LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 Herbert S. Woodward
 
 LIBRARY
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE 
 
 OF 
 
 FREEMASONRY 
 
 PREPARED FOR THK 
 
 SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE THIRTY-THIRD DEGREE. 
 
 SOUTHERN JURISDICTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY ITS AUTHORITY. 
 
 CHARLESTON, 
 A.\ M.'. 5641
 
 ENTF.KHII according to Act of Congress, HI me year 1871^ by 
 
 ALBERT PIKE. 
 In tne Office of tne LiDranan of Cor.gresf . at Washington. 
 
 ENTERI:D according to Act of Congress. :r the year 190>, by 
 THE SUPREME COUN'CIL OF THE SOUTHERN 
 
 JURISDICTION, A. A. S. I- .. U. S. A., 
 In the Office of tne Librarian of Cci gress. at Washington. 
 
 Manufactured by 
 
 L. H. Jenkins, Richmond. Va. 
 
 March, 1916
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following work has been prepared by authority of the Su- 
 preme Council of the Thirty-third Degree, for the Southern 
 Jurisdiction of the United States, by the Grand Commander, 
 and is now published by its direction. It contains the 
 Lectures of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in that juris- 
 diction, and is specially intended to be read and studied by the 
 Brethren of that obedience, in connection with the Rituals of the 
 Degrees. It is hoped and expected that each will furnish himself 
 with a copy, and make himself familiar with it ; for which pur- 
 pose, as the cost of the wo.rk consists entirely in the printing and 
 binding, it will be furnished at a price as moderate as possible. 
 No individual will receive pecuniary profit from it, except the 
 agents for its sale. 
 
 It has been copyrighted, to prevent its republication elsewhere, 
 and the copyright, like those of all the other works prepared for 
 the Supreme Council, has been assigned to Trustees for that Body. 
 Whatever profits may accrue from it will be devoted to purposes 
 of charity. 
 
 The Brethren of the Rite in the United States and Canada will 
 be afforded the opportunity to purchase it, nor is it forbidden that 
 other Masons shall ; but they will not be solicited to do so. 
 
 In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about 
 equally Author and Compiler ; since he has extracted quite 
 half its contents from the works of the best writers and most phi- 
 losophic or eloquent thinkers. Perhaps it would have been bet- 
 ter and more acceptable, if he had extracted more and written 
 less. 
 
 Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 the thoughts and words of others, he has continually changed 
 and added to the language, often intermingling, in the same sen- 
 tences, his own words with theirs. It not being intended for the 
 world at large, he has felt at liberty to make, from all accessible 
 sources, a Compendium of the Morals and Dogma of the Rite, to 
 re-mould sentences, change and add to words and phrases, com- 
 bine them with his own, and use them as if they mere his own, 
 to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to make the 
 whole most valuable for the purposes intended. He claims, there- 
 fore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to dis- 
 tinguish his own from that which he has taken from other sources, 
 being quite willing that every portion of the book, in turn, may 
 be regarded as borrowed from some old and better writer. 
 
 The teachings of these Readings are not sacramental, so far as 
 they go beyond the realm of Morality into those of other domains 
 of Thought and Truth. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite 
 uses the word "Dogma" in its true sense, of doctrine, or teaching; 
 and is not dogmatic in the odious sense of that term. Every one 
 is entirely free to reject and dissent from whatsoever herein may 
 seem to him to be untrue or unsound. It is only required of him 
 that he shall weigh what is taught, and give it fair hearing and 
 unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the ancient theosophic and 
 philosophic speculations are not embodied as part of the doctrines 
 of the Rite ; but because it is of interest and profit to know what 
 the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because 
 nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our 
 human and the animal nature, as the capacity of the human, 
 mind to entertain such speculations in regard to itself and the 
 Deity. But as to these opinions themselves, we may say, in the 
 words of the learned Canonist, Ludovicus Gomez: " Opiniones 
 secundiim varietatcm tcmporum scncscant ct inter moriantur, 
 aliccqnc diversoc vel prioribits contrarioc .renascantnr ei deinde 
 pubescant."
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 LODGE OF PERFECTION.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 i. 
 APPRENTICE. 
 
 THE TWELVE-INCH RULE AND THE COMMON GAVEL. 
 
 FORCE, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the 
 void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam 
 unconfined by science ; but, striking in the dark, and its blows 
 meeting only the air, they recoil, and bruise itself. It is destruc- 
 tion and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone ; 
 not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus blinded, striking at 
 random, and falling headlong among the sharp TOCKS by the 
 impetus of his own blows. 
 
 The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be econ- 
 omized, and also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the 
 ponderous iron arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore 
 and rifle the cannon and to weave the most delicate lace. It must 
 be regulated by Intellect. Intellect is to the people and the people's 
 Force, what the slender needle of the compass is to the ship its 
 soul, always counselling the huge mass of wood and iron, and always 
 pointing to the north. To attack the citadels built up on all sides 
 against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and pre-
 
 2 MORALS A ND DOGMA. 
 
 judices, the Force must have a brain and a law. Then its deeds 
 of daring produce permanent results, and there is real progress. 
 Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force, and phi- 
 losophy should be an energy, finding its aim and its effects in the 
 amelioration of mankind. The two great motor? are Truth and 
 Love. When all these Forces are combined, and guided by the 
 Intellect, and regulated by the RULE of Right, and Justice, and of 
 combined and systematic movement and effort, the great revolution 
 prepared for by the ages will begin to march. The POWER of the 
 Deity Himself is in equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only 
 results are HARMONY. 
 
 It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove fail- 
 ures. Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from 
 those high mountains that domineer over the moral horizon. Jus- 
 tice, Wisdom, Reason, Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal, 
 after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky 
 in their transparency, and been swollen by a hundred affluents, in 
 the majestic path of triumph, suddenly lose themselves in quag- 
 mires, like a Californian river in the sands. 
 
 The onward march of the human race requires that the heights 
 around it should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. 
 Deeds of daring dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding 
 lights of man. They are the stars and coruscations from that 
 great sea of electricity, the Force inherent in the people. To strive, 
 to brave all risks, to perish, to persevere, to be true to one's self, to 
 grapple body to body with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little 
 terror it inspires, now to confront unrighteous power, now to defy 
 intoxicated triumph these are the examples that the nations need, 
 and the light that electrifies them. 
 
 There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath 
 society ; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and 
 destitution, vices and crimes that reek and smimer in the darkness 
 in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinter- 
 estedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws 
 for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of progress there is no thought, 
 This populace has two mothers, both of thorn step-mothers Igno- 
 rance and Misery. Want is their onl \ guide for the appetite alone 
 they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be employed. The 
 lowlv sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted, purified 
 by fire, may become rcsplcndeir crystal. They have the brute
 
 APPRENTICE. 3 
 
 force of the HAMM-ER, but their blows help on the great cause, 
 when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by wisdom 
 and discretion. 
 
 Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the 
 giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in 
 their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of 
 which it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius 
 than under Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a 
 deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. 
 The foulness of the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious base- 
 ness of the despot. A miasma exhales from these crouching con- 
 sciences that reflect the master ; the public authorities are unclean, 
 hearts are collapsed, consciences shrunken, souls puny. This is 
 so under Caracalla, it is so under Commodus, it is so under Helio- 
 gabalus, while from the Roman senate, under Caesar, there comes 
 only the rank odor peculiar to the eagle's eyrie." 
 
 It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms, 
 the basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies ; 
 and these oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies 
 the RULE. Force is the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the 
 knight or of the bishop in armor. Passive obedience by force sup- 
 ports thrones and oligarchies, Spanish kings, and Venetian senates. 
 Might, in an army wielded by tyranny, is the enormous sum total 
 of utter weakness ; and so Humanity wages war against Humanity, 
 in despite of Humanity. So a people willingly submits to despot- 
 ism, and its workmen submit to be despised, and its soldiers to be 
 whipped ; therefore it is that battles lost by a nation are often 
 progress attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is 
 silent, reason sometimes speaks. 
 
 Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate that 
 is, enyoke the people. Then they plough with them as men do 
 with oxen yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is 
 reduced by bayonets, and principles are struck dumb by cannon- 
 shot ; while the monks mingle with the troopers, and the Church 
 militant and jubilant, Catholic or Puritan, sings Te Deums for 
 victories over rebellion. 
 
 The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again 
 the HAMMER or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an 
 armed tyranny, born full-grown, as Athene sprung from the brain 
 of Zeus. It spawns a dynasty, and begins with Caesar to rot into
 
 4 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Vitellius and Commodus. At the present day it inclines to begin 
 where former dynasties ended. 
 
 Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end 
 in immense weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in 
 indefinitely prolonging things long since dead ; in governing man- 
 kind by embalming old dead tyrannies of Faith ; restoring dilapi- 
 dated dogmas ; regilding faded, worm-eaten shrines ; whitening 
 and rouging ancient and barren superstitions; saving society by 
 multiplying parasites ; perpetuating superannuated institutions ; 
 enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual means of salvation ; 
 and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth, with the 
 living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the fatalities of 
 Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with phantoms, 
 with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the formulas 
 of error, and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the past, 
 become respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock, 
 rugged and horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and 
 smooth and beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny 
 is worth more, to dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of 
 despotism, and to direct FORCE aright, than the most eloquent 
 volumes. The French should have preserved the Bastile as a 
 perpetual lesson ; Italy should not destroy the dungeons of the 
 Inquisition. The Force of the people maintained the Power that 
 built its gloomy cells, and placed the living in their granite sep- 
 ulchres. 
 
 The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful 
 action, maintain and continue in action and existence a free 
 Government once created. That Force must be limited, re- 
 strained, conveyed by distribution into different channels, and by 
 roundabout courses, to outlets, \vhence it is to issue as the law, 
 action, and decision of the State ; as the wise old Egyptian kings 
 conveyed in different canals, by sub-division, the swelling waters 
 of the Nile, and compelled them to fertilize and not devastate the 
 land. There must be the jus ci norma, the law and Rule, or 
 Gauge, of constitution and law, within which the public force 
 must act. Make a breach in either, and the great steam-hammer, 
 with its swift and ponderous blows, crushes all the machinery to 
 atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself away, lies inert and dead amid 
 the ruin it has wrought. 
 
 The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and
 
 APPRENTICE. 5 
 
 exerted, symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and 
 acting within the limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the 
 
 TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, 
 
 and FRATERNITY, liberty regulated by law ; equality of rights in 
 the eye of the law ; brotherhood with its duties and obligations as 
 well as its benefits. 
 
 You will hear shortly of the Rough ASHLAR and the Perfect 
 ASHLAR, as part of the jewels of the Lodge. The rough 'Ashlar is 
 said to be "a stone, as taken from the quarry, in its rude and 
 natural state." The perfect Ashlar is said to be "a stone made 
 ready by the hands of the workmen, to be adjusted by the working- 
 tools of the Fellow-Craft." We shall not repeat the explanations 
 of these symbols given by the York Rite. You may read them in 
 its printed monitors. They are declared to allude to the self- 
 improvement of the individual craftsman, a continuation of the 
 same superficial interpretation. 
 
 The rough Ashlar is the PEOPLE, as a mass, rude and unor- 
 ganized. The perfect Ashlar, or cubical stone, symbol of perfection, 
 is the STATE, the rulers deriving their powers from the consent 
 of the governed ; the constitution and laws speaking the will of 
 the people ; the government harmonious, symmetrical, efficient, 
 its powers properly distributed and duly adjusted in equilib- 
 rium. 
 
 If we delineate a cube on a plane surface thus: 
 
 we have visible three faces, and nine external lines, drawn between 
 seven points. The complete cube has three more faces, making 
 six; three more lines, making twelve ; and one more point, making 
 eight. As the number 12 includes the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 
 3 times 3, or 9, and is produced by adding the sacred number 3 to 
 9; while its own two figures, i, 2, the unit or monad, and duad, 
 added together, make the same sacred number 3 ; it was called the 
 perfect number ; and the cube became the symbol of perfection. 
 Produced by FORCE, acting by RULE; hammered in accordance
 
 6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 with lines measured by the Gauge, out of the rough Ashlar, it is 
 an appropriate symbol of the Force of the people, expressed as the 
 constitution and law of the State ; and of the State itself the three 
 visible faces represent the three departments, the Executive, 
 which executes the laws ; the Legislative, which makes the laws ; 
 the Judiciary, which interprets the laws, applies and enforces 
 them, between man and man, between the State and the citizens. 
 The three invisible faces, are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, 
 the threefold soul of the State its vitality, spirit, and intellect. 
 
 Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, 
 prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration 
 of the soul toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which 
 is the One Supreme Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly 
 characterized as an " ARCHITECT/' Certain faculties of man are 
 directed toward the Unknown thought, meditation, prayer. 
 The unknown is an ocean, of which conscience is the compass. 
 Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great mysterious pointings 
 of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that thus connects the. 
 human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul 
 pierce through the shadow toward the light. 
 
 It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because 
 it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change 
 His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by 
 the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are 
 His forces. Our own are part of these. Our free agency and 
 our will are forces. We do not absurdly cease to make efforts to 
 attain wealth or happiness, prolong life, and continue health, 
 because we cannot by any effort change what is predestined. If 
 the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of 
 our free u'ill. So, likewise, w r e pray. Will is a force. Thought is 
 a force. Prayer is a force. Why should it not be of the law of 
 God, that prayer, like Faith and Love, should have its effects? Man 
 is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal, 
 without those two great forces, Faith and Love. Prayer is sublime. 
 Orisons that beg and clamor are pitiful. To deny the efficacy of 
 prayer, is to deny that of Faith, Love, and Effort. Yet the effects 
 produced, when our hand, moved by our will, launches a pebble 
 into the ocean, never cease : and every uttered word is registered 
 for eternitv upon the invisible air.
 
 APPRENTICE. X 
 
 Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details 
 symbolic. The Universe itself supplied man with the model for 
 the first temples reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the 
 Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments which formed its 
 chief decorations, and the dress of the High-Priest, all had refer- 
 ence to the order of the Universe, as then understood. The Temple 
 contained many emblems of the seasons the sun, the moon, the 
 planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the 
 elements, and the other parts of the world. It is the Master of 
 this Lodge, of the Universe, Hermes, of whom Khurum is the 
 representative, that is one of the lights of the Lodge. 
 
 For further instruction as to the symbolism of the heavenly 
 bodies, and of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its 
 details, you must wait patiently until you advance in Masonry, in 
 the mean time exercising your intellect in studying them for your- 
 self. To study and seek to interpret correctly the symbols of the 
 I "niverse, is the work of the sage and philosopher. It is to decipher 
 the writing of God, and penetrate into His thoughts. 
 
 This is what is asked and answered in our catechism, in regard 
 to the Lodge. 
 
 ****** 
 
 A " Lodge" is defined to be "an assemblage of Freemasons, duly 
 congregated, having the sacred writings, square, and compass, and 
 a charter, or warrant of constitution, authorizing them to work." 
 The room or place in which they meet, representing some part of 
 King Solomon's Temple, is also called the Lodge ; and it is that we 
 are now considering. 
 
 It is said to be supported by three great columns, WISDOM, 
 FORCE or STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, represented by the Master, the 
 Senior Warden, and the Junior Warden ; and these are said to be 
 the columns that support the Lodge, "because Wisdom, Strength, 
 and Beauty, are the perfections of everything, and nothing can 
 endure without them." " Because." the York Rite says, "it is 
 necessary that there should be Wisdom to conceive, Strength to 
 support, and Beauty to adorn, all great and important undertak- 
 ings." "Know ye not," says the Apostle Paul, "that ye are the 
 temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If 
 any man desecrate the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for 
 the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." 
 
 The Wisdom and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The
 
 8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 laws of nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic man- 
 dates of His Omnipotent will ; for, then they might be changed by 
 Him, and order become disorder, and good and right become evil 
 and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, and 
 vice, virtues. Omnipotent power, infinite, and existing alone, 
 would necessarily not be constrained to consistency. Its decrees 
 and laws could not be immutable. The laws of God are not ob- 
 ligatory on us, because they are the enactments of His POWER, or 
 the expression of His WILL ; but because they express His infinite 
 WISDOM. They are not right because they are His laws, but His 
 laws because they are right. From the equilibrium of infinite 
 wisdom and infinite force, results perfect harmony, in physics and 
 in the moral universe. Wisdom, Power, and Harmony constitute 
 one Masonic triad. They have other and profounder meanings, 
 that may at some time be unveiled to you. 
 
 As to the ordinary and commonplace explanation, it may be 
 added, that the wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining, 
 as only a skillful Architect can do, and as God has done every- 
 where, for example, in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the 
 cells of the honeycomb strength, with grace, beauty, symmetry, 
 proportion, lightness, ornamentation. That, too, is the perfec- 
 tion of the orator and poet to combine force, strength, energy, 
 with grace of style, musical cadences, the beauty of figures, the 
 play and irradiation of imagination and fancy; and so, in a 
 State, the warlike and industrial force of the people, and their 
 Titanic strength, must be combined with the beauty of the 
 arts, the sciences, and the intellect, if the State would scale 
 the heights of excellence, and the people be really free. Har- 
 mony in this, as in all the Divine, the material, and the 
 human, is the result of equilibrium, of the sympathy and opposite 
 action of contraries ; a single Wisdom above them holding the 
 beam of the scales. To reconcile the moral law, human responsi- 
 bility, free-will, with the absolute power of God ; and the existence 
 of evil with His absolute wisdom, and goodness, and mercy, these 
 are the great enigmas of the Sphynx. 
 
 You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent 
 the two which stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of 
 the great eastern gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers 
 breadth in thickness, were, according to the most authentic
 
 APPRENTICE. 9 
 
 account that in the First and that in the Second Book of Kings, 
 confirmed in Jeremiah eighteen cubits high, with a capital five 
 cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits in diameter. A 
 cubit is one foot and ^ a . That is, the shaft of each was a little 
 over thirty feel eight niches in height, the capital of each a little 
 over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of the shaft 
 six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by pomegranates 
 of bronze, covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with 
 wreaths of bronze ; and appear to have imitated the shape of the 
 seed-vessel of the lotus or Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the 
 Hindus and Egyptians. The pillar or column on the right, or 
 in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our 
 translation of the Bible, JACIIIN : and that on the left BOAZ. Our 
 translators say that the first word means, "He shall establish;" and 
 me second, "In it is strength." 
 
 These columns were imitations, by Khurum, the Tyrian artist, 
 of the great columns consecrated to the \Yinds and Fire, at the 
 entrance to the famous Temple of Malkarth, in the city of 
 Tyre. It is customary, in T odges of the York Rite, to see a celes- 
 tial globe on one, and a terrestrial globe on the other ; but these 
 are not warranted, if the object be to imitate the original two 
 columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns 
 we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that 
 Entered Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column 
 JACK IN ; and giving you the etymology and literal meaning of 
 the two names. 
 
 The word Jachin, in Hebrew, is p3\ It was probably pro- 
 nounced Ya-kayan, and meant, as a verbal noun. He that strength- 
 ens; and thence, firm, stable, upright. 
 
 The word Boaz is Ty3 ? Baaz. TJ? means Strong. Strength, Power, 
 Might, Refuge, Source of Strength, a Fort. The * prefixed means 
 " u'ith'' or " in," and gives the word the force of the Latin 
 gerund, roborando Strengthening. 
 
 The f (inner word also means he re 1 /// establish, or plant in an 
 erect position from the verb "yn Kiln, lie stood erect. It prob- 
 ably meant Active and V 'reifying Energy and Force; and Boac, 
 Stability. Permanence, in the passive sense. 
 
 The Dimensions of the Lodge, our Brethren of the York Rite 
 say, " are unlimited, and its covering no less than the canopy of 
 Heaven.' " To this object," they say, " tln '> mason's mind is con- 
 
 2
 
 10 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tinually directed, and thither he hopes at last to arrive by the 
 aid of the theological ladder which Jacob in his vision saw 
 ascending from earth to Heaven ; the three principal rounds of 
 which are denominated Faith, Hope, and Charity ; and which 
 admonish us to have Faith in God, Hope in Immortality, and 
 Charity to all mankind." Accordingly a ladder, sometimes with 
 nine rounds, is seen on the chart, resting at the bottom on the 
 earth, its top in the clouds, the stars shining above it ; and this is 
 deemed to represent that mystic ladder, which Jacob saw in his 
 dream, set up on the earth, and the top of it reaching to Heaven, 
 with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The 
 addition of the three principal rounds to the symbolism, is wholly 
 modern and incongruous. 
 
 The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged: the Moon, 
 Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There 
 were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets ; on all 
 the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated 
 to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden 
 candelabrum in the Temple. That these represented the planets, 
 we are assured by Clemens of Alexandria, in his Stromata, and by 
 Philo Judasus. 
 
 To return to its source in the Infinite, the human soul, the 
 ancients held, had to ascend, as it had descended, through the 
 seven spheres. The Ladder by which it reascends, has, according 
 to Marsilius Ficinus, in his Commentary on the Ennead of Plo- 
 tinus, seven degrees or steps ; and in the Mysteries of Mithras, 
 carried to Rome under the Emperors, the ladder, with its seven 
 rounds, was a symbol referring to this ascent through the spheres 
 of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God ascending and 
 descending on it ; and above it the Deity Himself. The Mithraic 
 Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at 
 the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac ; and the 
 seven planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must 
 traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the 
 elements that envelop the earth ; and seven gates were marked, 
 one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending or 
 returning. 
 
 We learn this from Celsus, in Origen, who says that the sym- 
 bolic image of this passage among the stars, used in the Mithraic 
 Mysteries, was a ladder reaching from earth to Heaven,
 
 APPRENTICE. II 
 
 into seven steps or stages, to each of which was a gate, and at the 
 summit an eighth one, that of the fixed stars. The symbol was 
 the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa, the Pyramid 
 of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and each of 
 a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate went 
 through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful 
 trials and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps 
 was the symbol. 
 
 You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights. 
 You have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser, 
 are said to be, and how they are spoken of by our Brethren of the 
 York Rite. 
 
 The Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, are not only styled the 
 Great Lights in Masonry, but they are also technically called the 
 Furniture of the Lodge ; and, as you have seen, it is held that 
 there is no Lodge without them. This has sometimes been made 
 a pretext for excluding Jews from our Lodges, because they can- 
 not regard the New Testament as a holy book. The Bible is an 
 indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge, onlj 
 because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The 
 Hebrew Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a 
 Mohammedan one, belong on the Altar ; and one of these, and the 
 Square and Compass, properly understood, are the Great Lights 
 by which a Mason must walk and work. 
 
 The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the 
 sacred book or books of his religion, that he may deem it more 
 solemn and binding ; and therefore it was that you were asked of 
 what religion you were. We have no other concern with your 
 religious creed. 
 
 The Square is a right angle, formed by two right lines. It is 
 adapted only to a plane surface, and belongs only to geometry, 
 earth-measurement, that trigonometry which deals only with 
 planes, and with the earth, which the ancients supposed to be a 
 plane. The Compass describes circles, and deals with spherical 
 trigonometry, the science of the spheres and heavens. The for- 
 mer, therefore, is an emblem of what 1 , concerns the earth and the 
 body ; the latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. Yet 
 the Compass is also used in plane trigonometry, as in erecting per- 
 pendiculars ; and, therefore, you are reminded that, although in 
 this Degree both points of the Compass are under the Square, and
 
 12 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 you are now dealing only with the moral and political meaning of 
 the symbols, and not with their philosophical and spiritual mean- 
 ings, still the divine ever mingles with the human; with the 
 earthly the spiritual intermixes ; and there is something spiritual 
 in the commonest duties of life. The nations are not bodies- 
 politic alone, but also souls-politic ; and woe to that people which, 
 seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we 
 have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of 
 a soul and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoral- 
 ized by lucre. Such a nature can never lead civilization. Genu- 
 flexion before the idol or the dollar atrophies the muscle which 
 walks and the will which moves. Hieratic or mercantile absorp- 
 tion diminishes the radiance of a people, lowers its horizon by 
 lowering its level, and deprives it of that understanding of the 
 universal aim, at the same time human and divine, which makes 
 the missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it has a soul 
 to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. 
 If it make war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The 
 citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury 
 as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, 
 and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous 
 opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all 
 the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people ; Privilege, 
 Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself : 
 a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded 
 and chained Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop, at 
 the loom, in the field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in 
 unventilated factories, founds public power upon private misery, 
 and plants the greatness of the State in the suffering of the indi- 
 vidual. It is a greatness ill constituted, in which all the material 
 elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters. 
 If a people, like a star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to 
 return. The eclipse should not degenerate into night. 
 
 The three lesser, or the Sublime Lights, you have heard, are the 
 Sun, the Moon, and the Master of the Lodge ; and you have heard 
 what our Brethren of the York Rite say in regard to them, and 
 why they hold them to be Lights of the Lodge. But the Sun and 
 Moon do in no sense light the Lodge, unless it be symbolically, 
 and then the lights are not they, but those things of which they 
 are the symbols. Of what they are the symbols the Mason in that
 
 APPRENTICE. IJ 
 
 Rite is not told. Nor does the Moon in any sense rule the night 
 with regularity. 
 
 The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative 
 power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life ; 
 and God was the source from which all light flowed ; the essence 
 of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as Flame manifested as 
 light and splendor. The Sun was His manifestation and visible 
 image; and the Sabaeans worshipping the Light God, seemed 
 to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the 
 Deity. 
 
 The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to 
 produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and energy 
 was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, 
 or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above 
 both, and manifested through both ; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, 
 become King of the Gods ; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become 
 the Master of Life ; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the 
 author of Light and Life and Truth. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are sym- 
 bolized in every Lodge by the Master and Wardens : and this 
 makes it the duty of the Master to dispense light to the Brethren, 
 by himself, and through the Wardens, who are his ministers. 
 
 "Thy sun," says ISAIAH to Jerusalem, "shall no more go down, 
 neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be 
 thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be 
 ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous ; they shall inherit 
 the land forever." Such is the type of a free people. 
 
 Our northern ancestors worshipped this tri-une Deity; ODIN, 
 the Almighty FATHER ; FREA, his wife, emblem of universal mat- 
 ter ; and THOR, his son, the mediator. But above all these was 
 the Supreme God, " the author of everything that existeth, the 
 Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awfr-l Being, the Searcher 
 into concealed things, the Being that nev^r changeth." In the 
 Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a window in the 
 roof, and representing the Universe), the images of the Sun, 
 Moon, and Mercury, were represented. 
 
 "The Sun and Moon," says the learned Bro.'. DELAUXAY. 
 " represent the two grand principles of all generations, the active 
 and passive, the male and the female. The Sun represents the
 
 14 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 actual light. He pours upon the Moon his fecundating rays ; both 
 shed their light upon their offspring, the Blazing Star, or HORUS, 
 and the three form the great Equilateral Triangle, in the centre of 
 which is the omnific letter of the Kabalah, by which creation is 
 said to have been effected." 
 
 The ORNAMENTS of a Lodge are said to be " the Mosaic Pave- 
 ment, the Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star." The Mosaic Pave- 
 ment, chequered in squares or lozenges, is said to represent the 
 ground-floor of King Solomon's Temple ; and the Indented Tessel 
 "that beautiful tesselated border which surrounded it." The 
 Blazing Star in the centre is said to be "an emblem of Divine 
 Providence, and commemorative of the star which appeared to 
 guide the wise men of the East to the place of our Saviour's 
 nativity." But " there was no stone seen" within the Temple. 
 The walls were covered with planks of cedar, and the floor was 
 covered with planks of fir. There is no evidence that there was 
 such a pavement or floor in the Temple, or such a bordering. In 
 England, anciently, the Tracing-Board was surrounded with an 
 indented border; and it is only in America that such a border is 
 put around the Mosaic pavement. The tesserae, indeed, are the 
 squares or lozenges of the pavement. In England, also, " the 
 indented or denticulated border" is called "tesselated," because it 
 has four "tassels," said to represent Temperance, Fortitude, Pru- 
 dence, and Justice. It was termed the Indented Trassel ; but this 
 is a misuse of words. It is a tesserated pavement, with an indented 
 border round it. 
 
 The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolizes, whether 
 so intended or not, the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian 
 and Persian creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the 
 Gods and Titans, of Balder and Lok; between light and shadow, 
 which is darkness ; Day and Night ; Freedom and Despotism ; 
 Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that 
 thinks for its votaries, and whose Pontiff claims to be infallible, 
 and the decretals of its Councils to constitute a gospel. 
 
 The edges of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be 
 indented or denticulated, toothed like a saw ; and to complete and 
 finish it a bordering is necessary. It is completed by tassels as 
 ornaments at the corners. If these and the bordering have any 
 symbolic meaning, it is fanciful and arbitrary. 
 
 To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the
 
 APPRENTICE. 15 
 
 Divine Providence, is also fanciful ; and to make it commemorative 
 of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a 
 meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, 
 or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile ; the 
 God ANUBIS, companion of Isis in her search for the body of 
 OSIRIS, her brother and husband. Then it became the image of 
 HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized also by the Sun, 
 the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time ; Son of Isis, who 
 was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter, inexhaust- 
 ible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all 
 beings. It was HERMES, also, the Master of Learning, whose 
 name in Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred 
 and potent sign or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and is 
 the significant emblem of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a 
 steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good and evil of 
 Revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile seasons to the 
 nations, after the storms of change and tumult. 
 
 In the East of the Lodge, over the Master, inclosed in a tri- 
 angle, is the Hebrew letter YOD [ or ff( ] . In the English and 
 American Lodges the Letter G.'. is substituted for this, as the 
 initial of the word GOD, with as little reason as if the letter D., 
 initial of DIEU, were used in French Lodges instead of the proper 
 letter. YOD is, in the Kabalah, the symbol of Unity, of the 
 Supreme Deity, the first letter of the Holy Name ; and also a 
 symbol of the Great Kabalistic Triads. To understand its mystic 
 meanings, you must open the pages of the Sohar and Siphra de 
 Zeniutha, and other kabalistic books, and ponder deeply on their 
 meaning. It must suffice to say, that it is the Creative Energy of 
 the Deity, is represented as a point, and that point in the centre of 
 the Circle of immensity. It is to us in this Degree, the symbol of 
 that unmanifested Deity, the Absolute, who has no name. 
 
 Our French Brethren place this letter YOD in the centre of the 
 Blazing Star. And in the old Lectures, our ancient English 
 Brethren said, "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers 
 us to that gran(l luminary, the Sun,- which enlightens the earth, 
 and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind." They 
 called it also in the same lectures, an emblem of PRUDENCE. The 
 word Prudcntia means, in its original and fullest signification, 
 Foresight; and, accordingly, the Blazing Star has been regarded 
 as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-seeing Eye, which to the
 
 It) MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Egyptian Initiates was the emblem of Osiris, the Creator. With 
 the Yob in the centre, it has the kabalistic meaning- of the Divine 
 Energy, manifested as Light, creating the Universe. 
 
 The Jewels of the Lodge are said to be six in number. Three 
 are called "Movable," and three "Immovable." The SQUARE, the 
 LEVEL, and the PLUMB were anciently and properly called the 
 Movable Jewels, because they pass from one Brother to another. 
 It is a modern innovation to call them immovable, because they 
 must always be present in the Lodge. The immovable jewels are 
 the ROUGH ASHLAR, the PERFECT ASHLAR or CUBICAL STONE, or, 
 in some Rituals, the DOUBLE CUBE, and the TRACING-BOARD, or 
 TRESTLE-BOARD. 
 
 Of these jewels our Brethren of the York Rite say: "The 
 Square inculcates Morality ; the Level, Equality ; and the Plumb, 
 Rectitude of Conduct." Their explanation of the immovable 
 Jewels may be read in their monitors. 
 
 Our Brethren of the York Rite say that "there is represented 
 in every well-governed Lodge, a certain point, within a circle ; 
 the point representing an individual Brother; the Circle, the 
 boundary line of his conduct, beyond which he is never to suffer 
 his prejudices or passions to betray him." 
 
 This is not to interpret the symbols of Masonry. It is said by 
 some, with a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point 
 within the circle represents God in the centre of the Universe. It 
 is a common Egyptian sign for the Sun and Osiris, and is still 
 used as the astronomical sign of the great luminary. In the Ka- 
 balah the point is YOD, the Creative Energy of God, irradiating 
 with light the circular space which God, the universal Light, 
 left vacant, wherein to create the worlds, by withdrawing His 
 substance of Light back on all sides from one point. 
 
 Our Brethren add that, "this circle is embordered by two 
 perpendicular parallel lines, representing Saint John the Baptist 
 and Saint John the Evangelist, and upon the top rest the Holy 
 Scriptures" (an open book). "In going round this circle," they 
 say. "we necessarily touch upon these two lines as well as upon 
 the Holy Scriptures ; and while a Mason keeps himself circum- 
 scribed within their precepts, it is impossible that he should 
 materially err."
 
 APPRENTICE. I/ 
 
 It would be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some 
 writers have imagined that the parallel lines represent the Tropics 
 of Cancer and Capricorn, which the Sun alternately touches upon 
 at the Summer and Winter solstices. But the tropics are not per- 
 pendicular lines, and the idea is merely fanciful. If the parallel 
 lines ever belonged to the ancient symbol, they had some more 
 recondite and more fruitful meaning. They probably had the 
 same meaning as the twin columns Jachin and Boaz. That mean- 
 ing is not for the Apprentice. The adept may find it in the Ka- 
 balah. The JUSTICE and MERCY of God are in equilibrium, and 
 the result is HARMONY, because a Single and Perfect Wisdom 
 presides over both. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the 
 symbol, like the terrestrial and celestial globes on the columns of 
 the portico. Thus the ancient symbol has been denaturalized by 
 incongruous additions, like that of Isis weeping over the broken 
 column containing the remains of Osiris at Byblos. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These 
 are its Ten Commandments : 
 
 I. .'.God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM 
 
 and Supreme INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless LOVE. 
 Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him ! 
 Thou shalt honor Him by practising the virtues ! 
 
 II. O.'. Thy religion shall be, to do good because it is a pleas- 
 
 ure to thee, and not merely because it is a duty. 
 That thoti mayest become the friend of the wise man, thou 
 
 shalt obey his precepts ! 
 Thy soul is immortal ! Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it ! 
 
 III. .'. Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice! 
 
 Thou shalt not do unto others that which thou wouldst not 
 
 wish them to do unto thee ! 
 Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning 
 
 the light of wisdom ! 
 
 IV. O.'. Thou shalt honor thy parents! 
 
 Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged ! 
 Thou shalt instruct the young ! 
 
 Thou shalt protect and defend infancy and innocence! 
 V. .'.Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children! 
 Thou shalt love thy country, and obey its laws !
 
 l8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 VI. O.'. Thy friend shall be to thee a second self ! 
 Misfortune shall not estrange thee from him ! 
 Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou wouldst do 
 
 for him. if he were living! 
 
 VII. .*. Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere friendships! 
 Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess ! 
 Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on thy memory ! 
 VIII. O.'. Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy master! 
 
 Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable lessons 
 
 to thyself! 
 
 Thou shalt be indulgent to error! 
 IX. .'. Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou 
 
 shalt act well ! 
 Thou shalt forget injuries! 
 Thou shalt render good for evil ! 
 
 Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority ! 
 X. O.'. Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou 
 
 mayest learn to know thyself! 
 Thou shalt ever seek after virtue ! 
 Thou shalt be just! 
 Thou shalt avoid idleness ! 
 
 But the great commandment of Masonry is this : "A new com- 
 mandment give I unto you : that ye love one another ! He that 
 saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, remaineth still in 
 the darkness." 
 
 Such are the moral duties of a Mason. But it is also the duty 
 of Masonry to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual level 
 of society ; in coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation, 
 and causing the mind of youth to grow ; and in putting, gradually, 
 by the teachings of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws, 
 the human race in harmony with its destinies. 
 
 To this duty and work the Initiate is apprenticed. He must not 
 imagine that he can effect nothing, and, therefore, despairing, be- 
 come inert. It is in this, as in a man's daily life. Many great 
 deeds are done in the small struggles of life. There is, we are told, 
 a determined though unseen bravery, which defends itself, foot to 
 foot, in the darkness, against the fatal invasion of necessity and of 
 baseness. There are noble and mysterious triumphs, which no eye 
 sees, which no renown rewards, which no flourish of trumpets 
 salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are
 
 APPRENTICE. 19 
 
 battle-fields, which have their heroes, heroes obscure, but some- 
 times greater than those who become illustrious. The Mason 
 should struggle in the same manner, and with the same bravery, 
 against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which come to 
 nations as well as to men. He should meet them, too, foot to foot, 
 even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs and 
 follies; against usurpation and the first inroads of that hydra, 
 Tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in 
 indignation. It is more difficult for a people to keep than to gain 
 their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always needed. Con- 
 tinually, the right must protest against the fact. There is, in fact, 
 Eternity in the Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Sol- 
 dier of that Right. If his country should be robbed of her liber- 
 ties, he should still not despair. The protest of the Right against 
 the Fact persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes 
 prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is barred by no length of 
 time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. 
 A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated States 
 kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the stress of 
 necessity ; but when the necessity disappears, if the people is fit to 
 be free, the submerged country will float to the surface and reappear, 
 and Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims. 
 Whatever occurs, we should have Faith in the Justice and over- 
 ruling Wisdom of God, and Hope for the Future, and Loving- 
 kindness for those who are in error. God makes visible to men 
 His will in events ; an obscure text, written in a mysterious lan- 
 guage. Men make their translations of it forthwith, hasty, incor- 
 rect, full of faults, omissions, and misreadings. We see so short a 
 way along the arc of the great circle ! Few minds comprehend 
 the Divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm, the most 
 profound, decipher the hieroglyphs slowly ; and when they arrive 
 with their text, perhaps the need has long gone by ; there are 
 already twenty translations in the public square the most incor- 
 rect being, as of course, the most accepted and popular. From 
 each translation, a party is born ; and from each misreading, a 
 faction. Each party believes or pretends that it has the only true 
 text, and each faction believes or pretends that it alone possesses 
 the light. Moreover, factions are blind men, who aim straight, 
 *rrors are excellent projectiles, striking skillfully, and with all the 
 violence that springs from false reasoning, wherever a want of logic
 
 2O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in those who defend the right, like a defect in a cuirass, makes 
 them vulnerable. 
 
 Therefore it is that we .shall often be discomfited in combating 
 error before the people. Antaeus long resisted Hercules ; and the 
 heads of the Hydra grew as fast as they were cut off. It is absurd 
 to say that Error, wounded, ivrithes in pain, and dies amid her 
 worshippers. Truth conquers slowly. There is a wondrous vital- 
 ity in Error. Truth, indeed, for the most part, shoots over the. 
 heads of the masses ; or if an error is prostrated for a moment, it 
 is up again in a moment, and as vigorous as ever. It will not die 
 when the brains are out, and the most stupid and irrational errors 
 are the longest-lived. 
 
 Nevertheless, Masonry, which is Morality and Philosophy, must 
 not cease to do its duty. We never know at what moment success 
 awaits our efforts generally when most unexpected nor with 
 \vhat effect our efforts are or are not to be attended. Succeed or 
 fail, Masonry must not bow to error, or succumb under discour- 
 agement. There were at Rome a few Carthaginian soldiers, taken 
 prisoners, who refused to bow to Flaminius, and had a little of 
 Hannibal's magnanimity. Masons should possess an equal great- 
 ness of soul. Masonry should be an energy ; finding its aim and 
 effect in the amelioration of mankind. Socrates should enter into 
 Adam, and produce Marcus Aurelius, in other words, bring forth 
 from the man of enjoyments, the man of wisdom. Masonry 
 should not be a mere watch-tower, built upon mystery, from which 
 to gaze at ease upon the world, with no other result than to be a 
 convenience for the curious. To hold the full cup of thought to the 
 thirsty lips of men ; to give to all the true ideas of Deity ; to har- 
 monize conscience and science, are the province of Philosophy. 
 Morality is Faith in full bloom. Contemplation should lead to 
 action, and the absolute be practical ; the ideal be made air and 
 food and drink to the human mind. Wisdom is a sacred commu- 
 nion. It is only on that condition that it ceases to be a sterile love 
 of Science, and becomes the one and supreme method by which to 
 unite Humanity and arouse it to concerted action. Then Philoso- 
 phy becomes Religion. 
 
 And Masonry, like History and Philosophy, has eternal duties 
 eternal, and, at the same time, simple to oppose Caiaphas as 
 Bishop, Draco or Jefferies as Judge, Trimalcion as Legislator, and 
 Tiberius as Emperor. These are the symbols of the tyrannv that
 
 APPRENTICE. 21 
 
 degrades and crushes, and the corruption that defiles and infests. 
 In the works published for the use of the Craft we are told that 
 the three great tenets of a Mason's profession, are Brotherly Love, 
 Relief, and Truth. And it is true that a Brotherly affection and 
 kindness should govern us in all our intercourse and relations with 
 our brethren ; and a generous and liberal philanthropy actuate us 
 in regard to all men. To relieve the distressed is peculiarly the 
 duty of Masons a sacred duty, not to be omitted, neglected, or 
 coldly or inefficiently complied with. It is also most true, that 
 Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. 
 To be true, and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great 
 objects of every good Mason. 
 
 As the Ancients did, Masonry styles Temperance, Fortitude, 
 Prudence, and Justice, the four cardinal virtues. They are as 
 necessary to nations as to individuals. The people that would be 
 Free and Independent, must possess Sagacity, Forethought, Fore- 
 sight, and careful Circumspection, all which are included in the 
 meaning of the word Prudence. It must be temperate in asserting 
 its rights, temperate in its councils, economical in its expenses ; it 
 must be bold, brave, courageous, patient under reverses, undis- 
 mayed by disasters, hopeful amid calamities, like Rome when she 
 sold the field at which Hannibal had his camp. No Cannae or 
 Pharsalia or Pavia or Agincourt or Waterloo must discourage her. 
 Let her Senate sit hi their seats until the Gauls pluck them by the 
 beard. She must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the 
 strong and warring on or plundering the weak ; she must act on 
 the square with all nations, and the feeblest tribes ; always keep- 
 ing her faith, honest in her legislation, upright in all her dealings. 
 Whenever such a Republic exists, it will be immortal : for rash- 
 ness, injustice, intemperance and luxury in prosperity, and despair 
 and disorder in adversity, are the causes of the decay and dilapida- 
 tion of nations.
 
 IL 
 THE FELLOW-CRAFT. 
 
 IN the Ancient Orient, all religion was more or less a mystery 
 and there was no divorce from it of philosophy. The popular 
 theology, taking the multitude of allegories and symbols for real- 
 ities, degenerated into a worship of the celestial luminaries, of 
 imaginary Deities with human feelings, passions, appetites, and 
 lusts, of idols, stones, animals, reptiles. The Onion was sacred 
 to the Egyptians, because its different layers were a symbol of the 
 concentric heavenly spheres. Of course the popular religion could 
 not satisfy the deeper longings and thoughts, the loftier aspirations 
 of the Spirit, or the logic of reason. The first, therefore, was 
 taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There, also, it was taught 
 by symbols The vagueness of symbolism, capable of many inter- 
 pretations, reached what the palpable and conventional creed 
 could not. Its indefmiteness acknowledged the abstruseness of the 
 subject: it treated that mysterious subject mystically: it endeav- 
 ored to illustrate what it could not explain ; to excite an appro- 
 priate feeling, if it could not develop an adequate idea; and to 
 make the image a mere subordinate conveyance for the conception, 
 which itself never became obvious or familiar. 
 
 Thus the knowledge now imparted by books and letters, was of 
 old conveyed by symbols ; and the priests invented or perpetuated 
 a display of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more at- 
 tractive to the eye than words, but often more suggestive and more 
 pregnant with meaning to the mind. 
 
 Masonry, successor of the Mysteries, still follows the ancient 
 manner of teaching. Her ceremonies are like the ancient mystic 
 shows, not the reading of an essay, but the opening of a problem, 
 requiring research, and constituting philosophy the arch-ex- 
 pounder. Her symbols are the instruction she gives. The lectures 
 are endeavors, often partial and one-sided, to interpret these sym- 
 bols. He who would become an accomplished Mason must not be 
 ontent merely to hear, or even to understand, the lectures; he 
 
 M
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 2^ 
 
 must, aided by them, and they having, as it were, marked out the 
 way for him, study, interpret, and develop these symbols for 
 
 himself. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Though Masonry is identical with the ancient Mysteries, it is so 
 only in this qualified sense : that it presents but an imperfect 
 image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a 
 system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of 
 social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility 
 of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modi- 
 fied by the habits of the different nations among whom they were 
 introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries 
 into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established 
 government, laws, and religion, was the obligation of the Initiate 
 everywhere ; and everywhere they were the heritage of the priests, 
 who were nowhere willing to make the common people co-proprie- 
 tors with themselves of philosophical truth. 
 
 Masonry is not the Coliseum in ruins. It is rather a Roman 
 palace of the middle ages, disfigured by modern architectural im- 
 provements, yet built on a Cyclopasan foundation laid by the Etrus- 
 cans, and with many a stone of the superstructure taken from 
 dwellings and temples of the age of Hadrian and Antoninus. 
 
 Christianity taught the doctrine of FRATERNITY; but repudi- 
 ated that of political EQUALITY, by continually inculcating obedi- 
 ence to Caesar, and to those lawfully in authority. Masonry was 
 the first apostle of EQUALITY. In the Monastery there is frater- 
 nity and equality, but no liberty. Masonry added that also, and 
 claimed for man the three-fold heritage, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and 
 FRATERNITY. 
 
 It was but a development of the original purpose of the Myste- 
 ries, which was to teach men to know and practice their duties to 
 themselves and their fellows, the great practical end of all philos- 
 ophy and all knowledge. 
 
 Truths are the springs from which duties flow ; and it is but a 
 few hundred years since a new Truth began to be distinctly seen ; 
 
 that MAN IS SUPREME OVER INSTITUTIONS. AND NOT THEY OVER 
 
 HIM. Man has natural empire over all institutions. They are 
 for him, according to his development ; not he for them. This 
 seems to us a very simple statement, one to which all men, every- 
 where, ought to assent. But once it was a great new Truth, not
 
 24 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 revealed until governments had been in existence for at least five 
 thousand years. Once revealed, it imposed new duties on men. 
 Man owed it to himself to be free. He owed it to his country to 
 seek to give her freedom, or maintain her in that possession. It 
 made Tyranny and Usurpation the enemies of the Human Race. It 
 created a general outlawry of Despots and Despotisms, temporal 
 and spiritual. The sphere of Duty was immensely enlarged. Pa- 
 triotism had, henceforth, a new and wider meaning. Free Govern- 
 ment, Free Thought, Free Conscience, Free Speech ! All these came 
 to be inalienable rights, which those who had parted with them or 
 been robbed of them, or whose ancestors had lost them, had the 
 right summarily to retake. Unfortunately, as Truths always be- 
 come perverted into falsehoods, and are falsehoods when misap- 
 plied, this Truth became the Gospel of Anarchy, soon after it was 
 first preached. 
 
