The Garden of Eden (Doughty)/Chapter 3

by John Doughty

 

 

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, the eating whereof brought sorrow, pain and death into the world, but was self-intelligent and sensuous life, with a perception of self as the only source of existence and the only thing to live for; that the eating from one or the other of these, was not the act of partaking of natural fruit, but was the drawing of the soul's spiritual sustenance from love of God or love of self; and that the command in relation to the fruit of these two trees, was not a precept concerning what the first man ought or ought not to have eaten as healthful natural food, but taught, in the language of correspondence, a lesson setting forth that law of freedom which was planted from the first in human souls, whereby man had the power of choosing to live from the Lord and inherit eternal life, or to live from sense and self in disobedience of God's command.

History furnishes no account of the man of this Golden Age. The traditions, however, of many races as well as sacred books unerringly point to it; mythology throws a glowing radiance of arcadian beauty around its life of simple tastes and quiet happiness; and revelation depicts its loves and joys in divine types and correspondences. And so we are taught that the man of this early age was the very embodiment of innocence and purity, with a meekness and humility truly angelic, basking in the very sunshine of the Lord's love. He could never, it is true, have coped with the world as it is to-day. To place such a man in our present world, would be almost like placing a lamb in the midst of wolves. Ignorant, as the world now would deem, he unquestionably was. Science and art, learning and skill, luxury and extravagance, as they permeate all present life, were to him unknown. Without doubt nature was beautiful, and the bounteous soil with its spontaneous products supplied his simple wants. It was not necessary for him to be lashed to his daily round of duty by the whip of necessity, nor to work in repulsive fields of labor under the spur of want. Earth was sparsely peopled, and fruitful nature furnished food for all.

But ignorant as he was in worldly things, the now hidden mysteries of God and godly conversation, of heaven and heavenly life, made him wise in a wisdom far above that of to-day. His life was a round of spiritual offices to those about him; his children were reared as heirs, not of the world's wealth and applause, but of spiritual riches and the approval of the Lord. It was indeed the childhood of the race; and those people of the past were very children of the Lord, innocent, beautiful, guileless, angelic. Godlike, but unlearned in the follies which the world prizes and pursues now, unskilled in all the cunning of to-day.

We know that mankind did not remain in that innocent state. The history of the past—so far back as human chronicles extend—is little more than a record of crime; and the struggles of the present are but efforts to rise from the moral mire into which the world is plunged. So there has been a great change. Celestial innocence has given place to selfishness and sensuality. This decadence occurred in prehistoric times. No earthly chronicler has left us the record of its progress. It could not have been sudden. Great and rapid moral changes are contrary to all experience. Nations decay by successive steps which run through centuries. Egypt, Athens, Sparta, Rome, sunk to effeminacy, indolence, crime and final destruction, by gradual departures, each so small that it was difficult to mark its separate existence; and their decline was so slow as to make their complete decadence the work of a hundred or a thousand years.

So was it, probably, that the most ancient people fell. So we read the allegory as set forth in the second and third chapters of Genesis. There was a first step, a second, and—a thousandth. There were also general steps measured by marked peculiarities of retrogression. It was the departure from rectitude of a race, and not that of an individual. That Church of innocence and peace may have lasted many centuries; how many we cannot tell. From that blissful state to its declension and final fall, probably was a period of many centuries more.

The first departure from perfect innocence must have been very slight. Such first departures always are. They begin in things so small that we do not see the evil in them. The first slight inclination is the preliminary step to a drunkard's grave; the first boyish cheat at marbles, the small beginning that leads to the forger's cell; the first fruit surreptitiously obtained from the mother's pantry, the trivial offense that may end in highway robbery. It is plain to perceive the nature of the first mistake of these primitive children of God; plain, not because it is so on the face of the literal narrative, but because the symbols by which it is related make it so.

Up to this time the description is that of the Garden of Eden as it was originally created by the Lord. All that from a spiritual point of view is lovely and lofty, is represented in the correspondences employed. By them we determine the character of the people whom they describe. But something new is introduced into Eden now—a feature which was not there when that garden was first planted; which was not there when man was put into the garden thus divinely formed. The woman is introduced upon the scene.

