writers interpret the Word spiritually, whereas the ordinary historian renders it literally.
Literally taken, the text is made to appear contradictory in some places; and that Divine Love — which gave man earth for a possession, and blessed it for his sake — is represented as changeable. The literal meaning would imply that God withheld from man the opportunity to reform, lest he should improve it and become better; but this is not the nature of God, who is Love, — Love infinitely wise and altogether lovely, “seeking not her own but another's good.”
Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. It is a two-edged sword, to guard and guide. Truth places the cherub Wisdom at the gate of Understanding, to mark the proper guests. Radiant with mercy and justice, the sword of Truth gleams afar, and indicates the infinite distance between Truth and error, between the material unreal and the scientific real.
The sun, giving light and heat to the earth, is figurative of the divine Life and Love that enlighten and sustain the universe and man. The Tree of Life is significant of eternal reality. The Tree of Knowledge typifies the existence of error. The testimony of the Serpent is significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims of matter, — yea, of all that misrepresents God.
Sin, sickness, and death have no record in the Elohistic introduction of Genesis, wherein God creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until that which contradicts the Truth of Being enters into the arena, evil has no history. Sin, sickness, and death are brought to view only as the unreal, in contradistinction to the real and eternal.
