The season of spring is the season of enjoyment and activity indeed, but it brings with it its peculiar dangers, and corresponding cares. The same genial warmth which restores the verdant and blooming scenes of spring, and which matures the fruits of summer, nourishes also, and brings forth from their retreats, the noxious vermin of the earth. These demand, at this season, the redoubled efforts of industry in order to their riddance, or the harvest and the vintage will be expected in vain. And thus, in the concerns of the soul, it should seem, that the point of danger, the time when she is most susceptible of injury, is not in the stormy season of her troubles when she feels most alarm; for that alarm has conduced to her security-she has fled to the rock for safety; but in those seasons of peace and joy, when she is encouraged to venture abroad, and to engage actively in the duties of her heavenly vocation. "Watch and "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation "." "Be sober, be vigilant ; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour." 66 My beloved is mine and I am his, let him eat among the flowers;" or "let him feed among the lilies." She obeys his call, and, accompanying him abroad, or entertaining him in her garden, is blessed with his society. A picture of the Christian, who receives the proffered communion of Christ, -- and in grateful return makes a surrender of himself to his service; he is refreshed with the comforts of the Holy Ghost, and is led forth in the ways of God, in fellowship with his Lord and Saviour. But, as we are perpetually admonished, these seasons of extraordinary joy are granted only, for a short time, during this our earthly pilgrimage. The night approaches, her beloved ends his visit ; but, as it should seem, has named a day when he shall no longer continue to abide at a distance from the object of his affections, but will come and take her to himself. Until this day shall breathe, and the shades which obscure its dawn be fled, a repetition of these visits from her beloved is the object of her constant and most earnest wish.-" Till the day shall breathe, and the shades be fled, be on every side, my beloved, like the gazel, or the fawn of the deer, upon the mountains of Bether." The same mountains of division, which had been before the barriers of her hope, are again, we find, contemplated as intervening between her and the beloved. And the soul, we may observe, after a season of spiritual communion, relapses into herself again, and feels the same inability to recover her departed comforts-the same insufficiency in herself," so much as to think a good thought." There is, however, this difference-her reliance on the power and faithfulness of her Lord increases. Having experienced the futility of her former apprehensions, and the exact fulfilment of his promise; having seen, more than once, with what ease all her fears and difficulties were surmounted by Almighty Love, the offers the fervent prayer, full of faith, and full of hope:-"Be on every side, my beloved, like the gazel, or the fawn of the deer, upon the mountains of Bether." Thus tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. IDYL THE FIFTH. Corresponding with the first five Verses of the third A CIRCUMSTANCE in domestic life, among the lower or middling classes of society, forms the subject of this Idyl. The scene is not, as is usual in these allegorical poems, when the nuptials of the King of Israel do not serve for the prototype, laid in the country, but in the city: we find ourselves in the streets and broad places, instead of the flowery meads; among watchmen or guards going their rounds, instead of shepherds feeding their flocks. The faithful wife, it is supposed, had in vain been expecting the return of her husband at the hour of rest. Filled with anxiety, she leaves the house in quest of him; and after long search, by the direction of the nightly watch, which she meets, she at length finds him.—The idyl closes with a description of her great earnestness to retain his society, on which her late disappointment had taught her to set a higher value. The wife, for she is here evidently the married wife, is the sole speaker in this idyl, as the espoused, to adopt that term, was in the last. Those commentators, who, in explaining the exterior of the allegory, confine their notions to the nuptials of King Solomon, F I sought the beloved of my soul; I will arise now, and go round the city; I sought him, but I could not find him: 'Twas but' a little that I had passed them, When I found the beloved of my soul. I held him, nor would I release him, Till I brought him to the house of my mother, bTo the chamber of her that conceived me. are driven to the necessity of supposing a dream, in order to account for the extraordinary circumstances of this idyl; for extraordinary they must be considered, as occurring to a royal bride. Not only, however, have we no intimation of a dream in the sacred text; but such a dream, in the circumstance supposed, must still be acknowledged to be improbable: "not as wont-of works of day past, or morrow's next design;" but of incidents altogether uncongenial to the situation of the parties. b —“an enclosed place or room, a chamber" (see Note, Idyl 1st). It is particularly applied to what is called a bedchamber. What Dr. Shaw says (Travels, p. 238-9. 2d edit.) concerning the structure of houses in Barbary (and the Levant), may give some light. "Their chambers are large and spacious, one of them frequently serving a whole family. At one end of each chamber there is a little gallery raised four or five feet, with a balustrade (and doubtless a veil to draw in the front of it). Here they place their beds." This shows the meaning of 1773 177, 66 a chamber in a chamber. 1 Kings, xx. 30, &c."-Parkhurst. And hence, we are at no loss to account for the supposition of the bride's conducting her husband into the house, and even into the chamber of her mother. For the chamber of the young couple was, in fact, a part of that chamber. |