life than to feel our solidarity with the communion of saints, and to know that intensity of love prevails against length of time, and that we can be helped by the prayers of those who love us? The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. "And thou," says King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,

"If thou should never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

ii. Another great lesson the "Purgatorio" will teach us. It is that forgiveness of sins is a very different thing from remission of consequences. Esau repents, but he has lost the blessing; Achan repents, but he has to die by fire in the Valley of Achor; David repents, but thenceforth the dark spirits of lust and blood are walking in his house. The impure man repents, but his bones are still full of the sin of his youth which shall lie down with him in the dust. The prodigal repents, but nevertheless his root has been as rottenness, and his blossom has gone up as dust. The "Purgatory" will help to teach us that sin is worse than punishment.

"Yea, thou forgivest, but with all forgiving
Canst not restore mine innocence again,
Make Thou, O Christ, a dying of my living-

Save from the guilt, but never from the pain!"

iii. The spirits in Purgatory yearn for the presence of God, but do not desire their penalty to be shortened. The sense of shame, the sense of justice, prevail with them. When Dante speaks to those in the seventh circle they lean towards him, but are careful not to lean one inch beyond the fire, though molten glass would be cool to it, because they do not desire one moment's respite from the pain which is purging away their sin. When the poet Guido has ended his conversation with Dante he vanishes in the flames as a fish darts to the bottom of the water. is a deep lesson here. It is the lesson that—

"Hearts which verily repent

Are burdened with impunity,
And comforted by chastisement;
That punishment's the best to bear
Which follows soonest on the sin,

And guilt's a game where losers fare

Better than those who seem to win."

There

iv. Once more, there is the lesson how pressing is repentance. Men delay repentance; and yet for the soul that has fallen into sin repentance is the very work of life. With awful folly they pave hell with good resolutions which they do not fulfil, and bid God await their leisure. How different is it when a

soul has realised the awful importance of time! Dante's "Purgatorio" the one thought, the one aim, the one desire of the spirits is with all speed to get rid of the sin which has been the shame and curse of life. The spirits on the terrace of sloth will not stop, even for a moment, in their race. Pope Adrian, weeping for his avarice, bids Dante leave him that his tears may not be interrupted. They are all free; but their will to suffer proves their worthiness; for, by the ordinance of Heaven, they are as eager for the healing torment as once they were for the sin. When a soul is in earnest, it has no time to waste on anything which does not further its own duty and its own redemption.

v. Here, then, are a very few of the many lessons of the poem in which Dante draws the picture of men suffering, in calm and holy hope, the sharp discipline of repentance, amid the prayers, the melodies, the consoling thoughts and images, the holy songs, the radiant comforting Angels of the Christian life. It was one and the same man who arose from the despair, the agony, the vivid and vulgar horrors of the "Inferno," to the sense and imaginations of certainty, sinlessness, and joy ineffable.

"No man," says Dean Church, "ever measured the greatness of man in all its forms with so true and yet so admiring an eye, and with such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so awfully man's

littleness and vileness. He never lets go the recollection that human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption and sin, and has to struggle through the sweat and dust and disfigurement of earthly toil, has, throughout, compensations, remedies, spheres innumerable of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of delight and consolation; and, at the other end, a perfection which cannot be named. And he went farther. No one who could understand and do homage to greatness in man ever drew the line so strongly between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly placed the hero of this world only-placed him in all his magnificence and honoured with no timid or dissembling reverence -at the distance of worlds below the place of the lowest saint."

III. THE PARADISO

T

HE "Paradiso" never has been, or can be, so

popular with the mass of readers as the "Inferno" or the "Purgatorio." It has not the weird and thrilling interest and variety of the "Inferno," with its multitudes of contemporary references. It has not the human nearness of the "Purgatorio." What sin is we all know; what penitence is we all know, or may know; what is the unbroken beatitude of glorified spirits we can only dream. It is quite natural to exclaim :

"O for a deeper insight into Heaven!

More knowledge of the glory, and the joy,
Which there unto the happy souls is given;
Their service, their engagements, their employ:

For it is past belief that Christ hath died
Only that we eternal psalms may sing:

That all the gain Death's awful curtains hide

Is this eternity of antheming;

And this praised rest-shall there be no endeavour?

No noble toil, no blessed strife for ever?"