The Eden tableau; or, Bible object-teaching

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

BY SAME AUTHOR:

REDEEMER AND REDEEMED. An Investigation of the Atonement and Eternal Judgment. 12mo. $1.75.

Preface

The wide diffusion of paradise legends among ancient nations has been often pointed out. We trace everywhere, in some form, the tradition of a golden age, a garden, a tree of life, cherubic guardians, a serpent or dragon, sacred rivers, and a happy pair. In the Isis of Egypt we seem to discern the Isha of Genesis, and in the Adima and Iva of Hindu legend, the Adam and Eve of Eden.

All the great ethnic religions begin with a cosmogony. Primeval speculation is very bold. It strikes back to the foundation of the world. It even goes far back of earth's creation. The idea of successive destructions and regenerations of the world, and successive reincarnations of its inhabitants, is fundamental to archaic cosmogony.

There have been ages on ages of spiritual history, reigns of the gods, and sublime conflicts before mundane periods began. Spirit is before matter, in the most ancient schemes of thought. The spiritual universe is vastly older than the material, said the antique faith. And we are reminded of a saying of Lessing : " La premiere et la plus ancienne opinion, dans les matieres speculatives, est toujours la plus vraisemblable, car c'est celle sur laquelle s'est arretee la raison de Thumanite dans sa sante premiere." l In Chinese legends we find a war in heaven, and a casting down of the dragon, at the beginning of the world, before the creation of the human race. And this dragon is the strong

1 In speculative matters, the first and most ancient opinion is most probably true, since on it human reason, in its pristine health, has reposed.

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and wise Lung, a winged serpent, the common symbol of the Chinese empire, the mighty spirit of all the elements.

Japanese legends speak of a combat between the glorious spirit of light-splendor, the Son of Heaven, and his brother, who wished to rob him of his office as ruler of heaven, in which the latter was vanquished and confined in the earth, which was darkened from its previous luminous condition.

It is a fundamental principle of Brahmamcal doctrine, that all creatures were originally pure", ethereal, celestial, and long enjoyed their freedom, till one of the highest spirits of heaven, through envy and jealousy, revolted from the Eternal. Then the great Being determined to create the material world, and banish thither the fallen spirits in order to their purification and recovery.

The Persian legends teach that the world before our present one was once destroyed, whereby the earth was completely covered with water. This sea had a honey-sweet foam, which gathered upon it like cream upon milk, forming the earth-essence. On this earth-essence these spirits fed which had sunk down out of God's heavenly light, and became men; whose bodies were originally without want (or defect), beautiful, and of glorious color and spirit nature. They radiated light, floated in the atmosphere, and nourished themselves only on bliss. Till that time there had been in the world neither sun, moon, nor stars ; neither night nor day ; no time; no male, no female; but only essence and essence. So soon, however, as they had eaten of the cream of the earth, their body became dense and heavy, it lost its beauteous brightness, then darkness came into existence in the world, and consequently sun, moon, and stars.

The doctrine of Parseeism has by some been represented as an absolute dualism, — Ahriman, the evil principle, being eternal. Others contend that this is a later form, and that the primitive Parsee doctrine described Ahriman as originally created a being of light.

Among Egyptian legends was that of the war of the Titans, before the creation of the present human race. On their defeat they were placed in the fixed stars, until Ment, the creative spirit, built

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the mortal bodies of men, and assigned each of them to one of the fallen spirits. Those spirits which failed to be restored to purity by one earthly life must return for another.

The further back we go in human history, the more familiar the mind of the nations seems to be with grand conceptions of this sort, namely the priority of the spiritual universe, and of its history, to all the developments of this earth.

