Gen 1:1-5

Heaven and earth are used in the Bible as symbols - heaven as the symbol of the spiritual mind, and earth as the symbol of the natural mind. Regeneration, which is t he subject treated of in this story of creation, is the orderly formation and development of the distinct planes of life that are involved in the structure of these two minds. The spiritual mind is formed of three distinct degrees, the celestial, spiritual and natural. The natural mind is also constituted of three degrees, the rational, scientific and sensual. These two minds, with their degrees of life, constitute the difference between man and the mere animal for the mere animal possesses only the sensual degree, with something that makes an approach to the scientific, but is wholly without the rational and the three degrees constituent of the spiritual mind.

This is why it is said: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." Regeneration begins with these two minds. It consists in the opening of the spiritual mind by which the natural mind is reformed and brought into order and completely subordinated to the spiritual mind. In the beginning of man's regeneration the natural mind (the earth) is mere vacuity and emptiness. It is not in the form of heaven and is empty of all genuine good. It is on a level with the world, and is the seat of hereditary evil, its life consisting in the love of self and the world. It must, therefore, be reformed and filled with new affections and thoughts.

The natural mind is also in darkness. It has no comprehension of spiritual things. It is of the earth, earthly. It is a great abyss; and over the face of this abyss, darkness broods. What a darkness it is! God, the Divine Word, the life after death, in fact, all the great truths of religion, are in total darkness to the natural mind. It knows only the natural world, and sees only the things that minister to its depraved loves.

If in the beginning, a spiritual mind had not been formed in man, above his natural mind, he never could have been raised above the animal plane of life. But "in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." By heaven is meant man's spiritual mind formed not of nature nor of the deposits of the world through the bodily senses, but of the substance of the inner spiritual world, with deposits from heaven, through the ministry of angels. These heavenly deposits are called, in the church writings, "Remains."

These deposits are stored up in all children, whether they were born in the church or out of it; whether they were born of pious parents or of impious parents. They are spiritual things - states of good, of innocence, formed in all, during childlife, while the mind which is on a level with heaven, is open, tender and plastic.

Our Blessed Saviour announced this truth of the Father's provision of these good states for child-life, when He said: "See that ye offend not one of these little ones; for verily I say unto you, that in heaven, their angels do always behold the face of my Father." The implantation and storing of these remains make a spiritual life possible to all men. They are really man's heredity from his heavenly Father.

Salvation, regeneration and the consequent subordination of all life to the Divine motive of living, become possible to all men because of this work done by the Lord through the angels during childhood.

Here lies the ground of hope for the salvation of the human race. It is the means by which the All-Good Father shall realize His end in the creation of man - a heaven of angels from the human race.

But these remains must be awakened. They are the Lord's own in man; and He alone knows how and when to find them. Thus it is said: "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Divine mercy of the Lord broods over these remains in man. It awakens them. The things that the Lord has hidden and treasured up in man, how precious they are! "More to be desired are they than gold, yea than much fine gold." They are what make every human being sacred. The sins which grow up and disfigure and mar human life - truly they are ugly, and sometimes men seem so hopelessly involved in them, yet such human beings have these sacred treasures stored up in them by the Lord. And the time comes when the spirit of our common Lord moves upon the face of these waters. These hidden treasures are the Lord's in man. They are not anything he has acquired by his conscious efforts. How beautifully does all this shine through Dr. Watt's lullaby:

Yes, these are the face of the waters in this story of the first day of creation. And gently does the Father's spirit move upon them. In ways recognized and in ways unrecognized, the Lord's Holy Spirit is moving - brooding over these things of heaven stored in man's spiritual mind. And the time comes to all, who hear His voice, when they are awakened. It may not always come in this life; but in the intermediate world of spirits, if not on earth, all in whom the way to their remains is not effectually closed by intellectual confirmation in evil, will hear the Divine voice and open the door; will feel the Divine brooding and yield to the Father's tender love.

What a need there is for parents to know this blessed teaching of the church! For knowing it, they can intelligently co-operate with the Lord and the angels. These remains are "the living creatures" to which the gospel is to be preached. Will the church ever learn this lesson? Conscious of our great intellectual stores of doctrines, we vainly imagine that our mission is to intellectually convince men that what we are offering them is the truth. Let it be said, for it is true, our failure to call the remnant into the church is not due to our failure to convince men of the rationality of the church's teaching, but to our not reaching, by a loving and gentle spirit, their remains - "the living creatures" in their hearts. Our efforts to convert men are intellectual and cold. We neglect the heart. I am not deprecating the teaching of doctrine. Far from it. But doctrine must be drawn from the Lord's Word, confirmed by it, and come to men with all the warmth of the Divine Heart, in an appeal to what is of the Lord in them.

This will reach and uncover the golden side of their life. "Deep will answer unto deep." A great light will dawn upon man through such an appeal. It will be the light of their heavenly Father's face; and in His light they will see light. Ah! this awakening of a human soul - what a momentous event it is! It is the dawning of a light in which one sees the Lord Jesus as one's God and Saviour; in which one sees oneself as a spiritual being; in which one sees the spiritual possibilities of life - the beginning of the great creation within. "And God said let there be light, and there was light."

Gen 1:6-8

The awakening of the things good and true that were implanted and stored away during childhood, and the dawning of the light of God upon the mind, brings the consciousness that there are in the mind states of knowledge that are from heaven and states of knowledge that are from the world. That which brings this consciousness is the rational perception of the duality of the mind. This perception at first is far from being clear; it is in fact very dim, but it enables a man to realize that he has, lying above what is natural in himself, a higher mind, or self, which demands, for its satisfaction, growth and culture, something the world cannot supply.

This dawning internal rational perception is what is meant by these words: "And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters." It is a rational perception, but it is in the formative state. It is not, at that time, lifted up and clearly discriminated and intellectually distinguished from the general perceptions of the mind. It is, at first, in the midst of the waters.

But growth is the law of the Divine life in man's life; therefore this rational perception grows and expands. This growth is largely dependent upon instruction - upon instruction suited and accommodated to the mind's state of reception. What a wide field for reflection this law, as it respects the growth of this rational perception, opens to the church!

May it not be true that one, and perhaps the most fruitful cause, of the Church's loss of so many of its own young people, is due to the Church's attempt to teach them theology? The mind is a spiritual organism created in distinct planes; and may it not be possible that the church has made the fatal mistake of forcing a degree of instruction upon its young people that they are wholly unprepared to receive? There is nothing more sacred than a young life, just opening to the realization of something deeper than the world is able to give; and the attempt to feed that budding life with instruction drawn from Swedenborg's "Divine Love and Wisdom" or "Earths in the Universe," or Burnham's "Discrete Degrees," is only to confuse and swamp it.

It might prove useful to us, as a church, if we would study more seriously and wisely the New-Church psychology, for it would save us from these mistakes.

Rational perceptions are formed slowly; and instruction must be suited to the mind in which they are growing. Simple doctrine, drawn from the letter of the Word, and presented affirmatively and affectionately, and always with reference to the sacred religious life that is awakening in the young people, never fails to interest and hold them. The deeper things of the spiritual sense of the Word - of the philosophy of doctrine - must wait. Their time will come; and the church must wait until her young people are capable of receiving them rationally.

While the expanse is in the midst of the waters, the simple Bible story, illustrated in its relation to the awakening religious nature, is all that is needed. If the church deals thus wisely with the opening, budding minds of its voung people, there will come the opening of a deeper rational perception in them. The expanse will divide between the waters in the waters. The faculty of classification will be developed. Things will be distinguished from each other.

Let the church watch this development, and adapt its instruction accordingly. This is the real argument for the graded lesson in the Sunday school. As the waters, the knowedges that are in the mind, begin to be classified, by rational thinking, guided by true and suitable instruction, the church, in her capacity as teacher, can adapt the truth to the new and higher plane of reception that is forming. The simpler lessons of the spiritual sense may then be given; but always shown to be in the very letter of the Bible. Then, too, simple doctrine may be taught, but always from the letter of the Lord's Word, and not in any abstract way.

This will divide between the waters in the waters. Knowledge that could only come from heaven, through the Lord's Word, will be distinguished from knowledge that comes from the world and that belongs to the world. It is all a gradual unfoldment of the mind.

And so, there comes a time when the waters, which were divided, attain perfect classification - a time when truth, derived by revelation, and truth derived through the exerercise of the natural mind, is clearly distinguished, the one from the other.

This is what is meant by these words: "And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters which were above the expanse and the waters which were under the expanse." Until this discrimination is made, it is not clearly seen that there is an internal man and that the things that are in the internal man are goods and truths that are from the Lord alone. Waters above the expanse! What do they mean other than the truths that come from the Lord? The rational faculty of perception does not originate spiritual truth. The Divine and spiritual truths, with which the internal mind is imbued, are above reason. The rational degree is an intermediate degree. The things that are proper to the natural mind, such as the knowledge belonging to the sensuous plane, and the scientifics that are learned in the schools, are below, under the reason ; and there is a side of the rational that looks down upon, orders and subordinates them. They are from the world and are not matters of revelation. They serve to teach man how to preserve his body, how to form and cultivate his natural mind, how to become a civic and moral man, and a useful member of civil society. They are all under the expanse. But the waters which are above the expanse! They are not on a level with nature. They are truths that have come through the channel of the spiritual world, the Word of God, and the church. They are above the reason but not contrary to reason; for as there is a side to I he rational degree of the mind that opens down to the stored states of the natural mind, so there is a side to it that opens up to the stored states of good and truth in the internal mind.

When the rational perception has attained to this degree of development, it calls for distinct doctrinal instruction and guidance. Here is the place for the doctrinal class - here opens the opportunity to use the church writings as hooks of instruction.

But in doing this, the church must not play the role of t he theological seminary. The church is to prepare men for useful living, and her instruction must have the making of good lives as its end. The world has very little interest in and use for a doctrinal gymnast: and it has less for a church that resolves itself into a theological gymnasium.

This is not meant as a disparagement of those who make a deep study of the church writings, that is largely a matter of inclination and taste. What I am advocating is the religious life, guided by the Lord's Word, as opened and explained in the doctrines of the church.

That this may be realized, the church in her teaching capacity, must put men in the possession of the light that can enable them to distinguish between spiritual good and natural good; between life lived from regard to self and life lived from regard to God; between truth from heaven, through revelation, and truth from the world. This is the mission of the church. Regeneration - the new life - that must be her aim. For this the Word, the Doctrines, yea all the means of grace, exist.

Gen 1:9-13

The rational perception that there is involved in man two minds, an external mind for this world and an internal mind for the spiritual world, puts us in a position to see that all spiritual knowledge, the truth and good of heaven, inflow from the Lord through the internal mind into the external and are stored up in the memory for use in our coming regeneration.

The memory is therefore a most important department of the mind. It must be formed and stored with truths, learned from without, before there can be any distinct reasoning or deep thinking. Children are inspired by the Lord, through their guardian angels, with the love of knowing facts, and they are gifted with the mental organ of memory, in which they may be implanted and stored up. The will and the memory are active long before the understanding is in any degree developed. The will to learn, the love of knowing, must come in order that one may learn, and there must be a receptacle of the knowledge that is acquired, and this is the memory, capacious to receive and retentive to retain what is learned.

