1. REMEMBER also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, 2 I have no pleasure in them; while the sun is not darkened, nor the light, nor the moon, nor the stars, and the clouds return not after 3 the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look 4 out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the street; when the sound of the grinding is low, and one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; 5 yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high, and terrors shall be in the way; and the almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: 6 while the silver cord is not loosed, nor the golden bowl broken, nor the pitcher broken at the fountain, nor the wheel broken at the 7 cistern; and the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it.

THE advice to lead an active life in the fear of God is here further enforced on the young by the consideration (vs. 1-7) of the circumstances which accompany old age, when activity gradually becomes less and less possible, and finally ceases altogether so far as this world is concerned. W. T. B.

1. This verse stands in close relation with chap. 11 : 7-10, and especially vs. 9, 10, and should not have been separated in the arrangement of chapters. The young man, rejoicing in his youth, and passing cheerfully along through those days of health, hope, and high anticipation and of superabundant physical life, is exhorted to remember his Creator even then, in the morning of his youthful years. To “remember one’s Creator” is more than simply to remember God. It is to think of God as your personal Creator, the Author of your very being and of all that wealth of blessings which He provides so profusely for the morning period of life. To be thus seriously mindful of our Creator is to feel our obligation to filial obedience and to grateful love and trust. H. C.—Gratitude to God as Creator (compare 11 : 5) is here inculcated as was previously (11 : 9) fear of God as Judge. In one word, godliness, acquired as a habit in youth, is recommended as the proper compensation for that natural cessation of youthful happiness which makes the days of old age more or less evil; more evil in proportion as there is less of godliness in the heart, and less evil where there is more godliness. W. T. B.

Remember thy Creator while your days are in their bud and blossom; while your hearts have not learned all the “deceitfulness of sin;” while your natures have not been corrupted by much knowledge of evil; while the world all about you is beautiful with the mysterious light of early days; while heart, and will, and habit are all fit to be moulded, and moulded aright; while you have not given pledges to the world by years of unbelief; while you have not a burden of transgressions, stretching through years to repent of; while you have life before you, that may be made sacred and beautiful, wise and righteous, full of Christ and a temple to God. A. M.

The days of evil here mentioned are the days of declining life, the infirmities and sorrows of which are most vividly painted in the sequel. Accumulated infirmities, with a certain prospect of their increase, are sufficient to account for the exclamation of the sufferer: I have no pleasure in them! M. S.

There comes again nothing like the first free burst of thought in youth; the intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly taken earlier, becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater vigor; one thing it sees clearly, but it is blind to all beside. It is in youth that the after tone of the mind is happily formed, when that natural burst of thought is sanctified and quickened by God’s Spirit, and we set up within us to love and adore, all our days, the one image of the truth of God, our Saviour Jesus. Then, whatever else may befall us afterward, it rarely happens that our faith will fail; His image, implanted in us, preserves us amid every change. . . . To see one standing at the opening of life, with that large treasure of time and strength laid up as it were for many years, and knowing and feeling its value; with those light and sanguine spirits which will not be weighed down by the burden of life, yet burning to attempt its hardest duties—to see, in short, one fully loaded with God’s gifts, and offering them all to God’s service; one full of enjoyment, yet looking on every pleasure as God’s free mercy, undeserved by himself, and not to be caught at, for his appointed portion here is to work and not to enjoy; to see one so rich for earth and heaven, might half tempt an older man to envy. But speaking more truly, it is not a sight for envy, but for the deepest joy and thankfulness, joy both of men and angels. We feel the charm of youth naturally, it cannot but awaken our interest even in itself; but when this natural interest is sanctioned by our soberest reason, when natural youth assumes, so to speak, the beauty of the spring of an eternal and a heavenly year, then it does fill us with the deepest joy; and this work of God’s Spirit, far more than all those natural works, the creation of which was described in the lesson of this morning, is indeed very good. There is no more beautiful, no more blessed sight upon this earth, than a youth that is rich toward God. T. Arnold.

Observe that the ground or argument of the appeal is the true happiness of those to whom it is addressed. The whole story of Solomon lies behind and impresses this argument. Who are the blessed? and How is true blessedness to be attained? are the questions answered by Psalmists and Prophets. Their answers are expanded and pressed upon men’s hearts by Christ and His apostles. Remember God in youth! When life is full of stir, and the energies pulsing with activity; when innumerable pleasures attract; when the days fly away unheeded; and when God, hidden behind His works and gifts, is disregarded and forgotten. In thy youth! When the heart is sensitive to impressions of spiritual goodness, purity, and truth; before it becomes blinded and hardened in the practice of evil, and so shuts out thought of God and good. Remember Him! Fix in thy heart just conceptions of His pure, wise, loving nature! Associate Him with all that is beautiful and beneficent in His visible working! Above all, rest your soul in hourly recollection upon the endearing characters and tender relations He avowedly sustains to you! So remember Him for thy truer happiness now. And so remember Him for thy peace in the coming days of decline and decay; that thine age may be serene and cheerful with hope of a deathless life. Before the evil days come, which will come if He be forgotten and neglected. Evil days, when social and sensual pleasures lose all zest and force of appeal; when there is left no resource for cheer, support, or hope. That such evil days may never come, therefore remember God, to thank and trust, to love and serve Him, now in the days of thy youth!

2. The second verse is a figurative expansion of the “evil days,” and a general introduction to the verses that follow. B.—The figures are drawn from the natural world. The darkening of the great lights of heaven is one of the most common figures with the Hebrew writers for great and sad calamity. (See Ezek. 32:7, 8; Isa. 13:10; Joel 2:31 and 3:15; Amos 8:9; Rev. 6:12, 13, and Matt. 24:29.) The clouds returning after the great rain, when “storm after storm rises dark o’er the way,” describe the rainy season of Palestine, when one storm passes away only to make room for another to follow, and a whole fair day is scarcely known. This represents forcibly the gloom and grief that hang over the old age of the ungodly. H. C.

3-6. The touching appeal enforced by the sure, sad experiences of decline and decay. This decay is in part prefigured by the ruin of a lordly castle, with its “keepers” and “strong men,” its lofty windows and doorways. The details, given in all these figures, are singular but simple. The keepers and strong men refer to the arms and hands which act for and protect, and the limbs which support and carry, the body. All of these become feeble and tremulous, and fail of their appropriate offices. The reference to the grinders, though also a figure, is obviously to the loss of the teeth. Dimness of sight is intimated by the “darkening of those that look out of the windows.” The shutting of the doors seems to refer to the closing of the ears, or perhaps, of all the senses, to outward impressions. The remainder of the verse (4) denotes the inability to enjoy the song of the worker or the bird; to take part in, or even appreciate, the music of voices or instruments. V. 5. Self-reliance is lost when strength is gone.

Uneven footways and the narrow, unsafe streets make the old man timid and fearful. Feebleness increases until he can walk no longer, nor even endure the least weight: The flowering almond tree, whose mass of snowy blossoms come forth in midwinter upon leafless stems, is a natural symbol of the white hair and beard of age. And (as the closing particular) desire, the very susceptibility to physical gratification, is gone. These experiences all foretell the time of departure from the temporary to the long eternal home; the day of death and burial. Then (v. 6) as the frail golden lamp, suspended by silk and silver cord, is broken and emptied by the fall when the cord is severed, so the body is emptied of its indwelling spirit when the thread of its animate life is sundered. Or, as the pitcher and wheel, by which water is gathered from fountain and well, are useless when broken, so the bodily organs, which collect and distribute vital nourishment, are finally shattered and disabled by death. B.

5. The almond-tree shall blossom. The point of the figure is doubtless the fact that the white blossoms completely cover the whole tree without any mixture of green leaves, for these do not appear until some time after. It is the expressive type of old age, whose hair is white as wool, unrelieved with any other color. W. M. Thomson.

Desire. Literally, the caper-berry. This berry, which was eaten before meals as a provocative to appetite, shall fail to take effect on a man whose powers are exhausted. Long home. Literally, “eternal house.” Considering that the word “eternal” may be used here in a restricted sense, the expression long home (which has become a household word among ourselves) appears to represent the Hebrew fairly. Man’s “eternal house” is his place in the next world. Without attributing to the author of Ecclesiastes that deep insight into the future life which is shown by the writer of the Epistles to the Corinthians, we may observe that He by whom both writers were inspired sanctions in both books (see 2 Cor. 5:1-6) the use of the same expression “eternal house.” In 2 Cor. it means that spiritual body which shall be hereafter; and it is placed, as it is here (see v. 3), in contrast with that earthly dissolving house which clothes the spirit of man in this world. W. T. B.

It is not at his death only that it may be said of any man, “He goeth to his long home.” It is a continual present tense. Every moment, every step he takes, he is always on the road, getting nearer and nearer. Eternity is an abyss in which the mind loses itself in a moment; and the more we try to realize, the more impossible it grows. And because we have never seen it or conceived it, we call some earthly thing, some work, some waiting-time, some sorrow, some suffering, “long.” But we shall never call it long again when we have looked out into the immensities which lie on the other side the horizon of this little world. But that life the Infinite Himself calls “long.” “Man goeth to his long home.” If that is home, we are travellers here. And every day should be a step homeward. We must not pitch our tents as if they were houses, for they will soon be taken down. We must not stop by the way to pick many flowers, and we must not care for little discomforts and disagreeable things as we go, seeing that our halting-places are only inns. If that is home, this is school. Hence the discipline. Life is all training. We have much to unlearn and much to learn, many habits to lose and many habits to form, before the minority of our existence here shall have fitted us for the maturity of our glorified manhood. J. Vaughan.

6. Death is here represented under two beautiful and striking emblems, the destruction of the lamp of life and of the machinery at the fountain of life. It connects as v. 2 and the last clause of v. 1 with the injunction with which v. 1 begins. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the silver cord is not loosed, nor the golden bowl broken. W. H. G. —The termination of life is signified generally by the breaking of a lamp, a pitcher, and a wheel; it seems unnecessary to assign to those images respectively different parts or functions of the body, all which end at death. The silver cord by which the lamp hangs from the ceiling snaps, and the cup or reservoir of oil is dashed in pieces by the fall, and the pitcher long used to bring water from the spring is shattered; and the wheel by which a bucket is let down into the well is broken. W. T. B.

The metaphor by which loss of life is denoted is borrowed from a lamp suspended from a ceiling by a silver cord. The golden bowl is the bowl or reservoir of oil, from which it is distributed into the branches, in which the wicks are placed, from which the lights proceed. (See Zech. 4 : 2; Job 29 : 3.) The cord by which this golden bowl or reservoir of oil is suspended, being decayed with age, giving away, and so suffering the bowl of oil to fall upon the floor and be broken, and thus extinguish the lamps, affords a striking image of the breaking up of the human machine and the extinction of its life, which by a very common metaphor is said to be suspended on a brittle thread. We need not inquire what internal part of the body is denoted by the silver cord or the golden bowl; whether by the former is denoted the spinal marrow, the nerves, the veins, or arteries; or whether by the golden bowl is denoted the heart, the brain, etc., since it is extremely doubtful whether the preacher refers to either. By the images of the broken bucket and wheel, in consequence of which no water could be procured, is set forth the decay and dissolution of the human body through age, in consequence of which life cannot be retained in it. Some have undertaken to point out what internal part of the body was denoted by the bucket, the fountain, the wheel and the cistern; I do not think that the preacher intended such a particular application of the terms. Noyes.

7. What becomes of man’s two natures at death? Each goes to its original source. The body is resolved to dust again; the spirit returns unto God who gave it. One ceases from existence until it is raised again at the fiat of God. The other has no cessation or pause of existence; its life continues on in the vision of God. Here is an absolute affirmation of the immortality of the human spirit! B.

Man is something more than vitalized clay. The breath of God imparted to the human form something more than animal life. The inspiration of the Almighty gave him understanding. He was made in the likeness of his Maker. He received a rational and intelligent nature. The soul is not the product of matter, nor any accident or modification of matter. It is a distinct existence, distinct in its origin, distinct in its nature. Though united, the body and the soul each preserves its own separate quality. The one is dust, the other is spirit. The one was fashioned by God’s fingers, the other came from God’s own life. This distinction is recognized throughout the whole of Scripture. What we call death is the dissolution of this fellowship and conjunction between the body and the soul. So saith the Scripture: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” W. Adams.

Then shall the dust return. The creation of man, as described in Gen. 2 : 7 (compare 3 : 19), is evidently referred to. W. T. B. —Although it is true that these bodies themselves are constantly dissolving into air, that the material atoms which compose them will in a few short weeks all be gone, and that there is nothing but the shadow of our forms which we can call our own, we must also remember that there is a mysterious principle within, constantly renewing and repairing our wasting frames—a cunning architect superintending a thousand builders who are constantly reconstructing, with materials prepared by vegetation, the bones, the muscles, and the nerves, as fast as they are wasted and consumed; making, in a most mysterious way, beyond all human comprehension, here the fibre of a muscle, there the filament of a nerve, here building up a bone, there uniting a tendon, fashioning each with scrupulous nicety, and fitting each to its place with never-failing skill. But no sooner is the work of the architect done, than another great power comes in to destroy it. The oxygen gas which the blood absorbs in the lungs and carries to the different parts of the body burns up these carefully elaborated tissues, converting them into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which pass into the atmosphere, from which they originally came. Life is, in fact, a constant struggle between the builders and the destroying element of the air; and when its short term is ended, and the builders cease because they are wearied and few, then “the dust returns to the earth as it was.” Cooke.