 Masonry early comprehended this Truth, and recognized its own 
 enlarged duties. Its symbols then came to have a wider meaning ; 
 but it also assumed the mask of Stone-masonry, and borrowed its 
 working-tools, and so was supplied with new and apt symbols. It 
 aided in bringing about the French Revolution, disappeared with 
 the Girondists, was born again with the restoration of order, and 
 sustained Napoleon, because, though Emperor, he acknowledged 
 the right of the people to select its rulers, and was at the head of 
 a nation refusing to receive back its old kings. He pleaded, with 
 sabre, musket, and cannon, the great cause of the People against 
 Royalty, the right of the French people even to make a Corsican 
 General their Emperor, if it pleased them. 
 
 Masonry felt that this Truth had the Omnipotence of God on 
 its side ; and that neither Pope nor Potentate could overcome it. 
 It was a truth dropped into the world's wide treasury, and forming 
 a part of the heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, and 
 holds in trust, and of necessity bequeaths to mankind ; the per- 
 sonal estate of man, entailed of nature to the end of time. And 
 Masonry early recognized it as true, that to set forth and develop 
 a truth, or any human excellence of gift or growth, is to make 
 greater the spiritual glory of the race ; that whosoever aids the 
 march of a Truth, and makes the thought a thing, writes in the 
 same Hue with MOSES, and with Him who died upon the cross ; 
 and has an intellectual sympathy with the Deity Himself. 
 
 The best gift we can bestow on man is manhood. It is that
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 25 
 
 which Masonry is ordained of God to bestow on its votaries : not 
 sectarianism and religious dogma ; not a rudirnental morality, that 
 may be found in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Seneca, and 
 the Rabbis, in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes ; not a little and cheap 
 common-school knowledge ; but manhood and science and phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 Not that Philosophy or Science is in opposition to Religion. For 
 Philosophy is but that knowledge of God and the Soul, which is 
 derived from observation of the manifested action of God and the 
 Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which 
 the religious sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of 
 an imperfect being, is not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES 
 thought, an infinite search or approximation. Philosophy is that 
 intellectual and moral progress, which the religious sentiment in- 
 spires and ennobles. 
 
 As to Science, it could not walk alone, while religion was sta- 
 tionary. It consists of those matured inferences from experience 
 which all other experience confirms. It realizes and unites all that 
 was truly valuable in both the old schemes of mediation, one 
 heroic, or the system of action and effort ; and the mystical theory 
 of spiritual, contemplative communion. " Listen to me," says 
 GALEN, " as to the voice of the Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe 
 that the study of Nature is a mystery no less important than theirs, 
 nor less adapted to display the wisdom and power of the Great Cre- 
 ator. Their lessons and demonstrations were obscure, but ours are 
 clear and unmistakable." 
 
 We deem that to be the best knowledge we can obtain of the 
 Soul of another man, which is furnished by his actions and his 
 life-long conduct. Evidence to the contrary, supplied by what 
 another man informs us that this Soul has said to his, would weigh 
 little against the former. The first Scriptures for the human race 
 were written by God on the Earth and Heavens. The reading of 
 these Scriptures is Science. Familiarity with the grass and trees, 
 the insects and the infusoria, teaches us deeper lessons of love and 
 faith, than we can glean from the writings of FENKLON and 
 AUGUSTINE. The great Bible of God is ever open before mankind. 
 
 Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of 
 
 utility and duty. But knowledge itself is not Power. Wisdom is 
 
 Power; and her Prime Minister is JUSTICE, which is the perfected 
 
 law of TRUTH. The purpose, therefore, of Education and Science 
 
 1
 
 26 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 is to make a man wise. If knowledge does not make him so, it is 
 wasted, like water poured on the sands. To know the formulas of 
 Masonry, is of as little value, by itself, as to know so many words 
 and sentences in some barbarous African or Australasian dialect. 
 To know even the meaning of the symbols, is but little, unless that 
 adds to our wisdom, and also to our charity, which is to justice 
 like one hemisphere of the brain to the other. 
 
 Do not lose sight, then, of the true object of your studies in 
 Masonry. It is to add to your estate of wisdom, and not merely 
 to your knowledge. A man may spend a lifetime in studying a 
 single specialty of knowledge, botany, conchology, or entomol- 
 ogy, for instance, in committing to memory names derived from 
 the Greek, and classifying and reclassifying ; and yet be no wiser 
 than when he began. It is the great truths as to all that most 
 concerns a man, as to his rights, interests, and duties, that Ma- 
 sonry seeks to teach her Initiates. 
 
 The wiser a man becomes, the less will he be inclined to submit 
 tamely to the imposition of fetters or a yoke, on his conscience or 
 his person. For, by increase of wisdom he not only better knows 
 his rights, but the more highly values them, and is more conscious 
 of his worth and dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his 
 independence. He becomes better able to assert it also ; and better 
 able to assist others or his country, when they or she stake all, even 
 existence, upon the same assertion. But mere knowledge makes 
 no one independent, nor fits him to be free. It often only makes 
 him a more useful slave. Liberty is a curse to the ignorant and 
 brutal. 
 
 Political science has for its object to ascertain in what manner 
 and by means of what institutions political and personal freedom 
 may be secured and perpetuated : not license, or the mere right 
 of every man to vote, but entire and absolute freedom of thought 
 and opinion, alike free of the despotism of monarch and mob and 
 prelate ; freedom of action within the limits of the general law 
 enacted for all ; the Courts of Justice, with impartial Judges and 
 juries, open to all alike; weakness and poverty equally potent 
 in those Courts as power and wealth ; the avenues to office and 
 honor open alike to all the worthy ; the military powers, in war or 
 peace, in strict subordination to the civil power; arbitrary ar- 
 rests for acts not known to the law as crimes, impossible ; Romish 
 Inquisitions, Star-Chambers, Military Commissions, unknown ; the
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 2/ 
 
 means of instruction within reach of the children of all ; the right 
 of Free Speech ; and accountability of all public officers, civil and 
 military. 
 
 If Masonry needed to be justified for imposing political as well 
 as moral duties on its Initiates, it would be enough to point to the 
 sad history of the world. It would not even need that she should 
 turn back the pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus : 
 that she should recite the incredible horrors of despotism under 
 Caligula and Domitian, Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and 
 Maximin. She need only point to the centuries of calamity 
 through which the gay French nation passed ; to the long oppres- 
 sion of the feudal ages, of the selfish Bourbon kings ; to those 
 times when the peasants were robbed and slaughtered by their own 
 lords and princes, like sheep ; when the lord claimed the first- 
 fruits of the peasant's marriage-bed ; when the captured city was 
 given up to merciless rape and massacre ; when the State-prisons 
 groaned with innocent victims, and the Church blessed the ban- 
 ners of pitiless murderers, and sang Te Deums for the crowning 
 mercy of the Eve of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 We might turn over the pages, to a later chapter, that of the 
 reign of the Fifteenth Louis, when young girls, hardly more than 
 children, were kidnapped to serve his lusts ; when lettres de cachet 
 filled the Bastile with persons accused of no crime, with husbands 
 who were in the way of the pleasures of lascivious wives and of 
 villains wearing orders of nobility ; when the people were ground 
 between the upper and the nether millstone of taxes, customs, and 
 excises ; and when the Pope's Nuncio and the Cardinal de la 
 Roche-Ayman, devoutly kneeling, one on each side of Madame 
 du Barry, the king's abandoned prostitute, put the slippers on her 
 naked feet, as she rose from the adulterous bed. Then, indeed, 
 suffering and toil were the two forms of man, and the people were 
 but beasts of burden. 
 
 The true Mason is he who labors strenuously to help his Order 
 effect its great purposes. Not that the Order can effect them by 
 itself; but that it, too, can help. It also is one of God's instru- 
 ments. It is a Force and a Power ; and shame upon it, if it did 
 not exert itself, and if need be, sacrifice its children in the cause 
 of humanity, as Abraham was ready to offer up Isaac on the altar 
 of sacrifice. It will not forget that noble allegory of Curtius 
 leaping, all in armor, into the great yawning gulf that opened to
 
 28 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 swallow Rome. It will TRY. It shall not be its fault if the day 
 never comes when man will no longer have to fear a conquest, an 
 invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand, 
 an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage-royal, or a 
 birth in the hereditary tyrannies ; a partition of the peoples by a 
 Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a com- 
 bat of two religions, meeting head to head, like two goats of dark- 
 ness on the bridge of the Infinite : when they will no longer have 
 to fear famine, spoliation, prostitution from distress, misery from 
 lack of work, and all the brigandages of chance in the forest of 
 events: when nations will gravitate about the Truth, like stars 
 about the light, each in its own orbit, without clashing or collision ; 
 and everywhere Freedom, cinctured with stars, crowned with the 
 celestial splendors, and with wisdom and justice on either hand, 
 will reign supreme. 
 
 In your studies .s a Fellow-Craft you must be guided by REA- 
 SON, LOVE and FAITH. 
 
 We do not now discuss the differences between Reason and 
 Faith, and undertake to define the domain of each. But it is 
 necessary to say, that even in the ordinary affairs of life we are 
 governed far more by what we believe than by what we know; by 
 FAITH and ANALOGY, than by REASON. The "Age of Reason" 
 of the French Revolution taught, we know, what a folly it is to 
 enthrone Reason by itself as supreme. Reason is at fault when it 
 deals with the Infinite. There we must revere and believe. Not- 
 withstanding the calamities of the virtuous, the miseries of the 
 deserving, the prosperity of tyrants and the murder of martyrs, 
 we must believe there is a wise, just, merciful, and loving God, an 
 Intelligence and a Providence, supreme over all, and caring for 
 the minutest things and events. A Faith is a necessity to man. 
 Woe to him who believes nothing! 
 
 We believe that the soul of another is of a certain nature and 
 possesses certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or pe- 
 nurious and knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious 
 and ill-tempered, from the countenance alone, from little more 
 than a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing. We venture 
 our fortune on the signature of a man on the other side of the 
 world, whom we never saw, upon the belief that he is honest 
 and trustworthy. We believe that occurrences have taken place, 
 upon the assertion of others. We believe that one will acts upon
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 29 
 
 another, and in the reality of a multitude of other phenomena, 
 that Reason cannot explain. 
 
 But we ought not to believe what Reason authoritatively denies, 
 that at which the sense of right revolts, that which is absurd or 
 self-contradictory, or at issue with experience or science, or that 
 which degrades the character of the Deity, and would make Him 
 revengeful, malignant, cruel, or unjust. 
 
 A man's Faith is as much his own as his Reason is. His Free- 
 dom consists as much in his faith being free as in his will being 
 uncontrolled by power. All the Priests and Augurs of Rome or 
 Greece had not the right to require Cicero or Socrates to believe in 
 the absurd mythology of the vulgar. All the Imaums of Mo- 
 hammedanism have not the right to require a Pagan to believe that 
 Gabriel dictated the Koran to the Prophet. All the Brahmin? 
 that ever lived, if assembled in one conclave like the Cardinals, 
 could not gain a right to compel a single human being to believe 
 in the Hindu Cosmogony. No man or body of men can be infal- 
 lible, and authorized to decide what other men shall believe, as to 
 any tenet of faith. Except to those who first receive it, every reli- 
 gion and the truth of all inspired writings depend on human tes- 
 timony and internal evidences, to be judged of by Reason and the 
 wise analogies of Faith. Each man must necessarily have the 
 right to judge of their truth for himself; because no one man can 
 have any higher or better right to judge than another of equal in- 
 formation and intelligence. 
 
 Domitian claimed to be the Lord God ; and statues and images 
 of him, in silver and gold, were found throughout the known world. 
 *He claimed to be regarded as the God of all men ; and, according to 
 Suetonius, began his letters thus: " Our Lord and God commands 
 that it should be done so and so;" and formally decreed that no 
 one should address him otherwise, either in writing or by word of 
 mouth. Palfurius Sura, the philosopher, who was his chief de- 
 lator, accusing those who refused to recognize his divinity, however 
 much he may have believed in that divinity, had not the right to 
 demand that a single Christian in Rome or the provinces should do 
 the same. 
 
 Reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in political 
 science. Love or loving-kindness must keep it company, to ex- 
 dude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution, to all of which a 
 morality too ascetic, and extreme political principles, invariably
 
 3O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 lead. We must also have faith in ourselves, and in our fellows and 
 the people, or we shall be easily discouraged by reverses, and our 
 ardor cooled by obstacles. We must not listen to Reason alone. 
 Force comes more from Faith and Love: and it is by the aid of 
 these that man scales the loftiest heights of morality, or becomes 
 the Saviour and Redeemer of a People. Reason must hold the 
 helm ; but these supply the motive power. They are the wings of 
 the soul. Enthusiasm is generally unreasoning; and without it, 
 and Love and Faith, there would have been no RIENZI, or TELL, 
 or SYDNEY, or any other of the great patriots whose names are 
 immortal. If the Deity had been merely and only All-wise and 
 All-mighty, He would never have created the Universe. 
 
 ****** 
 
 It is GENIUS that gets Power; and its prime lieutenants are 
 FORCE and WISDOM. The unruliest of men bend before the 
 leader that has the sense to see and the will to do. It is Genius 
 that rules with God-like Power ; that unveils, with its counsellors, 
 the hidden human mysteries, cuts asunder with its word the huge 
 knots, and builds up with its word the crumbled ruins. At its 
 glance fall down the senseless idols, whose altars have been on all 
 the high places and in all the sacred groves. Dishonesty and im- 
 becility stand abashed before it. Its single Yea or Nay revokes 
 the wrongs of ages, and is heard among the future generations. 
 Its power is immense, because its wisdom is immense. Genius is 
 the Sun of the political sphere. Force and Wisdom, its ministers, 
 are the orbs that carry its light into darkness, and answer it with 
 their solid reflecting Truth. 
 
 Development is symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel ; 
 the development of the energies and intellect, of the individual 
 and the people. Genius may place itself at the head of an unin- 
 tellectual, uneducated, unenergetic nation ; but in a free country, 
 to cultivate the intellect of those who elect, is the only mode of 
 securing intellect and genius for rulers. The world is seldom 
 ruled by the great spirits, except after dissolution and new birth. 
 In periods of transition and convulsion, the Long Parliaments, the 
 Robespierres and Marats, and the semi-respectabilities of intellect, 
 too often hold the reins of power. The Cromwells and Napoleons 
 come later. After Marius and Sulla and Cicero the rhetorician, 
 OESAR. The great intellect is often too sharp for the granite of 
 life. Legislators may be very ordinary men; for legislation
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 3" 1 
 
 s very ordinary work ; it is b.ut the final issue of a million 
 minds. 
 
 The power of the purse or the sword, compared to that of the 
 spirit, is poor and contemptible. As to lands, you may have agra- 
 rian laws, and equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his 
 own, held direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most 
 potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people com- 
 prehend Force in the physical sense, how much more do they rev- 
 erence the intellectual ! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola. 
 They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery of 
 mind over mind is the only conquest worth having. The other 
 injures both, and dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great 
 cable falls down and snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the 
 dominion of the Creator. It does not need a subject like that of 
 Peter the Hermit. If the stream be but bright and strong, it will 
 sweep like a spring-tide to the popular heart. Not in word only, 
 but in intellectual act lies the fascination. It is the homage to 
 the Invisible. This power, knotted with Love, is the golden chain 
 let down into the well of Truth, or the invisible chain that binds 
 the ranks of mankind together. 
 
 Influence of man over man is a law of nature, whether it be by 
 a great estate in land or in intellect. It may mean slavery, a 
 deference to the eminent human judgment. Society hangs spirit- 
 ually together, like the revolving spheres above. The free country, 
 in which intellect and genius govern, will endure. Where they 
 serve, and other influences govern, the national life is short. All 
 the nations that have tried to govern themselves by their smallest, 
 by the incapables, or merely respectables, have come to nought. 
 Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and Intellect to govern, 
 will not prevent decay. In that case they have the dry-rot and 
 the life dies out of them by degrees. 
 
 To give a nation the franchise of the Intellect is the only sure 
 mode of perpetuating freedom. This will compel exertion and 
 generous care for the people from those on the higher seats, and 
 honorable and intelligent allegiance from those below. Then politi- 
 cal public life will protect all men from self-abasement in sensual 
 pursuits, from vulgar acts and low greed, by giving the noble am- 
 bition of just imperial rule. To elevate the people by teaching 
 loving-kindness and wisdom, with power to him who teaches best ; 
 and so to develop the free State from the rough ashlar; this
 
 32 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 is the great labor in which Masonry desires to lend a helping 
 hand. 
 
 All of us should labor in building up the great monument of a 
 nation, the Holy House of the Temple. The cardinal virtues 
 must not be partitioned among men, becoming the exclusive prop- 
 erty of some, like the common crafts. ALL are apprenticed to 
 the partners, Duty and Honor. 
 
 Masonry is a march and a struggle toward the Light. For the 
 individual as well as the nation, Light is Virtue, Manliness, Intel- 
 ligence, Liberty. Tyranny over the soul or body, is darkness. 
 The freest people, like the freest man, is always in danger of re- 
 lapsing into servitude. Wars are almost always fatal to Republics. 
 They create tyrants, and consolidate their power. They spring, for 
 the most part, from evil counsels. When the small and the base are 
 intrusted with power, legislation and administration become but 
 two parallel series of errors and blunders, ending in war, calam- 
 ity, and the necessity for a tyrant. When the nation feels its feet 
 sliding backward, as if it walked on the ice, the time has come for 
 a supreme effort. The magnificent tyrants of the past are but the 
 types of those of the future. Men and nations will always sell them- 
 selves into slavery, to gratify their passions and obtain revenge. 
 The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available ; and the tyrant 
 once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety makes him 
 savage. Religion is a power, and he must control that. Inde- 
 pendent, its sanctuaries might rebel. Then it becomes unlawful 
 for the people to worship God in their ow'n way, and the old spir- 
 itual despotisms revive. Men must believe as Power wills, or die ; 
 and even if they may believe as they will, all they have, lands, 
 houses, body, and soul, are stamped with the royal brand. "I am 
 the State," said Louis the Fourteenth to his peasants ; "the very 
 shirts on your backs arc mine, and I can fake them if I n'ili" 
 
 And dynasties so established endure, like that of the Caesars of 
 Rome, of the Caesars of Constantinople, of the Caliphs, the Stu- 
 arts, the Spaniards, the Goths, the Valois, until the race wears out, 
 and ends with lunatics and idiots, who still rule. There is no 
 ccnoord among men, to end the horrible bondage. The State 
 fan's inwardly, as well as by the outward blows of the incoherent 
 elements. The furious human passions, the sleeping human indo- 
 'ence, the stolid human ignorance, the rivalry of human castes, are 
 s good for the kings as the swords of the Paladins. The worship-
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 33 
 
 pers have all bowed so long to the old idol, that they cannot go 
 into the streets and choose another Grand Llama. And so the 
 effete State floats on down the puddled stream of Time, until the 
 tempest or the tidal sea discovers that the worm has consumed its 
 
 strength, and it crumbles into oblivion. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand ; and Perse- 
 cution matures them both. A people content with the thoughts 
 made for them by the priests of a church will be content with 
 Royalty by Divine Right, the Church and the Throne mutually 
 sustaining each other. They will smother schism and reap infi- 
 delity and indifference ; and while the battle for freedom goes on 
 around them, they will only sink the more apathetically into servi- 
 tude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious 
 fits of frenzy, followed by helpless exhaustion. 
 
 Despotism is not difficult in any land that has only known one 
 master from its childhood ; but there is no harder problem than 
 to perfect and perpetuate free government by the people them- 
 selves ; for it is not one king that is needed : all must be kings. It 
 is easy to set up Masaniello, that in a few days he may fall lower 
 than before. But free government grows slowly, like the individual 
 human faculties ; and like the forest-trees, from the inner heart 
 outward. Liberty is not only the common birth-right, but it is 
 lost as well by non-user as by mis-user. It depends far more on 
 the universal effort than any other human property. It has no 
 single shrine or holy well of pilgrimage for the nation ; for its 
 waters should burst out freely from the whole soil. 
 
 The free popular power is one that is only known in its strength 
 in the hour of adversity : for all its trials, sacrifices and expecta- 
 tions are its own. It is trained to think for itself, and also to act 
 for itself. When the enslaved people prostrate themselves in the 
 dust before the hurricane, like the alarmed beasts of the field, the 
 free people stand erect before it, in all the strength of unity, in 
 self-reliance, in mutual reliance, with effrontery against all but 
 the visible hand of God. It is neither cast down by calamity nor 
 elated by success. 
 
 This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and 
 of performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the 
 functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the indi- 
 vidual moral vigor.
 
 34 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 And the maxim is no less true than old, that eternal vigilance is 
 the price of liberty. It is curious to observe the universal pretext 
 by which the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties. 
 It is stated in the statutes of Edward II. , that the justices and the 
 sheriff should no longer be elected by the people, on account of the 
 riots and dissensions which had arisen. The same reason was given 
 long before for the suppression of popular election of the bishops ; 
 and there is a witness to this untruth in the yet older times, when 
 Rome lost her freedom, and her indignant citizens declared that 
 
 tumultuous liberty is better than disgraceful tranquillity. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 With the Compasses and Scale, we can trace all the figures used 
 in the mathematics of planes, or in what are called GEOMETRY 
 and TRIGONOMETRY, two words that are themselves deficient 
 in meaning. GEOMETRY, which the letter G. in most Lodges is 
 said to signify, means measurement of land or the earth or Sur- 
 veying; and TRIGONOMETRY, the measurement of triangles, or 
 figures with three sides or angles. The latter is by far the most 
 appropriate name for the science intended to be expressed by the 
 word "Geometry." Neither is of a meaning sufficiently wide : 
 for although the vast surveys of great spaces of the earth's sur- 
 face, and of coasts, by which shipwreck and calamity to mariners 
 are avoided, are effected by means of triangulation ; though it 
 was by the same method that the French astronomers measured a 
 degree of latitude and so established a scale of measures on an 
 immutable basis ; though it is by means of the immense triangle 
 that has for its base a line drawn in imagination between the place 
 of the earth now and its place six months hence in space, and for 
 its apex a planet or star, that the distance of Jupiter or Sirius from 
 the earth is ascertained ; and though there is a triangle still more 
 vast, its base extending either way from us, with and past the 
 horizon into immensity, and its apex infinitely distant above us ; 
 to which corresponds a similar infinite triangle below what is 
 above equalling what is below, immensity equalling immensity ; 
 yet the Science of Numbers, to which Pythagoras attached so much 
 importance, and whose mysteries are found everywhere in the 
 Ancient religions, and most of all in the Kabalah and in the Bible, is 
 not sufficiently expressed by either the word " Geometry" or the 
 word "Trigonometry." For that science includes these, with Arith- 
 metic, and also with Algebra, Logarithms, the Integral and Differ-
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 35 
 
 ential Calculus; and by means of it are worked out the great 
 
 problems of Astronomy or the Laws of the Stars. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, 
 in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temp^a- 
 tions or menaces. Man is accountable for the />rightness of his 
 doctrine, but not for the Tightness of it. Devout enthusiasm is 
 far easier than a good action. The end of thought is action ; the 
 sole purpose of Religion is an Ethic. Theory, in political science, 
 is worthless, except for the purpose of being realized in practice. 
 
 In every credo, religious or political as in the soul of man, there 
 are two regions, the Dialectic and the Ethic ; and it is only when 
 the two are harmoniously blended, that a perfect discipline is 
 evolved. There are men who dialectically are Christians, as there 
 are a multitude who dialectically are Masons, and yet who are 
 ethically Infidels, as these are ethically of the Profane, in the 
 strictest sense: intellectual believers, but practical atheists: 
 men who will write you "Evidences," in perfect faith in their logic, 
 but cannot carry out the Christian or Masonic doctrine, owing to 
 the strength, or weakness, of the flesh. On the other hand, there 
 are many dialectical skeptics, but ethical believers, as there are 
 many Masons who have never undergone initiation ; and as ethics 
 are the end and purpose of religion, so are ethical believers the 
 most worthy. He who does right is better than he who thinks right. 
 
 But you must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are 
 hypocrites, whose conduct does not square with their sentiments. 
 No vice is more rare, for no task is more difficult, than systematic 
 hypocrisy. When the Demagogue becomes a Usurper it does not 
 follow that he was all the time a hypocrite. Shallow men only so 
 judge of others. 
 
 The truth is, that creed has, in general, very little influence on 
 the conduct ; in religion, on that of the individual ; in politics, on 
 that of party. As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient, 
 is far more honest and trustworthy than the Christian. A Gospel 
 of Love in the mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart. 
 Men who believe in eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and 
 brimstone, incur the certainty of it, according to their creed, on 
 the slightest temptation of appetite or passion. Predestination 
 insists on the necessity of good works. In Masonry, at the least 
 flow of passion, one speaks ill of another behind his back ; and so
 
 36 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 far from the "Brotherhood" of Blue Masonry being real, and the 
 solemn pledges contained in the use of the word ''Brother" being 
 complied with, extraordinary pains are taken to show that Masonry 
 is a sort of abstraction, which scorns to interfere in worldly mat- 
 ters. The rule may be regarded as universal, that, where there is 
 a choice to be made, a Mason will give his vote and influence, in 
 politics and business, to the less qualified profane in preference to 
 the better qualified Mason. One will take an oath to oppose any 
 unlawful usurpation of power, and then become the ready and even 
 eager instrument of a usurper. Another will call one "Brother," 
 and then play toward him the part of Judas Iscariot, or strike 
 him, as Joab did Abner, under the fifth rib, with a lie whose au- 
 thorship is not to be traced. Masonry does not change human 
 nature, and cannot make honest men out of born knaves. 
 
 While you are still engaged in preparation, and in accumulating 
 principles for future use, do not forget the words of the Apostle 
 James : "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is 
 like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he be- 
 holdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what 
 manner of man he was ; but whoso looketh into the perfect law of 
 liberty, and continueth, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer 
 of the work, this man shall be blessed in his work. If any man 
 among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but 
 deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. . . . Faith, if 
 it hath not works, is dead, being an abstraction. A man is justi- 
 fied by works, and not by faith only. . . . The devils believe, and 
 tremble. ... As the body without the heart is dead, so is faith 
 
 without works." 
 
 ***** 
 
 In political science, also, free governments are erected and free 
 constitutions framed, upon some simple and intelligible theory. 
 Upon whatever theory they are based, no sound conclusion is to 
 be reached except by carrying the theory out without flinching, 
 both in argument on constitutional questions and in practice. 
 Shrink from the true theory through timidity, or wander from it 
 through want of the logical faculty, or transgress against it 
 through passion or on the plea of necessity or expediency, and you 
 have denial or invasion of rights, laws that offend against first 
 principles, usurpation of illegal powers, or abnegation and abdica- 
 tion of legitimate authority.
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 37 
 
 Do not forget, either, that as the showy, superficial, impudent 
 and self-conceited will almost always be preferred, even in utmost 
 stress of danger and calamity of the State, to the man of solid 
 learning, large intellect, and catholic sympathies, because he is 
 nearer the common popular and legislative level, so the highest 
 truth is not acceptable to the mass of mankind. 
 
 When SOLON was asked if he had given his countrymen the best 
 laws, he answered, "The best they are capable of receiving." This 
 is one of the profoundest utterances on record ; and yet like all 
 great truths, so simple as to be rarely comprehended. It contains 
 the whole philosophy of History. It utters a truth which, had it 
 been recognized, would have saved men an immensity of vain, idle 
 disputes, and have led them into the clearer paths of knowledge in 
 the Past. It means this, that all truths are Truths of Period, 
 and not truths for eternity ; that whatever great fact has had 
 strength and vitality enough to make itself real, whether of re- 
 ligion, morals, government, or of whatever else, and to find place 
 in this world, has been a truth for the time, and as good as men 
 were capable of receiving. 
 
 So, too, with great men. The intellect and capacity of a people 
 has a single measure, that of the great men whom Providence 
 gives it, and whom it receives. There have always been men too 
 great for their time or their people. Every people makes such men 
 only its idols, as it is capable of comprehending. 
 
 To impose ideal truth or law upon an incapable and merely real 
 man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of 
 sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put 
 at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep 
 insist on in a leader. With men who are too high intellectually, 
 the mass have as little sympathy as they have with the stars. When 
 BURKE, the wisest statesman England ever had. rose to speak, the 
 House of Commons was depopulated as upon an agreed signal. 
 There is as little sympathy between the mass and the highest 
 TRUTHS. The highest truth, being incomprehensible to the man of 
 realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be 
 a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The pro- 
 foundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere 
 jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular expla- 
 nations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude 
 that have swarmed into the Temples, being fully up to the level
 
 3# MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of their capacity. Catholicism was a vital truth in its earliest ages, 
 but it became obsolete, and Protestantism arose, flourished, and 
 deteriorated. The doctrines of ZOROASTER were the best which 
 the ancient Persians were fitted to receive; those of CONFUCIUS 
 were fitted for the Chinese ; those of MOHAMMED for the idolatrous 
 Arabs of his age. Each was Truth for the time. Each was a 
 GOSPEL, preached by a REFORMER; and if any men are so little 
 fortunate as to remain content therewith, when others have at- 
 tained a higher truth, it is their misfortune and not their fault. 
 They are to be pitied for it, and not persecuted. 
 
 Do not expect easily to convince men of the truth, or to lead 
 them to think aright. The subtle human intellect can weave its 
 mists over even the clearest vision. Remember that it is eccentric 
 enough to ask unanimity from a jury; but to ask it from any 
 large number of men on any point of political faith is amazing. 
 You can hardly get two men in any Congress or Convention to 
 agree ; nay, you can rarely get one to agree with himself. The 
 political church which chances to be supreme anywhere has an 
 indefinite number of tongues. How then can we expect men to 
 agree as to matters beyond the cognizance of the senses? How 
 can we compass the Infinite and the Invisible with any chain of 
 evidence? Ask the small sea-waves what they murmur among 
 the pebbles ! How many of those words that come from the invis- 
 ible shore are lost, like the birds, in the long passage ? How vainly 
 do we strain the eyes across the long Infinite ! We must be con- 
 tent, as the children are, with the pebbles that have been stranded, 
 since it is forbidden us to explore the hidden depths. 
 
 The Fellow-Craft is especially taught by this not to become 
 wise in his own conceit. Pride in unsound theories is worse than 
 ignorance. Humility becomes a Mason. Take some quiet, sober 
 moment of life, and add together the two ideas of Pride and Man ; 
 behold him, creature of a span, stalking through infinite space in 
 all the grandeur of littleness ! Perched on a speck of the Universe, 
 every wind of Heaven strikes into his blood the coldness of death ; 
 his soul floats away from his body like the melody from the string. 
 Day and night, like dust on the wheel, he is rolled along the heav- 
 ens, through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations of God are 
 flaming on every side, further than even his imagination can reach. 
 Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to deny his 
 own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung with him from that dust
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 39 
 
 to which both will soon return? Does the proud man not err? 
 Does he not suffer? Does he not die? When he reasons, is he 
 never stopped short by difficulties ? When he acts, does he never 
 succumb to the temptations of pleasure ? When he lives, is he free 
 from pain ? Do the diseases not claim him as their prey ? When 
 he dies, can he escape the common grave ? Pride is not the heri- 
 tage of man. Humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for 
 ignorance, error, and imperfection. 
 
 Neither should the Mason be over-anxious for office and honor, 
 however certainly he may feel that he has the capacity to serve the 
 State. He should neither seek nor spurn honors. It is good to 
 enjoy the blessings of fortune ; it is better to submit without a 
 pang to their loss. The greatest deeds are not done in the glare of 
 light, and before the eyes of the populace. He whom God has 
 gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an additional 
 sense ; and among the vast and noble scenes of nature, we find the 
 balm for the wounds we have received among the pitiful shifts of 
 policy ; for the attachment to solitude is the surest preservative 
 from the ills of life. 
 
 But Resignation is the more noble in proportion as it is the less 
 passive. Retirement is only a morbid selfishness, if it prohibit 
 exertions for others ; as it is only dignified and noble, when it is 
 the shade whence the oracles issue that are to instruct mankind; 
 and retirement of this nature is the sole seclusion which a good 
 and wise man will covet or commend. The very philosophy which 
 makes such a man covet the quiet, will make him eschew the inu- 
 tility of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD 
 BOLINGBROKE have seemed among his haymakers and ploughmen, 
 if among haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indif- 
 ferent eye upon a profligate minister and a venal Parliament. 
 Very little interest would have attached to his beans and vetches, 
 if beans and vetches had caused him to forget that if he was hap- 
 pier on a farm he could be more useful in a Senate, and made him 
 forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering that of a 
 legislator. 
 
 Remember, also, that there is an education which quickens the 
 Intellect, and leaves the heart hollower or harder than - before. 
 There are ethical lessons in the laws of the heavenly bodies, in the 
 properties of earthly elements, in geography, chemistry, geology, 
 and all the material sciences. Things are symbols of Truths.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Properties are symbols of Truths. Science, not teaching moral 
 and spiritual truths, is dead and dry, of little more real value than 
 to commit to the memory a long row of unconnected dates, or of 
 the names of bugs or butterflies. 
 
 Christianity, it is said, begins from the burning of the false gods 
 by the people themselves. Education begins with the burning of 
 our intellectual and moral idols : our prejudices, notions, conceits, 
 our worthless or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to 
 shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the 
 longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever fall- 
 ing, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and 
 the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble 
 brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful 
 hazard drives Youth away before its time ; and this Youth draws 
 heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at 
 high pressure, a hundred years in a hundred months ; the ledger 
 becomes the Bible, and the day-book the Book of the Morning 
 Prayer. 
 
 Hence flow overreachings and sharp practice, heartless traffic in 
 which the capitalist buys profit with the lives of the laborers, 
 speculations that coin a nation's agonies into wealth, and all the 
 other devilish enginery of Mammon. This, and greed for office, 
 are the two columns at the entrance to the Temple of Moloch. It 
 is doubtful whether the latter, blossoming in falsehood, trickery, 
 and fraud, is not even more pernicious than the former. At all 
 events they are twins, and fitly mated ; and as either gains control 
 of the unfortunate subject, his soul withers away and decays, and 
 at last dies out. The souls of half the human race leave them 
 long before they die. The two greeds are twin plagues of the lep- 
 rosy, and make the man unclean ; and whenever they break out 
 they spread until "they cover all the skin of him that hath the 
 plague, from his head even to his foot." Even the raw flesh of the 
 
 heart becomes unclean with it. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Alexander of Macedon has left a saying behind him which has 
 survived his conquests: "Nothing is nobler than Work." Work 
 only can keep even kings respectable. And when a king is a king 
 indeed, it is an honorable office to give tone to the manners and 
 morals of a nation ; to set the example of virtuous conduct, and 
 restore in spirit the old schools of chivalry, in which the young
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 4! 
 
 manhood may be nurtured to real greatness. Work and wages 
 will go together in men's minds, in the most royal institutions. 
 We must ever come to the idea of real work. The rest that fol- 
 lows labor should be sweeter than the rest which follows rest. 
 
 Let no Fellow-Craft imagine that the work of the lowly and 
 uninfluential is not worth the doing. There is no legal limit to 
 the possible influences of a good deed or a wise word or a generous 
 effort. Nothing is really small. Whoever is open to the deep pen- 
 etration of nature knows this. Although, indeed, no absolute 
 satisfaction may be vouchsafed to philosophy, any more in circum- 
 scribing the cause than in limiting the effect, the man of thought 
 and contemplation falls into unfathomable ecstacies in view of all 
 the decompositions of forces resulting in unity. All works for all. 
 Destruction is not annihilation, but regeneration. 
 
 Algebra applies to the clouds ; the radiance of the star benefits 
 the rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the 
 hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calcu- 
 late the path of the molecule? How do we know that the crea- 
 tions of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand? 
 Who, then, understands the reciprocal flow and ebb of the infi- 
 nitely great and the infinitely small ; the echoing of causes in the 
 abysses of beginning, and the avalanches of creation? A flesh- 
 worm is of account ; the small is great ; the great is small ; all is 
 in equilibrium in necessity. There are marvellous relations be- 
 tween beings and things ; in this inexhaustible Whole, from sun 
 to grub, there is no scorn : all need each other. Light does not 
 carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing 
 what it does with them ; night distributes the stellar essence to the 
 sleeping plants. Every bird which flies has the thread of the 
 Infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor, 
 and the tap of a swallow's bill, breaking the egg ; and it leads for- 
 ward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of a Socrates. 
 Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of them 
 the grander view? A bit of mould is a Pleiad of flowers a 
 nebula is an ant-hill of stars. 
 
 There is the same and a still more wonderful interpenetration 
 between the things of the intellect and the things of matter. Ele- 
 ments and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied 
 one by another, to such a degree as to bring the material world and 
 the moral world into the same light. Phenomena are perpetually
 
 42 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 folded back upon themselves. In the vast cosmical changes the 
 universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, enveloping 
 all in the invisible mystery of the emanations, losing no dream 
 from no single sleep, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star 
 there, oscillating, and winding in curves ; making a force of Light, 
 and an element of Thought; disseminated and indivisible, dis- 
 solving all save that point without length, breadth, or thickness, 
 The MYSELF; reducing everything to the Soul-atom; making 
 everything blossom into God; entangling all activities, from the 
 highest to the lowest, in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism ; 
 hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth ; 
 subordinating, perhaps, if only by the identity of the law, the 
 eccentric evolutions of the comet in the firmament, to the whirl- 
 ings of the infusoria in the drop of water. A mechanism made of 
 mind, the first motor of which is the gnat, and its last wheel the 
 zodiac. 
 
 A peasant-boy, guiding Bliicher by the right one of two roads, the 
 other being impassable for artillery, enables him to reach Waterloo 
 in time to save Wellington from a defeat that would have been a 
 rout ; and so enables the kings to imprison Napoleon on a barren 
 rock in mid-ocean. An unfaithful smith, by the slovenly shoeing of 
 a horse, causes his lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his 
 world-conquering rider ends, and the destinies of empires are 
 changed. A generous officer permits an imprisoned monarch to 
 end his game of chess before leading him to the block ; and mean- 
 while the usurper dies, and the prisoner reascends the throne. 
 An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity 
 disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a 
 Caesar, and a new chapter is written in the history of a world. 
 What we call accident is but the adamantine chain of indissoluble 
 connection between all created things. The locust, hatched in the 
 Arabian sands, the small worm that destroys the cotton-boll, one 
 making famine in the Orient, the other closing the mills and starv- 
 ing the workmen and their children in the Occident, with riots and 
 massacres, are as much the ministers of God as the earthquake; 
 and the fate of nations depends more on them than on the intel- 
 lect of its kings and legislators. A civil war in America will end 
 in shaking the world ; and that war may be caused by the vote of 
 some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Con- 
 gress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 43 
 
 electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades 
 everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST, 
 with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked greater re- 
 sults than Alexander or Hannibal.. A single thought sometimes 
 suffices to overturn a dynasty. A silly song did more to unseat 
 James the Second than the acquittal of the Bishops. Voltaire, 
 Condorcet, and Rousseau uttered words that will ring, in change 
 and revolutions, throughout all the ages. 
 
 Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences 
 of what we do or say, are immortal ; and that no calculus has yet 
 pretended to ascertain the law of proportion between cause and 
 effect. The hammer of an English blacksmith, smiting down an 
 insolent official, led to a rebellion which came near being a revo- 
 lution. The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the 
 feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or 
 less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The echoes of the great- 
 est deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among the cliffs, 
 and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have 
 been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of 
 men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and 
 an empire be rent by the explosion. 
 
 The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single 
 and seemingly an unimportant individual ; a terrible and truth- 
 ful power ; for such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can 
 lift up their myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is 
 no graduated scale for the measurement of the influences of differ- 
 ent intellects upon the popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no 
 
 office, yet what a work he wrought ! 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 From the political point of view there is but a single principle, 
 the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of one's 
 self over one's self is called LIBERTY. Where two or several of 
 these sovereignties associate, the State begins. But in this associa- 
 tion there is no abdication. Each sovereignty parts with a certain 
 portion of itself to form the common right. That portion is the 
 same for all. There is equal contribution by all to the joint sov- 
 ereignty. This identity of concession which each makes to all,, is 
 EQUALITY. The common right is nothing more or less than the 
 protection of all, pouring its rays on each. This protection of 
 each by all, is FRATERNITY.
 
 44 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Liberty is the summit, Equality the base. Equality is not all 
 vegetation on a level, a society of big spears of grass and stunted 
 oaks, a neighborhood of jealousies, emasculating each other. It is 
 civilly, all aptitudes having equal opportunity ; politically, all votes 
 having equal weight; religiously, all consciences having equal 
 rights. 
 
 Equality has an organ; gratuitous and obligatory instruction. 
 We must begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary 
 school obligatory upon all ; the higher school offered to all. Such 
 is the law. From the same school for all springs equal society. 
 Instruction ! Light ! all comes from Light, and all returns to it. 
 
 We must learn the thoughts of the common people, if we would 
 be wise and do any good work. We must look at men, not so much 
 for what Fortune has given to them with her blind old eyes, as for 
 the gifts Nature has brought in her lap, and for the use that has 
 been made of them. We profess to be equal in a Church and in 
 the Lodge: we shall be equal in the sight of God when He judges 
 the earth. We may well sit on the pavement together here, in com- 
 munion and conference, for the few brief moments that constitute 
 life. 
 
 A Democratic Government undoubtedly has its defects, because 
 it is made and administered by men, and not by the Wise Gods. 
 It cannot be concise and sharp, like the despotic. When its ire is 
 aroused it develops its latent strength, and the sturdiest rebel trem- 
 bles. But its habitual domestic rule is tolerant, patient, and inde- 
 cisive. Men are brought together, first to differ, and then to agree. 
 Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution: these are the means 
 of attaining truth. Often the enemy will be at the gates before 
 the babble of the disturbers is drowned in the chorus of consent. 
 In the Legislative office deliberation will often defeat decision. 
 Liberty can play the fool like the Tyrants. 
 
 Refined society requires greater minuteness of regulation ; and 
 the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked 
 among the old rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies 
 in discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The 
 adjustment of mutual rights and wrongs is also more difficult in 
 democracies. We do not see and estimate the relative importance 
 of objects so easily and clearly from the level or the waving land 
 as from the elevation of a lone peak, towering above the plain ; for 
 each looks through his own mist.
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 45 
 
 Abject dependence on constituents, also, is too common. It is 
 as miserable a thing as abject dependence on a minister or the 
 favorite of a Tyrant. It is rare to find a man who can speak out 
 the simple truth that is in him, honestly and frankly, without fear, 
 favor, or affection, either to Emperor or People. 
 
 Moreover, in assemblies of men, faith in each other is almost 
 always wanting, unless a terrible pressure of calamity or danger 
 from without produces cohesion. Hence the constructive power of 
 such assemblies is generally deficient. The chief triumphs of 
 modern days, in Europe, have been in pulling down and obliterat- 
 ing; not in building up. But Repeal is not Reform. Time must 
 bring with him the Restorer and Rebuilder. 
 
 Speech, also, is grossly abused in Republics ; and if the use of 
 speech be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices. Rhet- 
 oric, Plato says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in 
 democracies it is too common to hide thought in words, to overlay 
 it, to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual 
 soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of 
 genius. The worthless pyrites is continually mistaken for gold. 
 Even intellect condescends to intellectual jugglery, balancing 
 thoughts as a juggler balances pipes on his chin. In all Congresses 
 we have the inexhaustible flow of babble, and Faction's clamorous 
 knavery in discussion, until the divine power of speech, that priv- 
 ilege of man and great gift of God, is no better than the screech 
 of parrots or the mimicry of monkeys. The mere talker, however 
 fluent, is barren of deeds in the day of trial. 
 
 There are men voluble as women, and as well skilled in fencing 
 with the tongue : prodigies of speech, misers in deeds. Too much 
 talking, like too much thinking, destroys the power of action. In 
 human nature, the thought is only made perfect by deed. Silence 
 is the mother of both. The trumpeter is not the bravest of the 
 brave. Steel and not brass wins the day. The great doer of great 
 deeds is mostly slow and slovenly of speech. There are some men 
 born and bred to betray. Patriotism is their trade, and their cap- 
 ital is speech. But no noble spirit can. plead like Paul and be false 
 to itself as Judas. 
 
 Imposture too commonly rules in republics ; they seem to be 
 ever in their minority ; their guardians are self-appointed ; and 
 the unjust thrive better than the just. The Despot, like the 
 night-lion roaring, drowns all the clamor of tongues at once, and
 
 46 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 speech, the birthright of the free man, becomes the bauble of the 
 enslaved. 
 
 It is quite true that republics only occasionally, and as it were 
 accidentally, select their wisest, or even the less incapable among 
 the incapables, to govern them and legislate for them. If genius, 
 armed with learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins, the people 
 will reverence it ; if it only modestly offers itself for office, it will 
 be smitten on the face, even when, in the straits of distress and 
 the agonies of calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation of the 
 State. Put it upon the track with the showy and superficial, the 
 conceited, the ignorant, and impudent, the trickster and charlatan, 
 and the result shall not be a moment doubtful. The verdicts of 
 Legislatures and the People are like the verdicts of juries, some- 
 times right by accident. 
 
 Offices, it is true, are showered, like the rains of Heaven, upon 
 the just and the unjust. The Roman Augurs that used to laugh 
 in each other's faces at the simplicity of the vulgar, were also 
 tickled with their own guile ; but no Augur is needed to lead the 
 people astray. They readily deceive themselves. Let a Republic 
 begin as it may, it will not be out of its minority before imbecility 
 will be promoted to high places ; and shallow pretence, getting 
 itself puffed into notice, will invade all the sanctuaries. The most 
 unscrupulous partisanship will prevail, even in respect to judicial 
 trusts ; and the most unjust appointments constantly be made, 
 although every improper promotion not merely confers one unde- 
 served favor, but may make a hundred honest cheeks smart with 
 injustice. 
 
