"It represents, say the commentators, the love of God for the congregation of Israel; it relates the history of the Jews from the Exodus to the Messiah; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel; it is an occult history; it represents the union of the divine soul with the earthly body, or of the material with the active intellect; it is the conversation of Solomon and Wisdom; it describes the love of Christ to his Church; it is historico-prophetic; it is Solomon's thanksgiving for a happy reign; it is a love-song unworthy of any place in the canon; it treats of man's reconciliation to God; it is a prophecy of the Church from the Crucifixion till after the Reformation; it is an anticipation of the Apocalypse; it is the seven days' epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh; it is a magazine for direction and consolation under every condition; it treats in hieroglyphics of the sepulchre of the Saviour, his death, and the Old Testament saints; it refers to Hezekiah and the Ten Tribes; it is written in glorification of the Virgin Mary. Such were the impossible and diverging interpretations of what many regarded as the very Word of God. A few only, till the beginning of this century, saw the truth,--which is so obvious to all who go to the Bible with the humble desire to know what it says, and not to interpret it into their own baseless fancies,--that it is the exquisite celebration of a pure love in humble life; of a love which no splendor can dazzle and no flattery seduce." These last sentences of Canon Farrar give the probable clew to the interpretation of the book. It is a dramatic poem, celebrating the story of a beautiful peasant girl, a native of the northern village of Shunem, who was carried away by Solomon's officers and confined in his harem at Jerusalem. But in the midst of all this splendor her heart is true to the peasant lover whom she has left behind, nor can any blandishments of the king disturb her constancy; her honor remains unstained, and she is carried home at length, heart-whole and happy, by the swain who has come to Jerusalem for her rescue. This is the beautiful story. The phrases in which it is told are, indeed, too explicit for Occidental ears; the color and the heat of the tropics is in the poetry, but it is perfectly pure; it celebrates the triumph of maiden modesty and innocence. "The song breathes at the same time," says Ewald, "such deep modesty and chaste innocence of heart, such determined defiance of the over-refinement and degeneracy of the court-life, such stinging scorn of the growing corruption of life in great cities and palaces, that no clearer or stronger testimony can be found of the healthy vigor which, in this century, still characterized the nation at large, than the combination of art and simplicity in the Canticles." [Footnote: _History of Israel_, iv. 43.]