Apple of Eden

“ I own, I think the apples horrid, they taste of hay and the ship, but the poor dear yellow creatures who have been here twenty years, and who left their homes at an age when munching an unripe apple was a real pleasure, and who have never seen one since, fly at this mucky fruit and fancy themselves young and their livers the natural size, as they eat it. ”

“ We suppose there is hardly a man who has not an apple orchard tucked away in his heart somewhere. There must be some deep reason for the old suspicion that the Garden of Eden was an apple orchard. Why is it that a man can sleep and smoke better under an apple tree than in any other kind of shade? Sir Isaac Newton was a wise man, and he chose an apple tree to sit beneath. (We have often wondered, by the way, how it is that no one has ever named an apple the Woolsthorpe after Newton's home in Lincolnshire, where the famous apple incident occurred.) ”

“ THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE The Scriptures give no indication whatever as to the size, shape or colour of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which grew in the midst of Eden, and it has been variously interpreted. Adam is depicted with an apple, a pear, a quince, a fig, according to the individual opinion of the painter. Milton took the tree to be an apple ”

“ Tradition persistently associates Eden with an apple, although Holy Writ contains nothing to warrant the connection: similarly tradition says that Eve had a daughter named Ada: as Idunn was said to be the daughter of Ivalde we may equate Idunn, the young and lovely apple-maid, with Ada or Ida, and Ivalde, her mother with the Old Wife, or Ive Old. [870] In an earlier chapter we connected Eve with happy, Hob, etc., and there is little doubt that Eve, “the Ivy Girl,” was the Greek Hebe who had the power of making old men young again, and filled the goblets of the gods with nectar. ”

“ If we love this Word, let us not imagine that we may safely be indifferent to its higher purpose. If we reverence it, let us not be content with its lower or sensuous meaning. If we have caught one glimpse of its heavenly spirit, let us take it to our hearts and fill our souls with its delights, and in its every utterance try—as we are trying in this history of the planting and loss of Eden—to read therein of our own changes and chances, and to gain therein the help of the Lord and his angels, to arise like the prodigal and return to the soul's true home—the garden of the Lord. ”

“ Much of man's energy is expended in trying to overcome the diverseness of nature.
Gradually and slowly the flower balloons enlarge and puff themselves up, the petals standing together at their tips; all the variety is united into a harmony of exuberance, color and form; then one day there is a shower of genial rain, a warm sun, birds in the air, bees released, grasses soft and lush, and behold! the apple-tree is in bloom,—a great heavenly mound of white and pink exhaling a faint delicious breath. ”

“ Had this been a literal garden and its sacred tree a literal tree, one would imagine that its obliteration from the earth were sufficient without literal guards or the flame of a literal sword. But as Eden is the state of celestial love and intelligence, and the tree of life, the Lord as their source and supply, spiritual provision is needed to keep from its sacred precincts the sensual and profane until they are prepared to partake of its fruit without profaning. Everywhere in the Word of the Lord, the burning lusts of unregenerate hearts are likened to fire and flame. ”

“ What care I for Iduna’s apples so long as I can get these?
When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature’s bounty, even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hillside has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple emulates man’s independence and enterprise. ”

“ Each year, when the cuckoo came calling in the spring, there was no finer sight in all the world than the Apple Tree. So thick was it with blossoms that scarce a branch or twig could be seen. Its fragrance floated on the breeze, drawing every bee and butterfly for leagues and leagues about. Surely with such a tree I might look for a bounteous harvest, one would think. But, alas! No sooner was the Apple Tree thus decked like a bride than my wicked enemy, the North Wind, would come and blow these blossoms far away. ”

“ As I lay on the shore in the night-time, I saw her as a great light afar, and she drew near to me with the foam playing white about her feet. In her hand she bore three shining golden apples.
“‘Fear not, Milanion,’ she said; ‘I have heard the cry of thy heart. Here are three apples from mine own apple-tree. If she whom thou lovest loves thee in return, she cannot resist the spell of their golden brightness. When thou runnest against her, cast them one by one into the middle of the course. If she love thee she will turn aside to pick them up. ”

“ There is only one tree whose fruit is life, for us as well as for our early progenitors. It is the Lord himself enthroned within the heart. It is that principle of love, so large, so all-embracing, so divine, that the mind of its possessor is an Eden of intelligence and delight. Its branches are far reaching; its roots strike deep; its fruits are all goodness and wisdom, and they nourish the soul from its centers of affection and thought to its extremities of active life and work. Other trees there are in the garden which contribute to life ”

“ And, even in the old, old, half-forgotten times, before the garden of the Hesperides was overrun with weeds, a great many people doubted whether there could be real trees that bore apples of solid gold upon their branches. All had heard of them, but nobody remembered to have seen any. Children, nevertheless, used to listen, open-mouthed, to stories of the golden apple-tree, and resolved to discover it, when they should be big enough. Adventurous young men, who desired to do a braver thing than any of their fellows, set out in quest of this fruit. ”

“ The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. James Russell Lowell. The Planting of the Apple-Tree
Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care. And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle-sheet; So plant we the apple tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? ”

