52 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



But man looks forward as well as backward. 

 The paradise that has been lost is to be re- 

 gained. Only the future paradise is to be not 

 a garden but a city. Buildings, as civilisation 

 — the gathering of men into cities — progresses, 

 take more and more the place which, in some 

 ways, trees had held in the past. The temple, 

 not the tree, becomes the place where the god 

 reveals himself. ''And I John saw the holy 

 city, near Jerusalem, coming down from God 

 out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned 

 for her husband." But no temple will be 

 needed. "And I saw no temple therein : for 

 the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are 

 the temple of it." Such is the ideal of those 

 for whom life centres in the city. Yet even 

 here the old ideal still lingers. ''And he 

 showed me a pure river of water of life, clear 

 as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 

 and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street 

 of it, and on either side of the river, was there 

 the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of 

 fruits, and yielded her fruit every month : and 

 the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 

 the nations." 



