the individual soul the bride of
Christ, and to treat the Song of Solomon as symbolic of "spiritual
nuptials" between Him and the individual "contemplative." It is this
latter notion, the growth of which I wish to trace.

Erotic Mysticism is no part of Platonism. That "sensuous love of the
unseen" (as Pater calls it), which the Platonist often seems to aim
at, has more of admiration and less of tenderness than the emotion
which we have now to consider. The notion of a spiritual marriage
between God and the soul seems to have come from the Greek Mysteries,
through the Alexandrian Jews and Gnostics. Representations of
"marriages of gods" were common at the Mysteries, especially at those
of the least reputable kind (cf. Lucian, _Alexander_, 38). In other
instances the ceremony of initiation was made to resemble a marriage,
and the [Greek: mystes] was greeted with the words [Greek: chaire,
nymphie]. And among the Jews of the first century there existed a
system of Mysteries, probably copied from Eleusis. They had their
greater and their lesser Mysteries, and we hear that among their
secret doctrines was "marriage with God." In Philo we find strange and
fantastic speculations on this subject. For instance, he argues that
as the Bible does not mention Abraham, Jacob, and Moses as [Greek:
gnorizontas tas gynaikas], we are meant to believe that their children
were not born naturally. But he allegorises the women of the
Pentateuch in such a way ([Greek: logo men eisi gynaikes, ergo de
aretai]) that it is difficult to say what he wishes us to believe in a
literal sense. The Valentinian Gnostics seem to have talked much of
"spiritual marriage," and it was from them that Origen got the idea of
elaborating the conception. But, curiously enough, it is Tertullian
who first argues that the body as well as the soul is the bride of
Christ. "If the soul is the bride," he says, "the flesh is the dowry"
(_de Resurr._ 63). Origen, however, really began the mischief in his
homilies and commentary on the Song of Solomon. The prologue of the
commentary in Rufinus commences as follows: "Epithalamium libellus
hic, id est nuptiale carmen, dramatis in modum mihi videtur a Salomone
conscriptus, quem cecinit instar nubentis sponsae, et erga sponsum suum
qui est sermo Dei caelesti amore flagrantis. Adamavit enim eum _sive
anima_, quae ad imaginem eius facta est, sive ecclesia." Harnack says
that Gregory of Nyssa exhibits the conception in its purest a