The religions of the ancient world centered in their Mysteries, the underlying idea of which was regeneration, or a return to preincarnate purity and holiness. In those mysteries not only Arkite emblems were used, but paradisaic also, especially the serpent. Closely connected with the mysteries also was the phallic cultus — the worship of ancestors, and the incantations of magic. The combination of these and other elements more or less manifestly paradisaic in their reference, recorded themselves not merely in books, on the written page, but in the more imperishable form of rituals, and funeral customs, and architectural structures. Tombs, and mounds, and dolmens, and pyramids, and temples, are more durable historic records of early human faith and practice than printed or written pages can be. 1

The idea of the spiritual origin of all things — the priority of the spiritual world over the material — has ever seemed to the author the sublimest feature of ancient ethnic systems. If we are to borrow aught from those systems, surely, it should not be their baser, but their nobler, grander elements.

Schopenhauer is correct in affirming metempsychosis to have been the belief of the majority of mankind, and the foundation of all religions, but he errs somewhat in saying, except Judaism and the two religions that have sprung from it. a

There can be no doubt that metempsychosis is but a corruption of the primitive doctrine of a celestial pre-existence, which, as

1 This idea is well elaborated by Fergusson in his History of Architecture, and other works.

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Keil shows, was the original faith of Israel, not borrowed from Platonic sources, and which was bequeathed to the early Christian churches. As the sacramental system rose, however, based on a too literal acceptation of paradise emblems, this ancient faith died out. Those mighty systems of Oriental thought, in all their grandeur and their gloom, gathered about the morning horizon of Christianity, like vast clouds. about the rising sun, 1 kindled with all the glories of the gates of paradise by that veiy orb which they darkened, and finally eclipsed. In rejecting the strange and wild dreams of the Gnostic, and the Manichean, the churches unhappily rejected some elements of truth that gave to those alien systems all their seeming beauty, while retaining some of their elements of error that gave them all their moral ugliness.

Yet traces of those sublime conceptions lingered. The mind of Christianity for a thousand years revolved earnestly, though, alas, fruitlessly, about the question how the death of Christ destroyed man's enemy and ransomed man. It was a favorite idea with Augustine that the redeemed of mankind were to fill up the void in heaven made by the fall of angels. 2 Says a recent author : " These scattered hints and speculations of early writers, afterwards more fully developed by some of the deeper thinkers of the seventeenth century, that regard the early (pre-Adamic) history of the world, and the fall of angels, as in some sort of connection, are certainly not unworthy of our consideration. 3

These scattered hints and speculations have received their ablest embodiment in the work of Keerl, who holds that the earth, originally self-luminous, like the fixed stars, was the original principality of the unfallen Lucifer and his angels, and was wrecked and thrown into chaos by their fall. 4

1 Neander.

3 Ellicott. Sermons on the Destiny of the Creature, p. 28.

* Der Mensch das Ebenbild Gottes. Von P. F. Keerl. Basel, 1861. A work of great ability and beauty, to which the author is indebted for a portion of the facts referred to in this preface.

PREFACE. 5

The prevalence of these paradisaic emblems, and the speculations accompanying them, in ancient and modern systems, is a fact to be accounted for, — especially by such as deny the historic character of the Eden narrative, and the reality of the spirit world and spirit intervention.

Celsus in early times, and Volney and others in modern, adopted the theory that Christianity was borrowed from older ethnic systems. To this the fathers and reformers replied that paganism borrowed from the Jews. The ablest presentation of this hypothesis is by Theophilus Gale, in his celebrated work, "The Court of the Gentiles" (Oxon, 1672), which the modern disciples of Celsus and Volney would be interested and profited to peruse. With the study of Sanskrit, the translation of the Zendavesta, the decipherment of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, a new era in the mythological discussion was introduced. One of the earliest and ablest works on the Pneumatic side (the side of faith in the spirit world and in revelation), was that of Faber, "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," about the beginning of the present century, which, though marred by diffuseness and repetition, is a storehouse of information, and its line of argument not easily met. The Apneumatic, or mythical, theory is, that like causes produce like effects in like circumstances. The powers and faculties of the human mind being ever the same, and the forces and movements of Nature the same, the results have been essentially similar in all ages. Faber replies, this might suffice for all great natural phenomena, but cannot apply to things wholly arbitrary. Nations the widest asunder in time, space, circumstances, and blood exhibit an astonishing agree-, ment in paradisaic emblems, which are obviously arbitrary, and this can only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a common paradisaic origin. This argument, reinforced by pre-existence, it is impossible for the mythical theory to meet. Faith in a primeval paradise, either terrestrial or celestial, or both, has been the universal heritage of man, recording itself not merely in uncial manuscripts, but in letters of stone and earth big as pyramids and mountains, and perpetuated in arbitrary emblems, and rites, and sacrificial ceremonies, from age to age and generation to generab PREFACE.