The spirit shall return. The fact here stated by the inspired writer is simply that the spirit, being separated at death from the body, returns to God. No more is said here of its future destiny. To return to God, who is the Fountain of Life, certainly means to continue to live. The doctrine of life after death is implied here as in Exod. 3 : 6, and in many other passages of Scripture earlier than the age of Solomon. W. T. B.—There is in each one of us a “spirit.” It is the higher part, the nobler, the more godlike. It contains the “willing,” of which the body does the “running.” It contains the grand, capacious intellect; the beautiful, generous feeling; the pure, unselfish affection; the power of believing, hoping, loving; the faculty of praying; the capacity of knowing, of communing, and holding converse with God. The “spirit” may be dragged down; may be secularized, carnalized, brutalized. If we will sow to the flesh, we can reap corruption; and that corruption shall spread itself till there is nothing left of mind but its cunning, and nothing left of spirit but its indestructibility. It is there; it cannot be extinguished; the spark once put to it, the fire must burn on. There is, at the moment of death, a “returning of the spirit to God who gave it.” The profitable thing for us is to anticipate, in its certainty and in its simplicity, that “return.” “The spirit shall return to God who gave it.” C. J. V.

The world is nothing more than one great, continuous grave. As it swings around the sun in its accustomed orbit, like a true mother, it carries the dust of her children in her bosom! Ye heavenly hosts, ye look down upon it from above, and we are almost among you. Thither flies the spirit, at the moment when it parts from its earthly shell. There shall we be ever united with all who have gone before us; and often shall we direct our glances of sympathy and sorrow toward our early home. Finally comes the hour; the seed is ripe for the harvest; the human race is ripe for judgment. The Lord descends with His angels; the graves open upon the heaving earth; and the glorified dust is united with the soul’s spiritual body. This we see in the spirit; herein are we absorbed; for this conviction we thank the Saviour whose grave quaked in the hour of His resurrection; and more mighty, more powerful grows in us the life of that faith which does not doubt of what it has not yet seen. Theremin.

The dust of the human frame returns to its kindred dust; but the spirit, of far higher nature, the very breath of God (Gen. 2 : 7), returns to God who gave it; not to be absorbed again into the essence of the Divine Being; not to lose its personality, its individual consciousness, or its moral responsibility; but to receive from God its reward according to its moral life in the body. This doctrine of future retribution forever precludes the pantheistic notion of the absorption of the human soul at death into the being of God Himself. The doctrine that all human souls have their existence directly from God, so that He is strictly and properly “the Father of all spirits,” appears in both the Old Testament and the New. See Num. 16 : 22, where it occurs in the prayer of Moses and Aaron; also again in the words of Moses (Num. 27 : 16); so the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12 : 9). That the soul, thus related to God as its Father, should return to Him at death, is due also and especially to its moral nature and moral relations and responsibilities. That this was the doctrine of the ancient Jewish teachers appears even in the Chaldee paraphrast who translates our verse: “The living spirit will return to stand in judgment before God who gave it to thee.” The same doctrine underlies this Book of Ecclesiastes, cropping out not unfrequently throughout the course of its discussions, and brought forth most distinctly and emphatically at the close. (See 3 : 17, 21; 5 : 8; 8 : 8, 12, 13; 11 : 9; 12 : 14.) And what can be more reasonable? For the gift of intellectual faculties devolves the obligation to know God. The gift of a moral power to obey and love God creates the obligation to obedience and love. God therefore has an account to settle with all those beings to whom He has committed such exalted powers, and hence their spirits must return to Him at death to meet this responsibility and to render this account. H. C.

The bodies of men after death return to dust and see corruption, but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none. West. Confession. If any one thing is made clear by the whole drift and structure of revelation, it is this, that probation begins and ends with this life. Our Lord’s teachings suggest neither doubt of this fact nor exceptions to it. Apostolic instruction suggests neither. This is not a subject on which it is reasonable to believe that a revelation from heaven has taught nothing. The when and the where of probation enter into the very fact of probation. The Scriptures furnish as much evidence that our probation began in a former world as that it will be continued or supplemented in a world to come. Regenerate character, started into being here, may be improved, developed, finished in a future life, which is not the perfected heavenly life. But this is education, and education is not probation. It is probation which determines the great moral distinction of character as right or wrong; and this the Bible assumes to be the work of one life, and one only. On the deeds done in the body the retributive experience depends. The validity of these views is not affected unfavorably by the fact that the Scriptures nowhere expressly affirm the non-existence of probation in the life to come. It is not the usage of inspiration to affirm negatives. Phelps.

With all that is said and assumed and argued for, and stiffly asserted, as regards the fact of a second trial hereafter, the whole world tacitly concedes, nevertheless, that no such new condition is, in fact, expected. For no unbeliever, no practically godless and really apostate believer, no bad man groaning under his vices, no drunkard writhing under his chains, no scoffing Altamont overtaken by remorse, no human creature, whether uninstructed Pagan or best instructed philosopher, and (what is most significant of all) no loosest, largest freethinker, who asserts most confidently the faith of a second trial hereafter, goes out of life talking of the new chance now to be given him, and the high, free time he is going to have, in the more propitious trial that will suffer him to mend his defects and the consciously bad ways that have corrupted him. All such advocates of a basement gospel, under the world and after the grave, convince themselves, by what they consider most indisputable and profoundly wise arguments, that their ultimation gospel, their posthumous salvation, will have power to mend all damage and smooth away all woes of character begun; but when we look to see those deep, natural instincts, which are always the spontaneous interpreters of our humanity, giving out their indications, we find our believers in the underworld opportunity clinging fast to life, as if they had no such faith at all in them, recoiling with instinctive shudder from death, and hailing never in glad welcome the better day now come to help their recovery; in which they may discover, as plainly as need be, themselves, that their arguments are one thing, and the verdict of their immortal, deep-discerning judgments another. They contrive how it is to be, they reason, they promise, they encourage; but their always demonstrative nature nowhere runs up a flag of hope or gives any slightest indication. If the question be whether we are immortal, all the flags of natural hope are out streaming on every hill; but here expectation is dumb and shows no sign! Bushnell.

Waste your youth; in it you shall have but one chance. Waste your middle life; in it you shall have but one chance. Waste your old age; in it you shall have but one chance. It is an irreversible natural law that character attains final permanence, and in the nature of things final permanence can come but once. This world is fearfully and wonderfully made, and so are we, and we shall escape neither ourselves nor these stupendous laws. It is not a pleasant thing to exhibit these truths from the side of terror; but on the other side these are truths of bliss, for by this very law through which all character tends to become unchanging, a soul that attains a final permanence of good character runs but one risk, and is delivered once for all from its torture and unrest. It has passed the bourne from behind which no man is caught out of the fold. He who is the force behind all natural law is keeper of His sheep, and no one is able to pluck them out of His hand. Himself without variableness or shadow of turning He maintains the irreversibleness of all natural forces, one of which is the ineffably majestic law by which character tends to assume final permanence, good as well as bad. Joseph Cook.

Nothing is more difficult than to realize that every man has a distinct soul, that every one of all the millions who live or have lived is as whole and independent a being in himself as if there were no one else in the whole world but he. Survey some populous town; crowds are pouring through the streets; every part of it is full of life. Hence we gain a general idea of splendor, magnificence, opulence, and energy. But what is the truth? Why, that every being in that great concourse is his own centre, and all things about him are but shades, but a “vain shadow,” in which he walketh and disquieteth himself in vain. He has his own hopes and fears, desires, judgments, and aim; he is everything to himself, and no one else is really anything. He has a depth within him unfathomable, an infinite abyss of existence; and the scene in which he bears part for the moment is but like a gleam of sunshine upon its surface. All those millions upon millions of human beings who ever trod the earth and saw the sun successively are at this very moment in existence all together. If we have once seen any child of Adam, we have seen an immortal soul. It has not passed away as a breeze or sunshine, but it lives; it lives at this moment in one of those many places, whether of bliss or misery, in which all souls are reserved unto the end. Every one of all the souls which have ever been on earth is in one of two spiritual states, so distinct from one another that the one is the subject of God’s favor and the other under His wrath, the one on the way to eternal happiness, the other to eternal misery. This is true of the dead, and it is true of the living also. Endeavor then to realize that you have souls, and pray God to enable you to do so. Endeavor to disengage your thoughts and opinions from the things that are seen; look at things as God looks at them, and judge of them as He judges. There will be no need of shutting your eyes to this world when this world has vanished from you, and you have nothing before you but the throne of God and the slow but continual movements about it in preparation of the judgment. In that interval, when you are in that vast receptacle of disembodied souls, what will be your thoughts about the world which you have left? How poor will then seem to you its highest aims, how faint its keenest pleasures, compared with the eternal aims, the infinite pleasures, of which you will at length feel your souls to be capable. Newman.

The man of the world is reconciled to his sins, and not to his state. The man of piety is in hostility to his sins, and reconciled to his state. The men of the world are always changing their state, and imagining a happiness which continually flies from them. It is the same in every period of life. In youth, the objects of the world not being tried, they think themselves at liberty to take excursions after happiness, and place it in the gratification of their passions. Weary of these, they become men, and then pursue riches and aspire after grandeur and consequence, but soon find that these have their cares and anxieties. When they become old, they look with equal contempt upon both periods; for both appear to them like a confused dream, that leaves nothing but a succession of images, which have lost their charms. But piety will produce satisfaction with our condition, and prevent the indulgence of the passions. In fact, in every way and at all periods it will preserve them; in youth, in manhood, and in advanced age. It will teach men that they have one solid good to obtain, and that time is short for attaining it. Dejection and gloom can have no place in that man who, having spent his life in serving God, looks forward to glory, honor, and immortality. R. Hall.

A young man, when won over to habits of sober-minded piety, has it in his power to cultivate a rounded, harmonious, beautiful life, which grows serener and calmer to its end. And if such a young man reaches the boundaries of old age, what a blessed sight is he. The fire of anger, which he has controlled his lifelong, plays only in a genial flame of indignation against sin. Those baser appetites, which cost him perhaps many a struggle to overcome, have died out of his character. Covetousness, as it never filled him with evil cravings in his manhood, so has no torment of miserly fears for his old age. His brow of peace tells of numberless triumphs over sin, followed by undisturbed repose. Such an old age of dignity and peace, when we see it among us, is a purifying power in society—it is a protest against exaggerated feelings and excited desires, it is a forerunner of heavenly rest. Compare it, in its tranquillity and noiseless movement, with the disappointment, the self-reproach, the weariness and emptiness of a worldling who feels the bitter penal sobering of life in its dregs, and see in it the beauty of the Gospel. Woolsey.

God will remember those in age who remember Him in youth or manhood. This compensating, sustaining fact is mercifully set over against the coming experiences of natural weakness and decay. To all who have acknowledged God in earlier life; to all who have consecrated their powers of body and mind to the Redeemer’s service while yet those powers were active and unimpaired, the Divine Jesus will manifest a tender, affectionate remembrance in the days of darkness and weariness. He will put forth His efficient sympathy and aid to light and cheer the closing experiences of the aged believer’s heavenward pilgrimage. When the bodily energies yield, and the mortal fabric crumbles, when the strong arm and the stout heart are alike palsied by the hand of time, when the pleasure-giving senses lose their susceptibility, when the eye is filmed, the ear is closed, the taste is dull, and the voice is inaudible, then will the indwelling Comforter afresh recall and impress with deepening power the promise of a new and glorified body, associated with whose incorruptible structure a renewed youth and vigor shall commence and be perennially enjoyed. So, too, when in the painful retrospect of life’s fruitless toil and its parted friendships and vanished earthy hopes, the aged believer is burdened with an unutterable loneliness and sadness, and his heart is filled with longing for lasting repose and an abiding fellowship, then will this gracious Comforter whisper peace to his spirit in the anticipation of a rest where weariness and sighing and sorrow are forever banished. He will breathe a sweet, calming assurance of speedy welcome to that celestial sphere where not only former friendships shall be revived, but where the purer, closer, more blessed fellowship with redeemed and angelic spirits and with God Himself shall impart perfect, enduring delight. With such blessed assurances and such bright prospects will the present Jesus sustain and cheer the closing days of the soul that has trusted itself to His keeping, and sought to walk with Him through life. And thus sustained and cheered, he can patiently, peacefully wait all the days of his appointed time until his change come. B.

The Near Look, and the Far.

Faith in the far or future life is necessary to wise walking through this life. The far life blotted out, or severed from the present, the present becomes insignificant, and almost utterly unmeaning. This life darkens and degenerates, becomes weariness, mockery, despair, as soon as it is separated from another. The sky seems to fall down; the horizon closes in; the far lights are swallowed up of the deepening darkness, and nothing is left us to do but to die. “Life and immortality” are abolished, and death is “brought to light,” or throned in darkness rather, by this gospel. And this is the best that can be said, is it, in justification of a life the full scope and last end of which are found among visible things? It is a poor life on its own showing. It can give no account of its origin, no explanation of its mysteries, no motive for its virtues, no consolation for its inevitable sorrows, no satisfaction for its own yearnings, no hope for its close. It is contradicted and denied by the living soul of man, by the instinct of immortality in the breast, by the sense of God which in one way or other all great minds and true hearts attain unto, by all our expansive powers and upward longings, by imagination, by faith, by hope, by love, by the word of God, by Jesus Christ in all His teachings, and by His resurrection and ascension into heaven. No man who only takes the near look can live, or act, or suffer, or die as a man should. Still further. Against such a life there lies this consideration, which it is really not easy to state in all its force, but which would be felt as having tremendous power, if it were duly understood and apprehended—this, that there is no natural probability that the latter part of life will be different in spiritual character from the former; that there is a strong probability that it will be the same; in circumstance and sensation very different, but in substance and principle the same. Enough. This life of scope so limited is no life for any of us to lead. It is too narrow for our greatness, too hollow for our satisfactions, too impure for our affections. It exhausts our energies, mocks our expectations, and will soon fade forever from our sight. But the life with the upward aspect and the far look is a life of peculiar dignity. On what, on whom, is this far-reaching gaze fixed? On the most perfect things, on the most glorious persons in the universe. On a world which is the harvest-home of other worlds. On “a city which hath foundations,” and which is the only city of which God professes Himself the sole builder. On a grand celestial commonwealth, in which men and angels meet as brothers. On a vast cosmical harmony, or “gathering together in one all things in Christ.” On “spirits of just men made perfect.” On “innumerable companies of angels.” On “Jesus the Mediator.” On “God, the Judge of all.” Where shall we find elevation and grandeur, if not in such a scene, in such society, as this? How poor in the comparison are the thrones and dignities of the present life, the scenes of enjoyment and the notable assemblies! Yonder are the true fountains of honor! the true seats of power! the true aristocracy of the universe! Higher no man can look than up to God’s chief dwelling-place. Nobler no man need wish to be than to be meet for association with His nobles and sons. And observe, such meetness is greatly promoted simply by the looking. A man becomes great in the loving contemplation of such greatness. So we are said, in some Scriptures of deep meaning, not only to look, but to see: not only to seek, but to find. “We are come,” already, now, “unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God.” In our faith and fellowship, and love and longing, “we are come.” In the strongest laws of our being we belong even now to this celestial state. “Our conversation, or citizenship, is in heaven.” The angels make mystical encampings about the steps of faithful men everywhere. The spirits made perfect are drawing us by all the sainted memories they have left behind, and by the irrepressible yearnings of our souls to follow until we overtake and grasp inseparable hands. And a far-looking soul becomes great as it gazes upward to home, and rest, and glory. A heaven-bound pilgrim has a shining face and a lordly air to those who can see. Since the “high calling” came, he can but look to “the mark” of it. Since he was gifted with spiritual sonship he can but hasten home to the house of many mansions. Since he was made a peer of the upper realms he can but gather up his garments in passing through the lower, and keep himself in reserve for eternal friendships and honors. Thus a wonderful dignity is thrown around a human life as soon as invisible things decisively become its scope and end.