The memory is therefore the "one place" into which the waters under the heavens are gathered. For think - the waters under the heavens are the truths acquired by study and instruction - the truths that are stored up after they are learned. During this period there is afforded to parents and teachers the golden opportunity of implanting in children's minds the knowledge of the letter of the Lord's Word. There is nothing more important than this. Parents and teachers should not do the least thing to disturb a child's implicit belief in the letter of the Bible stories. They should be taught to the child mind in the form the Lord has put them. And not only should the Bible stories be taught in the form we find them in the letter of the Word, but certain portions of the Word should be committed to memory, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Blessings, the Ten Commandments, and many of the shorter Psalms and the sayings of the Lord in the Gospels. The doing of this is the gathering of the waters into one place.

Rational thinking about these things will come later, and then doctrine about them can be taught. When this state arrives, there will form in the mind a plane for the reception of the Divine seed, from which will spring up and grow the life of heaven. This plane, or soil, is what is meant by the appearance of the dry land or earth.

The beginnings of the spiritual life - how interesting they are! God said: "Let the earth bring forth." Up to this point, God has done every thing, but now the earth, which has risen out of the waters, is called upon to bring forth. Childhood is a period of preparation for the spiritual life. This is what makes child life so sacred. Hut when the memory is stored with truths, and the understanding of them in their relation to life has been formed, man is then capable of co-operating with the Lord. He <an hear, understand and obey the Divine commands. He has come into his own responsible life. He is, spiritually, of age, and can act as of himself. He can receive and become conscious of God's operation in his soul, and is able to co-operate with the regenerative endeavor of the Divine Spirit. Thus God says: "Let the earth bring forth."

What is brought forth at first is very tender and feeble. It is called, in this story, "the tender grass." Self-compulsion is the first conscious step man takes in his effort to co-operate with the Lord's endeavor to regenerate him. The natural man is born into the love of evil; and his natural inclination is to those things which were habits of life in his parents. This is not the old doctrine of original sin, for no one is born into sin. It is the doctrine of heredity - the fact that we inherit from parents and ancestors the love of self and the world. These two evil loves are the very life of our natural mind. This evil life must be forsaken; we must act against and reject it if we would come into the life that makes heaven. This is what our Lord meant when He said: "Except a man hate his father and mother, yea, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." And self-compulsion, self-imposed obedience to the Ten Commandments, is the first step. The spiritual life that comes as the result of this self-compulsion is what is meant by the "tender grass."

The church must learn to deal gently and patiently with this state. There is much of self in it, and its motive is very external, but it is something, it is a beginning. How thankful we should be that the tender grass has no seed in itself. It appears in the beginning, serves its use, passes away and makes room for something higher.

This higher form of spiritual living is represented by the "herb yielding seed." A higher motive for life comes and a more spiritual thinking and doing follows. The habit of obedience is formed. The truth is delightful. We love it, and do it because of our love for it. A new life center is formed. The love of the Lord and the neighbor becomes our very life. We have lost our life for the Lord's sake, and have found His life and made it our life. The natural man is being put under the reign of the Lord's truth. The herb yielding seed has sprung up, and is growing in the soul.

But something more than the herb comes in this day of man's spiritual creation. The tree bearing fruit makes its appearance. There comes the perception that all truth, all good, is from the Lord. This is the tree of the third day. How patiently the Lord waits for us to come into this state! He lets us, in the beginning, think that we are thinking the truth and doing good from ourselves, because He knows that at first we cannot act otherwise. And so He leads us on step by step, like the loving and kind Father that He is, until the tender grass and herb states are lived through, and then He causes this tree this perception, that all truth is from Him, that all good flows in from Him, to grow up in the mind. What a revelation it is to us! How the very thought of it humiliates self! How it exalts God! It brings a new state of life with it. It bears fruit. This was not so of the tender grass, nor of the herb. But of the tree it is said: "And the tree bearing fruit after its kind, whose seed was in itself after its kind." The fruit the tree bears is the fruit of repentance. For we are told in the writings of the church that this third state is one of repentance. In this state a man sees the evils that are in his natural mind - evils of heredity and evils that he has acquired by the wrong acts of his life. It is the state of self-revelation.

Repentance follows - a repentance that is deep and sincere. For in this state a man not only sees his evils, but he acknowledges them, makes himself guilty before God, confesses them to the Lord, implores forgiveness of them, and then desists from them and enters upon a new life. And when they rise up he turns from them and seeks Divine aid in being withheld from them. This is the fruit the tree bears. In this way the Lord introduces us into the spiritual life, and communicates to us the inward joy of heaven in a peace that passes all understanding, that is unspeakable and full of glory.

Gen 1:14-19

Regeneration is the progressive development of the Divine life in the human soul. It is a spiritual creation, for when it is finished man stands forth a new creature. The old carnal life - the life of loving himself and the world - has been displaced by the new life - the life of loving the Lord and the neighbor.

No one begins regeneration with a deep love for the Lord, nor with a clear and living faith. The light of the Divine truth dawns upon the mind, and one sees oneself in contrast with the purity and the requirements of the truth; and as the truth points, with directing finger, straight to the duty to be done, one finds that one must compel one's natural man to do it. This is the beginning of the creation of God in the soul.

But faithfulness to duty, daily acting against the life - impulses of the lower self, leads one on and on to that state in which one begins to feel the warmth of a living love in the heart and a clear bright faith in the Lord and the realities of the inner life. The sun and the moon of the fourth day are this love and this faith set in the internal mind of the regenerating man. A man comes into this state by growth. The natural sun is therefore the symbol of the Lord's love given to man to be in him, his love of God and man, and the center of his life - the glowing orb, round which everything of his life must revolve, like planets round the sun. It is the greater luminary set in his mind; for of all graces, love is the greatest. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." "He that dwelleth in love, dwells in God, for God is love."

This is the sun of the soul. This sun comes to rule over the day. The regenerating man has his days and nights. It is day in the soul when he is awake and spiritually active; when the Lord, the Word, the church, the spiritual life and all that pertains to heaven are close and real to his consciousness. His soul is warmed by the Divine Sun and his mind enlightened by the light of the great love of God that is shining within him. We all have these day states. Then everything is bright and beautiful. God is near; the Holy Word glows with warmth; the church is a great reality, grand and beautiful; the sermon is full of instruction and help; the Holy Communion is the Sacrament of the presence of the Divine Humanity; and the members of the church come close in the bonds of a real spiritual brotherhood. This is the day time of regeneration; and the sun of the Divine love rules over that day.

But it is not always day in the soul of the man who is following the Lord in the regeneration. He has his nights as well as his days. It is night in the world, when the earth turns away from the sun. It is night in the soul when one turns away from the Lord and inclines to one's selfhood. We do this. Then the sun of the soul is not seen and its warmth is not felt. It is night. But in the case of the regenerating man it is not a night of thick, black darkness. The moon of faith rises high and full in the sky of his soul. He sees and walks by faith. The love of his day states is still there; he is simply in an obscure state. And in that state, faith reflects the light of love as the moon reflects the light of the sun. He still believes, although he does not feel the glowing warmth of love. God, the Word and the church are still realities. His faith is bright and clear. This is the moon that rules the night. And this faith is living. It is not mere intellectual assent to dogma. It is the soul's sight of eternal things - a belief founded upon a rational conviction of the truth.

So far as such a man's daily life, in its outward associations, is concerned, no change has occurred. He prays to His Father in heaven; he reads daily the Lord's Word; he attends faithfully to his duties as a churchman; he humbly partakes of the Holy Communion and in all external things acts as a Christian should. Only the man himself, the Lord and the angels know that it is night. He does not commit the folly of forsaking these things. He holds on to them, even if the love of them has grown less warm.

The man who turns away from and neglects the Lord and the church because he has come into night, shows, in an unmistakable way, that he never had any real love for his Heavenly Father and spiritual mother. There are men who mistake mere enthusiasm for genuine love. We have all seen them. The doctrines of the church solve their intellectual problems and they are fired by zeal for the church. They are zealous for the cause of the truth. But opposition arises, or persecution for the truth's sake; the world is indifferent to the things that seem so clear to them; night comes on - dark states in which their first love grows less ardent, and finally ends in cold. Then, they begin to doubt the truth, to question the Divine revelation. They are seen less frequently at the church service and finally sink into utter indifference. What does such a happening mean? It means that they never did really see the Lord as He is; that they never did really see the internal things of the Word and church. Their state was an external one - one of the understanding merely. But the man who has really come into day states who has in-mostly felt the movement and inspiration of the Divine love in his heart, when night comes to him, looks up to the moon and orders his walk and conversation by the light of faith - the lesser luminary, that rules the night.

But this is not all. It is said of God: "He made the stars also." The stars are distant suns, and the light from them travels over immense fields of ether in reaching our earth. They are God's beautiful symbols of spiritual knowledge which has come down to us from the past. The star the wise men saw was a spiritual star and symbolized the knowledge of the Lord's coming which had been handed down by tradition from the dim long ago. Much is said about stars in the Bible; and always they stand for the knowledge of spiritual things.

There come states to the regenerating man, in which faith is clouded - in which he cannot see clearly the Divine verities of religion. But no sane man loses his knowledge of spiritual things, especially his knowlege of what is taught in the Ten Commandments - his knowledge of what is right, of what is wrong.

Love may grow cold, faith may be darkened, but the knowledge that evils are to be shunned because they are sins against God abides. "He made the stars, also." The light that reaches a man from the spiritual stars - the knowledge of what he is to shun as sin and do as good - comes in the darkest night. It never fails.

And if in such a state one lives by star-light, shunning and turning away from the evils forbidden in the Lord's commandments and doing the good things they command, it will not be long before the moon will rise again in one's mental sky, giving one the light of faith, and later on, if one is faithful, the sun will rise again, and the Divine love fill and warm the heart. It is all wonderful - all the Divine guidance of the human lives that are committed to Him whose watchful care is never withdrawn from His child.

Gen 1:20-23

It requires a long time for one to realize that the good one does and the truth one believes and speaks are from the Lord alone. The consciousness that all genuine good and truth are from the Lord does not come until man has formed in his internal mind the principle of love to the Lord and the principle of faith in the Lord. These two principles are meant by the two great luminaries, the sun and the moon. These spiritual luminaries, set high in the heavens within, begin to give a living quality to the truths that are in the mind. These truths are meant by the waters, which are now commanded to bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life. The religious truths that have been acquired by instruction are stored in the memory like waters in the sea; and now that the sun of love and the moon of faith have been set in the mind, life from the Lord, through them, is communicated to the religious truths, which up to this point, have existed as mere scientifics in the memory. Warmth and light from above penetrate the waters of the mind, and the regenerating man begins to act from higher and purer principles. He is gifted with a higher motive. The change is an internal one, affecting the willing and thinking, thus giving a living quality to all the more external affections and thoughts.

The fishes and the fowls, that the waters are said to have brought forth, are symbols of what religious truths in our minds bring forth when brought under the influence of love and faith. Fishes are among the lowest order of animal life, and represent the moving, the life of the affections, the beginning of a real love for the genuine good of heaven. This affection is of a very external character at first; still there is something of the warmth and life of heaven in it. It is all we are capable of producing at this state. We must not expect too much in the beginning. Young people in the church are sometimes treated as if they were old in the regenerate life; and we often expect of them the high spiritual affections that belong to an advanced state of regeneration. This is a mistake, and has led to sad results.

Their first awakened affections are external; and as they are interested only in the things that are on the plane of the affections and that are active in their minds, they must, therefore, be held in touch with the church by the things that appeal to them. They cannot enter understandingly and affectionately into the deep things of the spiritual sense of the Word, nor into the depths of the doctrines of the church. They are not prepared for these things. But they are interested in the letter of the Word, and in the simple teaching of life in it. They are interested in a true and beautiful church service, in which they can take a part. It feeds their awakening religious affections; it holds and interests them. This is the explanation of the constantly growing interest in the church and its teaching our young people evince. The church, like a wise mother, adapts all its offices to their state of mind.

