Foreign Letters Received. CUTTACK-J. Buckley, D.D., Nov. 5, 25. W. Brooks, Nov. 5, 19, 25. J. G. Pike, Nov. 26. W. Miller, Nov. 26. J. Vaughan, Nov. 26. BERHAMPORE-J. G. Pike, Oct. 30. PIPLEE-T. Bailey, Oct. 28. CALCUTTA 19. 29. Nov. 16. ROME-N. H. Shaw, Dec. 5. Contributions Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from November 16th I. General Baptist Societies. FOREIGN MISSIONS.-TREASURER: W. B. BEMBRIDGE, Esq., Ripley, nr. Derby SECRETARY: REV. W. HILL, Crompton Street, Derby. II. CHILWELL COLLEGE.-TREASURER: T. W. MARSHALL, Esq., Loughborough. SECRETARY: REV. W. EVANS, Leicester. III. HOME MISSIONS.-TREASURER: T. H. HARRISON, Esq., Wardwick, Derby. SECRETARIES: REVS. J. FLETCHER, 322. Commercial Road, E., and J. CLIFFORD, 51, Porchester Road, London, W. IV. BUILDING FUND.-TREASURER: C. ROBERTS, Jun., Esq., Peterborough. Monies should be sent to the Treasurers or Secretaries. Information, Collecting Books, etc., may be had of the Secretaries. Man after Death. III.-THE TREE OF LIFE. In the discussion of the question of the original nature of man, and the continuance of his being after the shock of death, so prominent a place has been assigned to those passages in the early records of the book of Genesis which refer to the "Tree of Life," that it is necessary to give them a separate consideration. Some expositors regard them as naked and bare descriptions of factfact as literal and as completely historical as that "God in the beginning made the heavens and the earth," and, some time after the beginning, made man to rule over the earth. To them the particular tree is as really a member of the vegetable kingdom as the famous oak in which the Royal Fugitive, Charles, escaped from his pursuers; and its qualities are as definitely known as those of the Eucalyptus globulus planted in the Campanian marshes of Italy, or along the fever-breeding plains of Cyprus. These oldest books of the Hebrews are the same as the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Israel, and may be read in the same unimaginative, matter-of-fact way, as this morning's newspaper. The days of the Creation are six time-periods of exactly twenty-four hours duration, each hour of sixty minutes, and each minute of sixty seconds, counted on a Greenwich clock. The Garden of Eden, distinguished as the residence of the first man, is a tract of land in the heart of Asia, or Africa, or Europe, or somewhere else, so many square yards long by so many wide, and is as easily definable as Sinai or Palestine or England: the river that watered it is as distinct as the Jordan or the Thames; and the serpent that addressed Eve, with such diabolical skill and success, is as actual and literal a serpent as any member of the serpent family in the Zoological Gardens. All is literal, historical statement. There is no allegory, no parable, no symbolism, no figure. Such hard and unrelenting literalism is as unwise as it is unnecessary, and as hurtful as it is unwise. Not only the whole Bible, but all literary expression, protests against it. For it is undeniable that the Book which comes to us from the superbly imaginative and poetical East is enriched with all the forms of literature; and since it is inspired by that Spirit to whom nothing that is human, except sin, is alien, and who employs parable and proverb, drama and biography, sermon and song, tradition and prophecy, love-strains and storm-warnings, so that men may be duly instructed in righteousness, and thoroughly furnished unto all good works, it is, therefore, full of symbolism. Not to expect figure, parable, and symbol, in such a set of books, is as if men should not look for humanness in Shakespeare, sublimity in Milton, speech in man, and love from God. And pre-eminently ought we to anticipate the discovery of symbol in these oldest books of all"-books that deal with the beginnings of things, and were meant for the beginning of man's moral education; for the training of the world in its childhood, that period, of all others, when man is most apt to learn by pictures, and to take his mental and spiritual food, not in the dry and logical forms of the understanding, but in the warm, glowing, and sympathetic representations of the imagiGENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY, 1879.-Vol. LXXXI.-N. S. No. 110. nation and of the heart. We might as well expect the earliest works of men to be the "Calculus of Variations," or the "Dynamics of a Rigid Body," as look for statements uncoloured by phantasy in the earliest fragments of the divine literature upon which the children of the human race first set eyes.