intimation in the whole of this lengthy poem that it is designed to be allegorical, we are unwarranted to assume it. To take one portion of the Scriptures allegorically, without even an obscure hint of it in the writing itself, is to violate the established laws of language, and to expose all other portions of the sacred volume to a similar treatment. If one chooses to allegorize one part without any sanction, another may choose to allegorize another. But we have no right to depart from the literal and obvious meaning, without some authority for it from the inspired writer. This argument is applicable to every allegorical interpretation, whether historical or hieroglyphical, whether political or metaphysical.
2. The total silence of our Lord and his apostles respecting this book is against its allegorical interpretation. If this Song, according to the first and last allegorizers, "celebrates the glories of the Messiah, and all the mercies which through him flow to the people of God," it is more spiritual and more evangelical than any other portion of the Old Testament; surpassing even the writings of Isaiah, who is called the fifth Evangelist, and is, in fact, what Origen called it, "The Holy of Holies." Is it possible, then, that our Saviour, and his apostles, who, in their disputations with the Jews, so frequently quoted the prophecies of Isaiah and other passages of the Old Testament, far less evangelical and Messianic, would never have referred to this book? Is it possible that the apostle Paul, who so frequently describes the relation of Christ to the Church by the union subsisting between husband and wife (2 Cor. xi. 2, Rom. vii. 4, Eph. v. 23-32), would be silent about a book which, more than any other in the Old Testament, sets forth that union? The fact, therefore, that our Saviour and his apostles never once refer to this book is against the allegorical interpretation.
3. Is Solomon the man from whom a production of such pre-*eminent spirituality and evangelical truth could have been reasonably expected? Is there anything in his private history,
