as many ornaments as a summer's landscape or a winter's night sky; the raven's plumage is plucked from his wing; the dove's eye is extracted from its socket; perfumes are brought from beds of spices, and lilies led drooping out of their low valleys; nay, the vast Lebanon is himself ransacked to garnish and glorify the one dear image. On the other hand, the description of natural scenes is simple in the extreme, yet beautiful as if Nature were describing herself: "The winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." This is the green of nature looking in amid the glare of passion. We have here love first exaggerating the object beloved, and then retiring to hide her blushes of shame amid the cool leaves of the garden.

We find in Shakespeare a similar intermixture of natural objects with passionate scenes, and a similar subdued tone in their description. It is not that he does this for the sake of effect, nor that he quails-he merely cools-before nature. The natural allusions act like the touch of female affection laid on the red brow of passion and opening the fountain of tears. His madmen, like poor Lear, are crowned with flowers; his castles of gloom and murder are skimmed by swallows and swaddled in delicate air; in his loneliest ruins lurk wild grasses and flowers, and around them the lightning itself becomes a crown of glory.

Regarding the question as to the Christian application of the Song, as still a moot and as a non-essential point, we forbear to express an opinion on it. As a love dialogue, colored to the proper degree with a sensuous flush, "beautiful exceedingly" in its poetry, and portraying with elegance ancient customs and the inextinguishable principles of the human heart, this poem is set unalterably in its own niche. It has had many commentaries, but, in our judgment, the only writer who has caught its warm and glowing spirit is Samuel Rutherford, who has not, indeed,

written a commentary upon it, but whose Letters are inspired by its influence and have nearly reproduced all its language. Despite the extravagances with which they abound, when we consider the heavenliness of their spirit, the richness of their fancy, the daring yet devout tone of their language, the wrestling earnestness of their exercise, their aspirings after the Saviour, in whom the writer's soul often sees "seven heavens," and to gain whom he would burst through "ten hells,"-we say, "Blessings and perfumes on the memory of those dungeons whence so many of these letters came, and on that of their rapt, seraphic author, whose chains have been glorious liberty to many a son of God!" The soul was strong which could spring heaven-high under his prison load, and which has made the cells of his supposed infamy holy and haunted ground both to the lovers of liberty and the worshipers of God.

It is with a certain melancholy that we dismiss the great monarch of Israel. We remember once feeling a strong shudder of horror at hearing an insinuation (we believe not true) that the author of a very popular and awful religious poem was not himself a pious man. It was one of those assertions which make the heart quake and the hand catch convulsively at the nearest object, as if the earth were sinking below us. But the thought of the writer of a portion of the Bible being a "castaway"-a thought entertained by some of repute in the Christian worldis far more painful. It may not, as we have seen, detract from, but rather add to, the effect of his writings, but does it not surround them with a black margin? Does not every sentence of solemn wisdom they contain seem clothed in mourning for the fate of its parent? On Solomon's fate we dare pronounce no judgment; but even granting his final happiness, it is no pleasing task to record the mistakes, the sins, the sorrows or even the repentance of a being originally so noble. If at "evening-time it was light" with him, yet did not a scorching splendor torment the noon, and did not thunders, melting

into heavy showers, obscure the after-day? The "glory of Solomon" is a fearful and troubled glory; how different from the meek light of the life of Isaac-most blameless of patriarchs-whose history is that of a quiet, gray autumnal day where, with no sun visible, all above and below seems diluted sunshine-a day as dear as it is beautiful, and which dies regretted as it has lived enjoyed!

XXII.

ELIJAH.

HAB is the first of the kings of Israel who appears to have practiced polygamy. But over his harem presided a queen who has thrown all her lesser rivals into the shade. For the first time the chief wife of an Israelite king was one of the old accursed Canaanite race. A new dynasty now sat on the Tyrian throne founded by Eth-baal. He had, according to the Phoenician records, gained the crown by murder of his brother, and he united to the royal dignity his former office of high priest of Ashtaroth. The daughter of Ethbaal was Jezebel, a name of dreadful import to Israelitish ears, though in later ages it has reappeared under the innocent form of Isabella.

The marriage of Ahab with this princess was one of those turning-points in the history of families where a new influence runs like poison through all its branches and transforms it into another being. Jezebel was a woman in whom, with the reckless and licentious habits of an Oriental queen, were united the fiercest and sternest qualities inherent in the old Semitic race. Her husband, in whom generous and gentle feelings were not wanting, was yet of a weak and yielding character, which soon made him a tool in her hands. Even after his death, through the reigns of his sons, her presiding spirit was the evil genius of the dynasty. Through her daughter Athaliah—a daughter worthy of the mother-her influence extended to the rival king

dom. The wild license of her life and the magical fascination of her arts or her character became a proverb in the nation. Round her and from her, in different degrees of nearness, is evolved the awful drama of the most eventful crisis of this portion of the Israelite history.

The first indication of her influence was the establishment of the Phoenician worship on a grand scale in the court of Ahab. To some extent this was the natural consequence of the depravation of the public worship of Jehovah by Jeroboam, which seems under Omri to have taken a more directly idolatrous turn. But still the change from a symbolical worship of the one true God, with the innocent rites of sacrifice and prayer, to the cruel and licentious worship of the Phoenician divinities, was a prodigious step downward, and left traces in Northern Palestine which no subsequent reformations were able entirely to obliterate. Two sanctuaries were established-one for each of the great Phoenician deities—at each of the two new capitals of the kingdom. The sanctuary of Ashtaroth, with its accustomed grove, was under Jezebel's special sanction, at the palace of Jezreel. Four hundred priests or prophets ministered to it, and were supported at her table. A still more remarkable sanctuary was dedicated to Baal on the hill of Samaria. It was of a size sufficient to contain all the worshipers of Baal that the northern kingdom could furnish. Four hundred and fifty prophets frequented it. In the interior was a kind of inner fastness or adytum, in which were seated or raised on pillars the figures carved in wood of the Phoenician deities as they were seen in vision, centuries later, by Jezebel's fellow-countryman, Hannibal, in the sanctuary of Gades. In the centre was Baal, the sun-god; around him were the inferior divinities. In front of the temple stood on a stone pillar the figure of Baal alone.

As far as this point of the history the effect of the heathen worship was not greater than it had been at Jerusalem. But there soon appeared to be a more energetic spirit at work than