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Whatever may have been the site of the land of Eden or 

 Pleasure, Moses, in describing Paradise as its garden (much as we 

 speak of Kent as the Garden of England), doubtless wished to 

 convey the idea of a sanctuary of delight and primal loveliness ; 

 indeed, he tells us that "out of the ground made the Lord God to 

 grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." 

 This Paradise was in the middle of Eden, and in the middle of 

 Paradise was planted the Tree of Life, and, close by, the Tree of 

 Knowledge of Good and Evil, Into this garden the Lord put the 

 man whom He had formed, "to dress and to keep it," in other 

 words to till, plant, and sow. 



In the very centre of Paradise, in the midst of the land of 

 Eden, grew the Tree of Life. Now, what was this tree ? Various 

 have been the conjecftures with regard to its nature. The tradi- 

 tions of the Rabbins make the Tree of Life a supernatural tree, 

 resembling the world- or cloud-trees of the Scandinavians and 

 Hindus, and bearing a striking resemblance to the Tooba of the 

 Mahomedan Paradise. They describe the Tree of Life as being of 

 enormous bulk, towering far above all others, and so vast in its girth, 

 that no man, even if he lived so long, could travel round it in less than 

 five hundred years. From beneath the colossal base of this stupen- 

 dous tree gushed all the waters of the earth, by whose instrumentality 

 nature was everywhere refreshed and invigorated. Regarding 

 these Rabbinic traditions as purely mythical, certain commentators 

 have regarded the Tree of Life as typical only of that life and the 

 continuance of it which our first parents derived from God. Others 

 think that it was called the Tree of Life because it was a memorial, 

 pledge, and seal of the eternal life which, had man continued in 

 obedience, would have been his reward in the Paradise above. 

 Others, again, believe that the fruit of it had a certain vital 

 influence to cherish and maintain man in immortal health and 

 vigour till he should have been translated from the earthly to the 

 heavenly Paradise. 



Dr. Wild considers that the Tree of Life stood on Mount 

 Moriah, the very spot selected, in after years, by Abraham, whereon 

 to offer his son Isaac, the type, and the mount to which Christ 

 was led out to be sacrificed. As Eden occupied the centre of the 

 world, and the Tree of Life was planted in the middle of Eden, 

 that spot marked the very centre of the world, and it was necessary 

 that He who was the life of mankind should die in the centre of the 

 world, and act from the centre. Hence, the Tree of Life, destroyed 

 at the flood, on account of man's wickedness, was replaced on the 

 same spot, centuries after, by the Cross, — converted by the 

 Redeemer into a second and everlasting Tree of Life. 



Adam was told he might eat freely of every tree in the garden, 

 excepting only the Tree of Knowledge ; we may, therefore, suppose 



