thou didst come poor and hungry into the field to sow that plant of righteousness, which once was a vine but now is turned to a briar.'

"When this was ended, that holy court on high reëchoed through the circles with Te Deum laudamus, to the tune that is sung up yonder. And that chief who already, in his examination, had drawn me from branch to branch [of doctrine] so far that we were now close to the topmost leaves [of the tree], began once more: 'The grace that fondles thy mind hath opened thus far thy lips as they should be opened, wherefore I approve of that which hath come forth; but now it behooves thee to state what thou believest, and whence it came to thy belief.' 'O holy father,' I began, 'O spirit who now beholdest that which once thou didst believe so firmly as to outstrip the younger feet into the sepulcher, thou wouldst have me declare the essence of my unhesitating belief, and thou hast asked also for the cause of it. Now this is my reply: I believe in one God, single and eternal, who, unmoved himself, moveth all the heavens with love and with longing. And for such belief I not only have proofs physical and metaphysical, but I receive it also from the truth that hath been showered down from Heaven by Moses, by prophets and psalms, by the Gospels, and by you [Apostles] who did write, after the glowing spirit made you holy. And I believe in three eternal Persons; and these I believe to be an entity so one and yet so threefold that it admits of a construction with are or is. The mysterious divine nature

whereof I now speak is stamped upon my mind more than once by the teaching of the Evangel. This is the beginning; this is the spark that presently swells into a lusty flame, and sparkles in me like a star in the sky.'

E'en as a lord, receiving joyous word,

Thanketh the bearer, to his bosom prest,
As soon as he the messenger hath heard,
Thus me the saint melodiously blest,

Three times encircling me, when I was done
That apostolic light, at whose behest

I told my creed, which such approval won.

This curious passage (the last few lines of which I have tried to translate into verse) likens Dante's colloquy with St. Peter in the skies to an examination for the doctor's degree, the candidate being catechized by the professor. The subsequent tests in hope, administered by St. James, and in love, conducted by St. John, are less formal and less severe. Allegorically, Dante conceives of himself as being at this stage of his experience qualified for the highest flight of religious contemplation for entrance into the realm of pure spirit, above the stars-by his proficiency in the three essential virtues of Christianity, which, no doubt, he now grasps with firmer certainty than ever before.

In his literal conception of Paradise, Dante thought of certainty as constituting one of its eternal joys. Those doctrines which on earth are received as a matter of faith, beyond our thorough comprehension, those mysteries which are far out

of the reach of mortal penetration, shall in Heaven be as clear as any axiom, as the simplest geometrical proposition, as the plainest object our eyes behold. Those problems which so torment us by constantly whetting our intellectual curiosity shall be solved for us; our thirst for knowledge shall be satisfied.

During the poet's mystic progress through the heavens he continually receives from Beatrice, and from the other spirits he encounters, instruction in the abstruse problems of philosophy, ethics, and theology. These fictitious discussions, which, as I have said, often enough seem uninteresting to the modern reader, were surely a delight to their author as he invented them. To him they must have been as a foretaste of the real life after death. Among other things, he learns why it is that all the souls in Paradise are perfectly contented, although they do not all enjoy the same degree of blessedness: it is because each is blest to its utmost capacity for beatitude, and also because the greatest happiness for every one is the consciousness of conformity to the maker's intent. He is taught that injustice in God's decrees is not only impossible, but a downright contradiction of terms; for what we call justice is only another name for the divine will.

Now wilt thou sit upon the bench, O man,
To judge of things a thousand miles away.
With eyes that cannot see beyond a span?

But (we may ask, in our presumption) how can it be just that a virtuous pagan, who has never

heard of Christ, should be damned for not being a Christian?

A man, thou sayst, is born on Indus' strand

And none there is the tale of Christ to read
Nor write nor preach abroad, in all the land.
Upright is he in every wish and deed

And, in so far as human wit can tell,

A sinless life in act and word doth lead.

He dieth unbaptized, an infidel.

If he believe not, how is he to blame?

What kind of justice sendeth him to Hell?

The answer is this: although Heaven cannot be won without faith in Christ, such faith may be miraculously inspired in a worthy pagan by divine grace. And Dante invents as an example the salvation of the Trojan prince Ripheus, an obscure character in Virgil's Eneid, described as the most just and scrupulous of his countrymen. That soul, the poet is told, "moved by grace which flows from so deep a font that no created sight ever fathomed it to the bottom, bent all its love, here below, on justice; wherefore, proceeding from grace to grace, God opened its eyes to our future redemption. And the soul believed therein, and after that no longer could endure the stench of paganism, but rebuked his people for their perversity." The three Christian virtues were his baptism, more than a thousand years before men were baptized. "O predestination," cry the heavenly spirits that have expounded this truth to Dante, "O predestination, how distant is thy root from those minds which see not the primal cause entire! Ye mortals, hold your judg

Committee on the Harvard College:
Non-resident Student Center.

FAITH

ments in reserve; for we, who see God, do not yet know all the elect."

Predestination is a problem that never can be completely solved, even in Paradise. The mind of God, more profound than any created intelligence, can be fully understood only by itself. To the purest of the blest, even to the highest of the angels, the divine purpose is only partially apparent. But this ignorance does not disturb their bliss; for what God wills, they will. One thing, then, Dante can never hope to comprehend the secret of the plan of salvation. Why has the Lord made one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor? How can God's foresight and omnipotence be reconciled with man's absolute freedom and responsibility? For the individual human will is free: it has the choice between good and evil, it has conscience to guide it, it has opportunity to achieve salvation. If it fails, the fault is its own. How this can be, in spite of the foreknowledge of its maker, is a mystery that quite transcends the created mind.

By "predestination" Dante means, not the foredooming of certain souls to Hell, but the endowment of all souls, as they are made by God at the moment of the birth of the body, with distinct and different degrees of spiritual vision. All have sight enough to steer their course, if they make the best of what they have; but some see better than others. Now, if the soul, by its own effort, gains admission to Paradise, the kind of happiness it is destined to enjoy depends upon the clearness of