The far look brings purity into the mind. Directly and powerfully as though it drew it down from the skies. If there be one desire more essentially characteristic than another of a Christian state, and of progress in that state, it is the approbation and love of purity, or the perfect moral goodness of Jesus Christ. This is “the spirit of Christ,” which “if any man have not he is none of His.” This is the “hunger and thirst after righteousness” which whoso hath is blessed, for “he shall be filled.”

The far look has in it a wonderful power of composure. It holds the looking mind as in an element of Divine tranquillity amid the stir and tumult, amid the daily changes and troubles of this world. One fretted with cares and strifes and the many ups and downs of life looks away to the victor throngs gathering on the shores and mountain-sides of the “better country,” and then he chides his discouragement by thinking. “Haply, I shall soon be among them!” Many a calm hour does heaven thus drop down about the steps of her home-going sons and daughters, which, otherwise, they never would find. Many a touch of coolness she sheds on hot hand and fevered brow. And as day after day come and go, one and another who have learned to take the long look, find a straight path for their feet, through some of the busiest and most perplexing scenes of the cities here below, by holding firmly in hand the roll of citizenship above, and by sometimes thinking, if but a moment at a time, of the day of joyful entrance.

Finally, The far look brings a peculiar assuagement of suffering, and sorrow, and affliction of every kind. Listen to the apostle’s wonderful words: He counts his affliction “light,” although it is thus actually sinking him to the grave. He says it is “but for a moment,” although it had lasted from his conversion to that time, and, he knew, would last on to the day of his martyrdom! How, then, is this? What is the explanation of such a mystery? Here is the blessed explanation. The master power, the transmuting, transforming element in this great process, is nothing else than his soul’s “far look,” at “things not seen,” at “things eternal.” That look changes all. It makes affliction, which is very heavy in itself, “light,” by bringing it into contrast with immortal joy; which is long in itself, but momentary, by measuring it with eternal duration. The same look will do for us what it did for him, what it has done for so many of God’s children since. It will fill our souls, and even our bodies in a measure, with a sense of heavenly assuagement. It will impart “a strong consolation.” “In all these things” it will make us “more than conquerors.”

And what shall we more say? This life of the far look has been commended by the celestial dignity which it gathers as it grows; by the purity and goodness which it wins from the skies; by its power to generate tranquillity amid the hurry of this world’s affairs, and by its mastery of all trouble and affliction—we might even say, of death. What other kind of life could do as much, or almost anything at all, in the like ways? What force can match with this tremendous energy, which lifts immortal souls from one world up to another? What fire of mortal kindling will burn as doth the flame of Christian hope, up through the deepest earthly

8. VANITY of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity. 9 And further, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he pondered, and sought out, and set in 10 order many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written uprightly, even words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails well fastened are the words of the masters of assemblies [or, collectors of sentences], which are given from one shepherd. 12 And furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh 13 This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of 14 man [or, this is the duty of all men]. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.

8-14. THIS passage is properly regarded as the epilogue of the whole book. Here, as in the beginning of the book, the Preacher speaks of himself in the third person. He first repeats (v. 8) the mournful, perplexing theme with which his musings began (1:2); and then states the encouraging practical conclusion (13, 14) to which they have led him. Between these he interposes four verses (9-12), asserting his claim to come forward as a teacher, his intention to teach with no unnecessary obscurity, the usefulness and authority of such teaching, and the folly of protracted, unpractical meditation (compare 11:4); this brings him to the practical end (vs. 13, 14) of the epilogue and of the whole book. These verses have the same authority with the Christian reader as the rest of this book; for they were received as an integral part of the book by the Jewish Church long before the time of our Lord. The whole passage serves to make the book more intelligible and more acceptable. W. T. B.

8-12. General summing up of the book or sermon. V. 8 repeats the text for the last time. Transitoriness and dissatisfaction are the main ideas denoted by the word vanity. V. 9 declares the object of the Preacher, to teach the people knowledge; and his fitness to teach by reason of his wisdom and earnest endeavor. V. 10 refers to his effort to make his teaching acceptable; and it affirms that he has taught the truth. V. 11 discloses the purpose and effect of truth as taught by all wise and faithful teachers. The words of such are as goads to stir the heedless to thought, to excite the sluggish to active obedience and duty. They are as nails to fasten truth in the memory and to make obedience habitual. This truth, it is intimated, is to be taught by those who are themselves instructed by one Shepherd, even Christ. And v. 12 is designed to impress the supreme value of Divine wisdom and revealed truth as compared with all that is human and uninspired. This one book of God, unlike the multitude of human productions, conveys truth without error. It absorbs, enriches, and delights mind and heart without weariness in study or exhaustion of its sublime and satisfying themes. B.

The aim of Coheleth, in all that he has said, has been to speak “acceptable words,” full of the honey-sweetness of Divine truth—“upright sayings,” words of righteousness, with power to pierce the soul. This is characteristic of all wise teaching. It has a sweetness that glides into the heart, and at the same time a sharpness that penetrates the conscience, as a nail fastened in a sure place. Now, at the end, speaking to a son, after the manner of Solomon in the Proverbs, the Preacher exhorts him not to seek his welfare in many books, for literature no more than mirth can constitute man’s welfare, or supply his chief good. “Fear God and keep His commandments.” A conclusion quite similar to that of Job in his quest after wisdom. He sought for it in the mines and deep places of the earth; and the conclusion of the matter he found to be this, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” This was the height of the Hebrew “Chokmah,” or philosophy of wisdom and life. As David is the great poet, so is Solomon the great philosopher. And as David’s Psalms, read in the light of Christ and the Gospel, are still at the height of sacred poetry; so Solomon’s teachings and reflections, read in the same light, are at the summit of wisdom still. A child-like reverence for God, including the fear of displeasing Him, and the desire to obey Him from the heart—this is right, and to love Him with all the heart, soul, strength, and mind is the great commandment. D. F.

8. All is vanity. Obviously this introduces the closing section of the book, the concluding remarks. Hence he repeats the sentiment which more than any other has been his leading theme, the utter vanity of all things that are merely of the earth—sensual and worldly enjoyments. H. C.—The writer has gone through the whole round of human employment and enjoyment; and he comes out at last fully with the sentiment which he announced at the beginning. Solid, lasting, and unchanging happiness is not to be found in any worldly occupation, or in any worldly circumstances. God has impressed this truth on everything and made it visible everywhere. M. S.—Solomon has proved in this book that if there be no hereafter, no future day of righteous adjudication, then vanity must be predicated of the “all,” the universe. J. M. M.

10. The writer does not mean merely that he first sought for proper words and then proceeded to write the same down, but he means to convey the additional idea that he wrote words of truth, as well as acceptable words. M. S.—If the preacher be wise, he will search out and set in order words that shall be acceptable, yet words of truth and life; he will press into his service all his powers of wit, humor, argument, tenderness; he will seek to dip the arrows of conviction in healing balms, to carry guiding and comfortable rays into the darkness of doubt or grief, to rebuke successful wrong with an indignation that shall burn like a fire, and to lift up patient, unsuccessful merit by force of sympathy and love. He will consecrate all his faculties and energies to the service of his Master, to the endeavor to carry the very truth to the hearts of his brethren. But the defence and exposition of the truth will be his supreme aim. He will care more for what he teaches than for how he teaches it. Cor.

Acceptable words. Reflect on your own thoughts, actions, circumstances, and—which will be of special aid to you in forming the habit of reflection—accustom yourselves to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, their birth, derivation, and history. For if words are not things, they are living powers by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humanized. Coleridge.—If we could obtain the opinions of such authors as Horace, in Latin, or Bacon and Addison, in English, and, in the sacred tongue, that most wise “Preacher who sought to find out acceptable words,” we should think more highly of the study of words. What careful writer has not remarked how the entire character of a statement has been changed—has passed from ambiguity to clearness, from feebleness to strength, from awkwardness to grace—by the substitution of one epithet for another, or by the insertion, or even simply by the omission of an epithet? He surely is a stranger to the elements of power in speech who does not endeavor to be skilful in the use of words. Skinner.

11. From speaking of his own work, he passes to speak in a more general way of all the words of the wise, with special reference, it would seem, to the other inspired books of the Old Testament, then extant. These words of wise men are as goads; they have a piercing, penetrating power. They commend themselves to the good sense of mankind and to their conscience no less, and therefore take fast hold of the human soul. So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (4: 12). H. C.—As goads, and as nails well fastened. No figures could more aptly typify the two offices of sacred teaching: the one immediate in its effect, pricking the conscience, stimulating the soul; the other, permanent and durable, depending upon the concurrent action of the hearer, in so admitting and retaining the impression, that it shall pass from the region of impulse and excitement into the domain of principle, of conduct, of life. C. J. V.

The word translated “assemblies,” it is now conceded by the best critics, refers not to assembled persons, but to collected manuscripts, constituting the recorded wisdom of the wise (the “words of the wise” in the first clause), with probable reference to the inspired books then extant. H. C.—Collected or put together, as they are in the Book of Proverbs, they are as nails fastened or well driven in. Each is like a fresh nail supporting and strengthening the rest; and all combined together hold too firmly ever to be extracted. Which are given from one shepherd. All these words of wisdom, collected in the Book of Proverbs, whatever may have been their human origin, have nevertheless proceeded from one Divine source—from the great Shepherd, who guards, guides, and feeds His people. W. H. G.—That these collected writings are “given by one shepherd,” looks to their common origin in the one revealing Spirit of God. It was as a great and good shepherd, leading His people like a flock into the green pastures of truth, that the Divine Spirit taught holy men of old to speak and write these words of pre-eminent and superhuman wisdom. H. C.

12. No end of making books. The expression is perfectly natural in the mouth of the writer (1 Kings 4:32, 33) of three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs. Grätz points out that this epilogue assumes the identity of the Preacher with the writer of the Book of Proverbs. W. T. B.—“Many books” were in existence in Solomon’s day. Recent investigations have put beyond doubt that in earlier times Egyptian literature was both comprehensive and unfruitful. According to Diodorus, over the sacred library of Thebes was the inscription, “Pharmacy of the Soul.” We read of wise men in the days of Solomon, with whom he is compared. They lived in the “east country” and in Egypt. Y.

The form of expression in Hebrew is, To make books, many, without end. A second subject follows, and much eagerness of study. Both of these subjects are now followed by the predicate—viz., is a weariness of the flesh or body. Much study would be requisite to make very many books, at least if they were worth reading. And such books as are worth it Coheleth has in view, for they are such as are goads and nails. M. S.—It is in harmony with the entire strain of this book that Solomon should speak in this verse of his own personal experience as an author. If we may suppose him to have been at this writing far advanced in age, the pertinence of these words to his case becomes the more apparent. If he had in view also the multitude of books other than his, it was quite in place to exhort the reader to spare himself the labor, and not less, the loss, of reading many poor ones, and be content to read, digest, and put in practice the wisdom here laid so briefly before him. H. C.

I know not whether the sight of a great library doth more dismay or comfort me; it dismays me to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon—there is no end of making many books, this sight verifies it—there is no end; indeed, it were a pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul, the agitation whereof cannot but through time and experience work out many hidden truths; to suppress these would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose mind, like unto so many candles, should be kindled by each other. Bishop H.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you. Anon.—Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in travelling, in the country. Cicero.

I have friends whose society is extremely agreeable to me; they are of all ages and of every country. They have distinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them; for they are always at my service; I admit them to my company and dismiss them from it whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits, while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires and depend wholly on myself. In return for all these services they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace; for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement than with the tumults of society. Plutarch.

God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. Channing.

With regard to books, we ought not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. Plutarch.