If Eden symbolizes man's state of love, the garden his intelligence, the tree of life the Lord and his love perceived as the soul's inmost life, the tree of knowledge, the life of self and sense forbidden and as yet unknown, the woman mast be symbolic also. What was her spiritual meaning, and what the part she bore in this history of a celestial state and its final loss? For we must remember that Adam was a people, race, or Church. Adam was male and female. The woman, therefore, could not have been the wife of Adam as a man masculine, but must signify something that was adjoined or added to a whole people, after they had for indefinite ages enjoyed this state of love and innocence. As Eden, the garden, the rivers, and the gold, are all of the mind, so must the woman be also. She must be some principle or attribute which man had not possessed before.

Now, what is woman as a representative character, whether in the world, in tradition, or in the Word of God? Clearly she is the embodiment of that principle of the soul denominated affection. In all mythology, in all the symbolic poetry of the older times, in all the traditions of the ages, when love, devotion, religion—any tender sentiment of heart or grace of spirit which was born of gentle affections—was symbolized, delineated, mythologically embodied, painted, or sculptured, it was always under the form of woman. We know that the world now is pretty well upside down, and that nothing remains just as it ought to be; but the true woman is still devotion, affection, love. That is her distinguishing characteristic as compared with man; and when she loses that, she loses her sublimest feminine quality and distinctive mark. Of the various noble attributes of soul, that is the noblest of all. There may be masculine women and feminine men, but God did not originally create them so.

So is it also in the Bible. The woman symbolizes whatever is characteristically feminine. When the Church is spoken of in reference to its affection for the Lord, although composed of both men and women, it is called "the Bride, the Lamb's wife"; and it is so called, because of the love it is supposed to bear to the Lord as its husband. Thus it was likened, in the parable, to ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom, that is, the Lord. It was called, in older Scripture, "the virgin daughter of Zion," and "the virgin daughter of Jerusalem." The woman is the embodiment and representative of the principle of affection.

But there is also a dark side to this. The passions, too, were represented by women. Hatred and pride are feminine. But these are affection inverted. They are woman in the opposite of her genuine character. They are the feminine nature as it displays itself when demoralized. But woman as a sex had existed in Eden previous to this period of the narrative. In the first chapter of Genesis, where the creation of Adam is spoken of, it is said that "God created Adam in his own image; in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." And this was before man was placed in Eden. For it appears that after men were made, they were elevated, male and female, into the Eden state, and placed in the garden of the Lord. So it was not a wife that was now presented to man. The men of that Church had already each his own. Nor, evidently, could it have been, as a symbol, an affection for the Lord for the first time embodied in those people's lives. They had eaten of the tree of life, and love was already inscribed on their inmost hearts. It was something added to the Eden state. It was an affection that did not originally belong there. As all was made perfect at the planting of Eden, anything added to it must have been slight indeed, and not known as such, but still the first step on the downward path.

We read, indeed, that God said, "It is not good that man should be alone," or, according to a closer rendering of the original Hebrew, "It is not good to man that he should be alone." The implication is, that to man, in his then condition, this being alone did not seem to be a good thing. He began to want something that as yet he did not have. He was somewhat discontented. And then it is added that the Lord said "I will make a helpmeet for him." But Arius Montanus, one of the best authorities in Hebrew idiomatic difficulties, gives as the exact translation, "I will make one, as it were himself, before him." The proper rendering of the whole passage, to put it in idiomatic English, seems to be this: "And the Lord God said, It seemeth not good to man that he should be alone; I will make for him one which shall be, as it were himself, before him." This helps us much in tracing the spiritual sense. Adam in his high Eden state, had been altogether the Lord's. He had no consciously lived selfhood; so high and holy were the people of that age; so close were they to the Lord; so receptive of the Lord's life and influence; so completely under the control of his Spirit, that they had a distinct perception, a realization from actual experience and knowledge, and they were simply living out on earth the Lord's inward influence. It is not more certain to us, as a physical fact, that the blood is coursing through our veins and giving life to the whole body, from the heart to the utmost extremities, than it was to them, as a spiritual fact, that the Lord's influence and life permeated heart, soul and mind, descending into each and every act.

