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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."