Note 78 — INTRODUCTION. (continued 2)

1091–1153. To the scholastics of the middle ages the Song of Songs seemed an unfathomable abyss of mysticism, into whose depths they could dive as deeply as their speculative minds and fertile imaginations prompted them. St. Bernard, who was born at Fountains, in the vicinity of Dijon, in Burgundy, and died in 1153, delivered eighty-six sermons upon this book, and this prodigious number comprises the first two chapters only. In the first sermon he says, “The unction and experience can alone teach the understanding of such a Song. It is not to be heard outside, for its notes give no sound in the street; but she who sings it, she hears it and he to whom it is sung, that is the bridegroom and the bride.” He divides the Song into three parts; in the first part the bridegroom leads the bride into the garden, and in the second he conducts her into the cellar, and in the third he takes her home into his apartments. Upon the words Let him kiss me, &c. (Chap. i. 2), which he explains as referring to the incarnation of Christ, he remarks, “O happy kiss, marvellous because of amazing condescension; not that mouth is pressed upon mouth, but God is united with man.”78