* Moreover, God Himself has so completely shattered this hard literalism by the revelation He has made in nature, that it ought to be surrendered at once. The six day theory of creation has collapsed utterly and forever. The notion of six "periods" is refuted by the established and irrefutable facts of geology. Every attempt to treat the first chapters of Genesis as if they were written by a body of scientific savans fails irretrievably and ignobly. He who wrote for all the ages did not forget the capacities and needs of His earliest pupils, as He did not forestall the messages He had to communicate in the later eras of the world's long life. But even if it were allowed that these documents are literal statements of fact, and that there was a literal Eden, as there is a literal London, and in it a literal tree of life, as there is an actual and observable acacia in my garden, yet, I presume, it will not be denied that the VALUE of all these literal facts, to man made by God, and made in His image and likeness, IS IN THEIR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL MEANING. Nature is, and always has been, saturated with moral ideas. And the question of questions is not to fix the zoology of the subtile serpent, or the actual areas covered by Eden, or the botany of the tree of life and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but to find out the moral symbolism—the revelation they contain of God's will and of man's condition and destiny. Symbols are not nonentities. The FACTS of man's creation, of his fall and death by sin, and of the early promise of recovery by God, are not one whit less facts because of the mode in which they are represented. Job is not less, but more, a veritable man to us because he has dramatized his perplexities and agonies in the book which bears his name; and nothing can separate him from blessed companship with suffering and bewildered men of all ages and climes. The experiences of the sweet singer of Israel are not less actual because they are cast in the mould of lyrical song, than they are in the less vivid and pathetic descriptions of the Books of Samuel. Who would surrender the psalm because it is not literal history? Who does not enter into and enjoy the history all the more for the aid supplied by the song? And so the facts of dawning human history are as certain, reliable, and unimpeachable in their many coloured robe woven out of the threads of cherubic symbol and flaming sword, speaking serpent, and knowledge and life-giving trees, captivating and wonder-rousing allegory, and solid history, as the veriest dry-as-dust register of births, deaths, and marriages. The fact is not a whit less, and the moral value is immeasurably more. Looking, then, at this series of old world statements, we see man in the Eden of his youth and inexperience, and (1.) With him two trees; one the tree of life," and the other "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." (2.) The tree of life is accessible to him as well as all other things in the garden. No barrier is in the way. No ban rests upon him if he * Cf. Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, or the Igdrasil; or Life-tree of the Norse-men, pp. 18, 94. MAN AFTER DEATH. 43 eat of it; but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not to be touched on penalty of death. (3.) The law is broken, and the penalty is incurred and inflicted. (4.) Man is driven out of the garden at once, so that he may not eat of the tree of life, and so in that state "live for ever." (5.) Cherubim guard the gate of the garden from which man is expelled. (6.) A gyrating sword of fire fiercely menaces any one who would attempt to reach the branches of the tree of life. What does all this mean? What are the radical facts symbolized in these representations? We will walk with careful and reverent spirit, resolved not to warp or twist a single thread woven into this garment of beauty; and not to leave hidden and unexpressed, if we can help it, the least portion of the divine pattern which is put before us. I. "The tree of life" nourished by the happy soil of the garden in which man begins his existence is a type of the loftiest privilege of primeval man, the emblem of his purest and perfectest pleasure, viz., fellowship with his Creator and Lord, face to face communion with the Father of spirits. This is life. This is being's blessedness. This is the summum bonum. This is "the fulness of joy and pleasure for evermore." To have this in unbroken succession is to live, and to "live for ever." Let man retain that unique and distinguishing honour, and he lives, and enjoys, in its upward and onward extent, the entire range of divine blessing consequent upon fellowship with God. The tree of life" is in the midst of Eden; it is fixed in and nourished by the soil on which man lives, and which he is set "to dress and keep." Communion with the Lord of Nature is inspired and strengthened by actual contact with earth, and sky, and air, and sea, in the case of obedient and God-loving souls. There is no discord