 The country is stabbed in the front when those are brought into 
 the stalled seats who should slink into the dim gallery. Even' 
 stamp of Honor, ill-clutched, is stolen from the Treasury of 
 Merit. 
 
 Yet the entrance into the public service, and the promotion in 
 it, affect both the rights of individuals and those of the nation. 
 Injustice in bestowing or withholding office ought to be so intoler- 
 able in democratic communities that the least trace of it should be 
 like the scent of Treason. It is not universally true that all citi- 
 zens of equal character have an equal claim to knock at the door 
 of every public office and demand admittance. When any man 
 presents himself for service he has a right to aspire to the highest 
 body at once, if he can show his fitness for such a beginning, that
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 47 
 
 he is fitter than the rest who offer themselves for the same post. 
 The entry into it can only justly be made through the door of 
 merit. And whenever any one aspires to and attains such high 
 post, especially if by unfair and disreputable and indecent means, 
 and is afterward found to be a signal failure, he should at once be 
 beheaded. He is the worst among the public enemies. 
 
 When a man sufficiently reveals himself, all others should be 
 proud to give him clue precedence. When the power of promotion 
 is abused in the grand passages of life whether by People, Legis- 
 lature, or Executive, the unjust decision recoils on the judge at 
 once. That is not only a gross, but a willful shortness of sight, that 
 cannot discover the deserving. If one will look hard, long, and 
 honestly, he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification ; 
 and the eyes and voice of the Press and Public should condemn 
 and denounce injustice wherever she rears her horrid head. 
 
 "The tools to the workmen!" no other principle will save a Re- 
 public from destruction, either by civil war or the dry-rot. They 
 tend to decay, do all we can to prevent it, like human bodies. If 
 they try the experiment of governing themselves by their smallest, 
 they slide downward to the unavoidable abyss with tenfold ve- 
 locity ; and there never has been a Republic that has not followed 
 that fatal course. 
 
 But however palpable and gross the inherent defects of demo- 
 cratic governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably 
 are, we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Ca- 
 ligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla,of Domitian and Commodus, 
 to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is 
 as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, 
 and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of 
 the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's 
 character of Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot 
 win office without descending to low arts and whining beggary and 
 the judicious use of sneaking lies, let him remain in retirement, 
 and use the pen. Tacitus and Juvenal held no office. Let His- 
 tory and Satire punish the pretender as they crucify the despot. 
 The revenges of the intellect are terrible and just. 
 
 Let Masonry use the pen and the printing-press in the free 
 State against the Demagogue ; in the Despotism against the 
 Tyrant. History offers examples and encouragement. All history, 
 for four thousand years, being filled with violated rights and the
 
 48 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sufferings of the people, each period of history brings with it such 
 protest as is possible to it. Under the Csesars there was no insur- 
 rection, but there was a Juvenal. The arousing of indigna- 
 tion replaces the Gracchi. Under the Caesars there is the exile of 
 Syene ; there is also the author of the Annals. As the Neros 
 reign darkly they should be pictured so. Work with the graver 
 only would be pale ; into the grooves should be poured a concen- 
 trated prose that bites. 
 
 Despots are an aid to thinkers. Speech enchained is speech ter- 
 rible. The writer doubles and triples his style, when silence is 
 imposed by a master upon the people. There springs from this 
 silence a certain mysterious fullness, which filters and freezes into 
 brass in the thoughts. Compression in the history produces con- 
 ciseness in the historian. The granitic solidity of some celebrated 
 prose is only a condensation produced by the Tyrant. Tyranny 
 constrains the writer to shortenings of diameter which are in- 
 creases of strength. The Ciceronian period, hardly sufficient upon 
 Verres, would lose its edge upon Caligula. 
 
 The Demagogue is the predecessor of the Despot. One springs 
 from the other's loins. He who will basely fawn on those who 
 have office to bestow, will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miser- 
 able and pitiable failure. Let the new Junius lash such men as 
 they deserve, and History make them immortal in infamy ; since 
 their influences culminate in ruin. The Republic that employs 
 and honors the shallow, the superficial, the base, 
 
 "who crouch 
 Unto the offal of an office promised," 
 
 at last weeps tears of blood for its fatal error. Of such supreme 
 folly, the sure fruit is damnation. Let the nobility of every great 
 heart, condensed into justice and truth, strike such creatures like 
 a thunderbolt ! If you can do no more, you can at least condemn 
 by your vote, and ostracise by denunciation. 
 
 It is true that, as the Czars are absolute, they have it in their 
 power to select the best for the public service. It is true that the 
 beginner of a dynasty generally does so ; and that when monarch- 
 ies are in their prime, pretence and shallowness do not thrive and 
 prosper and get power, as they do in Republics. All do not gabble 
 in the Parliament of a Kingdom, as in the Congress of a Democ- 
 racy. The incapables do not go undetected there, all their lives.
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 49 
 
 But dynasties speedily decay and run out. At last they dwindle 
 down into imbecility; and the dull or flippant Members of Con- 
 gresses are at least the intellectual peers of the vast majority of 
 kings. The great man, the Julius Caesar, the Charlemagne, Crom- 
 well, Napoleon, reigns of right. He is the wisest and the strong- 
 est. The incapables and imbeciles succeed and are usurpers ; and 
 fear makes them cruel. After Julius came Caracalla and Galba ; 
 after Charlemagne, the lunatic Charles the Sixth. So the Sara- 
 cenic dynasty dwindled out; the Capets, the Stuarts, the Bour- 
 bons ; the last of these producing Bomba, the ape of Domitian. 
 * ***** 
 
 Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers. The barbarian, and the 
 tool of the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic, enjoy the sufferings of 
 others, as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies. Ab- 
 solute Power, once in fear for the safety of its tenure, cannot but 
 be cruel. 
 
 As to ability, dynasties invariably cease to possess any after a 
 few lives. They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favor- 
 ites, or courtesans, like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for 
 long ages in their golden royal robes, dissolving forever at the first 
 breath of day. Let him who complains of the short-comings of 
 democracy ask himself if he would prefer a Du Barry or a Pompa- 
 dour, governing in the name of a Louis the Fifteenth, a Caligula 
 making his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that most savage mon- 
 ster," who sometimes drank the blood of relatives, sometimes em- 
 ploying himself with slaughtering the most distinguished citizens 
 before whose gates fear and terror kept watch ; a tyrant of fright- 
 ful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly seeking 
 darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to make 
 solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the Con- 
 stitution are above the Incapables, the Courts correct their legisla- 
 tion, and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on 
 them. What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowl- 
 edge from civil office compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures 
 in the dark caverns of the Inquisition, Alva-butcheries in the 
 Netherlands, the Eve of Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian 
 
 Vespers ? 
 
 * ***** 
 
 The Abbe Barruel in his Memoirs for the History of Jaco- 
 bmistn, declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the
 
 5O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 words Equality and Liberty, leaving it for every honest and reli- 
 gious Mason to explain them as would best suit his principles ; but 
 retained the privilege of unveiling in the higher Degrees the mean- 
 ing of those words, as interpreted by the French Revolution. And 
 he also excepts English Masons from his anathemas, because in 
 England a Mason is a peaceable subject of the civil authorities, 
 no matter where he resides, engaging in no plots or conspiracies 
 igainst even the worst government. England, he says, disgusted 
 with an Equality and a Liberty, the consequences of which she 
 had felt in the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and Presby- 
 terians, had "purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending 
 to overturn empires ; but there still remained adepts whom disor- 
 ganizing principles bound to the Ancient Mysteries. 
 
 Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Free- 
 dom and Equal Rights, and was in rebellion against temporal and 
 spiritual tyranny, its Lodges were proscribed in 1735, by an edict 
 of the States of Holland. In 1737, Louis XV. forbade them in 
 France. In 1738, Pope Clement XII. issued against them his 
 famous Bull of Excommunication, which was renewed by. Benedict 
 XIV.; and in 1743 the Council of Berne also proscribed them. 
 The title of the Bull of Clement is, "The Condemnation of the 
 Society of Conventicles de Libcri Muratori, or of the Freemasons, 
 under the penalty of ipso facto excommunication, the absolution 
 from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point 
 of death." And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors 
 were empowered to punish Freemasons, "as vehemently sus- 
 pected of heresy," and to call in, if necessary, the help of the 
 secular arm ; that is, to cause the civil authority to put them to 
 
 death. 
 
 # * * * * * 
 
 Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the 
 State. For example, adopt the theory that offices and employ- 
 ments in it are to be given as rewards for services rendered to 
 party, and they soon become the prey and spoil of faction, the 
 booty of the victory of faction ; and leprosy is in the flesh of the 
 State. The body of the commonwealth becomes a mass of corrup- 
 tion, like a living carcass rotten with syphilis. All unsound theories 
 in the end develop themselves in one foul and loathsome disease 
 or other of the body politic. The State, like the man, must use 
 constant effort to stay in the paths of virtue and rnanliness. The
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 51 
 
 habit of electioneering and begging for office culminates in bribery 
 with office, and corruption in office. 
 
 A chosen man has a visible trust from God, as plainly as if the 
 commission were engrossed by the notary. A nation cannot re- 
 nounce the executorship of the Divine decrees. As little can Ma- 
 sonry. It must labor to do its duty knowingly and wisely. We 
 must remember that, in free States, as well as in despotisms, Injus- 
 tice, the spouse of Oppression, is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Dis- 
 trust, Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason, and Unfaithfulness. Even in 
 assailing Tyranny we must have Truth and Reason as our chief 
 weapons. We must march into that fight like the old Puritans, 
 or into the battle with the abuses that spring up in free govern- 
 ment, with the flaming sword in one hand, and the Oracles of God 
 in the other. 
 
 The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of 
 public life, cannot compass the larger. The vast power of endu- 
 rance, forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people, is 
 acquired only by continual exercise of all the functions, like the 
 healthful physical human vigor. If the individual citizens have 
 it not, the State must equally be without it. It is of the essence 
 of a free government, that the people should not only be concerned 
 in making the laws, but also in their execution. No man ought to 
 be more ready to obey and administer the law than he who has 
 helped to make it. The business of government is carried on for 
 the benefit of all, and every co-partner should give counsel and co- 
 operation. 
 
 Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked, 
 that free States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens 
 in strata, the creation of castes, the perpetuation of the jus divinum 
 to office in families. The more democratic the State, the more 
 sure this result. For, as free States advance in power, there is a 
 strong tendency toward centralization, not from deliberate evil 
 intention, but from the course of events and the indolence of hu- 
 man nature. The executive powers swell and enlarge to inordinate 
 dimensions ; and the Executive is always aggressive with respect 
 to the nation. Offices of all kinds are multiplied to reward parti- 
 sans ; the brute force of the sewerage and lower strata of the mob 
 obtains large representation, first in the lower offices, and at last 
 in Senates ; and Bureaucracy raises its bald head, bristling with 
 pens, girder 1 with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon. The art
 
 52 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of Government becomes like a Craft, and its guilds tend to become 
 exclusive, as those of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Political science may be much improved as a subject of specu- 
 lation; but it should never be divorced from the actual national 
 necessity. The science of governing men must always be practi- 
 cal, rather than philosophical. There is not the same amount of 
 positive or universal truth here as in the abstract sciences ; what 
 is true in one country may be very false in another ; what is untrue 
 to-day may become true in another generation, and the truth of 
 to-day be reversed by the judgment of to-morrow. To distinguish 
 the casual from the enduring, to separate the unsuitable from the 
 suitable, and to make progress even possible, are the proper ends 
 of policy. But without actual knowledge and experience, and 
 communion of labor, the dreams of the political doctors may be 
 no better than those of the doctors of divinity. The reign of such 
 a caste, with its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting influ- 
 ence, may be as fatal as that of the despots. Thirty tyrants are 
 thirty times worse than one. 
 
 Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people 
 to become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of abso- 
 lute kings. Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice 
 prompts them, cf the great and wise men, and elect the little, and 
 as to all the rest they will relapse into indolence and ipdifference. 
 The central power, creation of the people, organized and cunning 
 if not enlightened, is the perpetual tribunal set up by them for the 
 redress of wrong and the rule of justice. It soon supplies itself 
 with all the requisite machinery, and is ready and apt for all kinds 
 of interference. The people may be a child all its life. The cen- 
 tral power may not be able to suggest the best scientific solution 
 of a problem ; but it has the easiest means of carrying an idea 
 into effect. If the purpose to be attained is a large one, it requires 
 a large comprehension ; it is proper for the action of the central 
 power. If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by disagreement. 
 The central power must step in as an arbitrator and prevent this. 
 The people may be too averse to change, too slothful in their own 
 business, unjust to a minority or a majority. The central power 
 must take the reins when the people drop them. 
 
 France became centralized in its government more by the apa- 
 thy and ignorance of its people than by the tyranny of its kings. 
 When the inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardian-
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 53 
 
 ship of the State, and the repair of the belfry of a country church 
 requires a written order from the central power, a people is in its 
 dotage. Men are thus nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of 
 social life. When the central government feeds part of the people 
 it prepares all to be slaves. When it directs parish and county 
 affairs, they are slaves already. The next step is to regulate labor 
 and its wages. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit, even 
 to the putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the 
 little competent and less honest, despair not of the final result. 
 The terrible teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts 
 desolated with calamity and wrung by agony, will make them wiser 
 in time. Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will 
 some day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all 
 evil influences and discouragements ! FAITH is the Saviour and 
 Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had grown weak, profit- 
 less, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a 
 cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about to 
 be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at 
 the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised 
 in the air, came down to the gates of the city, and laid open be- 
 fore the army the Testament of Christ. The Christian general, 
 THOMAS, laid his hand on the book, and said, "Oh God! IF our 
 faith be true, aid us, and deliver us not into the hands of its ene- 
 mies!" But KHALED, "the Sword of God," who had marched 
 from victory to victory, exclaimed to his wearied soldiers, "Let no 
 man sleep! There will be rest enough in the bowers of Paradise; 
 sivcet ivill be the repose never more to be followed by labor." The 
 faith of the Arab had become stronger than that of the Christian, 
 and he conquered. 
 
 The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH, or of the 
 utterance of thought. Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the 
 sublime exile of Patmos, a protest in the name of the ideal, over- 
 whelming the real world, a tremendous satire tittered in the name 
 of Religion and Liberty, and with its fiery reverberations smiting 
 the throne of the Caesars, a sharp two-edged sword comes out of 
 the mouth of the Semblance of the Son of Man, encircled by the 
 seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven 
 stars. "The Lord," says Isaiah, "hath made my mouth like a 
 sharp sword." "I have slain them,'"' says Hosea, "by the words
 
 54 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of my mouth." "The word of God," says the writer of the apos- 
 tolic letter to the Hebrews, "is quick and powerful, and sharper 
 than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder 
 of soul and spirit." "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word 
 of God," says Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus. "I will 
 fight against them with the sword of my mouth," it is said in the 
 Apocalypse, to the angel of the church at Pergamos. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal 
 wave ; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is 
 heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an 
 echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing 
 to the living and coming generations of men. It was the written 
 human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought. 
 It is this that makes the whole human history but one individual 
 life. 
 
 To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment; but it 
 requires a pilgrimage to see it. There is but one copy, and Time 
 wears even that. To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it 
 were, but one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it. 
 The Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of old 
 sages, but also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate 
 thought, and to hinder progress ; for there is continual wandering 
 in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean 
 tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made and often mended. 
 
 Printing made the movable letters prolific. Thenceforth the 
 orator spoke almost visibly to listening nations ; and the author 
 wrote, like the Pope, his oecumenic decrees, urbi et orbi, and or- 
 dered them to be posted up in all the market-places ; remaining, 
 if he chose, impervious to human sight. The doom of tyrannies 
 was thenceforth sealed. Satire and invective became potent as 
 armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thun- 
 derbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One whisper from this 
 giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora. It 
 will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the next street. 
 It travels with the lightning tinder the oceans. It makes the 
 mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language, and 
 elicits a sure and single response. Speech passes into thought, and 
 thence promptly into act. A nation becomes truly one, with one 
 large heart and a single throbbing pulse. Men are invisibly pres-
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 55 
 
 em to each other, as if already spiritual beings; and the thinker 
 who sits in an Alpine solitude, unknown to or forgotten by all the 
 world, among the silent herds and hills, may flash his words to all 
 the cities and over all the seas. 
 
 Select the thinkers to be Legislators ; and avoid the gabblers. 
 Wisdom is rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thought are 
 unfavorable to volubility. The shallow and superficial are gen- 
 erally voluble and often pass for eloquent. More words, less 
 thought, is the general rule. The man who endeavors to say 
 something worth remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidi- 
 ous, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse 
 stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength^ is the 
 gewgaws of babble. 
 
 Neither is dialectic subtlety valuable to public men. The Chris- 
 tian faith has it, had it formerly more than now ; a subtlety that 
 might have entangled Plato, and which has rivalled in a fruitless 
 fashion the mystic lore of Jewish Rabbis and Indian Sages. It is 
 not this which converts the heathen. It is a vain task to balance 
 the great thoughts of the earth, like hollow straws, on the finger- 
 tips of disputation. It is not this kind of warfare which makes 
 the Cross triumphant in the hearts of the unbelievers ; but the 
 actual power that lives in the Faith. 
 
 So there is a political scholasticism that is merely useless. The 
 dexterities of subtle logic rarely stir the hearts of the people, or 
 convince them. The true apostle of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equal- 
 ity makes it a matter of life and death. His combats are like 
 those of Bossuet, combats to the death. The true apostolic fire 
 is like the lightning: it flashes conviction into the soul. The true 
 word is verily a two-edged sword. Matters of government and 
 political science can be fairly dealt with only by sound reason, and 
 the logic of common sense : not the common sense of the igno- 
 rant, but of the wise. The acutest thinkers rarely succeed in be- 
 coming leaders of men. A watchword or a catchword is more 
 potent with the people than logic, especially if this be the least 
 metaphysical. When a political prophet arises, to stir the dream- 
 ing, stagnant nation, and hold back its feet from the irretrievable 
 descent, to heave the land as with an earthquake, and shake the 
 silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight 
 from God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He 
 will reason, teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit"
 
 56 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 is keener than the brightest blade of Damascus. Such men rule 
 a land, in the strength of justice, with wisdom and with power. 
 Still, the men of dialectic subtlety often rule well, because in prac- 
 tice they forget their finely-spun theories, and use the trenchant 
 logic of common sense. But when the great heart and large intel- , 
 lect are left to the rust in private life, and small attorneys, brawlers 
 in politics, and those who in the cities would be only the clerks of 
 notaries, or practitioners in the disreputable courts, are made na- 
 tional Legislators, the country is in her dotage, even if the beard 
 has not yet grown upon her chin. 
 
 In a free country, human speech must needs be free ; and the 
 State jntist listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings 
 of its geese, and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden 
 oracles of its wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings 
 allowed their wise fools to say what they liked. The true alchem- 
 ist will extract the lessons of wisdom from the babblings of folly. 
 He will hear what a man has to say on any given subject, even if 
 the speaker end only in proving himself prince of fools. Even a 
 fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some truth in all men 
 who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak other 
 men's thoughts. The ringer even of the idiot may point to the 
 great highway. 
 
 A people, as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it neither 
 learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it has been 
 royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn ; and also it is 
 sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The antics of 
 fools make the current follies more palpable, as fashions are shown 
 to be absurd by caricatures, which so lead to their extirpation. The 
 buffoon and the zany are useful in their places. The ingenious 
 artificer and craftsman, like Solomon, searches the earth for his 
 materials, and transforms the misshapen matter into glorious 
 workmanship. The world is conquered by the head even more 
 than by the hands. Nor will any assembly talk forever. After a 
 time, when it has listened long enough, it quietly puts the silly, 
 the shallow, and the superficial to one side, it thinks, and sets to 
 work. 
 
 The human thought, especially in popular assemblies, runs in 
 the most singularly crooked channels, harder to trace and follow 
 than the blind currents of the ocean. No notion is so absurd that 
 it may not find a place there. The master-workman must train
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 57 
 
 these notions and vagaries with his two-handed hammer. They 
 twist out of the way of the sword-thrusts ; and are invulnerable 
 all over, even in the heel, against logic. The martel or mace, the 
 battle-axe, the great double-edged two-handed sword must deal 
 with follies ; the rapier is no better against them than a wand, 
 unless it be the rapier of ridicule. 
 
 The SWORD is also the symbol of war and of the soldier. Wars, 
 like thunder-storms, are often necessary, to purify the stagnant 
 atmosphere. War is not a demon, without remorse or reward. It 
 restores the brotherhood in letters of fire. When men are seated 
 in their pleasant places, sunken in ease and indolence, with Pre- 
 tence and Incapacity and littleness usurping all the high places 
 of State, war is the baptism of blood and fire, by which alone, 
 they can be renovated. It is the hurricane that brings the ele- 
 mental equilibrium, the concord of Power and Wisdom. So 
 long as these continue obstinately divorced, it will continue to 
 chasten. 
 
 In the mutual appeal of nations to God, there is the acknowl- 
 edgment of His might. It lights the beacons of Faith and Free- 
 dom, and heats the furnace through which the earnest and loyal 
 pass to immortal glory. There is in war the doom of defeat, the 
 quenchless sense of Duty, the stirring sense of Honor, the meas- 
 ureless solemn sacrifice of devotedness, and the incense of success. 
 Even in the flame and smoke of battle, the Mason discovers his 
 brother, and fulfills the sacred obligations of Fraternity. 
 
 Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism ; of Good and 
 Evil, Light and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith. 
 Jachin and Boaz, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon. 
 
 THREE, or the Triad, is most significantly expressed by the equi- 
 lateral and the right-angled triangles. There are three principal 
 colors or rays in the rainbow, which by intermixture make seven. 
 The three are the green, the yellow, and the red. The Trinity of 
 the Deity, in one mode or other, has been an article in all creeds. 
 He creates, preserves, and destroys. He is the generative power, 
 the productive capacity, and the result. The immaterial man. ac- 
 cording to the Kabalah, is composed of vitality, or life, the breath 
 of life; of soul or mind, and spirit. Salt, sulphur, and mercury 
 are the great symbols of the alchemists. To them man was body, 
 soul, and spirit. 
 
 FOUR is expressed by the square, or four-sided right-angled
 
 58 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 figure. Out of the symbolic Garden of Eden flowed a river, divid- 
 ing into four streams, PISON, which flows around the land of 
 gold, or light; GIHON, which flows around the land of Ethiopia 
 or Darkness ; HIDDEKEL, running eastward to Assyria ; and the 
 EUPHRATES. Zechariah saw four chariots coming out from be- 
 tween two mountains of bronze, in the first of which were red 
 horses; in the second, black; in the third, white; and in the 
 fourth, grizzled: "and these were the four winds of the heavens, 
 that go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth." 
 Ezekiel saw the four living creatures, each with four faces and 
 four wings, the faces of a man and a lion,^ an o.r and an eagle; 
 and the four wheels going upon their four sides ; and Saint John 
 beheld the four beasts, full of eyes before and behind, the LION, 
 the young Ox, the MAN, and the flying EAGLE. Four was the 
 signature of the Earth. Therefore, in the I48th Psalm, of those 
 who must praise the Lord on the land, there are four times four, 
 and four in particular of living creatures. Visible nature is de- 
 scribed as the four quarters of the world, and the four corners of 
 the earth. "There are four," says the old Jewish saying, "which 
 take the first place in this world ; man, among the creatures ; 
 the eagle among birds ; the o.v among cattle ; and the lion 
 among wild beasts." Daniel saw four great beasts come up from 
 the sea. 
 
 FIVE is the Duad added to the Triad. It is expressed by the 
 five-pointed or blazing star, the mysterious Pentalpha of Pythago- 
 ras. It is indissolubly connected with the number seven. Christ 
 fed His disciples and the multitude with five loaves and two fishes, 
 and of the fragments there remained tivelve, that is, fire and seven, 
 baskets full. Again He fed them with seven loaves and a few little 
 fishes, and there remained seven baskets full. The fire apparently 
 small planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with 
 the two greater ones, the Sun and Moon, constituted the seven 
 celestial spheres. 
 
 SEVEN was the peculiarly sacred number. There were seven 
 planets and spheres presided over by seven archangels. There were 
 seven colors in the rainbow ; and the Phoenician Deity was called 
 the HEPTAKIS or God of seven rays ; seven days of the week : 
 and seven and five made the number of months, tribes, and apos- 
 tles. Zechariah saw^ a golden candlestick, with seven lamps and 
 seven pipes to the lamps, and an olive-tree on each side. "Since
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 59 
 
 he says, "the seven eyes of the Lord shall rejoice, and shall see the 
 plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel." John, in the Apocalypse, 
 writes seven epistles to the seven churches. In the seven epistles 
 there arc ticelvc promises. What is said of the churches in praise 
 or blame, is completed in the number three. The refrain, "who 
 has cars to hear,'' etc., has ten words, divided by three and seven, 
 and the seven by three and four; and the seven epistles are also so 
 divided. In the seals, trumpets, and vials, also, of this symbolic 
 vision, the seven are divided by four and three. He who sends his 
 message to Ephesus, "holds the seven stars in his right hand, and 
 walks amid the seven golden lamps." 
 
 In six days, or periods, God created the Universe, and paused on 
 the seventh day. Of clean beasts, Noah was directed to take by 
 sevens into the ark ; and of fowls by sevens; because in seven days 
 the rain was to commence. On the seventeenth day of the month, 
 the rain began ; on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the 
 ark rested on Ararat. When the dove returned, Noah waited 
 seven days before he sent her forth again ; and again seven, after 
 she returned with the olive-leaf. Enoch was the seventh patriarch, 
 Adam included, and Lamech lived 777 years. 
 
 There were seven lamps in the great candlestick of the Taberna- 
 cle and Temple, representing the seven planets. Seven times Moses 
 sprinkled the anointing oil upon the altar. The days of consecra- 
 tion of Aaron and his sons were seven in number. A woman was 
 unclean seven days after child-birth ; one infected with leprosy 
 was shut up seven days ; seven times the leper was sprinkled with 
 the blood of a slain bird ; and seven days afterwards he must re- 
 main abroad out of his tent. Seven times, in purifying the leper, 
 the priest was to sprinkle the consecrated oil ; and seven times to 
 sprinkle with the blood of the sacrificed bird the house to be puri- 
 fied. Seven times the blood of the slain bullock was sprinkled on 
 the mercy-seat ; and seven times on the altar. The seventh year 
 was a Sabbath of rest ; and at the end of seven times seven years 
 came the great year of jubilee. Seven days the people ate unleav- 
 ened bread, in the month of Abib.- Seven weeks were counted 
 from the time of first putting the sickle to the .vheat. The Eeast 
 of the Tabernacles lasted screen days. 
 
 Israel was in the land of Midian seven years, before Gideon de- 
 livered them. The bullock sacrificed by him was seven years old. 
 Samson told Delilah to bind him with seven green withes; and
 
 60 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 she wove the seven locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them 
 off. Balaam told Barak to build for him seven altars. Jacob 
 served seven years for Leah and seven for Rachel. Job had seven 
 sons and three daughters, making the perfect number ten. He 
 had also seven thousand sheep and thre.e thousand camels. His 
 friends sat down with him seven days and seven nights. His friends 
 were ordered to sacrifice seven bullocks and seven rams ; and again, 
 at the end, he had seven sons and three daughters, and twice seven 
 thousand sheep, and lived an hundred and forty, or twice seven 
 times ten years. Pharaoh saw in his dream seven fat and seven 
 lean kine, seven good ears and seven blasted ears of wheat; and 
 there were seven years of plenty, and seven of famine. Jericho 
 fell, when seven priests, with seven trumpets, made the circuit of 
 the city on seven successive days ; once each day for six days, and 
 seven times on the seventh. "The seven eyes of the Lord," says 
 Zechariah, "run to and fro through the whole earth." Solomon was 
 seven years in building the Temple. Seven angels, in the Apoca- 
 lypse, pour out seven plagues, from seven vials of wrath. The 
 scarlet-colored beast, on which the woman sits in the wilderness, 
 has seven heads and ten horns. So also has the beast that rises 
 up out of the sea. Seven thunders uttered their voices. Seven 
 angels sounded seven trumpets. Seven lamps of fire, the seven 
 spirits of God, burned before the throne ; and the Lamb that was 
 slain had seven horns and seven eyes. 
 
 EIGHT is the first cube, that of two. NINE is the square of 
 three, and represented by the triple triangle. 
 
 TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially seven and 
 three; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras rep- 
 resented it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings. 
 This symbol is sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes 
 of commas or yods, and in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name 
 of Deity. It is thus arranged : 
 
 9 
 
 9 9 
 999 
 9 99 9
 
 FELLOW-CRAFT. 6l 
 
 The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are ten in num- 
 ber, and the same number is that of the Commandments. 
 
 TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a 
 cube. It is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apos- 
 tles ; of the oxen under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the 
 breast-plate of the high priest.
 
 III. , 
 
 THE MASTER. 
 
 ****** 
 
 To understand literally the symbols and allegories of Oriental 
 books as to ante-historical matters, is willfully to close our eyes 
 against the Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and 
 commonplace, is the blundering of mediocrity. 
 
 All religious expression is symbolism ; since we can describe only 
 what we see, and the true objects of religion are THE SEEN. The 
 earliest instruments of education were symbols ; and they and all 
 other religious forms differed and still differ according to external 
 circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowl- 
 edge, and mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as 
 it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All 
 words have, primarily, a material sense, however they may after- 
 ward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual non-sense. "To retract," 
 for example, is to drazv back, and when applied to a statement, is 
 symbolic, as much so as a picture of an arm drawn back, to express 
 the same thing, would be. The very word "spirit" means "breath," 
 from the Latin verb spiro, breathe. 
 
 To present a visible symbol to the eye of another, is not neces- 
 sarily to inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to you. 
 Hence the philosopher soon superadded to the symbols explana- 
 tions addressed to the ear. susceptible of more precision, but less 
 effective and impressive than the painted or sculptured forms 
 which he endeavored to explain. Out of these explanations grew 
 by degrees a variety of narrations, \vhose true object and meaning 
 were gradually forgotten, or lost in contradictions and incongrui- 
 ties. And when these were abandoned, and Philosophy resorted 
 to definitions and formulas, its language was but a more compli- 
 cated symbolism, attempting in the dark to grapple with and pic- 
 ture ideas impossible to be expressed. For as with the visible 
 symbol, so with the word : to utter it to you does not inform you 
 of the exact meaning which it has to me; and thus religion and 
 philosophy became to a great extent disputes as to the meaning 
 6a
 
 THE MASTER. 63 
 
 of words. The most abstract expression for DEITY, which language 
 can supply, is but a sign or symbol for an object beyond our com- 
 prehension, and not more truthful and adequate than the images 
 of OSIRIS and VISHNU, or their names, except as being less sensu- 
 ous and explicit. We avoid sensuousness, only by resorting to 
 simple negation. We come at last to define spirit by saying that 
 it is not matter. Spirit is spirit. 
 
 A single example of the symbolism of words will indicate to you 
 one branch of Masonic study. We find in the English Rite this 
 phrase : "I will always hail, ever conceal, and never reveal ;" and 
 in the Catechism, these : 
 
 Q.\ "I Mil," 
 
 A.'. "/ conceal;" 
 
 and ignorance, misunderstanding the word "hail," has interpolated 
 the phrase, "From whence do you hail?" 
 
 But the word is really "hele," from the Anglo-Saxon verb pelan, 
 helan, to cover, hide, or conceal. And this word is rendered by the 
 Latin verb tegere, to cover or roof over. "That ye fro me no 
 thynge woll hele," says Gower. "They hele fro me no priuyte," 
 says the Romaunt of the Rose. "To heal a house," is a common 
 phrase in Sussex ; and in the west of England, he that covers a 
 house with slates is called a Healer. Wherefore, to "heal" means 
 the same thing as to "tile" itself symbolic, as meaning, prima- 
 rily, to cover a house with tiles, and means to cover, hide, or con- 
 ceal. Thus language too is symbolism, and words are as much 
 misunderstood and misused as more material symbols are. 
 
 Symbolism tended continually to become more complicated ; and 
 all the powers of Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of 
 fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ig- 
 norance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of 
 explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism be- 
 came involved in symbolism and image- worship, borrowed prob- 
 ably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia, the wor- 
 ship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symboli- 
 cal representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined 
 to poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monothe- 
 ists : the people idolaters. 
 
 There are clangers inseparable from symbolism, which afford an 
 impressive lesson in regard to the similar risks attendant on tin- 
 use of language. The imagination, called in to assist the reason,
 
 64 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 usurps its place or leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. 
 Names which stand for things are confounded with them; the 
 means are mistaken for the end ; the instrument of interpretation 
 for the object; and thus symbols come to usurp an independent 
 character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a necessary 
 path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the Deity ; 
 in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing 
 signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition ; while others, in avoid- 
 ing one extreme, plunged into the no less hideous gulf of irreligion 
 and impiety." 
 
 It is through the Mysteries, CICERO says, that we have learned 
 the first principles of life; wherefore the term "initiation" is used 
 with good reason ; and they not only teach us to live more happily 
 and agreeably, but they soften the pains of death by the hope of a 
 better life hereafter. 
 
 The Mysteries were a Sacred Drama, exhibiting some legend 
 significant of nature's changes, of the visible Universe in which the 
 Divinity is revealed, and whose import was in many respects as 
 open to the Pagan as to the Christian. Nature is the great Teacher 
 of man ; for it is the Revelation of God. It neither dogmatizes nor 
 attempts to tyrannize by compelling to a particular creed or spec- 
 ial interpretation. It presents its symbols to us, and adds nothing 
 by way of explanation. It is the text without the commentary ; 
 and, as we well know, it is chiefly the commentary and gloss that 
 lead to error and heresy and persecution. The earliest instructors 
 of mankind not only adopted the lessons of Nature, but as far as 
 possible adhered to her method of imparting them. In the Myste- 
 ries, beyond the current traditions or sacred and enigmatic recitals 
 of the Temples, few explanations were given to the spectators. 
 who were left, as in the school of nature, to make inferences for 
 themselves. No other method could have suited every degree of 
 cultivation and capacity. To employ nature's universal symbolism 
 instead of the technicalities of language, rewards the humblest in- 
 quirer, and discloses its secrets to every one in proportion to his 
 preparatory training and his power to comprehend them. If their 
 philosophical meaning was above the comprehension of some, their 
 moral and political meanings are within the reach of all. 
 
 These mystic shows and performances were not the reading of 
 a lecture, but the opening of a problem. Requiring research, they 
 were calculated to arouse the dormant intellect. They implied no
 
 THE MASTER. 65 
 
 hostility to Philosophy, because Philosophy is the great expounder 
 of symbolism ; although its ancient interpretations were often ill- 
 founded and incorrect. The alteration from symbol to dogma is 
 fatal to beauty of expression, and leads to intolerance and assured 
 infallibility. 
 
 ****** 
 
 If, in teaching the great doctrine of the divine nature of the 
 Soul, and in striving to explain its longings after immortality, and 
 in proving its superiority over the souls of the animals, which have 
 no aspirations Heavenward, the ancients struggled in vain to 
 express the nature of the soul, by comparing it to FIRE and LIGHT, 
 it will be well for us to consider whether, with all our boasted 
 knowledge, we have any better or clearer idea of its nature, and 
 whether we have not despairingly taken refuge in having none at 
 all. And if they erred as to its original place of abode, and under- 
 stood literally the mode and path of its descent, these were but the 
 accessories of the great Truth, and probably, to the Initiates, mere 
 allegories, designed to make the idea more palpable and impressive 
 to the mind. 
 
 They are at least no more fit to be smiled at by the self-conceit 
 of a vain ignorance, the wealth of whose knowledge consists solely 
 in words, than the bosom of Abraham, as a home for the spirits of 
 the just dead ; the gulf of actual fire, for the eternal torture of 
 spirits; and the City of the New Jerusalem, with its walls of 
 jasper and its edifices of pure gold like clear glass, its foundations 
 of precious stones, and its gates each of a single pearl. "I knew 
 a man," says PAUL, "caught up to the third Heaven;. . . .that he 
 was caught up into Paradise, and heard ineffable words, which it 
 is not possible for a man to utter." And nowhere is the antagon- 
 ism and conflict between the spirit and body more frequently and 
 forcibly insisted on than in the writings of this apostle, nowhere 
 the Divine nature of the soul more strongly asserted. ''With the 
 mind," he says, "I serve the law of God ; but with the flesh the 
 law of sin. . . .As many as are led by the Spirit of God, are the 
 sons of God. . . . The earnest expectation of the created waits 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God. . . . The created shall 
 be delivered from the bondage of corruption, of the flesh liable to 
 
 decay, into the glorious liberty of the children of God." 
 ****** 
 
 Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of
 
 66 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacher- 
 ous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. 
 Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity 
 and office, and because of the greed for wealth. Experience will 
 probably prove that these odious and detestable vices will grow 
 most rankly and spread most rapidly in a Republic. When office 
 and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy 
 and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the high- 
 way to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies 
 and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern in- 
 tegrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only 
 rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will 
 cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be 
 selected to render service. Other qualifications, less honorable, 
 will be more available. To adapt one's opinions to the popular 
 humor ; to defend, apologize for, and justify the popular follies ; to 
 advocate the expedient and the plausible ; to caress, cajole, and flat- 
 ter the elector ; to beg like a spaniel for his vote, even if he be a 
 negro three removes from barbarism ; to profess friendship for a 
 competitor and stab him by innuendo ; to set on foot that which at 
 third hand shall become a lie, being cousin-german to it when ut- 
 tered, and yet capable of being explained away, who is there that 
 has not seen these low arts and base appliances put into practice, 
 and becoming general, until success cannot be surely had by any 
 more honorable means ? the result being a State ruled and ruined 
 by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit, the green- 
 ness of unripe intellect, vain of a school-boy's smattering of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The faithless and the false in public and in political life, will be 
 faithless and false in private. The jockey in politics, like the 
 jockey on the race-course, is rotten from skin to core. Every- 
 where he will see first to his own interests, and whoso leans on him 
 will be pierced with a broken reed. His ambition is ignoble, like 
 himself; and therefore he will seek to attain office by ignoble 
 means, as he will seek to attain any other coveted object, land, 
 money, or reputation. 
 
 At length, office and honor are divorced. The place that the 
 small and shallow, the knave or the trickster, is deemed competent 
 and fit to fill, ceases to be worthy the ambition of the great and 
 capable ; or if not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be 
 used wherein are unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits
 
 THE MASTER. 67 
 
 of unprincipled advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates, 
 and pettifoggers wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and 
 the lives of millions are at stake. States are even begotten by vil- 
 lain v and brought forth by fraud, and rascalities are justified by 
 legislators claiming to be honorable. Then contested elections are 
 decided by perjured votes or party considerations ; and all the 
 practices of the worst times of corruption are revived and exag- 
 gerated in Republics. 
 
 It is strange that reverence for truth, that manliness and gen- 
 uine loyalty, and scorn of littleness and unfair advantage, and 
 genuine faith and godliness and large-heartedness should diminish, 
 among statesmen and people, as civilization advances, and freedom 
 becomes more general, and universal suffrage implies universal 
 worth and fitness ! In the age of Elizabeth, without universal 
 suffrage, or Societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, or pop- 
 ular lecturers, or Lycsea, the statesman, the merchant, the burgher, 
 the sailor, were all alike heroic, fearing God only, and man not 
 at all. Let but a hundred or two years elapse, and in a Monarchy 
 or Republic of the same race, nothing is less heroic than the mer- 
 chant, the shrewd speculator, the office-seeker, fearing man only, 
 and God not at all. Reverence for greatness dies out, and is suc- 
 ceeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of 
 many, either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a gen- 
 eral feeling of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or 
 a general, who has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is un- 
 fortunate and sinks from his high estate. It becomes a misfor- 
 tune, if not a crime, to be above the popular level. 
 
 We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take 
 counsel with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great 
 men seem never so scarce as when they are most needed, and small 
 men never so bold to insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity 
 and incapable pretence and sophomoric greenness, and showy and 
 sprightly incompetency are most dangerous. When France was 
 in the extremity of revolutionary agony, she was governed by an 
 assembly of provincial pettifoggers, and Robespierre, Marat, and 
 Couthon ruled in the place of Mirabeau, Yergniaud, and Carnot. 
 England was governed by the Rump Parliament, after she had be- 
 headed her king. Cromwell extinguished one body, and Xapoleon 
 the other. 
 
 Fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deceit in national affairs, are the
 
 68 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis. 
 To bully the weak and crouch to the strong, is the policy of na- 
 tions governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for 
 office are re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dis- 
 penser of patronage, chiefly to the most unworthy ; and men are 
 bribed with offices instead of money, to the greater ruin of the 
 Commonwealth. The Divine in human nature disappears, and in- 
 terest, greed, and selfishness take its place. That is a sad and true 
 allegory which represents the companions of Ulysses changed by 
 
 the enchantments of Circe into swine. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "Ye cannot," said the Great Teacher, "serve God and Mam- 
 mon." When the thirst for wealth becomes general, it will be 
 sought for as well dishonestly as honestly ; by frauds and over- 
 reachings, by the knaveries of trade, the heartlessness of greedy 
 speculation, by gambling in stocks and commodities that soon de- 
 moralizes a whole community. Men will speculate upon the needs 
 of their neighbors and the distresses of their country. Bubbles 
 that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up by cun- 
 ning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistant and instru- 
 ment. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the earth- 
 quakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of 
 the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, 
 the crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, 
 prey on the savings of self-denial, and trouble with their depreda- 
 tions the first nourishment of infancy and the last sands of life, 
 and fill with inmates the churchyards and lunatic asylums. But 
 the sharper and speculator thrives and fattens. If his country is 
 fighting by a levy en masse for her very existence, he aids her by 
 depreciating her paper, so that he may accumulate fabulous 
 amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is distressed, he buys 
 his property for a song. If he administers upon an estate, it turns 
 out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank explodes, 
 he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society wor- 
 ships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians 
 worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most obsequiously 
 when in actual solid wealth they are the veriest paupers. No 
 wonder men think there ought to be another world, in which the 
 injustices of this may be atoned for, when they see the friends of 
 ruined families begging the wealthy sharpers to give alms to pre-
 
 THE MASTER. 69 
 
 vent the orphaned victims from starving, until they may find 
 
 ways of supporting themselves. 
 
 ****** 
 
 States are chiefly avaricious of commerce and of territory. The 
 latter leads to the violation of treaties, encroachments upon feeble 
 neighbors, and rapacity toward their wards whose lands are cov- 
 eted. Republics are, in this, as rapacious and unprincipled as 
 Despots, never learning from history that inordinate expansion by 
 rapine and fraud has its inevitable consequences in dismember- 
 ment or subjugation. When a Republic begins to plunder its 
 neighbors, the words of doom are already written on its walls. 
 There is a judgment already pronounced of God, upon whatever is 
 unrighteous in the conduct of national affairs. When civil war 
 tears the vitals of a Republic, let it look back and see if it has not 
 been guilty of injustices ; and if it has, let it humble itself in the 
 dust ! 
 
 When a nation becomes possessed with a spirit of commercial 
 greed, beyond those just and fair limits set by a due regard to a 
 moderate and reasonable degree of general and individual prosper- 
 ity, it is a nation possessed by the devil of commercial avarice, a 
 passion as ignoble and demoralizing as avarice in the individual ; 
 and as this sordid passion is baser and more unscrupulous than 
 ambition, so it is more hateful, and at last makes the infected na- 
 tion to be regarded as the enemy of the human race. To grasp at 
 the lion's share of commerce, has always at last proven the ruin of 
 States, because it invariably leads to injustices that make a State 
 detestable ; to a selfishness and crooked policy that forbid other 
 nations to be the friends of a State that cares only for itself. 
 
 Commercial avarice in India was the parent of more atrocities 
 and greater rapacity, and cost more human lives, than the nobler 
 ambition for extended empire of Consular Rome. The nation 
 that grasps at the commerce of the world cannot but become 
 selfish, calculating, dead to the noblest impulses and sympathies 
 which ought to actuate States. It will submit to insults that 
 
 o 
 
 wound its honor, rather than endanger its commercial interests by 
 war; while, to subserve those interests, it will wage unjust war, 
 on false or frivolous pretexts, its free people cheerfully allying 
 themselves with despots to crush a commercial rival that has
 
 ?o MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 commercially avaricious, always at last displace the sentiments and 
 lofty impulses of Honor and Generosity by which they rose to 
 greatness; which made Elizabeth and Cromwell alike the pro- 
 tectors of Protestants beyond the four seas of England, against 
 crowned Tyranny and mitred Persecution ; and, if they had 
 lasted, would have forbidden alliances with Czars and Autocrats 
 and Bourbons to re-enthrone the Tyrannies of Incapacity, and 
 arm the Inquisition anew with its instruments of torture. The 
 soul of the avaricious nation petrifies, like the soul of the individ- 
 ual who makes gold his god. The Despot will occasionally act 
 upon noble and generous impulses, and help the weak against the 
 strong, the right against the wrong. But commercial avarice is 
 essentially egotistic, grasping, faithless, overreaching, crafty, cold, 
 ungenerous, selfish, and calculating, controlled by considerations 
 of self-interest alone. Heartless and merciless, it has no senti- 
 ments of pity, sympathy, or honor, to make it pause in its remorse- 
 less career; and it crushes down all that is of impediment in its 
 way, as its keels of commerce crush under them the murmuring 
 and unheeded waves. 
 
 A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for com- 
 mercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and 
 more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths 
 of baseness men and nations can descend. Commercial greed val- 
 ues the lives of men no more than it values the lives of ants. The 
 slave-trade is as acceptable to a people enthralled by that greed, as 
 the trade in ivory or spices, if the profits are as large. It will by- 
 and-by endeavor to compound with God and quiet its own con- 
 science, by compelling those to whom it sold the slaves it bought 
 or stole, to set them free, and slaughtering them by hecatombs if 
 they refuse to obey the edicts of its philanthropy. 
 
