The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

MYSTICAL INTERPRETATIONS 43
Origen "surpassed himself" in his commentary on
the poem—a commentary to v/hich he devoted ten
volumes. According to his view, it was originally
an epithalamium celebrating the marriage of Solomon
with Pharaoh's daughter ; but it has secondary mystical
meanings descriptive of the relation of the Redeemer
to the Church or the individual soul. Thus " the little
foxes that spoil the grapes " are evil thoughts in the
individual, or heretics in the Church. Gregory the
Great contributes a commentary of no lasting interest.
Very different is the work of the great mediaeval monk
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who threw himself into it
with all the passion and rapture of his enthusiastic soul,
and in the course of eighty-six homilies only reached
the beginning of the third chapter in this to him in-
exhaustible mine of spiritual wealth, when he died,
handing on the task to his faithful disciple Gilbert Porre-
tanus, who continued it on the same portentous scale,
and also died before he had finished the fifth chapter.
Even while reading the old monkish Latin in this late
age we cannot fail to feel the glowing devotion that
inspires it. Bernard is addressing his monks, to whom
he says he need not give the milk for babes, and whom
he exhorts to prepare their throats not for this milk
but for bread. As a schoolman he cannot escape from
metaphysical subtleties—he takes the kiss of the bridegroom
as a symbol of the incarnation. But throughout
there burns the perfect rapture of love to Jesus Christ
which inspires his well-known hymns. Here we are
at the secret of the extraordinary popularity of mystical
interpretations of the Song of Solomon. It has seemed
to many in all ages of the Christian Church to afford
the best expression for the deepest spiritual relations
of Christ and His people. Nevertheless, the mystical