insects,” says Letourneau, “to love and to die are almost synonymous terms, and yet they do not even try to resist the amorous frenzy that urges them on.”  Yet no one would dream of calling this romantic love; from that it differs as widely as the insect mind in general differs from the human mind.  Waters cannot quench any kind of love or affection nor floods drown it.  What we are seeking for are actions or words describing the specific symptoms of sentimental love, and these are not to be found in this passage any more than elsewhere in the Bible.  An old man may buy a girl’s body, but he cannot, with all his wealth and splendor, awaken her love, either sentimental or sensual; love, whatever its nature, will always prefer the apple-tree and the shepherd lover to the vain desires and a thousand times divided attentions of a decrepit king, though he be a Solomon.

It would be strange if this purely profane poem, which was added to the Scriptural collection only by an unusual stretch of liberality,[290] and in which there is not one mention of God or of religion, should give a higher conception of sexual love than the books which are accepted as inspired, and which paint manners, emotions, and morals as the writers found them.  As a matter of fact the Song of Songs was long held to be so objectionable that the Talmudists did not allow young people to read it before their thirtieth year.  Whiston denounced it as foolish, lascivious, and idolatrous.  “The excessively amative character of some passages is designated as almost blasphemous when supposed to be addressed by Christ to his Church,"[291] as it was by the allegorists.  On the other hand there is a class of commentators to whom this poem is the ideal of all that is pure and lovely.  Herder went into ecstasies over it.  Israel Abrahams refers to it (163) as “the noblest of love-poems;” as “this idealization of love.”  The Rev. W.E.  Griffis declares rapturously (166, 63, 21, 16, 250) that “the purest-minded virgin may safely read the Song of Songs, in which is no trace of immoral thought.”  In it “sensuality is scorned and pure love glorified;” it “sets forth the eternal romance of true love,” and is “chastely pure in word and delicate in idea throughout.”  “The poet of the Canticle shows us how to love.”  “An angel might envy such artless love dwelling in a human heart.”

The truth, as usual in such cases, lies about half-way between these extreme views.  There is only one passage which is objectionably coarse in the English version and in the Hebrew original obscene;[292] yet, on the other hand, I maintain that the whole poem is purely Oriental in its exclusively sensuous and often sensual character, and that there is not a trace of romantic sentiment such as would color a similar love-story if told by a modern poet.  The Song of Songs is so confused in its arrangement, its plan so obscure, its repetitions and repeated denouements so puzzling,[293]