:--

"We must not understand, or take in a literal sense, what is
written in _the book_ on the _Creation_, nor form of it the
same ideas which are participated by the generality of
mankind; _otherwise our ancient sages would not have so much
recommended to us, to hide the real meaning of it, and not to
lift the allegorical veil, which covers the truth contained
therein_. When taken in its _literal sense_, the work gives
the most absurd and most extravagant ideas of the Deity.
'Whosoever should divine its true meaning ought to take great
care in not divulging it.' This is a maxim repeated to us by
all our sages, principally concerning the understanding of the
work of the six days."[100:3]

Philo, a Jewish writer contemporary with Jesus, held the same opinion of
the character of the sacred books of the Hebrews. He has made two
particular treatises, bearing the title of "_The Allegories_," and he
traces back to the _allegorical_ sense the "Tree of Life," the "Rivers
of Paradise," and the other fictions of the Genesis.[100:4]

Many of the early Christian Fathers declared that, in the story of the
Creation and Fall of Man, there was but an _allegorical fiction_. Among
these may be mentioned St. Augustine, who speaks of it in his "City of
God," and also Origen, who says:

"What man of sense will agree with the statement that the
first, second, and third days, in which the _evening_ is named
and the _morning_, were without sun, moon and stars? What man
is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in
Paradise like an husbandman? _I believe that every man must
hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is
concealed._"[100:5]

Origen believed aright, as it is now almost universally admitted, that
the stories of the "Garden of Eden," the "Elysian Fields," the "Garden
of the Blessed," &c., which were the abode of the blessed, where grief
and sorrow could not approach them, where plague and sickness could not
touch them, were founded on _allegory_. These abodes of delight were far
away in the _West_, where the sun goes down beyond the bounds of the
earth. They were the "Golden Islands" sailing in a sea of blue--_the
burnished clouds floating in the pure ether_. In a word, _the "Elysian
Fields" are the clouds at eventide_. The picture was suggested by the
images drawn from the phenomena of sunset and twilig