tion, is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads us to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.'

"In presenting to us the results of his extensive experience and observation, Solomon also lays open his method of investigation; not for the purpose of directing us into the same paths, but to warn us from a track so thoroughly explored, and so full of danger and disappointment. He intimates that his examination had been so complete as to preclude the necessity of any re-examination by persons of inferior opportunities; for what can the man do that cometh after the king? Even that which hath been already done. (Chap. ii. 12.)

"The book is an ample treatise, in a very concise style, on two great conclusions, at which Solomon had arrived by the road of persevering experimental inquiry. The first is, that whoever seeks his principal satisfaction, or his chief good in temporal possessions, pleasures, and pursuits, though he should possess all conceivable advantages for the execution of his plan, will be totally and miserably disappointed. His second great conclusion is, that though a good man may suffer many temporal evils and vexations, and though a wicked man may live and prosper, notwithstanding his crimes; yet this is absolutely certain, that in the end it shall be well with them that fear God;' but it shall not be well with the wicked;' and that the chief good of man is

to be found in fearing God and keeping his commandments;' 'for God will bring every thing into judgment, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.'

"The treatise on these points is presented in the interesting form in which the matter of it grew up in the writer's mind, as an important and essential part of his personal history. He makes us the companions and partakers of his thoughts, experiments, and emotions; and takes us with him from the beginning to the end of his investigation. He informs us that he was at first encouraged to attempt so vast a series of experiments, by the consideration that he had eminent qualifications for trying all the varieties of worldly joy, and for judging of all he tried. He avows his great object to see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life.' (Chapter ii. 3.) His disposition being highly voluptuous, and insatiably inquisitive, co-operated with his design. He gave his heart to seek and search out by wisdom, concerning all things that are done under heaven; and he withheld not his heart from any joy. He confesses that, in his search for the chief good, he tried not only the probable and promising sources, but, for the greater practical certainty, he also proved the unlikely and unpromising, such as mirth, wine, madness, and folly, as well as wisdom, but that he tried them for the ends of wisdom, and his wisdom remained with him; in his wanderings he still kept in sight the grand aim of his investigation, and retained both the desire and the ability to judge aright of all which he experimentally examined.

"There is one excellence in the style of thought and expression in this work of Solomon, which very much resembles a peculiar feature in the writings of St. Paul. Both the royal preacher and the apostle of the gentiles, first state and assert the truth strongly, and afterwards strongly limit and guard it. They lay down general maxims with a free and comprehensive fullness. They argue with a power, brilliance, and kindling vehemence which resemble the fire and force of lightning. But with all this amplitude and energy in the statement and enforcement of general truth, they show a watchful recollection of details; an advertence to all reasonable exceptions, limits, and precautions; a judgelike sobriety, impartiality, and circumspection, which are quite as extraordinary as their force and grandeur; and are very rarely united with views so vast, and eloquence so impressive.

"Inattention to the general scope of these inspired penmen has been combined with another fertile source of misconstruction, namely, the extensive influence which the partisans of monastic austerity and seclusion exercised for more than a thousand years over the majority of Scripture readers and interpreters.

"Those partizans found in the writings of St. Paul some commendations of a single life, as suitable and convenient during the hazards of extensive and continued persecution; and forthwith they assumed a general excellence and merit in celibacy; entirely overlooking Paul's limitation of the advice to seasons of persecution; and his prophetic reference to the corruptions of a later age, in which he

classes the forbidding to marry among the doctrines of devils,

"In a similar manner have misconceptions of the doctrine of the royal preacher been produced and perpetuated. The monastic views of christian holiness having had the ascendancy in schools, colleges, and pulpits, during so long a course of ages, still tinge the opinions and prejudices of many religious persons of various churches, to a degree of which the individuals themselves are often unconscious. Those who refused to distinguish between the use and abuse of temporal things, and who were for sending believers to the hermitage, the monastery, or the desert, as the only scenes in which christians could be kept unspotted from the world, were equally disposed, by the same sweeping precipitance of judgment, to assume that Solomon, in his repeated declarations of the vanity of worldly schemes of happiness, was altogether of their mind. But when they found that in the same book a temperate and thankful use and enjoyment of the bounty of Providence was not only not reprobated, but actually recommended, their reluctance to admit that the voice of inspiration could be against them, stimulated them to invent the theory, that such passages were inserted as the observations of a worldly character, whom they supposed to be holding debate with the Preacher, pleading the uncertainty of the invisible and future state of man, and advising to make the most of present advantages, as the only ascertained realities."

This latter opinion, as to the structure of this book, seems worthy of regard, from the considera

tion, that in other parts of the Holy Scripture, when the inspired writers introduce the words of an objector, they generally premonish us of it; as for example, when the words of an atheist are introduced, they are exhibited as the words of a fool-"the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." (Ps. xiv. 1.) So also, when the objections of an unbeliever in the ressurrection of the dead are brought forward, the Apostle warns us beforehand by saying, "But some man will say, how are the dead raised up?" &c. (1 Cor. xv. 35.) On this latter theory, therefore," the supposition of a second speaker in this book is gratuitous."

THE SONG OF SOLOMON.

Great diversity of sentiment prevails among critics and commentators relative to the character of this poem. The majority consider it as an inspired book, while others regard it as a merely human composition: some regard it as a sacred allegory, shadowing forth the intimate relation between Christ and his church, something like the forty-fifth Psalm; but others say it should only be regarded in its literal meaning, as referring to the marriage of Solomon with the princess of Egypt. Nor are those who concur in viewing it as a mystical allegory, agreed as to its precise meaning. Bishop Lowth restricts it to the universal church, and conceives that it has no reference whatever to the spiritual states of individuals; while others interpret it as referring to the individual members who compose that church.