 Justice in no wise consists in meting out to another that exact 
 measure of reward or punishment which we think and decree his 
 merit, or what we call his crime, which is more often merely his 
 error, deserves. The justice of the father is not incompatible 
 with forgiveness by him of the errors and offences of his child. 
 The Infinite Justice of God does not consist in meting out exact 
 measures of punishment for human frailties and sins. \Yc are too 
 apt to erect our own little and narrow notions of what is ricrht and 
 just, into the law of justice, and to insist that God shall adopt 
 that as His law ; to measure off something with our own little
 
 THE MASTER. 71 
 
 tape-line, and call it God's law of justice. Continually we seek to 
 ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by mis- 
 naming it justice. 
 
 Nor does justice consist in strictly governing our conduct to- 
 ward other men by the rigid rules of legal right. If there were a 
 community anywhere, in which all stood upon the strictness of this 
 rule, there should be written over its gates, as a warning to the 
 unfortunates desiring admission to that inhospitable realm, the 
 words which DANTE says are written over the great gate of Hell : 
 "LET THOSE wiio ENTER HERE LEAVE HOPE BEHIND!" It is not 
 just to pay the laborer in field or factory or workshop his current 
 wages and no more, the lowest market-value of his labor, for so 
 long only as we need that labor and he is able to work ; for when 
 sickness or old age overtakes him, that is to leave him and his 
 family to starve ; and God will curse with calamity the people in 
 which the children of the laborer out of work eat the boiled grass 
 of the field, and mothers strangle their children, that they may buy 
 food for themselves with the charitable pittance given for burial 
 expenses. The rules of what is ordinarily termed "Justice," may 
 be punctiliously observed among the fallen spirits that are the 
 
 aristocracy of Hell. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Justice, divorced from sympathy, is selfish indifference, not in 
 the least more laudable than misanthropic isolation. There is 
 sympathy even among the hair-like oscillatorias, a tribe of simple 
 plants, armies of which may be discovered, with the aid of the 
 microscope, in the tiniest bit of scum from a stagnant pool. For 
 these will place themselves, as if it were by agreement, in separate 
 companies, on the side of a vessel containing them, and seem 
 marching upward in rows ; and when a swarm grows weary of its 
 situation, and has a mind to change its quarters, each army holds 
 on its way without confusion or intermixture, proceeding with 
 great regularity and order, as if under the directions of wise lead- 
 ers. The ants and bees give each other mutual assistance, beyond 
 what is required by that which human creatures are apt to regard 
 as the strict law of justice. 
 
 Surely we need but reflect a little, to be convinced that the indi- 
 vidual man is but a fraction of the unit of society, and that he is. 
 indissolubly connected with the rest of his race. Not only the 
 actions, but the will and thoughts of other men make or mar his
 
 72 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 fortunes, control his destinies, are unto him life or death, dishonor 
 or honor. The epidemics, physical and moral, contagious and infec- 
 tious, public opinion, popular delusions, enthusiasms, and the other 
 great electric phenomena and currents, moral and intellectual, 
 prove the universal sympathy. The vote of a single and obscure 
 man, the utterance of self-will, ignorance, conceit, or spite, decid- 
 ing an election and placing Folly or Incapacity or Baseness in a 
 Senate, involves the country in war, sweeps away our fortunes, 
 slaughters our sons, renders the labors of a life unavailing, and 
 pushes us, helpless, with all our intellect to resist, into the grave. 
 
 These considerations ought to teach us that justice to others 
 and to ourselves is the same ; that we cannot define our duties by 
 mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them 
 the great circle traced by the compasses; that the circle of hu- 
 manity is the limit, and we are but the point in its centre, the 
 drops in the great Atlantic, the atom or particle, bound by a mys- 
 terious law of attraction which we term sympathy to every other 
 atom in the mass; that the physical and moral welfare of others 
 cannot be indifferent to us ; that we have a direct and immediate 
 interest in the public morality and popular intelligence, in the 
 well-being and physical comfort of the people at large. The igno- 
 rance of the people, their pauperism and destitution, and conse- 
 quent degradation, their brutalization and demoralization, are all 
 diseases ; and we cannot rise high enough above the people, nor 
 shut ourselves up from them enough, to escape the miasmatic con- 
 tagion and the great magnetic currents. 
 
 Justice is peculiarly indispensable to nations. The unjust State 
 is doomed of God to calamity and ruin. This is the teaching of 
 the Eternal Wisdom and of history. " Righteousness exalteth a 
 nation ; but wrong is a reproach to nations." " The Throne is 
 established by Righteousness. Let the lips of the Ruler pronounce 
 the sentence that is Divine ; and his mouth do no wrong in judg- 
 ment!" The nation that adds province to province by fraud and 
 violence, that encroaches on the weak and plunders its wards, and 
 violates its treaties and the obligation of its contracts, and for the 
 law of honor and fair-dealing substitutes the exigencies of greed 
 and the base precepts of policy and craft and the ignoble tenets of 
 expediency, is predestined to destruction ; for here, as with the in- 
 dividual, the consequences of wrong are inevitable and eternal. 
 
 A sentence is written against all that is unjust, written by God
 
 THE MASTER. 73 
 
 in the nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because it 
 is in the nature of the Infinite God. No wrong is really successful. 
 The gain of injustice is a loss; its pleasure, suffering. Iniquity 
 often seems to prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. If 
 its consequences pass by the doer, they fall upon and crush his 
 children. It is a philosophical, physical, and moral truth, in the 
 form of a threat, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon 
 the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who vio- 
 late His laws. After a long while, the day of reckoning always 
 comes, to nation as to individual ; and always the knave deceives 
 himself, and proves a failure. 
 
 Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and 
 justice. It is Satan attempting to clothe himself in the angelic 
 vesture of light. It is equally detestable in morals, politics, and 
 religion ; in the man and in the nation. To do injustice under the 
 pretence of equity and fairness ; to reprove vice in public and com- 
 mit it in private ; to pretend to charitable opinion and censoriously 
 condemn ; to profess the principles of Masonic beneficence, and 
 close the ear to the wail of distress and the cry of suffering; to 
 eulogize the intelligence of the people, and plot to deceive and be- 
 tray them by means of their ignorance and simplicity ; to prate of 
 purity, and peculate ; of honor, and basely abandon a sinking 
 cause ; of disinterestedness, and sell one's vote for place and pow- 
 er, are hypocrisies as common as they are infamous and disgrace- 
 ful. To steal the livery of the Court of God to serve the Devil with- 
 al ; to pretend to believe in a God of mercy and a Redeemer of love, 
 and persecute those of a different faith ; to devour widows' houses, 
 and for a pretence make long prayers ; to preach continence, and 
 wallow in lust ; to inculcate humility, and in pride surpass Lucifer : 
 to pay tithe, and omit the weightier matters of the law, judgment, 
 mercy, and faith ; to strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel ; to make 
 clean the outside of the cup and platter, keeping them full within 
 of extortion and excess ; to appear outwardly righteous unto men, 
 but within be full of hypocrisy and iniquity, is indeed to be like 
 unto whited sepulchres, which appear beautiful outward, but are 
 within full of bones of the dead and of all uncleanness. 
 
 The Republic cloaks its ambition with the pretence of a desire 
 and duty to "extend the area of freedom," and claims it as its 
 "manifest destiny" to annex other Republics or the States or 
 Provinces of others to itself, by open violence, or under obsolete, 
 
 6
 
 74 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 empty, and fraudulent titles. The Empire founded by a successful 
 soldier, claims its ancient or natural boundaries, and makes neces- 
 sity and its safety the 'plea for open robbery. The great Merchant 
 Nation, gaining foothold in the Orient, finds a continual necessity 
 for extending its dominion by arms, and subjugates India. The 
 great Royalties and Despotisms, without a plea, partition among 
 themselves a Kingdom, dismember Poland, and prepare to wrangle 
 over the dominions of the Crescent. Te maintain the balance of 
 power is a plea for the obliteration of States. Carthage, Genoa, 
 and Venice, commercial Cities only, must acquire territory by force 
 or fraud, and become States. Alexander marches to the Indus ; 
 Tamerlane seeks universal empire; the Saracens conquer Spain 
 and threaten Vienna. 
 
 The thirst for power is never satisfied. It is insatiable. Neither 
 men nor nations ever have power enough. When Rome was the 
 mistress of the world, the Emperors caused themselves to be wor- 
 shipped as gods. The Church of Rome claimed despotism over 
 the soul, and over the whole life from the cradle to the grave. It 
 gave and sold absolutions for past and future sins. It claimed to 
 be infallible in matters of faith. It decimated Europe to purge it 
 of heretics. It decimated America to convert the Mexicans and 
 Peruvians. It gave and took away thrones; and by excommuni- 
 cation and interdict closed the gates of Paradise against Nations. 
 Spain, haughty with its dominion over the Indies, endeavored to 
 crush out Protestantism in the Netherlands, while Philip the 
 Second married the Queen of England, and the pair sought to win 
 that kingdom back to its allegiance to the Papal throne. After- 
 ward Spain attempted to conquer it with her "invincible" Ar- 
 mada. Napoleon set his relatives and captains on thrones, and 
 parcelled among them half of Europe. The Czar rules over an 
 empire more gigantic than Rome. The history of all is or will be 
 the same, acquisition, dismemberment, ruin. There is a judg- 
 ment of God against all that is unjust. 
 
 To seek to subjugate the will of others and take the soul cap- 
 tive, because it is the exercise of the highest power, seems to be the 
 highest object of human ambition. It is at the bottom of all pros- 
 elyting and propagandism, from that of Mesmer to that of the 
 Church of Rome and the French Republic. That was the aposto- 
 late alike of Joshua and of Mahomet. Masonry alone preaches 
 Toleration, the right of man to abide by his own faith, tne right
 
 THE MASTER. 75 
 
 of all States to govern themselves. It rebukes alike the monarch 
 who seeks to extend his dominions by conquest, the Church 
 that claims the right to repress heresy by fire and steel, and the con- 
 federation of States that insist on maintaining a union by force 
 and restoring brotherhood by slaughter and subjugation. 
 
 It is natural, when we are wronged, to desire revenge ; and to 
 persuade ourselves that we desire it less for our own satisfaction 
 than to prevent a repetition of the wrong, to which the doer would 
 be encouraged by immunity coupled with the profit of the wrong. 
 To submit to be cheated is to encourage the cheater to continue ; 
 and we are quite apt to regard ourselves as God's chosen instru- 
 ments to inflict His vengeance, and for Him and in His stead to 
 discourage wrong by making it fruitless and its punishment sure. 
 Revenge has been said to be "a kind of wild justice ;" but it is 
 always taken in anger, and therefore is unworthy of a great soul, 
 which ought not to suffer its equanimity to be disturbed by ingrat- 
 itude or villainy. The injuries done us by the base are as much 
 unworthy of our angry notice as those done us by the insects and 
 the beasts ; and when we crush the adder, or slay the wolf or 
 hyena, we should do it without being moved to anger, and with no 
 more feeling of revenge than we haVe in rooting up a noxious weed. 
 
 And if it be not in human nature not to take revenge by way of 
 punishment, let the Mason truly consider that in doing so he is 
 God's agent, and so let his revenge be measured by justice and 
 tempered by mercy. The law of God is, that the consequences of 
 wrong and cruelty and crime shall be their punishment ; and the 
 injured and the wronged and the indignant are as much His instru- 
 ments to enforce that law, as the diseases and public detestation, 
 and the verdict of history and the execration of posterity are. No 
 one will say that the Inquisitor who has racked and burned the 
 innocent; the Spaniard who hewed Indian infants, living, into 
 pieces with his sword, and fed the mangled limbs to his blood- 
 hounds ; the military tyrant who has shot men without trial, the 
 knave who has robbed or betrayed his State, the fraudulent banker 
 or bankrupt who has beggared orphans, the public officer who has 
 violated his oath, the judge who has sold injustice, the legislator 
 who has enabled Incapacity to work the ruin of the State, ought 
 not to be punished. Let them be so ; and let the injured or the 
 sympathizing be the instruments of God's just vengeance ; but 
 always out of a higher feeling than mere personal revenge.
 
 7& MORALS AMD DOGMA. 
 
 Remember that every moral characteristic of man finds its pro- 
 totype among creatures of lower intelligence ; that the cruel foul- 
 ness of the hyena, the savage rapacity of the wolf, the merciless 
 rage of the tiger, the crafty treachery of the panther, are found 
 among mankind, and ought to excite no other emotion, when 
 found in the man, than when found in the beast. Why should the 
 true man be angry with the geese that hiss, the peacocks that 
 strut, the asses that bray, and the apes that imitate and chatter, 
 although they wear the human form? Always, also, it remains 
 true, that it is more noble to forgive than to take revenge ; and 
 that, in general, we ought too much to despise those who wrong 
 us, to feel the emotion of anger, or to desire revenge. 
 
 At the sphere of the Sun, you are in the region of LIGHT. * * 
 * * The Hebrew word for gold, ZAHAB, also means Light, of 
 which the Sun is to the Earth the great source. So, in the great 
 Oriental allegory of the Hebrews, the River PISON compasses the 
 land of Gold or Light; and the River GIHON the land of Ethiopia 
 or Darkness. 
 
 What light is, we no more know than the ancients did. Accord- 
 ing to the modern hypothesis, it is not composed of luminous 
 particles shot out from the sun with immense velocity ; but that 
 body only impresses, on the ether which fills all space, a powerful 
 vibratory movement that extends, in the form of luminous waves, 
 beyond the most distant planets, supplying them with light and 
 heat. To the ancients, it was an outflowing from the Deity. To 
 us, as to them, it is the apt symbol of truth and knowledge. To us, 
 also, the upward journey of the soul through the Spheres is symbol- 
 ical ; but we are as little informed as they whence the soul comes, 
 where it has its origin, and whither it goes after death. They en- 
 deavored to have some belief and faith, some creed, upon those 
 points. At the present day, men are satisfied to think nothing in 
 regard to all that, and only to believe that the soul is a something 
 separ ~ite from the body and out-living it, but whether existing be- 
 fore it, neither to inquire nor care. No one asks whether it ema- 
 nates from the Deity, or is created out of nothing, or is generated 
 like the body, and the issue of the souls of the father and the 
 mother. Let us not smile, therefore, at the ideas of the ancients, 
 until we have a better belief ; but accept their symbols as meaning 
 that the soul is of a Divine nature, originating in a sphere nearer 
 the Deity, and returning to that when freed from the enthrallment
 
 THE MASTER. 77 
 
 of the body ; and that it can only return there when purified of 
 all the sordidness and sin which have, as it were, become part of 
 its substance, by its connection with the body. 
 
 It is not strange that, thousands of years ago, men worshipped 
 the Sun, and that to-day that worship continues among the Par- 
 sees. Originally they looked beyond the orb to the invisible God, 
 cf whom the Sun's light, seemingly identical with generation and 
 life, was the manifestation and outflowing. Long before the 
 Chaldaean shepherds watched it on their plains, it came up regu- 
 larly, as it now does, in the morning, like a god, and again sank, 
 like a king retiring, in the west, to return again in due time in the 
 same array of majesty. We worship Immutability. It was that 
 steadfast, immutable character of the Sun that the men of Baalbec 
 worshipped. His light-giving and life-giving powers were second- 
 ary attributes. The one grand idea that compelled worship was 
 the characteristic of God which they saw reflected in his light, 
 and fancied they saw in its originality the changelessness of Deity. 
 He had seen thrones crumble, earthquakes shake the world and 
 hurl down mountains. Beyond Olympus, beyond the Pillars of 
 Hercules, he had gone daily to his abode, and had come daily again 
 in the morning to behold the temples they built to his worship. 
 They personified him as BRAHMA, AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS, 
 MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the nations that did so 
 grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the great col- 
 umns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain 
 the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and was borne off on 
 the wind, and still he shone on crumbling column and architrave. 
 The roof fell crashing on the pavement, and he shone in on the 
 Holy of Holies with unchanging rays. It was not strange that 
 men worshipped the Sun. 
 
 There is a water-plant, on whose broad leaves the drops of water 
 roll about without uniting, like drops of mercury. So arguments 
 on points of faith, in politics or religion, roll over the surface of 
 the mind. An argument that convinces one mind has no effect on 
 another. Few intellects, or souls that are the negations of intel- 
 lect, have any logical power or capacity. There is a singular obli- 
 quity in the human mind that makes the false logic more effective 
 than the true with nine-tenths of those who are regarded as men 
 of intellect. Even among the judges, not one in ten can argue 
 logically. Each mind sees the truth, distorted through its own
 
 78 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 medium. Truth, to most men, is like matter in the spheroidal 
 state. Like a drop of cold water on the surface of a red-hot metal 
 plate, it dances, trembles, and spins, and never comes into contact 
 with it ; and the, mind may be plunged into truth, as the hand 
 moistened with sulphurous acid may into melted metal, and be not 
 
 even warmed by the immersion. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The word Khairum or Khurum is a compound one. Gesenius 
 renders Khurum by the word noble or free-born: Khur meaning 
 white, noble. It also means the opening of a window, the socket 
 of the eye. Khri also means white, or an opening: and Khris, the 
 orb of the Sun, in Job, viii. 13, and x. 7. Krishna is the Hindu 
 Sun-God. Khur, the Parsi word, is the literal name of the Sun. 
 
 From Kur or Khur, the Sun, comes Khora, a name of Lower 
 Egypt. The Sun, Bryant says in his Mythology, was called Kur; 
 and Plutarch says that the Persian? called the Sun Kuros. Kurios, 
 Lord, in Greek, like Adona'i, Lord, in Phoenician and Hebrew, 
 was applied to the Sun. Many places were sacred to the Sun, and 
 called Kura, Kuria, Kuropolis, Kurene, Kureschata, Kuresta, and 
 Corusia in Scythia. 
 
 The Egyptian Deity called by the Greeks "Horns," was Her-Ra, 
 or Har-oeris, Hor or Har, the Sun. Hari is a Hindu name of the 
 Sun. Ari-al, Ar-es, Ar, Aryaman, Areimonios, the AR meaning 
 Fire or Flame, are of the same kindred. Hermes or Har-mes, 
 [Aram, Remus, Haram, Harameias), was Kadmos, the Divine 
 Light or Wisdom. Mar-kuri, says Movers, is Mar, the Sun. 
 
 In the Hebrew, AOOR, TN, is Light, Fire, or the Sun. 
 Cyrus, said Ctesias, was so named from Kuros, the Sun. Kuris, 
 Hesychius says, was Adonis. Apollo, the Sun-god, was called 
 Kurraios, from Kurra, a city in Phocis. The people of Kurene, 
 originally Ethiopians or Cuthites, worshipped the Sun under the 
 title of Achoor and Achor. 
 
 We know, through a precise testimony in the ancient annals of 
 Tsur, that the principal festivity of Mal-karth, the incarnation of 
 the Sun at the Winter Solstice, held at Tsur, was called his re-birth 
 or his awakening, and that it was celebrated by means of a pyre, 
 on which the god was supposed to regain, through the aid of fire, 
 a new life. This festival was celebrated in the month Peritius 
 (Barith], the second day of which corresponded to the 25th of 
 December. KHUR-UM, King of Tyre, Movers says, first performed
 
 THE MASTER. 79 
 
 this ceremony. These facts we learn from Josephus, Servius on 
 the JEneid, and the Dionysiacs of Nonnus; and through a coinci- 
 dence that cannot be fortuitous, the same day was at Rome- the 
 Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the festal day of the invincible Sun. 
 Under this title, HERCULES, HAR-acles, was worshipped at Tsur. 
 Thus, while the temple was being erected, the death and resurrec- 
 tion of a Sun-God was annually represented at Tsur, by Solomon's 
 ally, at the winter solstice, by the pyre of MAL-KARTH, the Tsurian 
 Haracles. 
 
 AROERIS or HAR-oeris, the elder HORUS, is from the same old 
 root that in the Hebrew has the form Aiir, or, with the definite 
 article prefixed, Hanr, Light, or the Light, splendor, flame, the Sun 
 and his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the 
 point in a circle ; of the Elder, a pair of eyes ; and the festival of 
 the thirtieth day of the month Epiphi, when the sun and moon 
 were supposed to be in the same right line with the earth, was 
 called "The birth-day of the eyes of Horus." 
 
 In a papyrus published by Champollion, this god is styled "Har- 
 oeri, Lord of the Solar Spirits, the beneficent eye 'of the Sun." 
 Plutarch calls him "Har-pocrates;" but there is no trace of the 
 latter part of the name in the hieroglyphic legends. He is the son 
 of OSIRIS and Isis ; and is represented sitting on a throne sup- 
 ported by lions; the same word, in Egyptian, meaning Lion and 
 Sun. So Solomon made a great throne of ivory, plated with gold, 
 with six steps, at each arm of which was a lion, and one on each 
 side to each step, making seven on each side. 
 
 Again, the Hebrew word Tl, Khi, means -"living;" and CK"1 
 ram, "was, or shall be, raised or lifted up." The latter is the same 
 as DTI, DTlS, Din, room, ardom, harum, whence Aram, for Syria, 
 or Aramcca, High-land. Khairum, therefore, would mean "was 
 raised up to life, or living." 
 
 So, in Arabic, hrm, an unused root, meant, "was high," "made 
 great," "exalted;" and Hirm means an ox, the symbol of the Sun 
 in Taurus, at the Vernal Equinox. 
 
 KHURUM, therefore, improperly called Hiram, is KHUR-OM, the 
 same as Her-ra, Hcr-mes, and Her-acles, the "Heracles Tyriits 
 Impetus," the personification of Light and the Son, the Mediator, 
 Redeemer, and Saviour. From the Egyptian word Ra came the 
 Coptic Oiiro, and the Hebrew Aiir, Light. Har-ocri, is PI or or 
 Har, the chief or master. Hor is also heat ; and hora, season or
 
 3C MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 hour ; and hence, in several African dialects, as names of the Sun, 
 Airo, Ayero, eer, uiro, ghurrah, and the like. The royal name 
 rendered Pharaoh, was PHRA, that is, Pai-ra, the Sun. 
 
 The legend of the contest between Hor-ra and Set, or Set-nu-bi, 
 the same as Bar or Bal, is older than that of the strife between 
 Osiris and Typhon; as old, at least, as the nineteenth dynasty. It 
 is called in the Book of the Dead, "The day of the battle between 
 Horus and Set." The later myth connects itself with Phoenicia 
 and Syria. The body of OSIRIS went ashore at Gebal or Byblos, 
 sixty miles above Tsur. You will not fail to notice that in the 
 name of each murderer of Khurum, that of the Evil God Bal is 
 
 found. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Har-oeri was the god of TIME, as well as of Life. The Egyptian 
 legend was that the King of Byblos cut down the tamarisk-tree 
 containing the body of OSIRIS, and made of it a column for his 
 palace. Isis, employed in the palace, obtained possession qf the 
 column, took the body out of it, and carried it away. Apuleius 
 describes her as "a beautiful female, over whose divine neck her 
 long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets ;" and in the procession 
 female attendants, with ivory combs, seemed to dress and ornament 
 the royal hair of the goddess. The palm-tree, and the lamp in the 
 shape of a boat, appeared in the procession. If the symbol we are 
 speaking of is not a mere modern invention, it is to these things it 
 alludes. 
 
 The identity of the legends is also confirmed by this hieroglyphic 
 picture, copied from an ancient Egyptian monument, which may 
 also enlighten you as to the Lion's grip and the Master's gavel.
 
 THE MASTER. 8 1 
 
 3K, in the ancient Phoenician character, 4 ^. and in the Sama- 
 ritan, 1 } /$, A B, (the two letters representing the numbers I, 2, 
 or Unity and Duality, means Father, and is a primitive noun, com- 
 mon to all the Semitic languages. 
 
 It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or 
 Ruler, Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet. 
 
 QK is simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when 
 it precedes another word, and in English the preposition "of" is 
 interposed, as ^-"OX, Abi-Al, the Father of Al. 
 
 Also, the final Yod means "my"; so that ''iX by itself means 
 "My father." vjtf TV7, David my father, 2 Chron. ii. 3. 
 
 1, (Vav) final is the possessive pronoun "his" ; and V2X, Abiu 
 (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full mean- 
 ing, as connected with the name of Khurum, no doubt is, "for- 
 merly one of my father's servants," or "slaves." 
 
 The name of the Phoenician artificer is, in Samuel and Kings, 
 GIT! and CnTl [2 Sam. v. n ; i Kings, v. 15; I Kings, vii. 40]. 
 In Chronicles it is Dlttl, with the addition of "2K. [2 Chron. ii. 12] ; 
 and of V2K. [2 Chron. iv. 16]. 
 
 It is merely absurd to add the word "Abif" or "Abiff," as part 
 of the name of the artificer. And it is almost as absurd to add 
 the word "Abi," which was a title and not part of the name. Jo- 
 seph says [Gen. xlv. 8], "God has constituted me 'Ab I'Paraah, 
 as Father to Paraah, i. e., Vizier or Prime Minister." So Haman 
 was called the Second Father of Artaxerxes ; and when King Khu- 
 rum used the phrase "Khurum Abi," he meant that the artificer 
 he sent Schlomoh was the principal or chief workman in his line 
 at Tsur. 
 
 A medal copied by Montfaucon exhibits a female nursing a child, 
 with ears of wheat in her hand, and the legend was (lao.) She is 
 seated on clouds, a star at her head, and three ears of wheat rising 
 from an altar before her. 
 
 HORUS was the mediator, who was buried three days, was regen- 
 erated, and triumphed over the evil principle. 
 
 The word HERI, in Sanscrit, means Shepherd, as well as Saviour. 
 CRISIINA is called Hcri, as JESUS called Himself the Good Shep- 
 herd. 
 
 Tin, Khur, means an aperture of a window, a cave, or the eye. 
 Also it means white. In Syriac, f j g^j. 
 
 *ifl also means an opening, and noble, free-born, high-born.
 
 82 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 D"II"I, KHURM means consecrated, devoted; in ^Ethiopic ,f\ A | 
 It is the name of a city, [Josh. xix. 38] ; and of a man, [Ezr. ii. 32, 
 x. 31 ; Neli. iii. n]. 
 
 nrpn, Khirah, means nobility, a noble race. 
 
 Buddha is declared to comprehend in his own person the 
 essence of the Hindu Trimurti ; and hence the tri-literal mono- 
 syllable Om or Aum is applied to him as being essentially the 
 same as Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. He is the same as Hermes, Thoth, 
 Taut, and Teutates. One of his names is Heri-maya or Her- 
 maya, which are evidently the same name as Hermes and Khirm 
 or Khurm. Heri, in Sanscrit, means Lord. 
 
 A learned Brother places over the two symbolic pillars, from 
 right to left, the two words *^ (ft* and 2j.\7Q, W* and f?j?2,lHU 
 and BAL : followed by the hieroglyphic equivalent, Vy^. of the 
 Sun-God, Amun-ra. Is it an accidental coincidence, c that in 
 the name of each murderer are the two names of the Good and Evil 
 Deities of the Hebrews; for Yu-bel is but Yehu-Bal orYeho-Balf 
 and that the three final syllables of the names, a, o, urn, make 
 A.'.U.'.M.'. the sacred word of the Hindoos, meaning the Triune- 
 God, Life-giving, Life-preserving, Life-destroying : represented by 
 the mystic character Y" ? 
 
 The genuine Acacia, also, is the thorny tamarisk, the same tree 
 which grew up around the body of Osiris. It was a sacred tree 
 among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mo- 
 hammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the Desert of 
 Thur : and of it the "crown of thorns" was composed, which was 
 set on the forehead of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a fit type of im- 
 mortality on account of its tenacity of life ; for it has been known, 
 when planted as a door-post, to take root again and shoot out 
 
 budding boughs above the threshold. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Every commonwealth must have its periods of trial and transi- 
 tion, especially if it engages in war. It is certain at some time to 
 be wholly governed by agitators appealing to all the baser ele- 
 ments of the popular nature ; by moneyed corporations ; by those 
 enriched by the depreciation of government securities or paper ; by 
 small attorneys, schemers, money-jobbers, speculators and adven- 
 turers an ignoble oligarchy, enriched by the distresses of the State, 
 and fattened on the miseries of the people. Then all the deceitful 
 visions of equality and the rights of man end ; and the wronged
 
 THE MASTER. 83 
 
 and plundered State can regain a real liberty only by passing 
 through "great varieties of untried being," purified in its trans- 
 migration by fire and blood. 
 
 In a Republic, it soon comes to pass that parties gather round 
 the negative and positive poles of some opinion or notion, and 
 that the intolerant spirit of a triumphant majority will allow no 
 deviation from the standard of orthodoxy which it has set up for 
 itself. Freedom of opinion will be professed and pretended to, 
 but every one will exercise it at the peril of being banished from 
 political communion with those who hold the reins and prescribe 
 the policy to be pursued. Slavishness to party and obsequiousness 
 to the popular whims go hand in hand. Political independence 
 only occurs in a fossil state ; and men's opinions grow out of the 
 acts they have been constrained to do or sanction. Flattery, 
 either of individual or people, corrupts both the receiver and the 
 giver ; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to 
 kings. A Csesar, securely seated in power, cares less for it than a 
 free democracy; nor will his appetite for it grow to exorbitance, 
 as that of a people will, until it becomes insatiate. The effect 
 of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please ; 
 to a people, it is to a great extent the same. If accessible to flat- 
 tery, as this is always interested, and resorted to on low and base 
 motives, and for evil purposes, either individual or people is sure, 
 in doing what it pleases, to do what in honor and conscience 
 should have been left undone. One ought not even to risk con- 
 gratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints ; and as 
 both individuals and peoples are prone to make a bad use of power, 
 to flatter them, which is a sure way to mislead them, well deserves 
 to be called a crime. 
 
 The first principle in a Republic ought to be, "that no man or 
 set of men is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or pri- 
 vileges from the community, but in consideration of public ser- 
 vices ; which not being descendible, neither ought the offices of 
 magistrate, legislature, <nor judge, to be hereditary." It is a volume 
 of Truth and Wisdom, a lesson for the study of nations, em- 
 bodied in a single sentence, and expressed in language which 
 every man can understand. If a deluge of despotism were 
 to overthrow the world, and destroy all institutions under 
 which freedom is protected, so that they should no longer be re- 
 membered among men, this sentence, preserved, would be suffi-
 
 84 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 cient to rekindle the fires of liberty and revive the race of free 
 men. 
 
 But, to preserve liberty, another must be added: "that a free 
 State does not confer office as a reward, especially for questionable 
 services, unless she seeks her own ruin ; but all officers are em- 
 ployed by her, in consideration solely of their will and ability to 
 render service in the future ; and therefore that the best and most 
 competent are always to be preferred." 
 
 For, if there is to be any other rule, that of hereditary succession 
 is perhaps as good as any. By no other rule is it possible to pre- 
 serve the liberties of the State. By no other to intrust the power of 
 making the laws to those only who have that keen instinctive sense 
 of injustice and wrong which enables them to detect baseness and 
 corruption in their most secret hiding-places, and that moral 
 courage and generous manliness and gallant independence that 
 make them fearless in dragging out the perpetrators to the light 
 of day, and calling down upon them the scorn and indignation of 
 the world. The flatterers of the people are never such men. On 
 the contrary, a time always comes to a Republic, when it is not 
 content, like Tiberius, with a single Sejanus, but must have a 
 host; and when those most prominent in the lead of affairs are 
 men without reputation, statesmanship, ability, or information, 
 the mere hacks of party, owing their places to trickery and want 
 of qualification, with none of the qualities of head or heart that 
 make great and wise men, and, at the same time, filled with all 
 the narrow conceptions and bitter intolerance of political bigotry. 
 These die ; and the world is none the wiser for what they have 
 said and done. Their names sink in the bottomless pit of obliv- 
 ion ; but their acts of folly or knavery curse the body politic and 
 at last prove its ruin. 
 
 Politicians, in a free State, are generally hollow, heartless, and 
 selfish. Their own aggrandisement is the end of their patriotism ; 
 and they always look with secret satisfaction on the disappoint- 
 ment or fall of one whose loftier genius and superior talents over- 
 shadow their own self-importance, or whose integrity and incor- 
 ruptible honor are in the way of their selfish ends. The influence 
 of the small aspirants is always against the great man. His 
 accession to power may be almost for a lifetime. One of them- 
 selves will be more easily displaced, and each hopes to succeed 
 him ; and so it at length comes to pass that men impudently
 
 THE MASTER. 85 
 
 aspire to and actually win the highest stations, who are unfit for 
 the lowest clerkships ; and incapacity and mediocrity become the 
 surest passports to office. 
 
 The consequence is, that those who feel themselves competent 
 and qualified to serve the people, refuse with disgust to enter into 
 the struggle for office, where the wicked and Jesuitical doctrine 
 that all is fair in politics is an excuse for every species of low 
 villainy ; and those who seek even the highest places of the State 
 do not rely upon the power of a magnanimous spirit, on the sym- 
 pathizing impulses of a great soul, to stir and move the people to 
 generous, noble, and heroic resolves, and to wise and manly action ; 
 but, like spaniels erect on their hind legs, with fore-paws obsequi- 
 ously suppliant, fawn, flatter, and actually beg for votes. Rather 
 than descend to this, they stand contemptuously aloof, disdain- 
 fully refusing to court the people, and acting on the maxim, that 
 "mankind has no title to demand that we shall serve them in 
 
 spite of themselves." 
 
 ****** 
 
 It is lamentable to see a country split into factions, each fol- 
 lowing this or that great or brazen-fronted leader with a blind, 
 unreasoning, unquestioning hero-worship ; it is contemptible to 
 see it divided into parties, whose sole end is the spoils of victory, 
 and their chiefs the low, the base, the venal and the small. Such 
 a country is in the last stages of decay, and near its end, no matter 
 how prosperous it may seem to be. It wrangles over the volcano 
 and the earthquake. But it is certain that no government can be 
 conducted by the men of the people, and for the people, without a 
 rigid adherence to those principles which our reason commends 
 as fixed and sound. These must be the tests of parties, men, and 
 measures. Once determined, they must be inexorable in their 
 application, and all must either come up to the standard or de- 
 clare against it. Men may betray : principles never can. Oppres- 
 sion is one invariable consequence of misplaced confidence in 
 treacherous man : it is never the result of the working or applica- 
 tion of a sound, just, well-tried principle. Compromises which 
 bring fundamental principles into doubt, in order to unite in one 
 party men of antagonistic creeds, are frauds, and end in ruin, the 
 just and natural consequence of fraud. Whenever you have set- 
 tled upon your theory and creed, sanction no departure from it in 
 practice, on any ground of expediency. It is the Master's v.ord.
 
 36 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Yield it up neither to flattery nor force ! Let no defeat or perse- 
 cution rob you of it! Believe that he who once blundered in 
 statesmanship will blunder again ; that such blunders are as fatal 
 as crimes; and that political near-sightedness does not improve 
 by age. There are always more impostors than seers among public 
 men, more false prophets than true ones, more prophets of Baal 
 than of Jehovah ; and Jerusalem is always in danger from the 
 Assyrians. 
 
 Sallust said that after a State has been corrupted by luxury and 
 idleness, it may by its mere greatness bear up under the burden of 
 its vices. But even while he wrote, Rome, of which he spoke, had 
 played out her masquerade of freedom. Other causes than luxury 
 and sloth destroy Republics. If small, their larger neighbors ex- 
 tinguish them by absorption. If of great extent, the cohesive 
 force is too feeble to hold them together, and they fall to pieces by 
 their own weight. The paltry ambition of small men disintegrates 
 them. The want of wisdom in their councils creates exasperating 
 issues. Usurpation of power plays its part, incapacity seconds 
 corruption, the storm rises, and the fragments of the incoherent 
 raft strew the sandy shores, reading to mankind another lesson for 
 it to disregard. 
 
 The Forty-Seventh Proposition is older than- Pythagoras. It is 
 this : "In every right-angled triangle, the sum of the squares of the 
 base and perpendicular is equal to the square of the hypothenuse."
 
 THE MASTER. 87 
 
 The square of a number is the product of that number, multi- 
 plied by itself. Thus, 4 is the square of 2, and 9 of 3. 
 
 The first ten numbers are : i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; 
 
 their squares are i, 4, 9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100; 
 
 and 3, 5, 7, 9, 1 1, 13, 15, 17, 19 
 
 are the differences between each square and that which precedes 
 it; giving us the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9. 
 
 Of these numbers, the square of 3 and 4, added together, gives 
 the square of 5 ; and those of 6 and 8, the square of 10 ; and if a 
 right-angled triangle be formed, the base measuring 3 or 6 parts, 
 and the perpendicular 4 or 8 parts, the hypothenuse will be 5 or 10 
 parts ; and if a square is erected on each side, these squares being 
 subdivided into squares each side of which is one part in length, 
 there will be as many of these in the square erected on the hy- 
 pothenuse as in the other two squares together. 
 
 Now the Egyptians arranged their deities in Triads the 
 FATHER or the Spirit or Active Principle or Generative Power ; 
 the MOTHER, or Matter, or the Passive Principle, or the Concep- 
 tive Power ; and the SON, Issue or Product, the Universe, proceed- 
 ing from the two principles. These were OSIRIS, Isis, and HORUS. 
 In the same way, PLATO gives us Thought the Father; Primitive 
 Matter the Mother; and Kosmos the World, the Son, the Universe 
 animated by a soul. Triads of the same kind are found in the 
 Kabalah. 
 
 PLUTARCH says, in his book De Iside et Osiride, "But the 
 better and diviner nature consists of three, that which exists 
 within the Intellect only, and Matter, and that which proceeds 
 from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos; of which three, Plato 
 is wont to call the Intelligible, the 'Idea, Exemplar, and Father' ; 
 Matter, 'the Mother, the Nurse, and the place and receptacle of 
 generation' ; and the issue of these two, 'the Offspring and Gen- 
 esis,' " the KOSMOS, "a word signifying equally Beauty and Order, 
 or the Universe itself." You will not fail to notice that Beauty is 
 symbolized by the Junior Warden in the South. Plutarch con- 
 tinues to say that the Egyptians compared the universal nature to 
 what they called the most beautiful and perfect triangle, as Plato 
 does, in that nuptial diagram, as it is termed, which he has intro- 
 duced into his Commonwealth. Then he adds that this triangle 
 is right-angled, and its sides respectively as 3, 4, and 5 ; and he 
 says, "We must suppose that the perpendicular is designed by them
 
 88 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to represent the masculine nature, the base the feminine, and that 
 the hypothenuse is to be looked upon as the offspring of both ; 
 and accordingly the first of them will aptly enough represent 
 OSIRIS, or the prime cause ; the second, Isis, or the receptive ca- 
 pacity ; the last, HORUS, or the common effect of the other two. 
 For 3 is the first number which is composed of even and odd ; and 
 4 is a square whose side is equal to the even number 2 ; but 5, 
 being generated, as it were, out o f the preceding numbers, 2 and 
 3, may be said to have an equal relation to both of them, as to its 
 common parents." 
 
 * * :!-- -\: # * 
 
 The clasped hands is another symbol which was used by PYTHAG- 
 ORAS. It represented the number 10, the sacred number in which 
 all the preceding numbers were contained ; the number expressed 
 by the mysterious TETRACTYS, a figure borrowed by him and the 
 Hebrew priests alike from .the Egyptian sacred science, and which 
 ought to be replaced among the symbols of the Master's Degree, 
 where it of right belongs. The Hebrews formed it thus, with the 
 letters ot the Divine name : 
 
 The Tetractys thus leads you. not only to the study of the 
 Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah, 
 and will aid you in discovering the True Word, and understanding 
 what was meant by "The Music of the Spheres.'' Modern science 
 strikingly confirms the id(,as of Pythagoias in regard to the prop- 
 erties of numbers, and that they govern in the Universe. Long 
 before Ms time, nature had extracted her cube-roots and her 
 squares. 
 
 ****** 
 
 All the FORCES at man's disposal or under man's control, or 
 subject to man's influence, are his working tools. The friendship 
 and sympathy that knit heart to heart are a force like the attrac-
 
 THE MASTER. 89 
 
 tion of cohesion, by which the sandy particles became the solid 
 rock. If this law of attraction or cohesion were taken away, the 
 material worlds and suns would dissolve in an instant into thin 
 invisible vapor. If the ties of friendship, affection, and love were 
 annulled, mankind would become a raging multitude of wild and 
 savage beasts of prey. The sand hardens into rock under the im- 
 mense superincumbent pressure of the ocean, aided sometimes by 
 the irresistible energy of fire ; and when the pressure of calamity 
 and danger is upon an order or a country, the members or the 
 citizens ought to be the more closely united by the cohesion of 
 sympathy and inter-dependence. 
 
 Morality is a force. It is the magnetic attraction of the heart 
 toward Truth and Virtue. The needle, imbued with this mystic 
 property, and pointing unerringly to the north, carries the mari- 
 ner safely over the trackless ocean, through storm and darkness, 
 until his glad eyes behold the beneficent beacons that welcome hin; 
 to safe and hospitable harbor. Then the hearts of those who love 
 him are gladdened, and his home made happy ; and this gladness 
 and happiness are due to the silent, unostentatious, unerring mon- 
 itor that was the sailor's guide over the weltering waters. But if 
 drifted too far northward, he finds the needle no longer true, but 
 pointing elsewhere than to the north, what a feeling of helpless- 
 ness falls upon the dismayed mariner, what utter loss of energy 
 and courage ! It is as if the great axioms of morality were to fail 
 and be no longer true, leaving the human soul to drift helplessly, 
 eyeless like Prometheus, at the mercy of the uncertain, faithless 
 currents of the deep. 
 
 Honor and Duty are the pole-stars of a Mason, the Dioscuri, by 
 never losing sight of which he may avoid disastrous shipwreck. 
 These Palinurus watched, until, overcome by sleep, and the ves- 
 sel no longer guided truly, he fell into and was swallowed up by 
 the insatiable sea. So the Mason who loses sight of these, and is 
 no longer governed by their beneficent and potential force, is 
 lost, and sinking out of sight, will disappear unhonored and 
 unwept. 
 
 The force of electricity, analogous to that of sympathy, and by 
 means of which great thoughts or base suggestions, the utterances 
 of noble or ignoble natures, flash instantaneously over the nerves 
 of nations; the force of growth, fit type of immortality, lying 
 dormant three thousand years in the wheat-grains buried with 
 7
 
 gO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 their mummies by the old Egyptians ; the forces of expansion and 
 contraction, developed in the earthquake and the tornado, and 
 giving birth to the wonderful achievements of steam, have their 
 parallelisms in the moral world, in individuals, and nations. 
 Growth is a necessity for nations as for men. Its cessation is the 
 beginning of decay. In the nation as well as the plant it is mys- 
 terious, and it is irresistible. The earthquakes that rend nations 
 asunder, overturn thrones, and engulf monarchies and republics, 
 have been long prepared for, like the volcanic eruption. Revolu- 
 tions have long roots in the past. The force exerted is in direct 
 proportion to the previous restraint and compression. The true 
 statesman ought to see in progress the Causes that are in due time 
 to produce them ; and he who does not is but a blind leader of the 
 blind. 
 
 The great changes in nations, like the geological changes of the 
 earth, are slowly and continuously wrought. The waters, falling 
 from Heaven as rain and dews, slowly disintegrate the granite 
 mountains ; abrade the plains, leaving hills and ridges of denuda- 
 tion as their monuments ; scoop out the valleys, fill up the seas, 
 narrow the rivers, and after the lapse of thousands on thousands 
 of silent centuries, prepare the great alluvia for the growth of that 
 plant, the snowy envelope of whose seeds is to employ the looms 
 of the world, and the abundance or penury of whose crops shall 
 determine whether the weavers and spinners of other realms shall 
 have work to do or starve. 
 
 So Public Opinion is an immense force ; and its currents are as 
 inconstant and incomprehensible as those of the atmosphere. 
 Nevertheless, in free governments, it is omnipotent ; and the busi- 
 ness of the statesman is to find the means to shape, control, and 
 direct it. According as that is done, it is beneficial and conserva- 
 tive, or destructive and ruinous. The Public Opinion of the civil- 
 ized world is International Law ; and it is so great a force, though 
 with no certain and fixed boundaries, that it can even constrain 
 the victorious despot to be generous, and aid an oppressed people 
 in its struggle for independence. 
 
 Habit is a great force ; it is second nature, even in trees. It is 
 '<s strong in nations as in men. So also are Prejudices, which are 
 given to men and nations as the passions are, as forces, valuable, 
 if properly and skillfully availed of; destructive, if unskillfully 
 handled.
 
 THE MASTER. QI 
 
 Above all, the Love of Country, State Pride, the Love of Home, 
 are forces of immense power. Encourage them all. Insist upon them 
 in your public men. Permanency of home is necessary to patriot- 
 ism. A migratory race will have little love of country. State 
 pride is a mere theory and chimera, where men remove from State 
 to State with indifference, like the Arabs, who camp here to-day 
 and there to-morrow. 
 
 If you have Eloquence, it is a mighty force. See that you use 
 it for good purposes to teach, exhort, ennoble the people, and not 
 to mislead and corrupt them. Corrupt and venal orators are the 
 assassins of the public liberties and of public morals. 
 
 The Will is a force; its limits as yet unknown. It is in the 
 power of the will that we chiefly see the spiritual and divine in 
 man. There is a seeming identity between his will that moves 
 other men, and the Creative Will whose action seems so incompre- 
 hensible. It is the men of will and action, not the men of pure 
 intellect, that govern the world. 
 
 Finally, the three greatest moral forces are FAITH, which is the 
 only true WISDOM, and the very foundation of all government; 
 HOPE, which is STRENGTH, and insures success ; and CHARITY, 
 which is BEAUTY, and alone makes animated, united effort possi- 
 ble. These forces are within the reach of all men ; and an associa- 
 tion of men, actuated by them, ought to exercise an immense 
 power in the world. If Masonry does not, it is because she has. 
 ceased to possess them. 
 
 Wisdom in the man or statesman, in king or priest, largely 
 consists in the due appreciation of these forces ; and upon the 
 general w07t-appreciation of some of them the fate of nations often 
 depends. What hecatombs of lives often hang upon the not 
 weighing or not sufficiently weighing the force of an idea, such as, 
 for example, the reverence for a flag, or the blind attachment to a 
 form or constitution of government ! 
 
 What errors in political economy and statesmanship are com- 
 mitted in consequence of the over-estimation or under-estimation 
 of particular values, or the non-estimation of some among them ! 
 Everything, it is asserted, is the product of human labor ; but the 
 gold or the diamond which one accidentally finds without labor 
 is not so. What is the value of the labor bestowed by the husband- 
 man upon his crops, compared with the value of the sunshine 
 and rain, without which his labor avails nothing? Commerce
 
 92 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 carried on by the labor of man, adds to the value of the products 
 of the field, the mine, or the workshop, by their transportation to 
 different markets ; but how much of this increase is due to the 
 rivers down which these products float, to the winds that urge the 
 keels of commerce over the ocean ! 
 
