supra-conscious state, and that, in other words, he frequently "backslid"
from divine contemplation, and allowed his yearning for the state of
liberation, to express itself in love of woman.

An attribute of the possession of cosmic consciousness is wisdom, and this
Solomon is said to have possessed far beyond his contemporaries, and to a
degree incompatible with his years. It is said that he built and
consecrated a "temple for the Lord," and that, as a result of his extreme
piety and devotion to God, he was vouchsafed a vision of God.

As these reports have come to us through many stages of church history and
as Solomon lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus, it seems hardly
fitting to ascribe the raptures of Solomon as typifying the love of the
Church (the bride) for Christ (the bridegroom).

Rather, it is easier to believe, the wisdom of the king argues a degree of
consciousness far beyond that of the self-conscious man, and he rose to the
quality of spiritual realization, expressing itself in a love and longing
for that soul communion which may be construed as quite personal, referring
to a personal, though doubtless non-corporeal union with his spiritual
complement.

Although the pronoun "he" is used, signifying that Solomon's longing was
what theology terms "spiritual" and consequently impersonal, meaning God
The Absolute, yet we suggest that the use of the masculine pronoun may be
due entirely to the translators and commentators (of whom there have been
many), and that, in their zeal to reconcile the song with the
ecclesiastical ideas of spirituality, the gender of the pronoun has been
changed. We submit that the idea is more than possible, and indeed in view
of the avowed predilections of the ancient king and sage, it is highly