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 allegorisers, “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 preeminent spirituality and evangelical truth could have been reasonably expected? Is there anything in his private history, his habits of thought, his moral inclinations, or in the general tone and tendency of his religious emotions, at any period of his life, as far as they can be gathered from his history and writings, that would lead us to anticipate such evangelical piety as this interpretation presupposes? The same agreement which exists between ordinary writers and their productions is perceptible in the inspired records. Inspiration, like Providence, selected the fittest instruments for its work. Thus, between the history of Moses and his writings, of David and his writings, of Paul and his writings, of John and his writings, a natural uniformity exists; and so of other sacred authors. Accordingly, we have not only to suppose Solomon to have been more spiritually-minded than any under the Jewish economy, but to have stood upon a level with the most enlightened and Christ-loving under the present dispensation, in order to write in such a strain. Where is any such qualification in Solomon, even remotely intimated in any part of Scripture? The wisdom which he asked, which he received, and for which he gained celebrity, was that displayed in his civil government, in social and moral teaching, of which the first-fruit was given in the decision upon the litigation of the two mothers. The poetry which he wrote, consisting of one thousand and five songs, upon natural history, not having been deemed worthy of a place in the sacred canon, shows that his muse did not indulge in a devotional strain. The Book of Ecclesiastes, which is attributed to him by tradition, is the experience of a thorough-going