University of Virginia Library

Garden of Eden

The name Eden, according to Cruden, means pleasure, delight. In this text Eden stands for the mortal, mate-

rial body. God could not put Mind into matter nor in- finite Spirit into finite form to dress it and keep it, - to make it beautiful or to cause it to live and grow. Man is God's reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.

Genesis ii. 16, 17. And the Lord God [Jehovah] com- manded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.