Garden of the Gods

“ Looking through the open door down a vista of archways bowered in clematis and climbing roses, with an alpine rock garden at each side of the broad walk, we might almost imagine ourselves to be at the entrance to some botanical gardens. ”

“ The purpose of this garden is not simply to protect the beings collected there during the great winter; they are to remain there through all historical ages. When these come to an end, there comes a great conflagration and then a regeneration of the world. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The task of the wandering breed,—
To better the world with beauty,
Wherever the way may lead.
Who shall inquire of the season,
Or question the wind where it blows?
We blossom and ask no reason.
The Lord of the Garden knows.
The Garden of Saint Rose
This is a holy refuge,
The garden of Saint Rose,
A fragrant altar to that peace
The world no longer knows.
Below a solemn hillside,
Within the folding shade
Of overhanging beech and pine
Its walls and walks are laid.
Cool through the heat of summer,
Still as a sacred grove,
It has the rapt unworldly air
Of mystery and love. ”

“ But it should be a place susceptible of, and adapted to moral and intellectual growth, and lead to the admiration, adoration, and worship of the great Builder of the universe, the Infinite and Perfect. Is there a better place for that, in all this beautiful earth, than is our garden, and its surroundings? ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us remember that God has given to all of us, little children as well as grown-up people, a place in His garden here on earth, and He would have us take these white flowers, the lives of His saints, as a pattern for our own. We may not be set where all can see us; our place in God's garden may be a very humble and sheltered spot; but, like the saints, we may keep our faces ever turned upward, and learn to grow, as they grew, like their Master, pure and straight and strong—fit flowers to blossom in the Garden of God. ”

“ As the Boy passed through the heavy iron gate, and his eye gazed in appreciation upon the tints of foliage no autumn chills had affected, and the glints of sun and shadow that only heightened the splendor of blossom, and shrub, and vine, which were pouring their incense upon the air, he felt that he was indeed entering the Garden of Eden—the Garden of Eden with no French serpents to tempt from him the woman that had been created his helpmeet. ”

“ On the Earth, created in all the variety that we behold in it, excepting that the climates are all happy, our Two first Parents live in the Garden of Paradise, planted by God. The unimaginably vast enclosing Sphere hangs by a golden chain from the battlements of Heaven. ”

“ A garden is, in many ways, the "mute gospel" it has been declared to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, the pledge of Paradise regained. It is so much of earth's surface redeemed from the scar of the fall:
"Who loves a garden still keeps his Eden." ”

“ The unseen, unheard, inconceivable joys can be faintly expressed by the reproduction in one of the three most glorious revelations of Scripture—The Garden of Eden, the Holy Land with its Temple, the Church of Christ ”

“ I was always happiest in this holy garden of the Lord, where youthful minds expand, which is brightened by thoughts as swift and radiant as the lightning, and where the lovely innocence of childhood exhales its sweetest fragrance. ”

“ The Book of God begins with failure, but it ends with a glowing picture of great victory, painted with rose colors. Every feature of beauty and of good in Eden has grown greatly in John's Revelation climax. The garden of Genesis becomes a garden-city. All the simplicity and purity of garden life, and all the development and power represented by city life, are brought together. There is now a river of life, and the tree of life has grown into a grove. ”

“ The white blossoms that grow in this garden are the blossoms of Prayer, and Praise, and Perusal of the Holy Scriptures. The fragrance of them is as the fragrance of the Garden of Eden. But the full sweetness of the fruit which follows will be enjoyed in heaven, where the hymn of praise on earth will be changed for the song of the Lord’s redeemed: The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever! ”

“ By prayer the windows of heaven are opened, and showers of refreshing dew are rained upon the soul. It is as a watered garden, a fertile spot where blooms the unfading rose of Sharon and the lily-of-the-valley; where spread the undecaying, unwithering branches of the tree of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their home is wherever they live and rest, its roof is the high vault of Heaven with its azure canopy, Mother Earth the floor, the trees its walls; Nature's bowers are their boudoirs. All created beings are their family, the whole earth their country. And the whole earth is one large, beautiful garden, the richest and most beautiful garden of flowers and fruits and songbirds. But more beautiful than the garden are the divine men and women who sanctify its soil by their walking, at whose approach near them the trees worship them with showers of flowers and offers of their fruits as love-gifts. ”

