more distinguished names. The poor sufferer used to sing as night came on— God of my days, God of my nights, Nearness to Christ I fain would find, Send, Source of Light, some cheering ray, I mourn, and think thy absence long, Command my blindness to depart, Oh let the mercies of this day In her last hours she was truly "compassed about "I have not sung for with songs of deliverance." some time," she said. "Sing with me, it will not hurt me. Sing Dr. Watts's hymn— How sweet and awful is the place, With Christ within the doors; While everlasting love displays The choicest of her stores. The hymn was softly sung by her friends; and then she added, "Let us sing again". Come, let us join our cheerful songs Worthy the Lamb that died, they cry, To be exalted thus; Worthy the Lamb, our lips reply, For He was slain for us. Jesus is worthy to receive And blessings more than we can give, Then Nobody seemed able to sing with her. Her voice was like something more than human, and she waved her arm exultingly, as she sang. "You do not sing with me," she said; "well, I cannot forbear." she continued nearly the whole night warbling softly, though at times apparently dying. Her last night was full of song; and just before she took her upward flight, she pointed heavenward, and said, “I cannot talk, but I shall soon sing there." Chapter XIX. MARRIAGE SONGS AND BIRTH-DAY HYMNS. “And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.” T is said of Solomon that "his songs were a thousand and five." One of this number occupies a distinguished place in the sacred canon, and is called "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," or "the most beautiful or excellent of his songs." It was written a thousand years before Christ-long before the earliest profane poets whose works are extant; but the freshness of its unrivalled beauty has remained through all the changes of time and manners, while its charms continue to exert their power under all the disadvantages of incompetent translation. It may be called a pastoral, in which two leading characters are represented as speaking and acting throughout the poem. The one is a king called Shelomoh, "The peaceful, or Prince of Peace," the other a female, who from being a rustic shepherdess becomes his queen; she bears the name of Shelomith, which is simply the feminine form of Shelomoh. Whether this poem was written by Solomon on the occasion of his own marriage or not, it seems to stand among the oracles of inspiration as a seal of divine approbation on the institution of marriage, or as the fixed light of God's smile upon the fervid but modest and delicate affection of conjugal life. Both ancients and moderns, Jews and Christians, have agreed that under its face of poetic beauty an allegorical meaning is hid for the instruction and solace of the teachable, chaste, and believing soul. Indeed, we cannot conceive that Ezra, a man under divine inspiration, and the members of the great synagogue, or those who assisted in collecting the sacred writings, would have admitted this song into the sacred canon if they had not a full conviction that under its mysterious and luxuriant imagery there lay concealed some great truths bearing on the interests of God's kingdom and people. It is an Oriental book, written by a highly poetical Eastern monarch, intended, in the first place, for an Oriental people such as seven-eighths of the human race have been, and such as form one half of the present population of the earth. The book should therefore be interpreted in accordance with Eastern manners and rules of composition. It has always been the universal custom in the Fast to represent spiritual things under such figures as are beautifully sketched in the Song of Solomon. Numerous examples might be quoted from mere heathen authorities; but the Bible is full of them. David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the evangelists, apostles, and our Lord Himself, all speak of the intercourse of the divine and the human under the imagery of marriage feasts and conjugal communion. And in this light the Song of Solomon has always been viewed, both by Jews and Christians. The Jews explained it as a song of Jehovah's love for the synagogue; the Christians, as celebrating the union of Christ and his Church. Both have agreed, however, that the spirit and design of the book can be realized by none but the chaste and devotional mind. The Jews denied it to the weak and the profane, as too strong for the one, and too holy for the other. They have always guarded and honoured it not only as holy, but, as they say, "the Holy of holies"; and have ever used it as an incentive to holy thought and intense devotion. While the Christians, who have consulted it as the expression of Christ's love to the community of the faithful, have ever found in it a refreshing sweetness and power, leading them, as it does, to meditate on the mutual affection of the Redeemer and his people, associated with trials and vicissitudes in this life, but promising perfect fruition and repose in the world to come. This may be illustrated by one passage from a personal history. "Ah! my dear friend, is that you?" said a kindhearted and intelligent Polish Jew, as he affectionately took the hand of a Methodist preacher, who had taken his seat by the side of his sick-bed. The two had known each other in earlier life, and had learnt to "love one another," distinct as they were in creed as well as by birth. After some years of separation, the Gentile had found out his Jewish brother and first Hebrew teacher, in his affliction; and now once more they were heart to heart, and entered into communion about the sacred text which they had at one time so lovingly studied together. The Jew was gentle, tender, and open as a child, and freely told out his hope in the mercy of that God who had been pleased, as he said, “to put the innocent for the uninnocent, that the sinner who was penitent over the sacrifice |