The Portland daily press., 1885-11-03
DANTE.
Lecture by Canon Farrar In the Y. m.
C. Course.

There was large audience in attendance
at City Hall last evening to listen to the lee
ture given in the Y. NJ. c. A. course by
Archdeacon Frederick W. Farrar, on
Dante AT o'clock the lecturer APP
peared on the platform arm in arm with
Mr.. A. G. Dewey of the Association, and ac-
companied by Rev. Phillips Brooks of Bos-
ton, together with Hon. Neal Dow and the
entire clergy of the city and suburban par
ishes. There were also several visiting cler-
gymen from different parts of the State,
Rev. Messrs. Westwood and Lindsay of
Auburn, Luce of Gardiner and Harlow of
Houlton being among the number.
In introducing the lecturer Mr. Dewey said
that probably no spot in England is so fav-
orably known to people on this side of the
water as Westminster Abbey, and spoke of
the pleasure it gave him to introduce to the
audience one of the most eloquent of its
present ministerial board. Amid the APP
plause that followed, Canon Farrar stepped
forward and without moments delay COM
menced on his subject He is man rather
above the ordinary height, with well-pro-
portioned figure, large head and full chest, but
with more than ordinary refinement in his
features. His light brown hair slightly tinged
with gray surmounts broad, high forehead,
beneath which are a pair of dark blue eyes
not especially prominent His lecture was
in manuscript before him and he reviewed
in everyday language the work of the great
poet, acting more as a guide and making
more brilliant the bright spots, and more ter
rible, by his graphic descriptions, the hor-
rors of the scenes through which he led his
hearers.
DANTE" he said "shows everywhere to
mankind the royal priesthood and immortal
dignity Of man, made in Gods image and for
whom Christ died. 1t is because such a
poet seems peculiarly fitted to teach and ele-
yate this age and make it blush for its own
favorite vices that have asked you to listen
while L speak Ii any young men are in my
audience, | INVITE them to hold high a per-
petual companionship with such souls as
this, and if there are those who have found
delight in meaner things | would hope that
by taking to the study of Dante they might
be induced to turn away from such follies
and breathe the pure air of the great and i'm
mortal poet"
The speaker hastily passed over the earlier
history of Dante, his sorrows and disappoint-
ments, which trained his mind to sublimity
of thought. 'God," he said, dipped his
luUIStl Ill vinegar anu gave Hill 10 uIlnk!
is it wonderful that bitter words sometimes
escaped him! But his loss was our gain. As
In the case of many other poets, the gold was
purged through affiiction of all its dross and
moulded into forms of eternal loneliness.
Dante never desired other than fit audi
ence, though few. He warned off all base
and feeble readers. What we learn from his
great poem is its intense moral purpose, and
those who do not care for moral purposes do
not care for Dante. He wishes us to feel
the same hatred and fierce ScOrn of sin where
with God had inspired him, whether it takes
the form of avarice, fraud or lust. He sets
sin before us both in its nature and punish
ment, now melting us with pity, now freezing
us with horror, now infaming us with in
dignation, but always placing before us this
lesson that it is sin which is hell. You have
all read the Book of Wisdom and you know
the lesson of the last chapters of that re-
markably eloquent book is this: that where
withal man sinneth by the same also shall
he be punished. 1t is always one sin and
that tfav0rite one by which souls are de-
str0yed.
Sometimes in a single line Dante infuses
moral lesson which is moral gain for life
One lesson he teaches is that the forgiveness
OF sin is one thing and the remission of sin
another. The spirits in Purgatory do not
feel worthy to see God until the angels have
brushed from their foreheads the seven let
tiers which stand for the seven sins. That
punishment is the easiest to bear which fol-
which Dante points out is the absolute neces-
SHY for repentance He means to teach us,
too, that there is danger in contact with evil
he feels the faint of the vices he looks on.
He feels that he becomes base as he listens
to the reyilings of the base and false when
he listens to treachery. Dante felt, as we all
must feel, that there is no more certain
proof of the being of God than the fact that
He has created in every one of us keen and
sensitive instinct Of beauty, and He has
gratifed, by the beauty of the outward uni
verse, the instinct He has implanted within
US, so that in everything, the beautiful, and
the sweet and the lovely, we see as it were
the very autograph of God
"The poem ON Paradise is the least read of
all by the multitude. 1t is pre-eminently a
poem of light. If you understand the Para
disc of Dante and feel its magic influence
you must battle yourselves in light. You
on the light as with the eagles undazzled
eye; you must become, in the language of
Scripture, the children of light for here he
leaves the earth utterly behind him and
speaks with no meaner beings than
and apostles. Through ali the scenes
amid which he passes he is permitted
to gaze for one instant on the supreme glory
of God, the Trinity in Unity. Higher than
that the wings of poetry cannot ascend, and
gloom. The object is to hold up before men
the purity of Gods moral government, to
arouse them to a sense of the mystery of
their state, to point them to the beauty of
the Christian temper, to teach them the full
ness of the grace of God, to bring the human
soul to a conception of the possibility of ris-
ing, step by step, into joy not unimagina-
BILE by men, and yet of a higher order than
the ideal of earth. His subject lis not so
much the state of souls after death, about
which Dante knew just as much and just as
little as you or l, because he knew just as
much and just as little as has been revealed
to us by God. He does not mean to describe
kind of hell in which all mankind has
ceased to believe as reality, but behind
this he means to give the full verify of a
moral hell. His subject is not so much the
state of souls after death, as that man is
rendering himself liable by the exercise of
free will to the rewards and punishments of
justice 1t is solely by realizing such truths
that any one of us can attain the ideal which
Dante wanted to picture forth before us, and
help us to attain-the ideal of one, who in
boyhood, is gentle, and obedient, and mod
est, in youth is temperate, resolute and loyal,
in ripe years is prudent, just and generous,
and who in age has attained to calm wisdom
and to perfect peace in God"
Rev. DR.. Brooks did not make any remarks
as was expected, owing to the lateness of the
hour.