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Patriarchs and Prophets
was indeed a cause of sorrow; but when the goodly trees cast off their
leaves, the scene brought vividly to mind the stern fact that death is
the portion of every living thing.
The Garden of Eden remained upon the earth long after man had
become an outcast from its pleasant paths. The fallen race were
long permitted to gaze upon the home of innocence, their entrance
barred only by the watching angels. At the cherubim-guarded gate of
Paradise the divine glory was revealed. Hither came Adam and his sons
to worship God. Here they renewed their vows of obedience to that
law the transgression of which had banished them from Eden. When
the tide of iniquity overspread the world, and the wickedness of men
determined their destruction by a flood of waters, the hand that had
planted Eden withdrew it from the earth. But in the final restitution,
when there shall be “a new heaven and a new earth” (
Revelation 21:1
),
it is to be restored more gloriously adorned than at the beginning.
Then they that have kept God’s commandments shall breathe in
immortal vigor beneath the tree of life; and through unending ages the
inhabitants of sinless worlds shall behold, in that garden of delight, a
sample of the perfect work of God’s creation, untouched by the curse
of sin—a sample of what the whole earth would have become, had
man but fulfilled the Creator’s glorious plan.
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