The Spiritual Sense of Dantes Divina Commedia

re compass of its effects. Just as we strive in our human laws to establish justice by turning back upon the criminal the effects of his deeds, so, in fact, when placed ' under the form of Eternity,' all deeds do return to the doer; and this is the final adjustment, the ' end of all things'?it is the Last Judgment. And this judgment is now and is always the only actual Fact in the world." (From an article on " The Relation of Religion to Art," " Journal of Speculative Philosophy," April, 1876.) " This first great Christian poem (Dante's ' Divina Coin- media ') is regarded by Schelling as the archetype of all Christian poetry. . . . The poem embodies the Catholic view of life, and for this reason is all the more wholesome for study by modern Protestants. The threefold future world?Inferno, Purgatorio,Paradiso?presents us the exhaustive picture of man's relation to his deeds. The Protestant ' hereafter' omits the purgatory but includes the Inferno and Paradiso. What has become of this missing link in modern Protestant Art? we may inquire, and our inquiry is a pertinent one, for there is no subject connected with the relation of Religion to Art which is so fertile in suggestive insights.to the investigator. . . . "One must reduce life to its lowest terms, and drop away all consideration of its adventitious surroundings. The deeds of man in their threefold aspect are judged in this ' mystic, unfathomable poem.' The great fact of human responsibility is the key-n...