I am requested by J. D. Forsythe, of Des Moines, Ia., to express myself on the questions which have been raised respecting Solomon's Song; and this request has reminded me that I received from J. W. Ellis, of Plattsburg, Mo., a copy of his new translation and analysis of the song, with the request that I review it. I have hesitated about both of these requests, and have delayed complying with them, because the song is to me an enigma, and I am not fond of writing on subjects which I do not understand.

      While studying this peculiar composition many years ago under some of the old commentators, I tried hard to see something prophetic in it, but I failed, and I have never yet succeeded. I am not surprised, therefore, that [266] all very recent interpreters have abandoned the idea that the Shulamite in some way represents the church, and Solomon the Lord Jesus. There is no sustained analogy in any part of the song to anything connected with Christ or the church. The theory first proposed, I believe, by Ewald, and now very commonly adopted by those who claim to understand the song, that it is a drama in five acts, in which the Shulamite, Solomon, and certain "daughters of Jerusalem" are the principal actors, has much more in its favor, and yet to my mind it is not satisfying. I have read it again and again within the past few years, as set forth in various periodicals and by various writers, and I have now before me both the version by Bro. Ellis, mentioned above, and that of Professor Moulton, of Chicago University, which I noticed in these columns last spring. The latter uses the text of the Revised Version, while the former, as stated above, gives a new version. The plot and the dramatis personae set forth in the two are so nearly alike that I will not here mention the differences. If any of my readers wish to study them, let them order from the Macmillan Company, New York, "Biblical Idyls," by R. G. Moulton, and from J. W. Ellis, Plattsburg, Mo., his pamphlet entitled "The Song of Songs."

      In both of these expositions the text is divided into the form of the supposed dialogue, and the names of the speakers are interpolated at the proper places. When I read either of them, with these helps, the theory runs very smoothly through the song; but when I then attempt to read the song in the Scripture text, I find that after the first two chapters, or three, in which it is easy to imagine the theory correct, I get lost. In other words, the theory seems workable in the first and a part of the second act, and then it draws too much on the [267] imagination of the reader to justify the conclusion that he is following the thought of the original writer. I conclude, therefore, that whatever may be the plot which existed in the mind of the author, our interpreters can scarcely yet be confident that they have traced it out. Furthermore, if their theory of the song is correct, I should like for some of them to give a better reason than they have yet given for putting such a document into the sacred Scriptures. They have not pointed out to me anything in it to edify men or to glorify God.

[SEBC 266-268]