You can create for yourself, if you will, by a process of selection, the choicest and most inspiring society. You can summon to your side the world’s great teachers—philosophers and poets and prophets; you can commune with those who stimulate thought, with those who stir imagination and feeling, with those who unveil the future and lift the soul to heaven. With your Bible only in your hands, what a goodly company of seers and apostles of God you can call up from the past; and there are other books through which may come to you a similar, though not so great a blessing. J. Anderson.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both instances all that we can learn from bad ones is, that so much time has been worse than thrown away. That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. That short period of a short existence which is rationally employed is that which alone deserves the name of life; and that portion of our life is most rationally employed which is occupied in enlarging our stock of truth and of wisdom. Colton.—Readers are not aware of the fact that their first grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly, conscientiously select; and to know everywhere that books, like human souls, are actually divided into what we may call “sheep and goats”—the latter put inexorably on the left hand of the Judge; and tending, every goat of them, at all moments, whither we know, and much to be avoided and if possible ignored by all sane creatures! Carlyle.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand on those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. For as the solar light in its effect upon vegetation, so with the light that is intellectual; it calls forth and awakens into energy those latent principles of thought in the minds of others, which without this stimulus, reflection would not have matured, nor examination improved, nor action embodied. Colton.—As your time for reading will be limited, do not waste it on any reading but such as will go toward informing your mind and improving your taste. Do not read for mere amusement. Do not seek to feed the imagination; that will always extract food for itself out of the sternest studies. Do not read, for the purpose of mere conversation, the popular works of the day, reviews, magazines. The literature of the day is always considered most piquant, the most immediately interesting, but is generally transient; it soon passes away, and leaves no general knowledge, no permanent topic in the mind. And then it is so copious; if one yield his attention to contemporary literature, he is overwhelmed with it. Make yourself, on the other hand, well acquainted with the valuable standard authors, which have stood the test of time; they will always be in fashion; and in becoming intimately acquainted with them, you become intimately acquainted with the principles of knowledge and good taste. W. Irving.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested—that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. Bacon.

Books suggest thoughts, thoughts become motives, motives prompt to action. Man is a complicated piece of machinery; hundreds of nerves and muscles must act and react for the slightest turn of the body; yet the very wind of a word, a casual hint or association, can set the whole in motion, and produce an action—actions repeated form habits, and determine the character, fixed, firm and unalterable, for good or for evil. Pyecroft.—Every book, every paper, has a soul, breathing a spirit good or bad. It is the soul of its author, and when spread over the pages of the book, that soul acts upon its reader, as truly as when acting directly. The person who touches the book comes in contact with that soul, and is affected by it. And no contact with it is more influential. In reading an author’s book you are conversing with him under circumstances very favorable to your becoming like him; for in the book everything is generally deeply thought out, in shape to convince, or carefully dressed up in a manner to bewitch. And all this only indicates the necessity of reading with care and caution. Anon.

Books make life, and books make death. Every book which is read as a good book ought to be read enters into the reader’s heart-blood for weal or for woe. Read an evil book, and the stain may remain with you always. Many a man would give all his gold to rid his mind of the false or impure thoughts which his early reading has made abiding guests in his brain. Refuse to soil your mind with a book which is essentially evil, however skilled an artist of words its author may be. There are enough good, pure, strong books in the world to supply all the demands of your intellectual life. Read these! . . . Unless it is directed and controlled by religious principle, the intellectual faculty contributes no more to man’s chief good than does the digestive faculty. The thing which gives meaning and value to life is the soul’s recognition of its relationship to God, and its glad performance of the duties involved in that relationship. Where that relationship is denied, no wealth of intellectual gifts will save the life from being an utter and disastrous failure. In the sublime view of life which Christianity opens up, in the centre which it gives to all thought, provision is made for the deepest and purest intellectual life. Hold fast to this great privilege of so shaping your intellectual life that it may also be a Christian life. Let go no legitimate opportunity to read the best books and to think the best thoughts. Guard for your children, and for those whom God has placed in your care, the same high privilege which you would preserve for yourself. S. S. T.

Many works of fiction may be read with safety, some even with profit; but the constant familiarity, even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind, which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, which wants fortifying; stirs the imagination, which wants quieting; irritates the passions, which want calming; and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises. Though all these books may not be hurtful, yet the habitual indulgence in such reading is a silent mining mischief. Though there is no act and no moment in which any open assault on the mind is made, yet the constant habit performs the work of a mental atrophy—it produces all the symptoms of decay; and the danger is not less for being more gradual, and therefore less suspected. Hannah More.

Generally speaking, there can be no question that excessive indulgence in novel reading necessarily enervates the mind and diminishes the power of endurance. In other departments of literature, the mental powers are more or less exercised by the ideas which they convey. Facts are stored up in the memory, hints are obtained for the further pursuit of knowledge, judgments are formed respecting character and actions, original thoughts are elicited, a spirit of investigation is excited, and more than all, life is viewed as it really has been, and must be lived. A mind thus furnished and disciplined is provided with a fund of reserved power to fall back upon when assailed by the adverse forces which, in some shape or other, all of us must expect to encounter. In novel reading, on the contrary, the mind passively contemplates the scenes that are brought before it, and which, being chiefly addressed to the passions and emotions, naturally please without the necessity of effort or preparation. There is little or no addition to one’s stock of knowledge, no element of mental strength is evolved, and no one is better prepared by it for encountering the stern realities of life. Dr. Ray.

It cannot but be injurious that the human mind should never be called into effort. The habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading. Those who confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties, and finally reduce their understandings to a deplorable imbecility. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breathless periods hurry off in quick and profitless succession, each indeed, for the moment of its stay, prevents the pains of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but, altogether, they leave the mistress of the house (the soul I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to its own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests. Coleridge.

Freely admit from the circulating library the novels of the season, and then be content to find that all residue of zest is gone as to history, or biography, or science, or anything else that is real and genuine, Christianity included. The alternative for the individuals or the family is this: Novel reading, with its consequent ennui and utter apathy, or else genuine feeling, employment with zest, as to whatever is real in life, in history, in science, in poetry, and in general literature. Fiction of any sort in one scale, and reality in the other, the beam will never stand on the level. I. T.—It may be safely assumed that most of the novel reading which people fancy is an intellectual pastime is the emptiest dissipation, hardly more related to thought or the wholesome exercise of the mental faculties than opium eating; in either case the brain is drugged, and left weaker and crazier for the debauch. If this may be called the negative result of the fiction habit, the positive injury that most novels work is by no means so easily to be measured in the case of young men whose character they help so much to form or deform, and the women of all ages whom they keep so much in ignorance of the world they misrepresent. W. D. Howells.

That an unnatural and constant excitement of the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that excitement involves a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature than which none is surer; that the weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse to quiet study and thought, to that reflection which alone is wisdom, is also clear in itself, and proved too largely by experience. And that without reflection there can be no spiritual understanding is at once evident; while without spiritual understanding—that is, without a knowledge and a study of God’s will, there can be no spiritual life. Surely, then, it is well to remind you that in reading works of amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an abiding responsibility in the sight of God; that, like other lawful pleasures, we must beware of excess in it; and not only so, but that if we find it hurtful to us, either because we have used it too freely in times past, or because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we are bound most solemnly to abstain from it; because, however lawful in itself, or to others who can practise it without injury, whatever is to us an hindrance in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement—that is in our case a positive sin. T. Arnold.—I recollect, some years ago, that upon reading some very popular tales (Moral Tales they are styled), the talent of which is exceedingly great, but which are distinguished by the total absence of religion, and the want of all reference to it even in the scenes of death; the influence on my mind was such that, during the time devoted to that reading, it was with great difficulty and perplexity I was able to discharge my ministerial duties. It became, therefore, painfully evident to me, that to be conversant long together with trains of thought or associations of ideas from which religion is entirely excluded is of most dangerous tendency; for religion is a positive thing, and must be realized by an effort of the mind; it addresses not itself to the senses, does not occur naturally in the paths of life; it lies in an invisible state, and can only be realized by a positive act of faith, and be made operative by a serious exertion of the mental faculties, by calling our attention to spiritual impressions, and thereby overpowering the mechanical and necessary operations of sensible objects. R. Hall.

There is a danger to be guarded against, in young persons especially, of an over-indulgence of imagination in reading works of fiction, and in what is called “castle-building.” Not that such an exercise of the imagination is to be condemned as an evil in itself, supposing, of course, that we avoid immoral books; but an excess in the perusal of fictions is apt to disqualify any one for real life, by creating a distaste and disgust for actual every-day scenes and humble practical duties, which do not equal in brilliancy the ideal scenes and imaginary transactions of fiction. The heart may even become hardened against real objects of compassion, from our having been too much occupied in dwelling on the elegant and poetical pictures of ideal distress which tales and poems exhibit. For in these, a flaming excitement being all that is aimed at, there is, of course, a studied exclusion of all those homely and sometimes disgusting circumstances which often accompany real distresses, such as we are called upon to sympathize with and to relieve. Archbishop Whately.—A person who is moved by high-wrought scenes in novels is necessarily sure to shrink from such scenes in real life, because in the mimic case he had all the excitement without the pain, and he will turn aside from circumstances where excitement cannot be had without pain. And such an one is sure to be found wanting when true feeling is required for use, because the feelings have got the habit of being roused, without leading to exertion. It is plain to me that in this way all such reading is injurious. F. W. Robertson.

Every one knows that an artificial excitement of all the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, however vivid and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart. Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a pressing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence, and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is in fact more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyzes sympathy; and the eyes that can pour forth their floods of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama grudge a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy; the heart has become, like that of leviathan, “firm as a stone; yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone.” I. T.—Practical habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts, and passive impressions grow weaker by being repeated upon us. Perception of distress in others is a natural excitement passively to pity, and actively to relieve it. Let a man set himself to attend to, inquire out, and relieve distressed persons, and benevolence, considered as a practical principle of action, will strengthen; and he will acquire a greater aptitude actively to assist and befriend them. Bishop Butler.

13,14. The Preacher’s summary conclusion. First, in a single brief injunction, he declares the sum of all wise, right teaching, and of wise, right living—Fear God and keep His commandments. A reverential filial fear, based upon a childlike trust and love, and the spontaneous, glad obedience which flows from the grateful, peaceful sense of Divine forgiveness, Divine renewal, and full adoption; this is the New Testament interpretation of Solomon’s concluding injunction. Next, he adds two grand motives to this rule of wise, right living. Already, in the body of his sermon, he has referred to the utter insufficiency of life’s pleasures and to coming death, as powerful dissuasives to selfish living. Now he concludes with considerations of even greater force, as persuasives to the fear and obedience of God. “For this,” he affirms, “is the duty of every man.” This filial fear and childlike obedience develops all his energies, brings the gratification of every right desire, and enables him to achieve the largest and best results in this life. In a word, “this is all his business and all his blessedness.” The final motive for heeding this injunction is the solemn assertion of a future judgment. The language is explicit, and finds its parallel in Rom. 14:12 and 2 Cor. 5:10. God is the Judge, and Himself organizes the judgment. He brings into that judgment every man, and every work of the man’s whole life, everything secret and hidden from human eye, every purpose of the heart, with every act and influence of the life. Confronting us with this stern and stupendous reality of a personal accounting at the bar of God, alike for the good and for the evil done in the body, this instructive, monitory discourse is abruptly closed. B.

True religion can have no more comprehensive description than in the words, Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the duty of every man; and it is enforced by the great doctrine which lies at the basis of this entire book, that there is to be a judgment which will extend to every secret thing, in which our works will be estimated, not according to their outward appearance, but by those inward dispositions and motives which give character to conduct. J. M. M.

13. That filial emotion which here and throughout the Old Testament is often called “fear;” that blended emotion of reverence, trust, and affection can only arise where the spirit of sonship reciprocates God’s revealed aspect of compassionate and forthgoing fatherliness. It matters little whether we call the affection fear, or, with the first and great commandment, call it love. In that fear which realizes God’s fatherliness there cannot be terror; and in the love which recollects that its father is God there cannot be irreverent boldness. Hamilton.—The fear of God turns other fears out of doors; there is no room for them where this great fear is; and being greater than they all, yet disturbs not as they do; yea, it brings as great quiet as they brought trouble. Leighton.

The words, “Fear God and keep His commandments,” were the simplest of all precepts, and yet one who fixed his heart on them, and strove to live in them, would find himself led perpetually into new regions of truth, new convictions of sin, new forms of holiness. To fear God, not at stated times and in solemn worship only, but evermore; at morning and at noon-day and in the evening; speaking or acting; in secret thoughts and unrevealed desires; not with the false fear of a slave or hireling, but with the true loving fear of children; to feel that His commandments are “exceeding broad;” that no man is free from them; that they give freedom, and set a man’s heart at liberty—what might not these thoughts teach to the humbled and contrite heart? Would they in the end leave him so far behind? Would there not be growth, from faith to faith, and grace to grace; a perpetual increase of light, shining more and more brightly unto the perfect day? E. H. P.

13. This is the duty of all men. Another and better construction is, This is for every man, i.e., a law of universal obligation. What is meant is that this is the only true answer to that quest of the chief good in which the writer had been engaged. This was the “work” of man, that to which he was called by the very fact of his existence. All else was but accessory. E. H. P.

The Hebrew words for “whole of man” are used so frequently and so invariably in the sense—all men, the whole race of man—that we cannot give them any other sense here. The sentiment therefore must be, not this comprises all human duty, but this duty is universal. It binds all human beings. It belongs to man as a creature of God, made intelligent so that he can know God and with such voluntary powers that he can give to his Maker the love of his heart and the service of his life in true obedience to His commandments. H. C.

14. In conclusion, he enforces his appeal by the solemn announcement of a judgment, in which God will finally and searchingly test every false and true life; in which every word shall be made manifest, and every secret bared to the gaze of all; in which they that have sown to the flesh (have lived to themselves) and they that have sown to the Spirit (have lived unto God) shall each reap according to the sowing. B.

Knobel argues fairly from the expressions “every work” and “every secret thing” (compare Rom. 2:16; 1 Cor. 4:5) that the Preacher here means an appointed judgment which shall take place in another world, as distinct from that retribution which frequently follows man’s actions in the course of this world, and which is too imperfect to be described by these expressions. W. T. B.—No wonder that Knobel here finds a future judgment. “If,” says he, “one considers this passage without prejudice, he must acknowledge the idea of a formal judgment, occurring, as men suppose, after death.” He considers this so plain and certain as a result of the language, that he denies the genuineness of the verse, because, as he says, Coheleth had no knowledge of such a judgment, or belief in it. . . . I see no way of consistency, but that of supposing a future judgment and retribution. The motives to piety without this are inert and powerless. If you say that the prospect of a judgment during the present life is sufficient, we may well ask how that can be, when Coheleth tells us, that “there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous (8:14); and that all things come alike to all” (9:22)? What retribution is there in all this? A more inconsistent man than Coheleth, it would be difficult to find, putting all his views side by side, provided he has abjured all futurity, and yet insists on retribution to the righteous and the wicked? M. S.

