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tree of knowledge of good and evil," and afterwards also of "the tree of life." The tree of knowledge in itself considered, is a divine gift and blessing to man. It signifies the perception of truth from the Lord. But the sin is in eating of that tree. To eat signifies to appropriate, as physical food is appropriated and becomes a part of the body. An orderly appropriation is not forbidden; but to appropriate divine truths in such a way as to think they are of ourselves - of our own intelligence, is the sin here prohibited. For by this means, all such truth becomes perverted into forms of selfishness, the Lord is shut out, and the healthy influx of the Divine Life obstructed. This is the source of death. "In the day," or state, "thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." All thy wisdom and perception and life shall perish. It was called the tree in the "midst of the garden," because it was the very central principle of life.

But, we say, all this began, not in positive evil, but in becoming less good. A little less thought of the Divine Creative Source that perpetually sustained him, and a little more, and still a little more, of himself. Thus his good gradually diminished, till by and by it all ran out, and man in his natural mind became nothing but evil, became entirely selfish. For all this, he needed no tempter, no Devil, but the serpent in himself, the sensual principle of his own natural mind. This was continually suggesting-"Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” That is, ye shall be like God himself-shall have wisdom of yourself, and life of yourself, and not be led by another. O man, the deceiver!

But still the question recurs Why should man begin to allow this? Why should he take the very first initiatory step in all the series, to turn away from God, and turn unto himself? —especially if he had no real, absolute and entire will of his own, but only an apparent one, as in the will of goodness,

and if in this state of high spiritual re-creation he was so entirely good. This is the very question.

And we answer in the first place, that good as he was, and dependent as he was, there was necessarily an imperfection entering into his nature by the very act of creation. God could not create a being so perfect as Himself, without imparting all of Himself, which is a contradiction. Secondly, He must create man at an immense remove from Himself; for notwithstanding he is in his "image and likeness," yet being clothed in flesh, and ultimated in the natural and material world, he is necessarily a weak and puny creature, subject to vanity from the very first. And thirdly, he must be made to choose good. He must, in order to the highest possible enjoyment as a man, have moral enjoyment, which consists in a choice between good and evil.*

All this could not be without necessarily being involved in many imperfections which the Divinity itself could not prevent. These imperfections lay chiefly or altogether in his sensual or external mind, which was nearest to earth, and most likely to be deceived by appearances of things instead of the reality. Yet it was very necessary that man should have such a mind; it is the basis on which the interiors rest. It is very necessary too, to have it cultivated to the outermost possible region. Herein lay all the danger, and herein, when fully done, will be given the finishing stroke of the Divine Artist, in the complete ultimation of a rounded human character. Nothing is perfect till ultimated in exteriors. The men before the Fall did not know evil, nor could they have known that great good which will be experienced by redemptive man, when he

*It is not indeed asserted, as is sometimes understood, that evil is necessary in order to the existence of any good at all, for it is not. Man could have been preserved in good, and in a distinct knowledge of it, without this terrible contrast of evil; but still the ability to choose an opposite was necessary to his perfect freedom, and enjoyment of the higher good.

shall have passed through this evil experience, and come fully to the joys of deliverance. The men before the Fall were a good, docile, tender, innocent, unsophisticated, spiritual, infantile people, and had, by their purity, open communication with the angels of heaven. But they had not that peculiar power and experience that wondrous susceptibility to good and enjoyment that filling out of the whole being, even to the extremest parts of the natural mind, with wisdom, knowledge, and variety, that man will attain to by passing through the Fall, and coming to the state of the progressed man of the future. For be it known here, that the Fall of man, through thousands of years, is not inconsistent with a general law of progression. Like a sinless infant passing into corrupt manhood, the very Fall, in this sense, is a progression. For it was necessary that man should pass out of this state of infancy, and through the various periods of manhood, even at the risk of sin and defilement, that he might come fully into the most external state of his sensual and intellectual nature, and thus purify even these by the interior life flowing out and ultimating itself in the whole man. Then he is no longer an infant, but a strong man, able to battle with the opposing elements of nature, to subdue and beautify the outward world, and press it into his service by all the art and science of experienced manhood. When this is done, or when man by regeneration becomes purified again, it will be seen that even the Fall of man was a part of the progression. But not an orderly part. was not orderly for man to sin, and so to lose his pristine glory; but having lost it in the effort to exert and cultivate his sensuous and external nature, when he regains it, it will come with a greater power, with a more enlarged expansion of all the faculties of the natural mind, and be in reality a Golden Age of the future surpassing all the glory of the past. Thus, although this kind of progression is not orderly, yet like every thing else, the Fall of man is overruled for good, a good more glorious than can be imagined.