tion, among peoples the widest apart in locality, lineage, and language. Of all paradisaic legends, that of Moses is simplest, purest, most in accordance with good taste, most elevated and ennobling in its suggestiveness, most free from incongruous elements, and most readily yields a consistent and lofty spiritual meaning under the application of the simple law of Analogy. It is therefore presumptively true, and, until a better one can be found, is to be studied with reverence as throwing light upon the sublime but mysterious question of the past history of the spiritual universe.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Prelude, 9

II. What is the Bible? 14

III. Parallelism, . 20

IV. Before the Curtain, 29

V. Curtain Rises, 37

VI. Tree op Life, 45

VII. Tree of Knowledge, 51

VIII. The First Adam, 60

IX. The Second Adam, 67

X. The Serpent, 73

XI. The Attack, 86

XH. The Examination, 94

XTTT. Sentence on the Serpent, 107

XIV. Sentence on Woman, 107

XV. Sentence on Man, 77

XVI. Coats of Skins, 79

XVII. The Curtain Falls, . . . . '. .91

XVIII. The Eden Tabernacle, 102

XIX. The Cherubim, 134

XX. The Four Rivers, 140

XXI. Comparative Theology, . . . . .153

THE EDEN TABLEAU.

Chapter I. Prelude

The present is a transition era of religious thought. The Bible was never more earnestly assailed, or more ably defended. The developments of science, the general progress of human thought, the methods of modern destructive criticism, combining with other causes, have produced a general feeling of a need of re-statement of conventional beliefs. At the same time, the Bible was never more widely demanded, more profoundly studied, or in one sense more popular. A monopoly of it would be to any publishing house a princely fortune. Translated into one hundred and fifty languages, it interests minds of all races, climes, and latitudes, as no other book has ever done. And some of those most familiar with anti-biblical learning, minds who have sounded all the deeps (and shallows) of modern criticism, are recoiling from the extremes of denial, and uttering positive affirmations of great interest.

" I wish the Bible to be more loved and honored than it is now, not less ; I wish it more a source of hope and faith than now ; to bring us nearer to God than it now does ; to make Christ more interesting, and more of a true Teacher, Master, Friend. The better we understand it, the more we shall revere it ; not with a blind homage, but with an intelligent admiration." *•

Modern spiritualism is often anti-biblical in tone, but some of its leading writers bear testimony in the same direction.

" No people were ever made worse by the general reading of the Bible. Corruption and vice have never generally prevailed in any community where it has been honestly regarded as the rule of faith and action ; and if I believed that the work in which I am now engaged could have the effect of withdrawing attention from the Bible, I would consign every written page to the flames." 2

" By confessing ourselves to be Christian spiritualists," says the same writer, " we declare our high estimation of his (Christ's) character and teachings : it is also a declaration that we profess to imitate his example, and make his teachings .... the rule of our daily life, as they are the groundwork of our faith." 3 * The author invites such as may honor him with their attention, both assailants and defenders of the Bible, to what may be called a study. He proposes to attempt a more thorough and consistent application of the laws of analogic interpretation, to one of the most interesting and vital portions of the Bible, f The whole controversy about the inspiration of the Bible must largely turn on exposition. There are more Bibles than one. There is the real Bible, which is always the same, and there is the idea of the Bible, which varies in different minds and ages. This must have a bearing on the discussion ; for as a man may set up in the temple of his thought a false

2 Eugene Crowell, M.D., Primitive Christianity and Modern Spiritualism. Vol. II. pp. 502, 503.

3 The Religion of Spiritualism, p. 39.

PRELUDE. 11

idea, under the name God, either to attack or to adore, so a man may set up in his inner thought-world a false idea of the Bible, to defend or to defame.

