An Essay on the Canticles. By Rev. W. Houghton, M.A.,
F.L.S. (Trubner.)—We seem to be renewing the experiences of the Reforma- tion times. Then, as now, the Lower House of Convocation was all but unanimous in denouncing the new ideas, and calling for pains and penalties on those who held them, whilst here and there amongst the clergy an isolated voice was raised against the views of the dominant majority. Perhaps the thinkers and inquirers were not so unpopular as they are now, but they had the advantage of a reforming Archbishop, which is almost an inconceivable phenomenon to us, and material comfort had not dulled the desire for spiritual life. However, the result of that movement is encouraging to those who, like the author of the pamphlet before us, are in a minority at the present moment, and exposed to some obloquy because, finding themselves possessed of a certain critical faculty, they feel bound to make use of it, and will not suppress the conclu- sions to which it leads them. The present writer, in this able essay, which with great moral courage he dedicates to the Bishop of Natal, discusses the meaning of the Song of Solomon, of which he gives an excellent trans- lation. He first disposes of the typical and allegorical interpretations, giving some curious instances of the lengths to which these "pious medi- tations, fancy free," can go, and quoting this forcible sentence from Dr. Ginsburg,—" to take one portion of the Scriptures allegorically, without even an obscure hint of it in the writing itself, is to violate tho laws of language, and to expose all other portions of the sacred volume to the same treatment." He then propounds the theory, which he has adopted, that the poem is an irregular drama, with several interlocutors, scenes, and a kind of chorus, and that it celebrates the successful resistance which a village girl of Shulem, betrothed to a young shepherd, makes to the tempting of King Solomon, whose notice she has attracted in one of his excursions into the country. He concludes with a few remarks on the authorship, which he is inclined to attribute not to King Solomon, who could scarcely have written it on the foregoing hypothesis, but to an Israelite of the northern kingdom, soon after the revolt of the tribes. We cannot say that this interpretation is estab- lished to our satisfaction; it seems to rest chiefly on a 8, v. 7, 11, 12, and the parts are assigned with some arbitrariness, here to Solomon, thin), to the shepherd spouse ; but the question is ably argued, and the opinion of the various commentators fairly given. Those who are giving up the theological interpretation, but are unwilling to accept the simple explanation of a nuptial song, may be glad to have the fall broken by this theory of a moral lesson, at the expense of King Solomon.
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