heed the lesson well, ponder its great privileges, appreciate its divine excellence, admire its tribute to our heaven-born powers, cling to the tree of life, and win the Eden which awaits all open, receptive and obedient souls.