“ A stream of water, pure as crystal, proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb. That stream flows through the city, and on its banks is the tree of life constantly bearing fruit—fruit to be partaken of freely. It is Paradise regained—a holy and beautiful abode, of which the garden of Eden was only an imperfect emblem, where there is no prohibition, as there was there, of anything that grows, and where there is no danger of falling into sin. ”

“ In Bible vignettes of the eighteenth century, Paradise—which is the archetype of the virgin splendor of nature—is depicted as a flat tiresome garden entirely without elevations of any kind, in which the dear God has already begun to correct his own handiwork, and with the shears of a French gardener has carved out from the clumps of trees, straight avenues, pyramids, and the like. ”

“ The surrounding scenery, though full of interest, seems but the setting of the priceless gem, and when inexorable Time, the modern angel of the flaming sword, at length bars the way, and banishes us from our Javanese Eden, the exiled heart turns back perpetually to the floral sanctuary, the antitype of that Divinely-planted Garden on the dim borderland of Time which revealed and fulfilled the primeval beauty of earth's morning hours. ”

“ And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and ’prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come. ”

“ So we find the New Jerusalem of divine promise, to be but paradise restored. The rivers of Eden break out afresh in its golden streets; the tree of life is growing by its river of living water; all the blessings that man ever enjoyed, shall be his again; all love, innocence, purity, wisdom and happiness, the river pure as crystal that flows from the throne of God, the tree of life with its healing leaves and heavenly fruit, will he but keep the Lord's commandments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the king of the garden, the father of the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the sun, whose earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its green vault poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music of birds, gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous warmth of evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through the very bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making it the symbol of earth’s virility. Its presence sufficed to give the clearing an enchanting charm. ”

“ The whole earth was now a paradise, compared with what it is since the fall, and since the flood; the finest gardens in the world are a wilderness, compared with what the whole face of the ground was before it was cursed for man's sake: yet that was not enough; God planted a garden for Adam. God's chosen ones shall have distinguishing favours showed them.
3. The situation of this garden was extremely sweet; it was in Eden, which signifies delight and pleasure. ”

“ God’s Garden is a well-meaning attempt to use Nature for theological and educational purposes. It belongs to that antiquated school of thought that, in spite of the discoveries of modern science, invites the sluggard to look at the ant, and the idle to imitate the bee. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is the glorious charter of the garden, the truth of which none can dispute—there is the revelation of the spirit of the garden delivered to men by the wisest and the most sympathetic garden-lover that ever sought a Gethsemane for communion With the Father of all, in an hour of trial. ”

“ In the last chapters of the Revelation, that day is revealed in a vision of glory. There is no more sea; but the river of life pours its exhaustless crystal waters through the restored Eden of God. But the garden is no longer the retired home of one human 33pair, but is built up, a great city, with walls of gems and streets of gold and gates of pearl and the light of the glory of God. ”

“ Nor yet can we of a stronger race stand among their moss-grown stumps{32} to-day without feeling the worshipful awe of the forest strong upon us. The gods are gone indeed, but the demigods remain. The spruces and firs, foster children of the great pines, stand close-set upon the ground that they once occupied and rear again the temple toward heaven in pinnacles and spires where once were darkly-vaulted domes. ”

“ How could Joshua get rid of these ominous words in the song of Moses to which they had so lately listened?—"They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger. They sacrificed to devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.... And He said, I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Proclaim unto the children of assurance that within the realms of holiness, nigh unto the celestial paradise, a new garden hath appeared, round which circle the denizens of the realm on high and the immortal dwellers of the exalted paradise. ”

“ Does not the oldest of our legends, so closely bound up with our youngest apprehension of religious teaching, tell us of the earliest of our race of whom we have any record or even tradition, living happily in a garden in a state of childish innocence? Why should a garden not be childish?—perhaps when it truly deserves such a term it is the highest praise it could possibly have! ”

“ But beside this habitual contentment and peace, the flowers of the virtues of this garden so open in the soul and diffuse their odors that it seems to be, and is, full of the delights of God. I say that the flowers open; because the soul, though filled with the virtues in perfection, is not always in the actual fruition of them, notwithstanding its habitual perception of the peace and tranquillity which they produce. We may say of these virtues that they are in this life like the budding flowers of a garden ”