The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-01-31

been sent as ambassador to the Pope ard to him he turns for aid. The Pope, how ever, makes known his intention to take advantage of the situation to strengthen the power of the church. Baffled in his efforts to restore order in his beloved city, Dante turns toward Florence when he learns that in his absence his enemies have passed a decree of banishment against him and have also confscated his property. There is no career left to him in his native city. Cast down by the failure of his public career, he beholds a mountain whose shoulders are vested already with that planet rays which leadeth others right by every road" (sym- bolic of the shining heights of success), his soul is quieted and he determines to climb. He encounters three obstacles A leopard with spotted skin, symbolic of the factions of Florence, and of worldly pleasures with it's fair outside" and of sensuality, so impedes his prog ress that he had minded many times to return, that is, give up the worthy amhi- tion to reach the heights of success. But the propitious season (Easter, Good Fri day morning), the time of the day and his youth, were to him "oceasions of good hope" that he would be able to over come the leopard, when a lion, the sym bol of the ambition of Florence with head erect and ravenous with hunger for territory is encountered. The very air quakes as it must have done when Charles of Valois interferred in Florence Dante turns away from the lion (was banished with the party which he was accused of favoring) only to meet a she wolf (symbolic of the avarice shown by the papal court when Dante had asked for aid) ravenous with hunger for money and for political power. He relinquishes all hope of gaining the height and in his despair meets Virgil, human reason and the ppniuS xUb n there is another way to success. "He must try to make himself useful to his age a world poet
 As Dr. Harris says: Dante is to go through the inferno where he must col lect and classify all manner of human deeds, all manner of the states of the human soul (antecedent and consequent on those deeds) and paint a vast picture gallery of characters for the education not only of his native city, nor even of Italy, but of all Europe and of nations yet unborn" He is to become the world poet to interpret the world problem.
 Accompanied by Virgil, he is to 20 through hell and purgatory. From there Beatrice, the inspirer of his life is to be his guide in the terrestrial and celestial paradise. Although his life seems at first failure, in that public ca reer IS closed for him, yet it proves to ! be more enduring than he had planned The celestial powers have overruled his counsels, led him through eternal places and given him a more important station on the lofty hill whose shoulders were clothed with the days of the celestial sun."
 This doctrine of hell with it's apparent contradictions, I leave you to interpret The inferno is, as Dante makes Virgil say, 'the place where I told thee thou shouldst see the wretched souls who have iost the good of the intellect" Accord ing to Aristotle. the good of the intel lect is the highest good, the contempla- ton Of God, the vision of absolute truth and goodness The wicked do not see God revealed in the world of nature: to them God is friend more potent than the friends of hell, and their state of mind IS summed up by Dante as follows:
 God they blasphemed and their progeni- i tors
 The human race, the place, the time the seed
 or their engendering and of their birtht'
 Thus they are not subdued in obedience though conquered by the tyranny. os ex- l ternal circumstances which oppresses
 them and inficts pain on them. This l state IS hell for those who look upon
 pain not as produced by their own free
 dom but as thrust upon them from with 1 our. Then hell was created of necessity when freedom and responsibility were
 given to finite things and it will exist as long as the finite is created that is | eternity.
 It is in the lowest pit of the Inferno