lve trees, laden with divers fruits, and as many
fountains flowing with milk and honey, and seven mighty mountains,
whereupon there grow roses and lilies."[303] "They shall have the tree
of life for an ointment of sweet savour; they shall neither labour nor
be weary."[304]

In the Rabbinical writings, and still more in the Koran, this conception
of paradise is embroidered with many fanciful extravagances. The Talmud
even invents two paradises. "There is an upper paradise and a lower
paradise. And between them is fixed a pillar, by which they are joined
together, and which is called 'The strength of the Hill of Sion.' And by
this pillar on every Sabbath and festival the souls of the righteous
ascend from the lower to the upper paradise, and there enjoy the light
of the Divine Majesty till the end of the Sabbath or festival, when they
descend and return into the lower paradise."[305]

This pillar is no doubt a survival of the old tradition of the
world-tree, a tradition still more obviously traceable in the Mahometan
belief. According to the Koran paradise is situated in the seventh
heaven. In the centre of it stands the marvellous tree called _Tooba_,
which is so large that a man mounted on the fleetest horse could not
ride round its branches in a hundred years. This tree not only affords
the most grateful shade over the whole extent of the Mussulman paradise,
but its boughs, laden with delicious fruits of a size and taste unknown
to mortals, bend themselves to be plucked at the wish of the happy
denizens of that blissful abode. The rivers of paradise take their rise
from the tree, flowing some with water, some with milk, and some with
honey; while others are filled with wine, the use of which is not
forbidden to the blessed.[306]

The confusion of thought apparent in these ancient traditions of
paradise was no doubt partly due to the fact that primitive man, with
his limited grasp of the possibilities of space, pictured heaven as not
far distant from him. It was a happier and a brighter earth, which
offered mater