of God to hurt man. But God is ever on the heels of Satan to cushion the
hurt and save the man. It is a nip-and-tuck race with God a head and a
heart in the lead. Something had to be done. Man had started sin in
himself by his choice. The taint of disobedience, rebellion, had been
breathed out into the air. He had gotten out of sorts with his
surroundings. His presence would spoil his own heaven. The stain of his
sin would have been upon his eternal life. The zero of selfishness would
have been the atmosphere of his home. The touch of his unhallowed hand
must be taken away for his own sake. That unhallowed touch _has_ been upon
every function and relationship of life outside those gates. Nothing has
escaped the slimy contact.

Sin _could_ not be allowed to stay _there_. Its presence stole heaven away
from heaven. Yet sin had become a part of the man. The man and the wrong
were interwoven. They were inseparable. Sin has such a tenacious, gluey,
sticky touch! Each included the other. _It_ could not be put out without
_his_ being put out. So man had to be driven out for his own sake to rid
his home-spot of sin. The man was driven out that he might come
back--_changed_. Love drove him out that later it might let him in. The
tree of life was kept _from_ him for a time that it might be kept _for_
him for an eternity.

When he had _changed his spirit_, and _changed sides_ in the fight with
evil started that day, and gotten victory over the spirit now dominant
within himself, those gates would swing again. When the stain of his
choice would be taken out of his fibre it would be his right eagerly to
retrace these forced steps, and the coming back would find more than had
been left. Love has been busy planning the home-coming. The tree of life
has been grown in his absence to a grove of trees. The life has become
life more abundant.