however irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend Avesta" (Chips, vol. i. p. 134).
It is remarkable that almost identical expressions are employed by a Roman Catholic writer in reference to the efforts that have been made by theologians to discover the doctrine of the Trinity in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. I am glad to be able to quote an authority so unexceptionable as that of M. Didron for the proposition, that the poverty of the Old Testament in texts relating to the Trinity has caused the commentators to torture the sense of the words and the signification of facts. He adds the interesting information that artists, pushed on by the commentators, have represented the signs of the Trinity in scenes which did not admit of them. Thus, commentators and artists have united to find a revelation of the three persons of the Godhead in the three angels whom Abraham met in the plain of Mamre; in the three companions of Daniel who were thrown into the fiery furnace, and in other passages of equal relevance. No wonder, when such are the texts relied upon to prove the presence of this cardinal dogma, that M. Didron should observe that the Old Testament contains very few texts that are clear and precise upon the subject, and that in this portion of the Sacred Books we do not see a sufficient number of real and unquestionable manifestations of the Holy Trinity (Ic. Ch., pp 514-517).
Perhaps, however, the most conspicuous instance of the power of preconceptions in deciding the sense of Holy Writ is the traditional interpretation of the Song of Solomon. In this little book, which is altogether secular in its subject and its nature, the love of a young damsel to her swain is described in peculiarly plain and sensuous language. But precisely because it was so plain was it necessary to find allegorical allusions under its rather glowing phrases. Hence such expressions as "let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth; thy caresses are softer than wine," are held to refer to "the Church's love unto Christ," and an enthusiastic encomium passed by the Shulamite upon the physical perfections of her lover is called "a description of Christ by his graces." So, when another speaker, in
