xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 255 



out stars in heaven, formerly invisible ; showed to him a 

 side of God's nature, His justice, and His mercy, which 

 had not been formerly revealed ; disclosed to him 

 powers in himself of endurance and courage, hope 

 and faith, such as no dressing and keeping of the 

 garden in Eden could ever have brought into play, and 

 set forth a wonderful adaptation between a world whose 

 objects and processes are memorials of struggle, pain, 

 and death, and his own constitution, which has been so 

 organized that his purest joys should spring out of his 

 greatest sorrows, and his noblest gains out of his most 

 utter sacrifices. 



The witness of the trees of Eden to Adam was simple 

 and intelligible. The tree of life was to him the symbol 

 of all spiritual blessings. The tree of the knowledge of 

 good and evil was the emblem of the whole moral law. 

 Every time that he beheld the beauty of the tree of life 

 he was reminded of the blessedness of obedience to 

 God's will. The eating of its fruit was a natural sacra- 

 ment in which he realized his communion with and tasted 

 of the goodness of God. Every time that he looked 

 upon the forbidden tree he was reminded of the penal- 

 ties of disobedience, expulsion from God's presence, 

 the loss of His favour, misery and death. Religion 

 meant to him simply the knowledge, worship, and 

 service of God as He was revealed by the objects and 

 processes of nature ; and on these points nature could 

 give him all the light that he needed. But we have 

 sinned and fallen, and religion to us includes, besides 

 these elements, repentance of sin and dependence upon 



