" In another place he asserts: "In pondering the way of
life by which this high priest of the Middle Ages (Dante) proclaims that
men attain perfect liberty, we cannot but remark the stress he lays
upon a principle which has well-nigh faded from the Protestant mind. It
is that of expiation--(and) expiation is no musty dogma of the
schoolmen, but a living truth.... Dante placed more emphasis on the
human side of the problem than we, and for this reason he deserves
attentive study, having portrayed most powerfully some truths which our
age, so eager to break from the narrowness of the past, has overlooked."
In agreement with this statement of the learned Congregational divine is
William T. Harris, former United States Commissioner of Education, who
observes in his "Spiritual Sense of the Divina Commedia," that if
Purgatory is absent from the Protestant creed, the thought of which
Purgatory in this life is the symbol, is not uncommon in non-Catholic
literature. His exact words are: "If Protestantism has omitted Purgatory
from its religion, certainly Protestant literature has taken it up and
absorbed it entire," and for proof he points to the moral, among other
books, of The Scarlet Letter, The Marble Faun, Adam Bede and Romola, all
showing
"That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
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