light. 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.
