Tracts for Today Author:Moncure Daniel Conway Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ORPHEUS, Foe the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. The story runs th... more »at Orpheus, having had his wife Eurydice snatched from him by a serpent's bite, determined to seek her in the realms of Pluto. He descended into Hades with the lyre which he had received from Apollo, and in the use of which he had been so well instructed by the Muses, that, whilst ho played, the wild beasts gave over their prey and ferocity, and even the trees and rocks, uprooted from the earth, followed him. At the gates of Hades a note from his lyre served to silence the three-headed dog Cerberus who guarded it, and gain him admittance. Never before had a living person entered the dread abodes of death,—never had a shade that wandered there been released to life again. But when Orpheus entered where Pluto sat enthroned in the midst of the Judges, and saw his beloved wife, sad at having lost him, he commenced a strain upon his lyre. The music wrought its enchantraent everywhere. The tortures of those undergoing punishment were suspended. The stern Gods of Death and Hell were softened,—and he received permission that Eurydice should return with him to life again. This much of the fable suffices our purpose. Lord Bacon has said that "all the ancient fables might be familiarly illustrated, and brought down to the capacities of children." And there can be no doubt that such a spiritual sense is enfolded in the story of Orpheus. Hades with its monarch Pluto and its stern judges, its guard Cerberus, stand for the Senses, the earthly propensities; the Furies are Passions. The fair Eurydice is a type of the Soul, which, though heaven-born, and conscious of the life and light in the world above the Senses, where dwells the p...« less