Controvertists too often forget that words are not things. Each man, shut up in his castle, looks out through his colored window-panes on the landscape, and supposes that all other men see it as he does, couleur de rose, or green, or done in India-ink. When the writer hears people out yonder (seemingly earnest and philanthropic) call the Bible a bad book, he wonders what they are thinking of. Evidently their Bible (or idea of Bible) and his are not the same. . He can only try to show what he sees ; for to him it seems as though if people out there could only see the same thing, they would feel as he feels.

In attempting an original study of this kind, one should of course be familiar with the original ; should consult the best authorities ; pay modest attention to the judgment of scholars ; but should not surrender the right of private judgment, even in the interpretation of a Hebrew or Greek sentence. He should remember that the sacred writers were often in high frames of thought and emotion, in which language was to them but an imperfect medium of expression. The academic life is not always adapted to bring the mind into kindred states, without which no amount of technical skill can give insight. The obscure parish minister, or home-missionary on his frontier post, in his anguish of poverty, bereavement, and martyrdom in the conflict against world-majorities, yet full of the Holy Spirit, may be brought more nearly into the same frame of thought and emotion with the sacred writer, than many more pleasantly situated in a worldly point of view, and who are greatly his superiors in the minutisB of scholarship. Such should indeed be modest towards man, but importunate with God, that they may have an " unction from the Holy One, and know all things ; " and should never forget that " He who is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man ; " and that " the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God." x He should ponder long on that pregnant question, " Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world, and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters ? " 2 If the ablest Hebrew scholars are about evenly divided on the use of a single simple word, cannot a village pastor who knows a little of Hebrew, or a Sunday-school teacher who knows none at all, judge between them ?

The greatest part of the Bible is written in language so simple, that there is but little for scholarship to do. One needs no magnifying-glass to read coarse print. Our noble English version may be improved and embellished, but it is in the main practically as good and reliable, to the common Christian, as the original.

The Bible has one simple and sublime object — which is to make us acquainted with God. He speaks, moves, acts, lives, and his heart beats on every page, from the first to the last. He is, if one may use the expression, the Hero of the sublime story of Redeeming Love, which begins to be told in Eden, and winds up in the New Jerusalem. He is the heart, soul, and life of the Bible. A loving, adoring heart that finds Him there, cannot have been a bad interpreter. Yet it is the effect of the Bible to stimulate the soul to ineffable longings for nearer access, and more unveiled vision — a more full and final revelation of His glory. " We groan within ourselves," and the entire universe, intently gazing forward, groans with us with desire.

A man brings you a crystal aquarium, beautifully sculptured, and filled with the trophies of the sea. He

PRELUDE. 13

places it on your center-table, and tells you that is the ocean. The water is brine, the sand is from the seashore, the pebbles are from the cliffs, and the algse and little fish are all marine. You say, " Aha, I have seen the ocean ! " But some sultry day, in the heart of summer, you wend your way, panting and oppressed, toward the beach ; and, as you draw nigh, the whole air is impregnated with the exhilarating saline breath, and burdened with the muffled roar ; and as you come upon the verge the ground trembles, and you feel the vibration through all your frame. And there, out there, the long foamy rollers come thundering upon the sand, thousands of tons' weight in each stroke, as they have thundered for millions of years. And now, as you gaze over the illimitable expanse, you say with awe, " Now I have seen the ocean ! " Yet you have only seen another aquarium, larger, grander, more sublime, but the whole ocean you have not seen, and cannot see.

