II.

The Tree of Life.

"In this pleasant soil

His far more pleasant garden God ordained;
Out of the fertile ground He caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste,
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit,

Of vegetable gold; and next to Life

Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by."

MILTON.

THE first state of man was one, of which no later generation could form a just picture or conception. It was like infancy, which leaves no trace in recollection. The parents of the human race lived amidst a world of speaking symbols. They saw the properties of animals at a glance; the fit names came at once to their lips; and the foundation of all language was laid in the analogies of nature. The voice of God breathed to them as distinctly in the garden, in the cool of the day, as the murmurs of the wind. In the subtlest of all beasts lurked the presence of their spiritual tempter, with his hissing whisper, and his envenomed sting. The trial of their obedience, with all its vast issues, was a symbolical transaction. Amidst all the trees, the fruit of one was forbidden; and all their happy domain was held under the tenure of this compliance. One other tree was made the pledge and means of their perpetual preservation. The Tree of Life was planted in Paradise, that, eating of its fruit, mankind might live for ever.

All the material creation tends to decay, and requires incessant renewal: such is the law of its existence. The life of man was always sustained, as at this day, by continual supplies from a Providence, which has scattered over the earth, and gathers to his feet, those substances whose elementary composition is adapted to that of his body. But these supplies could only prevent, from day to day, that incidental decay which would ensue were the human body separated from any of the surrounding elements which are necessary to the coninual renovation of its vital energies. The great, constant, essential tendency to decay, under which all bodies, however nourished, grow old, and at last sink without disease, and notwithstanding all surrounding elements, could not be thus removed. For this, the bounteous Creator had provided another antidote, in the fruit of that blessed tree which stood distinct and pre-eminent. amongst all the growth of the garden. It was ordained to be the sacramental symbol of immortality; perhaps, to be even the physical agency through which the decay of nature should perpetually be counteracted. The pulse, which grew cold and languid after the flight of years, was thus, perhaps, to be quickened and warmed into more than youthful strength. Or, it may be that he, who, at an appointed season, should approach and eat its fruit, was to pass through some gentle transformation, as if from glory to glory. Without dying, the insect lies down to its chrysalis slumber, and then spreads its light wings, a beautiful inhabitant of the air. The bud expands into the blossom, the blossom into the fruit, and yet there is no interval or violence. Two of the family of men have entered a brighter state of being without corporeal dissolution. It may be that the Tree

of Life was not only the pledge but the means of such a transition, when the time should come to exchange Eden for some bliss yet nearer to the angels. These have been the opinions of wise and holy interpreters. "In the other trees," says Augustin, "there was nourishment; but in this a sacrament." Irenæus and Chrysostom suppose that it had a virtue to preserve the organs in their original state, without disturbance, till the period of translation. The words of Gregory Nazianzen make either the translation, or the perpetuity of a blissful existence here, the direct consequence of the taste. "If we had continued what we were, and kept the commandments, we should have been what we were not, by coming to the Tree of Life, being made immortal, and approaching nigh to God."

We can imagine that, had men multiplied in innocence, they might have come from the ends of the earth, on pilgrimage to Eden. In that pleasant land, the aged, the ripe, might say, "come and let us go up to

"that sovereign Plant, whose scions shoot

With healing virtue, and immortal fruit,
The Tree of Life, beside the stream that laves
The fields of Paradise with gladdening waves !"

There they might pluck from its branches, unforbidden and in safety. If they returned to their own regions, it would be with strength renewed like that of the eagle, for another career; as in the summer of countries that approach the pole, the sun just reaches the horizon, and, without setting, ascends anew, so that no night intervenes between the evening and the morning. If they passed into another and a higher being, it would be as angels have disappeared from the sight of men, and entered within the glorious veil. No thought of

suffering would have attended their departure; and, perhaps, with the powers of their higher nature, they would no more have been always absent from such as they left behind, than the angel visiters, who disappeared, indeed, but "walked the air unseen," and at times came visibly again, on messages of love.

III.

The Sentence of Death.

"One arrow more,

The sharpest of the Almighty's store,

Trembles upon the string-a sinner's death."

KEBLE.

"It is one thing," says St. Augustin, "not to be able to die, as God has formed some creatures; another thing to be able not to die, as the first man was created. Separated from the tree of life, he could die; but if he had not sinned, he could have been exempt from death. He was mortal by the constitution of his animal body; immortal by the gift of his Maker.'

وو

Placed, for his trial, under a single prohibition, he saw before him the two symbolical trees; and it was announced to him that, by tasting the one, he must forfeit the right and power to taste the other; that if he would know evil as well as good by his experience, he must surrender the peace, the joy, and the very life which would else have been perpetual. "In the day that thou eatest thereof," was the divine word, "thou shalt surely die." The name of death was spoken: it was heard in Paradise: the thought was written on the mind of man, in characters of fear, and it has never been effaced. In the present languages of the world, it is a simple, primitive word: there is no more elementary idea from which this could have its derivation. Man needed not to see death, that he might feel its horror; no more than he needs to see annihilation, that he may shrink from the