This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love, could be headed: "The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ's coming." The "Higher Criticism" is now turning the headings into comedy, but they have done--nay, are continuing--their very serious work of misdirection. It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba, adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son, who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba's successor in our version: "The Church glorieth in Christ." And of course the shepherd lover's feeding (his flock) among the lilies becomes "Christ's care of the Church." But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications, should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the book given them as the "Word of God" (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32, Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said of the "Word of God," but over which is printed: "18. Nothing may be added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom." But even the learned cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke branded for all time as the "sinner" who anointed Jesus,--"Magdalen" being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,--additions which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from the malarious well--Jahvist and ecclesiastical--in which she has long been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics