ABSTRACT
The message and the symbolism of Pentecost are both made up of contrasts. “The Garden of Eden”—that is the Jewish name for the Heaven that is to be, and the mystics picture it as filled with beautiful trees and fragrant with the breath of a thousand flowers. That spiritual garden is far finer even than the garden of trees and flowers which it has replaced. The ideal lives on mightily when material things have perished. God gives us the soul as a garden; He plants it, as He did the primitive Eden, with all manner of beautiful trees. It is for us so to tend our divine domain that it shall yield fruit worthy of the Master’s acceptance. Recognition of God as the source of all one’s blessings, gratitude, humility submission—these duties the command to lay his First-fruits on the altar taught the Israelite in ancient days; and these it may teach us in our turn.
