Garden of Eden

“ 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! ”

“ It was in the midst of the herb garden; beds of mint and thyme, rosemary and marjoram, basil, lavender, and other fragrant plants were around, and close at hand a little city of straw skeps peopled by golden brown bees; From these skeps came a delicious aroma of riced flowers and virgin wax. It was a new Garden of Eden, in which life was sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. Nothing stirred the green, sunny afternoon but the murmur of the bees, and the sleepy twittering of the birds in the plane branches. An inexpressible peace swept like the breath of heaven through the odorous places. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chain and the vulture and the rock must be their portion. Nevertheless they are not eternal, and the Garden of Eden itself, glowing in the summer noon, was but a dreary waste compared with that garden which men enter by a strait way and through a narrow gate. ”

“ And God planted the Garden of Eden for the man to live in, with great shady trees, and a river singing as it flowed between its flowery banks. Then God brought to the man all the beasts and birds, and the man gave each a name, and they played together in the sunny fields. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ The river of Eden and the river of the New Jerusalem are one. The spirit of wisdom, its fountain-head being the Lord, proceeds from the love of spiritual things within the mind, and the delight in pursuing them. Without a love for it and a delight in its pursuit, there is no wisdom of any kind. Hence the river went forth from Eden—wisdom springing from love and its delight. And it went forth to water the garden, or to give life and vigor to human intelligence. ”

“ I am the source of all good. Draw your nourishment, your food for heart and mind, from me the great Tree of Life, and existence shall be to you exceeding blissful. Do this, and life is an Eden, a garden of joy to you; and Eden is the bliss of heavenly life. But I place before you also the fact, that the life of self and sense is misery, degradation and spiritual death. ”

“ Would all the plants and trees and flowers that grew and bloomed in the Garden of Eden in the days of Adam and Eve's innocence be still there, with the same leaves and blooms, just as they were, if man had not sinned? ”

“ We still cling to one another, as we walk along. We are alone in this Garden of Eden. Busie holds me tightly, very tightly. She is silent, but I imagine she is talking to me in the words from the "Song of Songs":
"My beloved is mine, and I am his."
The Levada is big. It stretches away without a beginning and without an end. It is covered with a green mantle, sprinkled with yellow flowers, and nailed down with red nails. It gives out a delicious odour—the most fragrant spices in the world are there. We walked along, embraced—we two alone in the Garden of Eden. ”

“ So his Garden of Eden would now be an intelligence concerning spiritual things based upon what had been handed down from his forefathers, a tradition concerning the love state, but not an experience of it. For we must remember that we are tracing the spiritual fall of a race through its centuries of decadence. The present generation had much more of an intellectual assent than of an experimental knowledge of the wisdom of Eden. ”

“ This world is a garden of God, set apart for the planting and growth of human souls. The garden of Eden, which God planted and beautified as the residence of the first parents of the human race, is a type of the ideal earth as it was conceived in the mind of God. ”

“ Central in this domain, Eden, is our Garden of Eden. The soil is not a deep, rich paste, like the American bottoms opposite St. Louis, on the same river, which is known to be the richest land in the world, but higher, drier, and more habitable, easily cultivated, and adapted to gardening. ”

“ The Garden of Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it must have been fairer when Eve adorned it. ”

“ And now it was clear that the garden of Eden was all a fable, that man had never been perfect, that he had evolved slowly out of the beast. He had risen, not fallen, and stood now higher than ever before. ”

“ S the Word of God, in recording the spiritual history of man, begins by placing him in the Garden of Eden, so it ends by restoring him to that beautiful dwelling-place from whence, through sin, he was driven. Eden is the first blessing and the last promise which the Lord offers to man. ”

“ That Garden of Eden must have been on a hill, with lowlands below, and high hills above, and roads both ways. The man seems to have gotten into the lowland road, and after a bit, struck some marshes and swamps, with a good bit of thick gray fog.
The first result of the break with God was in the man himself. Man has two doors opening into himself from God--the eye and the ear. Through these God comes into the man and makes Himself known. Through these comes all man knows of God. Both have their hinges in the will, the heart. Man gave both doors a slam shut that day in Eden. ”

“ It would no longer be a wide-spread garden of Eden, nor an earthly paradise within the reach of our enjoyments. May the fruits and flowers of it, reared and presented by their fair hands, ever operate as a charm in ensuring the attentions and unabating regard of all men! And of all good men it will. ”

“ When the soul leaves this world, if that person has merit, the soul enters the earthly Garden of Eden, which the Holy One, blessed be He, planted for the spirits of the righteous. Similarly, He created the Garden of Eden on high, where all the righteous people of the world dwell. ”

“ He was stumbling over the boulders, downheaded, hardly able to see the ground at his feet, yet when he reached the bottom of the little ravine which ran toward the entrance, he looked up to a red sky, and the higher mountains rolled off in waves of light. Distances were magnified; he seemed to look from the bottom of the world to the top of it; he turned, a little dizzy, and between the edges of the cleft that rose straight as Doric pillars, he saw a fire burning at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. ”

“ The sceptre which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this world. She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. ”

“ In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries. ”

“ In the garden of Eden, we are reminded, was made to grow, not only what was good for food, but every tree also that was pleasant to the sight: and in that garden man was placed, to keep it, and to dress it. ”

“ It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed. ”

“ All along on the banks of the river, where the garden of Eden is supposed to have been, the earth is red; and being created from that, he was called Adam, or the red man. It is said,—
"'The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.'
"I suppose it is hardly possible for us to conceive the luxuriant beauty of the place. ”

“ Must we, then, as many have done, look upon the Garden of Eden as a religious or a philosophic myth? Has modern research—especially research in the domain of the new science of Assyriology—done nothing toward clearing up the mystery which has so long enveloped the site of the Biblical Paradise, or are we forever to renounce all hope of even an approximate solution of the great enigma? ”

“ Then for the first time I knew why Eden was a garden, no splendid palace, but a garden with the sweet smell of flowers, with the shade of noble trees, and the sound of murmuring waters. Oh! thought I, that I might be allowed to dream my life away here, that that gate would shut out for ever the noisy bustling world.
[D] “Oranges, lemons, pomegranates, and all other fruits, are produced in the greatest abundance, and sold at the vilest prices. The gardens are rich and beautiful, and adorned with many plants unknown in other countries.”—History of Candia, published in 1550. ”

“ 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. ”