Even so it is with the visions and revelations of God, that have been vouchsafed hitherto in this weary world. But the prophetic word is lighted up with passages of a brighter day. There is to be a day when " the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams," — a clay when His glory shall fill the earth like a great deep, and rise above the mountains ; and the night is far spent, and that day is at hand ! We hear almost the detonation of its waves — we feel almost the vibration of the solid shore as the hosanna breaks over us, — " as it were the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings. Alleluia ! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth."

Chapter II. What Is The Bible?

The Bible is many-sided. Men are one-sided. That is the reason why minds differ so widely. Each sees but a part, and can contain but a part. We may describe the Bible as containing the constitution and laws of the first republic that ever existed ; extracts from the national annals ; sacred poems ; idyls ; biographical sketches ; a series of prophecies ; the life of an obscure Galilean carpenter ; and extracts from the lives and correspondence of his pupils.

These writings, especially the oldest, make one think of a traveler's portfolio of manuscript, printed without preparation for the press ; printed, but not edited. So much the more striking the individuality of the writer. The materials for Genesis, Moses may in part have acquired in the halcyon days of youth, when he was the habitue of palace and temple, initiated into the secrets of the priesthood of the Nile. The intermediate books he must have composed under heavy burdens of responsibility, with slender conveniences for literary work. Deuteronomy was the product of his riper age. His task was well-nigh done. He was on the border of the promised land. He was near the close of life ; naturally there would be something in circumstances to give smoothness to the flow of his style, music to his diction, elevation and sublimity to his anticipations of the future.

WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 15

Much more if we suppose the seer lifted into his most ecstatic moods, and moved to utter sublime and far-reaching prophecies.

The subsequent historical portions of the Old Testament are curiously jumbled. They remind us of the tilted leaves of the great geological volume with many a break and fault and dike. Seemingly heterogeneous, and selected by chance, they after all contrive to carry a connected chain down through the ages — a certain plan one can catch sight of, regularly and consistently unfolding. There is a Nation there that is doing and saying and suffering remarkable things, not a tithe of which is recorded. As John says of Jesus, so it may be said of Israel, " If all were written, the world itself could not contain the books." Then the poems of the Bible, the Psalms, and most of the prophecies, how they are confusedly thrown together, centuries perhaps intervening between the date of two consecutive psalms. What would a modern poet think to have his works subjected to such an ordeal ? What would be the fate of poems thus thrown together, some known, others incognito, mostly disconnected from the circumstances occasioning them, and often interspersed with lists of genealogy and extracts from national annals ?

The whole Old Testament is about as unchronologically arranged as possible ; and (severest test of a literary work) is" seen only through a translation, an excellent one indeed, all things considered, yet inevitably defective, and especially defective in the most delicate and spiritual parts ; Canticles, for instance, or that exquisite relic of patriarchism, the book of Job.

Translations from an Oriental tongue to an Occidental ; from ancient to modern ; by theologians rather than poets, — scholastic logicians and philosophers, scarce more than half reformed from the errors of medieval asceticism, — still seeing the fair material universe through smoked-glass spectacles ; and then, the whole still further obscured by being broken up into chapters and verses, often to the serious injury of the sense ; it is not wonderful that men think the Old Testament is not infallible. But there is the Nation. Behind the words we see the live nation. The more imperfect the record, the more wonderful the life that was there, the national life of that body politic. .

Now there are things described in that nation's past history which mean more than the words describing them. We cannot force a meaning upon the words. But the things (once described) are eloquent. The things themselves have whole volumes of meaning. Israel has something to say — more than Israel's penmen have said. Israel's self — her sins, her sorrows, her rites, her deeds, her whole story. But Judaism is only Patriarchism remodeled. Christianity is but Judaism fulfilled. The Bible with all its manifoldness is one, by the unity of a great idea. It is a sublime oratorio, the subject proposed in Eden, the discords all resolved in the New Jerusalem. The relative imperfections are a perfection. Fancy a perfect revelation according to modern notions of authorship and book-making, handed down to us as the product of such a people, in such times, places, and circumstances. Its gilded perfection would be its highest imperfection, like the rouge on a harlot's cheek. Give us the Bible rough as Mount Sinai, stained and hoary with age, but honest through and through. The faults are those inseparable from antiquity, and the imperfection of the human instrumentalities employed. All the objections of sincere inquirers will disappear when they see a wise and benevolent plan underlying