The precise sense I take to be, God will bring into the final judgment everything done by men, together with every secret thing, whether good or evil; all the unspoken words, all the unuttered thoughts of the heart—everything whatever that has moral character and therefore comes within the pale of His moral law and government. Comparing the retributive judgments sent of God upon individuals and nations in time with that final judgment which is reserved for men at the end of the world and whose awards lie in the eternal state, the former relates for the most part not to secret things, but to patent, open transactions, such as are naturally “known and read of all men;” while the latter distinctively includes “every secret thing”—the thoughts of the heart, unseen by mortal eye; the unuttered murmurings; the rebellious spirit; the persistent purpose to remain a rebel against God despite of His unceasing love and tenderest calls of mercy. These secret sins cannot wisely be judged and punished of God until they are fully disclosed both to the sinner himself and to the universe as the ground and reason for the infliction of his righteous penalties. The argument is therefore unanswerable which infers that this judgment, since it takes cognizance not only of some secret things, but of “every secret thing,” must be specially and pre-eminently that final judgment scene at the end of the world of which both our Lord and His apostles spake with the utmost distinctness and solemnity. There is no adequate explanation of the anomalies and irregularities of God’s dealings with men as they stand before us in this life, until we take into consideration the grand idea of eternity, the fact of a future eternal life in which retribution will be made equal and righteous, in perfect harmony with the deeds done in the body, including every secret thing whether good or evil. To the pleasure-loving and pleasure-seeking men of his time before whom his own example had been terribly pernicious, he bears throughout this book a straightforward, strong, and solemn testimony to the vanity of the life they are living; to the wisdom of accepting with gratitude to God the moderate enjoyments of earthly good which are provided in the simple gratification of the few natural wants of the human system; and then he exhorts them to hold forever fresh in their mind the thought of a present God, everywhere and always to be feared and obeyed; whose will should be the great study of mortals, accepted as infinite reason, and whose final retribution for all human deeds should perpetually shield men against temptation and bind them to a docile and true-hearted obedience to all the known commands of the great Maker and Father. With surpassing pertinence and force this book closes, leaving the echo of this judgment trump still resounding in our ear. H. C.

Men have large liberty in the present life, they are free, they enthrone and act out their own choices—God’s moral government is a government of law and motive over free minds; it is reasonable they should be called to an account for this liberty, say what they have done with their freedom—how they chose, how they willed, what they have wrought. On this choosing, willing, and acting their immortality hinges, and before they enter upon their changeless heritage, it is fitting that there should be a summing up and a setting forth of the grounds upon which the eternal issue is declared. So it is nothing arbitrary, but altogether coincident with reason and equity, that men’s eyes should be, through all time, turned forward to a great day of trial and award. And this clear announcement of accountability and its issues crowns its reasonableness. Men are forewarned. They will not be taken by surprise. They understand that every day, swift lapsing between its rising and setting sun, is to come up in review. Stone.

All of us are on our way, in our one decisive lifetime trial; and what are we doing with it? How is it turning? Some are but a little way advanced in it, and all the fine possibilities of our outfit are still on hand, scarcely if at all abridged. Great is their advantage, greater than if a hundred other stages of probation were promised them. Precious are the gifts, and precious are the moments as they fly. Act, every one, as if this eventful experiment were now on its way and passing rapidly. Allow no expectation of another to beguile you. Bring in all your powers and centre them on this point of crisis, now so close at hand, knowing that God’s friendship cannot be too soon secured. Once for all, remember, once for all. And it is appointed unto men once for all to die, but after that the judgment. H. B.

There is scarcely one human interest, institution, undertaking, of which we can predict the course for twenty-four hours; but far above all their chances, independent of them all, subject to no chance, no reconsideration, no postponement, is the judgment. So doubtful and ignorant are we about everything in our own personal lives and fortunes, from this hour onward, that we can be said to be perfectly sure of only two events to come: “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.” And “now,” says the apostle, “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent; because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness.” It must be. And we must appear there—that is, we must be not only present, but our true characters must be made manifest; what is here kept hidden must come to light. Faith will stand out boldly. Purity will shine in garments white as the light. Long-abused innocence will get its due. Misunderstood charity and wrongly suspected integrity will come forth out of their cloud in triumph and joy. “Holy and humble men of heart” will be seen for what they are. Deception and concealment will have had their crafty way long enough. Masks will fall off. Disguises will be stripped aside. The cunning sagacity that has covered up the lurking passion, or the cool calculation will lose its self-possession. Whatever wicked thing we have been at most pains to conceal will be written out as with a pen of fire on our foreheads. There will be only one covering for our shame, and that the robe of the mercy promised to them who believe. F. D. H.

Every man who has secretly injured or defrauded another has had the fraud or the injury inscribed and catalogued for eternity. Every man who has neglected prayer, neglected the Word of God, neglected his own soul, has had the neglect, every instance of it, not only written down in the book of his own conscience and memory, but checked, as it were, in the record of things to be manifested in eternity. Every man, every day, is filling up his character. God keeps a book of character. Every thought, every act, goes into it; every attitude of the moral being. Cheever.

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, “How have I believed?” but “How have I loved?” The test of religion, the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but love. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of His compassion for the world. H. Drummond.

Ecclesiastes was never written to satisfy an Israelite, much less a Christian. It has throughout a tossing of mind and uneasiness of tone; and though it may be of use in awakening spiritual sensibilities, it cannot meet deep spiritual wants. Solomon cannot give us rest. We must go to the Greater than Solomon, who does not so much descant on vexation of spirit as preach to us blessedness, and welcome us to salvation and peace. Solomon tells of the vanity under the sun, and we feel his words to be painfully true; but the Lord Jesus tells us of a good part that shall not be taken away, and which never palls on those who have once learned to value it; and He raises us in union with Himself above this sphere of earthly things under the sun, and puts us in heavenly places as the heirs of an incorruptible and unfading inheritance. In the bounded sphere of life under the sun men will never go further than remember their Creator, and look for death and judgment, and give some heed to the awfulness of God and His demands on them as creatures. But they who are adopted through Christ, quickened and raised up with Him, know the Father, and have His commandments written on their hearts, and set their mind on things above, not on things on the earth. This is the secret of victory over the world while we dwell in it—“even our faith.” This is the rest of the spirit amid ever so many vanities and vexations. “Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory.” D. F.

IN the Hebrew this Book is called the Song of Songs; that is, the most beautiful of songs; in the Vulgate it is entitled Canticum Canticorum; whence it is frequently termed Canticles in English. P. S.

The Jews revered the Song as among the holiest of sacred books. Likening his written works to his noble but less durable fabric of wood and stone, they compared the Proverbs to the outer court of the Temple, Ecclesiastes to the holy place, and the Song of Songs to the holy of holies, the inmost sanctuary of God. A. M. Stuart.

The book bears internal evidence of having been written in his youth and not in his advanced age; in youth his piety seems to have been exemplary and for aught that appears spiritual, judging from his choice of wisdom before all other good, from the zeal with which he devoted himself to the building of the temple, from the striking pertinence, simplicity, and spirituality of his prayer at its dedication; and if he wrote Psalm 72, as is generally supposed, then we have in that Psalm another index of enlarged and just spiritual views of vital truth. This book stands before us with high claims—

“The Song of Songs”—the superlative song of the holy Word. The nation already had in hand the song of Moses and Miriam at the Red Sea; the last song of Moses in review of God’s paternal care of His chosen through their forty years of wandering; the Song of Deborah over the fall of Israel’s foes; and many a song of “the sweet Psalmist of Israel”—with all of which we may suppose this of Solomon to be tacitly compared as the song of all songs, inferior to none, if not eclipsing all. Shall we here assume the point of comparison and standard of value to be only that of poetic embellishment—artistic merit? Must we not assume a broader range of comparison so as to include as well the excellence of its theme and the high moral worthiness of its aim? This book stands in the sacred canon by indefeasible right, counted in among the sacred books by all the standard authorities; endorsed therefore by Christ and His apostles; and, moreover, attributed to Solomon according to the unanimous consent of all sober critics. Now all other Scripture has a high moral purpose—an obvious aim, worthy of the source whence it came. The very idea of a revelation from God to man involves such an aim and purpose. Consequently, we are not only authorized but bound to look for such an aim in this book. If a choice lies between two constructions, otherwise possible, this consideration legitimately comes in with a strong, perhaps decisive bearing upon our choice. If a figurative construction be admissible and accepted, the book at once develops the noblest theme and the highest moral purpose. The love of God to His chosen redeemed people—a love so pure, so deep, so true, so rich in its fruits of blessing, so fraught with reacting influence toward reciprocal love in return—what can be a more worthy theme for poetry and song? What truth ever revealed from God to man should more command our grateful reception and our profound regard? H. C.

The pious instinct of believers in every age and land, aided by the general analogy of Scripture—an analogy running all the way through from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse—has discerned the figurative meaning of this Song of songs, as it is justly entitled, and has joyfully used it for the purposes for which it was made a part of Divine revelation. The poem turns upon the expression of the strongest passion of our nature, and is marked with Oriental abandon, yet, unlike all other pastorals, Latin, Greek, or Eastern, it nowhere needs to be apologized for or to have omissions marked with stars. An unseen but irresistible hand warded off the touch of pollution, and kept the emotion which glows like a very flame of Jehovah from overleaping decorum or modesty. No part of the poetical books more required the hand of revision, since in the common version the connection of the paragraphs was not exhibited, and the force of not a few terms was misunderstood. It would be claiming too much to assert that all infelicities have been removed in the revision, but it is certain that a very great improvement has been made. Chambers.

The Song of Songs is a graceful and highly finished idyl. No pastoral poetry in the world was ever written so exquisite in its music, so bright in its enjoyment of nature, or presenting so true a picture of faithful love. This is a poem not unworthy to be called “the Song of Songs,” as surpassing all others, but it is very different from the poetry of the Psalms. Perovene.—The truthfulness of the poem is found in the primeval alliance of love and nature, of love and rural life, which imparts to the warmest of emotions its simplicity and purity, its healthfulness, and to the rural taste its animation and vividness of enjoyment. Upon this association human nature was at the first constructed; and toward it will human nature ever be tending. . . . Although the allusions are to rural scenes and the incidents of shepherd-life, there is not a taint of rusticity. The persons speak at the impulse of real and passionate emotions; but, in the utterance of these genuine and fond affections, there is always elegance, and there are the ornate habitudes of an advanced Oriental civilization. These love dialogues and fond soliloquies are the loves of the pure in heart. An indication at once of simplicity and refinement, and of purity of temperament in both lovers appears at every turn of this abrupt composition; forever and again is there the commingling of the language of tender fondness with the sense of the beauty and sweetness of nature; the field, the vineyard, the garden, the flowers, the perfumes, the fruits, are not out of sight, from hour to hour, of these pastimes of love. I. T.

Whatever may be true as to a secondary meaning, in its primary sense this book treats of love as between the sexes. It has been conceded generally, if not universally, and it must be, that the love here portrayed is connubial, or wedded love. The early Christian fathers sometimes seem to speak of connubial love, even the purest known to mortals, as necessarily involving more or less of original sin. Hence they denounce unsparingly any construction which finds such love in this song. Our age has advanced too far toward the millennium to endorse such asceticism. In so far as this song commends conjugal fidelity; paints attractively the pure devotion of husband and wife to each other [“my beloved is mine and I am his”]; sets forth the beautiful blending of the love of nature and the charms of rural life with the social endearments of the connubial relation, it has done a noble work for the purity and elevation of our common humanity. H. C.

There are difficulties which beset the interpreter of its meaning; but they are not insuperable. The ingenuity of theorists must be put aside; the fanatical prejudices of allegorists must be disregarded; the solid facts of the case must be kept in view, such as the undoubted canonicity of the book and the almost universal feeling of both the Jewish and Christian Churches that there is valuable spiritual truth conveyed in it. Under such conditions it is not impossible to find an intermediate ground on which to stand, on the one side recognizing the distinctly human characteristics of the work, on the other tracing in it the marks of inspiration, so that it shall be retained as a genuine portion of the Word of God.

Authorship and Date.

The title is not decisive, “The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s;” but the fact that Solomon is not described by any royal title is in favor of the antiquity of the words, and the opinion of critics is almost unanimous that they may be contemporaneous with the book itself. The meaning undoubtedly is, The song which Solomon composed, not The song which celebrates Solomon’s love. When we examine the internal evidence, however, we are left in little doubt that the work is at least of the Solomonic period, and is more likely to have been the production of one whose literary qualities were equal to it than of an author who, while capable of such a masterpiece, still remains unknown. The tendency of recent criticism is to go back to the early view and connect the work with the age of Solomon. Redford.

The diction of the Song (on the character of which several critics have insisted in arguing for a later date) is unquestionably peculiar. The poem is written in pure Hebrew of the best age, but with a large sprinkle of uncommon idioms and some very remarkable and apparently foreign words. Some of these may possibly have been provincialisms, and attributable, as

Ewald assumes, to the writer’s familiarity with the dialect of Northern Palestine. Diction apart, most of the references and allusions in the Song would lead us to assign it, in accordance with its title, to the age of Solomon; nor does there seem sufficient reason for departing from the traditional belief that Solomon was himself the author. The time in which the Song was written was unquestionably one of peace and general prosperity, such as occurred but very rarely in the checkered history of Israel. All the indications concur with this in fixing that time as the age of Solomon. T. L. K.

