Henry Tres Patr. Angelomus. Philo Carp. Tres Patr. Honorius. Idem. The spirit's duty. True hearts spread and heave Give Him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep Yet never sleep the sun up. Prayer should Rise to prevent the sun; sleep doth sins glut, And heaven's gate opens when this world's is shut. Then, in quiet self-examination, it is possible to learn whether the True Vine is flourishing in the soil of our hearts, if the flower promise fruit in the formation of character, if the pomegranate of outward self-restraint and inward fervour be developing within us, if purity of life and true confession of faith be ours. There will I give Thee my loves. Or, with LXX. and Vulgate, my breasts. In the field, in the scene of laCassiodor. bour, not in the palace of rest, is it that my love and devotion will be chiefly kindled, there only can I bring forth children to suckle and bring up for Thee, there S. Just. Org. only shall I be able to train them for martyrdom. Or, taking the vineyards, with Honorius, to denote the cloisters of the Religious Life, there, apart from the disturbances of the city, in the still quiet of the field, will the love of God be best nourished in the soul. And there comes a time too when this world's night is ended, and the Bride rises early to the vineyards, lifting herself up to the Churches on high. The Day of Judgment is the morn of that everlasting day, which is better than a thousand years; or, you may take it that man's life is the night, and the life to come is the morning, in which morning each of the faithful gets up to the vineyards when he arrives after death at the Heavenly Churches. There he beholds the flowers of the vineyard, the fruits of these flowers, and the buds of the pomegranates, that is, the reward for the faithful and righteous, given to those who labour diligently, and the wages which shall be paid to the Martyrs. And there the Church will give CHRIST her breasts, because she will, in eternal glory, present to Him the teachers of the Old and New Law. 13 The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. S. Greg. M. The mandrake, or love-apple, a narcotic fruit, was supposed to have the powers of a philtre, to excite love and to produce fruitfulness; and for this latter Gen. xxx. reason Rachel asks Leah to give her the mandrakes 14. which Reuben had gathered. The root is also said to resemble a headless human body, and these two opinions about the plant have influenced much of the exposition of this passage. Theodoret, confining himself to the notion of an opiate,' holds that the words Theodoret. here imply a further progress in grace beyond that last stage of the previous verse, and denote deadness to the world and sin, and tranquil sleep, free from all disturbance and passion, attained by quaffing the chalice of holy doctrine. S. Gregory, also holding to the view that advance in religious perfection is here intended, refers, following Cassiodorus, to the medicinal use of the mandrake, and takes the plant here to denote those more perfect Saints who are not merely fruitful in good works themselves, but are able to heal others s. August. with the wholesome odour of their good example. He in Faust. does not, however, dwell on the special use which 56. Cassiodorus ascribes to the mandrake, that of being Cassiodor. given as an anaesthetic to persons about to undergo severe surgical operations, which, he hints, signifies the power of faith in overcoming the tortures of martyrdom. Philo sees in the shape of the mandrake's Philo Carp. root, the buried Saints of the Old Testament, hidden from the glory of God, but yielding a sweet savour until the early morning of CHRIST's Resurrection, when they received the reward of their fragrance in the gift of everlasting life. The Vulgate couples this clause with the succeeding one thus, The mandrakes give a smell at our gates. These gates, says Cassio- Cassiodor. dorus, are the Apostles and their successors, because no one enters the Church, which is the City of God, save he who has been regenerated in Baptism and taught the doctrine of life by holy teachers. Of these gates the Psalmist said, "The LORD loveth the gates Ps, lxxxvii. 1 "Not poppy, nor mandra gora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to Which thou ow'dst yesterday.' Othello, Act iii., sc. 3. Man. xxii. Rupert. Isa. liv. 1. X. 4. of Sion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." The mandrakes denote the perfume of holiness, and thus the mandrakes gave a smell at the gates of the Church when the Apostles and their successors spread far and wide the fame of their sweet teaching, the fragrance of their holiness. And Rupert, who accepts the view that the mandrake produces fruitfulness, adds: The reason why they give a smell in our gates is because that is now at hand to be fulfilled which the spirit of prophecy spake to the yet barren Gentile race: "Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not, break forth and cry, thou that travailest not, for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband." In our gates, while we are still within our own borders, in the land of the Jews, we smell this odour. The Ethiopian eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning sitting in his chariot and reading Esaias the Prophet, when, lo, the HOLY SPIRIT, smellActs viii. 29; ing the odour, said unto Philip, "Go near, and join thyself to this chariot." We were even then in our gates when the alms of Cornelius the Centurion gave their smell in the sight of GOD. And