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the whole, and when they apply the correct principles of interpretation which are the principles of commonsense. They will find some things in the Bible they never anticipated, and some things wanting which have been commonly supposed to be there.

But one thing they will find, and that is that God is the hero of the Bible. Not Moses, nor David, nor Isaiah, nor Israel ; but the Lord. And they will find that however his character may grow in quantity with successive writers, there is no evolution in quality, but it bursts upon us full-fledged from the first.

It is this that makes the Bible so dear, because our Father is its hero. It is the child's book, the homesick, orphan child astray on the mountains. It is the lover's book, where the virgin daughter of Israel finds the portrait of her absent Lord. Its style has all the abandon of Oriental pantheism, while it is yet severely monotheistic. It is a temple full of images, countless as the gods of polytheism, but they are ideals, not idols, and all graven images are an abomination to him. He sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and all the nations in his sight are as the fine dust of the balance, yet he gathers the lambs in his arms, and carries them in his bosom.

These analogies are such as interest a refined, and even sentimental, age, yet they are also such as did suit a savage or semi-civilized age.

But the remarkable fact is, that while allowing this wide range of imagery, the unsymmetrical and the savage is the exception, as in a landscape the uncouth and the grotesque. The main current of imagery flows through the channels of family relationships, husband, father, and correlated ties. If it be asked, What analogies, on the whole, have these writers made most 2 prominent ? the answer would be, Those expressed by the words, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So striking is the fact that a devout writer, who is far from sympathizing with the patristic dogma of the Trinity, declares frankly, " If Unitarianism were understood to deny the doctrine of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or even to waive and ignore it as unessential, then should I repudiate the name, renounce the connection, and desire that my name were expunged from the muster-roll of the denomination." 1

In short, the Bible is unique in this, that the Lord is the real hero, and is holy, the enemy of nothing in the universe but sin. Now those who regard these writings as mere legends must concede that the very unaccountableness of this perfect, divine character, becomes a powerful argument for its truth.

" Is it conceivable that an idea of this order — a conception so majestic, and so vivid and real, and so truthfully majestic, should, even if once it had been formed, have floated itself onward, unbroken, through the waywardness of so many uncontrolled human minds ? Onward, unbroken it has come, even from the remote age of its first expression, down to the latest age of its last utterance. Nothing that is incredible and inconceivable can be more inconceivable than is a supposition of this kind." 2

Especially is this argument enhanced to those who, like Eugene Crowell, believe in the reality of directspiritual revelations, not only in this, but in all past ages. This character of the Lord, contrasted as it is with that of Baal and other ethnic deities, must be the true one. The prophets of the Lord were real media

1 Dr. Hedge, Unitarian Affirmations, p. 22.

2 Isaac Taylor, Sp. Heb. Poetry, p. 267.

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of the Holy Spirit, in whom the infirmity of the vehicle was at the minimum, the power of the Spirit at the maximum.

That Spirit, striving with ineffable earnestness to utter himself through imperfect minds, in an imperfect language, agonizing to subdue a stubborn nation and a wayward world to implicit yet free submission to himself — that Spirit is the only living and true God, whom to know is life eternal.

Chapter III

The Bible was written among Orientals, and by Orientals, and for Orientals. We are not Orientals, We are people of the West. Moses, though- a Hebrew, was a native Egyptian, a child of the palace, the pupil of the temple, who had trod the white pavement under the shadow of the great pyramid which seemed to Strabo as if it had been let down out of heavan, a dazzling mountain of white marble.