By the ablest interpreters and critics of Holy Scripture, the Song of Solomon has generally been regarded as an epithalamium, or nuptial canticle. But, like many other parts of the sacred volume, doubtless, it has a mystical and secondary application, which is more important than the literal and primary. The true Solomon is Christ, and the Church is his beautiful Shulamite. In this chapter, the Bride sings the glory of her divine Spouse, and our text concludes the description. But what is thus true of the Church in her corporate capacity, is true also of her individual members; and without its verification in their personal experience, it could not be thoroughly verified in the organic whole. Every regenerate and faithful soul may say of the heavenly Bridegroom: "This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem!" Christ for a beloved--the Son of God for a friend! What nobler theme could occupy our thoughts? what sublimer privilege invest the saints in light? So constituted is man, that love and friendship are necessary to his happiness, almost essential to his existence. Accumulate in your coffers the wealth of all kingdoms, and gather into your diadems the glories of the greatest empires. Bid every continent, island and ocean bring forth their hidden treasures, and pour the sparkling tribute at your feet. Subsidize and appropriate whatever is precious in the solar planets or magnificent in the stellar jewellery of heaven, and hold it all by an immortal tenure. Yet, without at least one kindred spirit to whom you might communicate your joy, one congenial soul from whom you might claim sympathy in your sorrow, the loveless heart were still unsatisfied-- "The friendless master of the worlds were poor!" Among the children of men, however, love and friendship, in one respect or another, will always be found defective, liable to many irregularities and interruptions, painful suspicions and sad infirmities, which mar their beauty, tarnish their purity, and imbitter their consolations, turning the ambrosia into wormwood and the nectar into gall. Sometimes they are manifest only in words, and smiles, and hollow courtesies, and other external tokens; while the heart is as void of all true affection and confidence as the whitewashed sepulchre is of life and beauty. Beginning with flattery, they often proceed by hypocrisy, and end in betrayal. Or if there be sincerity in the outset, it may prove as impotent as childhood, as changeful as autumn winds, or as fleeting as the morning cloud. Or if not destroyed by some trivial offence, or suffered to die of cold neglect, their ties are clipped at length by the shears of fate, and no love or friendship is possible in the everlasting banishment of the unblest.