It was a glorious life! Yet the restless spirit of man, in view of the fact that freedom of choice was his, began to feel that he would a little rather not experience quite so great a dependence on the Lord. He said, as it were, "Oh, how I would like to experience this thing called life, as my own! How pleasant it would be to feel that I think, I will, I desire, I speak, I act, and not to be always so strongly conscious that it is a higher influence to which I am yielding. I feel now, that in all this love it is God's love in me, that in all this goodness and intelligence it is God's good and truth within me, notwithstanding the sensation that I think and do as of myself; how much better to carry the consciousness that I am loving, I am good, I am intelligent and wise."

The phrase, "to be alone," in most ancient times, was used to denote the most intimate union with the Lord. It was a consciousness of Him alone as the source of life, goodness and intelligence. It was a rendering to Him alone the meed of all good gifts. It was an abiding in Him alone as the only stay and rest in all the things of life. The first deviation consisted, it seems, in a slight discontent with that position, and in a desire to mingle self-consciousness in this respect with the higher consciousness. It would be no desire to deny the Lord as the Creator of life and the Giver of all good gifts, but a willingness to recognize that truth as a matter of faith, while the feeling would be that the man himself was the author of his own good, and the discoverer of the truths which constituted his own intelligence. It did not seem to him good to be alone in the Lord, but he wanted himself or his selfhood to be more consciously before himself. It was a leaning toward the love of self-consciousness. It was entering into an affection for himself and the things of his selfhood, that is, those of his own personality. Not but that he had an individuality or a selfhood before, but that his life was so pure and disinterested that he was, as it were, in all his meditations, desires and acts, quite unconscious of self. Therefore in this divine parable is it written: "And the Lord God said, It seemeth not good to man to be alone; I will make him one that shall be, as it were himself, before him." And from this time, as the first beginning of his fall, man began, instead of having the Lord and his neighbor constantly before him, to have himself before him.

Now as woman throughout the Word is employed as the symbol of affection in its many varying phases, and as this divinely inspired narrative is in the language of pure symbolism, this affection for self was represented by the woman. And when it is said that the Lord brought the woman unto the man, it is to be understood that He permitted man, created as he was a free being, to have his selfhood as a constantly conscious thing before his mind.

The term selfhood does not fully express the idea intended to be conveyed, but it is the best English word at hand. The Latin word proprium, or the French le propre, would exactly express it. The idea is that man has an individuality of his own. Then he has also that which is the Lord's in him. Somewhat as the earth has a material of its own—its soil and rock and sand. But the sun flows to earth with its light and heat, and gives it vitality. The earth has its own separate existence; but let the sun cease to permeate its atmospheres, waters, and soils, and it were a mere dead thing. So the soul of man has its own personality; but let the Lord and his life cease to flow in, and there would be no flowers of intelligence or fruits of use to make beautiful the garden of his mind. With the sun, the earth blossoms as a rose; without the sun it were a desert. With the Lord, man's mind is a Garden of Eden; without Him it is a wilderness of self, sensuality and sin. Therefore it was a beautiful thing when man lived in the sunlight of the conscious presence of the Lord; it was a sad step when he descended into his selfhood or proprium. When this affection for proprium was added to his Eden life—when the woman, by his own desire, was brought to the man, it was a step downward.

This state of decline is represented by the deep sleep which fell upon Adam. To believe that a man called Adam actually went into a deep natural sleep wherein a rib was taken from him which was built into a woman, requires extraordinary credulity. But to think of the sleep into which the early Church fell, as a growing obliviousness to the higher life and the Lord as its center and soul, is an idea entirely consonant with the style in which the Scripture is written, and the purpose for which it was given. To this day when we see an individual or a Church manifesting indifference to religious things, we say it has fallen asleep. So the entrance of mankind into the state of the proprium, was, in comparison with the spiritually wakeful life of the higher state, denominated a deep sleep.