But the waters brought forth not only fishes but fowl flying above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. The birds are symbols of spiritual thoughts. At first our thought of spiritual things has much that is natural connected with it, and has to be freed from what is natural before it can rise above the earth and freely soar in the open expanse of heaven.

Scientists tell us that in the beginning the birds were part reptile and part bird, but that in the process of the evolution of animal forms of life, a complete separation was made, the reptile branching out in one direction as a typical reptile, and the bird rising out of the water as a typical bird. This doctrine of science has a beautiful correspondence. The reptile is the symbol of sensuous thinking - of thinking that is confined to the Sense-plane of the mind; and the bird is the symbol of spiritual thinking - of thinking that rises above the sphere of the sense life into the clear atmosphere of what is spiritual.

But at first our thought of spiritual things is connected with what is sensuous. This is especially true of young people. They are incapable of freeing their thinking from sensuous appearances. This is why the mere abstract doctrines of the church fail to hold their interest. They cannot follow the pure spiritual sense of the Word. And yet, if they are young people who have the atmosphere of the church in their homes, their thinking is not wholly sensuous; it has a spiritual element in it.

When we insist that young people should be taught the letter of the Holy Scripture, we mean that the letter is to be taught in a New-Church way; for as a New-Church scientist learns the facts, laws and phenomena of nature, as the materialist learns them, but learns to think of them as outward expressions of the Divine creative life that is present in all material forms and expressions of life, so the young people of the church, while they learn the facts and moral lessons of the letter of the Word, should, at the same time, learn to think of them as outward and symbolic expressions of a great underlying spiritual sense, which, when they grow to it, will unfold in all its beauty before their wondering minds. In other words, there is a New-Church way of teaching the letter of the Word, just as there is a New-Church way of teaching the natural sciences.

But there comes a time in the course of the mind's growth when its thinking is separated from what is natural or sensuous. The mental reptile and the mental bird separate. Natural thought stays on its own level and finds its development on its own plane, and spiritual thought rises and flies in the open expanse of heaven. Then we can come directly to the doctrines and think spiritually.

When this state of spiritual thinking comes, the great cardinal doctrines of the church can be taught, rationally received and confirmed. It is a mistake to attempt to do this before the faculty of distinct spiritual thinking has been formed. The cardinal doctrines of the church are meant by the great whales that were created.

When the doctrine concerning the Lord, the Word and Life are clearly fixed and confirmed in the mind, then the external man, the daily life, is imbued with new qualities. Things really living begin to appear - things that have in them a living spiritual soul of good affection and thought.

This is what is meant by these words: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul after its kind, the beast and the moving thing, and the wild beast of the earth after its kind; and it was so."

Then it is that the regenerating man begins to speak from a principle of genuine faith and to confirm in himself the good and the true. This prepares the way for the Lord to form in him that high and holy human quality that He calls "man."

Gen 1:24-31

The making of man, on the sixth day, is God's symbol way of telling us how the spiritual man is made and what he is when made. The spiritual man is a human quality of life, organized in the soul, and exercising its supremacy in the daily conduct seen from this Divine view-point, anything short of the attainment and exercise of this human quality of life is not man.

The sensuous thought of what constitutes man stops with his body. Doubtless this is what most people think of when they attempt to form an idea of man. They think merely of so much matter molded into the human shape and moved and animated by the mysterious force called life. It does not enter their minds that man is something apart from the human shape.

In a rude state of society what is called man is a well formed physical body, with the additional quality of physical prowess. In polite and cultured society, man is conceived to be a being endowed with charming and graceful dignified carriage. In the eyes of the law, one is a man when he has attained his majority. But none of these measurements has in it the Divine idea of man. None of these things is meant in this story by the words, "Let us make man."

Intellectual and spiritual excellence and supremacy are what God calls man. This is evident from the use of the term "man" in the Holy Scriptures. For instance, we read: "I beheld the earth, and lo! there was no man." This cannot mean that, in a physical sense, there was no man upon the earth. It means that the human shapes upon the earth at that time were without those intellectual, moral and spiritual qualities which constitute the Divine idea of what it is to be a man. Again we read: '' Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man; if there be any that executeth judgement, that seeketh the truth." Human shapes are not in themselves men. Jerusalem was thronged with human shapes, but man, in the sense of human quality of life, was not to be found.

The story of creation is God's symbol way of telling us of the creation of the spiritual man - how, stage after stage, He carries forward the great work of regeneration, until in the sixth stage, man, the fully regenerated man, comes upon the scene. It is a slow process, this making of man. Many stages of preparation must be passed through before it is possible for God to say: "Let us make man." This spiritual man, who results from the combats and labors of the regenerative work of the six days, from a principle of faith and love, speaks what is true and does what is good. He acts from love as well as from faith. He is a spiritual man. He is an image of God.

But this spiritual man whom God makes, through the process of regeneration, is male and female; for it is said: "Male and female, created He them." Do not let your thought drop to the plane of thinking of two individuals, for the story of the creation of the male and female is introduced to show the complete evolution of the two great elements constituent of the human mind - its understanding, with its intellectual faculties, and its will, with all its affectional graces and powers.

The male man is the Divine symbol of the understanding: the female man of the will and its power of love and affection. Man and woman, considered as individuals, are the two equal halves of a complete humanity. Neither standing alone is complete. It is only in the spiritual union of the two that the complete one exists. This is effected by marriage, in which each supplies what the other lacks. Here then is the symbol. It is the symbol of the understanding and the will. As man, as an individual, is incomplete, standing alone, so the understanding is incomplete, standing alone. It is only half of the mind. The man who lives merely in his understanding, becomes cold, hard and critical. As woman, as an individual, standing alone, is incomplete, so the will is incomplete, standing alone. The man who lives merely in his will becomes emotional, impulsive and blind in his judgment.

Marriage - marriage I mean, in the real sense of a spiritual union, a Divine Sacrament - of twain makes one flesh - one man. So marriage - the union of the understanding and the will in the individual, makes a spiritual man. This spiritual man is thus male and female. He is not all intellect, nor is he all emotion. He is both an intellectual and an emotional man. His understanding is turned toward the Lord's truth, and he delights in the sight and reception of it; it opens to him the wonders of creation, the wonders of the Bible, the wonders of the Incarnation and the Divine redemption, and he delights in the clear intellectual aspects of these great truths.

All this is the legitimate field of the masculine side of the mind. But he is also female. He has a will, a heart, an affectional side to his mind, and it must find a corresponding development. This female element must exist in the man that God makes in His image in order that the mind may have poise. Both elements are necessary.

The understanding must be formed to see and rationally comprehend the truth, and the will must be formed to feel and love the truth. Either one, standing alone, is fruitless. This is true, even of God Himself. For if God were love alone, He could not create anything; if he were wisdom alone, He could not create anything. The creative life, the creative power, results from the perfect union of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom in God.

A religion that is all feeling runs into wild emotionalism - into mere enthusiasm. A religion that is all faith, runs into mere intellectualism and spends its time in abstract thinking, in mere idealistic speculation.

No, when God said: "Let us make man in our image and after our likeness," the man that was made and the man that is made now, is the new man, born, not of the flesh, but of the spirit, with his understanding open to the light of heaven, and with his will open to the heat of heaven.

And marriage - the blending of thought and feeling, understanding and will, is the eternal union in the mind, which having its beginning on earth, grows more beautiful to all eternity.

But in the making of this spiritual man, there must be a willing and intelligent co-operation on man's part, with the Lord. That is why it is said: "And God said, let us make man." This does not mean that God, the Father, thus addressed the Son and the Holy Ghost. The real truth is that the Lord is addressing the individual. The spiritual man is not made by a Divine fiat, nor is he made by an arbitrary Divine election or predestination. God and man are personally distinct from each other. Man is created out of the dead substance of matter, as to his body, and out of the substance of the spiritual world as to his soul; and then he is endowed with freedom and reason. He can co-operate with God. God cannot make him into a spiritual man unless he does co-operate with Him. He stores up in us, during child life, things good and true, the possibilities of spiritual manhood; and when we come to the years of responsibility, the Lord says to you and to me and to all who hear His voice: "Let us make man." God operates; we co-operate.

Here is the man of the world, absorbed in mere worldly things. He is in the human shape; he has attained to some degree of intellectual, moral and civil life; and God says to him: "I will operate upon your soul; you co-operate by keeping my commandments, and thus let us, I operating and you co-operating, make man - the spiritual man in you, who as he comes into power, will have dominion over all lower things, subduing and bringing them into order."

Gen 2:1-4

The first chapter of Genesis describes, in its spiritual sense, the creation of the spiritual man. It tells us of the great processes by which, from being merely natural, man becomes spiritual. Here is where Genesis begins. Out of the merely natural state, in which man loves himself and the world, it carries him in his spiritual growth until there is implanted in him a genuine spiritual life - affections and thoughts, regulated and determined into act by a clear understanding of the laws and rules of religious life and duty. He then reflects the Divine wisdom and becomes an image of God. This process is what is meant by the six days of creation.

During this growth, from one state to another, man's regard is for the Divine truth. All that he wills, thinks and does is inspired by his understanding and love of the truth.

This is why the name God alone is used in the first chapter of Genesis; for by the name God, the operation of the Lord as the Divine truth is meant.

The spiritual man is therefore the product of the Divine truth. He receives the truth by an outward way into his memory. Then he begins to think about it, to reason about it; then it is lifted into the light of his understanding and he becomes intelligent in the doctrines of the church.

The next step he takes is the act of compelling himself to live according to it. He begins to order his life and conversation by the truth which he understands. As he does this, the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, flows into him, by an interior way, and gifts him with affections for the truth. These affections are ultimately united to the truth and he becomes a spiritual man. This is the way the Lord makes the spiritual man.

When made, he is the image of God, and differs in every particular of his life of motive from the natural man.

But the spiritual man, while in God's image, is not in God's likeness. Thus there lies above the plane of the spiritual degree of the internal mind of man a region of possible affection and thought, which when it is formed and developed, results in a celestial man, a man that is as distinct from the spiritual man as the spiritual man is from the natural man.

The celestial man is not made by the truth, although every act of his life is in harmony with the truth. He is open to the Lord in his heart-life; and while far from being wildly emotional, is at the same time moved and impelled by the Divine good.

He is under no necessity to reason about the Divine truth, but what he believes, thinks and does are consonant with the very highest exercise of spiritual reason. Truth falls immediately into the embrace of his love. He sees it from within. What faith is to the spiritual man, perception is to the celestial man. He is intuitive, and comes by an internal way, into the deepest things of the Divine wisdom. He is childlike in his trust in the Lord. Yet his understanding sees in clearest light the deeper things of the church that are hidden from the wise and prudent.

The law of the Lord is inscribed on the tables of his heart of flesh. The Lord is very being to him; he lives and moves in the atmosphere of the Divine love. When he reads the Lord's Word, he feels the personal atmosphere of the Lord in it. His conversation is in heaven. Such is the celestial man - such are the celestial people - the love-people, of the world.

The celestial man is the Lord's Sabbath. God's truth has done its work. He has had his spiritual combats; and now love crowns the whole spiritual work with its life and touch and fills the soul with its Sabbath calm and peace.

The Sabbath of the Bible was the seventh day. Think of the meaning of the number seven. The word seven is used in the Bible as the number of wholeness and perfection. For instance, when it is said in the Bible: "In that day seven women shall take hold of one man," the thought expressed is that of all the affections of the heart - the pure love of the heart, going out to and seeking guidance by the Lord in His Divine Humanity. In the book of Revelation it is said that the Lamb in the midst of the throne had seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God.

