Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/67

 

IV.

THE SERPENT.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.—Gen. iii. 1.

E have thus far followed the story of Eden from its original planting to the period of man's first departure from the state of his primitive innocence. We have found it to be, not a literal history, but an allegory constructed in accordance with the rules of sacred symbolism. We have seen that it relates to no one individual, but to the primitive race, or the first Church on earth. We have learned that Adam was a people, not a person; that the Garden of Eden was their state of love, intelligence and happiness, and not a particular place. We have dwelt upon the spiritual beauty of the life of those people, and the wise innocence of their condition, and have taken particular notice of how supreme in their hearts was the principle of love to the Lord. We have seen that the tree of life in the midst of the garden was no natural tree, but the Lord and his love central in the mind as its only faith; and that eating from the tree was living from this principle and nourishing the whole nature with