The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

MYSTICAL INTERPRETATIONS 47
faint beginning of the stream of erotic religious fancies
which sometimes manifests itself most objectionably in
subsequent Church history. There is not a trace of it
in the New Testament.
If the choice spiritual ideas which some people think
they see in the Song of Solomon are not imported by
the reader, but form part of the genuine contents of the
book, how comes it that this fact was not recognised
by one of the inspired writers of the New Testament ?
or, if privately recognised, that it was never utilised ?
In the hands of the mystical interpreter this work is
about the most valuable part of the Old Testament.
He finds it to be an inexhaustible mine of the most
precious treasures. Why, then, was such a remunera-
tive lode never worked by the first authorities in Chris-
tian teaching ? It may be replied that we cannot prove
much from a bare negative. The apostles may have
had their own perfectly sufficient reasons for leaving to
the Church of later ages the discovery of this valuable
spiritual store. Possibly the converts of their day
were not ripe for the comprehension of the mysteries
here expounded. Be that as it may, clearly the onus
probandi rests with those people of a later age who
introduce a method of interpretation for which no
sanction can be found in Scripture.
Now the analogies that have been referred to are
not sufiicient to establish any proof In the case of
the other poems mentioned above there are distinct
indications of symbolical intentions. Thus in the
Gitagovinda the hero is a divinity whose incarnations
are acknowledged in Hindoo mythology ; and the con-
cluding verse of that poem points the moral by a
direct assertion of the religious meaning of the whole
composition. This is not the case with the Song of