The Lamb is the symbol of the Lord in His Divine Humanity; and the number seven applied to the horns and eyes of the Lamb stands for the perfection and holiness of His power and His wisdom. The seven devils cast out of Mary of Magdala, denote, not her sinfulness and moral degradation, but the fulness of her regeneration.

So of the seventh day of the creation - it stands for the perfect work of regeneration - for the sabbath of the soul. The love man is the Lord's sabbath - His rest. He has the rest and peace of the Lord in his soul. Repose and heavenly tranquillity characterize his life. He feels the, delights of wisdom and enjoys the peace of exalted virtue.

The Jewish dispensation of religion was merely the representative of a church. It was held in connection with the Lord and heaven, not through any internal quality of life, but by the symbols of its ceremonials and ritual; and in that representative of a church, the seventh day stood for two things: (1) The peace which came to the Lord after He had fought against and subjugated the infernal powers of darkness; and (2) the rest that comes to all who, by taking up the cross and following Him in the regeneration, attain to the rest and peace of heaven.

When we understand the difference between the celestial man and the spiritual man, instantly there dawns the reason for the two and conflicting accounts of creation given in Genesis. The first account describes the rise of man out of the natural into the spiritual state. The second account describes the rise of man out of the spiritual into the celestial state. The spiritual man is made by the truth; and because Elohim means God as to the Divine Truth, that name is used in the first account. The celestial man is made by a double operation, the operation, of love and truth; and because Jehovah means God in the operation of His Divine Love, therefore it is introduced in the second account of creation. Jehovah - Elohim is used to designate the fact that the celestial man is the love man - the likeness of God, and that with him all truth is from good.

The love door of the celestial man is open to the Lord. Love is first with him. It flows from the Lord into his will; and because his understanding is connected directly with his will, love from the heavenly Father, passes immediately into the understanding where it is intellectualized and becomes truth from good.

Such was the man of the seventh day of creation. There are but a few who at this day come into the fullness of the perfect life of the seventh day; but it exists for all who do faithfully the work of the six days. The New Jerusalem means, in the highest thought of it, the coming again to men of this beautiful celestial life of the long ago golden age. It seems far away, but it will come again. Of the seventh day it is not said: "And the evening and the morning were the seventh day." For when the Sabbath of regeneration dawns, the work is done; and one unending day of spiritual peace and joy reigns in the purified soul.

Gen 2:5-7

The second chapter of Genesis instead of being, as is supposed by rationalizing critics, another account of creation, is the description of the Divine process in the carrying forward of the spiritual creation of man to the higher and celestial plane of life.

The celestial, or love man, different from the spiritual, or truth man, is formed and moved by the Divine love. It is because of this that the name Jehovah, or Lord, is placed in the foreground in the second chapter of Genesis; for the name Lord stands for God as to His Divine love. But in what sense are we to view the man whose formation is so minutely described in this chapter? Is he to be conceived of as an individual; or is he to be regarded as the type of a community?

The verbal expressions of the story, as well as the dictates of sound reason, show that the man of the Genesis story is the communal man. This is, of course, away from the ordinary interpretation, but there are several circumstances mentioned in the story that clearly indicate this as the true conception. For instance, it is said: "The Lord God called their name Adam, in the day that the Lord God created them." Also Cain, after he had slain Abel, said: "My punishment is greater than I can bear; and it shall come to pass that every one finding me will slay me." This statement certainly implies the existence of society.

There is another statement in the letter of the story which clearly indicates the existence of human society, When Cain went into the land of Nod, he is said to have known his wife who bore him a son whom they named Enoch and for whom a city was built and called after his name. If there existed no human society, where did Cain's wife come from? Where were workmen procured to build a city? Those whose existence, at that time, are inferred in the letter of the narrative, had no connection with and bore no relation to Adam.

The fact is, the story is a Divine parable. Adam is a race-name. It stands for a community of men and women who by the processes of regeneration, described in the first chapter of Genesis, were gradually separated, spiritually, from the general mass of human beings, and who had come into those excellencies of character which gifted them with the moral image and likeness of God. In other words, by the creation of Adam is meant the formation of the first church on this earth - the MostAncient Church.

Surely there is nothing irrational in this thought. It was then, as it was when the Lord came into the world and established the Christian Church. It was formed of all who accepted Him, and who, by their acknowledgment of Him, were separated, in motive and belief, from the outlying mass who rejected Him.

The name Adam occurs in the second and third chapters of Genesis a great many times; and in every instance it is put with the definite article - "the Adam." This shows that the name Adam is not the appellation of an individual. It is a nominal expression of kind. The Adam, or the man, indicated the community - the society - the church; and the idea is that of a human association of people possessing the graces and excellencies of genuine religion.

The people who formed this church of the childhood of the race, were of a heavenly genius. Their whole being was alive with the consciousness of the Divine love. They reached up to the highest things; and the life of the Lord descending through them, gave a living and human quality to the most external things of their lives. This coming down of the Divine life into the most external plane of their being and gifting it with a human quality is what is meant by the Lord forming man of the dust of the ground.

Keep the mind on the spiritual plane of thought, for by the dust of the ground is not meant natural dust, but natural dust is used to symbolize that which in itself is dead and external. Not only the souls of these most ancient people, but their minds, yea their very bodies shared in the influx and formative power of the life of God. The Lord dwelt in their souls, and through their souls illuminated their minds, and through their minds filled their very material bodies with sensations of joy and delight. The very dust of their mental ground was made alive - imbued with a human quality. How much more worthy of the Divine Creator this conception is! What a profound interest it creates in the Divine Book!

And the breath of lives breathed into the nostrils of Adam - how easy, now that we see that Adam stands for a highly developed heavenly society, to see in that breathing the symbol of how the Divine and heavenly life came to the people who constituted this first church! The nostrils, through which odors, good or bad, are sensed, stand for the mental faculties of perception. The people of the long ago golden age had an internal and living perception of what was good and true. The Lord's life of goodness and truth came to them as a matter of inward perception. It was breathed into their souls; and it came, not as the breath of life, but as the breath of lives, for that is what is said in the original text.

Man has a will and an understanding. Today the understanding is separated from the will and made capable of an intellectual elevation above the will; but this was not the case with the Adamic man. His will and understanding were united. Good from the Lord flowed, in an internal way, into his will and passed immediately into his understanding and became there, in an intellectualized form, the truth to guide him. Good in the will, truth in the understanding were God's breath in the most ancient man. It was in him the breath of lives - the life of good, and the life of truth from that good.

When we speak of the church formed among these people we must think of it as a heavenly state of life in them. They had no outward book or revelation. They saw what was good and true from perception. They had - that is, the more interior among them - open communication with heaven; and from heaven they knew the heavenly correspondence of the objects of nature that surrounded them. Their internal sight made one with their external sight. When they looked upon natural objects, they saw what we see, but, different from us, their minds were immediately elevated to see the heavenly meaning of natural objects.

Nature to them was what the letter of the Word is to a well-instructed New Churchman, a vast symbol of the Divine mind. They could ascend from Nature to Nature's God. Heaven was then close to the earth and they saw it mirrored in all the beautiful forms of natural life. Their whole being, soul, mind and body, was open to the Divine influxes. They lived and moved in the current of the Divine harmonies. And when we read of this Most Ancient Church, we are not to think of cathedrals and church structures, of priests, rituals or outward sacraments. All these came when man had fallen away from his primeval state. The people of the Golden Age lived simple pastoral life. The father in the family was the head and the priest, and the church was an innocent, yet wise life in the hearts, and revelation was the voice of the heavenly Father in their souls.

Gen 2:8-9

The people of the Golden Age, who formed the Most Ancient Church, were celestial. They were open in their heart life to all the influences that came to them from their Heavenly Father. They had no memory of the truth apart from their life. Their life was really their memory. Their life of love and faith came to them as a constant inflowing from above, and as their external mind acted in complete harmony with their internal mind, there was nothing in them to resist or act against the Divine in-flow of life. They were the love - people of long ago.

The state of love in which they lived - love to the Lord and to each other - is meant by Eden. The Eden of the Golden Age was therefore not a natural territory or tract of land, but a heavenly state of love, with the tranquillity and blessedness of soul that belong to and result from it. Of course the people who formed this church of the childhood of the race, had a local habitation in the world, and that natural place was what we know as the land of Canaan; but Eden was not a natural place, but a state of love. It was the kingdom of heaven in men's hearts - the church, as to love, in human lives. It was within and not outside.

There is no difficulty attending this thought of Eden if we keep in mind that the Lord in this story is telling us, not of the natural life of an individual, but of the spiritual life of a race. It is the history of the church - of the celestial church - that we are reading about in this story; of the church, not as an ecclesiastical organization, but as a state of love and faith in human hearts. This is the key to the right understanding of the subject. The church was in the most ancient people, and Eden was the love-side of it - the love that filled and animated their will. We have seen that in the man of the celestial church, the will and understanding were united. The man of that church had no memory knowledge - no understanding - no faith - no intelligence apart from the great love life of his will. He thought as he loved, and his thought life or intelligence was the form his love assumed in his understanding. Here we see the spiritual meaning of the garden planted eastward in Eden. The garden in Eden was the heavenly intelligence that was from and in the heavenly state of love denoted by Eden. Eden is one thing and the garden is quite another thing. We are told in the church writings that the celestial man, because he is in a state of supreme love to the Lord - a love that is from the Lord and directed to the Lord - comes into a state en rapport with the angels and is, as if he were one among them. " In this state all his thoughts and ideas of thoughts, and even his words and actions are open even from the Lord, and contain within them what is celestial and spiritual. "Such was the celestial man of the Edenic age. He was open to the Lord. His intelligence was from love. He was in the true order of his life. His intelligence came from within. It was the form of his love. This was the garden planted in Eden.

It is true that this intelligence was not of the external character that belongs to our idea of intelligence. It was not an intelligence formed from knowledge of external science; for the people of the Golden Age did not study matters of mere science. Their intelligence was the intelligence of love. They understood the deep things of the Divine life.

Remnants of this intelligence may be found today in the simple good people of the world. Their hearts are right; their love is pure and single; and while they lack much, and in many instances all the knowledge of external matters of science and philosophy, so highly prized by the man of the world, yet they have an inward intelligence that opens them to see and comprehend the very deepest things of the church. They are the babes of the kingdom of heaven to whom the Lord reveals the things that are hidden from the wise and prudent of the world. Such, only in a deeper sense, was the heavenly intelligence of the people of the Most Ancient Church. Their garden was planted in Eden.

Think of what is meant by the statement that the garden was planted eastward.

The east, as a spiritual quarter, stands, in the supreme sense, for the Lord. In Ezekiel we read: "He brought me to the gate, even the gate that looked the way of the east, and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east." We are told in the church writings that it was because of this correspondence of the east to the Lord that there prevailed, in the representative Jewish Church, before the building of the temple, the holy custom of turning the face to the east when praying.

But the east not only represented the Lord; it also represented the reception of intelligence from Him. Here lies its meaning. The minds of the Adamic people were turned toward the Lord. He was in their love; and their love of Him formed and turned their thoughts toward Him. This is the true origin of orientation. Largely the internal has been lost and only the physical act remains; but among the people of the celestial church there was a real turning of their minds to the Lord and a real reception of intelligence from Him. He was the east they turned to; and light from Him was the intelligence that made their beautiful garden.