 Who can estimate the value of morality and manliness in a 
 State, of moral worth and intellectual knowledge? These are the 
 sunshine and rain of the State. The winds, with their changeable, 
 fickle, fluctuating currents, are apt emblems of the fickle humors 
 of the populace, its passions, its heroic impulses, its enthusiasms. 
 \Yoe to the statesman who does not estimate these as values ! 
 
 Even music and song are sometimes found to have an incalcula- 
 ble value. Every nation has some song of a proven value, more 
 easily counted in lives than dollars. The Marseillaise was worth to 
 revolutionary France, who shall say how many thousand men? 
 
 Peace also is a great element of prosperity and wealth ; a value 
 not to be calculated. Social intercourse and association of men in 
 beneficent Orders have a value not to be estimated in coin. The 
 illustrious examples of the Past of a nation, the memories and im- 
 mortal thoughts of her great and wise thinkers, statesmen, and 
 heroes, are the invaluable legacy of that Past to the Present and 
 future. And all these have not only the values of the loftier and 
 more excellent and priceless kind, but also an actual money-value, 
 since it is only when co-operating with or aided or enabled by 
 these, that human labor creates wealth. They are of the chief 
 elements of material wealth, as they are of national manliness, 
 
 heroism, glory, prosperity, and immortal renown. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Providence has appointed the three great disciplines of War, the 
 Monarchy and the Priesthood, all that the CAMP, the PALACE, and 
 the TEMPLE may symbolize, to train the multitudes forward to in- 
 telligent and premeditated combinations for all the great purposes 
 of society. The result will at length be free governments among 
 men, when virtue and intelligence become qualities of the multi- 
 tudes ; but for ignorance such governments are impossible, Man 
 advances only by degrees. The removal of one pressing calamity 
 gives eourr.ge to attempt the removal of the remaining evils, rend- 
 ering men more sensitive to them, or perhaps sensitive for the first 
 time. Serfs that writhe under the whip are not disquieted about 
 their political rights ; manumitted from personal slavery, they be-
 
 THE MASTER. 93 
 
 come sensitive to political oppression. Liberated from arbitrary 
 power, and governed by the law alone, they begin to scrutinize the 
 law itself, and desire to be governed, not only by law, but by what 
 '!iey deem the best law. And when the civil or temporal despot- 
 ism has been set aside, and the municipal law 4ias been moulded 
 on the principles of an enlightened jurisprudence, they may wake 
 to the discovery that they are living under some priestly or ecclesi- 
 astical despotism, and become desirous of working a reformation 
 there also. 
 
 It is quite true that the advance of humanity is slow, and that 
 it often pauses and retrogrades. In the kingdoms of the earth we 
 do not see despotisms retiring and yielding the ground to self-gov- 
 erning communities. We do not see the churches and priesthoods 
 of Christendom relinquishing their old task of governing men by 
 imaginary terrors. Nowhere do we see a populace that could be 
 safely manumitted from such a government. We do not see the 
 great religious teachers aiming to discover truth for themselves 
 and for others ; but still ruling the world, and contented and com- 
 pelled to rule the world, by whatever dogma is already accredited ; 
 themselves as much bound down by this necessity to govern, as 
 the populace by their need of government. Poverty in all its 
 most hideous forms still exists in the great cities ; and the cancer 
 of pauperism has its roots in the hearts of kingdoms. Men there 
 take no measure of their wants and their own power to supply 
 them, but live and multiply like the beasts of the field, Providence 
 having apparently ceased to care for them. Intelligence never 
 visits these, or it makes its appearance as some new development 
 of villainy. War has not ceased ; still there are battles and 
 sieges. Homes are still unhappy, and tears and anger and spite 
 make hells where there should be heavens. So much the more 
 necessity for Masonry ! So much wider the field of its labors ! So 
 much the more need for it to begin to be true to itself, to revive 
 from its asphyxia, to repent of its apostacy to its true creed ! 
 
 Undoubtedly, labor and death and the sexual passion are essen- 
 tial and permanent conditions of human existence, and render 
 perfection and a millenium on e?.rth impossible. Always, it is the 
 decree of Fate ! the vast majority of men must toil to live, and 
 cannot find time to cultivate the intelligence. Man, knowing he 
 is to die, will not sacrifice the present enjoyment for a greater one 
 in the future. The love of woman cannot die out; and it has a
 
 94 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 terrible and uncontrollable fate, increased by the refinements of 
 civilization. Woman is the veritable syren or goddess of the 
 young. But society can be improved ; and free government is 
 possible for States ; and freedom of thought and conscience is no 
 longer wholly Utopian. Already we see that Emperors prefer to be 
 elected by universal suffrage ; that States are conveyed to Empires 
 by vote; and that Empires are administered with something of the 
 spirit of a Republic, being little else than democracies with a single 
 head, ruling through one man, one representative, instead of an 
 assembly of representatives. And if Priesthoods still govern, they 
 now come before the laity to prove, by stress of argument, that they 
 ought to govern. They are obliged to evoke the very reason which 
 they are bent on supplanting. 
 
 Accordingly, men become daily more free, because the freedom 
 of the man lies in his reason. He can reflect upon his own future 
 conduct, and summon up its consequences ; he can take wide views 
 of human life, and lay down rules for constant guidance. Thus 
 he is relieved of the tyranny of sense and passion, and enabled at 
 any time to live according to the whole light of the knowledge 
 that is within him, instead of being driven, like a dry leaf on the 
 wings of the wind, by every present impulse. Herein lies the free- 
 dom of the man as regarded in connection with the necessity im- 
 posed by the omnipotence and fore-knowledge of God. So much 
 light, so much liberty. When emperor and church appeal to rea- 
 son there is naturally universal suffrage. 
 
 Therefore no one need lose courage, nor believe that labor in the 
 cause of Progress will be labor wasted. There is no waste in na- 
 ture, either of Matter, Force, Act, or Thought. A Thought is as 
 much the end of life as an Action ; and a single Thought sometimes 
 works greater results than a Revolution, even Revolutions them- 
 selves. Still there should not be divorce between Thought and 
 Action. The true Thought is that in which life culminates. But 
 all wise and true Thought produces Action. It is generative, like 
 the light ; and light and the deep shadow of the passing cloud are 
 the gifts of the prophets of the race. Knowledge, laboriously 
 acquired, and inducing habits of sound Thought, the reflective 
 character, must necessarily be rare. The multitude of laborers 
 cannot acquire it. Most men attain to a very low standard of it. 
 It is incompatible with the ordinary and indispensable avocations 
 of life. A whole world of error as well as of labor, go to make
 
 THE MASTER. 95 
 
 one reflective man. In the most advanced nation of Europe there 
 are more ignorant than wise, more poor than rich, more automatic 
 laborers, the mere creatures of habit, than reasoning and reflective 
 men. The proportion is at least a thousand to one. Unanimity 
 of opinion is so obtained. It only exists among the multitude 
 who do not think, and the political or spiritual priesthood who 
 think for that multitude, who think how to guide and govern 
 them. When men begin to reflect, they begin to differ. The 
 great problem is to find guides who will not seek to be tyrants. 
 This is needed even more in respect to the heart than the head. 
 Now, every man earns his special share of the produce of human 
 labor, by an incessant scramble, by trickery and deceit. Useful 
 knowledge, honorably acquired, is too often used after a fashion 
 not honest or reasonable, so that the studies of youth are far more 
 noble than the practices of manhood. The labor of the farmer in 
 his fields, the generous returns of the earth, the benignant and 
 favoring skies, tend to make him earnest, provident, and grateful ; 
 the education of the market-place makes him querulous, crafty, 
 envious, and an intolerable niggard. 
 
 Masonry seeks to be this beneficent, unambitious, disinterested 
 guide ; and it is the very condition of all great structures that the 
 sound of the hammer and the clink of the trowel should be always 
 heard in some part of the building. With faith in man, hope for 
 the future of humanity, loving-kindness for our fellows, Masonry 
 and the Mason must always work and teach. Let each do that for 
 which he is best fitted. The teacher also is a workman. Praise- 
 worthy as the active navigator is, who comes and goes and makes 
 one clime partake of the treasures of the other, and one to share 
 the treasures of all, he who keeps the beacon-light upon the hill is 
 also at his post. 
 
 Masonry has already helped cast down some idols from their 
 pedestals, and grind to impalpable dust some of the links of the 
 chains that held men's souls in bondage. That there has been 
 progress needs no other demonstration than that you may now 
 reason with men, and urge upon them, without danger of the 
 rack or stake, that no doctrines can be apprehended as truths 
 if they contradict each other, or contradict other truths given us 
 by God. Long before the Reformation, a monk, who had found 
 his way to heresy without the help of Martin Luther, not ventur- 
 ing to breathe aloud into any living ear his anti-papal and trea-
 
 96 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sonable doctrines, wrote them on parchment, and sealing up the 
 perilous record, hid it in the massive walls of his monastery. 
 There was no friend or brother to whom he could intrust his 
 secret or pour forth his soul. It was some consolation to imagine 
 that in a future age some one might find the parchment, and the 
 seed be found not to have been sown in vain. What if the truth 
 should have to lie dormant as long before germinating as the wheat 
 in the Egyptian mummy ? Speak it, nevertheless, again and again, 
 and let it take its chance ! 
 
 The rose of Jericho grows in the sandy deserts of Arabia and 
 on the Syrian housetops. Scarcely six inches high, it loses its 
 leaves after the flowering season, and dries up into the form of a 
 ball. Then it is uprooted by the winds, and carried, blown, or 
 tossed across the desert, into the sera. There, feeling the contact 
 of the water, it unfolds itself, expands its branches, and expels its 
 seeds from their seed-vessels. These, when saturated with water, 
 are carried by the tide and laid on the sea-shore. Many are lost, 
 as many individual lives of men are useless. But many are thrown 
 back again from the sea-shore into the desert, where, by the 
 virtue of the sea-water that they have imbibed, the roots and 
 leaves sprout and they grow into fruitful plants, which will, in 
 their turns, like their ancestors, be whirled into the sea. God will 
 not be less careful to provide for the germination of the truths 
 you may boldly utter forth. "Cast," He has said, "thy bread upon 
 the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee again." 
 
 Initiation does not change : we find it again and again, and 
 always the same, through all the ages. The last disciples of Pas- 
 calis Martinez are still the children of Orpheus ; but they adore 
 the realizer of the antique philosophy, the Incarnate Word of the 
 Christians. 
 
 Pythagoras, the great divulger of the philosophy of numbers, 
 visited all the sanctuaries of the world. He went into Judaea, 
 where he procured himself to be circumcised, that he might be 
 admitted to the secrets of the Kabalah, which the prophets Ezekiel 
 and Daniel, not without some reservations, communicated to him. 
 Thf 1 ;, not without some difficulty, he succeeded in being admitted 
 to the Egyptian initiation, upon the recommendation of King 
 Amasis. The power of his genius supplied the deficiencies of the 
 imperfect communications of the Hierophants. and he himself 
 became a Master and a Revealer.
 
 THE MASTER. 97 
 
 Pythagoras defined God : a Living and Absolute Verity clothed 
 with Light. 
 
 He said that the Word was Number manifested by Form. 
 
 He made all descend from the Tetractys, that is to say, from the 
 Quaternary. 
 
 God, he said again, is the Supreme Music, the nature of which 
 is Harmony. 
 
 Pythagoras gave the magistrates of Crotona this great religious, 
 political, and social precept : 
 
 "There is no evil that is not preferable to Anarchy." 
 
 Pythagoras said, "Even as there are three divine notions and 
 three intelligible regions, so there is a triple word, for the Hierar- 
 chical Order always manifests itself by threes. There are the 
 word simple, the word hieroglyphical, and the word symbolic: in 
 other terms, there are the word that expresses, the word that con- 
 ceals, and the word that signifies; the whole hieratic intelligence 
 is in the perfect knowledge of these three degrees." 
 
 Pythagoras enveloped doctrine with symbols, but carefully 
 eschewed personifications and images, which, he thought, sooner 
 or later produced idolatry. 
 
 The Holy Kabalah, or tradition of the children of Seth, was car- 
 ried from Chaldsea by Abraham, taught to the Egyptian priesthood 
 by Joseph, recovered and purified by Moses, concealed under sym- 
 bols in the Bible, revealed by the Saviour to Saint John, and con- 
 tained, entire, under hieratic figures analogous to those of all 
 antiquity, in the Apocalypse of that Apostle. 
 
 The Kabalists consider God as the Intelligent, Animating, Living 
 Infinite. He is not, for them, either the aggregate of existences, 
 or existence in the abstract, or a being philosophically definable. 
 He is in all, distinct from all, and greater than all. His name 
 even is ineffable ; and yet this name only expresses the human 
 ideal of His divinity. What God is in Himself, it is not given to 
 man to comprehend. 
 
 God is the absolute of Faith ; but the absolute of Reason is 
 BEING, m!"P. "/ am that I am" is a wretched translation. 
 
 Being, Existence, is by itself, and because it Is. The reason 
 of Being, is Being itself. We may inquire. "Why does some- 
 thing exist?" that is, "Why does such or such a thing exist?" 
 But we cannot, without being absurd, ask. "Why Is Being?" 
 That would be to suppose Being before Being. If Being had a
 
 98 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 cause, that cause would necessarily Be; that is, the cause and 
 effect would be identical. 
 
 Reason and science demonstrate to us that the modes of Exist- 
 ence and Being balance each other in equilibrium according to 
 harmonious and hierarchic laws. But a hierarchy is synthetized, 
 in ascending, and becomes ever more and more monarchical. Yet 
 the reason cannot pause at a single chief, without being alarmed 
 at the abysses which it seems to leave above this Supreme Mon- 
 arch. Therefore it is silent, and gives place to the Faith it adores. 
 
 What is certain, even for science and the reason, is, that the 
 idea of God is the grandest, the most holy, and the most useful of 
 all the aspirations of man ; that upon this belief morality reposes, 
 with its eternal sanction. This belief, then, is in humanity, the 
 most real of the phenomena of being ; and if it were false, nature 
 would affirm the absurd ; nothingness would give form to life, and 
 God would at the same time be and not be. 
 
 It is to this philosophic and incontestable reality, which is 
 termed The Idea of God, that the Kabalists give a name. In 
 this name all others are contained. Its cyphers contain all the 
 numbers ; and the hieroglyphics of its letters express all the laws 
 and all the things of nature. 
 
 BEING is BEING: the reason of Being is in Being: in the Be- 
 ginning is the Word, and the Word in logic formulated Speech, 
 the spoken Reason ; theWord is in God, and is God Himself, mani- 
 fested to the Intelligence. Here is what is above all the philoso- 
 phies. This we must believe, under the penalty of never truly 
 knowing anything, and relapsing into the absurd skepticism of 
 Pyrrho. The Priesthood, custodian of Faith, wholly rests upon 
 this basis of knowledge, and it is in its teachings we must recog- 
 nize the Divine Principle of the Eternal Word. 
 
 Light is not Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants believed it to be ; 
 but only the instrument of the Spirit. It is not the body of the 
 Protoplastes, as the Theurgists of the school of Alexandria taught, 
 but the first physical manifestation of the Divine afflatus. God 
 eternally creates it, and man, in the image of God, modifies and 
 seems to multiply it. 
 
 The high magic is styled "The Sacerdotal Art," and "The 
 Royal Art." In Egypt, Greece, and Rome, it could not but share 
 the greatnesses and decadences of the Priesthood and of Royalty. 
 Every philosophy hostile to the national worship and to its myste-
 
 THE MASTER. 99 
 
 ries, was of necessity hostile to the great political powers, which 
 lose their grandeur, if they cease, in the eyes of the multitudes, to 
 be the images of the Divine Power. Every Crown is shattered, 
 when it clashes against the Tiara. 
 
 Plato, writing to Dionysius the Younger, in regard to the nature 
 of the First Principle, says : "I must write to you in enigmas, so 
 that if my letter be intercepted by land or sea, he who shall read 
 it may in no degree comprehend it." And then he says, "All 
 things surround their King; they are, on account of Him, and He 
 alone is the cause of good things, Second for the Seconds and 
 Third for the Thirds." 
 
 There is in these few words a complete summary of the The- 
 ology of the Sephiroth. "The King" is AINSOPH, Being Supreme 
 and Absolute. From this centre, which is everywhere, all things 
 ray forth ; but we especially conceive of it in three manners and 
 in three different spheres. In the Divine world (AZILUTH), which 
 is that of the First Cause, and wherein the whole Eternity of 
 Things in the beginning existed as Unity, to be afterward, during 
 Eternity uttered forth, clothed with form, and the attributes that 
 constitute them matter, the First Principle is Single and First, 
 and yet not the VERY Illimitable'Deity, incomprehensible, undefin- 
 able ; but Himself in so far as manifested by the Creative Thought. 
 To compare littleness with infinity, Arkwright, as inventor of the 
 spinning-jenny, and not the man Arkwright otherwise and beyond 
 that. All we can know of the Very God is, compared to His 
 Wholeness, only as an infinitesimal fraction of a unit, compared 
 with an infinity of Units. 
 
 In the World of Creation, which is that of Second Causes [the 
 Kabalistic World BRiAH],the Autocracy of the First Principle is 
 complete, but we conceive of it only as the Cause of the Second 
 Causes. Here it is manifested by the Binary, and is the Creative 
 Principle passive. Finally: in the third world, YEZIRAH, or of 
 Formation, it is revealed in the perfect Form, the Form of Forms, 
 the World, the Supreme Beauty and Excellence, the Created Per- 
 fection. Thus the Principle is at once the First, the Second, and 
 the Third, since it is All in All, the Centre and Cause of all. It 
 is not the genius of Plato that we here admire. We recognize only 
 the exact knowledge of the Initiate. 
 
 The great Apostle Saint John did not borrow from the philoso- 
 phy of Plato the opening of his Gospel. Plato, on the contrary,
 
 tO6 MOfeALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 drank at the same springs with Saint John and Philo; and John 
 in the opening verses of his paraphrase, states the first principles 
 of a dogma common to many schools, but in language especially 
 belonging to Philo, whom it is evident he had read. The philoso- 
 phy of Plato, the greatest of human Revealers, could yearn toivard 
 the Word made man ; the Gospel alone could give him to the world. 
 
 Doubt, in presence of Being and its harmonies ; skepticism, in 
 the face of the eternal mathematics and the immutable laws of 
 Life which make the Divinity present and visible everywhere, as 
 the Human is known and visible by its utterances of word and 
 act, is this not the most foolish of superstitions, and the most 
 inexcusable as well as the most dangerous of all credulities? 
 Thought, we know, is not a result or consequence of the organiza- 
 tion of matter, of the chemical or other action or reaction of its 
 particles, like effervescence and gaseous explosions. On the con- 
 trary, the fact that Thought is manifested and realized in act 
 human or act divine, proves the existence of an Entity, or Unity, 
 that thinks. And the Universe is the Infinite Utterance of one of 
 an infinite number of Infinite Thoughts, which cannot but ema- 
 nate from an Infinite and Thinking Source. The cause is always 
 equal, at least, to the effect ; and matter cannot think, nor could it 
 cause itself, or exist without cause, nor could nothing produce 
 either forces or things ; for in void nothingness no Forces can 
 inhere. Admit a self-existent Force, and its Intelligence, or an 
 Intelligent cause of it is admitted, and at once GOD Is. 
 
 The Hebrew allegory of the Fall of Man, which is but a special 
 variation of a universal legend, symbolizes one of the grandest 
 and most universal allegories of science. 
 
 Moral Evil is Falsehood in actions ; as Falsehood is Crime in 
 words. 
 
 Injustice is the essence of Falsehood; and every false word is 
 an injustice. 
 
 Injustice is the death of the Moral Being, as Falsehood is the 
 poison of the Intelligence. 
 
 The perception of the Light is the dawn of the Eternal Life, in 
 Being. The Word of God, which creates the Light, seems to be 
 uttered by every Intelligence that can take cognizance of Forms 
 and will look. "Let the Light BE! The Light, in fact, exists, in 
 its condition of splendor, for those eyes alone that gaze at it ; and 
 the Soul, amorous of the spectacle of the beauties of the L~niverse,
 
 THE MASTER. IQt 
 
 and applying its attention to that luminous writing of the Infinite 
 Book, which is called "The Visible," seems to utter, as God did on 
 the dawn of the first day, that sublime and creative word, "Bel 
 LIGHT!" 
 
 It is not beyond the tomb, but in life itself, that we are to seek 
 for the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation begins here 
 below, and the terrestrial world too has its Heaven and its Hell. 
 Always, even here below, virtue is rewarded ; always, even here be- 
 low, vice is punished ; and that which makes us sometimes believe 
 in the impunity of evil-doers is that riches, those instruments of 
 good and of evil, seem sometimes to be given them at hazard. But 
 woe to unjust men, when they possess the key of gold ! It opens, 
 for them, only the gate of the tomb and of Hell. 
 
 All the true Initiates have recognized the usefulness of toil and 
 sorrow. "Sorrow," says a German poet, "is the dog of that un- 
 known shepherd who guides the flock of men." To learn to suffer, 
 to learn to die, is the discipline of Eternity, the immortal Novi- 
 tiate. 
 
 The allegorical picture of Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy 
 of Dante was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has 
 been preserved for us, and which many painters of the middle age 
 have reproduced by this description, is a monument at once philo- 
 sophical and magical. It is a most complete moral synthesis, and 
 at the same time the most audacious demonstration ever given of 
 the Grand Arcanum, of that secret whose revelation would overturn 
 Earth and Heaven. Let no one expect us to give them its expla- 
 nation ! He who passes behind the veil that hides this mystery, 
 understands that it is in its very nature inexplicable, and that it 
 is death to those who win it by surprise, as well as to him who 
 reveals it. 
 
 This secret is the Royalty of the Sages, the Crown of the Initi- 
 ate whom we see redescend victorious from the summit of Trials, 
 in the fine allegory of Cebes. The Grand Arcanum makes him 
 master of gold and the light, which are at bottom the same thing, 
 he has solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle, he di- 
 rects the perpetual movement, and he possesses the philosophical 
 stone. Here the Adepts will understand us. There is neither in- 
 terruption in the toil of nature, nor gap in her work. The Har- 
 monies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, and the Eternal 
 Life accomplishes its evolutions in accordance with the same laws
 
 IO2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 as the life of a dog. "God has arranged all things by weight, num- 
 ber, and measure," says the Bible ; and tb : s luminous doctrine was 
 also that of Plato. 
 
 Humanity has never really had but one religion and one wor- 
 ship. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its de- 
 ceitful reflections, and its shadows ; but always, after the nights of 
 Error, we see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun. 
 
 The magnificences of worship are the life of religion, and if 
 Christ wishes poor ministers, His Sovereign Divinity does not wish 
 paltry altars. Some Protestants have not comprehended that wor- 
 ship is a teaching, and that we must not create in the imagination 
 of the multitude a mean or miserable God. Those oratories that 
 resemble poorly-furnished offices or inns, and those worthy minis- 
 ters clad like notaries or lawyer's clerks, do they not necessarily 
 cause religion to be regarded as a mere puritanic formality, and 
 God as a Justice of the Peace ? 
 
 We scoff at the Augurs. It is so easy to scoff, and so difficult 
 well to comprehend. Did the Deity leave the whole world with- 
 out Light for two score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner 
 of Palestine and a brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people? Why 
 always calumniate God and the Sanctuary? Were there never any 
 others than rogues among the priests? Could no honest and sin- 
 cere men be found among the Hierophants of Ceres or Diana, of 
 Dionusos or Apollo, of Hermes or Mithras ? Were these, then, all 
 deceived, like the rest? Who, then, constantly deceived them, 
 without betraying themselves, during a series of centuries? for 
 the cheats are not immortal ! Arago said, that outside of the pure 
 mathematics, he who utters the word "impossible," is wanting in 
 prudence and good sense. 
 
 The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh 
 reversed ; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. 
 The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry. 
 
 For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for 
 good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty 
 or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the 
 physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the 
 God PAN ; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the 
 Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the 
 poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend. 
 
 Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They
 
 THE MASTER. 1 03 
 
 style the sacred numbers of the Kabalah "golden numbers," and 
 the moral teachings of Pythagoras his "golden verses." For the 
 same reason, a mysterious book of Apuleius,in which an ass figures 
 largely, was called "The Golden Ass." 
 
 The Pagans accused the Christians of worshipping an ass, and 
 they did not invent this reproach, but it came from the Samaritan 
 Jews, who, figuring the data of the Kabalah in regard to the Di- 
 vinity by Egyptian symbols, also represented the Intelligence by 
 the figure of the Magical Star adored under the name of Rem- 
 phan, Science under the emblem of Anubis, whose name they 
 changed to Nibbas, and the vulgar faith or credulity under the 
 figure of Thartac, a god represented with a book, a cloak, and the 
 head of an ass. According to the Samaritan Doctors, Christianity 
 was the reign of Thartac, blind Faith and vulgar credulity erected 
 into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence and Science. 
 
 Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, a great Kabalist, but of doubt- 
 ful orthodoxy, wrote : 
 
 "The people will always mock at things easy to be understood ; 
 it must needs have impostures." 
 
 "A Spirit," he said, "that loves wisdom and contemplates the 
 Truth close at hand, is forced to disguise it, to induce the multi- 
 tudes to accept it Fictions are necessary to the people, and 
 
 the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to 
 contemplate it in all its brilliance. If the sacerdotal laws allowed 
 the reservation of judgments and the allegory of words, I would 
 accept the proposed dignity on condition that I might be a philoso- 
 pher at home, and abroad a narrator of apologues and parables. . . . 
 In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude 
 and sublime wisdom ? The truth must be kept secret, and the 
 masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason." 
 
 Moral disorders produce physical ugliness, and in some sort 
 realize those frightful faces which tradition assigns to the demon's. 
 
 The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their 
 initiation came from Egypt and Chaldaea, that is to say, from the 
 pure sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity 
 under the names of Isis or Hesus, the Supreme Harmony ; of 
 Belen or Bel, which in Assyrian means Lord, a name correspond- 
 ing to that of ADOXAI ; and of Catnul or Camacl, a name that in 
 the Kabalah personifies the Divine Justice. Below this triangle of 
 Light they supposed a divine reflection, also composed of three per-
 
 IO4 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sonified rays : first, Teutates or Tenth, the same as the Thnth of 
 the Egyptians, the Word, or the Intelligence formulated; then 
 Force and Beauty, whose names varied like their emblems. 
 Finally, they completed the sacred Septenary by a mysterious 
 image that represented the progress of the dogma and its future 
 realizations. This was a young girl veiled, holding a child in her 
 arms ; and they dedicated this image to "The Virgin who will 
 become a mother ; Virgini paritura." 
 
 Hertha or Wertha, the young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the 
 Virgin who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled 
 with wool half white and half black; because she presides over 
 all forms and all symbols, and weaves the garment of the Ideas. 
 
 One of the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabalah, contained 
 in the Enchiridion of Leo III., represents an equilateral triangle 
 reversed, inscribed in a double circle. On the triangle are writ- 
 ten, in such manner as to form the prophetic Tau, the two Hebrew 
 words so often found appended to the Ineffable Name, en^K and 
 mfcOX, ALOHAYIM, or the Powers, and TSABAOTH, or the Starry 
 Armies and their guiding spirits ; words also which symbolize the 
 Equilibrium of the Forces of Nature and the Harmony of Num- 
 bers. To the three sides of the triangle belong the three great 
 Names mrP, TTK, and K^K, IAHAVEIJ, ADONAI, and AGLA, 
 Above the first is written in Latin, Formatio, above the second 
 Reformatio, and above the third, Transformatio. So Creation is 
 ascribed to the FATHER, Redemption or Reformation to the SON^ 
 and Sanctification or Transformation to the HOLY SPIRIT, answer- 
 ing unto the mathematical laws of Action, Reaction, and Equilib- 
 rium. IAHAVEH is also, in effect, the Genesis or Formation of 
 dogma, by the elementary signification of the four letters of the 
 Sacred Tetragram ; ADONAI is the realization of this dogma in the 
 Human Form, in the Visible LORD, who is the Son of God or the 
 perfect Man; and AGLA (formed of the initials of the four words 
 Ath Gebur Lauldim Adonai} expresses the synthesis of the whole 
 dogma and the totality of the Kabalistic science, clearly indicat- 
 ing by the hieroglyphics of which this admirable name is formed 
 the Triple Secret of the Great Work. 
 
 Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism 
 and Alchemy, conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and 
 Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanation ; and misinterpreta- 
 tions of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be mis-
 
 THE MASTER. IO5 
 
 led ; it) conceal the Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to 
 draw them away from it. Truth is not for those who are unworthy 
 or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So God Himself inca- 
 pacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and 
 leads the masses away from the highest Truth, giving them the 
 power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to 
 know. Every age has had a religion suited to its capacity. 
 
 The Teachers, even of Christianity, are, in general, the most 
 ignorant of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is 
 no book of which so little is known as the Bible. To most who 
 read it, it is as incomprehensible as the Sohar. 
 
 So Masonry jealously conceals its secrets, and intentionally leads 
 conceited interpreters astray. There is no sight under the sun 
 more pitiful and ludicrous at once, than the spectacle of the Pres- 
 tons and the Webbs, not to mention the later incarnations of Dull- 
 ness and Commonplace, undertaking to "explain" the old symbols 
 of Masonry, and adding to and "improving" them, or inventing 
 new ones. 
 
 To the Circle inclosing the central point, and itself traced be- 
 tween two parallel lines, a figure purely Kabalistic, these persons 
 have added the superimposed Bible, and even reared on that the 
 ladder with three or nine rounds, and then given a vapid inter- 
 pretation of the whole, so profoundly absurd as actually to excite 
 admiration. 
 8
 
 IV. 
 SECRET MASTER. 
 
 MASONRY is a succession of allegories, the mere vehicles of great 
 lessons in morality and philosophy. You will more fully appreciate 
 its spirit, its object, its purposes, as you advance in the different 
 Degrees, which you will find to constitute a great, complete, and 
 harmonious system. 
 
 If you have been disappointed in the first three Degrees, as you 
 have received them, and if it has seemed to you that the performance 
 has not come up to the promise, that the lessons of morality are 
 not new, and the scientific instruction is but rudimentary, and the 
 symbols are imperfectly explained, remember that the ceremonies 
 and lessons of those Degrees have been for ages more and more 
 accommodating themselves, by curtailment and sinking into com- 
 monplace, to the often limited memory and capacity of the Master 
 and Instructor, and to the intellect and needs of the Pupil and 
 Initiate ; that they have come to us from an age when symbols 
 were used, not to reveal but to conceal; when the commonest learn- 
 ing was confined to a select fe\v, and the simplest principles of 
 morality seemed newly discovered truths; and that these antique 
 and simple Degrees now stand like the broken columns of a roof- 
 less Druidic temple, in their rude and mutilated greatness ; in 
 many parts, also, corrupted by time, and disfigured by modern ad- 
 ditions and absurd interpretations. They are but the entrance to 
 the great Masonic Temple, the triple columns of the portico. 
 
 You have taken the first step over its threshold, the first step 
 toward the inner sanctuary and heart of the temple. You are in 
 the path that leads up the slope of the mountain of Truth ; and 
 106
 
 SECRET MASTER. IO7 
 
 it depends upon your secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, whether you 
 will advance or remain stationary. 
 
 Imagine not that you will become indeed a Mason by learning 
 what is commonly called the "work," or even by becoming familiar 
 with our traditions. Masonry has a history, a literature, a philoso- 
 phy. Its allegories and traditions will teach you much ; but much 
 is to be sought elsewhere. The streams of learning that now flow 
 full and broad must be followed to their heads in the springs that 
 well up in the remote past, and you will there find the origin and 
 meaning of Masonry. 
 
 A few rudimentary lessons in architecture, a few universally 
 admitted maxims of morality, a few unimportant traditions, whose 
 real meaning is unknown or misunderstood, will no longer satisfy 
 the earnest inquirer after Masonic truth. Let whoso is content 
 with these, seek to climb no higher. He who desires to understand 
 the harmonious and beautiful proportions of Freemasonry must 
 read, study, reflect, digest, and discriminate. The true Mason is an 
 ardent seeker after knowledge ; and he knows that both books and 
 the antique symbols of Masonry are vessels which come down to 
 us full-freighted with the intellectual riches of the Past ; and that 
 in the lading of these argosies is much that sheds light on the 
 history of Masonry, and proves its claim to be acknowledged the 
 benefactor of mankind, born in the very cradle of the race. 
 
 Knowledge is the most genuine and real of human treasures ; 
 for it is Light, as Ignorance is Darkness. It is the development of 
 the human soul, and its acquisition the growth of the soul, which 
 at the birth of man knows nothing, and therefore, in one sense, 
 may be said to be nothing. It is the seed, which has in it the 
 pou'cr to grow, to acquire, and by acquiring to be developed, as the 
 seed is developed into the shoot, the plant, the tree. "We need not 
 pause at the common argument that by learning man excelleth 
 man, in that wherein man excelleth beasts ; that by learning man 
 ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in body he can- 
 not come, and the like. Let us rather regard the dignity and 
 excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's 
 nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or continuance. 
 For to this tendeth generation, and raising of Houses and Fami- 
 lies ; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments ; to this tend- 
 eth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the 
 strength of all other human desires." That our influences shall
 
 IO8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 survive us, and be living forces when we are in our graves ; and not 
 merely that our names shall be remembered; but rather that our 
 works shall be read, our acts spoken of, our names recollected and 
 mentioned when we are dead, as evidences that those influences live 
 and rule, sway and control some portion of mankind and of the 
 world, this is the aspiration of the human soul. "We see then how 
 far the monuments of genius and learning are more durable than 
 monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of 
 Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the 
 loss of a syllable or letter, during which time infinite palaces, tem- 
 ples, castles, cities, have decayed and been demolished? It is not 
 possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, 
 Caesar, no, nor of the Kings or great personages of much later 
 years ; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose 
 of the life and truth. But the images of men's genius and knowl- 
 edge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and 
 capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called 
 images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the 
 minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opin- 
 ions in succeeding ages ; so that if the invention of the ship was 
 thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place 
 to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation 
 of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, 
 as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so dis- 
 tant to participate of the wisdom, illumination, and inventions, 
 the one of the other." 
 
 To learn, to attain knowledge, to be wise, is a necessity for every 
 truly noble soul ; to teach, to communicate that knowledge, to 
 share that wisdom with others, and not churlishly to lock up his 
 exchequer, and place a sentinel at the door to drive away the 
 needy, is equally an impulse of a noble nature, and the worthiest 
 work of man. 
 
 "There was a little city," says the Preacher, the son of David, 
 "and few men within it ; and there came a great King against it 
 and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there 
 was found in it a poor \vise man, and he by his wisdom delivered 
 the city : yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then, 
 said I, wisdom is better than strength : nevertheless, the poor man's 
 wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard." If it should 
 chance to you. my brother, to do mankind good service, and be
 
 SECRET MASTER. IOLJ 
 
 rewarded with indifference and forgetfulness only, still be not dis- 
 couraged, but remember the further advice of the wise King. 
 "In the morning sow the seed, and in the evening withhold not thy 
 hand ; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that, or 
 whether both shall be alike good." Sow you the seed, whoever 
 reaps. Learn, that you may be enabled to do good ; and do so be- 
 cause it is right, finding in the act itself ample reward and recom- 
 pense. 
 
 To attain the truth, and to serve our fellows, our country, and 
 mankind this is the noblest destiny of man. Hereafter and all 
 your life it is to be your object. If you desire to ascend to that 
 destiny, advance! If you have other and less noble objects, and 
 are contented with a lower flight, halt here! let others scale 
 the heights, and Masonry fulfill her mission. 
 
 If you will advance, gird up your loins for the struggle ! for the 
 way is long and toilsome. Pleasure, all smiles, will beckon you 
 on the one hand, and Indolence will invite you to sleep among the 
 flowers, upon the other. Prepare, by secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, 
 to resist the allurements of both ! 
 
 Secrecy is indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree. It is 
 the first and almost the only lesson taught to the Entered Ap- 
 prentice. The obligations which we have each assumed toward 
 every Mason that lives, requiring of us the performance of the 
 most serious and onerous duties toward those personally unknown 
 to us until they demand our aid, duties that must be performed, 
 even at the risk of life, or our solemn oaths be broken and violated, 
 and we be branded as false Masons and faithless men, teach us 
 how profound a folly it would be to betray our secrets to those 
 who, bound to us by no tie of common obligation, might, by ob- 
 taining them, call on us in their extremity, when the urgency of 
 the occasion should allow us no time for inquiry, and the peremp- 
 tory mandate of our obligation compel us to do a brother's duty 
 to a base impostor. 
 
 The secrets of our brother, when communicated to us, must be 
 sacred, if they be such as the law of our country warrants us to 
 keep. We are required to keep none other, when the law that we 
 are called on to obey is indeed a law, by having emanated from 
 the only source of power, the People. Edicts which emanate from 
 the mere arbitrary will of a despotic power, contrary to the law of 
 God or the Great Law of Nature, destructive of the inherent rights
 
 110 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of man, violative of the right of free thought, free speech, free 
 conscience, it is lawful to rebel against and strive to abrogate. 
 
 For obedience to the Law does not mean submission to tyranny ; 
 nor that, by a profligate sacrifice of every noble feeling, we should 
 offer to despotism the homage of adulation. As every new victim 
 falls, we may lift our voice in still louder flattery. We may fall at 
 the proud feet, we may beg, as a boon, the honor of kissing that 
 bloody hand which has been lifted against the helpless. We may 
 do more : we may bring the altar and the sacrifice, and implore 
 the God not to ascend too soon to Heaven. This we may do, for 
 this we have the sad remembrance that beings of a human form 
 and soul have done. But this is all we can do. We can constrain 
 our tongues to be false, our features to bend themselves to the 
 semblance of that passionate adoration which we wish to express, 
 our knees to fall prostrate ; but our heart we cannot constrain. 
 There virtue must still have a voice which is not to be drowned 
 by hymns and acclamations ; there the crimes which we laud as 
 virtues, are crimes still, and he whom we have made a God is the 
 most contemptible of mankind ; if, indeed, we do not feel, per- 
 haps, that we are ourselves still more contemptible. 
 
 But that law which is the fair expression of the will and judg- 
 ment of the people, is the enactment of the whole and of every 
 individual. Consistent with the law of God and the great law of 
 nature, consistent with pure and abstract right as tempered by 
 necessity and the general interest, as contra-distinguished from 
 the private interest of individuals, it is obligatory upon all, because 
 it is the work of all, the will of all, the solemn judgment of all, 
 from which there is no appeal. 
 
 In this Degree, my brother, you are especially to learn the duty 
 of obedience to that law. There is one true and original law, 
 conformable to reason and to nature, diffused over all, invariable, 
 eternal, which calls to the fulfillment of duty, and to abstinence 
 from injustice, and calls with that irresistible voice which is felt 
 in all its authority wherever it is heard. This law cannot be 
 abrogated or diminished, or its sanctions affected, by any law of 
 man. A whole senate, a whole people, cannot dispense from its 
 paramount obligation. It requires no commentator to render it 
 distinctly intelligible : nor is it one thing at Rome, another at 
 Athens, one thing now, and another in the ages to come; but in 
 all times and in all nations, it is, and has been, and will be, one
 
 SECRKT MASTER. Ill 
 
 and everlasting; one as that God, its great Author and Promul- 
 gator, who is the Common Sovereign of all mankind, is Himself 
 One. No man can disobey it without flying, as it were, from his 
 own bosom, and repudiating his nature ; and in this very act he 
 will inflict on himself the severest of retributions, even though he- 
 escape what is regarded as punishment. 
 
 It is our duty to obey the laws of our country, and to be careful 
 that prejudice or passion, fancy or affection, error and illusion, be 
 not mistaken for conscience. Nothing is more usual than to pre- 
 tend conscience in all the actions of man which are public and 
 cannot be concealed. The disobedient refuse to submit to the 
 laws, and they also in many cases pretend conscience ; and so dis- 
 obedience and rebellion become conscience, in which there is 
 neither knowledge nor revelation, nor truth nor charity, nor 
 reason nor religion. Conscience is tied to laws. Right or sure 
 conscience is right reason reduced to practice, and conducting 
 moral actions, while perverse conscience is seated in the fancy or 
 affections a heap of irregular principles and irregular defects 
 and is the same in conscience as deformity is in the body, or 
 peevishness in the affections. It is not enough that the conscience 
 be taught by nature ; but it must be taught by God, conducted 
 by reason, made operative by discourse, assisted by choice, in- 
 structed by laws and sober principles ; and then it is right, and it 
 may be sure. All the general measures of justice, are the laws of 
 God, and therefore they constitute the general rules of government 
 for the conscience ; but necessity also hath a large voice in the 
 arrangement of human affairs, and the disposal of human rela- 
 tions, and the dispositions of human laws ; and these general 
 measures, like a great river into little streams, are deduced into 
 little rivulets and particularities, by the laws and customs, by the 
 sentences and agreements of men, and by the absolute despotism 
 of necessity, that will not allow perfect and abstract justice and 
 equity to be the sole rule of civil government in an imperfect 
 world ; and that must needs be law which is for the greatest good 
 of the greatest number. 
 
 When thou vowest a vow unto God, .defer not to pay it. It is 
 better thou shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and 
 not pay. P>e not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be 
 hasty to utter anything before God : for God is in Heaven, and 
 thou art upon earth : therefore let thy words be few. Weigh well
 
 112 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 what it is you promise ; but once the promise and pledge are given 
 remember that he who is false to his obligation will be false to his 
 family, his friend, his country, and his God. 
 
 Fides servanda est: Faith plighted is ever to be kept, was a 
 maxim and an axiom even among pagans. The virtuous Roman 
 said, either let not that which seems expedient be base, or if it be 
 base, let it not seem expedient. What is there which that so-called 
 expediency can bring, so valuable as that which it takes away, if 
 it deprives you of the name of a good man and robs you of your in- 
 tegrity and honor? In all ages, he who violates his plighted word 
 has been held unspeakably base. The word of a Mason, like the 
 word of a knight in the times of chivalry, once given must be sa- 
 cred ; and the judgment of his brothers, upon him who violates his 
 pledge, should be stern as the judgments of the Roman Censors 
 against him who violated his oath. Good faith is revered among 
 Masons as it was among the Romans, who placed its statue in the 
 capitol, next to that of Jupiter Maximus Optimus ; and we, like 
 them, hold that calamity should always be chosen rather than base- 
 ness ; and with the knights of old, that one should always die 
 rather than be dishonored. 
 
 Be faithful, therefore, to the promises you make, to the pledges 
 you give, and to the vows that you assume, since to break either 
 is base and- dishonorable. 
 
 Be faithful to your family, and perform all the duties of a good 
 father, a good son, a good husband, and a good brother. 
 
 Be faithful to your friends ; for true friendship is of a nature 
 not only to survive through all the vicissitudes of life, but to con- 
 tinue through an endless duration ; not only to stand the shock of 
 conflicting opinions, and the roar of a revolution that shakes the 
 world, but to last when the heavens are no more, and to spring 
 fresh from the ruins of the universe. 
 
 Be faithful to your country, and prefer iis dignity and honor 
 to any degree of popularity and honor for yourself ; consulting its 
 interest rather than your own, and rather than the pleasure and 
 gratification of the people, which are often at variance with their 
 welfare. 
 
 Be faithful to Masonry, which is to be faithful to the best inter- 
 ests of mankind. Labor, by precept and example, to elevate the 
 standard of Masonic character, to enlarge its sphere of influence, 
 to popularize it? teachings, and to nake all men know it for the
 
 SECRET MASTER. HJ 
 
 Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, and Good-will on earth among 
 men ; of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. 
 
 Masonry is useful to all men : to the learned, because it affords 
 them the opportunity of exercising their talents upon subjects em- 
 inently worthy of their attention ; to the illiterate, because it offers 
 them important instruction; to the young, because it presents 
 them with salutary precepts and good examples, and accustoms 
 them to reflect on the proper mode of living; to the man of the 
 world, whom it furnishes with noble and useful recreation ; to the 
 traveller, whom it enables to find friends and brothers in countries 
 where else he would be isolated and solitary ; to the worthy man 
 in misfortune, to whom it gives assistance ; to the afflicted, on 
 whom it lavishes consolation ; to the charitable man, whom it en- 
 ables to do more good, by uniting with those who are charitable 
 like himself ; and to all who have souls capable of appreciating its 
 importance, and of enjoying the charms of a friendship founded 
 on the same principles of religion, morality, and philanthropy. 
 
 A Freemason, therefore, should be a man of honor and of con- 
 science, preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life ; 
 independent in his opinions, and of good morals ; submissive to 
 the laws, devoted to humanity, to his country, to his family ; kind 
 and indulgent to his brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and 
 ready to assist his fellows by all means in his power. 
 
 Thus will you be faithful to yourself, to your fellows, and to 
 God, and thus will you do honor to the name and rank of SECRET 
 MASTER; which, like other Masonic honors, degrades if it is not 
 deserved.
 
 V. 
 PERFECT MASTER. 
 
 THE Master Khurum was an industrious and an honest man. 
 What he was employed to do he did diligently, and he did it well 
 and faithfully. He received no wa^ges that u'cre not his due. In- 
 dustry and honesty are the virtues peculiarly inculcated in this 
 Degree. They are common and homely virtues ; but not for that 
 beneath our notice. As the bees do not love or respect the drones, 
 so Masonry neither loves nor respects the idle and those who live 
 by their wits ; and least of all those parasitic acari that live upon 
 themselves. For those who are indolent are likely to become dis- 
 sipated and vicious ; and perfect honesty, which ought to be the 
 common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds. . To do 
 earnestly and steadily, and to do faithfully and honestly that which 
 we have to do perhaps this wants but little, when looked at from 
 every point of view, of including the whole body of the moral 
 law ; and even in their commonest and homeliest application, these 
 virtues belong to the character of a Perfect Master. 
 
 Idleness is the burial of a living man. For an idle person is so 
 useless to any purposes of God and man, that he is like one who 
 is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world ; 
 and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth. 
 Like a vermin or a wolf, when his time comes, he dies and per- 
 ishes, and in the mean time is nought. He neither ploughs nor 
 carries burdens : all that he does is either unprofitable or mis- 
 chievous. 
 
