who prays that all the three may be preserved blameless. In this division the second term is employed for that animal life which uses the organs of sense, and receives their impressions; and the third for that higher and more active part or operation of the inward man which is chiefly the divine image. But in the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, the name of the spirit is also derived from words that express a wind or breath; and therefore the original signification of soul and spirit is essentially the same.

It is the spirit, or it is the soul in those higher properties and acts which give it the name of the spirit, that knows, that imagines, that wills; that employs the tongue in speech, and the whole body in free and moral action. When man became a living soul, these powers were given to him; and they were given to no other earthly creature. These are the strength of his arm, the grace of his figure, the beauty of his countenance; for, if the imagination could quite dismiss these, the noblest or the loveliest form would but produce the impression of the tiger or the swan, or, were it possible, of a majestic or a blooming idiot. But when the divine breath gave life to the body of man, a spirit shone in his glance, spoke from his features, and acted through his free movements. He alone could know himself, the visible world and its invisible Maker, and ripen for ever in this knowledge. The moral image of God was in man alone; and before him was that path in which he might go on from perfection to perfection. Male and female were they made, that strength and sweetness might every where be united in exquisite joy; and that the broad earth might be replenished and subdued by a vast family, whose ancestral home should be Paradise.

H.

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

holy interpreters.

"there was nouIrenæus and Chry

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 "In the other trees," says Augustin, rishment; but in this a sacrament." sostom 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.