p off devils; and so forth.'

'I have heard such silly Cabbalisms, certainly.'

'You have? Then suppose that I went on, and saw in my dream how this
same academic and unbeliever, being himself also a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, snatched the roll out of the rabbis' hands, and told them that
they were a party of fools for trying to set forth what the book might
possibly mean, before they had found out what it really did mean; and
that they could only find out that by looking honestly at the plain
words to see what Solomon meant by it. And then, suppose that this same
apostate Jew, this member of the synagogue of Satan, in his carnal and
lawless imaginations, had waxed eloquent with the eloquence of devils,
and told them that the book set forth, to those who had eyes to see,
how Solomon the great king, with his threescore queens, and fourscore
concubines, and virgins without number, forgets all his seraglio and his
luxury in pure and noble love for the undefiled, who is but one; and
how as his eyes are opened to see that God made the one man for the one
woman, and the one woman to the one man, even as it was in the garden of
Eden, so all his heart and thoughts become pure, and gentle, and simple;
how the song of the birds, and the scent of the grapes, and the spicy
southern gales, and all the simple country pleasures of the glens of
Lebanon, which he shares with his own vine-dressers and slaves, become
more precious in his eyes than all his palaces and artificial pomp; and
the man feels that he is in harmony, for the first time in his life,
with the universe of God, and with the mystery of the seasons; that
within him, as well as without him, the winter is past, and the rain
is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, and the voice of the
turtle is heard in the land.... And suppose I saw in my dream how the
rabbis, when they heard those wicked words, stopped their ears with one
accord, and ran upon that son of Belial and cast him out, because
he blasphemed their sacred books by his carnal interpretations. And
suppose--I only say suppose--that I saw in my dream how the poor man
said in his heart, "I will go to the Christians; they acknowledge the
sacredness of this same book; and they say that their God taught them
that 'in the beginning God made man, male and female.' Perhaps they will
tell me whether this Song of Songs does not, as it seems to me to do,
show the passage upwards from brutal polygamy to that monogamy whic