to this smell too belongs that vision which appeared in the night to Acts xvi. 9. one of the Bridegroom's friends, "There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us." In these and other like ways the mandrakes gave a smell at our gates, denoting fruitfulness where sterility had been. And the resemblance to a headless body is dwelt on by more than one commentator. The mandrakes, says an early writer, were the Gentiles, living by the law of nature, and so far like natural men, but without the head of faith. These, not in the field, but at our gates, at the very utmost limit of our tenure, that is, near the end of the world, will be converted to GOD, and yield their perfume to Him. Another, not dissimilarly, tells us that in the evil times of the latter days, Antichrist will be for a time the visible head of the faithful, but when he has been smitten off, when the body lies as it were headless, then the Bride will call on her Beloved to go with her again for a new preaching of the Gospel and the new foundation of Churches amongst the helpless people lying at her gates. And S.Ans. Laud. S. Anselm of Laon reproduces this idea, confining it, however, to the Jews, as lacking CHRIST their true Head, but who will give a pleasant smell at our gates Luc. Abb. Honorius. when they exhibit signs of conversion, and seek admission by faith into the Church. At our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for Thee, O my Beloved. Theodoret. There is a general agreement here that the substantial S. Greg. M. unity of the Church under the Law and the Gospel is Beda. intended, and that the Bride tells her Beloved that Honorius. she will bring Him her children, the Saints of both covenants, that she will preserve the types and promises of the Old Testament along with the fulfilment of them in the New. There are, however, some additional meanings which they draw from the words. One reminds us that the Church offered her LORD His Parez. sacrifices without distinction of sex or age, that childmartyrs like Agnes and Cyriac, young maidens as Lucy and Agatha, and aged prelates such as Polycarp, Urban, and Marcellinus, alike were given as choice fruits for the Master's garners. Another interpreta. Tres Patr. tion sees here the comparison made, by co-ordinate study, of secular literature and natural religion along with the teachings of the Gospel, that the superiority of the latter may be clearly manifested, and the soul may profit by all. And a modern commentator wisely adds that the Church has not merely to keep in mind Thrupp. the records of former achievements of the Saints and the imitation of their examples, but also to employ new methods, and to practise duties formerly neglected or, at any rate, not brought into prominence. At our gates. Many are these gates of the Bride, whether Church or soul, where the fruits must be piled as an offering for her Bridegroom and King as He enters His own City in triumph, that He may accept her service and laud her devotion, according to that saying, "Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her Prov. xxxi. own works praise her in the gates." These are the gates of faith, hope, and charity; the gates of the Sacraments; the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Saints; the eight Beatitudes; the two low and narrow gates, through which few are to enter, of patient suffering and of perfect meditation on GOD alone. There are, besides, the five senses, gates through which thoughts pass from the body to the soul. At all these the Bride lays up, in the recesses of a devout and thankful heart, fruits for her Beloved, since she knows not where He may choose His place of entrance, and she brings new and old alike, all the works she once Vieyra. 31. Nic. Argent. Hugo Card. Beda. S. Mat. xiii. 52. did for GOD in fear, and all those she now does in love, all those of her early life and those of her later years, and she lays them up not for herself, but for Him, not because He is her LORD, but because He is her Beloved, and all that she has done, all the fruits she has stored, come from Him and are perfected in Him. One and all, they illustrate their expositions by citing those words of the Redeemer: "Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasures things new and old." Cassiodor. S. Athan. CHAPTER VIII. 10 that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised. Cassiodorus justly remarks that the expression of this wish, so inconsistent with the conditions of earthly love and marriage, is an incidental proof of the spiritual intention of the Song. Accordingly, the usual expoS. Ambros. sition of the verse is that it is the prayer of the Synagogue for the Incarnation of CHRIST. There is, however, no little variety in the details of this interpretation. S. Epiphan. Thus S. Epiphanius and his pupil Philo agree in allegPhilo Carp. ing that the mother of the Bride is eternal Wisdom, and her brother the LORD JESUS CHRIST in the human form which He took and bore; and that when CHRIST comes to the newly-baptized, as though to the infants of the Church, by the grace of His visitation, then He is said to suck the breasts, while, in their persons, He begins, as it were, to know God and taste heavenly things, that is, to suck the two breasts of the Old and New Testament and of the twin precepts of love. Theodoret. And Theodoret points out that the LORD condescended even more than in this wise, since He did not merely learn in the persons of those with whom He was pleased to identify Himself, but that He "grew, and |