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Symbolical Interpretation.

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"As from the fountain the whole river, in the first place, flows, and through its channel the water which first rises in the fountain, however far it goes, continually and without intermission runs down; thus the Divine goodness, and essence, and life, and wis. dom, and all things which are in the fount of all, first flow into the primordial causes, calling them into being, thence, through primordial causes into their effects, in unspeakable ways, and in the succession adapted to the universal harmony, flowing through the superior ever to the inferior, and again, by the most secret pores and most hidden paths of nature, returning to their fount. Thence is all good, all essence, all life, all sense, all reason, all wisdom, all genus, all species, all fulness, all order, all unity, all equality, all distinction, all place, all time, and all that is, and all that is not, and all that is understood, and all that is felt, and all that surpasses sense and understanding."

The book is principally occupied with an examination of the first five days of the creation.

The Fourth Book, beginning with the sixth day of creation, considers the return of all things into that nature which neither creates nor is created. This Fourth Book, Erigena says, will be the last; and as the Fifth Book, unlike the others, begins without preface, and continues the discussion, we suppose it is to be regarded as simply a second part of the Fourth.

In the extracts which follow, it will appear to the modern reader that Erigena uses a fanciful and allegorical mode of interpretation. But we should not demand of him a perfect freedom from the errors of his times, and in those days no one dreamed of interpreting Scripture according to its obvious meaning. Moreover, Erigena does not so often indulge in the allegorical interpretation of history as in the symbolical interpretation of parables. He conceived that the writers of the Old Testament, and the Apostles of the New, were teachers of the most profound philosophy, and that they taught by means of symbols. Moses never meant, he says (and ingeniously endeavours to prove), that we should understand the story of Eden and the fall as any thing else than a spiritual history. The first chapters of Genesis, in their literal meaning, are, in Scotus's opinion, scarcely better than childish fables, unworthy the Spirit by whom Scripture is inspired. But take them as the symbolical description of human nature, its powers and opportunities, they lead at once to the deepest revelations of spiritual truth.

"The plantation of God, that is, paradise, in Eden, that is, in

the delights of eternal and blessed felicity, we have said, is human nature made in the image of God. The fount in this paradise is that of which the prophet speaks to the Father, With thee is the fountain of life,' that which invites all who thirst for righteousness to drink of itself, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.' The four rivers of this paradise, flowing from this fountain of wisdom, are the four principal virtues of the soul, from which all virtue and good works spring; its 'every tree' is that of which it is written, To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is planted by the rivers of water,' (that is, around which all the oracles of prophets, and all symbols of either law, and interpretations of symbols, and all open and pure teachings, flow,) namely, our Lord the Word, implanted in human nature. The tree' of mixed knowledge' in this paradise is the indistinct and confused desire of the senses towards divers pleasures, concealed under the form of good, deceiving and destroying careless souls; its 'man' is the mind presiding over all human nature; its 'woman,' the senses, incautiously yielding to which the mind is lost; its serpent,' the unlawful delight for which those things that please the carnal sense are unlawfully and destructively desired."

It will be noticed that Erigena allows only two trees to have been in paradise; the " every tree," of which man was commanded to eat, and the memory of which was to be preserved by the cherub light, edge," that is, the natural,

and the tree of "mixed knowlcorporeal passions, which might

be made the servants of man, or, being taken for masters, might lead him to ruin.

Thus was man created in the image of God. And it was his sublime destiny to be the mediator between the creation. and the Creator, and to restore them to unity. But from this high post he fell. How? By any act of God? Let the Gospel answer : "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell among thieves." Now while man remained in Jerusalem, that is, in righteousness, no evil attacked him. It was his own leaving his post, that put him in the power of the thieves, that is, of the Devil and his angels. Sin, then, was not a positive action, so much as the omission of action; it was the voluntary weakness of the will. Temptations could not assail man till he first left Jerusalem, till he ceased to look at God, and looked at himself. It was not that temptation conquered the will, but the will fell and sought temptation, and was overcome. The fall of man, also, is not chronological, but simply logical.

For if

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God both Origin and End.

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man had remained for even one instant in paradise, he would have been in union with God, and thus impeccable. But the Devil was a manslayer from the beginning, which must mean that he slew man at the very instant of his creation. Man, being made capable of righteousness, capable of redeeming creation, chose to sin, chose to desert his high post and leave the world without a mediator. What remained? Who could supply his place? There was no intercessor. Wherefore God himself took flesh upon him, to do that which man had failed to do, to restore creation to the bosom of its Creator. That this was the object of Jesus is proved by his own words, "Go, preach the gospel to every creature." For "every creature" includes all things, animate and inani

mate.

The uncreative uncreated nature is the Godhead, considered, not as the efficient, but as the final cause, the end and home of all his creatures. For "of him, and to him, and for him are all things." All divisions in nature must cease, and all be restored to unity with God. Man is first to be restored, that he may take his true post of mediator, and through him all things are to be brought in. The substance of this part of the doctrine of Erigena is so well given by Taillandier, that we shall, in the remainder of this article, quote, or abridge, indifferently, his language and that of the original work.

