her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody" (li. 3). How beautiful a description of the wonderful change that shall transform the religious wilderness of Judaism into the Eden of Christianity—the desert of religious ignorance into the garden of spiritual intelligence!
He who attains this state of superabounding love, is in Eden; he who can see spiritual truth as clearly as he understands natural truth, is in the Lord's garden. Eden, as a sacred symbol, is love, with all the blessings that follow in its train; a garden, as a sacred symbol, is spiritual intelligence, with all the joys that follow its possession. And our early ancestors—no matter where they lived, nor by the side of what rivers, nor in what meridian, clime or zone—were in the Garden of Eden; not because they were here or there, but because they were in a state of love and innocence and joy and bliss that no tongue can express; because they were in a state of consciousness of the Lord's presence, of comprehension of the things of divine wisdom, and of conception of all that pertains to eternal life and its joys, of which none but dwellers in that garden can form the least idea. Perhaps they were simple in what we call worldly ways; illiterate in what
