Page:The Song of Songs (1857).djvu/119

 THE ALLEGORICAL VIEW.

The allegorical view principally maintained is, ''that this poem, in language borrowed from that which characterises chaste affections between the sexes, expresses the mutual love subsisting between the Lord and his Church''.

REASONS FOR THE ALLEGORICAL VIEW EXAMINED.

1. The existence of this book in the sacred canon has been adduced as an argument for its allegorical interpretation.

"In what part of the Hebrew Bible can we find any composition of an analogous nature? All—every Psalm, every piece of history, every part of prophecy—has a religious aspect, and (the book of Esther perhaps excepted) is filled with theocratic views of things. How came there here to be such a solitary exception, so contrary to the genius and nature of the whole Bible? It is passing strange, if real amatory Idyls are mingled with so much, all of which is of a serious and religious nature. If the author viewed his composition as being of an amatory nature, would he have sought a place for it among the sacred books? And subsequent redactors or editors—would they have ranked it here, in case they had regarded it in the same light? I can scarcely deem it credible. So different was the reverence of the Jews for their Scriptures from any mere approbation of an amatory poem as such, that I must believe that the insertion of Canticles among the canonical books, was the result of a full persuasion of its spiritual import. Had the case stood otherwise, why did they not introduce other secular books, as well as this, into the canon?"

Granting that the design of the book was simply to describe love, we deny that it would have been deemed unworthy of a place in the sacred canon. Why should the pleasures of chaste love be considered less worthy of record in the sacred books,