It

It is to be particularly observed here, that it was not necessary that man should sin, but it was necessary that he should pass out of this state of infancy. Man at the first was a being of a different order.* He was a mere child from the hands of his Maker, and received intuitionally, and by angelic influences, all the knowledge that was requisite for him. He rested on the bosom of the Father's love, without any desire for the things of the outward world and of mere intellectual science such as men now have and turn to so much usefulness. Would it not have been a greater evil for the human race to have remained forever in that state? And how could they ever be brought out of it but by coming into a different life—by exerting their own reason and senses, and endeavoring to find out truth themselves? In short, how could the rational faculty ever be cultivated without using it? But with the use, came the abuse. As soon as they began to reason, they fell. The Fall consisted in the gradual closing up of their interior, spiritual minds, their spiritual senses also, with all their powers of heavenly perception, and the sensualizing and materializing of their whole better nature. But it was all seen and calculated from the beginning, and mercifully permitted them, notwithstanding it would lead them so far away from the Lord of all life, and be the means of their terrible ruin. It was permitted them as a means of strengthening their whole nature, internal and external: that is, speaking of their posterity largely, and at the same time not excluding them from a share in the Divine Mercy. By such a permission, a new and still better race will be introduced upon the earth.

It might have been done otherwise, without the Fall, if man would have allowed it. And we have no hesitation in saying it would have been better, thus effected, and that man had free-will enough to have prevented this whole catastrophe, and to have improved and spiritualized his external nature without sinning, if he had chosen to do so. He was no more

* For particulars, see the first volume of Swedenborg's Arcana.

He was not any more com

obliged to do it then than now. pelled to take the first step in iniquity, than he is now compelled to murder, or to do any other abomination. He could have abstained from it, and ought to. But he would not, and that is the whole story. And thus this very faculty of our nature - this whole sensual and external mind which might have been orderly turned to so much use and proficiency, and so much happiness, became the means of a downfall which has drenched the world in wickedness and misery for ages upon ages, and peopled the vast abysses of hell.

Here it should be observed that this first life, so beautiful, could not be sustained without their loving it more freely and outwardly as of themselves. This is manifest from the New Church idea of proprium · in Adam's finding it not good to be alone, that is, under the Divine guidance exclusively, and desiring some other aid, which was called a woman, and which was taken out of man, that is, a self-hood which could be loved most dearly. Here, then, a greater freedom, because more external, more apparently of one's own self, was to be established in the human constitution, which in time should become equally at one with the inmost celestial life, and sustain it in greater fulness. And it was in their learning to acquire this that the stronger power of choice between good and evil came into play. Before, they only knew good by the simple, unmixed enjoyment of the heavenly influx into their tender and celestial minds. Now they were to know it more thoroughly, at least their posterity were, but attended with tremendous dangers. And God the Creator would not shrink from the work, but would follow them in the whole experience, lead them through it, and out of it, and bring a greater joy from this very scene of trial and suffering.

Here then we see what kind of a necessity it was that man should pass through this evil experience. It was not any thing in God which made evil a necessity of his own choosing. The only necessity which existed in God was a necessity to

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