There are many references in the book which indicate the time of its composition, and which could scarcely be introduced as they are by a writer at a later period. The scene is laid partly in the beautiful northern country and partly in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and in both cases there is a peaceful prosperity and abundance which corresponds to the age of the great king. The knowledge of national objects of all kinds and of the whole land of Israel befits the royal pen (1 Kings 4:23; 5:13). The familiarity with a great variety of lovely objects and scenes, the reference to the splendor of the royal household, and the poetic beauty of the language throughout make it probable that it was the recollection of the early life of the monarch employed by him at a subsequent time to embody Divine truth. The following are some of the objects introduced names of plants and of animals in thirty-one instances; works of art in ten instances; spices and perfumes, wine of Lebanon, pools of Hebron, forests of Carmel, tents of Kedar, mountains of Gilead, the beauty of Tirzah and Jerusalem, the royal crown, the royal bed of state, the royal bodyguard, the royal espousals, and the connection of the queen-mother with them. While such allusions do not absolutely prove that King Solomon himself was the author, they confirm the likelihood that it dates from his age, and show that it breathed much of his spirit, which was both intensely Jewish and cosmopolitan, dignified and human, profound and poetic. The substance of the book, too, accords with the facts of Solomon’s history.

The argument for a later date derived from the language itself is of very little force. It is assumed that Aramaic forms certainly betoken the decay of the Hebrew language. But this is by no means the case. In compositions of a highly poetical and lyrical character such forms are found throughout the Old Testament, as in the Song of Deborah, in Job, and in Amos. The language of the Song generally is much more like the Hebrew of the Augustan age of the language than of times when its native vigor was in decay, and it was rapidly becoming a dead language. There is no work subsequent to the captivity to be compared with it in literary power, nor can we suppose that all reference to the changes in the national life could have been lacking had it come from a writer of the later times. It is utterly destitute of all philosophical thought, which would certainly have crept into it had it been composed during the Greek period. On the whole, we can scarcely doubt that it is an early work, and the critical authorities which would dispute that conclusion are of no great weight. Redford.

[For an effective refutation of arguments in favor of a recent date to the Song, see Speaker’s (Bible) Commentary, vol. 4, p. 700. B.]

The Literary Form and Method of the Poem.

Critics have been almost as much divided on the literary questions arising out of this remarkable book as theological writers have been on the interpretation of its meaning. The chief authorities for the unity of the composition are Ewald, Umbreit, Delitzsch, and Zöckler. The following considerations must be acknowledged by every candid reader to be amply sufficient to support the view that the poem is not a mere collection of fragments or isolated songs, but has a definite aim and is the product, at least in arrangement, of some one superintending mind. The name of Solomon, and of “the king,” who is plainly Solomon, is prominent in the poem throughout. The different parts seem to be strung together by the introduction of a chorus somewhat after the manner of a Greek play; and the lover and his beloved interchange the language of affection in a kind of dialogue. The references to the family of the bride are consistent throughout. The mother is introduced, never the father, but only the brothers, as though the father were deceased, which would point to a particular history (see 1:6; 3:4; 8:2). Again, the occurrence again and again of the same or similar words as a refrain, and the repetition of similar illustrations and figures, suggest one mind at work. The bride speaks in much the same language several times. In chaps, 2:16 and 6:3 she says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” In chap, 2:5 and 5:8, “I am sick with love,” and over and over again she uses the expression, “he whom my soul loves.” She is addressed by the chorus in a similar manner throughout. Delitzsch rightly says, “He who has any perception whatever of the unity of a work of art in human discourse will receive an impression of external unity from the Song of Solomon which excludes all right to sunder anything from it as of a heterogeneous character or belonging to different periods, and which compels to the conclusion of an internal unity that may still remain an enigma to the Scripture exposition of the present, but must nevertheless exist." Redford.

Though the Song is a well-organized poetical whole, its unity is made up of various parts and sections, of which several have so much independence and individuality as to have been not inaptly called idyls, i.e., short poetic pieces of various forms containing each a distinct subject of representation. These shorter pieces are all, however, so closely linked by a common purpose, as to form, when viewed in their right connection, constituent parts of a larger and complete poem. To distinguish these parts, and observe the relation in which they stand to one another and the general subject, is a primary duty of the careful interpreter, who, in making his division, will be guided, partly by observation of poetical structure and sequences of thought, and partly by refrains and recurrent phrases, used it would seem of set purpose by the author of the poem to indicate the commencement or the close of its various sections.

The Song consists entirely of dialogue or monologue, the writer nowhere speaking in his own person; and the dialogue is connected with the development of a certain action. There are, we believe, only three chief speakers, “the bride,” “the beloved,” and a chorus of “virgins” or “daughters of Jerusalem,” having each their own manner and peculiar words and phrases, and these so carefully adhered to as to help us, in some cases of doubt, to determine the particular speaker. It will be found, moreover, that the two halves, or main divisions of the Song have throughout numerous well-balanced contrasts and correspondences; in the one the bride ascends to Jerusalem, and at the king’s invitation remains with him there, in the other at her request he returns with her to Shunem; in the one, the beloved seeks and wins the bride, in the other she seeks and obtains her will from him; in the one he claims her self-surrender, in the other she demands his vow of fidelity. In the first half of the Song the chorus sing the praise of the king, in the second they celebrate the beauty of the bride and her triumph over him. Finally, in each of these main divisions the bride relates to her companions a significant dream in order more fully to express her feelings toward the beloved (3:1-5;

5:2-8), and in each she sings at his request a strain of peculiar import which seems to have a special music for his ear (2:17; 8:14). These and other peculiarities, which impart to the Song of Songs its unique and enigmatical character, and have proved a crux to the soberest expositors, seem chiefly due to its idealizing treatment of an actual history felt at the time, and especially by the writer, to be profoundly interesting and significant. T. L. K.

The literary problems arising out of the mixed character of the composition seem to be solved in the higher question of its aim and purpose. It is the adaptation of human affection and sentiment to religious uses. We need not, therefore, wait for a satisfactory theory of its literary style, but rather be content to arrange its contents as they dispose themselves by the natural divisions of the subject-matter. It has been observed by Dr. W. Henry Green: “The scenes portrayed and the displays of mutual fondness indulged seem to be grouped rather than linked. They stand forth in their distinctness as exquisitely beautiful, and reflecting as much light on each other and on the subject which they illustrate and adorn as though they had been gathered up into the artificial unity of a consecutive narration or a dramatic plot. And this looser method of arrangement or aggregation, with its abrupt translation and sudden changes of scene, is no less graceful and impressive, while it is more in harmony with the Oriental mind and style of composition generally than the vigorous, external, and formal concatenation which the more logical but less proud Indo-European is prone to demand.” All that seems necessary to do as a help to the literary appreciation of the poem is to indicate the general principle and method of its arrangement, which may be expressed thus: Love is first set forth simply in its ecstatic fervor of emotion in the mutual delight of the lover and the beloved. It is then celebrated as nuptial love in the rejoicing of the bridegroom and the bride. And in the second half of the poem, from chap. 5:1 to the end, love is set forth as tried, for a time in danger of being lost, ultimately recovered and expanding into the fulness of joy. There are thus three parts in the poem. Part I. extends from the beginning to the fifth verse of the third chapter, and may be described as The Rapture of First Love. Part II. extends from chap. 3:6 to chap. 5:1, and may be called Nuptial Rejoicing. Part III. extends from chap. 5:2 to chap. 8:14, and may be named Separation and Reunion. But while these main divisions are traceable in the composition, there are subdivisions which enable us to arrange the whole into a series of lyrical pieces, and to discern in the language some distinction of speakers and some variety of scene and action which give a wonderful life and unity to the poem.

The opening words prepare us for the general scope of the whole work, which is to set forth the theme of True Love, and thus to lead our thoughts to the highest ideal of love. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for thy love is better than wine.” We are prepared for the rapture of first love, which is poured out in the first part in exquisite dialogue and monologue. First, Shulamith, the beloved, is waiting for the arrival of her lover, and surrounded by the chorus of ladies pours out her rapture and longing, which is responded to by her admiring companions (1:1-8). Second, the royal lover appears, and the rapturous joy of mutual delight is poured out in the banqueting house (1:9-2:7), closing with the refrain of serene contentment addressed by the beloved woman to the fair companions of her chamber. “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awaken love until it please.” Third, in the bright, pure atmosphere of this newfound rapture the beloved woman sings the episodes of her love, tells how the loved one wooed her, how the first love mingled with the loveliness of the opening spring and summer and the delights of a pastoral life, how the heart longed for him until he was found, and when it found him would not let him go, concluding with the same refrain of satisfied yearning as in chap. 2:7. This third subdivision of Part I. occupies from chap. 2:8 to chap. 3:5, and contains some of the loveliest poetry in the whole composition.

Part II. Nuptial Rejoicing (3:6-5:1). Here we have first a description of the nuptial festival, and then the bride and bridegroom rejoicing in one another. First, the litter of Solomon is seen surrounded with his bodyguard advancing toward Jerusalem. The daughters of Jerusalem go forth to meet him. He is crowned with the splendid crown made by his mother for the day of his espousal. It is but a glimpse of the festival, but it suggests the whole (3:6-11). Second, the greater part of the beautiful song which follows (4:1-15) is the address of the bridegroom to the bride; but the bride responds with a brief rhapsody of delight, in which she surrenders herself entirely to her husband (4:16): “Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his precious fruits;” to which the bridegroom responds with the words of delight and satisfaction (5:1). This concludes the first half of the poem. We then pass into another region. The cloud passes over the face of the sun. The brightness of the bridal bliss is obscured for awhile. The bride tells of her forgetfulness and the recovery of her peace. This we may call Separation and Reunion—Part III. (5:2-8:14). The subdivisions of this concluding portion may be distinguished as follows: Under the figure of a dream the bride describes the temporary separation of her heart from the bridegroom; her misery; her longing and searching for the beloved object, and her appeal to her fair companions to help her (5:2-8). The sympathizing companions of the bride draw out the fulness of her love by their questions, asking “why she loves him,” and whither he is gone from her? (5:9-6:3). The Royal Bridegroom returns to his bride and rejoices once more in her (6:4-9). The companions of the bride, recognizing the effect of the renewed bliss in the appearance of the bride, burst out into a song of praise of her beauty (6:10). The bride responds with a declaration of her ecstatic delight (6:11, 12). The companions of the bride pour out their praises as they behold the bride in her dance of ecstasy (6:13-7:5). The royal bridegroom, approaching the bride, delights in her attractions (7:6-9). The bride, full of satisfaction in the love of her husband, invites him to return with her to the scenes of her maiden life, and there his love would beautify all that was familiar to her. In the thought of such bliss she again adjures her companions to acknowledge the perfection of her peace (7:10-8:4). Bride and bridegroom are together in the restful joy of a simple country life, exchanging sweet remembrances and confidences (8:5-7). In the peace of the old home others are thought of, and the bliss of the bride overflows upon her kindred, to which the royal bridegroom responds and the bride rejoices (8:8-12). The royal bridegroom, delighting in his bride, bids her sing (8:13). The poem ends with the sweet melody of the bride’s voice, inviting the bridegroom to hasten to her side in one of her familiar love songs: “Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.” Thus the voice of the bride, which opens the poem, lingers on the ear in its close, and suggests to us that the whole is as if from her standpoint the aspiration of an ideal love, breathing itself out in desire after the beloved object—that the king may delight himself in her beauty.

Theories of Interpretation.

No one can accept the Song of Solomon as a book of Scripture, the canonical authority of which is undoubted, without forming some theory of interpretation which shall justify the position of such a book among the sacred writings. If the sacred writings are no more than a collection of Jewish literature, in which there would naturally be great variety, and not necessarily in every instance a lofty spiritual aim, then we can regard the Song of Solomon as Herder did, as a collection of beautiful Eastern songs, and there is no need to seek in them either unity of purpose or special significance. But it is simply incredible that such a book, if merely of literary or moral worth, should be introduced into the collection of Jewish Scriptures to be an inexplicable exception to the whole volume. There is no more beautiful book in the Old Testament than the Song of Solomon. We cannot be right in leaving it unstudied and unused. We must deal with it as a part of Holy Scripture. As far as possible, therefore, we must put it in intelligible relation to the Word of God, as a progressive revelation of Divine truth. We must understand what is the idea of the book, and how that idea is set forth in the form in which the poem is composed. We proceed, therefore, to give an account of the different theories which have been held as to the interpretation of the book, and so to justify that which we accept.

The theories of interpretation may be classed under three heads. First, those which assume that the work is an allegory, that the facts contained in it are merely employed for the purpose of framework, the language being mystical and figurative. Secondly, those which are founded upon a naturalistic basis, taking the literary features of the work as the first in importance, and regarding it as some form of love poem or collection of erotic songs. Thirdly, between these two extremes stands the typical view, which, without discarding the historical and literary basis, not to be disputed on the very face of the work, endeavors to justify its position in the Word of God by analogy with other portions of Scripture, in which natural and national facts and interests are imbued with spiritual significance. In each of these points of view there is truth, as there is variety of interpretation. We shall be best prepared to understand the results of the most able modern criticism by placing these different theories clearly side by side.

