The Pulpit Commentary — Song of Songs — Section 8

animation, and depth, and intensity, imd warrant, too, to the devout meditations of thousands of the most devout and of the purest minds, Those who have no consciousness of this kind, and whose feelings and notions are all 'of the earth, earthy,' will not fail to find iu this instance that which suits them, for purposes, sometimes of mockery, sometimes of luxury, sometimes of disbelief. Quite unconscious of these possessions, aml happily ignorant of them, and unable to suppose them possible, there have been multitudes of earthly spirits to whom this, the most beautiful of pastorals, has been, not indeed a beautiful pastoral, but the choicest of ,those words of truth which are 'sweeter than honey to the taste,' and • rather to be chosen than thousands of gold and silver.'" 2. We must now proceed to describe the theories of interpretation which have been based upon a. naturalistic principle. These may be styled the 8f'otic, as they all regard the work as a collection of erotic songs, put together ~imply on the ground of their literary worth and poetic arrangement, religiously used by being idealized, just as the language of secular poetry may be sometimes mingled with sacred, though the original intention of the words had no such application. There are several varieties in the form of this erotic theory. The songs have been regarded by some as separate idylls of love, collected together and formed into a poem only by a predominating reference to Solomon, and by the one pervading spirit of pure love. But others have a.ttem.pted to trace a dramatic unity and progresa in the whole, and have elaborated a history on which to found the drama, while those who have r_enounced all such attempts to find a drama in Hebrew poetry have yet clung to the idea of an epithalamium, composed on the occasion of Solo,mon's marriage, either with the Egyptian princess or some Israelitish bride, and have endeavoured to justify their view by the literary form of the poem. It is. not necessary entirely to reject the naturalistic basis in order to find a reason for the position of Solomon's Song in the Bible.. There is an element of truth in all the erotic theories. They help us to remember that human love is capable of being mingled with Divine ideas. That whioh is so often impme, and which sinks the life of man below that of the beasts that perish, may yet be sanctified, lifted above the evil of a fallen nature, and so may be taken, ideally, as the fitting vehicle by which to convey the Spirit of God to the spirit of man. The earliest writer whose treatment of the book was based upon the secular view of it was Theodore of Mopsuestia (died A.D. 429). He dealt with all Scripture much in the same way, in the spirit of a rigid literalism, in which he followed the school of Antioch. Like others of the same class, he found only human love in the language, and his' Commentary' was publicly condemned on that account in the Fifth (Ecumenical Council (A.D. 553). The Church's anathema crushed this commen~ry out of existence. The Middle Ages were dominated by the allegorical spirit, and no other view was put forth for hundreds of years. Until the free spirit of the Reforma- tion introduced 1:1, new oriticism, the secular view of Sl•lomon's Song diu  INTRODUCTION TO