Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/128

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
122
The Garden of Eden.

of God; and that a purely sensuous life shall incapacitate one to perceive the light of heaven. We see the operations of this law all the world over. And now that man has gone forth from Eden, none are permitted to see the light except those who will endeavor to live by the light. In our present low condition we may fail to live in all respects as the truth requires. But this is not the unpardonable sin. If we want to get into the sunlight of the Lord, and to rise above our evils, knowledge is given us adapted to our states; and the wanting and seeking is a sign that at some time we shall gain what we desire.

So, as the Eden of love faded from the hearts of men, the light of spiritual intelligence flickered in its departing struggle, and at last went out. Then the garden state was gone. And forth from the garden of Eden—forth from love and even spiritual knowledge—our early progenitors went. They went forth to "till the ground"—to cultivate the lowest part of their nature; "to till the ground from whence they were taken," to cultivate the sensuous plane on which the race was originally born, but from which untainted as yet by hereditary evil, the Lord had raised them into Eden.

But the Spirit of the Lord is ever operating for the salvation of man. There is no state of the heart into which it may not enter if man will per-