ound in Heaven as they catch sight of the stars, a symbol of divine order and hope.
             Dante's relationship with God, which portrays the experience of a deeply committed Christian, is evidenced throughout The Inferno. At the time he completed his work, this commitment to Christianity and the sense of duty to lead a morally pure life were religiously upheld by the current medieval society. The spiritual belief-that those who insist on denying God's Will or those who give in to sinful temptation and die unrepentant are eternally damned, makes Dante's Inferno a religious and morally challenging experience.
             Dante's work, even though called the Divine Comedy , is not intended to be humorous. From the multitude of different stories in Inferno, including the cantos III, VII, and XIX, a major theme repeatedly emerges-the eternal justice of God, which gives each sinner his due by "perfecting" the sins that he committed in life and thus makes the punishment always fit the crime.
             Already in the opening cantos of the Inferno, when Virgil leads Dante up to the Gate of Hell, where they read a foreboding inscription: "Through me the way into the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my High Artificer; my Maker was Divine Authority, the Highest Wisdom, and the Primal Love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, who enter here", (Inferno, Canto III, lines 1-9) the reader is given the first taste of the nature of Dante's Hell-its hopelessness
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