But this was not all. There were beautiful fruit-bearing spiritual trees in the garden. "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree desirable to behold and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

The garden eastward in Eden being the heavenly intelligence of the man of the celestial church, the trees of the garden are the perceptions from that intelligence - perceptions of truth and good. Every tree desirable to behold! Don't we see that they were the perceptions of truth? The eye of the mind is the faculty of understanding - the intellectual seeing of the truth.

We must not think of these most ancient people as being without intellectual guidance. They possessed the very highest form of intelligence; and from it, in an internal way, saw the very deepest truths. But truth with them was not a spiritual plaything. It was a vital thing of life. They beheld it as a desirable tree to look upon because it was from good and led to good. "A tree good for food!" How easy to see that it was the perception of good!

Truth and goodness, as matters of perception, formed the very life of these people. They did not reason about truth; they perceived it. They did not reason about good; they perceive it. Open to the Lord and the heavenly influxes, they spiritually sensed what was true and good as we sense naturally the odors of flowers. They had no system of doctrine - all things came to them from within.

And the tree of life in the midst of the garden, was the highest of all their perceptions, the perception of the Lord as very Being, their very inmost life. They ate of the fruit of this tree - lived from the Lord's life - had a sensation of His life in the midst of all their intelligence. For this tree was in the midst of the garden. The Lord's life which is His love, they made central in all their willing, thinking and doing. This was the tree of life.

But while all this is true, yet in order that man may have freedom, he must be in the appearance that life is in him. He must never confirm that appearance as if it were true; but he must be held in it. This is what is meant by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was there in the garden, but to turn to it and seek to enter into heavenly things from self would result in spiritual death. Thus it was said: "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

Gen 2:10-17

The people of the Adamic age had an intuitive perception of the Divine symbolism of nature. The lands and rivers of the earth were to them representative of the internal things of heaven and the church. They saw from within that the world of nature was a theatre representative of the world of mind and that there was a living and vital relation of correspondence between the two worlds. Remnants of the knowledge of this correspondence of natural things to spiritual are found among us today. Christian people speak of Zion, Jerusalem, Canaan and Jordan with spiritual ideas attached to each name. In using these names they do not think of natural cities, lands or rivers, but of what they spiritually stand for.

With the Adamic people correspondence - the relation of natural objects to spiritual realities - was a universal language. Here we have the key to the meaning of all the natural objects mentioned in connection with the Edenic story and people. As Eden was not a natural place, but a highly developed state of heavenly love; as the garden eastward in Eden was not a highly cultivated piece of ground, but a beautifully cultivated state of heavenly intelligence, so the river of Eden that parted into four heads was not a natural river, but the Divine wisdom of the Lord, which flowed into the mind, performing for it a service fitly represented by the service which a river renders to the natural country through which it courses its way.

The thought of a natural river was, in the minds of the most ancient people, instantly changed into the thought of the inflowing Divine wisdom, and the variety of forms the Divine wisdom takes on as it flows into finite minds, they regarded as its streams, and gave corresponding or symbolic names to them. This very thing has been preserved in the ancient mythologies. The consecration of the fountains of Pindus, Helicon and Parnassus to the Muses and other references, in mythology, to rivers, their sources and results, had their rise from a perception of the correspondence of a river to the Divine wisdom.

In our holy volume of Divine Scripture, this symbolism is clearly set forth. Those who find deep satisfaction in receiving instruction in the truths of Divine wisdom are said "to drink of the river of God's pleasures." Ezekiel's vision of the stream that issued from under the altar of the Lord's house and which widened and deepened as it flowed on, until it became a river that no man could pass - what was it other than the Divine wisdom received by man and heightening as he learns to love and obey it, until it attains to what no mere finite mind can comprehend?

St. John's vision of the river of life proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb - was it not a symbolic representation of the Divine wisdom as the Word going forth from the Lord to men? The Psalmist says: "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." What is this river? Truly, it is the Lord's Word, which is His wisdom. And the streams of that river - what are they? Truly, they are the particular truths - truths informing the will, enlightening the understanding and enriching the life, that go forth from the Divine wisdom in the Word as streams from a river.

Now, in all these instances none of us has been thinking of a natural river. We have been thinking of the Lord's Word, which is the source of all wisdom to angels and to men. Why, then, should anyone think naturally of the river in Eden?

The river in Eden is mentioned as the symbol of the Divine wisdom of God. There was a tree of life in Eden, and it was the perception of the Lord as the very life of the will - the Divine love itself, from which the will's affections existed. But the Lord was not only, as to His love, the life of the affections which belonged to the Adamic people, but He was also the life of the thoughts that belonged to their understanding. God's wisdom as the very life of their thinking, was the river of life to them, as God's love as the very life of their willing was the tree of life to them.

Have you noticed the fact that no name is given to this river? Why is it a river without a name? Its branches are named, but the river itself bears no name. Why is this so? It is so because the Divine wisdom, as it is in God, cannot be expressed to finite thought. There is no finite term by which it can be defined. For this reason the river is not named. But when the river entered Eden it was parted and "became into four heads."

The nameless river entering Eden symbolizes the inexpressible Divine wisdom finiting itself - adapting itself to human reception and thus presenting itself to the various faculties of the mind and there finding what distinguishes it in the human quality of loving and thinking.

It is not difficult to see this, for every one can see that the Divine wisdom of God cannot fall into finite vessels, and that in order to be understood by the finite mind must, in some sense and degree, enter the faculties of the mind.

Here we come to the distinct degrees of the mind - to that sublime psychology which is a part of the Lord's revelation to the church. For we are taught to think of the mind as a definite spiritual organism comprising distinct degrees or planes of mental life.

In general, the mind is formed of three degrees, which we designate as celestial, spiritual and natural, but there is really a fourth degree. It is the rational, which exists between the spiritual and the natural. As the Divine wisdom flows out of God to man, it is thus parted, like the river in Eden, into four heads. It enters these four degrees of the mind, and wisdom formed in these four degrees is apprehensible by man. The heads of the river can be named. Parted into four heads, the streams of the Edenic river were called Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates. Each of these names stands for a distinct form and activity of the Divine wisdom as received into the finite mind.

As a Hebrew word, Pison means literally a change or extension, but spiritually the name stands for the operation of the Divine wisdom upon the human will. As this operation goes on the will undergoes continual changes in its quality - constant improvement by being lifted up. And as this is done, the Divine wisdom directs its affections in the performance of wide and extensive uses. This is Pison - change and extension.

Gihon, as a Hebrew name, means a stream or a valley of grace. Spiritually, this stream of the river of Eden means the understanding's perception, through the truth, of all heavenly graces. Wisdom from God is the only thing that enables the understanding to distinguish between the graces of heaven and the moralities and virtues of a well-ordered natural life. The grace of heavenly life is a quality that belongs to a purified understanding - an understanding that sees how to classify the virtues of life, distinguishing those that are merely moral and civil from those that are the result of the inflowing wisdom of God. This is Gihon - Valley of Grace.

Hiddekel means a sharp voice. Here we have the Divine wisdom pictured to us as the influence which illuminates the rational faculty - the inflowing reason as the sharp voice that guides, by instruction, the rational degree of the mind. In the Eden story Hiddekel flowed toward the east of Assyria. Assyria is the great Bible symbol of the rational mind. The word itself means beholding. The rational is the seeing faculty of the mind. The rational faculty receiving the stream of Divine wisdom by which like a voice speaking from within, it is led to look up to God and revelation in all its processes, is Hiddekel.

Euphrates, the fourth stream from the river, means literally to make fruitful. The natural mind, the whole plane of natural life, when it receives the guidance of Divine wisdom, is made fruitful in good works as the true and ultimate expression of the heavenly life. Thus the Lord's wisdom flowing into the natural mind and rendering it prolific in works of genuine charity is Euphrates.

Such is the spiritual meaning of the river in Eden parted into four heads. It is the symbol way of telling us of the influence of the Divine wisdom upon every department of the life of the Adamic people. There was a stream for the will (the celestial); there was a stream for the understanding, (the spiritual); there was a stream for what lies between the spiritual and the natural, (the rational,) and there was a stream for the natural mind and life. The whole mind and life were reached and affected by the wisdom of the Lord which thus adapted itself to every plane of their being.

Gen 2:18-25

When there dawns upon the mind the true spiritual character of these early chapters of the book of Genesis, one feels less and less inclined to call attention to the difficulties standing in the way of one who attempts to invent theories of a merely literal interpretation. God's purpose, in the very structure of these early records, is so apparent that the mere calling of attention to their literal contradictions seems almost sacrilegious; and for that reason we have not dwelt at all with that phase of the subject but have held the mind on the high plane of their spiritual meaning. It is not a destructive, but a constructive work the church has been called to do. We need therefore, to come directly to the Lord's own opening of the internal sense of the story of Adam's sleep and the creation of Eve.

The Adamic Church gradually rose to the very fullest enjoyment of all the love and intelligence that belong to the highest state of regeneration. The deepest heavenly love filled the heart of the church. That love was Eden. The highest heavenly intelligence illuminated the mind of the church. That intelligence was the beautiful garden planted eastward in Eden. The deep perceptive faculty this Most Ancient Church was endowed with, enabled it to receive instruction from the Lord in an internal way. The voice of the Lord was heard in the garden, that is, the guidance of the church was not effected by following an outward rule of life, but by an inward listening to the Lord's voice as it uttered its message in their souls.

It was a beautiful life, too beautiful, indeed, for us, to whom the Lord must come in such a different way, to form any adequate idea of it. The man - the Adam, dwelt alone in the garden. How significant this is when once we learn what is meant in the Bible by living alone!

Think. Those who look to the Heavenly Father and trust in all things to His guidance, are, in the Bible, said to be alone. External things of mere doctrinal knowledge - things that make one conscious of one's individuality - are not in the affections and thoughts of such highly developed people. They live alone with the Lord. Balaam , in speaking of the future of Israel as the Lord's people said: "Lo the people shall dwell alone." Moses, on one occasion, in speaking of Israel said: "Israel shall dwell in safety alone." A prophet of the olden time, exhorted Israel, saying: "Arise, get you up to the wealthy nation, that dwelleth without care, saith the Lord, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone." Of course, we all see that by dwelling alone was not meant individual solitude. So of Adam. As Adam is the name of the church of the childhood of the race, his being alone means that the celestial church lived alone with the Lord. That it was led and influenced solely by the Divine guidance from within.

We have no means of determining how long this single leadership of the Lord - this dwelling alone with Him - lasted. A very considerable length of time must have elapsed before the Adamic people began to turn to self and thus away from the Lord; but there ultimately came a posterity of the Most Ancient Church that inclined to their proprium or ownhood - that entertained the thought of and desire to possess the consciousness of an individuality apart from the Lord.

This thought - this desire, grew from generation to generation, until finally the ownhood, the personal individuality, had such prominence given to it that the sole leading of the Lord was no longer possible. This state, when it was formed, is what is meant by the words: "And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone."

This does not mean that in the original creation the Lord had failed to supply all the needs of man and that upon the discovery of man's need for human companionship He set to work to remedy the defect. It means that a state had arisen in the Adamic Church in which the church no longer felt that it was good to live alone with the Lord.

The Lord respects, in all the dispensations of His providence the freedom of man. So when the Adamic Church no longer desired to be led solely by the Lord, He did not interfere with the church's freedom. It would not have been for the good of the church if the Lord had compelled it to live alone with Him.

But while the Lord permitted the Adamic people to descend into this more external state, He did not turn away from them. He followed these most ancient people in their decline and raised up the means of regenerating them on the plane to which they had fallen. Hence we read that the Lord said: "I will make an help meet for him." Here we come to the story of Adam's deep sleep. Don't think of a man going to sleep physically. The sleep described here was a spiritual sleep. St. Paul exhorts spiritual sleepers where he says: "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light."