 It is a vast work that any man may do, if he never be idle : and 
 it is a huge way that a man may go in virtue, if he never go out 
 of his way by a vicious habit or a great crime : and he who per- 
 114
 
 PERFECT MASTER. 115 
 
 petually reads good books, if his parts be answerable, will have a 
 huge stock of knowledge. 
 
 St. Ambrose, and from his example, St. Augustine, divided every 
 day into these tcrtias of employment: eight hours they spent in 
 the necessities of nature and recreation : eight hours in charity, 
 in doing assistance to others, dispatching their business, reconcil- 
 ing their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting their errors, 
 instructing their ignorance, and in transacting the affairs of their 
 dioceses ; and the other eight hours they spent in study and 
 prayer. 
 
 We think, at the age of twenty, that life is much too long for 
 that which we have to learn and do ; and that there is an almost 
 fabulous distance between our age and that of our grandfather. 
 But when, at the age of sixty, if we are fortunate enough to reach 
 it, or unfortunate enough, as the case may be, and according as we 
 have profitably invested or wasted our time, we halt, and look back 
 along the way we have come, and cast up and endeavor to balance 
 our accounts with time and opportunity, we find that we have 
 made life much too short, and thrown away a huge portion of our 
 time. Then we, in our mind, deduct from the sum total of our 
 years the hours that we have needlessly passed in sleep ; the work- 
 ing-hours each day, during which the surface of the mind's slug- 
 gish pool has not been stirred or ruffled by a single thought ; the 
 days that we have gladly got rid of, to attain some real or fancied 
 object that lay beyond, in the way between us and which stood 
 irksomely the intervening days ; the hours worse than wasted in 
 follies and dissipation, or misspent in useless and unprofitable 
 studies ; and we acknowledge, with a sigh, that we could have 
 learned and done, in half a score of years well spent, more than 
 we hare done in all our forty years of manhood. 
 
 To learn and to do! this is the soul's work here below. The 
 soul grows as truly as an oak grows. As the tree takes the carbon 
 of the air, the dew, the rain, and the light, and the food that the 
 earth supplies to its roots, and by its mysterious chemistry trans- 
 mutes them into sap and fibre, into wood and leaf, and flower and 
 fruit, and color and perfume, so the soul imbibes knowledge, and 
 by a divine alchemy changes what it learns into its own substance, 
 and grows from within outwardly with an inherent force and 
 power like those that lie hidden in the grain of wheat. 
 
 The soul hath its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated,
 
 Il6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 enlarged, refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion; and 
 he who cannot appreciate a fine painting or statue, a noble poem, 
 a sweet harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to 
 whom the wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and 
 the loftiest truths of less importance than the price of stocks or 
 cotton, or the elevation of baseness to office, merely lives on the 
 level of commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority 
 of the soul's senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect develop- 
 ment of the soul itself. 
 
 To sleep little, and to study much; to say little, and to hear 
 and think much ; to learn, that we may be able to do, and then to 
 do, earnestly and vigorously, whatever may be required of us by 
 duty, and by the good of our fellows, our country, and mankind, 
 these are the duties of every Mason who desires to imitate the 
 Master Khurum. 
 
 The duty of a Mason as an honest man is plain and easy. It 
 requires of us honesty in contracts, sincerity in affirming, sim- 
 plicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in performing. Lie not at 
 all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance 
 nor in the circumstance, neither in word nor deed : that is, pre- 
 tend not what is false ; cover not what is true ; and let the measure 
 of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your con- 
 tractor ; for he who deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking 
 what is true, in a sense not intended or understood by the other, 
 is a liar and a thief. A Perfect Master must avoid that which 
 deceives, equally with that which is false. 
 
 Let your prices be according to that measure of good and evil 
 which is established in the fame and common accounts of the 
 wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that manufacture or 
 
 % 
 
 commodity ; and the gain such, which, without scandal, is allowed 
 to persons in all the same circumstances. 
 
 In intercourse with others, do not do all which thou mayest 
 lawfully do ; but keep something within thy power ; and, because 
 there is a latitude of gain in buying and selling, take not thou the 
 utmost penny that is lawful, or which thou thinkest so ; for 
 although it be lawful, yet it is not safe ; and he who gains all that 
 he can gain lawfully, this year, will possibly be tempted, next 
 year, to gain something unlawfully. 
 
 Let no man, for bis own poverty, become more oppressing and 
 cruel in his bargain ; but quietly, modestly, diligently, and patiently
 
 PERFECT MASTER. 117 
 
 recommend his estate to God, and follow its interest, and leave the 
 success to Him. 
 
 Detain not the wages of the hireling ; for every degree of deten- 
 tion of it beyond the time, is injustice and uncharitableness, and 
 grinds his face till tears and blood come out ; but pay him exactly 
 according to covenant, or according to his needs. 
 
 Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though made to 
 your disadvantage, though afterward you perceive you might have 
 done better ; and let not any precedent act of yours be altered by 
 any after-accident. Let nothing make you break your promise, 
 unless it be unlawful or impossible ; that is, either out of your 
 nature or out of your civil power, yourself being under the power 
 of another ; or that it be intolerably inconvenient to yourself, and 
 of no advantage to another ; or that you have leave expressed or 
 reasonably presumed. 
 
 Let no man take wages or fees for a work that he cannot do, 
 or cannot with probability undertake ; or in some sense profitably, 
 and with ease, or with advantage manage. Let no man appropriate 
 to his own use, what God, by a special mercy, or the Republic, 
 hath made common ; for that is against both Justice and Charity. 
 
 That any man should be the worse for us, and for our direct 
 act, and by our intention, is against the rule of equity, of justice, 
 and of charity. We then do not that to others, which we would 
 have done to ourselves ; for we grow richer upon the ruins of their 
 fortune. 
 
 It is not honest to receive anything from another without re- 
 turning him an equivalent therefor. The gamester who wins the 
 money of another is dishonest. There should be no such thing as 
 bets and gaming among Masons : for no honest man should desire 
 that for nothing which belongs to another. The merchant who 
 sells an inferior article for a sound price, the speculator who 
 makes the distresses and needs of others fill his exchequer are 
 neither fair nor honest, but base, ignoble, unfit for immortality. 
 
 It should be the earnest desire of every Perfect Master so to live 
 and deal and act, that when it comes to him to die, he may be 
 able to say, and his conscience to adjudge, that no man on earth 
 is poorer, because he is richer ; that what he hath he has honestly 
 earned, and no man can go before God, and claim that by the 
 rules of equity administered in His great chancery, this house in 
 which we die, this land we devise to our heirs, this money that
 
 Il8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 enriches those who survive to bear our name, is his and not ours, 
 and we in that forum are only his trustee. For it is most certain 
 that God is just, and will sternly enforce every such trust ; and 
 that to all whom we despoil, to all whom we defraud, to all from 
 whom we take or win anything whatever, without fair considera- 
 tion and equivalent, He will decree a full and adequate compensa- 
 tion. 
 
 Be careful, then, that thou receive no wages, here or elsewhere, 
 that are not thy due ! For if thou dost, thou wrongest some one, 
 by taking that which in God's chancery belongs to him ; and 
 whether that which thou takest thus be wealth, or rank, or 
 influence, or reputation or affection, thou wilt surely be held to 
 make full satisfaction.
 
 VI. 
 INTIMATE SECRETARY. 
 
 [Confidential Secretary.] 
 
 You are especially taught in this Degree to be zealous and faith- 
 ful ; to be disinterested and benevolent ; and to act the peace- 
 maker, in case of dissensions, disputes, and quarrels among the 
 brethren. 
 
 Duty is the moral magnetism which controls and guides the 
 true Mason's course over the tumultuous seas of life. Whether the 
 stars of honor, reputation, and reward do or do not shine, in the 
 light of day or in the darkness of the night of trouble and adver- 
 sity, in calm or storm, that unerring magnet still shows him the 
 true course to steer, and indicates with certainty where-away lies 
 the port which not to reach involves shipwreck and dishonor. He 
 follows its silent bidding, as the mariner, when land is for many 
 days not in sight, and the ocean without path or landmark spreads 
 out all around him, follows the bidding of the needle, never 
 doubting that it points truly to the north. To perform that 
 duty, whether the performance be rewarded or unrewarded, is his 
 sole care. And it doth not matter, though of this performance 
 there may be no witnesses, and though what he does will be for- 
 ever unknown to all mankind. 
 
 A little consideration will teach us that Fame has other limits 
 than mountains and oceans ; and that he who places happiness in 
 the frequent repetition of his name, may spend his life in propa- 
 gating it, without any danger of weeping for new worlds, or neces- 
 sity of passing the Atlantic sea. 
 
 If, therefore, he who imagines the world to be filled with his ac- 
 
 119
 
 I2O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tions and praises, shall subduct from the number of his encomiast 
 all those who are placed below the flight of fame, and who hear in 
 the valley of life no voice but that of necessity; all those who im- 
 agine themselves too important to regard him, and consider the 
 mention of his name as a usurpation of their time ; all who are too 
 much or too little pleased with themselves to attend to anything 
 external ; all who are attracted by pleasure, or chained down by 
 pain to unvaried ideas; all who are withheld from attending his 
 triumph by different pursuits ; and all who slumber in universal 
 negligence; he will find his renown straitened by nearer bounds 
 than the rocks of Caucasus ; and perceive that no man can be ven- 
 erable or formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures. 
 And .therefore, that we may not languish in our endeavors after 
 excellence, it is necessary that, as Africanus counsels his decend- 
 ants, we raise our eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate our 
 future and eternal state, without giving up our hearts to the praise 
 of crowds, or fixing our hopes on such rewards as human power 
 can bestow. 
 
 We are not born for ourselves alone ; and our country claims her 
 share, and our friends their share of us. As all that the earth pro- 
 duces is created for the use of man, so men are created for the 
 sake of men, that they may mutually do good to one another. In 
 this we ought to take nature for our guide, and throw into the pub- 
 lic stock the offices of general utility, by a reciprocation of duties ; 
 sometimes by receiving, sometimes by giving, and sometimes to 
 cement human society by arts, by industry, and by our resources. 
 
 Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and entertain their 
 good and glory with delight; but at no hand disparage them, or 
 lessen the report, or make an objection ; and think not the ad- 
 vancement of thy brother is a lessening of thy worth. Upbraid 
 no man's weakness to him to discomfit him, neither report it to 
 disparage him, neither delight to remember it to lessen him, or to 
 set thyself above him ; nor ever praise thyself or dispraise any man 
 else, unless some sufficient worthy end do hallow it. 
 
 Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight grounds 
 and little instances ; and if a man be highly commended, we think 
 him sufficiently lessened, if we can but charge one sin of folly or 
 inferiority in his account. We should either be more severe to our- 
 se-lves, or less so to others, and consider that whatsoever good any 
 one can think or say of us, we can tell him of many unworthy and
 
 INTIMATE SECRETARY. 121 
 
 foolish and perhaps worse actions of ours, any one ol which, done 
 by another, would be enough, with us, to destroy his reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 If we think the people wise and sagacious, and just and appre- 
 ciative, when they praise and make idols of ns, let us not call 
 them unlearned and ignorant, and ill and stupid judges, when 
 our neighbor is cried up by public fame and popular noises. 
 
 Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own mind 
 trouble enough, in his own fortunes evil enough, and in perform- 
 ance of his offices failings more than enough, to entertain his 
 own inquiry ; so that curiosity after the affairs of others cannot be 
 without envy and an ill mind. The generous man will be solicit- 
 ous and inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed 
 family, and after the virtues of an excellent person ; but anything 
 for which men keep locks and bars, or that blushes to see the light, 
 or that is either shameful in manner or private in nature, this 
 thing will not be his care and business. 
 
 It should be objection sufficient to exclude any man from the 
 society of Masons, that he is not disinterested and generous, both 
 in his acts, and in his opinions of men, and his constructions of 
 their conduct. He who is selfish and grasping, or censorious 
 and ungenerous, will not long remain within the strict limits 
 of honesty and truth, but will shortly commit injustice. He who 
 loves himself too much must needs love others too little ; and he 
 who habitually gives harsh judgment will not long delay to give 
 unjust judgment. 
 
 The generous man is not careful to return no more than he re- 
 ceives ; but prefers that the balances upon the ledgers of benefits 
 shall be in his favor. He who hath received pay in full for all 
 the benefits and favors that he has conferred, is like a spendthrift 
 who has consumed his whole estate, and laments over an empty 
 exchequer. He who requites my favors with ingratitude adds 
 to, instead of diminishing, my wealth ; and he who cannot return 
 a favor is equally poor, whether his inability arises from poverty 
 of spirit, sordidness of soul, or pecuniary indigence. 
 
 If he is wealthy who hath large sums invested, and the mass of 
 whose fortune consists in obligations that bind other men to pay 
 him money, he is still more so to whom many owe large returns of 
 kindnesses and favors. Beyond a moderate sum each year, the 
 wealthy man merely invests his means : and that which he never 
 9
 
 \22 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 uses is still like favors unreturned and kindnesses unreciprocated, 
 an actual and real portion of his fortune. 
 
 Generosity and a liberal spirit make men to be humane and ge- 
 nial, open-hearted, frank, and sincere, earnest to do good, easy and 
 contented, and well-wishers of mankind. They protect the feeble 
 against the strong, and the defenceless against rapacity and craft. 
 They succor and comfort the poor, and are the guardians, under 
 God, of his innocent and helpless wards. They value friends more 
 than riches or fame, and gratitude more than money or power. 
 They are noble by God's patent, and their escutcheons and quar- 
 terings are to be found in heaven's great book of heraldry. Nor can 
 any man any more be a Mason than he can be a gentleman, unless 
 he is generous, liberal, and disinterested. To be liberal, but only 
 of that which is our own ; to be generous, but only when we have 
 first been just; to give, when to give deprives us of a luxury or a 
 comfort, this is Masonry indeed. 
 
 He who is worldly, covetous, or sensual must change before he 
 can be a good Mason. If we are governed by inclination and not 
 by duty; if we are unkind, severe, censorious, or injurious, in the 
 relations or intercourse of life ; if we are unfaithful parents or un- 
 dutiful children ; if we are harsh masters or faithless servants ; if 
 we are treacherous friends or bad neighbors or bitter competitors 
 or corrupt unprincipled politicians or overreaching dealers in bus- 
 iness, we are wandering at a great distance from the true Masonic 
 light. 
 
 Masons must be kind and affectionate one to another. Fre- 
 quenting the same temples, kneeling at the same altars, they should 
 feel that respect and that kindness for each other, which their com- 
 mon relation and common approach to one God should inspire. 
 There needs to be much more of the spirit of the ancient fellowship 
 among us ; more tenderness for each other's faults, more forgive- 
 ness, more solicitude for each other's improvement and good for- 
 tune ; somewhat of brotherly feeling, that it be not shame to use 
 the word "brother." 
 
 Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that kindness and 
 affection : neither the spirit of business, absorbing, eager, and 
 overreaching, ungenerous and hard in its dealings, keen and bitter 
 in its competitions, low and sordid in its purposes ; nor that of 
 ambition, selfish, mercenary, restless, circumventing, living only 
 in the opinion of others, envious of the good fortune of others,
 
 INTIMATE SECRETARY. 123 
 
 miserably vain of its own success, unjust, unscrupulous, and 
 slanderous. 
 
 He that does me a favor, hath bound me to make him a return 
 of thankfulness. The obligation comes not by covenant, nor by 
 his own express intention ; but by the nature of the thing ; and 
 is a duty springing up within the spirit of the obliged person, to 
 whom it is more natural to love his friend, and to do good for 
 good, than to return evil for evil ; because a man may forgive an 
 injury, but he must never forget a good turn. He that refuses to 
 do good to them whom he is bound to love, or to love that which 
 did him good, is unnatural and monstrous in his affections, and 
 thinks all the world born to minister to him ; with a greediness 
 worse than that of the sea, which, although it receives all rivers 
 into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds and springs with a return of 
 all they need. Our duty to those who are our benefactors is, to 
 esteem and love their persons, to make them proportionable re- 
 turns of service, or duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they 
 need, or as opportunity presents itself ; and according to the great- 
 ness of their kindnesses. 
 
 The generous man cannot but regret to see dissensions and dis- 
 putes among his brethren. Only the base and ungenerous delight 
 in discord. It is the poorest occupation of humanity to labor to 
 make men think worse of each other, as the press, and too com- 
 monly the pulpit, changing places with the hustingsand the tribune, 
 do. The duty of the Mason is to endeavor to make man think 
 better of his neighbor ; to quiet, instead of aggravating difficul- 
 ties, to bring together those who are severed or estranged ; to keep 
 friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes to become 
 friends. To do this, he must needs control his own passions, and 
 be. not rash and hasty, nor swift to take offence, nor easy to be an- 
 gered. 
 
 For anger is a professed enemy to counsel. It is a direct storm, 
 in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without ; for 
 if you counsel gently, you are disregarded ; if you urge it and be 
 vehement, you provoke it more. It is neither manly nor ingenu- 
 ous. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble ; 
 friendships and societies and familiarities, to be intolerable. It 
 multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine 
 to run into madness. It makes innocent jesting to be the begin- 
 ning of tragedies. It turns friendship into hatred ; it makes a
 
 1 24 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 man lose himself, and his reason and his argument, in disputation. 
 It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It 
 adds insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judg- 
 ment into oppression. It changes discipline into tediousness and 
 hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man to be en- 
 vied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied. 
 
 See, therefore, that first controlling your own temper, and gov- 
 erning your own passions, you fit yourself to keep peace and har- 
 mony among other men, and especially the brethren. Above all 
 remember that Masonry is the realm of peace, and that "among 
 Masons there must be no dissension, but only that noble emulation, 
 which can best work and best agree." Wherever there is strife and 
 hatred among the brethren, there is no Masonry ; for Masonry is 
 Peace, and Brotherly Love, and Concord. 
 
 Masonry is the great Peace Society of the world. Wherever it 
 exists, it struggles to prevent international difficulties and dis- 
 putes ; and to bind Republics, Kingdoms, and Empires together 
 in one great band of peace and amity. It would not so often 
 struggle in vain, if Masons knew their power and valued their 
 oaths. 
 
 Who can sum up the horrors and woes accumulated in a single 
 war? Masonry is not dazzled with all its pomp and circumstance, 
 all its glitter and glory. War comes with its bloody hand into our 
 very dwellings. It takes from ten thousand homes those who lived 
 there in peace and comfort, held by the tender ties of family and 
 kindred. It drags them away, to die untended, of fever or expo- 
 sure, in infectious climes ; or to be hacked, torn, and mangled in 
 the fierce fight ; to fall on the gory field, to rise no more, or to be 
 borne away, in awful agony, to noisome and horrid hospitals. The 
 groans of the battle-field are echoed in sighs of bereavement from 
 thousands of desolated hearths. There is a skeleton in every 
 house, a vacant chair at every table. Returning, the soldier brings 
 worse sorrow to his home, by the infection which he has caught, of 
 camp-vices. The country is demoralized. The national mind is 
 brought down, from the noble interchange of kind offices with 
 another people, to wrath and revenge, and base pride, and the habit 
 of measuring brute strength against brute strength, in battle. 
 Treasures are expended, that would suffice to build ten thousand 
 churches, hospitals, and universities, or rib and tie together a con- 
 tinent with rails of iron. If that treasure were sunk in the sea, it
 
 INTIMATE SECRETARY. 125 
 
 would be calamity enough ; but it is put to worse use ; for it is ex- 
 pended in cutting into the veins and arteries of human life, until 
 the earth is deluged with a sea of blood. 
 
 Such are the lessons of this Degree. You have vowed to make 
 them the rule, the law, and the guide of your life and conduct. 
 If you do so, you will be entitled, because fitted, to advance in 
 Masonry. If you do not, you have already gone too far.
 
 & l& 
 
 VII. 
 PROVOST AND JUDGE. 
 
 THE lesson which this Degree inculcates is JUSTICE, in decision 
 and judgment, and in our intercourse and dealing with other men. 
 
 In a country where trial by jury is known, every intelligent man 
 is liable to be called on to act as a judge, either of fact alone, or of 
 fact and law mingled ; and to assume the heavy responsibilities 
 which belong to that character. 
 
 Those who are invested with the power of judgment should 
 judge the causes of all persons uprightly and impartially, without 
 any personal consideration of the power of the mighty, or the 
 bribe of the rich, or the needs of the poor. That is the cardinal 
 rule, which no one will dispute ; though many fail to observe it. 
 But they must do more. They must divest themselves of preju- 
 dice and preconception. They must hear patiently, remember 
 accurately, and weigh carefully the facts and the arguments offered 
 before them. They must not leap hastily to conclusions, nor form 
 opinions before they have heard all. They must not presume 
 crime or fraud. They must neither be ruled by stubborn pride of 
 opinion, nor be too facile and yielding to the views and arguments 
 of .others. In deducing the motive from the proven act, they 
 must not assign to the act either the best or the \vorst motives, but 
 those which they would think it just and fair for the world to as- 
 sign to it, if they themselves had done it : nor must they endeavor 
 to make many little circumstances, that weigh nothing separately, 
 weigh much together, to prove their own acuteness and sagacity. 
 These are sound rules for every juror, also, to observe. 
 126
 
 PROVOST AND JUDGE. 12J 
 
 In our intercourse with others, there are two kinds of injustice: 
 the first, of those who offer an injury; the second, of those who 
 have it in their power to avert an injury from those to whom it is 
 offered, and yet do it not. So active injustice may be done in two 
 ways by force and by fraud, of which force is lion-like, and 
 fraud fox-like, both utterly repugnant to social duty, but fraud 
 the more detestable. 
 
 Every wrong done by one man to another, whether it affect his 
 person, his property, his happiness, or his reputation, is an offence 
 against the law of justice. The field of this Degree is therefore a 
 wide and vast one ; and Masonry seeks for the most impressive 
 mode of enforcing the law of justice, and the most effectual means 
 of preventing wrong and injustice. 
 
 To this end it teaches this great and momentous truth : that 
 wrong and injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal 
 in their consequences ; once committed, are numbered with the 
 irrevocable Past ; that the wrong that is done contains its own 
 retributive penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn con- 
 tains the oak. Its consequences are its punishment ; it needs no 
 other, and can have no heavier ; they are involved in its commis- 
 sion, and cannot be separated from it. A wrong done to another 
 is an injury done to our own Nature, an offence against our own 
 souls, a disfiguring of the image of the Beautiful and Good. Pun- 
 ishment is not the execution of a sentence, but the occurrence of 
 an effect. It is ordained to follow guilt, not by the decree of God 
 as a judge, but by a law enacted by H*im as the Creator and Legis- 
 lator of the Universe. It is not an arbitrary and artificial annex- 
 ation, but an ordinary and logical consequence ; and therefore 
 must be borne by the wrong-doer, and through him may flow on 
 to others. It is the decision of the infinite justice of God, in the 
 form of law. 
 
 There can be no interference with, or remittance of, or protec- 
 tion from, the natural effects of our wrongful acts. God will not in- 
 terpose between the cause and its consequence ; and in that sense 
 there can be no forgiveness of sins. The act which has debased 
 our soul may be repented of, may be turned from ; but the injury 
 is done. The debasement may be redeemed by after-efforts, the 
 stain obliterated by bitterer struggles and severer sufferings : but 
 the efforts and the endurance which might have raised the soul to 
 the loftiest heights are now exhausted in merely regaining what
 
 128 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 it has lost. There must always be a wide difference between 
 him who only ceases to do evil, and him who has always done 
 well. 
 
 He will certainly be a far more scrupulous watcher over his con- 
 duct, and far more careful of his deeds, who believes that those 
 deeds will inevitably bear their natural consequences, exempt from 
 after intervention, than he who believes that penitence and par- 
 don will at any time unlink the chain of sequences. Surely we 
 shall do less wrong and injustice, if the conviction is fixed and 
 embedded in our souls that everything done is done irrevocably, 
 that even the Omnipotence of God cannot uncommit a deed, can- 
 not make that undone which has been done; that every act of 
 ours must bear its allotted fruit, according to the everlasting la\vs > 
 must remain forever ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets of 
 Universal Nature. 
 
 If you have wronged another, you may grieve, repent, and reso- 
 lutely determine against any such weakness in future. You may, 
 so far as it is possible, make reparation. It is well. The injured 
 party may forgive you, according to the meaning of human lan- 
 guage; but the deed is done; and all the powers of Nature, were 
 they to conspire in your behalf, could not make it undone; the 
 consequences to the body, the consequences to the soul, though no 
 man may perceive them, are there, are written in the annals of the 
 Past, and must reverberate throughout all time. 
 
 Repentance for a wrong done, bears, like every other act, its own 
 fruit, the fruit of purifying the heart and amending the Future. 
 but not of effacing the Past. The commission of the wrong is an 
 irrevocable act; but it does not incapacitate the soul to do right 
 for the future. Its consequences cannot be expunged ; but its 
 course need not be pursued. Wrong and evil perpetrated, though 
 ineffaceable, call for no despair, but for efforts more energetic than 
 before. Repentance is still as valid as ever ; but it is valid to se- 
 cure the Future, not to obliterate the Past. 
 
 Even the pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human 
 voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. 
 Their quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human 
 ears. But the waves of air thus raised perambulate the surface of 
 earth and ocean, and in less than twenty hours, every atom of the 
 atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitesi- 
 mal portion of primitive motion which has been conveyed to it
 
 PROVOST AND JUDGE. I2Q 
 
 through countless channels, and which must continue to influence 
 its path throughout its future existence. The air is one vast 
 library, on whose pages is forever written all that man has ever 
 said or even whispered. There, in their mutable, but unerring 
 characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest signs of 
 mortality, stand forever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises un- 
 fulfilled ; perpetuating, in the movements of each particle, all in 
 unison, the testimony of man's changeful will. God reads that 
 book, though we cannot. 
 
 So earth, air, and ocean are the eternal witnesses of the acts 
 that we have done. No motion impressed by natural causes or by 
 human agency is ever obliterated. The track of every keel which 
 has ever disturbed the surface of the ocean remains forever regis- 
 tered in the future movements of all succeeding particles which 
 may occupy its place. Every criminal is by the laws of the Al- 
 mighty irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime ; for 
 every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes it's 
 particles may migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through 
 every combination, some movement derived from that very mus- 
 cular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated. 
 
 What if our faculties should be so enhanced in a future life as 
 to enable us to perceive and trace the ineffaceable consequences of 
 our idle words and evil deeds, and render our remorse and grief 
 as eternal as those consequences themselves? No more fearful 
 punishment to a superior intelligence can be conceived, than to 
 see still in action, with the consciousness that it must continue 
 in action forever, a cause of wrong put in motion by itself ages 
 before. 
 
 Masonry, by its teachings, endeavors to restrain men from the 
 commission of injustice a-nd acts of wrong and outrage. Though 
 it does not endeavor to usurp the place of religion, still its code 
 of morals proceeds upon other principles than the municipal law ; 
 and it condemns and punishes offences which neither that law 
 punishes nor public opinion condemns. In the Masonic law, to 
 cheat and overreach in trade, at the bar, in politics, are deemed no 
 more venial than theft; nor a deliberate lie than perjury; nor 
 slander than robbery ; nor seduction than murder. 
 
 Especially it condemns those wrongs of which the doer induces 
 another to partake. He may repent ; he may, after agonizing 
 struggles, regain the path of virtue : his spirit may reachieve its
 
 130 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 purity through much anguish, after many strifes ; but the weaker 
 fellow-creature whom he led astray, whom he made a sharer in his 
 guilt, but whom he cannot make a sharer in his repentance and 
 amendment, whose downward course (the first step of which he 
 taught) he cannot check, but is compelled to witness, what for- 
 giveness of sins can avail him there? There is his perpetual, his 
 inevitable punishment, which no repentance can alleviate, and no 
 mercy can remit. 
 
 Let us be just, also, in judging of other men's motives. We 
 know but little of the real merits or demerits of any fellow-crea- 
 ture. We can rarely say with certainty that this man is more 
 guilty than that, or even that this man is very good or very 
 wicked. Often the basest men leave behind them excellent repu- 
 tations. There is scarcely one of us who has not, at some time in 
 his life, been on the edge of the commission of a crime. Every 
 "one of us can look back, and shuddering see the time when our 
 feet stood upon the slippery crags that overhung the abyss of 
 guilt; and when, if temptation had been a little more urgent, or 
 a little longer continued, if penury had pressed us a little harder, 
 or a little more wine had further disturbed our intellect, dethroned 
 our judgment, and aroused our passions, our feet would have slip- 
 ped, and we should have fallen, never to rise again. 
 
 We may be able to say "This man has lied, has pilfered, has 
 forged, has embezzled moneys intrusted to him ; and that man has 
 gone through life with clean hands." But we cannot say that the 
 former has not struggled long, though unsuccessfully, against 
 temptations under which the second would have succumbed with- 
 out an effort. We can say which has the cleanest hands before 
 man; but not which has the cleanest soul before God. We may 
 be able to say, this man has committed adultery, and that man 
 has been ever chaste ; but we cannot tell but that the innocence 
 of one may have been due to the coldness of his heart, to the ab- 
 sence of a motive, to the presence of a fear, to the slight degree 
 of the temptation : nor but that the fall of the other may have 
 been preceded by the most vehement self-contest, caused by the 
 most over-mastering frenzy, and atoned for by the most hallowing 
 repentance. Generosity as well as niggardliness may be a mere 
 yielding to native temperament ; and in the eye of Heaven, a long 
 life of beneficence in one man may have cost less effort, and may 
 indicate less virtue and less sacrifice of interest, than a few rare
 
 PROVOST AND JUDGE. 13! 
 
 hidden acts of kindness wrung by duty out of the reluctant and 
 unsympathizing nature of the other. There may be more real 
 merit, more self-sacrificing effort, more of the noblest elements 
 of moral grandeur, in a life of failure, sin, and shame, than in a 
 career, to our eyes, of stainless integrity. 
 
 When we condemn or pity the fallen, how do we know that, 
 tempted like him, we should not have fallen like him, as soon, and 
 perhaps with less resistance? How can we know what zvc should 
 do if we were out of employment, famine crouching, gaunt, and 
 hungry, on our fireless hearth, and our children wailing for bread? 
 We fall not because we are not enough tempted! He that hath 
 fallen may be at heart as honest as we. How do we know that our 
 daughter, sister, wife, could resist the abandonment, the desola- 
 tion, the distress, the temptation, that sacrificed the virtue of their 
 poor abandoned sister of shame? Perhaps they also have not 
 fallen, because they have not been sorely tempted ! Wisely are 
 we directed to pray that we may not be exposed to temptation. 
 
 Human justice must be ever uncertain. How many judicial 
 murders have been committed through ignorance of the phenom- 
 ena of insanity ! How many men hung for murder who were no 
 more murderers at heart than the jury that tried and the judge 
 that sentenced them ! It may well be doubted whether the ad- 
 ministration of human laws, in every country, is not one gigantic 
 mass of injustice and wrong. God seeth not as man seeth ; and 
 the most abandoned criminal, black as he is before the world, may 
 yet have continued to keep some little light burning in a corner 
 of his soul, which would long since have gone out in that of those 
 who walk proudly in the sunshine of immaculate fame, if they had 
 been tried and tempted like the poor outcast. 
 
 We do not know even the outside life of men. We are not com- 
 petent to pronounce even on their deeds. We do not know half 
 the acts of wickedness or virtue, even of our most immediate fel- 
 lows. We cannot say, with certainty, even of our nearest friend, 
 that he has not committed a particular sin, and broken a particu- 
 lar commandment. Let each man ask his own heart ! Of how 
 many of our best and of our worst acts and qualities are our most 
 intimate associates utterly unconscious ! How many virtues does 
 not the world give us credit for, that we do not possess ; or vices 
 condemn us for, of which we nre not the slaves ! It is but a small 
 portion of our evil deeds and thoughts that ever comes to light;
 
 132 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and of our few redeeming goodnesses, the largest portion is known 
 to God alone. 
 
 We shall, therefore, be just in judging of other men, only when 
 we are charitable; and we should assume the prerogative of judg- 
 ing others only when the duty is forced upon us ; since we are so 
 almost certain to err, and the consequences of error are so serious 
 No man need covet the office of judge ; for in assuming it he as- 
 sumes the gravest and most oppressive responsibility. Yet you 
 have assumed it ; we all assume it ; for man is ever ready to judge, 
 and ever ready to condemn his neighbor, while upon the same state 
 of case he acquits himself. See, therefore, that you exercise your 
 office cautiously and charitably, lest, in passing judgment upon 
 the criminal, you commit a greater wrong than that for which you 
 condemn him, and the consequences of which must be eternal. 
 
 The faults and crimes and follies of other men are not unim- 
 portant to us ; but form a part of our moral discipline. War and 
 bloodshed at a distance, and frauds which do not affect our pecu- 
 niary interest, yet touch us in our feelings, and concern our moral 
 welfare. They have much to do with all thoughtful hearts. The 
 public eye may look unconcernedly on the miserable victim of vice, 
 and that shattered wreck of a man may move the multitude to 
 laughter or to scorn. But to the Mason, it is the form of sacred 
 humanity that is before him ; it is an erring fellow-being ; a deso- 
 late, forlorn, forsaken soul ; and his thoughts, enfolding the poor 
 wretch, will be far deeper than those of indifference, ridicule, or 
 contempt. All human offences, the whole system of dishonesty, 
 evasion, circumventing, forbidden indulgence, and intriguing am- 
 bition, in which men are struggling with each other, will be looked 
 upon by a thoughtful Mason, not merely as a scene of mean toils 
 and strifes, but as the solemn conflicts of immortal minds, for ends 
 vast and momentous as their own being. It is a sad and unworthy 
 strife, and may well be viewed with indignation ; but that indig- 
 nation must melt into pity. For the stakes for which these game- 
 sters play are not those which they imagine, not those which are 
 in sight. For example, this man plays for a petty office, and gains 
 it ; but the real stake he gains is sycophancy, uncharitableness, 
 slander, and deceit. 
 
 Good men are too proud of their goodness. They are respecta- 
 ble ; dishonor comes not near them ; their countenance has weight 
 and influence ; their robes are unstained ; the poisonous breath of
 
 PROVOST AND JUDGE. 133 
 
 calumny has never been breathed upon their fair name. How easy 
 it is for them to look down with scorn upon the poor degraded 
 offender ; to pass him by with a lofty step ; to draw up the folds 
 of their garment around them, that they may not be soiled by his 
 touch ! Yet the Great Master of Virtue did not so ; but descended 
 to familiar intercourse with publicans and sinners, with the Samar- 
 itan woman, with the outcasts and the Pariahs of the Hebrew 
 world. 
 
 Many men think themselves better, in proportion as they can 
 detect sins in others ! When they go over the catalogue of their 
 neighbor's unhappy derelictions of temper or conduct, they often, 
 amidst much apparent concern, feel a secret exultation, that 
 destroys all their own pretensions to wisdom and moderation, and 
 even to virtue. Many even take actual pleasure in the sins of 
 others ; and this is the case with every one whose thoughts are 
 often employed in agreeable comparisons of his own virtues with 
 his neighbors' faults. 
 
 The power of gentleness is too little seen in the world ; the sub- 
 duing influences of pity, the might of love, the control of mildness 
 over passion, the commanding majesty of that perfect character 
 which mingles grave displeasure with grief and pity for the offend- 
 er. So it is that a Mason should treat his brethren who go astray. 
 Not with bitterness ; nor yet with good-natured easiness, nor with 
 worldly indifference, nor with the philosophic coldness, nor with a 
 laxity of conscience, that accounts everything well, that passes 
 under the seal of public opinion ; but with charity, with pitying 
 loving-kindness. 
 
 The human heart will not bow willingly to what is infirm and 
 wrong in human nature. If it yields to us, it must yield to what 
 is divine in us. The wickedness of my neighbor cannot submit to 
 my wickedness ; his sensuality, for instance, to my anger against 
 his vices. My faults are not the instruments that are to arrest 
 his faults. And therefore impatient reformers, and denouncing 
 preachers, and hasty reprovers, and angry parents, and irritable 
 relatives generally fail, in their several departments, to reclaim the 
 erring. 
 
 A moral offence is sickness, pain, loss, dishonor, in the immor- 
 tal part of man. It is guilt, and misery added to guilt. It is itself 
 calamity ; and brings upon itself, in addition, the calamity of God's 
 disapproval, the abhorrence of all virtuous men, and the soul's own
 
 134 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 abhorrence. Deal faithfully, but patiently and tenderly, with this 
 evil ! It is no matter for petty provocation, nor for personal strife, 
 nor for selfish irritation. 
 
 Speak kindly to your erring brother ! God pities him : Christ 
 has died for him: Providence waits for him: Heaven's mercy 
 yearns toward him ; and Heaven's spirits are ready to welcome him 
 back with joy. Let your voice be in unison with all those powers 
 that God is using for his recovery ! 
 
 If one defrauds you, and exults at it, he is the most to be pitied 
 of human beings. He has done himself a far deeper injury than he 
 has done you. It is him, and not you, whom God regards with 
 mingled displeasure and compassion ; and His judgment should 
 be your law. Among all the benedictions of the Holy Mount 
 there is not one for this man ; but for the merciful, the peace- 
 makers, and the persecuted they are poured out freely. 
 
 We are all men of like passions, propensities, and exposures. 
 There are elements in us all, which might have been perverted, 
 through the successive processes of moral deterioration, to the 
 worst of crimes. The wretch whom the execration of the throng- 
 ing crowd pursues to the scaffold, is not worse than any one of that 
 multitude might have become under similar circumstances. He 
 is to be condemned indeed, but also deeply to be pitied. 
 
 It does not become the frail and sinful to be vindictive toward 
 even the worst criminals. We owe much to the good Providence 
 of God, ordaining for us a lot more favorable to virtue. We all had 
 that within us, that might have been pushed to the same excess. 
 Perhaps we should have fallen as he did, with less temptation. Per- 
 haps we have done acts, that, in proportion to the temptation or 
 provocation, were less excusable than his great crime. Silent pity 
 and sorrow for the victim should mingle with our detestation of 
 the guilt. Even the pirate who murders in cold blood on the high 
 seas, is such a man as you or I might have been. Orphanage in 
 childhood, or base and dissolute and abandoned parents ; an un- 
 friended youth ; evil companions ; ignorance and want of moral 
 cultivation; the temptations, of sinful pleasure or grinding pov- 
 erty ; familiarity with vice ; a scorned and blighted name ; seared 
 and crushed affections ; desperate fortunes ; these are steps that 
 might have led any one among us to unfurl upon the high seas the 
 bloody flag of universal defiance ; to wage war with our kind ; to 
 live the life and die the death of the reckless and remorseless free-
 
 1'ROVOST AND JUDGE. 135 
 
 hooter. Many affecting relationships of humanity plead with us 
 to pity him. His head once rested on a mother's bosom. He was 
 o"oe the object of sisterly love and domestic endearment. Perhaps 
 his hand, since often red with blood, once clasped another little 
 loving hand at the altar. Pity him then ; his blighted hopes and 
 his crushed heart ! It is proper that frail and erring creatures 
 like us should do so; should feel the crime, but feel it as weak, 
 tempted, and rescued creatures should. It may be that when God 
 weighs men's crimes, He will take into consideration the tempta- 
 tions and the adverse circumstances that led to them, and the op- 
 portunities for moral culture of the offender ; and it may be that our 
 own offences will weigh heavier than we think, and the murderer's 
 lighter than according to man's judgment. 
 
 On all accounts, therefore, let the true Mason never forget the 
 solemn injunction, necessary to be observed at almost every mo- 
 ment of a busy life: "J UDGE NOT > LEST YE YOURSELVES BE JUDGED: 
 
 FOR WHATSOEVER JUDGMENT YE MEASURE UNTO OTHERS, THE 
 SAME SHALL IN TURN BE MEASURED UNTO YOU." Such is the 
 
 lesson taught the Provost and Judge.
 
 ~ 4 
 
 VIII. 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 
 
 IN this Degree you have been taught the important lesson, that 
 none are entitled to advance in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish 
 Rite, who have not by study and application made themselves 
 familiar with Masonic learning and jurisprudence. The Degrees 
 of this Rite are not for those who are content with the mere work 
 and ceremonies, and do not seek to explore the mines of wisdom 
 that lie buried beneath the surface. You still advance toward the 
 Light, toward that star, blazing in the distance, which is an em- 
 blem of the Divine Truth, given by God to the first men, and 
 preserved amid all the vicissitudes of ages in the traditions and 
 teachings of Masonry. How far you will advance, depends upon 
 yourseJf alone. Here, as everywhere in the world, Darkness 
 struggles with Light, and clouds and shadows intervene between 
 you and the Truth. 
 
 When you shall have become imbued with the morality of Ma- 
 sonry, with which you yet are. and for some time will be exclu- 
 sively occupied, when you shall have learned to practise all the 
 virtues which it inculcates ; when they become familiar to you as 
 your Household Gods: then will you be prepared to receive its 
 lofty philosophical instruction, and to scale the heights upon 
 whose summit Light and Truth sit enthroned. Step by step men 
 must advance toward Perfection : and each Masonic Degree is 
 meant to be one of those steps. Each is a development of a par- 
 ticular duty; and in the present you are taught charity and be- 
 136
 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 137 
 
 nevolence ; to be to your brethren an example of virtue ; to correct 
 yourown faults ; and to endeavor to correct those of your brethren. 
 
 Here, as in all the Degrees, you meet with the emblems and the 
 names of Deity, the true knowledge of whose character and attri- 
 butes it has ever been a chief object of Masonry to perpetuate. To 
 appreciate His infinite greatness and goodness, to rely implicitly 
 upon His Providence, to revere and venerate Him as the Supreme 
 Architect, Creator, and Legislator of the universe, is the first of 
 Masonic duties. 
 
 The Battery of this Degree, and the five circuits which you 
 made around the Lodge, allude to the five points of fellowship, 
 and are intended to recall them vividly to your mind. To go upon 
 a brother's errand or to his relief, even barefoot and upon flinty 
 ground ; to remember him in your supplications to the Deity ; to 
 clasp him to your heart, and protect him against malice and evil- 
 speaking ; to uphold him when about to stumble and fall ; and to 
 give him prudent, honest, and friendly counsel, are duties plainly 
 written upon the pages of God's great code of law, and first among 
 the ordinances of Masonry. 
 
 The first sign of the Degree is expressive of the diffidence and 
 humility with which we inquire into the nature and attributes of 
 the Deity; the second, of the profound awe and reverence with 
 which we contemplate His glories ; and the third, of the sorrow 
 with which we reflect upon our insufficient observance of our du- 
 ties, and our imperfect compliance with His statutes. 
 
 The distinguishing property of man is to search for and follow 
 after truth. Therefore, when relaxed from our necessary cares 
 and concerns, we then covet to see, to hear, and to learn some- 
 what ; and we esteem knowledge of things, either obscure or won- 
 derful, to be the indispensable means of l-iving happily. Truth, 
 Simplicity, and Candor are most agreeable to the nature of man- 
 kind. Whatever is virtuous consists either in Sagacity, an.d the 
 perception of Truth ; or in the preservation of Human Society, 
 by giving to every man his due, and observing the faith of con- 
 tracts ; or in the greatness and firmness of an elevated and unsub- 
 dued mind ; or in observing order and regularity in all our words 
 and in all our actions ; in which consist Moderation and Temperance. 
 
 Masonry has in all times religiously preserved that enlightened 
 faith from which flow sublime Devotedness, the sentiment of Fra- 
 ternity fruitful of good works, the spirit of indulgence and peace, 
 10
 
 138 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of sweet hopes and effectual consolations ; and inflexibility in the 
 accomplishment of the most painful and arduous duties. It has 
 always propagated it with ardor and perseverance ; and therefore 
 it labors at the present day more zealously than ever. Scarcely a 
 Masonic discourse is pronounced, that does not demonstrate the 
 necessity and advantages of this faith, and especially recall the two 
 constitutive principles of religion, that make all religion, love of 
 God, and love of our neighbor. Masons carry these principles into 
 the bosoms of their families and of society. While the Sectarians 
 of former times enfeebled the religious spirit, Masonry, forming 
 one great People over the whole globe, and marching under the 
 great banner of Charity and Benevolence, preserves that religious 
 feeling, strengthens it, extends it in its purity and simplicity, as it 
 has always existed in the depths of the human heart, as it existed 
 even under the dominion of the most ancient forms of worship, 
 but where gross and debasing superstitions forbade its recognition. 
 
 A Masonic Lodge should resemble a bee-hive, in which all the 
 members work together with ardor for the common good. Ma- 
 sonry is not made for cold souls and narrow minds, that do not 
 comprehend its lofty mission and sublime apostolate. Here the 
 anathema against lukewarm souls applies. To comfort misfortune, 
 to popularize knowledge, to teach whatever is true and pure in re- 
 ligion and philosophy, to accustom men to respect order and the 
 proprieties of life, to point out the way to genuine happiness, to 
 prepare for that fortunate period, when all the fractions of the 
 Human Family, united by the bonds of Toleration and Frater- 
 nity, shall be but one household, these are labors that may well 
 excite zeal and even enthusiasm. 
 
 We do not now enlarge upon or elaborate these ideas. We but 
 utter them to you briefly, as hints, upon which you may at your 
 leisure reflect. Hereafter, if you continue to advance, they will be 
 unfolded, explained, and developed. 
 
 Masonry utters no impracticable and extravagant precepts, cer- 
 tain, because they are so, to be disregarded. It asks of its initiates 
 nothing that it is not possible and even easy for them to perform. 
 Its teachings are eminently practical ; and its statutes can be 
 obeyed by every just, upright, and honest man, no matter what his 
 faith or creed. Its object is to attain the greatest practical good, 
 without seeking to make men perfect. It does not meddle with 
 the domain of religion, nor inquire into the mysteries of regen-
 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 139 
 
 eration. It teaches those truths that are written by the finger of 
 God upon the heart of man, those views of duty which have been 
 wrought out by the meditations of the studious, confirmed by the 
 allegiance of the good c.nd wise, and stamped as sterling by the 
 response they find in every uncorrupted mind. It does not dog- 
 matize, nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to be attainable. 
 
