ere must be for sin, somewhere, somehow,
according to immutable laws, unless a mantle of universal forgiveness
were spread over sinners who in this life had given no sufficient proofs
of repentance and faith. Expiation was the great element of Mediaeval
theology. It may have been borrowed from India, but it was engrafted on
the Christian system. Sometimes it was made to take place in this life;
when the sinner, having pleased God, entered at once upon heavenly
beatitudes. Hence fastings, scourgings, self-laceration, ascetic rigors
in dress and food, pilgrimages,--all to purchase forgiveness; which idea
of forgiveness was scattered to the winds by Luther, and replaced by
grace,--faith in Christ attested by a righteous life. I allude to this
notion of purgatory, which early entered into the creeds of theologians,
and which was adopted by the Catholic Church, to show how powerful it
was when human consciousness sought a relief from the pains of endless
physical torments.

After Dante had written his _Purgatorio_, he retired to the picturesque
mountains which separate Tuscany from Modena and Bologna; and in the
hospitium of an ancient monastery, "on the woody summit of a rock from
which he might gaze on his ungrateful country, he renewed his studies in
philosophy and theology." There, too, in that calm retreat, he commenced
his _Paradiso_, the subject of profound meditations on what was held in
highest value in the Middle Ages. The themes are theological and
metaphysical. They are such as interested Thomas Aquinas and
Bonaventura, Anselm and Bernard. They are such as do not interest this
age,--even the most gifted minds,--for our times are comparatively
indifferent to metaphysical subtleties and speculations. Beatrice and
Peter and Benedict alike discourse on the recondite subjects of the
Bible in the style of Mediaeval doctors. The themes are great,--the
incarnation, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body,
salvation by faith, the triumph of Christ, the glory of Paradise, the
mysteries of the divine and human natures; and with these disquisitions
are reproofs of bad popes, and even of some of the bad customs of the
Church, like indulgences, and the corruptions of the monastic system.
The _Paradiso_ is a thesaurus of Mediaeval theology,--obscure, but
lofty, mixed up with all the learning of the age, even of the lives of
saints and heroes and kings and prophets. Saint Peter examines Dante
upon faith, James