The mind is not simply a thinking faculty; it is a spiritual organism, created in discrete planes of consciousness. This was true of the people called Adam. Now, when the Most Ancient Church ceased to desire to be alone with the Lord, the very highest plane of life in that Adam fell into a state of spiritual sleep. The Lord's love was no longer active on that plane. Deep sleep brooded over it. This was Adam's sleep. Falling into this sleep, the Adamic people would have utterly destroyed all heavenly life in themselves if it had not been for the tender mercy of the Lord. They inclined to their selfhood, and it would have swallowed them up. Think of the Lord's mercy! Adam sleeps; the highest life of the church has ceased; but while Adam sleeps, the Lord takes one of his ribs and closes up the flesh instead, and that rib, He builds into a woman. So runs the allegory. What does it mean? Remember, it is the religious condition of the Most Ancient Church that is treated of in this story of the rib built into a woman - remember that, and the whole narrative becomes clear.

The rib of Adam stands for the ownhood - the individuality, of the earliest people. This ownhood, in itself, was dead - without any spiritual life; but it was capable of being vivified with life from the Lord. Thus taken out of the most ancient man, as the means of arresting his spiritual ruin, and raised into a new condition and animated by another life, it could come to see that what is good and true are to be believed and practiced in daily life, by man as of himself, yet with the acknowledgment that the will, the understanding and the power to do so are from the Lord alone.

When the ownhood is thus vivified, it is no longer a hard bone - no longer a rib. It becomes soft, pliable, fair, yielding and lovable. These qualities are meant by the woman, beautiful and innocent.

This is not, therefore, the story of the origin of woman; but the woman is introduced into the story because, in all the tenderness and beautiful qualities of high and noble womanhood, she represents what was true of the ownhood of the most ancient people after it was taken out of them and raised to newness of life by the Lord. They could love this proprium, and the Lord could still retain His hold on them. It was, of course, a more external state than the one pictured by Adam alone in the garden; but it was not an evil state. In coming into it, this posterity of the Adamic Church, forsook many internal things. This is what is meant by the forsaking of father and mother. But the church could cleave to the wife - to the pure and the good, as it saw them, on a more external plane.

To teach us that while what we have described was a more outward state of the Most Ancient Church, yet not an utterly fallen and evil state, it is said: "And they were both naked and were not ashamed." There was no guilt up to this point. It was only the beginning of the fall that went on until the Lord came.

Gen 3:1-13

The primeval state of man - of man before he became the subject of regeneration - is described in allegorical terms, as the earth, without form, and void, with darkness brooding over the face of a great deep. The six days of creation symbolically set forth his gradual rise, through the work of regeneration, out of this low condition into one of the highest degree of spiritual and celestial excellence. His fall was a gradual return to his former natural state; but when he returned to the ground from whence he was taken, he was no longer innocent in his naturalism; for now he had become evil. As there were steps that led up to the high state man reached in his Eden home, so there were steps that led down to the moral degradation that ultimately expelled him from Eden.

We must think of these most ancient people as involving in their spiritual, mental and physical structures the same constituents of humanity that we possess; but in them, all the elements of their being were in harmony. They, when fully regenerated, were open, from their inmost soul down through all their mental degrees of life - yea even to the most external planes of their bodies - to the descending life of the Lord. Everything was in perfect order.

The first movement downward came when a certain posterity of the Most Ancient Church felt an inclination to exalt and make prominent their individuality. In the beginning this was a mere suggestion, but it grew with succeeding posterities of that church until they felt it was no longer good to live alone with the Lord.

This led to Adam's deep sleep - the closure of the higher planes of the mind to the inflow of the Lord's life. It is not that the most ancient people did not possess a proprium, in the beginning; for without a proprium - an ownhood - they would not have had personal otherness from the Lord, and would thus have been incapable of regeneration. They always possessed an ownhood; but it was not made prominent, nor did they incline to it until a posterity came that wished to be led as of themselves.

This, in the beginning, was not an evil thing; for, at first, it did not take them away from the Lord, but only gave them a consciousness of individuality in following Him. The "rib" - the ownhood - was taken out of man and built into a woman imbued with innocence and thus rendered capable of serving man in his regeneration. But this state was much lower than the one described by Adam living alone in the garden; and it ultimately led to the utter ruin of the Most Ancient Church.

Up to this point, the sensuous nature in the most ancient people, yielded willing obedience to the dictates and impulses of the celestial principles of the mind. Like an obedient servant, the sensuous plane of their minds ministered to the attainment of the highest life. It kept its subordinate position. The whole plane of sense life was designed by the all-wise Creator to serve the higher life of the soul. The senses are inlets for certain kinds of knowledge - doors through which the outer things of the world enter the mind; and while they are kept subordinate to the higher principles of the soul, they serve the use of elevating and enlarging the mind; but when they are turned to and exalted above the intellectual and spiritual things of life, they close the mind to heaven and open it downward to the world and thus invert all true order.

This sensuous plane of life - the degree of life that belongs to the senses of the body - is what is meant by the serpent in the Eden story. It is said in this story: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field." The animals to which Adam gave names stand for the affections and thoughts of the most ancient people; and by Adam naming the animals is meant that the man of the celestial church perceived the quality of all such affections and thoughts. And now, when it is said that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, the thing meant is that the senses are more deceptive than any other quality of human life. They are the lowest and the least to be depended upon. They call for constant watchfulness on the part of the higher powers of the mind; they need constant direction and guidance. They belong to the outer extremes of human life and are open directly to receive impressions from the world, by which the memory is furnished with things which it can use with persuasive art in favor of the delights and cupidities of mere bodily life. The natural mind is formed by deposits from the world through the senses of the body: and the natural mind thus formed reasons from the sense plane, and thus rejects the truth of revelation, and doubts all Divine things. The senses cannot be trusted. The judgments and conclusions formed from them are always erroneous. Every wise man is called upon, in reaching the truth, to correct the impressions received from without through his senses. They cannot be followed. With the people of the most Ancient Church, this sensuous plane, while they remained in their integrity, was as wise as a serpent, because it admitted into itself the correcting light of the higher principles of the mind; but as succeeding posterities of that church began to incline to the sense life, to look to the senses for their interpretation of life, they came more and more under the influence of the sensuous side of their being, until all the inner avenues of life were closed.

To whom did the serpent make its appeal? To Eve. Eve is the symbol of the selfhood. The selfhood imbued with innocence, was at first a help-meet; but now it had grown so large in the regard of these most ancient people that it became a means by which the senses were able to involve them in complete spiritual ruin.

The tree of the knowledge of good and of evil was not a literal tree, for we can all see that the knowledge of good and evil could not have been the product of a tree. The knowledge of spiritual things is communicated to man by the Lord. It comes by revelation, given either through an internal dictate or by a written word of Scripture. Every man who does any serious thinking knows this to be true. He feels himself incompetent for such a discovery as the knowledge of spiritual things.

With the most ancient people this knowledge flowed in from the Lord and they were forbidden to attempt to gain it by any external methods. Of all the trees of the garden they might eat, excepting the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Why this prohibition? The fruit of every perception of goodness and truth, they were permitted to appropriate; but they must not appropriate to themselves the knowledge that belongs to God alone; for to eat of this tree meant a mental appropriation by which they would be led to believe that spiritual knowledge was the result of their own self-derived intelligence. But the Eve in this posterity of the Most Ancient Church - the ownhood - had opened the way for the pleading of the sense life. Knowledge, as a tree to see was planted by the Lord in Eden; for it is lawful to see the tree of knowledge - to seek to learn and comprehend the things of knowledge ; but it never is lawful to eat of the tree of knowledge because that act stands for making knowledge a result of our own efforts. It meant intellectual conceit. "Ye shall be as gods," the serpent said. This posterity of the Most Ancient Church yielded to the deception of the sense life. Men began to think of themselves as wise from themselves - to be as gods. The senses won out. "Eve ate and gave to her husband, and he did eat." The selfhood, the will, yielded to the senses; and as a result, the intellectual faculty consented. Innocence was lost. The soul was closed to God. The sense of guilt came. Conscience took the place of perception. They knew they were naked. Eden closed to them, and they were "sent forth to till the ground from whence they were taken.

Gen 3:14-21

Eating of the tree of knowledge is assigned, in the Genesis story, as the reason for the expulsion from Eden; and when we see that Eden was the state of heavenly love, which had been gradually formed in the hearts of the Adamic people, and the garden in Eden the heavenly intelligence of their minds, and the tree of knowledge the appearance that life was their own, and that eating of that tree meant that they confirmed and appropriated the appearance as a truth, and thus came to regard knowledge of spiritual things as self derived, we can see that nothing less than the loss of their heavenly love and intelligence could result.

The question has been asked: "If the serpent represented man's sensual nature, which finally led him astray, why did the Lord put such a snare in man's way?" In answering this question, we must lay aside the current ideas clustering around the term "sensual;" for as used in the writings of the New Church, it does not stand for the lusts and appetites of the fallen mind, but for that plane of the mind which sees and concludes through the senses of the body. It means the sensuous degree of man's mind. This sensuous degree of the mind is the sense plane of life - the sense-consciousness - that which makes us conscious of the external world and its life. It is plainly to be seen that the Lord could not have created man without this plane of life. He would not be man if it were left out of his constitution.

With the primeval Adamic man, this plane was in perfect order. It was upright. It looked to the higher element of spiritual reason for guidance. It was an obedient servant.

The posterity of the Adamic people who lost their heavenly Eden, inclined to this sensuous principle. They paid an undue regard to that, which on its own plane, was designed to minister to higher things. They came to prefer the things of mere bodily life to the things of the soul. This led them to eat of the tree of knowledge.

They then came to believe in their own goodness and wisdom; they became wise in their own conceit; they attempted to enter into Divine and heavenly things through a cultivation of their sense-life. Thus that which was a necessary endowment became, because of an abuse, the source of the greatest evils.

This could not have been prevented without violation to that freedom of will in which the Lord holds His children. Where the will is not free there can be no moral responsibility.

The dreadful crime committed by this posterity of the Most Ancient Church - the exaltation of their own good above God - the turning of their minds downward to the senses and the consequent loss of all the heavenly excellencies that had crowned and beautified the lives of their forefathers, is visited with fearful curses. How are we to understand this? The idea generally prevails that God became angry at man when he transgressed His law, and that He visited these evils upon man because of His anger. This cannot be true. Anger has no place in the Divine mind. It is as utterly foreign to God's nature as sin itself. There may be here the appearance of anger, but it is only an appearance. It cannot be a reality. Anger when attributed to the Lord, expresses the aspect under which He appears to the perverted mind of man.

The wicked man thinks God must be angry when His laws are broken, because he forms his ideas of God from his own state. He believes God does what he knows he would do if he were in God's place. Here is a principle by which to explain all that is said in the letter of the Bible about the anger of God. But the serpent was cursed: the woman's sorrow was to be multiplied, and the ground, cursed of God, was to bring forth thorns and thistles. What do these things mean?

The serpent of this story is, as we have seen, the sensuous side of the mind. This mental serpent, which in the beginning, was upright, led the self-hood of the Adamic people astray and involved them in dreadful evils. It thus turned away from its subordinate position; and then sank to the lowest depths. It, the sensuous plane of the mind, reached a deeper degradation than any other fallen principle in the Adamic people. The curse, which is said to have consigned it to drag its slimy length upon the ground, was simply the utterance of the Divine truth as to the state of the sensuous mind after it averted itself from the Divine order in which it was formed.