The rib or bone which the Lord took, has somewhat the same meaning as the woman, for it was builded into a woman. It will be seen from the marginal reference, that the proper rendering is not, of the rib "made he a woman," but "builded he a woman." To build, in the Scripture sense, is to raise up that which is degraded. Bones are comparatively dead things; flesh is a living thing. Bones signify what is spiritually dead; flesh what is spiritually alive. The rib means the selfhood, in itself a dead thing; but by closing up the flesh instead thereof, and building it into a woman, is meant the selfhood vitalized, endued with somewhat of spiritual life, or endowed with heavenly affection; that is to say, the Lord was not willing, if man was determined to enter upon a state in which self should be the conscious element of his existence, to leave his selfhood dry and hard and lifeless. If man was determined to depart from the primal order of his life, He would give him in that departure as much of spiritual life as possible. And He builded his self-consciousness, selfhood, or proprium, into a form of living affection. The dead proprium symbolized by the rib, was builded into a spiritualized affection adjoined to this self-conscious life, symbolized by the woman.

Thus was it, in this divine parable of Eden, that the Lord took the rib—it is not said that He took it out of or away from Adam—and closed up the flesh in the place thereof, and built it into a woman whom He brought to the man. Since that day man has been more or less under the dominion of the proprium. He has thought and loved to think of life and its surroundings as his own. If at any time he has risen above this state and prostrated himself before the throne of God, he may oft and again have been ready to acknowledge the Lord's position as the center and fountain of all, but he still has walked, in some sense, with himself forever before his eyes. Not that the consciousness of personal identity was then or ever, on the principle of the Hindu Nirvana, swallowed up in the all-engulfing infinitude of God; but that, at the first, with a clear perception of his own identity and freedom as a finite being, he had so full a consciousness of the Lord as the life power of his soul, and of the Lord's influence as thrilling his entire existence, that his life was raised in all things above the selfhood, and that he did not recognize this last as a motive or element at all entering into the joy of living.

Would we could return to that state! We may—under different conditions, indeed; for the fall of the human race has rendered us of a different genius from that of our remote progenitors; but to all it is given to rise above the proprium. To aid us in this, is the true object of religion or religious teaching. To succeed in it, is to attain the truly Christian life. There is nothing else worth living or striving for. Happy they who can see this truth and live in the light of it!

It is true that this portion of the parable is less easy of comprehension than some others; that its meaning does not lie quite so close to the surface. To some the explanation may seem abstruse. But it must be remembered that, as the history of Eden is purely symbolic, it must be so in all its parts. As it is a history of minds and states, the sleep and the rib and the woman must denote internal and mental conditions. The law of correspondence according to which the Scripture is written, is consistent, whether applied to Genesis, Isaiah or John. As this law is alike applicable to the unfolding of the true meaning of Genesis and all other portions of sacred Writ, we may be sure that we are treading on safe ground. The woman, in her relation to Adam, will appear again. She was the first to listen to the seductive voice of the serpent; the first to eat of the forbidden tree, and the first to receive the curse. In tracing these events we shall find we have not mistaken her symbolic character.

The lesson of the text is, that evil had its origin in human selfhood, and that the first step is the mother of sin. Have we ever thought how grand a thing life would be, were it elevated above the realm of self? How soon its cankering cares were gone, how far its shadows sent away, how dried of tears its weeping eyes, how soothed to smiles its face of sorrow, were it only freed from this constant sense of self! Could we not be ourselves, yet live for others? Could we not consciously receive the beautiful life of the Lord, yet pour it ever forth into the hearts of those around us? Could we not walk the earth in joy, yet know that all our joys were resting in the blessinigs we had shed over others' lives? How far the world is from this to-day! How long the path to return to the point from whence the downward journey of the race began! But, after all, it is the only true religion; and we will never see this world a Christian world, until we ourselves become a part of its great salvation from the overmastering love of self. Let us pray for it, work for it, gather what fruits we can; for as the first step led from Eden away, the first retracing step will lead to Eden again.