 Masonry does not occupy itself with crying down this world, 
 with its splendid beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works, 
 its noble and holy affections ; nor exhort us to detach our hearts 
 from this earthly life, as empty, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix 
 them upon Heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the 
 loving or the meditation of the wise. It teaches that man has 
 high duties to perform, and a high destiny to fulfill, on this earth ; 
 th?.t this world is not merely the portal to another ; and that this 
 life, though not our only one, is an integral one, and the particular 
 one with which we are here meant to be concerned ; that the Pres- 
 ent is our scene of action, and the Future for speculation and 
 for trust; that man was sent upon the earth to live in it, to enjoy 
 it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, to make the most of it. 
 It is his country, on which he should lavish his affections and his 
 efforts. It is here his influences are to operate. It is his house, 
 and not a tent; his home, and not merely a school. He is sent 
 into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, dreaming of, 
 preparing for another ; but to do his duty and fulfill his destiny 
 on this earth ; to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to 
 render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around 
 him, to those who are to come after him. His life here is part of 
 his immortality ; and this world, also, is among the stars. 
 
 And thus, Masonry teaches us, will man best prepare for that 
 Future which he hopes for. The Unseen cannot hold a higher 
 place in our affections than the Seen and the Familiar. The law 
 of our being is Love of Life, and its interests and adornments ; 
 love of the world in which our lot is cast, engrossment with the 
 interests and affections of earth. Not a low or sensual love ; not 
 love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of power, of splendor. Not low 
 worldliness ; but the love of Earth as the garden on which the 
 Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty ; as the habitation 
 of humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its illimitable 
 progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the active, the 
 loving, and the dear ; the place of opportunity for the development
 
 140 . MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest passions, 
 the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies. 
 
 They take very unprofitable pains, who endeavor to persuade 
 men that they are obliged wholly to despise this world, and all that 
 is in it, even whilst they themselves live here. God hath not taken 
 all that pains in forming and framing and furnishing and adorn- 
 ing the world, that they who were made by Him to live in it 
 should despise it. It will be enough, if they do not love it too im- 
 moderately. It is useless to attempt to extinguish all those affec- 
 tions and passions which are and always will be inseparable from 
 human nature. As long as the world lasts, and honor and virtue 
 and industry have reputation in the world, there will be ambition 
 and emulation and appetite in the best and most accomplished men 
 in it ; and if there were not, more barbarity and vice and wicked- 
 ness would cover every nation of the world, than it now suffers 
 under. 
 
 Those only who feel a deep interest in, and affection for, this 
 world, will work resolutely for its amelioration. Those who under- 
 value this life, naturally become querulous and discontented, and 
 lose their interest in the welfare of their fellows. To serve them, 
 and so to do our duty as Masons, we must feel that the object is 
 worth the exertion ; and be content with this world in which God 
 has placed us, until He permits us to remove to a better one. He 
 is here with us, and does not deem this an unworthy world. 
 
 It is a serious thing to defame and belie a whole world ; to speak 
 of it as the abode of a poor, toiling, drudging, ignorant, contempt- 
 ible race. You would not so discredit your family, your friendly 
 circle, your village, your city, your country. The world is not a 
 wretched and a worthless one ; nor is it a misfortune, but a thing 
 to be thankful for, to be a man. If life is worthless, so also is im- 
 mortality. 
 
 In society itself, in that living mechanism of human relation- 
 ships that spreads itself over the world, there is a finer essence 
 within, that as truly moves it, as any power, heavy or expansive, 
 moves the sounding manufactory or the swift-flying car. The 
 man-machine hurries to and fro upon the earth, stretches out its 
 hands on every side, to toil, to barter, to unnumbered labors and 
 enterprises ; and almost always the motive, that which moves it, 
 ;s something that takes hold of the comforts, affections, and hopes 
 of social existence. True, the mechanism often works with diffi-
 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 14! 
 
 culty, drags heavily, grates and screams with harsh collision. True, 
 the essence of finer motive, becoming intermixed with baser and 
 coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars, and deranges the 
 free and noble action of social life. But he is neither grateful nor 
 wise, who looks cynically on all this, and loses the tine sense of 
 social good in its perversions. That I can be a friend, that I can 
 have a friend, though it were but one in the world ; that fact, that 
 wondrous good fortune, we may set against all the sufferings of 
 our social nature. That there is such a place on earth as a home, 
 that resort and sanctuary of in-walled and shielded joy, we may 
 set against all the surrounding desolations of life. That one can 
 be a true, social man, can speak his true thoughts, amidst all the 
 j anglings of controversy and the warring of opinions ; that fact 
 from within, outweighs all facts from without. 
 
 In the visible aspect and action of society, often repulsive and 
 annoying, we are apt to lose the due sense of its invisible bless- 
 ings. As in Nature it is not the coarse and palpable, not soils and 
 rains, nor even fields and flowers, that are so beautiful, as the in- 
 visible spirit of wisdom and beauty that pervades it ; so in society, 
 it is the invisible, and therefore unobserved, that is most beautiful. 
 
 What nerves the arm of toil ? If man minded himself alone, 
 he would fling down the spade and axe, and rush to the desert ; or 
 roam through the world as a wilderness, and make that world a 
 desert. His home, which he sees not, perhaps, but once or twice 
 in a day, is the invisible bond of the world. It is the good, strong, 
 and noble faith that men have in each other, which gives the lof- 
 tiest character to business, trade, and commerce. Fraud occurs in 
 the rush of business; but it is the exception. Honesty is the 
 rule ; and all the frauds in the world cannot tear the great bond of 
 human confidence. If they could, commerce would furl its sails 
 on every sea, and all the cities of the world would crumble into 
 ruins. The bare character of a man on the other side, of the 
 world, whom you never saw, whom you never will see, you hold 
 good for a bond of thousands. The most striking feature of the 
 political state is not governments, nor constitutions, nor laws, nor 
 enactments, nor the judicial power, nor the police ; but the univer- 
 sal will of the people to be governed by the common weal. Take 
 off that restraint, and no government on earth could stand for an 
 hour. 
 
 Of the many teachings of Masonry, one of the most valuable is,
 
 142 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 that we should not depreciate this life. It does not hold, that 
 when we reflect on the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought 
 to bedew his cradle with our tears ; but, like the Hebrews, it hails 
 the birth of a child with joy, and holds that his birthday should 
 be a festival. 
 
 It has no sympathy with those who profess to have proved this 
 life, and found it little worth; who have deliberately made up 
 their minds that it is far more miserable than happy; because its 
 employments are tedious, and their schemes often baffled, their 
 friendships broken, or their friends dead, its pleasures palled, and 
 its honors faded, and its paths beaten, familiar, and dull. 
 
 Masonry deems it no mark of great piety toward God to dis- 
 parage, if not despise, the state that He has ordained for us. It 
 does not absurdly set up the claims of another world, not in com- 
 parison merely, but in competition, with the claims of this. It 
 looks upon both as parts of one system. It holds that a man may 
 make the best of this world and of another at the same time. It 
 does not teach its initiates to think better of other works and dis- 
 pensations of God, by thinking meanly of these. It does not look 
 upon life as so much time lost; nor regard its employments as 
 trifles unworthy of immortal beings ; nor tell its followers to fold 
 their arms, as if in disdain of their state and species ; but it looks 
 soberly and cheerfully upon the world, as a theatre of worthy 
 action, of exalted usefulness, and of rational and innocent enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 It holds that, with all its evils, life is a blessing. To deny that 
 is to destroy the basis of all religion, natural and revealed. The 
 very foundation of all religion is laid on the firm belief that God 
 is good ; and if this life is an evil and a curse, no such belief can 
 be rationally entertained. To level our satire at humanity and 
 human existence, as mean and contemptible ; to look on this world 
 as the habitation of a miserable race, fit only for mockery and 
 scorn ; to consider this earth as a dungeon or a prison, which has 
 no blessing to offer but escape from it, is to extinguish the primal 
 light of faith and hope and happiness, to destroy the basis of reli- 
 gion, and Truth's foundation in the goodness of God. If it in- 
 deed be so, then it matters not what, else is true or not true ; spec- 
 ulation is vain and faith is vain ; and all that belongs to man's 
 highest being is buried in the ruins of misanthropy, melancholy, 
 and des air.
 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 143 
 
 Our love of life ; the tenacity with which, in sorrow and suffer- 
 ing, we cling to it ; our attachment to our home, to the spot that 
 gave us birth, to any place, however rude, unsightly, or barren, on 
 which the history of our years has been written, all show how dear 
 are the ties of kindred and society. Misery makes a greater im- 
 pression upon us than happiness; because the former is not the 
 habit of our minds. It is a strange, unusual guest, and we are 
 more conscious of its presence. Happiness lives with us, and we 
 forget it. It does not excite us, nor disturb the order and course 
 of our thoughts. A great agony is an epoch in our life. We re- 
 member our afflictions, as we do the storm and earthquake, 
 because they are out of the common course of things. They are 
 like disastrous events, recorded because extraordinary ; and with 
 whole and unnoticed periods of prosperity between. We mark 
 and signalize the times of calamity; but many happy days and 
 unnoted periods of enjoyment pass, that are unrecorded either in 
 the book of memory, or in the scanty annals of our thanksgiving. 
 We are little disposed and less able to call up from the dim remem- 
 brances of our past years, the peaceful moments, the easy sensa- 
 tions, the bright thoughts, the quiet reveries, the throngs of kind 
 affections in which life flowed on, bearing us almost unconsciously 
 upon its bosom, because it bore us calmly and gently. 
 
 Life is not only good ; but it has been glorious in the experience 
 of millions. The glory of all human virtue clothes it. The splen- 
 dors of devotedness, beneficence, and heroism are upon it ; the 
 crown of a thousand martyrdoms is upon its brow. The bright- 
 ness of the soul shines through this visible and sometimes dark- 
 ened life ; through all its surrounding cares and labors. The 
 humblest life may feel its connection with its Infinite Source. 
 There is something mighty in the frail inner man ; something of 
 immortality in this momentary and transient being. The mind 
 stretches away, on every side, into infinity. Its thoughts flash 
 abroad, far into the boundless, the immeasurable, the infinite ; far 
 into the great, dark, teeming future ; and become powers and in- 
 fluences in other ages. To know its wonderful Author, to bring 
 down wisdom from the Eternal Stars, to bear upward its homage, 
 gratitude, and love, to the Ruler of all worlds, to be immortal in 
 our influences projected far into the slow-approaching Future, 
 makes life most worthy and most glorious. 
 
 Life is the wonderful creation of God. It is light, sprung from
 
 144 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 void darkness ; power, waked from inertness and impotence ; be- 
 ing created from nothing; and the contrast may well enkindle 
 wonder and delight. It is a rill from the infinite, overflowing 
 goodness ; and from the moment when it first gushes up into the 
 light, to that when it mingles with the ocean of Eternity, that 
 Goodness attends it and ministers to it. It is a great and glorious 
 gift. There is gladness in its infant voices ; joy in the buoyant 
 step of its youth ; deep satisfaction in its strong maturity ; and 
 peace in its quiet age. There is good for the good ; virtue for the 
 faithful ; and victory for the valiant. There is, even in this hum- 
 ble life, an infinity for those whose desires are boundless. There 
 are blessings upon its birth ; there is hope in its death ; and eter- 
 nity in its prospect. Thus earth, which binds many in chains, is 
 to the Mason both the starting-place and goal of immortality. 
 Many it buries in the rubbish of dull cares and wearying vanities ; 
 but to the Mason it is the lofty mount of meditation, where 
 Heaven, and Infinity and Eternity are spread before him and 
 around him. To the lofty-minded, the pure, and the virtuous, this 
 life is the beginning of Heaven, and a part of immortality. 
 
 God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world ; 
 and that is a contented spirit. We may be reconciled to poverty 
 and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and equanimity to 
 make the proportions. No man is poor who doth not think him- 
 self so ; but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more, 
 he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. This virtue 
 of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and 
 is of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the 
 only instrument t ease the burdens of the world and the enmities 
 of sad chances. It is the great reasonableness of complying with 
 the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so 
 ordered us in the administration of His great family. It is fit that 
 God should dispense His gifts as He pleases ; and if we m-urmur 
 here, we may, at the next melancholy, be troubled that He did not 
 make us to be angels or stars. 
 
 We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad ; and when God 
 lets loose a Tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened 
 f 01 tune, if \ve fear to die, or know not how to be patient, or are 
 proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we 
 know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much 
 as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a
 
 INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 145 
 
 fever, and pride to be the greatest disgrace as well as the greatest 
 folly, and poverty far preferable to the torments of avarice, \ve may 
 still bear an even mind and smile at the reverses of fortune and 
 the ill-nature of Fate. 
 
 If thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy : and 
 if thou must die sooner than others, or than thou didst expect, yet 
 do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him who is con- 
 tent, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable. 
 No man can make another man to be his slave, unless that other 
 hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, 
 to hope or fear ; command these passions, and you are freer than 
 the Parthian Kings. 
 
 When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impar- 
 tial relator of our faults ; for he will tell us truer than our fondest 
 friend will, and we may forgive his anger, while we make use of 
 the plainness of his declamation. The ox, when he is weary, 
 treads truest ; and if there be nothing else in abuse, but that it 
 makes us to walk warily, and tread sure for fear of our enemies, 
 that is better than to be flattered into pride and carelessness. 
 
 If thou fallest from thy employment in public, take sanctuary 
 in an honest retirement, being indifferent to thy gain abroad, or 
 thy safety at home. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains 
 sadly, we do not sit down in it and cry ; but defend ourselves 
 against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. So 
 when the storm of a sad mischance beats upon our spirits, we may 
 turn it into something that is good, if we resolve to make it so ; 
 and with equanimity and patience may shelter ourselves from its 
 inclement pitiless pelting. If it develop our patience, and give 
 occasion for heroic endurance, it hath done us good enough to re- 
 compense us sufficiently for all the temporal affliction ; for so a 
 wise man shall overrule his stars ; and have a greater influence 
 upon his own content, than all the constellations and planets of 
 the firmament. 
 
 Compare not thy condition with the few above thee, but to se- 
 cure thy content, look upon those thousands with whom thou 
 wouldst not, for any interest, change thy fortune and condition. 
 A soldier must not think himself unprosperous. if he be not suc- 
 cessful as Alexander or Wellington; nor any man deem himself 
 unfortunate that he hath not the wealth of Rothschild : but rather 
 let the former rejoice that he is not lessened like the many generals
 
 146 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 who went down horse and man before Napoleon, and the latter 
 that he is not the beggar who, bareheaded in the bleak winter 
 wind holds out his tattered hat for charity. There may be many 
 who are richer and more fortunate ; but many thousands who are 
 very miserable, compared to thee. 
 
 After the worst assaults of Fortune, there will be something 
 left to us, a merry countenance, a cheerful spirit, and a good con- 
 science, the Providence of God, our hopes of Heaven, our charity 
 for those who have injured us; perhaps a loving wife, and many 
 friends to pity, and some to relieve us ; and light and air, and all 
 the beauties of Nature ; we can read, discourse, and meditate ; and 
 having still these blessings, we should be much in love with sor- 
 row and peevishness to lose them all, and prefer to sit down on 
 our little handful of thorns. 
 
 Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the evils 
 of it bear patiently and calmly ; for this day only is ours : we are 
 dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. When 
 our fortunes are violently changed, our spirits are unchanged, if 
 they always stood in the suburbs and expectation of sorrows and 
 reverses. The blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and in- 
 tegrity deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. We are quit from 
 a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon us, 
 would make us insensible of our present sorrow, and glad to re- 
 ceive it in exchange for that other greater affliction. 
 
 Measure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your 
 fortunes by your desires : be governed by your needs, not by your 
 fancy ; by nature, not by evil customs and ambitious principles. 
 It is no evil to be poor, but to be vicious and impatient. Is that 
 beast better, that hath two or three mountains to graze on, than 
 the little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what falls 
 every morning from the store-houses of Heaven, clouds and 
 Providence? 
 
 There are some instances of fortune and a fair condition that 
 cannot stand with some others ; but if you desire this, you must 
 lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose the com- 
 fort of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a 
 retired life ; if honors of State and political distinctions, you must 
 be ever abroad in public, and get experience, and do all men's 
 business, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all. If you 
 will be rich, you must be frugal ; if you will be popular, you must
 
 JNTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 147 
 
 be bountiful ; if a philosopher, you must despise riches. If you 
 would be famous as Epaminondas, accept also his poverty, for it 
 added lustre to his person, and envy to his fortune, and his virtue 
 without it could not. have been so excellent. If you would have 
 the reputation of a martyr, you must needs accept his persecution ; 
 if of a benefactor of the world, the world's injustice ; if truly great, 
 you must expect to see the mob prefer lesser men to yourself. 
 
 God esteems it one of His glories, that He brings good out of 
 evil ; and therefore it were but reason we should trust Him to 
 govern His own world as He pleases ; and that we should patiently 
 wait until the change cometh, or the reason is discovered. 
 
 A Mason's contentedness must by no means be a mere contented 
 selfishness, like his who, comfortable himself, is indifferent to the 
 discomfort of others. There will always be in this world wrongs 
 to forgive, suffering to alleviate, sorrow asking for sympathy, ne- 
 cessities and destitution to relieve, and ample occasion for the 
 exercise of active charity and beneficence. And he who sits un- 
 concerned amidst it all, perhaps enjoying his own comforts and 
 luxuries the more, by contrasting them with the hungry and rag- 
 ged destitution and shivering misery of his fellows, is not con- 
 tented, but selfish and unfeeling. 
 
 It is the saddest of all sights upon this earth, that of a man lazy 
 and luxurious, or hard and penurious, to whom want appeals in 
 vain, and suffering cries in an unknown tongue. The man whose 
 hasty anger hurries him into violence and crime is not half so un- 
 worthy to live. He is the 'faithless steward, that embezzles what 
 God has given him in trust for the impoverished and suffering 
 among his brethren. The true Mason must be and must have a 
 right to be content with himself; and he can be so only when he 
 lives not for himself alone, but for others also, who need his assist- 
 ance and have a claim upon his sympathy. 
 
 "Charity is the great channel," it has been well said, "through 
 which God passes all His mercy upon mankind. For we receive 
 absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother. 
 This is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in 
 this world ; and on the day of death and judgment, the great sen- 
 tence upon mankind shall be transacted according to our alms, 
 which is the other part of charity. God himself is love; and 
 every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the 
 Divine nature,"
 
 148 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 These principles Masonry reduces to practice. By them it ex- 
 pects you to be hereafter guided and governed. It especially 
 inculcates them upon him who employs the labor of others, for- 
 bidding him to discharge them, when to want employment is to 
 starve ; or to contract for the labor of man or woman at so low a 
 price that by over-exertion they must sell him their blood and life 
 at the same time with the labor of their hands. 
 
 These Degrees are also intended to teach more than morals. The 
 symbols and ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning. 
 They rather conceal than disclose the Truth. They hint it only, at 
 least ; and their varied meanings are only to be discovered by re- 
 flection -and study. Truth is not only symbolized by Light, but 
 as the ray of light is separable into rays of different colors, so is 
 truth separable into kinds. It is the province of Masonry to teach 
 all truths not moral truth alone, but political and philosophical, 
 and even religious truth, so far as concerns the great and essential 
 principles of each. The sphynx was a symbol. To whom has it 
 disclosed its inmost meaning? Who knows the symbolic meaning 
 of the pyramids ? 
 
 You will hereafter learn who are the chief foes of human liberty 
 symbolized by the assassins of the Master Khurum ; and in their 
 fate you may see foreshadowed that which we earnestly hope will 
 hereafter overtake those enemies of humanity, against whom Ma- 
 sonry has struggled so long.
 
 IX. 
 ELECT OF THE NINE. 
 
 [Elu of the Nine.] 
 
 ORIGINALLY created to reward fidelity, obedience, and devotion, 
 this Degree was consecrated to bravery, devotedness, and patriot- 
 ism ; and your obligation has made known to you the duties which 
 you have assumed. They are summed up in the simple mandate, 
 "Protect the oppressed against the oppressor ; and devote yourself 
 to the honor and interests of your Country." 
 
 Masonry is not "speculative," nor theoretical, but experimental ; 
 not sentimental, but practical. It requires self-renunciation and 
 self-control. It wears a stern face toward men's vices, and inter- 
 feres with many of our pursuits and our fancied pleasures. It pen- 
 etrates beyond the region of vague sentiment ; beyond the regions 
 where moralizers and philosophers have woven their fine theories 
 and elaborated their beautiful maxims, to the very depths of the 
 heart, rebuking our littlenesses and meannesses, arraigning our 
 prejudices and passions, and warring against the armies of our 
 vices. 
 
 It wars against the passions that spring out of the bosom of a 
 world of fine sentiments, a w r orld of admirable sayings and foul 
 practices, of good maxims and bad deeds ; whose darker passions 
 are not only restrained by custom and ceremony, but hidden even 
 from itself by a veil of beautiful sentiments. This terrible sole- 
 cism has existed in all ages. Romish sentimentalism has often 
 covered infidelity and vice ; Protestant straightness often lauds 
 spirituality and faith, and neglects homely truth, candor, and gen- 
 erosity ; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars 
 
 149
 
 150 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the mire of earth in its 
 deeds. 
 
 There may be a world of Masonic sentiment; and yet a world 
 of little or no Masonry. In many minds there is a vague and gen- 
 eral sentiment of Masonic charity, generosity, and disinterested- 
 ness, but no practical, active virtue, nor habitual kindness, self- 
 sacrifice, or liberality. Masonry plays about them like the cold 
 though brilliant lights that flush and eddy over Northern skies. 
 There are occasional flashes of generous and manly feeling, tran- 
 sitory splendors, and momentary gleams of just and noble thought, 
 and transient coruscations, that light the Heaven of their imagina- 
 tion ; but there is no vital warmth in the heart ; and it remains as 
 cold and sterile as the Arctic or Antarctic regions. They do nothing ; 
 they gain no victories over themselves; they make no progress; 
 they are still in the Northeast corner of the Lodge, as when they 
 first stood there as Apprentices ; and they do not cultivate Ma- 
 sonry, with a cultivation, determined, resolute, and regular, like 
 their cultivation of their estate, profession, or knowledge. Their 
 Masonry takes its chance in general and inefficient sentiment, 
 mournfully barren of results ; in words and formulas and fine pro- 
 fessions. 
 
 Most men have sentiments, but not principles. The former are 
 temporary sensations, the latter permanent and controlling im- 
 pressions of goodness and virtue. The former are general and 
 involuntary, and do not rise to the character of virtue. Every one 
 feels them. They flash up spontaneously in every heart. The 
 latter are rules of action, and shape and control our conduct ; and 
 it is these that Masonry insists upon. 
 
 We approve the right; but pursue the wrong. It is the old 
 story of human deficiency. No one abets or praises injustice, 
 fraud, oppression, covetousness, revenge, envy, or slander; and yet 
 how many who condemn these things, are themselves guilty of 
 them. It is no rare thing for him whose indignation is kindled at 
 a tale of wicked injustice, cruel oppression, base slander, or misery 
 inflicted by unbridled indulgence ; whose anger flames in behalf 
 of the injured and ruined victims of wrong; to be in some relation 
 unjust, or oppressive, or envious, or self-indulgent, or a careless 
 talker of others. How wonderfully indignant the penurious man 
 often is, at the avarice or want of public spirit of another ! 
 
 A great Preacher well said, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O
 
 ttl-ECT OF THE NINE. l$l 
 
 Man, whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest 
 another, thou condemnest thyself: for thou that judgest, doest the 
 same things." It is amazing to see how men can talk of virtue and 
 honor, whose life denies both. It is curious to see with what a 
 marvellous facility many bad men quote Scripture. It seems to 
 comfort their evil consciences, to use good words ; and to gloze 
 over bad deeds with holy texts, wrested to their purpose. Often, 
 the more a man talks about Charity and Toleration, the less he has 
 of either; the more he talks about Virtue, the smaller stock he 
 has of it. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart ; 
 but often the very reverse of what the man practises. And the 
 vicious and sensual often express, and in a sense feel, strong dis- 
 gust at vice and sensuality. Hypocrisy is not so common as is 
 imagined. 
 
 Here, in the Lodge, virtue and vice are matters of reflection and 
 feeling only. There is little opportunity here, for the practice of 
 either; and Masons yield to the argument here, with facility and 
 readiness ; because nothing is to follow. It is easy, and safe, here, 
 to fed upon these matters. But to-morrow, when they breathe the 
 atmosphere of worldly gains and competitions, and the passions 
 are again stirred at the opportunities of unlawful pleasure, all 
 their fine emotions about virtue, all their generous abhorrence of 
 selfishness and sensuality, melt away like a morning cloud. 
 
 For the time, their emotions and sentiments are sincere and 
 real. Men may be really, in a certain way, interested in Masonry, 
 while fatally deficient in virtue. It is not always hypocrisy. Men 
 pray most fervently and sincerely, and yet are constantly guilty 
 of acts so bad and base, so ungenerous and unrighteous, that the 
 crimes that crowd the dockets of our courts are scarcely worse. 
 
 A man may be a good sort of man in general, and yet a very 
 bad man in particular : good in the Lodge and bad in the world ; 
 good in public, and bad in his family ; good at home, and bad on 
 a journey or in a strange city. Many a man earnestly desires to 
 be a good Mason. He says so, and is sincere. But if you require 
 him to resist a certain passion, to sacrifice a certain indulgence, to 
 control his appetite at a particular feast, or to keep his temper in 
 a dispute, you will find that he does not wish to be a good Mason, 
 in that particular case; or, wishing, is not able to resist his worse 
 impulses. 
 
 The duties of life are more than life. The law imposeth it upon
 
 152 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 i 
 
 every citizen, that he prefer the urgent service of his country be- 
 fore the safety of his life. If a man be commanded, saith a great 
 writer, to bring ordnance or munition to relieve any of the King's 
 towns that are distressed, then he cannot for any danger of tem- 
 pest justify the throwing of them overboard; for there it holdeth 
 which was spoken by the Roman, when the same necessity of 
 weather was alleged to hold him from embarking : "Necesse est ut 
 earn, non ut vivam:" it needs that I go : it is not necessary I should 
 live. 
 
 How ungratefully he slinks away, who dies, and does nothing to 
 reflect a glory to Heaven ? How barren a tree he is, who lives, and 
 spreads, and cumbers the ground, yet leaves not one seed, not one 
 good work to generate another after him ! All cannot leave alike ; 
 yet all may leave something, answering their proportions and their 
 kinds. Those are dead and withered grains of corn, out of which 
 there will not one ear spring. He will hardly find the way to 
 Heaven, who desires to go thither alone. 
 
 Industry is never wholly unfruitful. If it bring not joy with 
 the incoming profit, it will yet banish mischief from thy busied 
 gates. There is a kind of good angel waiting upon Diligence that 
 ever carries a laurel in his hand to crown her. How unworthy 
 was that man of the world who never did aught, but only lived 
 and died ! That we have liberty to do anything, we should ac- 
 count it a gift from the favoring Heavens; that we have minds 
 sometimes inclining us to use that liberty well, is a great bounty 
 of the Deity, 
 
 Masonry is action, and not inertness. It requires its Initiates to 
 WORK, actively and earnestly, for the benefit of their brethren, 
 their country, and mankind. It is the patron of the oppressed, 
 as it isthe comforter and consoler of the unfortunate and wretched. 
 It seems to it a worthier honor to be the instrument of advance- 
 ment and reform, than to enjoy all that rank and office and lofty 
 titles can bestow. It is the advocate of the common people in 
 those things which concern the best interests of mankind. It 
 hates insolent power and impudent usurpation. It pities the poor, 
 the sorrowing, the disconsolate ; it endeavors to raise and improve 
 the ignorant, the sunken, and the degraded. 
 
 Its fidelity to its mission will be accurately evidenced, by the 
 extent of the efforts it employs, and the means it sets on foot, to 
 improve the people at large and to better their condition ; chiefest
 
 ELECT OF THE NINE. 153 
 
 of which, within its reach, is to aid in the education of the chil- 
 dren of the poor. An intelligent people, informed of its rights, 
 will soon come to know its power, and cannot long be oppressed ; 
 but if there be not a sound and virtuous populace, the elaborate 
 ornaments at the top of the pyramid of society will be a wretched 
 compensation for the want of solidity at the base. It is never safe 
 for a nation to repose on the lap of ignorance: and if there ever 
 was a time when public tranquillity was insured by the absence of 
 knowledge, that season is past. Unthinking stupidity cannot 
 sleep, without being appalled by phantoms and shaken by terrors. 
 The improvement of the mass of the people is the grand security 
 for popular liberty ; in the neglect of which, the politeness, refine- 
 ment, and knowledge accumulated in the higher orders and 
 wealthier classes will some day perish like dry grass in the hot fire 
 of popular fury. 
 
 It is not the mission of Masonry to engage in plots and conspir- 
 acies against the civil government. It is not the fanatical propa- 
 gandist of any creed or theory ; nor does it proclaim itself the 
 enemy of kings. It is the apostle of liberty, equality, and frater- 
 nity; but it is no more the high-priest of republicanism than of 
 constitutional monarchy. It contracts no entangling alliances 
 with any sect of theorists, dreamers, or philosophers. It does not 
 know those as its Initiates who assail the civil order and all lawful 
 authority, at the same time that they propose to deprive the dying 
 of the consolations of religion. It sits apart from all sects and 
 creeds, in its own calm and simple dignity, the same under every 
 government. It is still that which it was in the cradle of the hu- 
 man race, when no human foot had trodden the soil of Assyria 
 and Egypt, and no colonies had crossed the Himalayas into South- 
 ern India, Media, or Etruria. 
 
 It gives no countenance to anarchy and licentiousness ; and no 
 illusion of glory, or extravagant emulation of the ancients in- 
 flames it with an unnatural thirst for ideal and Utopian liberty. 
 It teaches that in rectitude of life and sobriety of habits is the 
 only sure guarantee for the continuance of political freedom ; and 
 it is chiefly the soldier of the sanctity of the laws and the rights 
 of conscience. 
 
 It recognizes it as a truth, that necessity, as well as abstract 
 right and ideal justice, must have its part in the making' of laws, 
 the administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in 
 ii
 
 154 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 society. It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of 
 man. It knows that where any man, or any number or race of 
 men, are so imbecile of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self- 
 control, so inferior in the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be 
 intrusted with the highest prerogatives of citizenship, the great 
 law of necessity, for the peace and safety of the community and 
 country, requires them to remain under the control of those of 
 larger intellect and superior wisdom. It trusts and believes that 
 God will, in his own good time, work out his own great and wise 
 purposes ; and it is willing to wait, where it does not see its own 
 way clear to some certain good. 
 
 It hopes and longs for the day when all the races of men, even 
 the lowest, will be elevated, and become fitted for political freedom ; 
 when, like all other evils that afflict the earth, pauperism, and 
 bondage or abject dependence, shall cease and disappear. But it 
 does not preach revolution to those who are fond of kings, nor re- 
 bellion that can end only in disaster and defeat, or in substituting 
 one tyrant for another, or a multitude of despots for one. 
 
 Wherever a people is fit to be free and to govern itself, and gen- 
 erously strives to be so, there go all its sympathies. It detests the 
 tyrant, the lawless oppressor, the military usurper, and him who 
 abuses a lawful power. It frowns upon cruelty, and a wanton dis- 
 regard of the rights of humanity. It abhors the selfish employer, 
 and exerts its influence to lighten the burdens which want and 
 dependence impose upon the workman, and to foster that human- 
 ity and kindness which man owes to even his poorest and most 
 unfortunate brother. 
 
 It can never be employed, in any country under Heaven, to teach 
 a toleration for cruelty, to weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to 
 deprave and brutalize the human mind. The dread of punish- 
 ment will never make a Mason an accomplice in so corrupting his 
 countrymen, and a teacher of depravity and barbarity. If any- 
 where, as has heretofore happened, a tyrant should send a satirist 
 on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeller, in a 
 court of justice, a Mason, if a juror in such a case, though in 
 sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of the innocent, 
 and within hearing of the clash of the bayonets meant to overawe 
 the court, would rescue the intrepid satirist from the tyrant's 
 fangs, and send his officers out from the court with defeat and 
 disgrace.
 
 ELECT OF THE NINE. 155 
 
 Even if all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of 
 Jacobinical demagogues or a military banditti, and great crimes 
 were perpetrated with a high hand against all who were deservedly 
 the objects of public veneration; if the people, overthrowing law, 
 roared like a sea around the courts of justice, and demanded the 
 blood of those who, during the temporary fit of insanity and 
 drunken delirium, had chanced to become odious to it, for true 
 words manfully spoken, or unpopular acts bravely done, the Ma- 
 sonic juror, unawed alike by the single or the many-headed tyrant, 
 would consult the dictates of duty alone, and stand with a noble 
 firmness between the human tigers and their coveted prey. 
 
 The Mason would much rather pass his life hidden in the re- 
 cesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding his mind even with the 
 visions and imaginations of good deeds and noble actions, than to 
 be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized 
 with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest 
 situation any other than the greatest curse. And if he has been 
 enabled to lend the slightest step to any great and laudable de- 
 signs ; if he has had any share in any measure giving quiet to pri- 
 vate property and to private conscience, making lighter the yoke 
 of poverty and dependence, or relieving deserving men from op- 
 pression ; if he has aided in securing to his countrymen that best 
 possession, peace ; if he has joined in reconciling the different sec- 
 tions of his own country to each other, and the people to the gov- 
 ernment of their own creating; and in teaching the citizen to 
 look for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his com- 
 fort to the good-will of his countrymen ; if he has thus taken 
 his part with the best of men in the best of their actions, 
 he may well shut the book, even if he might wish to read a page 
 or two more. It is enough for his measure. He has not lived 
 in vain. 
 
 Masonry teaches that all power is delegated for the good, and not 
 for the injury of the People; and that, when it is perverted from 
 the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right ought 
 to be resumed ; that resistance to power usurped is not merely a 
 duty which man owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty 
 which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank 
 which He gave him in the creation. This principle neither the 
 rudeness of ignorance can stifle nor the enervation of refinement 
 extinguish. It makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought
 
 1^6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to act ; and, tending to preserve to him the original destinations 
 of Providence, spurns at the arrogant assumptions of Tyrants and 
 vindicates the independent quality of the race of which we are a 
 part. 
 
 The wise and well-informed Mason will not fail to be the votary 
 of Liberty and Justice. He will be ready to exert himself in their 
 defence, wherever they exist. It cannot be a matter of indiffer- 
 ence to him when his own liberty and that of other men, with 
 whose merits and capacities he is acquainted, are involved in the 
 event of the struggle to be made; but his attachment will be to 
 the cause, as the cause of man; and not merely to the country. 
 Wherever there is a people that understands the value of political 
 justice, and is prepared to assert it, that is his country; wherever 
 he can most contribute to the diffusion of these principles and the 
 real happiness of mankind, that is his country. Nor does he de- 
 sire for any country any other benefit than justice. 
 
 The true Mason identifies the honor of his country with his 
 own. Nothing more conduces to the beauty and glory of one's 
 country than. the preservation against all enemies of its civil and 
 religious liberty. The world will rrever willingly let die the names 
 of those patriots who in her different ages have received upon their 
 own breasts the blows aimed by insolent enemies at the bosom of 
 their country. 
 
 But also it conduces, and in no small measure, to the beauty and 
 glory of one's country, that justice should always be administered 
 there to all alike, and neither denied, sold, nor delayed to any one ; 
 that the interest of the poor should be looked to, and none starve 
 or be houseless, or clamor in vain for work ; that the child and the 
 feeble woman should not be overworked, or even the apprentice or 
 slave be stinted of food or overtasked or mercilessly scourged ; and 
 that God's great laws of mercy, humanity, and compassion should 
 be everywhere enforced, not only by the statutes, but also by the 
 power of public opinion. And he who labors, often against re- 
 proach and obloquy, and oftener against indifference and apathy, 
 to bring about that fortunate condition of things when that great 
 code of divine law shall be everywhere and punctually obeyed, is 
 no less a patriot than he who bares his bosom to the hostile steel 
 in the ranks of his country's soldiery. 
 
 For fortitude is not only seen resplendent on the field of battle 
 and amid the clash of arms, but he displays its energy under
 
 ELECT OF THE N INK. 157 
 
 every difficulty and against every assailant. He who wars against 
 cruelty, oppression, and hoary abuses, fights for his country's 
 honor, which these things soil ; and her honor is as important as 
 her existence. Often, indeed, the warfare against those abuses 
 which disgrace one's country is quite as hazardous and more dis- 
 couraging than that against her enemies in the field ; and merits 
 equal, if not greater reward. 
 
 For those Greeks and Romans who are the objects of our admi- 
 ration employed hardly any other virtue in the extirpation of 
 tyrants, than that love of liberty, which made them prompt in 
 seizing the sword, and gave them strength to use it. With facility 
 they accomplish the undertaking, amid the general shout of 
 praise and joy ; nor did they engage in the attempt so much as an 
 enterprise of perilous and doubtful issue, as a contest the most 
 glorious in which virtue could be signalized ; which infallibly led 
 to present recompense ; which bound their brows with wreaths of 
 laurel, and consigned their memories to immortal fame. 
 
 But he who assails hoary abuses, regarded perhaps with a super- 
 stitious reverence, and around which old laws stand as ramparts 
 and bastions to defend them ; who denounces acts of cruelty and 
 outrage on humanity which make every perpetrator thereof his 
 personal enemy, and perhaps make him looked upon with suspi- 
 cion by the people among whom he lives, as the assailant of an 
 established order of things of which he assails only the abuses, 
 and of laws of which he attacks only the violations, he can 
 scarcely look for present recompense, nor that his living brows 
 will be wreathed with laurel. And if, contending against a dark 
 array of long-received opinions, superstitions, obloquy, and fears, 
 \vhich most men dread more than they do an army terrible with 
 banners, the Mason overcomes, and emerges from the contest vic- 
 torious ; or if he does not conquer, but is borne down and swept 
 away by the mighty current of prejudice, passion, and interest ; 
 in either case, the loftiness of spirit which he displays merits for 
 him more than a mediocrity of fame. 
 
 He has already lived too long who has survived the ruin of his 
 country ; and he who can enjoy life after such an event deservesnot 
 to have lived at all. Nor does he any more deserve to live who looks 
 contentedly upon abuses that disgrace, and cruelties that dishonor, 
 and scenes of misery and destitution and brutalization that dis- 
 figure his country ; or sordid meanness and ignoble revenges that
 
 158 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 make her a by-word and a scoff among all generous nations ; and 
 does not endeavor to remedy or prevent either. 
 
 Not often is a country at war ; nor can every one be allowed the 
 privilege of offering his heart to the enemy's bullets. But in these 
 patriotic labors of peace, in preventing, remedying, arid reforming 
 evils, oppressions, wrongs, cruelties, and outrages, every Mason 
 can unite ; and every one can effect something, and share the honor 
 and glory of the result. 
 
 For the cardinal names in the history of the human mind are 
 few and easily to be counted up; but thousands and tens of 
 thousands spend their days in the preparations which are to speed 
 the predestined change, in gathering and amassing the materials 
 which are to kindle and give light and warmth, when the fire from 
 Heaven shall have descended on them. Numberless are the sutlers 
 and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of 
 intellect. Many move forward in detachments, and level the way 
 over which the chariot is to pass, and cut down the obstacles that 
 would impede its progress ; and these too have their reward. If 
 they labor diligently and faithfully in their calling, not only will 
 they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in the lowliest 
 task never fails to win ; not only will the sweat of their brows be 
 sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows ; but, when the 
 victory is at last achieved, they will come in for a share in the 
 glory ; even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at 
 King's Mountain became a sharer in the glory of those saving 
 days ; and within his own household circle, the approbation of 
 which approaches the nearest to that of an approving conscience, 
 was looked upon as the representative of all his brother-heroes ; 
 and could tell such tales as made the tear glisten on the cheek of 
 his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes with an unwonted sparkling 
 eagerness. Or, if he fell in the fight, and his place by the fireside 
 and at the table at home was thereafter vacant, that place was 
 sacred ; and he was often talked of there in the long winter even- 
 ings ; and his family was deemed fortunate in the neighborhood, 
 because it had had a hero in it, who had fallen in defence of his 
 country. 
 
 Remember that life's length is not measured by its hours and 
 days, but by that which we have done therein for our country and 
 kind. A useless life is short, if it last a century ; but that of 
 Alexander was long as the life of the oak, though he died at thir-
 
 ELECT OF THE NINE. . 159 
 
 ty-five. We may do much in a few years, and we may do nothing 
 in a lifetime. If we but eat and drink and sleep, and let every- 
 thing go on around us as it pleases ; or if we live but to amass 
 wealth or gain office or wear titles, we might as well not hav^ lived 
 at all ; nor have we any right to expect immortality. 
 
 Forget not, therefore, to what you have devoted yourself in this 
 Degree: defend weakness against strength, the friendless against 
 the great, the oppressed against the oppressor! Be ever vigilant 
 and watchful of the interests and honor of your country ! and 
 may the Grand Architect of the Universe give you that strength 
 and wisdom which shall enable you well and faithfully to perform 
 these high duties !
 
 X. 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 
 
 [Elu of the Fifteen.] 
 
 THIS Degree is devoted to the same objects as those of the Elu 
 of Nine ; and also to the cause of Toleration and Liberality against 
 Fanaticism and Persecution, j. >olitical and religious ; and to that of 
 Education, Instruction, and Enlightenment against Error, Barbar- 
 ism, and Ignorance. To these objects you have irrevocably and 
 forever devoted your hand, your heart, and your intellect ; and 
 whenever in your presence a Chapter of this Degree is opened, you 
 will be most solemnly reminded of your vows here taken at the 
 altar. 
 
 Toleration, holding that every other man has the same right to 
 his opinion and faith that we have to ours ; and liberality, holding 
 that as no human being can with certainty say, in the clash and 
 conflict of hostile faiths and creeds, what is truth, or that he is 
 surely in possession of it, so every one should feel that it is quite 
 possible that another equally honest and sincere with himself, and 
 yet holding the contrary opinion, may himself be in possession of 
 the truth, and that whatever one firmly and conscientiously be- 
 lieves, is truth, to him these are the mortal enemies of that fanat- 
 icism which persecutes for opinion's sake, and initiates crusades 
 against whatever it, in its imaginary holiness, deems to be contrary 
 to the law of God or verity of dogma. And education, instruc- 
 tion, and enlightenment are the most certain means by which 
 fanaticism and intolerance can be rendered powerless. 
 
 No true Mason scoffs at honest convictions and an ardent zeal 
 in the cause of what one believes to be truth and justice. But he 
 1 60
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. l6l 
 
 does absolutely deny the right of any man to assume the preroga- 
 tive of Deity, and condemn another's faith and opinions as deserv- 
 ing to be punished because heretical. Nor does he approve the 
 course of those who endanger the peace and quiet of great nations, 
 and the best interest of their own race by indulging in a chimeri- 
 cal and visionary philanthropy a luxury which chiefly consists in 
 drawing their robes around them to avoid contact with their fel- 
 lows, and proclaiming themselves holier than they. 
 
 For he knows that such follies are often more calamitous than 
 the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have 
 been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. 
 Better any error than persecution ! Better any opinion than the 
 thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake! And he knows also how 
 unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to whom himself and 
 everything around him are mysteries, to torture and slay others, 
 because they cannot think as he does in regard to the profoundest 
 of those mysteries, to understand which is utterly beyond the 
 comprehension of either the persecutor or the persecuted. 
 
 Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious 
 belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the 
 Mahometan, the Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his pe- 
 culiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate, 
 must needs retain it, and cannot have two religions ; for the social 
 and sacred laws adapted to the usages, manners, and prejudices of 
 particular countries, are the work of men. 
 
 But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the car- 
 dinal tenets of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the 
 foundation of all religions. All that ever existed have had a basis 
 of truth ; and all have overlaid that truth with errors. The prim- 
 itive truths taught by the Redeemer were sooner corrupted, and 
 intermingled and alloyed with fictions than when taught to the 
 first of our race. Masonry is the universal morality which is suit- 
 able to the inhabitants of every clime, to the man of every creed. 
 It has taught no doctrines, except those truths that tend directly 
 to the well-being of man ; and those who have attempted to direct 
 it toward useless vengeance, political ends, and Jesuitism, have 
 merely perverted it to purposes foreign to its pure spirit and real 
 nature. 
 
 Mankind outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the 
 childhood of the world. Yet it is easy for human indolence to
 
 l62 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 linger near these helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the un- 
 adventurous Nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his flock in the 
 same close-cropped circle where they first learned to browse, while 
 the progressive man roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures 
 new." 
 
 The latter is the true Mason ; and the best and indeed the only 
 good Mason is he who with the power of business does the work of 
 life ; the upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer, the man with 
 the f/ower of thought, of justice, or of love, he whose whole life 
 is One great act of performance of Masonic duty. The natural 
 use of the strength of a strong man or the wisdom of a wise one, 
 is to do the work of a strong man or a wise one. The natural 
 work of Masonry is practical life; the use of all the faculties in 
 their proper spheres, and for their natural function. Love of 
 Truth, justice, and generosity as attributes of God, must appear in 
 a life marked by these qualities; that is the only effectual ordi- 
 nance of Masonry. A profession of one's convictions, joining the 
 Order, assuming the obligations, assisting at the ceremonies, are 
 of the same value in science as in Masonry ; the natural form of 
 Masonry is goodness, morality, living a true, just, affectionate, 
 self-faithful life, from the motive of a good man. It is loyal obe- 
 dience to God's law. 
 
 The good Mason does the good thing which comes in his way, 
 and because it comes in his way ; from a love of duty, and not 
 merely because a law, enacted by man or God, commands his will 
 to do it. He is true to his mind, his conscience, heart, and soul, 
 and feels small temptation to do to others what he would not wish 
 to receive from them. He will deny himself for the sake of his 
 brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the line of his duty, 
 both being in conjunction. Not in vain does the poor or the op- 
 pressed look up to him. You find such men in all Christian sects, 
 Protestant and Catholic, in all the great religious parties of the 
 civilized world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They 
 are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable in their busi- 
 ness, beautiful in their daily lives. You see their Masonry in their 
 work and in their play. It appears in all the forms of their ac- 
 tivity, individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, or political. Trus 
 Masonry within must be morality without. It must become 
 eminent morality, which is philanthropy. The true Mason loves 
 not only his kindred and his country, but all mankind ; not only
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 163 
 
 the good, but also the evil, among his brethren. He has more 
 goodness than the channels of his daily life will hold. It runs 
 over the banks, to water and to feed a thousand thirsty plants. 
 Not content with the duty that lies along his track, he goes out to 
 seek it; not only willing, he has a salient longing to do good, to 
 spread his truth, his justice, his generosity, his Masonry over all 
 the world. His daily life is a profession of his Masonry, published 
 in perpetual good-will to men. He can not be a persecutor. 
 