I. The Allegorical Theory. This is much the most ancient method of interpretation. It is of no consequence to prove that there were any real persons, such as Solomon and Shulamith, whose love for one another is celebrated in this book. It might be so or it might not be so; these things are an allegory. The deepest truths are set forth in the dress of these words of human affection. Some have found in them God and His Church throughout all time. Others the historical and political relations of the Jewish people. Others have sought in them profound philosophical mysteries and cabalistic secrets. There is one point, and one alone, in which all these allegorical interpreters agree, and that is, that nothing is to be made of the book taken literally, that there is no consistency and order in it if we attempt to regard it historically; therefore we have nothing in it but words, which may be applied in any manner which is spiritually or otherwise profitable. Such a view condemns itself, for it deprives us of any ground of confidence in seeking the true interpretation. That surely must be the mind of the Spirit which best accords with the facts of the case. If there is not a foundation of historical truth underlying all the Scripture, then it is a mere unsubstantial cloud which may be blown away by the changes in the atmosphere of human opinion. It is against the analogy of Scripture. It opens the way to extravagance and folly, by removing all bounds and inviting the license of mere individual speculation. It repels the common sense of the ordinary reader of Scripture, and simply shuts the book which it misinterprets, so that many refuse to look into it at all. “This mode of expounding each separate particular, not with a view to its place in the description in which it stands, but as a distinct reference to the spiritual object typified by it, necessarily leads both to a serious distortion of the lessons to be conveyed, and to a marring and mangling of the symmetry and beauty of the objects depicted.” The rise of the allegorical method can be traced chiefly to the Alexandrian school, and to its great representative, Origen. It was the fruit of philosophy in union with Christianity. Origen wrote two homilies on the Song of Solomon, which were translated by Jerome, and a commentary, part of which still remains in the Latin of Rufinus. The idea of the book, according to Origen, is the longing of the soul after God, and the sanctifying and elevating influence of Divine love; but he varies in his explanation of the allegory, now taking it of the individual and then of the Church. His example was followed by later Christian writers, as by Eusebius, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Cyril,

Macarius, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, Augustine, and Chrysostom. There were slight differences among these early Fathers in their application of the method, but they all adopted it. In the time of the reformers, when biblical study received an entirely new impulse and direction, we find the allegorical method, while not altogether discarded, somewhat modified by the historical and critical spirit which was growing in the Church. In the middle ages we meet with larger and fuller commentaries, in which the allegorical method is wrought out with great ingenuity. Until we come to the time of Keil and Hengstenberg we have no really sensible defence of the theory, and it is scarcely necessary to make the remark that their defence is a virtual surrender, for their use of the allegorical method is so moderate that it barely exceeds the ideal and typical view, and is substantially the same as that of Delitzsch and Zöckler. Keil says: “The book depicts in dramatico-lyrical, responsive songs, under the allegory of the bridal love of Solomon and Shulamith, the loving communion between the Lord and His Church, according to its ideal nature as it results from the choice of Israel to be the Church of the Lord. According to this, every disturbance of that fellowship springing out of Israel’s infidelity leads to an ever firmer establishment of the covenant of love, by means of Israel’s return to the true covenant God, and this God’s unchangeable love. Yet we are not to trace in the poem the historical course of the covenant relation, as if a veil of allegory had been thrown over the principal critical events in the theocratic history.” Hengstenberg argues for the allegorical view from the use of similar erotic language in the Psalms and prophets, as well as in the general tone of the Old Testament. The beloved of the heavenly Solomon is the daughter of Zion; the whole, therefore, must be explained of Messiah and His Church. But he proceeds to attempt an application of this view to the details of the language, in which he shows that it can only be accepted in a modified form. The only other names which require mention in connection with the allegorical theory are those of Thrupp, Wordsworth, and Stowe. The fault of all these writers, able and learned as they are, is that they push their theory too far, and that they are led away by it into a misuse of Scripture to support that which does not fairly rest upon it.

But while the allegorical method, as a formal treatment, may be erroneous, it recognizes the spiritual meaning and value of the book. The allegorist is certainly right in demanding that a distinct religious purpose shall be the vital centre of any system of interpretation put forth. As Isaac Taylor has remarked in his Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, “the book has given animation, and depth, and intensity, and 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 in this instance that which suits them, for purposes, sometimes of mockery, sometimes of luxury, sometimes of disbelief. Quite unconscious of these possessions, and 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.’”

II. We proceed to describe the theories of interpretation which have been based upon a naturalistic principle. These may be styled The Erotic, as they all regard the work as a collection of erotic songs, put together simply 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 Idyls 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 attempted to trace a dramatic unity and progress in the whole, and have elaborated a history on which to found the drama, while those who have renounced all such attempts to find a drama in Hebrew poetry have yet clung to the idea of an epithalamium, composed on the occasion of Solomon’s marriage, either with the Egyptian princess or some Israelitish bride, and have endeavored 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 which is so often impure, 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. Herder wrote a separate work on Solomon’s Song, treating it as a collection of songs of love, and as intended to describe ideal human love, for the purpose of setting forth the example of purity and innocence when it was most needed in the ancient world. His criticism is in many respects valuable and highly aesthetic. He draws attention to the exquisite poetry of the songs, and to their surpassing worth as an ideal of human sentiment. But delightful reading as Herder’s work undoubtedly is, it is yet but little help to the biblical student, as there is no attempt to follow out the religious intimations of the language, or to find in it any parabolical intention. The rationalistic critics have, most of them, regarded the songs as fragmentary and isolated, and thus have deprived themselves of their true position as commentators; for if there be no unity in the book, it is hard to find any basis on which to rest the explanation of its meaning as a whole. To suppose a sacred work written simply in praise of human feeling, or even to cherish the ideal of human relationship, is to resist the analogy of Scripture. It may be doubted if even the Proverbs of Solomon should be regarded from so wide and general a point of view as that. There is a little advance upon the barren, dreary emptiness of this rationalistic criticism in what is called the dramatic theory of interpretation, which has received a considerable accession of interest during the present century by the development of a new historical hypothesis by which it is attempted to explain the dramatic unity and progress of the composition. Jacobi in 1771 led the way, in a work in which he professed to defend the Song of Solomon from the reproaches brought against it, supposing Solomon to have fallen in love with a young married woman, who, with the husband, is brought to Jerusalem. The husband is induced to divorce his wife for Solomon’s sake, and she is alarmed at the king’s approach, and cries out for her husband’s help. The whole is a worthless attempt to work out a baseless hypothesis, which is entirely out of harmony with the pure spirit of the whole book. Other German critics have followed Jacobi in endeavoring to unfold the dramatic unity of the poem, but none have gone further than the great historian, Ewald, who has translated it with an introduction and critical remarks (1826) (see also his work on The Poets of the Old Testament—1866). His view, as set forth in the latter work, is that it was actually prepared for representation. This opinion is supported by the hypothesis that there is an actual love history at the basis of the poem; a young shepherd, of the north of Palestine, being the real lover of Shulamith, from whom Solomon desires to alienate her affection; and that the main idea of the book is the successful resistance of Shulamith to the allurements of the royal lover and her faithfulness to her first love, to whom she is restored by the king in acknowledgment of her virtue and as an act of homage to faithful affection. This theory has been adopted by many critics in later times, as by Hitzig, Vaihinger, Renan, Reville, and Ginsburg; but it is not only exceedingly improbable in itself, but out of harmony with the place of the work in the canon of Scripture. Even if we could suppose Solomon capable of writing such a history of his own delinquencies, we could still less understand how such a “confession” should be incorporated in the sacred volume. There may be expressions in the mouth of the bride which seem at first sight to favor such a theory, but the position of Solomon throughout is quite inconsistent with the idea of illicit solicitation, or indeed with any other relation to Shulamith than that of chaste and legal marriage. The only forcible argument in favor of this view, which is generally called “the shepherd” theory, is the use of language in reference to the bridegroom which supposes him a shepherd; but this is explained by the fact which lies on the surface of the poem, that the bride is one brought up in country life, and who in the purity and simplicity of her heart addresses even Solomon himself as her shepherd. The conclusion of the poem bears this out, for Solomon is so captivated by the beauty of her character that he follows her to her native region and rural home, where he is surrounded by her relations, to whom he vouchsafes his royal favor. It must not be overlooked, that by this highly artistic method not only is the contrast between the royal splendor and the pastoral simplicity heightened, but ample scope is given for the introduction of spiritual analogies which must be granted to be the main purpose of the book and the justification of its place in the canon. The theory is seen in all its improbability in the form which is given it by Renan, who represents the shepherd following his beloved one to the foot of the tower of the seraglio where she is confined, being admitted secretly by her, and then exclaiming, in the presence of the chorus, in a state of rapturous delight: “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse,” etc. (5:1), carrying her home when she is at last released from the king’s harem, asleep in his arms, and laying her under an apple-tree when she awakes to call upon her lover to set her as a seal upon his arm, etc. The shepherd hypothesis is also defective in another respect, and that is, that it fails to give a clear explanation of the two dreams which Shulamith narrates, which certainly must both refer to the same object of love, and would seem to imply that there was some defect of love on her part. The spiritual interpretation is perfectly simple and plain; the bride representing the soul of man, and therefore its inferiority to that with which it would be united. But if we suppose Shulamith shut up in a harem, the representation is most forced and unnatural, for she certainly could not have either wandered by night in the city of Jerusalem, nor dreamed of such an adventure. The whole hypothesis is rendered unnecessary by the arrangement which disposes the language among three classes of speakers only, the bride, the chorus of ladies, and the king. Thus the shepherd lover is identified with the royal bridegroom, and the basis is still left secure on which a spiritual interpretation of the whole can be based. Notwithstanding the very ingenious attempts made by Ginsburg and Reville to defend the theory, it must be given up, with all the erotic explanations, as untenable and lowering to the character of the poem. Redford.

“The hypothesis” so called “of the shepherd-lover,” though favored by a majority of modern interpreters, and worked out by some with great ingenuity, necessitates the introduction of many forced expositions and of thoughts and sentiments alien from the purity and sweetness of the whole composition. This hypothesis assumes that there are two lovers in the Song, one a faithful, simple-minded shepherd, the other a magnificent, voluptuous king, by each of whom the affections of a Shulamite maiden are alternately solicited, while she, faithful in her allegiance to her shepherd-lover, rejects with scorn the monarch’s blandishments, and finally compels him to abandon his pursuit. There is, we are persuaded, but one lover in the Song, and one object of his affection, without rival or disturbing influence on either side. The beloved of the bride is in truth a king, and if she occasionally speaks of him as a shepherd, she intimates herself (6:2, 3) that she is speaking figuratively. It is, moreover, quite in accordance with her character, as consistently delineated throughout the poem, that being herself a rustic maiden of at least comparatively lowly station she should, by such an appellation, seek to draw down him “whom her soul loveth” (1:7; 3:1-4), though he be the King of Israel, within the narrower circle of thoughts and aspirations, in which she is herself accustomed to move. And, therefore, while the whole poem breathes of almost more than regal splendor and magnificence the bride is nowhere represented as dwelling with any pride or satisfaction on the riches or grandeur of her beloved, but only on what he is to her in his own person as “chief among ten thousand and altogether desirable,” thus exhibiting that characteristic of womanly affection which Cornelius à Lapide attributes to her in words erroneously ascribed by him to Augustine: “Love heedless of dignity is devoid also of fear. The loving soul, upborne by her aspirations and drawn by her desires, closes her eyes to majesty, but opens them to delight.”

We must venture to say of the theory itself (which with various shades of interpretation a crowd of modern critics are agreed in maintaining), that the more we examine it in detail, the more thoroughly unsound it appears to be in its main positions. The readiest way to its refutation might perhaps be found in a careful critical discussion and comparison of the numerous and often mutually destructive forms which this one hypothesis has been made to assume in the hands of even its most able advocates. T. L. K.

The piece can only be put into this shape by arbitrary transpositions, and the most enormous drafts upon the imagination. The chronological order of action is almost inverted. In the first chapter the girl is supposed to enter the seraglio of Solomon, but it is only in the third chapter that she comes to Jerusalem for the first time; while in the sixth chapter she is carried away finally by the chariots of Solomon; and the eighth chapter obstinately refuses to fit into the frame at all. Indeed, M. Renan himself seems to admit that he can make nothing of the whole passage from chaps. 6:11 to 7:12. Bishop W. Alexander.

The very power of the breath of inspiration which fills the pages of this book, so unique in its kind, might suffice to make it clear that its meaning could not be limited to the mere love-story which forms its plot. How can we fail to see that the splendor of an ideal of a higher nature illumines all these figures, and crowns them with a heavenly glory? Hence the incomparable force of the poetic inspiration of the Canticle. The mystical interpretation has erred, no doubt, in giving no historical basis to its composition; but the grossly realistic explanations of the modern school err no less certainly in not recognizing in the situation and in the historical personages symbols of the sublime theocratic ideas, the contemplation of which inspires the mind of the author, and gives to his work that superior brilliancy which distinguishes it from all merely erotic productions. Here, as well as in the Book of Job, the real drama with which the author’s mind is filled, is that which is acted behind the curtain; it is left for the reader to guess it. Godet.