“ He tells of "provident old tree mothers on the orchard slope, whose red-cheeked children are autumn Apples." It is this motherliness, this domesticity, this homeliness that makes the Apple tree so cherished, so beloved. No scene of life in the country ever seems to me homelike if it lacks an Apple orchard—this doubtless, because in my birthplace in New England they form a part of every farm scene, of every country home. Apple trees soften and humanize the wildest country scene. Even in a remote pasture, or on a mountain side, they convey a sentiment of home ”

“ From the fiery core of that apple, the earth, Sprang apple-amaranths divine. Love's orchards climbed to the heavens of the West, And snowed the earthly sod with flowers. Farm hands from the terraces of the blest Danced on the mists with their ladies fine; And Johnny Appleseed laughed with his dreams, And swam once more the ice-cold streams. And the doves of the spirit swept through the hours, With doom-calls, love-calls, death-calls, dream-calls; And Johnny Appleseed, all that year, Lifted his hands to the farm-filled sky, To the apple-harvesters busy on high ”

“ He who attains this state of superabounding love, is in Eden; he who can see spiritual truth as clearly as he understands natural truth, is in the Lord's garden. Eden, as a sacred symbol, is love, with all the blessings that follow in its train; a garden, as a sacred symbol, is spiritual intelligence, with all the joys that follow its possession. And our early ancestors—no matter where they lived, nor by the side of what rivers, nor in what meridian, clime or zone—were in the Garden of Eden ”

“ It is the flower of the spirit which blossoms on the tree of life. Every soul may plant and nurture it in its own garden, in its own Eden. It is Eden renewed—Paradise regained. Every one may have an Eden—a garden of Eden in his own soul. ”

“ The cross and death-coffer of apple-wood, the crown of wild-apple, the apple-staff, the poet’s tablets of apple-wood, all the apple-myths and apple-legends, how could one tell of them in a few words. They are in old songs and old tales of all lands. Our Gaelic literature alone is fragrant with apple-bloom, is lovely with the flickering shadow of the apple-leaf, mysterious with symbol of fruit and the apple-wood that holds life and death in one embrace. ”

“ We are so accustomed to the apple-tree as a part of an orchard, where it is trimmed into shape and its bolder irregularities controlled, that we do not think it has beauty when left to itself to grow as it will. An apple-tree that takes its own course, as does a pine-tree or an oak, is looked on as unkempt and unprofitable and as a sorry object in the landscape, advertizing the neglect of the owner. Yet if the apple-tree had never borne good fruit, we should plant it for its bloom and its picturesqueness as we plant a hawthorn or a locust-tree. ”

“ Apple pies, peach dumplings, blackberry puddings and strawberry shortcakes all have their ardent admirers, and happy is the housewife who can make them to perfection.
The Apple.—Well might the apple be the fruit to tempt mankind. The schoolboy feels this when before him stands a neighbor’s tree loaded with the golden spheres of ripeness and sweetness. Well might Solomon with all his wisdom acknowledge the beauty and worth of this best of fruits when he writes: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” ”

“ And the life that man has lived, may be lived by man again. We may all dwell in Eden; and the narrative of the garden of spiritual joy, stands as a hope, a promise, a spiritual prophecy of what may again be realized here on earth.
May the time speed on when Christianity shall find its Eden once more, where the sole delight shall be—with love that shall never weary and wisdom that will not die—to dress and keep, in its eternal beauty, that sacred garden of the Lord! ”

“ Such is, of course, the popular assumption; based upon what we are taught in school books and in standard works of reference. But, as a matter of fact, in many cases the round object admittedly signified an apple; the Golden Apple of the Hesperides: a well known phallic symbol. Whenever a round object unsurmounted by anything is to be seen in the hand of either the Sun-God Hercules or Venus the Goddess of Love, it admittedly may have been, for it admittedly often was, a representation, not of the world, but of the Golden Apple. ”

“ AN OLD APPLE TREE Beyond the meadow, perhaps half a mile from my window, stands an old apple tree, the last of an ancient line that once marked the boundary between the “upper” and the “lower” pastures. It is a bent, broken, hoary old tree, grizzled with suckers from feet to crown. No one has pruned it for half a century; no one ever gathers its gnarly apples—no one but the cattle who love to lie in its shadow and munch its fruit. ”

“ The Apple tree was formerly supposed to be the Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of which was eaten by Eve in Paradise; and it is a curious fact, that the apple tree is also distinguished by legends in the mythologies of the Greeks, the Scandinavians, and the Druids. The pagans believed that the golden fruit of the Hesperides, which it was one of the labours of Hercules to procure, in spite of the fierce dragon that guarded them and never slept, were apples ”

“ It seems strange to natural thought, that the reason given for man's being sent forth from the Garden of Eden was, "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." ”

“ As I gazed, it fluttered a little, then rose in a golden sunbeam; its colors played in the different strata of the air, the roseate, the azure, the ether; it disappeared.
O my flower! I know whither thou goest and whence thou comest! I know the hidden sources of thine eternal bloom. I know the Word that created thee; I know the Eden where thou growest!
Winged flower! he who falters in his search for thee will never find thee. He who seeks thee on earth may grasp thee, but will surely lose thee again. ”

“ Even its bark and its gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp smooth fruits ”

“ The Paradise or dwarfe Apple tree groweth nothing so high as the former, and many times not much higher then a man may reach, hauing leaues and flowers altogether like the other, the fruit is a faire yellow Apple, and reasonable great, but very light and spongy or loose, and of a bitterish sweet taste, nothing pleasant. ”