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world ; and the Garden of Eden, the Paradise of Adam and Eve, was
the choicest and most exquisite portion of Eden. As regards the
situation of this terrestrial Paradise, the Biblical narrative distinctly
states that it was in the East, but various have been the
speculations as to the precise locality. Moses, in writing of Eden,
probably contemplated the country watered by the Tigris and
Euphrates—the land of the mighty city of Babylon. Many
traditions confirm this v iew : not only were there a district called
Eden, and a town called Paradisus, in Syria, a neighbouring
country to Mesopotamia, but in Mesopotamia itself there is a
certain region which, as late as the year 1552, was called Eden.
Some would localise the Eden of Scripture near Mount Lebanon, in
Syria; others between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, to the west
of Babylon ; others, again, in the delightful plains of Armenia, or
in the highlands of Armenia, where the Tigris and Euphrates have
their rise. An opinion very generally held is, that Eden was placed
at the junction of several rivers, on a site which is now swallowed
up by the Persian Gulf, and that it never existed after the deluge,
which effaced this Paradise from the face of a polluted earth.
Another theory places Eden in a vast central portion of the globe,
comprising a large piece of Asia and a portion of Africa, the four
rivers being the Ganges, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile.
Dr. Wild, of Toronto, is of opinion that the Garden of Paradise
embraced what we now call Syria. The land that God gave to
Abraham and his seed for ever—the Land of Promise, the Holy
Land—is the very territory that constituted the Garden of Paradise.
“ Before the flood,” says the reverend gentleman, “ there was in
connection with this garden, to the east of it, a gate and a flaming
sword, guarding this gate, and a way to the Tree of Life. On that
very spot I believe the Great Pyramid of Egypt to be built, to
mark where the face of God shone forth to man before the F lo o d ;
and the Flood, by changing the land surface through the changing
of the ocean bed, changed the centre somewhat, and threw it
further south. It is the very centre of the earth now where the
Pyramid stands, . . . . and marks the place where the gate
of Eden was before the Flood.” *
* Besides the localities already mentioned, Paradise has been located on Mount
Ararat; in Persia ; in Ethiopia ; in the land now covered by the Caspian Sea ; in a
plain on the summit of Mount Taurus; in Sumatra; in the Canaries; and in the
Island of Ceylon, where there is a mountain called the Peak of Adam, underneath
which, according to native tradition, lie buried the remains of the first man, and
whereon is shown the gigantic impress of his foot. Goropius Becanus places Paradise
near the river Acesines, on the confines of India. Tertullian, Bonaventura, and
Durandus affirm that it was under the Equinoctial, while another authority contends
that it was situated beneath the North Pole. Virgil places the happy land of the
Hyperboreans under the North Pole, and the Arctic Regions were long associated
with ideas of enchantment and beauty, chiefly because of the mystery that has
always enveloped these remote and unexplored regions. Peter Comestor and Moses
Barcephas set Paradise in a region separated from our habitable zone by a long tract
of land and sea, and elevated so that it reaches to the sphere of the moon.
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Whatever may have been the site of the land of Eden or
Pleasure, Moses, in describing Paradise as its garden (much as we
speak of Kent as the Garden of England), doubtless wished to
convey the idea of a sanctuary of delight and primal loveliness ;
indeed, he tells us that “ out of the ground made the Lord God to
grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for fqod.”
This Paradise was in the middle of Eden, and in the middle of
Paradise was planted the Tree of Life, and, close by, the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Into this garden the Lord put the
man whom He had formed, “ to dress and to keep it,” in other
words to till, plant, and sow.
In the very centre of Paradise, in the midst of the land of
Eden, grew the Tree of Life. Now, what was this tree ? Various
have been the conjedlures with regard to its nature. The traditions
of the Rabbins make the Tree of Life a supernatural tree,
resembling the world- or cloud-trees of the Scandinavians anc.
Hindus, and bearing a striking resemblance to the Tooha of the
Mahomedan Paradise. They describe the Tree of Life as being of
enormous bulk, towering far above all others, and so vast in its girth,
that no man, even if he lived so long, could travel round it in less than
five hundred years. From beneath the colossal base of this stupendous
tree gushed all the waters of the earth, by whose instrumentality
nature was everywhere refreshed and invigorated. Regarding
these Rabbinic traditions as purely mythical, certain commentators
have regarded the Tree of Life as typical only of that life and the
continuance of it which our first parents derived from God, Others
think that it was called the Tree of Life because it was a memorial,
pledge, and seal of the eternal life which, had man continued in
obedience, would have been his reward in the Paradise above.
Others, again, believe that the fruit of it had a certain vital
influence to cherish and maintain man in immortal health and
vigour till he should have been translated from the earthly to the
heavenly Paradise.
Dr. Wild considers that the Tree of Life stood on Mount
Moriah, the very spot selected, in after years, by Abraham, whereon
to offer his son Isaac, the type, and the mount to which Christ
was led out to be sacrificed. As Eden occupied the centre of the
world, and the Tree of Life was planted in the middle of Eden,
that spot marked the very centre of the world, and it was necessary
that He who was the life of mankind should die in the centre of the
world, and act from the centre. Hence, the Tree of Life, destroyed
at the flood, on account of man’s wickedness, was replaced on the
same spot, centuries after, by the Cross,—converted by the
Redeemer into a second and everlasting Tree of Life.
Adam was told he might eat freely of every tree in the garden,
excepting only the Tree of Knowledge ; we may, therefore, suppose