between the earth and man till there is discord between man and God. Nature feeds" the tree of life;" she guides and helps the spirit in its believing and loving access to the Eternal. II. And that other tree, also in the midst of the garden, and nourished by the same soil as the tree of life; that tree of probation and of doom! what is it but a mournful picture of those numerous "Thou shalt nots" which are heard in every life, and rouse that disastrous and fateful energy of self-will which craves to know, for knowing's sake, and have, for having's sake; and seeks experience of evil and of good in total unconcern, or in fierce defiance of the will of Him who is the Giver and the Lord of Life? Such trees are in the gardens of human experience still. Restrictions meet us as soon as we pass through the gate of life. This thou mayest have, but not that, and that, and that! We gain our manhood by self-restraint. Man is of the earth, akin to it, and the craving for the land and house, the fame and honour, that are not his own, is part of him; and his chief glory, and greatest peril, is that he may conquer, or yield to it, as he prefers. But he is tempted. Evil was in the universe before man; and its subtle Chief suggested the pleasures of disobedience. Man heard and saw, longed and fell. And disobedience was followed by instant estrangement from God, wretchedness of spirit, selfishness of life, and, in a word, by that awful progeny of evils which, in these old writings, bears the name of death. But it is, as we have shown, death, not as a natural event, but as a terrible doom, an awful penalty, a doom beginning in separation from God, and ending: alas! ending when? III. When? For man is not only separated from God, and therefore from life, but his sin has thrown up prodigious and insuperable difficulties in the way of his return. God cannot and will not let him have life save on the divine and eternal terms of obedience. Self-will must be broken. There is no other way to the Eden of blessedness except this. This is God's order, and it cannot be broken. More vividly this could not be told than it is here. The prodigious obstacles in the way of man's getting back to true life, the life of fellowship with God, could not be more powerfully pourtrayed. God punishes sinning man, resists him, will not suffer him to find rest and peace apart from Himself; holds him off from happiness till he yields to His righteous will. The Cherubim, types of the noblest orders of life, join to guard the most sacred gift of God. The fiery and flaming justice of God persistently declares that men shall not be happy unless they will be good. 66 IV. But all is not cloud and gloom. Hints are not altogether wanting of a goodness coming to man again, by means of which he shall partake of the life of God. There is a gospel at the heart of the curse;" and a promise of the serious and final hurt of evil is heard amongst the mournful notes declaring the doom of sinful man. The disobedient cannot come back to God; but the iron self-will can be melted by the fires of the divine love, and penitence and faith flowing into the moulds of obedience will lead to God and holiness, and to life everlasting. In favour of such an exposition as this, four things may be alleged. First, it puts no strain on any part of the story. All is natural, sustained, and consistent. No detail is out of harmony with the whole. No thread is warped out of its place. Archbishop Whately, and others, affirm that the tree of life had the property of curing human diseases and keeping man physically alive for ever; and so immortality was dependent upon access to the tree, and therefore man, after his sin, was placed beyond the reach of its leaves so that he might not make himself an immortal sinner. Against this it is pertinent to urge that it assumes (1) that man was not created immortal at the first. This should be proved, and not taken for granted. (2) It requires an addition to the qualities of the vegetable kingdom of such a unique and exceptional character that one would like more evidence of such a botanical prodigy than this passage supplies: or (3) man must have been structurally very different from what we find him now, if the leaves of any tree could have preserved him from the grip of death. The resources of nature are vast and approximately exhaustless; but we are not prepared to admit that the elixir vitæ is, or ever has been, one of her gifts. Secondly, it is a merit of this interpretation that it omits no portion of the emblem; drops nothing out as inconvenient, and secures the whole moral and spiritual value of the record. There is no point, so far as I can see, in this account of man in and out of Eden which is not reckoned with in this representation. Thirdly, the general symbolism of the Scripture supports it. The |