This side of man's mind, which in the beginning looked up to higher principles, now crawled close to the earth and was fed by merely earthly and corporeal things. The higher degrees of man's life were closed and men began to live a sensuous life believing only the things that reported to their minds through the outer doorways of their bodily senses. They became sensuous men - a generation of serpents - mere naturalists, to whom God and spiritual things were mere sounds. Ah yes, this curse upon the serpent is seen even in our own day in men and women who are seeking the satisfactions of life in the gratification of bodily appetite, in mere pleasure and natural diversion.

The enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed - what is it? It was the separation that was then effected between the sensuous life and the heavenly selfhood. These two planes became antagonistic. There originated then an antagonism which has persisted in all the succeeding generations of men. We all know what it is. St. Paul graphically describes it: "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other." It has been the conflict of the ages, and will continue, until the mystery of sin is ended in the final triumph of redemption.

And the curse upon the woman, what was it? Certainly it was no Divine infliction. The woman of the Edenic story was the symbol of the selfhood, which the Lord mercifully granted to the Adamic people when they could no longer live alone with Him, and into which He inspired what was lovely and pure. But this selfhood, yielding to the senses, fell. Its entire character was changed. Thereafter it would be hard to bring into the conduct the states of heavenly life. It would be difficult to even conceive of spiritual things, and great spiritual sorrow and temptation would be experienced in bringing the high truths of heaven into the daily life. Is it not so? How difficult it is to lead men to see that there is a spiritual world! How hard it is for them to believe in the supersensuous life! This is all the result of man's fall.

And the curse upon the ground: "Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth." The ground referred to is the external natural life. Out of this ground, the Lord, in the beginning, formed man; now he returns to the ground from whence he was taken; but it brings forth evils which are spiritual thorns and false principles of life, which are spiritual thistles. These things became man's hereditary nature; they grew up spontaneously. And the curse upon the man! He was to eat bread in the sweat of his face. No longer would good come directly from the Lord by a gentle inflowing into the will. The order of influx was changed. Only through spiritual toil could heavenly life - the good of heaven - be procured. It has been so ever since. Man came under a different law, the law expressed by St. Paul where he says: "Work out your soul's salvation with fear and trembling." Only in this way can we expect to procure and eat of the bread of life.

Gen 3:22-24

What a wonderful parable this story of the first pair is! We have seen them in their beautiful garden home - happy, because innocent. We have traced their decline, step by step, to their final act of disobedience. Now we see them driven from their beautiful garden to till the ground from whence they were taken. It is all a wonderfull Divine parable.

We have grown familiar with the thought that Adam is the name of that portion of the then existing human race which by process of spiritual and celestial unfoldings, was formed into the first church established upon the earth; and we have learned to think of Eden as the name given to the beautiful love-life they lived, and of the garden, eastward in Eden, as the name given to designate the heavenly intelligence they possessed; for like a luxuriant garden, their minds, always open to the Lord, brought forth every form and order of celestial intelligence.

In this love-state, with all the beautiful forms of intelligence which clothed it, the Adamic people lived for many generations. Then the love of leading themselves began to take root and grow in their hearts. That love the Lord modified by imbuing it with the affection of looking to and acknowledging Him in the life of acting as of themselves; and when he showed this marvelous love for them, He called it taking a rib out of Adam and building it into a woman. This mercy of the Lord arrested, for a while, the fall of this church, but the decline once entered upon, went on until by turning to their senses for the interpretation of life, the members of this church of the race's infancy, fell entirely away from their heavenly Father's guidance and lost their love for Him and their intelligence of heavenly things, and were expelled from Eden.

The steps in this moral decline were slowly taken, and many generations came and passed away before these early people came to believe that they had life and intelligence from themselves. The story of the talking serpent is introduced into the parable to symbolize the sensuous life of these most ancient people. This sense plane, good when subordinated to the higher principles of the mind, they exalted to a degree of dominance and began to listen to its pleadings. This led them into evil.

The serpent has ever been regarded as the symbol of sensuous thought and life. In Phoenecian mythology we have the story of an egg surrounded by a serpent. It was the Phoenician way of expressing the fact that life, in its very beginning, is beset with danger from sensuous thoughts and affections. The hair of Medusa was transformed into serpents after she had violated the sanctity of the temple of Minerva. This myth expressed the law that the ultimate things of life become merely sensual in those who violate the holy things of their soul life. Hercules, strangling great serpents, while as yet he was an infant in his cradle, and afterward destroying the hydra, is a mythological picture of how innocence destroys every approach of sensuality, and how through the labors of regeneration every form of evil is overcome.

The serpent of the Edenic story represents the same things. Listening to its subtle pleading on the part of Eve was the selfhood inclining to the mere sense plane and finally yielding to its seductive influence. This could not have been prevented without taking from the most ancient people that freedom of will which enabled them to live a responsbile human life. In this way the final fall came about.

The appearance that they lived of themselves, that life was their own, the Adamic people confirmed as a truth. Little by little did they bring into their thinking the importance of their individuality; little by little they receded from the inward guidance of the Lord until finally senuous reasoning seduced them into believing that outward and visible things were more real than inward and invisible things; that it was folly to believe that life came to them from God when it was evident to their senses that it orginated in them; that it was foolish to look up to the guidance of an invisible being when their sense-consciousness clearly revealed to them the fact that they guided themselves. So it was these appearances, which they exalted into the region of truth, and adopted, that led them ultimately to believe that they were good and wise of themselves - gods knowing good and evil.

What could result from this dreadful state but their expulsion from Eden? This expulsion, however, was not an arbitrary act on the part of the Lord. It was the result of their closure to the inflow of the Lord's life.

The story of the Lord driving the first pair out of Eden is only the parable way of describing the way things appeared to the fallen people of the Most Ancient Church. The people of whom this parable treats had effaced those heavenly graces which were once the glory of their lives. They could no longer respond to the Divine love. They had closed, plane after plane, their minds to the heavenly influxes, and their expulsion from Eden was their own act.

We all know that as evil loves grow in man's heart they expel him from any real delight in the society of innocent and pure-minded people. He does not love what they love. He seeks his own. So it was in the long ago. By closing their hearts to heaven the fallen people of the Adamic age withdrew from the sacred influences of goodness and separated themselves from heaven as a bad man expels himself from the society of the virtuous and truth-loving.

But a great mercy was shown them. We are told of it in the story of the cherubim with the sword of flame stationed at the east of the garden to guard the way of the tree of life. Don't think of a literal cherub, nor of a literal sword of flame, but instead think of the mercy and providence of the Lord over those most ancient people - the Lord's watchful care lest they from mere sensuous reasoning, should seek to enter into holy things and profane them, and by so doing bring the deeper curse upon themselves.

The great miracle of the separation of the understanding from the will had not as yet been wrought, so their wills must be guarded lest in them there might occur the mixture of good and evil. Such a mixture is profanation; and that sin is incurable because it closes the very capacity for the reception of God. The gate of their wills must be guarded; and the loving providence of the Lord in thus protecting them against this sin of profanation is what is meant by the cherub at the east of Eden. The cherub stood there to guard the way of the tree of life, "lest they put forth their hand and eat of the tree of life and live forever."

How remarkable this language is! Theologians have thought that it was God's way of preventing man from attaining an immortal existence in this world. It was not that. So long as one does not mix good and evil in his heart and thus profane holy things, he is in a saveable state; but if he becomes guilty of deliberate profanation, he commits the sin that cannot be cured in this world nor in the world to come. To eat of the tree of life after they had turned their hearts to the world - to put forth their hand and pluck the fruit of that tree - meant to attempt to enter into interior things, holy things, from their ownhood and own power; and to do this would mean to live forever in evil - in a state of utter profanation. Seeing this, what a mercy that a cherub should stand there to prevent such an awful crime!

And here in the east of the garden appeared also the flaming sword, turning itself every way to guard the tree of life. This flaming sword was the self-love of those fallen people, with its insane cupidities and persuasions which desire to enter into holy things, and by so doing profaned them. The sword of flame turned every way, and thus, prevented profanation.

It is the same today. The Lord's providence prevents not to be understood as individuals, but as symbolizing two different classes of religious sentiments and doctrines that grew up in the Adamic Church. So long as the Adamic Church maintained its integrity, the minds of its members were united, and all the various faculties of their minds existed and acted in harmony. The will loved what was good, and from that good, the understanding perceived what was true.

But when the Adamic Church turned its mind out and down to the sense plane and sought to enter into interior things from mere sensuous knowledge, the two faculties the will and the understanding, ceased to act as one. The harmony of the moral creation was broken up. The will and the understanding began to act against each other, and in course of time there developed two types of churchmen. One of these types was called Cain; the other was called Abel.

The Cainites were people who had an intellectual knowledge of what was good and true, but exalted that knowledge into mere faith and claimed that faith without works, was the all of religion. Thus arose the heresy of faith alone in the Adamic Church.

Abel was the name given to those, who, while they did not disparage faith, nor ignore the place spiritual knowledge held in the church, saw that charity was superior to knowledge and the mere doctrine of faith. Thus side by side these two sects grew in the Adamic Church, the Cainites claiming that faith was a more excellent and saving quality than charity, and the Abelites claiming that charity was the great and distinguishing mark of churchmanship. Both of these sects professed to serve the Lord, but each had a different principle and motive in that service.

Cain was the firstborn of Adam. It was natural that he should come first; for in eating of the forbidden fruit, the Adamic Church chose knowledge as a thing above obedience; and in thus placing the cultivation of the intellect above the cleansing of the heart, the first outcome - the first spiritual conception and birth of the church - could not have been other than the doctrine of faith as a thing separate from charity and forming the sole ground of acceptance with the Lord. All who accepted this doctrine were denominated Cain.

Abel was the second son of the Adamic Church. He stands for the doctrine that charity is the supreme characteristic of the truly religious man. The Abelites were those who cultivated the good of charity in their hearts and practiced it in their lives. They loved the Lord; they loved each other. They had faith, but it was not made the prominent thing in their religious life. Charity of life was their principal quest. They were humble, gentle, kind and loving. They believed, but they laid the emphasis upon the loving and doing side of religion.

Here, then, we see the two branches into which the great Adamic Church was divided - Cain being the branch that placed the all of religion in mere faith alone, and Abel the branch that stood for charity as the embodiment and true expression of faith. Look at the respective occupations of these two brothers. Cain was a tiller of the ground. Abel was a shepherd. Cain a tiller of the ground! How full of meaning in relation to what he stands for that expression is! The ground mentioned here is the external or natural plane of the mind; and by Cain tilling this ground is meant the labor bestowed upon the cultivation of the external mind in making it fruitful in the production of theories of faith as a thing apart from the daily life. The Cainites did what the same kind of faith-alone people did and do in the Christian Church. For instance - the Apostolic Church worshipped one Lord, and had one faith and one baptism. It was a true church. But the schismatic bodies formed in it invented theories of the Trinity, theories of Atonement, theories of Salvation, theories of Faith, almost without number. What was the age of the Councils but a long period in which Cain did nothing else than till the ground? The various and conflicting doctrines of Catholic and Protestant theology are only the reward of the labor bestowed by Cain in the Christian Church, on the ground he has tilled. It was thus in the Adamic Church. The intellect of the Cainites was busy tilling the ground of faith alone. Abel was a shepherd. Spiritually thought of, a shepherd is one who exercises the good of charity; and as a "keeper of sheep," Abel stands for what this truly religious branch of the Adamic Church was daily doing - keeping the affections of their hearts pure in the sight of their Heavenly Father. The Abelites employed their time in promoting the life of charity in themselves and in others. They were keepers of spiritual sheep. Not despising - not undervaluing the faith side of religion; for they knew that without faith it was impossible to please their Heavenly Father; yet they made the life of religion to consist in that principle of charity that as St. Paul says, "Vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up."

