called a type or figure of things to come. When the emblems are multiplied, and the figure continued to some length, the whole becomes an allegory. Such is the nature of this book. It is an allegorical illustration of the operations of love in the bosom of the saint and of the Redeemer.

Lowth defines an allegory to be "a figure, which, under the literal sense of the words, conceals a foreign or a distant meaning." Dividing allegories into three kinds, the continued metaphor, the parabolic allegory, and the mystical or historic allegory, he supposes this Song to belong to the third class, which conveys under the veil of some historical narrative a sacred and more elevated meaning. According to him, the parabolic allegory "consists of a continued narration. of fictitious events, applied by way of simile to the illustration of some important truth." The difference between the historic and the parabolic allegory lies in this fact in the latter, the incidents are partly or wholly fictitious; in the former they are entirely real. We differ from him, in holding this book to belong to the parabolic, rather than the historic, allegory. Fairbairn's definition is good:* "An allegory is a narrative, either expressly feigned for the purpose, or, if describing facts which really took place, describing them only for the purpose of representing certain higher truths or principles than the narrative in its immediate representation, whether real or fictitious, could possibly have taught. The immediate

*Fairbairn's Typology, vol. i. p. 5.

representation, therefore, is either invented, or at least used, as a mere cover for the higher sense, which may refer to things ever so remote from those primarily denoted, if only the corresponding relations are preserved." The inquiry then arises-Receiving this book as a part of the canon, what reasons have we for giving it an allegorical interpretation? While proceeding to mention these, we consider the point as incontestably settled, that no portion of the Scriptures has a better right than this Song to a place among the pages of inspiration. Taking this book as canonical, are we to go no further than the literal import, or are we to give it an allegorical meaning? We expound it allegorically for the following reasons.

1. The reception of this book into the canon cannot be accounted for but on the ground that it represents allegorically the reciprocal love of Christ and his people. There must have been some reason for taking it into the canon. It could not have been for singing of carnal love: this the whole aim of the Scriptures opposes. And when such men as Umbreit, Ammon, and Velthusen maintain that it consists of amatory epistles by Solomon, and Michaelis supposes it was placed here to guard against the opinions of those who hold conjugal love inconsistent with the love of God-they forget that a house divided against itself cannot stand; that as the design of the Scriptures is to effect the purity of heart necessary for seeing God, they cannot by any possibility sing of illicit love or even the praises of conjugal affection. "Impossible! impossible!" says

Aben Ezra, the celebrated rabbi, "that the Song of songs should treat of carnal love; every thing is expressed in it in the way of allegory. Were not the book of the highest dignity, it could never have been incorporated among the sacred writings. Nor on this point is there any controversy." To all such objections, the answer of Rosenmüller is sufficient: "The universal genius and method of the sacred books exclude the idea of admitting among them songs about the ordinary love of man and woman." The marriage of Solomon was not a thing of such importance, as to warrant the Jews in placing among the sacred Scriptures a song restricted to this topic only, and uninspired. Nothing was admitted into the canon that is not inspired, and that has not a direct bearing on the spiritual improvement of man-that is not profitable for instruction in righteousness. 2 Tim. iii. 16.

2. The allegorical interpretation is in perfect accordance with the spirit of oriental poetry. "The Song of songs is an oriental poem; and this allegoric mode of describing the sacred union subsisting between mankind at large, or an individual and pious soul, and the great Creator, is common to almost all eastern poets, from the earliest down to the present age.

It is impossible, without such an esoteric interpretation, to understand many of the passages of the chaste and virtuous Sadi, or the more impassioned Hafiz; and the Turkish commentators, Feridun, Sudi, and Seid Ali, following the example of the ancient Hushangis, have uniformly thus interpreted them, as

they have also the writings of all the Sufi poets; though in many instances they have unquestionably pursued their mystic meaning to an extravagant length. The Leili and Mejuun of the Persians may be contemplated as the royal bridegroom and his beloved spouse of the Hebrews. The former have furnished a subject for a variety of the bards of Iran. But whether, in the instance before us, Solomon intended, or not, to introduce the mystic allegory here assumed, it is incontrovertible that precisely such an allegory exists in the Mesnavi, or poem upon the loves of the same illustrious personages, Leili and Mejuun, by the elegant Nezami, who, as well as Hafiz, in the opinion of Sir William Jones, always appears to apply the name of Leili to the omnipresent Spirit of God. This emblematic mysticism in the bards of Iran, is quite as conspicuous in those of India; and the Vedantis, or Hindu commentators, have been as eager as the Sufis themselves to attribute such a double meaning to their compositions. Of all the poems of the east, by far the nearest in subject, style, and imagery, to the Songs of Solomon, are the Gitagovinda,* or Songs of Jayadeva. The subject of the inimitable Jayadeva is the loves of Crishna and Radha, or the reciprocal attraction between the divine goodness and the human soul. His style, like that of the Hebrew bard, is in the highest degree flowery; his poem consists of distinct songs or

* A translation of this may be found in Adam Clark's Commentary on the Song, and in Sir William Jones's Works.

idyls, some of which are soliloquies, and others dialogues; but all of them, like the Song of songs, confined to the same theme, and in some measure progressive in its history."* Major Scott Waring says: "The Persians insist that we should give them the credit of understanding their own language; that all the odes of their celebrated poets are mystical, and breathe a fervent spirit of adoration towards the Supreme Being. They maintain that the poets, being generally Soofees, profess eager desire without carnal affection, and circulate the cup, but no material goblet, since all is spiritual to them, all is mystery within mystery. In fact, they regard the poetry as of the same nature as Solomon's Song; and, indeed, the fact that so large a proportion of the poetry of Western Asia, that is, of Arabia and Persia, is employed in the expression of religious emotions mystically, under the same image that we find there, is a very strong argument for the general opinion that the Canticles form a mystical, or allegorical, or religious poem, the details of which, although they seem to us hard to be understood, are perfectly intelligible, in a sacred sense, to the Persian and Arabian of the present day, as they were to the ancient Hebrew."

In his essay on the mystical poetry of the Persians and Hindus, Sir William Jones says all that need be said on this subject:. "A figurative mode of expressing the fervour of devotion, or the ardent love of cre

* Song of songs, or Sacred Idyls, by John Mason Good, p. 20.