the soul as its eternal form; that the free-will becomes at last enslaved to evil; that the sinner, apart from divine grace, tends ever downward in an ever-increasing intensity of selfish will, and an ever-increasing intensity of punishment.

It is pleasant to emerge from the Inferno, even though we have learned from it so many lessons. Dante emerges under the guidance of Virgil. Having passed the center of the earth in his descent, he takes his upward way to the opposite side of the globe from that at which he entered. But the force of gravity is against him now. "Facilis descensus Averno"; and we may add, Difficilis ascensus Calo. By what road does he ascend? Ah, there is a channel worn through the solid earth by the stream that flows downward from the Mount of Purgatory. That stream is made up of the tears of the penitents who make reparation on the mount, and whose guilt and depravity, as fast as it is purged away, flows downward to Satan from whom it came and with whom it now abides forever.

As our toilworn pilgrim emerges from the bowels of the earth and plants his feet upon the Mount of Purification, the day begins to break, and the sorrow of his soul gives place to joy. He sees an angel-piloted bark approaching the island-mount, a bark which brings to purgatory, from the banks of the Tiber, all souls which have died at peace with the church, and who only need to be freed from the remains of sin to be fitted for heaven. Here we need to remember that in Roman Catholic doctrine, purgatory is only a temporary abiding place. Purgation may last for hundreds of years, but it cannot last forever.

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All who enter hell go there to stay. In purgatory none ever stay. And yet none wish to depart. They desire only to be cleansed. They bear willingly, yes even gladly, the chastisements of God, which are meant for their correction in righteousness. The reeds with which the shores of that island are fringed, yielding ever as they do to the swaying of the waves, are the symbol of the will of the mountain's habitants, bending ever to the slightest movement of the will of God. On this mount they bemoan their sins. It is a sweet and holy dwelling-place, irradiated by the southern cross, a constellation unseen in our cold northern climes; the grassy slopes are kept green by the tears of the penitents; angels visit it to encourage them, admonish them, guide them upward, in their toilsome striving; hymns and prayers to God are continually ascending from its terraces, as from altar-stairs; its summit is the terrestrial paradise, from which by a short step the soul, with the temporary shade-body which it wears till the resurrection, can rise from earth to heaven.

There is an ante-purgatory, just as there was an antehell. This ante-purgatory is under the wardenship of Cato of Utica, that model of ancient self-control. Here at the base of the mountain are detained those who deferred repentance during their former life; they are compelled to wait outside of St. Peter's gate a hundred years for every year of that former delay-that is, are compelled to wait unless their stay is shortened by the pious prayers of friends whom they have left behind, one moment of whose intense intercessions has power to deliver from years of purgatorial sorrow. Voltaire

said rightly that in purgatory the church had found what Archimedes vainly longed for, a o ar upon which he might plant his lever to move the world.

The souls in this place of preliminary trial chant the Miserere and the Compline Hymn, and so get help against the Adversary. At St. Peter's Gate, purgatory proper first begins. They approach it by a threefold stair, symbolic of the confession, contrition, and satisfaction which the church requires. An angel with flaming sword keeps the door, charged to err by admitting, rather than to err by excluding, those who seek admission there; and yet there is a safeguard-he who after entering should look back, would again find himself without.

Upon the brow of each one so admitted the angel with his sword of flame marks seven times the letter P, which means Peccatum, Peccavi, and indicates that there are seven capital sins which must be successively purged away. There are seven terraces, each devoted to the purgation of one of these sins of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lasciviousness; and when the purgation of any one of these is complete, the corresponding mark of shame vanishes from the brow. So the process goes on until the forehead is pure as at man's first creation; and, as the soul leaps up in freedom and regains once more its lost estate of innocency, the whole Mount of Purgatory shakes for joy.

In the Inferno sin grows in intensity as the circles narrow and we go downward. In purgatory the rule is just the opposite; the greatest sins are first purged away, and the mountain narrows as we ascend. Progress upward is at the first slow and difficult, and the heights

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are great. But each sin removed gives new freedom; the distances grow smaller and the ascent more rapid; for "to him that hath shall be given," and when the sins that so easily beset are all laid aside, the soul "mounts up with wings as eagles"; nothing now is left. to separate between it and God.

There is another relation between the structure of the purgatory and the hell-sins in both are classified under three general divisions. In the Purgatory, however, the classification is that of the medieval theologians, into love distorted, love defective, and love excessive. Under love distorted, pride, envy, and anger are ranged-each being regarded as loving evil to one's neighbor. Love defective is represented only by sloth -this loves too little the highest good. Love excessive has three divisions—avarice, or the excessive love of money; gluttony, or the excessive love of food; lasciviousness, or the excessive love of sensual pleasure. The seven terraces around the mountain are but eighteen feet in width, for "narrow is the way that leads to life." On the one side of each is the precipice; on the other the rocky wall, up which there is but one long and steep ascent, by stairs, to the terrace next above.

Let us delay for one moment to glance at the chastisements of the Mount of Penitence. In the first circle pride, the primal sin and root of all other sins, is made to suffer. The proud are bowed to the earth by heavy weights of stone placed upon their backs; and as they move onward in long procession, their eyes lifted up no longer, they look sideways at wonderfully sculptured representations of humility upon the rocky

wall, or downward at wonderfully sculptured representations of pride upon the pavement beneath their feet, while spirit voices chant the Lord's Prayer and "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

In the second terrace the envious are punished by having the eyes that looked askance on others sewed up with iron thread, while mantled in prickly haircloth they are compelled to sit shoulder to shoulder, leaning upon one another and recognizing their mutual obligation and dependence. The eyes that have transgressed are not permitted now to see, and so instruction is communicated to them by spirit voices that record the various historical instances of love or of envy. "Blessed are the merciful," and "Rejoice, O Victor," are the salutations that signalize release.

The third circle is devoted to the chastisement of anger. This too is punished in kind, by a dense fog, symbolic of the passion which blinds the eyes of the wrathful. The fog is bitter as smoke and black as night, and it is only in ecstatic vision that the angry souls are reminded of noble examples of forbearance, and of the murderous fruits of the opposite vice. The souls here suffering pray to the Lamb of God for mercy, and the beatitude that celebrates the completion of their purging is "Blessed are the peacemakers."

But we must hasten up the mount. The slothful are punished in the fourth terrace by being forced against their nature to run races with each other; while they exercise the virtue opposite to their own failing by shouting out to each other shameful illustrations of lukewarmness and inspiring instances of diligence. Avarice, in the circle next above, is bound hand and