III. The Typical View. It should be frankly admitted by those who reject both the allegorical and the erotic interpretation of the Song of Solomon, that no theory can be sound which does not recognize what forms the principal distinctive element in each of these views. We cannot overlook the fact that the book is a religious book, and is placed as such in the canon; therefore in some sense and to some extent it must be allegorical; that is, there must be a deeper meaning in it than that which appears on the surface, and that meaning must be in harmony with the rest of Scripture. So with regard to the various erotic and naturalistic explanations, it cannot be denied that there is a historical basis on which the whole rests, so that as poetry there is an ideal human element running through it which gives it both vitality and form. It is the attempt to carry it out to an extreme which has vitiated the theory in each case. The main principle can be preserved without acceptance of the details. It is true, as Zöckler has observed, that it was “the greatly preponderating inclination of the Fathers in the middle ages, which soon obtained exclusive sway, to plunge immediately and at once into the spiritual sense, which stifled at its birth every attempt to assert at the same time a historical sense, and branded it with the same anathema as the profane-erotic interpretation of Theodore of Mopsuestia.” But the spirit of the Reformation broke the spell of the allegorists. The desire to know the mind of the Spirit led to a truer searching of the Scriptures. The two great English names in connection with a revival of the study of the book on a more intelligent foundation are John Lightfoot (1684) and Bishop Lowth (1753). The latter, especially in his Prelections in Hebrew Poetry, somewhat after the style of Herder, led the way in this country to a profounder attention to the literary form and critical examination of the Bible. Lowth’s view is substantially that which has been adopted by the majority of evangelical writers since his time, that the book is not to be regarded as a “continual metaphor” nor as a “parable properly so called,” but rather as a “mystical allegory in which a higher sense is superinduced upon a historical verity.” The two great German commentators, Keil and

Delitzsch, substantially agree in their view, which, while admitting the allegorical intent of the book, refuses to see hidden meanings in every detail of the historical basis. One would find, more distinctly than the other, reference to the Church of Christ, both in Israel and in the new dispensation, but both agree that the love of Solomon for his bride is idealized, and so used spiritually. Keil sums up his view thus: “It depicts in dramatized lyrical expression songs under the allegory of the bridal love of Solomon and Shulamith, the loving communion between the Lord and His Church, according to its ideal nature as it results from the choice of Israel to be the Church of the Lord. According to this, every disturbance of that fellowship, springing out of Israel’s infidelity, leads to an even firmer establishment of the covenant of love, by means of Israel’s return to the true covenant God, and this God’s unchangeable love. Yet we are not to trace in the poem the historical course of the covenant relation, as if a veil of allegory had been thrown over the principal events in the theocratic history.” The Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, in the Speaker’s Commentary, has accepted the suggestion which seems the most natural, that the history which is involved in the Song is genuine, and that it refers to “some shepherd maiden of Northern Palestine by whose beauty and nobility of soul the great king has been captivated; that as the work of one endued by inspiration with that wisdom which ‘overseeth all things’ (Wis. 8: 23), and so contemplates them from the highest point of view, it is in its essential character an ideal representation of human love in the relation of marriage; that which is universal and common in its operation to all mankind being here set forth in one grand typical instance.” “No allegorical method of exposition,” he rightly observes, “which declines attempting to elucidate an independent literal sense, on the plea that such endeavor would involve the interpretation in a succession of improprieties and contradictions,” should be accepted. It is both “untrue and dishonoring to a sacred and canonical book.” The fundamental idea he would take to be, “the awful, all-constraining, the at once levelling and elevating power of the mightiest and most universal of human affections; and the two axes on which the main action of the poem revolves are the twofold invitation, the king’s invitation to the bride on bringing her to Jerusalem (4: 8), the bride’s to the king in recalling him to Shunem (7: 11); in these two invitations and their immediate consequences—the willing obedience of the bride and the ready condescension of the king, the first surrender on her part and the final vow on his—the writer of the Song seems to have intended to exhibit the twofold energy, both for elevation and abasement, of that affection, to the delineation of which his work is dedicated.”

While we willingly coincide in the general truth of these remarks, we incline to the view which Keil has expressed so moderately, that the main purpose of the book is not to glorify a human sentiment or relationship, which seems out of place in a Hebrew book, but rather using the ideal human feeling and relationship to lead the soul of man into the thought of its fellowship with God, the condescending privilege which is included in that fellowship, the exaltation of man which it brings with it, and the mutual character of religion, both in the individual and in the Church, as based upon the mystical union of God and His creature and their interchange of communications. We must not be deterred from a moderate and chastened employment of type in the interpretation of Scripture by the abuse which has been only too frequently made of it. No doubt, if we look above the historical or natural or literary aspects of the book, it is easy to find in it the meanings which we may be tempted to put there, but the same thing may be said of the Lord’s parables and of all Scripture. The historical, literary, and spiritual aspects blend in one, and that interpretation which is given to the language is most likely to be after the mind of the Spirit which follows His own method and harmonizes with that which He inspired the man of God to set before us, and His Church to hand down to us with the seal of its approbation upon it. The commentary must always justify, or otherwise, its own main principle; and if as a whole it satisfies the language, it cannot be very far astray. It has been objected by some that we ought not to employ Solomon as in any sense a type of God or of Christ, because he was a sensual man; but such a principle would simply exclude all types, for they must be inferior in worth to that which they typify. The patriarchs were far from perfect men in their moral features, but they were plainly employed in Scripture typically as well as historically. David himself, the leading typical character and norm of the Old Testament, was guilty of great sins. Moreover, while Solomon appears in the poem itself as a sensual Eastern monarch, there is no reference to the sensuality of his life. Nor need we doubt that sensualist as he became, and degraded as he was in the latter part of his life, he would in the earlier portion of his manhood be capable of the sincere attachment portrayed in the Song. At the same time it may be allowed that the facts are idealized. Fundamentally they are historical. For a religious purpose they are lifted up into the region of poetry. To a considerable extent the same may be said of the Book of Job, which builds a splendid poem on a basis of facts. There remains, then, only in conclusion to justify this typical interpretation by showing that it is in analogy with other parts of Scripture. It will not be denied by any one, however much opposed to allegory or type, that the metaphor of marriage is common through the Old Testament in connection with the exhortation to covenant faithfulness. The fifth, fiftieth, and sixty-second chapters of Isaiah and the first few chapters of Hosea, with the opening words of Malachi, will suffice to remind the reader that it was an illustration which all the sacred writers made use of. It should again be remembered that we have in the forty-fifth Psalm an instance of what the title describes as a “Song of Loves” or Epithalamium, which no one doubts was composed on the occasion of Solomon’s marriage, or on some similar occasion in Israel. It is only a very extreme rejection of typical interpretation which would refuse to such a Psalm any higher application than that which appears upon the surface, especially with such language in it as v. 6: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a right sceptre.” Admitting that such terms might be at first employed only as royal adulation and homage, it can scarcely be doubted that their place in the Word of God is due to the fact that the Israelitish king was regarded as the type of Him who was called by the believing Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile, “the Son of God, the King of Israel” (John 1:49). The reference to Messiah was certainly believed by the Jews themselves, as we see from the introduction of it into the Chaldee paraphrase and others of the Jewish writings, and as such it is cited in Hebrews (1:8,9). No satisfactory explanation of the Psalm can be made out on any other view. It must be admitted, too, that the use of metaphors formed from the marriage relation and from the language of human affection, in application to the highest intercourse of the soul with the objects of faith, is common both in our Lord’s discourses and in the writings of the apostles. It is especially prominent in the Apocalypse. The Church is the bride, the Lamb’s wife. Would such metaphors be employed by the Apostle John unless he had found them already in the Old Testament? Would the Apostle Paul have spoken as he does of the mystical meaning of marriage as setting forth the union between Christ and His Church, unless the Scriptures had familiarized the people of God with the symbol? We entirely sympathize with that revulsion of feeling with which healthy minds turn away from the extravagant fancifulness and arbitrariness of the allegorical school of commentators. But we refuse to follow those who, in their avoidance of one extreme, fly to the other. The book cannot be a mere literary product. We must find for it some true place in the sacred volume. “Shall we then,” asks Mr. Kingsbury in the Speaker’s Commentary, “regard it as a mere fancy, which for so many ages past has been wont to find in the pictures and melodies of the Song of Songs types and echoes of the actings and emotions of the highest love, of love Divine, in its relations to humanity; which, if dimly discerned through their aid by the synagogue, have been amply revealed in the Gospel to the Church? Shall we not still claim to trace, in the noble and gentle history thus presented, foreshadowings of the infinite condescensions of incarnate love?—that love which, first stooping in human form to visit us in our low estate in order to seek out and win its object, and then raising along with itself a sanctified humanity to the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6), is finally awaiting there an invitation from the mystic bride to return to earth once more and seal the union for eternity (Rev. 22:17)? With such a conception of the character and purpose of the poem, we may at any rate sympathize with the glowing language of Bernard concerning it. ‘This Song excels all other songs of the Old Testament. They being, for the most part, songs of deliverance from captivity, Solomon for such had no occasion. In the height of glory, singular in wisdom, abounding in riches, secure in peace, he here by Divine inspiration sings the praises of Christ and His Church, the grace of holy love, the mysteries of the eternal marriage, yet all the while like Moses putting a veil before his face, because at that time there were few or none that could gaze upon such glories.’” It is unworthy of any devout interpreter of such a book to despise and disparage the spiritual element in it. What so many of God’s people have recognized must be substantially the mind of the Spirit. Redford.

The typical interpretation seems safest and best. It admits a literal basis for the Song, while it refuses to be content with a literal sense. It assigns to the book a full spiritual significance, but saves it from fantastic or eccentric meanings. There is an earthly theme—the love of Solomon and Shulamith. The Song celebrates a pure affection, and a wedded bliss. But it has, at the same time, a deeper meaning and a loftier aim, well entitling the poem to its place in Holy Scripture. Typically it suggests and depicts the love, sacred and intense, which unites the Lord Himself to the people, who form, in inspired language, His “Bride.” Solomon is here—and then, typically, the Greater than Solomon. A beautiful bride is here—and then, typically, Israel, and also the Church, adorned as a bride for her husband. D. F.

The great central idea is that the relation of God to His people in covenant with Himself is analogous to the well-known marriage relation in human society. The bride is not precisely the individual Christian, but the Church as a whole. It seems to me the part of wisdom to give scope to this fact so far forth as to guard us against abuses, but not so far as to rob the book of its precious applications to the heart and life of the individual Christian. For it must be true that in loving the Church, God loves the individual Christian souls that compose it. We learn from this Song that the love between God and His people should be reciprocal. In the marriage covenant each party professes and binds itself to love the other. A sense of love received should prompt to responsive love in return. So a sense of God’s love to us should quicken and intensify our love to Him. In all true marriage it is assumed that this mutual love of the parties is and should be exceedingly strong. One of the first lessons taught us in this Song is the strength of the love which God bears toward His people. The figure seized upon as the basis of this allegory indicates and signifies the deepest, strongest love known to human souls. The loving man and the loving woman are happy to leave father and mother, brother and sister, and be no longer twain, but one. Human bosoms can witness to no love more deep, more pure, more self-sacrificing than this. This is a simple fact of human experience which it were quite gratuitous to attempt to prove. The proof is in the hearts of those who have experienced its presence and its power. Now when God takes up this well-known human affection as He does often in His Word, and as I believe in this Song, and affirms it of Himself toward His people, he testifies most explicitly and forcibly to the deep, intense, absorbing love of His heart toward His people. Then let a sense of this great love toward us quicken and call forth a like deep, intense, and all-absorbing love from our hearts toward Him. And as, in the relation of husband and wife, little services, perpetually recurring, are the life of love, so the perpetual cares and services of our great Maker and Husband toward His people, and in truth toward every individual soul, should hold us to perpetual service for Him—a service done in love, done as the spontaneous expression of our love for Him—a service that our love should be too strong to suffer us ever to neglect. How should the reciprocity of this loving service on our part toward God be assiduously cherished! It is beautiful as between husband and wife; as between our Divine Lord and His affianced people, it is glorious. How full of joy does the most laborious and self-sacrificing service toward God become when done in love, responsive to the love that glows in all the service he does for us! And finally, as our Divine Father has seen fit to set forth His love for His people and His claims upon their love under this most precious relation, so fraught with suggestive analogies, so richly instructive, and withal, so intensely quickening and inspiring, let us guard most sedulously against abusing it; let us shut off sternly every unhallowed association which may steal upon us from the peculiar form of these representations, that so, holding our minds to their manifest intent, we may bring home to our heart all the gloriously impulsive, quickening, heavenly inspirations to love and duty which it may and should impart. H. C.

There is a state of mind and feeling which enables men to appropriate to themselves strong spiritual nutriment from such writings as these, seizing with a sharply apprehensive sense the spiritual which is set forth to them under carnal symbols, that the carnal is lost sight of and forgotten under the spiritual. This faculty is very strong among the Orientals; in fact, this mode of expression is at the present day so familiar in the East that an Oriental, on first becoming acquainted with this book, would read it with rapture, and recognize it as full of edifying spiritual expression, the general purport of which he would be at no loss to gather. That this faculty is not entirely wanting to the Occidentals has been evinced by the relish with which men of eminent holiness and spiritual feeling have extracted refreshment to their souls from the Song of Songs. Kitto.

We find the Canticles to have been the favorite book of Bernard, who poured out the hoarded tenderness and experience of his soul in those eighty-six sermons to the brethren at Clairvaux. But it was as dear to Leighton, to Taylor, and to Bunyan, as to Bernard and Catherine of Sienna. Bishop Alexander.—Jonathan Edwards, although the driest and most astute of scholastic theologians, had a heart and imagination of Oriental richness and fervor. In the account which he gives of his religious experience, he says: “The whole Book of Canticles used to be pleasant to me, and I used to be much in reading it about that time, and found from time to time an increased sweetness, that would carry me away in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise than by a calm, delightful abstraction of the soul from all the concerns of the world; and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations—of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of Divine things often would, of a sudden, kindle up an ardor in my soul that I knew not how to express. . . . While thus engaged, it seemed natural to me to sing and chant forth my meditations; or to speak my thoughts in solitude with a singing voice.” The soft, rich, glowing, all-absorbing devotional feeling of Jonathan Edwards would soon cure people of all their scruples in respect to the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Stowe.

There are many sweet lessons and suggestions of the mind of Christ and the love of saints to be gathered from a minute study of this book; and some preachers, like M’Cheyne and Krummacher, have turned select passages to excellent homiletic use; but great caution is to be observed lest a cold, unimaginative mind, on the one hand, should so dissect this glowing Oriental poetry as to destroy its living beauty—nay, should even force upon it an indelicacy from which the original is innocently free; and, on the other hand, lest an over-active fancy should, by insisting on a separate spiritual meaning for every figure of speech, every allusion to natural objects, and every turn of expression in poetical descriptions of the human form, weaken the force and mar by very extravagance the general impression of the Song. So have the types in the Books of Moses been often injured by fantastic interpretation, and the Parables of Christ overstrained by the pressing of spiritual analogies into every detail. The charm of this Song to every Christian heart is its constant suggestion and eulogy of Christ.

The type Solomon is quite forgotten in the Pre-eminent Antitype. Christ is the winner of souls; His name is fragrant; His love passes knowledge; His person is sacred, head and foot being seen as of fine gold; His strength is as “pillars of marble;” His “mouth is most sweet,” full of gracious words, and breathing on us the Holy Ghost. “Yea, He is altogether lovely.” All who really know Him love Him; and the more they know Him the more they must love Him, and following Him, depart from all iniquity. D. F.