"God, having expelled Adam, places before the door of Eden a cherub armed with a flaming sword. ..... Now, according to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, cherub' signifies the fulness of wisdom; God has, then, placed before paradise, that is, before the primitive perfection of human nature, the light of wisdom to shine upon the road by which we shall return to Eden. No, this flaming sword is not a symbol of wrath, it is the sign of unbounded mercy. ..... This cherub, this Divine wisdom, is Christ himself, the Logos, who is ever warning us, teaching us, correcting us, and leading us toward spotless perfection. Do we not see all things in nature thus returning towards their point of depart

And has not God put in material phenomena the symbols of sublime truth? The spheres of heaven return to their starting-place, the planets come again to their perihelion, the animals bring forth young, and the plants seeds. There is nothing in creation which is not thus returning to its origin. Examine any thing that lives; the end of its movement is in its very origin.

... Origin and end, these are but different aspects of the same idea. The Greeks have but one word to translate them

both, réλos [end and purpose, final cause], thus showing that the origin always includes the end, and that the end is nothing else than the origin. Besides the examples from nature, there are those from science and art, from logic, and arithmetic, and music, which gives an example of the same principle; a song begins upon the tonic, around which it may play in varied melody, but it must end upon its key-note, its [bass] basis and strength. The origin and end of man is his cause, it is God. It is toward God and in God that he must return. Let us mark out the road in which he is to go, and, to do this, let us see to what point he has fallen."

He has fallen among the irrational animals, he is like the beasts that perish. He has fallen into the death of a body; this is the coat of skins given him after the fall; he could not go lower; body, matter, is the lowest degree of creation. Now this point, which is the last limit of the fall of man and of his overthrow, will be his point of departure to return to God; and the beginning of his deliverance will be the dissolution of his material frame, which he owes, not to God, but to sin. The destruction of the flesh, though it may seem like the vengeance of an angry God, is not a chastisement, but rather a blessing for man, and a means of salvation. Far from giving us to death, it delivers us from death, it is the death of our death.

"This death of our death is, then, the first step towards God; the second is the resurrection; the third is the transfiguration of our body into a spiritual body, into spirit; afterwards, when the spirit, that is, the whole man thereinto transformed, returns to his primal causes, that is the fourth step in this sublime ascension; which will be finally accomplished when man shall live in God, as the air moves in the bosom of the light. Then God will be in all things, and everywhere he alone will be visible. This, let us carefully remember, will not cause human nature to vanish, by confounding the Creator and the creature. God alone will appear in all things, yet our soul will live in him. The air is still in existence when the light of the sun has clothed and illumined it; the iron has not ceased to be, when, all glowing in the flame, it seems changed into fire. No; the air and the iron are only concealed by the light which penetrates and envelopes them. Thus shall our soul be more beautiful, more like to God, penetrated and clothed with his glories."

All things

It is not man alone that is to return to God. which he has created shall return again to the Word by which

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Punishment.

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they were created. Thus saith the Scripture, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away." Space and time are as transient as the world which they contain; they, too, must pass away; there will be no need of either in those eternal and immaterial regions where there. will be nothing to place and nothing to measure.

"To return to our subject: as many divisions, as many evolutions, as there were in the formation of beings, so many reunions and involutions will there be. The first division is into created and uncreated. Created things are divided into those which are perceived by sense, and those which are perceived by intellect. In things of sense there are two great divisions, heaven and earth. Afterwards, the earth was separated from paradise. Finally, the last division is that of the two sexes, which was made in man after the fall. Now this last division will disappear first; there will be no longer man and woman; it will be man. Afterwards, the earth will be transformed into paradise; paradise into heaven; the world of sense into the world of ideas; the creature into the Creator."

"Now all the while we must be careful not to forget that this union will be accomplished without any confusion or vanishing of substances. Jesus Christ gives us an instance of this mystery; after his resurrection, he had no sex; he was man, primitive man, man before his fall; he was wholly man, and wholly God. . . . . . He was in paradise, though he was visible to his disciples; and when he disappeared, it was not because he retired from their presence, for there was to him no space; but it was because he enclosed himself in the pure spirituality of his body, inaccessible to their yet carnal eyes.

"The first step of this return towards God is, for man, the dissolution of his body; the second is his resurrection. . . . . . But it is not man alone that shall rise, but also all sensible and corporeal things; the material universe will rise again; it will rise in man, who is its crown. One cannot doubt the resurrection of this world of sense, if one remember that it was created by the Son of God, and that it is in him that its causes subsist. And can the ideas projected in the Logos be perishable? No; that which dwells in life is also life, and cannot die.

"If the human race, as a whole, returns towards God, what becomes of eternal punishment, of that hell-fire with which Christ threatened the wicked? Behold the only reply. Humanity is entire, simple, indestructible, in each individual. Now, since it is