other difficulties—that not the remotest hint of any such sense is given in the poem itself; that both among the Rabbis and the Fathers the early study of the book was discouraged lest the sensuous character of some of the diction should have an undesirable effect on the passions;1 that in Scripture itself the book is not so much as once alluded to; that in the age to which it belongs, there is not the remotest trace of the feelings which would turn it into a sort of "Imitatio Christi"; and, above all, that neither our Lord, nor St. Paul, nor St. John, nor any apostle; once referred to it as illustrating in any way the relations between God and Israel, or between Christ and His Church. But I heartily agree with a modern commentator in the view that this mystical sense may be true religiously, though exegetically untenable. So long as it be not pushed to the wild extravagances which occur in some of the mediæval commentaries, we may well claim for the language of Canticles the privilege which belongs to all inspired language, namely, that it extends beyond the immediate occasion, and lends itself to many germinal and far reaching developments. So far we would leave room for the mystic application, and even within reasonable limits for the allegorical, so long as it makes no pretence whatever to be the literal meaning. Seeing that the poem, with all its warmth of imagination, "might have been," as Herder said, "written in Paradise," no harm could arise from the secondary and homiletic transference of its primary meaning to express analogous emotions in another sphere. And yet will any honest man read over such passages as iv. 2, 5, 9; vii. 8, 9, &c., and—bearing in mind, as he must do, the terrible violations of taste and purity in sonic patristic and mediæval writings which have arisen from the application of such imagery to Christ—will he not admit that the irreve-
other difficulties—that not the remotest hint of any such sense is given in the poem itself; that both among the Rabbis and the Fathers the early study of the book was discouraged lest the sensuous character of some of the diction should have an undesirable effect on the passions;1 that in Scripture itself the book is not so much as once alluded to; that in the age to which it belongs, there is not the remotest trace of the feelings which would turn it into a sort of "Imitatio Christi"; and, above all, that neither our Lord, nor St. Paul, nor St. John, nor any apostle; once referred to it as illustrating in any way the relations between God and Israel, or between Christ and His Church. But I heartily agree with a modern commentator in the view that this mystical sense may be true religiously, though exegetically untenable. So long as it be not pushed to the wild extravagances which occur in some of the mediæval commentaries, we may well claim for the language of Canticles the privilege which belongs to all inspired language, namely, that it extends beyond the immediate occasion, and lends itself to many germinal and far reaching developments. So far we would leave room for the mystic application, and even within reasonable limits for the allegorical, so long as it makes no pretence whatever to be the literal meaning. Seeing that the poem, with all its warmth of imagination, "might have been," as Herder said, "written in Paradise," no harm could arise from the secondary and homiletic transference of its primary meaning to express analogous emotions in another sphere. And yet will any honest man read over such passages as iv. 2, 5, 9; vii. 8, 9, &c., and—bearing in mind, as he must do, the terrible violations of taste and purity in sonic patristic and mediæval writings which have arisen from the application of such imagery to Christ—will he not admit that the irreve-