Gen 4:1-6

The offerings of Cain and Abel have suggested a difficulty to those who know that ceremonial worship did not have its rise until a later period, that is, until the Ancient Church was established among the descendants of Noah; but no difficulty really exists. The original Adamic Church had an internal perception of the correspondence of natural objects to spiritual realities; all of their compositions were structured according to the law of correspondence and their mode of conversing was correspondential. They employed the objects of nature to express their spiritual ideas. This was especially true of the animal kingdom. When, for instance, we read of Adam giving names to the animals that are said to have been brought to him, we are not to think of natural names given to natural animals, but instead we are to think of the church giving a celestial quality to the various affections and thoughts of the mind. So of the fruits of the ground. They were, to the Most Ancient Church, symbols of the fruits of the mind. The worship or offering of Cain and Abel was not therefore what we understand by ceremonial worship. This did not begin until in the Ancient and succeeding churches, men lost the spiritual ideas of worship and formed a worship with the things that in the beginning were spoken of only as symbols of celestial affections and thoughts.

The period in the Adamic Church pictured to us in the story of Cain and Abel, was not far enough removed from the original state of the church as to require ceremonial worship. This state came, however; and when it did come, the things, the names of which only were mentioned in connection with worship, began to be used. Here was the origin of outward sacrificial worship. In the original Adamic Church, Cain was the name given to those who made religion to consist in faith without charity. The people of this Cainitish sect in the Most Ancient Church who adopted this doctrine had their own mode and principle of worship. At first there was something of charity among the Cainites. They did not begin as they ended. They underwent a gradual decline. Each step they took was away from their original regard for charity, until they finally eliminated it entirely from their lives and from their worship of the Lord.

This is pointed out in the allegory itself. It is said: "And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord." Adam when expelled from the garden was sent forth to till the ground from whence he was taken. The ground Adam was sent forth to till was the external man. The external man is the ground on which the celestial and spiritual states of the internal man rest. They must be grounded in what is natural; for the external mind is to the more interior things of the soul what the earth is to the body.

The original Adamic Church was made of the dust of this ground, which means that as the most ancient man rose into the life of celestial regeneration, a human quality was given to the most external plane of his mind. The Lord, in the gospel, uses the ground in a spiritual sense. He said: "The kingdom of heaven is as if a man should cast seed into the ground." And in the parable of the Sower, He speaks of the seed falling on "good ground." It is plainly to be seen that in these instances, the Lord used natural ground in a symbolic sense as denoting the external mind of man.

Now, notice one important thing. Cain did not bring to the Lord an offering of the fruit of seeds sown in the ground. He brought of the fruit of the ground and not the fruit of the seeds. Do we see the point? The fruit of the ground represented simply the works - the deeds - of the external man. By the external man, the church writings do not mean man's physical body. In the psychology of the church, the external man is formed of the affections, thoughts and knowledge that are gathered from the natural world and which form the exterior plane of man as a spiritual being. The natural body, strictly speaking, is no part of man. It is only a material scaffolding within which the external man and the higher spiritual man are being reared.

The internal man is created on a level with heaven. He is so formed that he can see and love the things of heaven. The external man is created on a level with the world and is formed to see and love the things of the world.

In a perfectly regenerated man these two, the internal man and the external, act as one. But in the man whose loves are evil, the internal man is closed to heaven and his external man only is open and active. The quality of the external mind in such a man is evil. He is separated, in the motive of his life, from all that is of heaven. He becomes a worldly man, no matter how much memory knowledge he may have of spiritual things; and the good he does is done from himself and not from the acknowledgement of the Lord. This is what is meant by the ground of which Cain was a tiller. The religion, therefore, of the Cainites had not anything from the Lord in it. It was the fruit of the ground - mere knowledge, mere form - a body that had no soul in it. How could it be acceptable unto the Lord? It was heartless. Faith alone can never be a thing of Divine regard. Faith as a thing by itself is mere self-derived intelligence. It belongs to the external man separated from its proper internal - the fruit of the ground - and is not accepted by the Lord. This is why Cain's offering was rejected.

Look now at Abel. The Lord had respect unto Abel's offering because he, as representing the branch of the Adamic Church principled in charity, brought to the Lord the offering of a sincere and good heart. Under the ceremonial law, offerings taken from the flock were lambs, sheep, rams and goats. These stood for the good things of charity. The Abelites were full of innocence and charity. They worshipped the Lord with their whole heart. Their faith was only the form of their charity, and their charity consisted in shunning evils as sins against God and in doing good from Him.

There is no real charity without innocence; and innocence is the quality of singlemindedness - a willingness to be led by the Lord alone. As Abel stands, in this allegory, for all who preserved in the church the principle and life of charity, his bringing to the Lord, as an offering, the firstlings of the flock, which were lambs, therefore the quality of the worship of the Abelites that made it acceptable unto the Lord was innocence. All that made them men of charity with its innocence of life, came to them from the Lord, and they acknowledged Him in every form of their charitable and innocent lives, and worshipped Him from the good of charity.

The Abelites were not without faith, but their faith was a living and doing faith - a faith made perfect by love. They knew their Heavenly Father's will; they believed His word; but they also did their Heavenly Father's will and Word. This is why the Lord had respect unto Abel's offering.

When Cain's offering was rejected, it is said: "He was very wroth and his countenance fell." How expressive this is! Faith alone has in it the wrath that is to come to those who adopt it as a principle of religion. Cain's anger is the evil that fills the place in the heart that charity should occupy. The falling of Cain's countenance expresses the dreadful state of those long-ago faith-alone people of the Adamic age; for the changes that take place with the countenance indicate corresponding and causal changes in the mind. With Abel it was different. Worship from charity was acceptable to the Lord; and the Abelites must have experienced in their hearts the sweetness of their communion in worship, with their good and Divine Father in heaven.

Gen 4:7-15

The Cainitish sect in the Adamic Church had gone on increasing in wickedness; for it is as true of a false and heretical sect, of a declining church, as it is of an individual, that unless it repents of its evils and abandons its false teaching, it will continue to sink lower and lower in the moral scale.

This was the case with the Cainites. At first they were not wholly bad. They had, it is true, adopted a false doctrine, but in the beginning they retained something of charity. But the faith-alone doctrine for which they stood involved the deadly falsity that religion was merely for the intellect. And this involved falsity gradually led them to less and less regard for charity, until it culminated in the utter rejection and death of charity in their hearts and lives.

This is clearly pointed out in the allegory: "And Cain talked with Abel, his brother; and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him."

The idea expressed here is that of an angry dispute. Cain was the aggressor. He talked or disputed with Abel. He rose up and s!ew him. We must think of two distinct branches of the Adamic Church, one of which was called Cain and stood for the doctrine that faith is the essential and first thing of the church, and the other called Abel, which stood for the doctrine that charity was the essential of the church. These two branches of the Adamic Church were involved in a theological controversy, and each was seeking an ascendency over the other.

It was not unlike the controversies that have arisen in the Christian Church. The original catholic church of Jesus Christ was one. St. Paul gloried in the fact that it had one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Rome grew to be the most important Episcopal See in the church, and the Bishop of Rome saw the way clear to establish himself in the chair of St. Peter as the universal bishop of Christendom, and he did it. But his claim was denied by the Eastern Church; and after several centuries of bitter controversy, the Eastern Church broke off communion with the church in the west and installed a Patriarch at Constantinople as the spiritual head of the Eastern Church. These two branches of the original Catholic Church, which died as Adam is said to have died, have been in one sense the Cain and Abel of the Catholic Church. Rome, as Cain, has been arrogant and intolerant. It has destroyed the principle of charity and has had no mercy for those who dared to differ in opinion from its edicts and bulls.

The same thing has been realized in Protestant Christianity. The long and angry disputes that took place between the Lutheran, Calvinistic and Arminian sects in the Protestant Church come readily to mind. Like Cain and Abel, these sects have talked together in the field; but it has been vehement and invective talk.

Think of the strife - the battle that was fought between Luther and Erasmus. Luther rose up like Cain. He said: "That exasperated viper Erasmus has again attacked me." Servetus dared to controvert one of John Calvin's pet theories; and, like Cain, Calvin rose up, caused him to be apprehended, accused him of blasphemy, had him condemned as a heretic and consigned to the flames.

These facts of church history help us to an understanding of the story we are considering. The Cainites were faith-alone people. They had no regard for charity. The Abelites were of a sweet and affirmative disposition. They had no quarrel with faith as such; but they did see that standing alone, it was a worthless, dead thing. They would have nothing to do with faith alone. They saw where it would lead those who adopted it. The Cainites would have nothing to do with charity. Religion, with them, was a matter of faith apart from the life. This was the dispute in the field.

This division having entered into the Most Ancient Church, doctrinal controversies arose in many forms, and those who ranged themselves on the side of faith alone drew to themselves great numbers who saw in the Cainitish doctrine that which favored their lusts and pride of intelligence; and as a consequence the Abelites, who loved peace and were actuated by an affirmative spirit, suffered at the hands of the larger and more powerful sect of Cainites. They submitted to persecution and sought in all their trials to exhibit the true spirit of religion. Still Cain rose up. Think of that expression: "Cain rose up." You see in it the idea of exaltation - of superiority. This is precisely the state that faith alone produces in the mind. It exalts creeds above life-forms above the genuine spirit of religion. And those who believe that faith, mere doctrine, is the essential of the church are exalted in their own esteem. They rise up in their regard for doctrine and form and claim to be superior to those who differ from them.

Our own beloved church is not entirely free from this spirit. We are often tempted to place more importance upon a correct knowledge of doctrine than upon a correct life. It is very difficult for some of us to acknowledge that one may be in the life of the internal sense of the Word without an intelligent understanding of the internal sense of the Word as given in the church writings. We have had many disputes along these lines. We must guard against this dreadful state; for whoever is in good, from the Lord, comes into the spirit of the Word when he reads it. We must entertain no unkindly sentiments against those who may differ from us in doctrine.

This is what the Cainites failed to do. They tried to establish the pre-eminence of faith, and they finally did it, but it was done at a dreadful cost. "Cain rose up and slew Abel, his brother." The story of the natural murder is introduced into the allegory to represent the spiritual murder that had been committed in the hearts of the Cainites. Abel is murdered in all who destroy the life of charity in themselves by exalting faith above it. So when the Cainites had slain Abel in their hearts - when they made faith the essential of the church, they rested not until they had exterminated the Abelites from the church. Abel was slain. We hear nothing more of him. Faith alone ruled men's hearts.

What could come upon the people who perpetrated so dreadful a spiritual crime but the evils that are represented by the curses upon Cain?

The Lord is represented as asking Cain, "Where is thy brother Abel?" This question conveys the idea of an internal dictate to the conscience of those who had slain charity, as to what had become of it. It means this: "There was once peace and tranquillity in the church; now there is discord and division; what has become of charity? These things could not exist if charity were alive and active. Where is charity?

But the faith-alone people of the long ago, while they stood convicted by this dictate, instead of repenting of their crime, made an effort to justify it. Cain said: "Am I my brother's keeper?" This expressed the utterly fallen state of these Cainites. They had no regard for charity. "What have we to do with charity? Our business is to defend and establish faith."

Then came the curses. The ground would not yield its strength; and Cain would become a fugitive and a vagabond. It was so. The external mind of the Cainites produced heresy after heresy, each one more dreadful than the former, until this branch of the Adamic Ch