'So He drove out the man: and He placed at the east of
the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which
turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'
--GENESIS iii. 24.
'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they
may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in
through the gates into the city.'
REVELATION xxii. 14.
Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.' Eden was fair, but
the heavenly city shall be fairer. The Paradise regained is an advance
on the Paradise that was lost. These are the two ends of the history of
man, separated by who knows how many millenniums. Heaven lay about him
in his infancy, but as he journeyed westwards its morning blush faded
into the light of common day--and only at eventide shall the sky glow
again with glory and colour, and the western heaven at last outshine
the eastern, with a light that shall never die. A fall, and a rise--a
rise that reverses the fall, a rise that transcends the glory from
which he fell,--that is the Bible's notion of the history of the world,
and I, for my part, believe it to be true, and feel it to be the one
satisfactory explanation of what I see round about me and am conscious
of within me.