 Not more naturally does the beaver build or the mocking-bird 
 sing his own wild, gushing melody, than the true Mason lives in 
 this beautiful outward life. So from the perennial spring swells 
 forth the stream, to quicken the meadow with new access of green, 
 and perfect beauty bursting into bloom. Thus Masonry does the 
 work it was meant to do. The Mason does not sigh and weep, and 
 make grimaces. He lives right on. If his life is, as whose is not, 
 marked with errors, and with sins, he ploughs over the barren 
 spot with his remorse, sows with new seed, and the old desert blos- 
 soms like a rose. He is not confined to set forms of thought, pi 
 action, or of feeling. He accepts what his mind regards as true, 
 what his conscience decides is right, what his heart deems generous 
 and noble ; and all else he puts far from him. Though the ancient 
 and the honorable of the Earth bid him bow down to them, his 
 stubborn knees bend only at the bidding of his manly soul. His 
 Masonry is his freedom before God, not his bondage unto men. His 
 mind acts after the universal law of the intellect, his conscience 
 according to the universal moral law, his affections and his soul 
 after the universal law of each, and so he is strong with the 
 strength of God, in this four-fold way communicating with Him. 
 
 The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, 
 will not suffice us now. The duties of life are to be done ; we are 
 to do them, consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistic- 
 ally, loving only our selfish gain. There are sins of trade to be 
 corrected. Everywhere morality and philanthropy are needed. 
 There are errors to be- made way with, and their place supplied 
 with new truths, radiant with the glories of Heaven. There are 
 great wrongs and evils, in Church and State, in domestic, social, 
 and public life, to be righted and outgrown. Masonry cannot in 
 our age forsake the broad way of life. She must journey on in the 
 open street, appear in the crowded square, and teach men by her 
 deeds, her life more eloquent than any lips.
 
 1-64 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 This Degree is chiefly devoted to TOLERATION ; and it inculcates 
 in the strongest manner that great leading idea of the Ancient 
 Art, that a belief in the one True God. and a moral and virtuous 
 life, constitute the only religious requisites needed to enable a man 
 to be a Mason. 
 
 Masonry has ever the most vivid remembrance of the terrible 
 and artificial torments that were used to put down new forms of 
 religion or extinguish the old. It sees with the eye of memory the 
 ruthless extermination of all the people of all sexes and ages, be- 
 cause it was their misfortune not to know the God of the Hebrews, 
 or to worship Him under the wrong name, by the savage troops of 
 Moses and Joshua. It sees the thumb-screws and the racks, the 
 whip, the gallows, and the stake, the victims of Diocletian and 
 Alva, the miserable Covenanters, the Non-Conformists, Servetus 
 burned, and the unoffending Quaker hung. It sees Cranmer hold 
 his arm, now no longer erring, in the flame until the hand drops 
 off in the consuming heat. It sees the persecutions of Peter and 
 Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, the trials of Ignatius, Polycarp, 
 Justin, and Irenaeus ; and then in turn the sufferings of the 
 wretched Pagans under the Christian Emperors, as of the Papists 
 in Ireland and under Elizabeth and the bloated Henry. The Ro- 
 man Virgin naked before the hungry lions ; young Margaret Gra- 
 ham tied to a stake at low-water mark, and there left to drown, 
 singing hymns to God until the savage waters broke over her 
 head ; and all that in all ages have suffered by hunger and naked- 
 ness, peril and prison, the rack, the stake, and the sword, it sees 
 them all, and shudders at the long roll of human atrocities. And 
 it sees also the oppression still practised in the name of religion 
 men shot in a Christian jail in Christian Italy for reading the 
 Christian Bible ; in almost every Christian State, laws forbidding 
 freedom of speech on matters relating to Christianity ; and the 
 gallows reaching its arm over the pulpit. 
 
 The fires of Moloch in Syria, the harsh mutilations in the name 
 of Astarte, Cybele, Jehovah ; the barbarities of imperial Pagan 
 Torturers ; the still grosser torments which Roman-Gothic Chris- 
 tians in Italy and Spain heaped on their brother-men ; the fiendish 
 cruelties to which Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, England, 
 Scotland, Ireland, America, have been witnesses, are none too pow- 
 erful to warn man of the unspeakable evils which follow from mis- 
 takes and errors in the matter of religion, and especially from
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 165 
 
 investing the God of Love with the cruel and vindictive pas- 
 sions of erring humanity, and making blood to have a sweet 
 savor in his nostrils, and groans of agony to be delicious to his 
 ears. 
 
 Man never had the right to usurp the unexercised prerogative 
 of God, and condemn and punish another for his belief. Born in 
 a Protestant land, we are of that faith. If we had opened our eyes 
 to the light under the shadows of St. Peter's at Rome, we should 
 have been devout Catholics ; born in the Jewish quarter of Aleppo, 
 we should have contemned Christ as an imposter ; in Constanti- 
 nople, we should have cried "Allah il Allah, God is great and Ma- 
 homet is his prophet!" Birth, place, and education give us our 
 faith. Few believe in any religion because they have examined 
 the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment, 
 upon weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand 
 knows anything about the proofs of his faith. We believe what 
 we are taught ; and those are most fanatical who know least of the 
 evidences on which their creed is based. Facts and testimony are 
 not, except in very rare instances, the ground-work of faith. It is 
 an imperative law of God's Economy, unyielding and inflexible as 
 Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief of those 
 among whom he is born and reared; the faith so made a part of 
 his nature resists all evidence to the contrary ; and he will disbe- 
 lieve even the evidence of his own" senses, rather than yield up the 
 religious belief which has grown up in him, flesh of his flesh and 
 bone of his bone. 
 
 What is truth to me is not truth to another. The same argu- 
 ments and evidences that convince one mind make no impression 
 on another. This difference is in men at their birth. No man is 
 entitled positively to assert that he is right, where other men, 
 equally intelligent and equally well-informed, hold directly the 
 opposite opinion. Each thinks it impossible for the other to be 
 sincere, and each, as to that, is equally in error. "What is truth f" 
 was a profound question, the most suggestive one ever put to man. 
 Many beliefs of former and present times seem incomprehensible. 
 They startle us with a new glimpse into the human soul, that mys- 
 terious thing, more mysterious the more we note its workings. 
 Here is a man superior to myself in intellect and learning; and 
 yet he sincerely believes what seenis to me too absurd to merit 
 confutation ; and I cannot conceive, and sincerely do not believe,
 
 1 66 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 that he is both sane and honest. And yet he is both. His reason 
 is as perfect as mine, and he is as honest as I. 
 
 The fancies of a lunatic are realities, to him. Our dreams are 
 realities while they last; and, in the Past, no more unreal than 
 what we have acted in our waking hours. No man can say that 
 he hath as sure possession of the truth as of a chattel. When 
 men entertain opinions diametrically opposed to each other, and 
 each is honest, who shall decide which hath the Truth; and how 
 can either say with certainty that he hath it? We know not 
 what is the truth. That we ourselves believe and feel absolutely 
 certain that our own belief is true, is in reality not the slightest 
 proof of the fact, seem it never so certain and incapable of doubt 
 to us. No man is responsible for the Tightness of his fai'.h; but 
 only for the w/rightness of it. 
 
 Therefore no man hath or ever had a right to persecute another 
 for his belief ; for there cannot be two antagonistic rights ; and if 
 one can persecute another, because he himself is satisfied that the 
 belief of that other is erroneous, the other has, for the same rea- 
 son, equally as certain a right to persecute him. 
 
 The truth comes to us tinged and colored with our prejudices 
 and our preconceptions, which are as old as ourselves, and strong 
 with a divine force. It comes to us as the image of a rod comes to 
 us through the water, bent and distorted. An argument sinks 
 into and convinces the mind of one man, while from that of ano- 
 ther it rebounds like a ball of ivory dropped on marble. It is no 
 merit in a man to have a particular faith, excellent and sound and 
 philosophic as it may be, when he imbibed it with his mother's 
 milk. It is no more a merit than his prejudices and his passions. 
 
 The sincere Moslem has as much right to persecute us, as we to 
 persecute him ; and therefore Masonry wisely requires no more 
 than a belief in One Great All-Powerful Deity, the Father and 
 Preserver of the Universe. Therefore it is she teaches her votaries 
 that toleration is one of the chief duties of every good Mason, a 
 component part of that charity without which we are mere hollow 
 images of true Masons, mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. 
 
 No evil hath so afflicted the world as intolerance of religious 
 opinion. The human beings it has slain in various ways, if once 
 and together brought to life, would make a nation of people ; left 
 to live and increase, would have doubled the population of the 
 civilized portion of the globe ; among which civilized portion it
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 167 
 
 chiefly is that religious wars are waged. The treasure and the 
 human labor thus lost would have made the earth a garden, in 
 which, but for his evil passions, man might now be as happy as in 
 Eden. 
 
 No man truly obeys the Masonic law who merely tolerates 
 those whose religious opinions are opposed to his own. Every 
 man's opinions are his own private property, and the rights of all 
 men to maintain ef ch his own are perfectly equal. Merely to tol- 
 erate, to bear ivith an opposing opinion, is to assume it to be he- 
 retical ; and assert the right to persecute, if we would ; and claim 
 our toleration of :'t as a merit. The Mason's creed goes farther 
 than that. No n in, it holds, has any right in any way to inter- 
 fere with the religious belief of another. It holds that each man 
 is absolutely sovereign as to his own belief, and that belief is a 
 matter absolutely foreign to all who do not entertain the same 
 belief; and that, if there were any right of persecution at all, it 
 would in all cases be a mutual right; because one party has the 
 same right as the other to sit as judge in his own case ; and God is 
 the only magistrate that can rightfully decide between them. To 
 that great Judge, Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide 
 its portals, it invites to enter there and live in peace and harmony, 
 the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew, the Moslem ; every man 
 who will lead a truly virtuous and moral life, love his brethren, 
 minister to the sick and distressed, and believe in the ONE, Ail- 
 Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere-Present GOD, Architect, Creator, 
 and Preserver of all things, by whose universal law of Harmony 
 ever rolls on this universe, the great, vast, infinite circle of suc- 
 cessive Dea-th and Life: to whose INEFFABLE NAME let all true 
 Masons pay profoundest homage ! for whose thousand blessings 
 poured upon us, let us feel the sincerest gratitude, now, henceforth, 
 and forever ! 
 
 We may well be tolerant of each other's creed ; far in every 
 faith there are excellent moral precepts. Far in the South of 
 Asia, Zoroaster taught this doctrine: "On commencing a journey, 
 the Faithful should turn his thoughts toward Ormuzd, and confess 
 him, in the purity of his heart, to be King of the World ; he 
 should love him, do him homage, and serve him. He must be 
 upright and charitable, despise the pleasures of the body, and avoid 
 pride and haughtiness, and vice in all its forms, and especially 
 falsehood, one of the basest sins of which man can be guilty. He
 
 l68 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 must forget injuries and not avenge himself. He must honor the 
 memory of his parents and relatives. At night, before retiring to 
 sleep, he should rigorously examine his conscience, and repent of 
 the faults which weakness or ill-fortune had caused him to com- 
 mit." He was required to pray for strength to persevere in the 
 Good, and to obtain forgiveness for his errors. It was his duty to 
 confess his faults to a Magus, or to a layman renowned for his vir- 
 tues, or to the Sun. Fasting and maceration were prohibited ; and, 
 on the contrary, it was his duty suitably to nourish the body and 
 to maintain its vigor, that his soul might be strong to resist the 
 Genius of Darkness; that he might more attentively read the 
 Divine Word, and have more courage to perform noble deeds. 
 
 And in the North of Europe the Druids taught devotion to 
 friends, indulgence for reciprocal \vrongs, love of deserved praise, 
 prudence, humanity, hospitality, respect for old age, disregard of 
 the future, temperance, contempt of death, and a chivalrous defer- 
 ence to woman. Listen to these maxims from the Hava Maal, or 
 Sublime Book of Odin : 
 
 "If thou hast a friend, visit him often ; the path will grow over 
 with grass, and the trees soon cover it, if thou dost not constantly 
 walk upon it. He is a faithful friend, who, having but two loaves, 
 gives his friend one. Be never first to break with thy friend ; sor- 
 row wrings the heart of him who has no one save himself with 
 whom to take counsel. There is no virtuous man who has not 
 some vice, no bad man who has not some virtue. Happy he who 
 obtains the praise and good-will of men ; for all that depends on 
 the will of another is hazardous and uncertain. Riches flit away 
 in the twinkl-ing of an eye ; they are the most inconstant of 
 friends ; flocks and herds perish, parents die, friends are not im- 
 mortal, thou thyself diest ; I know but one thing that doth not 
 die, the judgment that is passed upon the dead. Be humane to- 
 ward those whom thou meetest on the road. If the guest that 
 cometh to thy house is a-cold, give him fire ; the man who has 
 journeyed over the mountains needs food and dry garments. Mock 
 not at the aged ; for words full of sense come often from the 
 wrinkles of age. Be moderately wise, and not over-prudeni . Let 
 no one seek to know his destiny, if he would sleep tranquilly. 
 There is no malady more cruel than to be discontented with our 
 lot. The glutton eats his own death ; and the wise man laughs at 
 the fool's greediness. Nothing is more injurious to the young than
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 169 
 
 excessive drinking; the more one drinks the more he loses his 
 reason ; the bird of forgetfulness sings before those who intoxicate 
 themselves, and wiles away their souls. Man devoid of sense be- 
 lieves he will live always if he avoids war ; but, if the lances spare 
 him, old age will give him no quarter. Better live well than live 
 long. When a man lights a fire in his house, death comes before 
 it goes out." 
 
 And thus said the Indian books : "Honor thy father and mother. 
 Never forget the benefits thou hast received. Learn while thou 
 art young. Be submissive to the laws of thy country. Seek the 
 company of virtuous men. Speak not of God but with respect. 
 Live on good terms with thy fellow-citizens. Remain in thy proper 
 place. Speak ill of no one. Mock at the bodily infirmities of 
 none. Pursue not unrelentingly a conquered enemy. Strive to 
 acquire a good reputation. The best bread is that for which one 
 is indebted to his own labor. Take counsel with wise men. The 
 more one learns, the more he acquires the faculty of learning. 
 Knowledge is the most permanent wealth. As well be dumb as 
 ignorant. The true use of knowledge is to distinguish good from 
 evil. Be not a subject of shame to thy parents. What one learns 
 in youth endures like the engraving upon a rock. He is wise who 
 knows himself. Let thy books be thy best friends. When thou 
 attainest an hundred years, cease to learn. Wisdom is solidly 
 planted, even on the shifting ocean. Deceive no one, not even 
 thine enemy. Wisdom is a treasure that everywhere commands 
 its value. Speak mildly, even to the poor. It is sweeter to for- 
 give than to take vengeance. Gaming and quarrels lead to misery. 
 There is no true merit without the practice of virtue. To honor 
 our mother is the most fitting homage we can pay the Divinity. 
 There is no tranquil sleep without a clear conscience. He badly 
 understands his interest who breaks his word." 
 
 Twenty- four centuries ago these were the Chinese Ethics : 
 
 "The Philosopher [Confucius] said, 'SAN! my doctrine is sim- 
 ple, and easy to be understood.' THSENG-TSEU replied, 'that is 
 certain.' The Philosopher having gone out, the disciples asked 
 what their master had meant to say. THSENG-TSEU responded. 
 'The doctrine of our Master consists solely in being upright of 
 heart, and loving our neighbor as we love ourself.' " 
 
 About a century later, the Hebrew law said, "If any man hate 
 his neighbor . . . then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to
 
 170 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 do unto his brother . . . Better is a neighbor that is near, than a 
 brother afar off . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 In the same fifth century before Christ, SOCRATES the Grecian 
 said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 Three generations earlier, ZOROASTER had said to the Persians: 
 "Offer up thy grateful prayers to the Lord, the most just and pure 
 Ormuzd, the supreme and adorable God, who thus declared to his 
 Prophet Zerdusht : 'Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou 
 wouldst not desire done unto thyself; do that unto the people, 
 which, when done to thyself, is not disagreeable unto thee.' ' 
 
 The same doctrine had been long taught in the schools of Bab- 
 ylon, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. A Pagan declared to the Phar- 
 isee HILLEL that he was ready to embrace the Jewish religion, if 
 he could make known to him in a few words a summary of the 
 whole law of Moses. "That which thou likest not done to thy- 
 self," said Hillel, "do it not unto thy neighbor. Therein is all the 
 law : the rest is nothing but the commentary upon it." 
 
 "Nothing is more natural," said CONFUCIUS, "nothing more 
 simple, than the principles of that morality which I endeavor, by 
 salutary maxims, to inculcate in you ... It is humanity; which 
 is to say, that universal charity among all of our species, without 
 distinction. It is uprightness ; that is, that rectitude of spirit 
 and of heart, which makes one seek for truth in everything, and 
 desire it, without deceiving one's self or others. It is, finally, sin- 
 cerity or good faith ; which is to say, that frankness, that open- 
 ness of heart, tempered by self-reliance, which excludes all feints 
 and all disguising, as much in speech as in action." 
 
 To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, 
 sure forerunner of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of 
 the great day, when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase 
 away the lazy, lingering mists of ignorance and error, even from 
 the base of the great social pyramid, is indeed a high calling, in 
 which the most splendid talents and consummate virtue may well 
 press onward, eager to bear a part. From the Masonic ranks 
 ought to go forth those whose genius and not their ancestry enno- 
 ble them, to open to all ranks the temple of science, and by their 
 own example to make the humblest men emulous to climb steps 
 no longer inaccessible, and enter the unfolded gates burning in 
 the sun. 
 
 The highest intellectual cultivation is perfectly compatible with
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 171 
 
 the daily cares and toils of working-men. A keen relish for the 
 most sublime truths of science belongs alike to every class of 
 mankind. And, as philosophy was taught in the sacred groves of 
 Athens, and under the Portico, and in the old Temples of Egypt 
 and India, so in our Lodges ought Knowledge to be dispensed, the 
 Sciences taught, and the Lectures become like the teachings of 
 Socrates and Plato, of Agassiz and Cousin. 
 
 Real knowledge never permitted either turbulence or unbelief; 
 but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened 
 toleration. Whoso dreads these may well tremble ; for he may be 
 well assured that their day is at length come, and must put to 
 speedy flight the evil spirits of tyranny and persecution, which 
 haunted the long night now gone down the sky. And it is to be 
 hoped that the time will soon arrive, when, as men will no longer 
 suffer themselves to be led blindfold in ignorance, so will they no 
 more yield to the vile principle of judging and treating their fel- 
 low-creatures, not according to the intrinsic merit of their actions, 
 but according to the accidental and involuntary coincidence of 
 their opinions. 
 
 Whenever we come to treat with entire respect those who con- 
 scientiously differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of a dif- 
 ference will be, to make us enlighten the ignorance on one side or 
 the other, from which it springs, by instructing them, if it be 
 theirs ; ourselves, if it be our own ; to the end that the only kind 
 of unanimity may be produced which is desirable among rational 
 beings, the agreement proceeding from full conviction after the 
 freest discussion. 
 
 The Elu of Fifteen ought therefore to take the lead of his fel- 
 low-citizens, not in frivolous amusements, not in the degrading 
 pursuits of the ambitious vulgar; but in the truly noble task of 
 enlightening the mass of his countrymen, and of leaving his own 
 name encircled, not with barbaric splendor, or attached to courtly 
 gewgaws, but illustrated by the honors most worthy of our ra- 
 tional nature ; coupled with the diffusion of knowledge, and grate- 
 fully pronounced by a few, at least, whom his wise beneficence has 
 rescued from ignorance and vice. 
 
 We say to him, in the words of the great Roman : "Men in no 
 respect so nearly approach to the Deity, as when they confer bene- 
 fits on men. To serve and do good to as many as possible, there 
 is nothing greater in your fortune than that you should be able,
 
 1^2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and nothing finer in your nature, than that you should be desir- 
 ous to do this." This is the true mark for the aim of every man 
 and Mason who either prizes the enjoyment of pure happiness, or 
 sets a right value upon a high and unsullied renown. And if the 
 benefactors of mankind, when they rest from their noble labors, 
 shall be permitted to enjoy hereafter, as an appropriate reward of 
 their virtue, the privilege of looking down upon the blessings with 
 which their exertions and charities, and perhaps their toils and 
 sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence, it will 
 not, in a state of exalted purity and wisdom, be the founders of 
 mighty dynasties, the conquerors of new empires, the Caesars, 
 Alexanders, and Tamerlanes ; nor the mere Kings and Counsel- 
 lors, Presidents and Senators, who have lived for their party 
 chiefly, and for their country only incidentally, often sacrificing to 
 their own aggrandizement or that of their faction the good of their 
 fellow-creatures ; it will not be they who will be gratified by con- 
 templating the monuments of their inglorious fame ; but those 
 will enjoy that delight and march in that triumph, who can trace 
 the remote effects of their enlightened benevolence in the im- 
 proved condition of their species, and exult in the reflection, that 
 the change which they at last, perhaps after many years, survey, 
 with eyes that age and sorrow can make dim no more, of Knowl- 
 edge become Power, Virtue sharing that Empire, Superstition 
 dethroned, and Tyranny exiled, is, if even only in some small and 
 very slight degree, yet still in some degree, the fruit, precious if 
 costly, and though late repaid yet long enduring, of their own 
 self-denial and strenuous exertion, of their own mite of charity 
 and aid to education wisely bestowed, and of the hardships and 
 hazards which they encountered here below. 
 
 Masonry requires of its Initiates and votaries nothing that is 
 impracticable. It does not demand that they should undertake 
 to climb to those lofty and sublime peaks of a theoretical and im- 
 aginary unpractical virtue, high and cold and remote as the eternal 
 snows that wrap the shoulders of Chimborazo, and at least as in- 
 accessible as they. It asks that alone to be done which is easy to 
 be clone. It overtasks no one's strength, and asks no one to go 
 beyond his means and capacities. It does not expect one whose 
 business or profession yields him little more than the wants of 
 himself and his family require, and whose time is necessarily oc- 
 cupied by his daily vocations, to abandon or neglect the business
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 173 
 
 by which he and his children live, and devote himself and his 
 means to the diffusion of knowledge among men. It does not ex- 
 pect him to publish books for the people, or to lecture, to the ruin 
 of his private affairs, or to found academies and colleges, build up 
 libraries, and entitle himself to statues. 
 
 But it does require and expect every man of us to do something, 
 within and according to his means; and there is no Mason who 
 cannot do some thing, if not alone, then by combination and asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 If a Lodge cannot aid in founding a school or an academy it 
 can still do something. It can educate one boy or girl, at least, 
 the child of some poor or departed brother. And it should never 
 be forgotten, that in the poorest unregarded child that seems 
 abandoned to ignorance and vice may slumber the virtues of a 
 Socrates, the intellect of a Bacon or a Bossuet, the genius of a 
 Shakespeare, the capacity to benefit mankind of a Washington ; 
 and that in rescuing him from the mire in which he is plunged, 
 and giving him the means of education and development, the 
 Lodge that does it may be the direct and immediate means cf con- 
 ferring upon the world as great a boon as that given it by John 
 Faust the boy of Mentz ; may perpetuate the liberties of a country 
 and change the destinies of nations, and write a new chapter in 
 the history of the world. 
 
 For we never know the importance of the act we do. The 
 daughter of Pharaoh little thought what she was doing for' the 
 human race, and the vast unimaginable consequences that de- 
 pended on her charitable act, when she drew the little child of a 
 Hebrew woman from among the rushes that grew along the bank 
 oi the Nile, and determined to rear it as if it were her own. 
 
 How often has an act of charity, costing the doer little, given 
 to the world a great painter, a great musician, a great inventor! 
 How often has such an act developed the ragged boy into the ben- 
 efactor of his race ! On what small and apparently unimportant 
 circumstances have turned and hinged the fates of the world's 
 great conquerors. There is no law that limits the returns that 
 shall be reaped from a single good deed. The widow's mite may 
 not only be as acceptable to God, but may produce as great results 
 as the rich man's costly offerinrr. The poorest boy. helped by be- 
 nevolence, may come to lead armies, to control senates, to decide 
 on peace and war, to dictate to cabinets ; and his magnificent
 
 174 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 thoughts and noble words may be law many years hereafter to mil- 
 lions of men yet unborn. 
 
 But the opportunity to effect a great good does not often occur 
 to any one. It is worse than folly for one to lie idle and inert, and 
 expect the accident to befall him, by which his influences shall live 
 forever. He can expect that to happen, only in consequence of one 
 or many or all of a long series of acts. He can expect to benefit 
 the world only as men attain other results; by continuance, by 
 persistence, by a steady and uniform habit of laboring for the 
 enlightenment of the world, to the extent of his means and ca- 
 pacity. 
 
 For it is, in all instances, by steady labor, by giving enough of 
 application to our work, and having enough of time for the doing 
 of it, by regular pains-taking, and the plying of constant assidui- 
 ties, and not by any process of legerdemain, that we secure the 
 strength and the staple of real excellence. It was thus that De- 
 mosthenes, clause after clause, and sentence after sentence, elabo- 
 rated to the uttermcst his immortal orations. It was thus that 
 Newton pioneered his way, by the steps of an ascending geometry, 
 to the mechanism of the Heavens, and Le Verrier added a planet 
 to our Solar System. 
 
 It is a most erroneous opinion that those who have left the most 
 stupendous monuments of intellect behind them, were not differ- 
 ently exercised from the rest of the species, but only differently 
 gifted ; that they signalized themselves only by their talent, and 
 hardly ever by their industry ; for it is in truth to the most stren- 
 uous application of those commonplace faculties which are dif- 
 fused among all, that they are indebted for the glories which now 
 encircle their remembrance and their name. 
 
 We must not imagine it to be a vulgarizing of genius, that it 
 should be lighted up in any other way than by a direct inspiration 
 from Heaven ; nor ove-rlook the steadfastness of purpose, the devo- 
 tion to some single but great object, the unweariedness of labor 
 that is given, not in convulsive and preternatural throes, but by 
 little and little as the strength of the mind may bear it ; the accu- 
 mulation of many small efforts, instead of a few grand and gigan- 
 tic, but perhaps irregular movements, on the part of energies that 
 are marvellous ; by which former alone the great results are 
 brought out that write their enduring records on the face of the 
 earth and in the history of nations and of man.
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 175 
 
 We must not overlook these elements, to which genius owes the 
 best and proudest of her achievements ; nor imagine that qualities 
 so generally possessed as patience and pains-taking, and resolute 
 industry, have no share in upholding a distinction so illustrious 
 as that of the benefactor of his kind. 
 
 We must not forget that great results are most ordinarily pro- 
 duced by an aggregate of many contributions and exertions ; as it 
 is the invisible particles of vapor, each separate and distinct from 
 the other, that, rising from the oceans and their bays and gulfs, 
 from lakes and rivers, and wide morasses and overflowed plains, 
 float away as clouds, and distill upon the earth in dews, and fall in 
 showers and rain and snows upon the broad plains and rude moun- 
 tains, and make the great navigable streams that are the arteries 
 along which flows the life-blood of a country. 
 
 And so Masonry can do much, if each Mason be content to do 
 his share, and if their united efforts are directed by wise counsels 
 to a common purpose. "It is for God and for Omnipotency to do 
 mighty things in a moment ; but by degrees to grow to greatness 
 is the course that He hath left for man." 
 
 If Masonry will but be true to her mission, and Masons to their 
 promises and obligations if, re-entering vigorously upon a career 
 of beneficence, she and they will but pursue it earnestly and unfal- 
 teringly, remembering that our contributions to the cause of char- 
 ity and education then deserve the greatest credit when it costs us 
 something, the curtailing of a comfort or the relinquishment of a 
 luxury, to make them if we will but give aid to what were once 
 Masonry's great schemes for human improvement, not fitfully and 
 spasmodically, but regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise 
 and the springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up 
 into the heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be 
 attained and a great work done. And then it will most surely be 
 seen that Masonry is not effete or impotent, nor degenerated nor 
 drooping to a fatal decay.
 
 XL 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE; 
 
 OR 
 
 PRINCE AMETH. 
 [Elu of the Twelve.] 
 
 THE duties of a Prince Ameth are, to be earnest, true, reliable, 
 and sincere; to protect the people against illegal impositions and 
 exactions ; to contend for their political rights, and to see, as far as 
 he may or can, that those bear the burdens who reap the benefits 
 of the Government. 
 
 You are to be true unto all men. 
 
 You are to be frank and sincere in all things. 
 
 You are to be earnest in doing whatever it is your duty to do. 
 
 And no man must repent that he has relied upon your resolve, 
 your profession, or your word. 
 
 The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy 
 with his kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family, 
 all connected with himself by those invisible links, and that 
 mighty net-work of circumstance, forged and woven by God. 
 
 Feeling that sympathy, it is his first Masonic duty to serve his 
 fellow-man. At his first entrance into the Order, he ceases to be 
 isolated, and becomes one of a great brotherhood, assuming new 
 duties toward every Mason that lives, as every Mason at the same 
 moment assumes them toward him. 
 
 Nor are those duties on his part confined to Masons alone. He 
 assumes many in regard to his country, and especially toward the 
 great, suffering masses of the common people ; for they too are his 
 brethren, and God hears them, inarticulate as the meanings oi 
 their misery are. By all proper means, of persuasion and influ- 
 176
 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 177 
 
 ence, and otherwise, if the occasion and emergency require, ne is 
 bound to defend them against oppression, and tyrannical and ille- 
 gal exactions. 
 
 He labors equally to defend and to improve the people. He does 
 not flatter them to mislead them, nor fawn upon them to rule 
 them, nor conceal his opinions to humor them, nor tell them that 
 they can never err, and that their voice is the voice of God. He 
 knows that the safety of every free government, and its continu- 
 ance and perpetuity depend upon the virtue and intelligence of 
 the common people; and that, unless their liberty is of such a 
 kind as arms can neither procure nor take away ; unless it is the 
 fruit of manly courage, of justice, temperance, and generous vir- 
 tue unless, being such, it has taken deep rcot in the minds and 
 hearts of the people at large, there will not long be wanting those 
 who will snatch from them by treachery what they have acquired 
 by arms or institutions. 
 
 He knows that if, after being released from the toils of war, the 
 people neglect the arts of peace ; if their peace and liberty be a 
 state of warfare; if war be their only virtue, and the summit of 
 their praise, they will soon find peace the most adverse to their 
 interests. It will be only a more distressing war ; and that which 
 they imagined liberty will be the worst of slavery. For, unless by 
 the means of knowledge and morality, not frothy and loquacious, 
 but genuine, unadulterated, and sincere, they clear the horizon of 
 the mind from those mists of error and passion which arise from 
 ignorance and vice, they will always have those who will bend their 
 necks to the yoke as if they were brutes ; who, notwithstanding all 
 their triumphs, will put them up to the highest bidder, as if they 
 were mere booty made in war; and find an exuberant source of 
 wealth and power, in the people's ignorance, prejudice, and pas- 
 sions. 
 
 The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy 
 to avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and 
 their families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the 
 poor, and labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice and low 
 indulgence, and to keep the industrious from starving in sight of 
 luxurious festivals, will find that it has cherished, in that avarice, 
 ambition, sensuality, selfishness, and luxury of the one class, and 
 that degradation, misery, drunkenness, ignorance, and brutaliza- 
 tion of the other, more stubborn and intractable despots at home
 
 178 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 than it ever encountered in the field ; and even its very bowels will 
 be continually teeming with the intolerable progeny of tyrants. 
 
 These are the first enemies to be subdued; this constitutes the 
 campaign of Peace ; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but 
 bloodless ; and far more honorable than those trophies which are 
 purchased only by slaughter and rapine ; and if not victors in this 
 service, it is in vain to have been victorious over the despotic enemy 
 in the field. 
 
 For if any people thinks that it is a grander; a more benefi- 
 cial, or a wiser policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps 
 and imposts, for increasing the revenue and draining the life-blood 
 of an impoverished people; to multiply its naval and military 
 force ; to rival in craft the ambassadors of foreign states ; to plot 
 the swallowing up of foreign territory ; to make crafty treaties and 
 alliances; to rule prostrate states and abject provinces by fear and 
 force; than to administer unpolluted justice to the people, to re- 
 lieve the condition and raise the estate of the toiling masses, redress 
 the injured and succor the distressed and conciliate the discon- 
 tented, and speedily restore to every one his own ; then that people 
 is involved in a cloud of error, and will too late perceive, when the 
 illusion of these mighty benefits has vanished, that in neglecting 
 these, which it thought inferior considerations, it has only been 
 precipitating its own ruin and despair. 
 
 Unfortunately, every age presents its own special problem, most 
 difficult and often impossible to solve ; and that which this age 
 offers, and forces upon the consideration of all thinking men, is 
 this how, in a populous and wealthy country, blessed with free 
 institutions and a constitutional government, are the great masses 
 of the manual-labor class to be enabled to have steady work at fair 
 wages, to be kept from starvation, and their children from vice and 
 debauchery, and to be furnished with that degree, not of mere 
 reading and writing, but of knozvledge, that shall fit them intelli- 
 gently to do the duties and exercise the privileges of freemen ; 
 even to be intrusted with the dangerous right of suffrage? 
 
 For though we do not know why God, being infinitely merciful 
 as well as wise, has so ordered it. it seems to be unquestionably his 
 law, that even in civilized and Christian countries, the large mass 
 of the population shall be fortunate, if, during their whole life, 
 from infancy to old age, in health and sickness, they have enough 
 of the commonest and coarsest food to keep themselves and their
 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 179 
 
 children from the continual gnawing of hunger enough of the 
 commonest and coarsest clothing to protect themselves and their 
 little ones from indecent exposure and the bitter cold ; and if they 
 have over their heads the rudest shelter. 
 
 And He seems to have enacted this law which no human com- 
 munity has yet found the means to abrogate that when a country 
 becomes populous, capital shall concentrate in the hands of a lim- 
 ited number of persons, and labor become more and more at its 
 mercy, until mere manual labor, that of the weaver and iron- 
 worker, and other artisans, eventually ceases to be worth more 
 than a bare subsistence, and often, in great cities and vast extents 
 of country, not even that, and goes or crawls about in rags, beg- 
 ging, and starving for want of work. 
 
 While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed, 
 it is not always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance 
 to work at anything like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing 
 object of a man's life. The capitalist can live without employing 
 the laborer, and discharges him whenever that labor ceases to be 
 profitable. At the moment when the weather is most inclement, 
 provisions dearest, and rents highest, he turns him off to starve. 
 If the day-laborer is taken sick, his wages stop. When old, he has 
 no pension to retire upon. His children cannot be sent to school ; 
 for before their bones are hardened they must get to work lest they 
 starve. The man, strong and able-bodied, works for a shilling or 
 two a day, and the woman shivering over her little pan of coals, 
 when the mercury drops far below zero, after her hungry children 
 have wailed themselves to sleep, sews by the dim light of her lonely 
 candle, for a bare pittance, selling her life to him who bargained 
 only for the work of her needle. 
 
 Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees, 
 that with the price of one child's life they may continue life in 
 those that survive. Little girls with bare feet sweep the street- 
 crossings, when the winter wind pinches them, and beg piteously 
 for pennies of those who wear warm furs. Children grow up in 
 squalid misery and brutal ignorance ; want compels virgin and wife 
 to prostitute themselves : women starve and freeze, and lean up 
 against the walls of workhouses, like bundles of foul rags, all night 
 long, and night after night, when the cold rain falls, and there 
 chances to be no room for them within : and hundreds of families 
 are crowded into a single building, rife with horrors and teeming
 
 jgO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 with foul air and pestilence; where men, women, and children 
 huddle together in their filth ; all ages and all colors sleeping in- 
 discriminately together ; while, in a great, free, Republican State, 
 in the full vigor of its youth and strength, one person in every 
 seventeen is a pauper receiving charity. 
 
 How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal dis- 
 ease is by far the most important of all social problems. What is 
 to be done with pauperism and over-supply of labor ? How is the 
 life of any country to last, when brutality and drunken semi-bar- 
 barism vote, and hold offices in their gift, and by fit representatives 
 of themselves control a government? How, if not wisdom and 
 authority, but turbulence and low vice are to exalt to senatorships 
 miscreants reeking with the odors and pollution of the hell, the 
 prize-ring, the brothel, and the stock-exchange, where gambling is 
 legalized and rascality is laudable? 
 
 Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and co-oper- 
 ation, to improve and inform as well as to protect the people ; to 
 better their physical condition, relieve their miseries, supply their 
 wants, and minister to their necessities. Let every Mason in this 
 good work do all that may be in his power. 
 
 For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be 
 free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate 
 and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and 
 brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a 
 slave. And it usually happens, by the appointment, and, as it 
 were, retributive justice of the Deity, that that people which can - 
 not govern themselves, and moderate their passions, but crouch 
 under the slavery of their lusts and vices, are delivered up to the 
 sway of those whom they abhor, and made to submit to an invol- 
 untary servitude. 
 
 And it is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the 
 constitution of Nature, that he who, from the imbecility or de- 
 rangement of his intellect, is incapable of governing himself, 
 should, like a minor, be committed to the government of another. 
 
 Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes 
 one great brotherhood ; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, 
 and therefore bound to sympathize with each other. 
 
 For no tower of Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its pos- 
 sessor above the trials and fears and frailties of humanity. No 
 human hand ever built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out
 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. l8l 
 
 affliction, pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and 
 death, are dispensations that level everything. They know none, 
 high nor low. The chief wants of life, the great and grave necessi- 
 ties of the human soul, give exemption to none. They make all 
 poor, all weak. They put supplication in the mouth of every 
 human being, as truly as in that of the meanest beggar. 
 
 But the principle of misery is not an evil principle. We err, 
 and the consequences teach us wisdom. All elements, all the laws 
 of things around us, minister to this end ; and through the paths 
 of painful error and mistake, it is the design of Providence to lead 
 us to truth and happiness. If erring only taught us to err : if 
 mistakes confirmed us in imprudence; if the miseries caused by 
 vicious indulgence had a natural tendency to make us more abject 
 slaves of vice, then suffering would be wholly evil. But, on the 
 contrary, all tends and is designed to produce amendment and im- 
 provement. Suffering is the discipline of virtue ; of that which is 
 infinitely better than happiness, and yet embraces in itself all essen- 
 tial happiness. It nourishes, invigorates, and perfects it. Virtue 
 is the prize of the severely-contested race and hard-fought battle ; 
 and it is worth all the fatigue and wounds of the conflict. Man 
 should go forth with a brave and strong heart, to battle with ca- 
 lamity. He is to master it, and not let it become his master. He 
 is not to forsake the post of trial and of peril ; but to stand firmly 
 in his lot, until the great word of Providence shall bid him fly, or 
 bid him sink. With resolution and courage the Mason is to do 
 the work which it is appointed for him to do, looking through the 
 dark cloud of human calamity, to the end that rises high and 
 bright before him. The lot of sorrow is great and sublime. None 
 suffer forever, nor for nought, nor without purpose. It is the 
 ordinance of God's wisdom, and of His Infinite Love, to procure 
 for us infinite happiness and glory. 
 
 Virtue is the truest liberty ; nor is he free who stoops to pas- 
 sions ; nor he in bondage who serves a noble master. Examples 
 are the best and most lasting lectures ; virtue the best example. 
 He that hath clone good deeds and set good precedents, in sincerity, 
 is happy. Time shall not outlive his worth. He lives truly after 
 death, whose good deeds are his pillarsof remembrance : andno chy 
 but adds some grains to his heap of glory. Good works are seeds, 
 that after sowing return us a continual harvest ; and the memory 
 of noble actions is more enduring than monuments of marble.
 
 1 82 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Life is a school. The world is neither prison nor penitentiary, 
 nor a palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and specta- 
 cles; but a place of instruction, and discipline. Life is given for 
 moral and spiritual training; and the entire course of the great 
 school of life is an education for virtue, happiness, and a future 
 existence. The periods of Life are its terms; all human condi- 
 tions, its forms; all human employments, its lessons. Families 
 are the primary departments of this moral education ; the various 
 circles of society, its advanced stages; Kingdoms and Republics, 
 its universities. 
 
 Riches and Poverty, Gayeties and Sorrows, Marriages and 
 Funerals, the ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate, or un- 
 toward and painful, are all lessons. Events are not blindly and 
 carelessly flung together. Providence does not school one man, 
 and screen another from the fiery trial of its lessons. It has nei- 
 ther rich favorites nor poor victims. One event happeneth to all. 
 One end and one design concern and urge all men. 
 
 The prosperous man has been at school. Perhaps he has thought 
 that it was a great thing, and he a great personage ; but he has 
 been merely a pupil. He thought, perhaps, that he was Master, 
 and had nothing to do, but to direct and command ; but there was 
 ever a Master above him, the Master of Life. He looks not at our 
 splendid state, or our many pretensions, nor at the aids and appli- 
 ances of our learning; but at our learning itself. He puts the 
 poor and the rich upon the same form ; and knows no difference 
 between them, but their progress. 
 
 If from prosperity we have learned moderation, temperance, 
 candor, modesty, gratitude to God, and generosity to man, then we 
 are entitled to be honored and rewarded. If we have learned self- 
 ishness, self-indulgence, wrong-doing, and vice, to forget and 
 overlook our less fortunate brother, and to scoff at the providence 
 of God, then we are unworthy and dishonored, though we have 
 been nursed in affluence, or taken our degrees from the lineage of 
 an hundred noble descends ; as truly so, in the eye of Heaven, and of 
 all right-thinking men, as though we lay, victims of beggary and 
 disease, in the hospital, by the hedge, or on the dung-hill. The 
 most ordinary human equity looks not at the school, but at the 
 scholar : and the equity of Heaven will not look beneath that 
 mark. 
 
 The poor man also is at school. Let him take care that he
 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. * 183 
 
 learn, rather than complain. Let him hold to his integrity, his 
 candor, and his kindness of heart. Let him beware of envy, and 
 of bondage, and keep his self-respect. The body's toil is nothing. 
 Let him beware of the mind's drudgery and degradation. While 
 he betters his condition if he can, let him be more anxious to bet- 
 ter his soul. Let him be willing, while poor, and even if always 
 poor, to learn poverty's great lessons, fortitude, cheerfulness, con- 
 tentment, and implicit confidence in God's Providence. With 
 these, and patience, calmness, self-command, disinterestedness, and 
 affectionate kindness, the humble dwelling may be hallowed, and 
 made more dear and noble than the loftiest palace. Let him, 
 above all things, see that he lose not his independence. Let him 
 not cast himself, a creature poorer than the poor, an indolent, help- 
 less, despised beggar, on the kindness of others. Every man should 
 choose to have God for his Master, rather than man ; and escape 
 not from this school, either by dishonesty or alms-taking, lest he 
 fall into that state, worse than disgrace, where he can have no 
 respect for himself. 
 
 The ties of Society teach us to love one another. That is a mis- 
 erable society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought 
 to be supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and pol- 
 ished insincerity ; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust rule, in 
 place of simplicity, confidence, and kindness. 
 
 So, too, the social state teaches modesty and gentleness ; and 
 from neglect, and notice unworthily bestowed on others, and injus- 
 tice, and the world's failure to appreciate us, we learn patience and 
 quietness, to be superior to society's opinion, not cynical and bit- 
 ter, but gentle, candid, and affectionate still. 
 
 Death is the great Teacher, stern, cold, inexorable, irresistible ; 
 whom the collected might of the world cannot stay or ward off. 
 The breath, that parting from the lips of King or beggar, scarcely 
 stirs the hushed air, cannot be bought, or brought back for a mo- 
 ment, with the wealth of Empires. What a lesson is this, teach- 
 ing our frailty and feebleness, and an Infinite Power beyond us ! 
 It is a fearful lesson, that never becomes familiar. It walks through 
 the earth in dread mystery, and lays its hands upon all. It is a 
 universal lesson, that is read everywhere and by all men. Its mes- 
 sage comes every year and every day. The past years are crowded 
 with its sad and solemn mementoes; and death's finger traces its 
 handwriting upon the walls of every human habitation.
 
 ig^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It teaches us Duty ; to act our part well ; to fulfill the work as- 
 signed us. When one is dying, and after he is dead, there is but 
 one question: Has he lived well? There is no evil in death but 
 that which life makes. 
 
 There are hard lessons in the school of God's Providence ; and 
 yet the school of life is carefully adjusted, in all its arrangements 
 and tasks, to man's powers and passions. There is no extravagance 
 in its teachings ; nor is anything done for the sake of present 
 effect. The whole course of human life is a conflict with difficul- 
 ties ; and, if rightly conducted, a progress in improvement. It is 
 never too late for man to learn. Not part only, but the whole, of 
 life is a school. There never comes a time, even amidst the decays 
 of age, when it is fit to lay aside the eagerness of acquisition, or the 
 cheerfulness of endeavor. Man walks, all through the course of 
 life, in patience and strife, and sometimes in darkness ; for, from 
 patience is to come perfection ; from strife, triumph is to issue ; 
 from the cloud of darkness the lightning is to flash that shall open 
 the way to eternity. 
 
 Let the Mason be faithful in the school of life, and to all its les- 
 sons ! Let him not learn nothing, nor care not whether he learns 
 or not. Let not the years pass over him, witnesses of only his 
 sloth and indifference ; or see him zealous to acquire everything 
 but virtue. Nor let him labor only for himself; nor forget that 
 the humblest man that lives is his brother, and hath a claim on his 
 sympathies and kind offices ; and that beneath the rough garments 
 which labor wears may beat hearts as noble as throb under the 
 stars of princes. 
 
 God, who counts by souls, not stations, 
 
 Loves and pities you and me; 
 For to Him all vain distinctions 
 
 Are as pebbles on the sea. 
 
 Nor are the other duties inculcated in this Degree of less impor- 
 tance. Truth, a Mason is early told, is a Divine attribute and the 
 foundation of every virtue ; and frankness, reliability, sincerity, 
 straightforwardness, plain-dealing, are but different modes in 
 which Truth develops itself. The dead, the absent, the innocent, 
 and those that trust him, no Mason will deceive willingly. To all 
 these he owes a nobler justice, in that they are the most certain 
 trials of human Equity. Only the most abandoned of men, said
 
 SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 185 
 
 Cicero, will deceive him, who would have remained uninjured if 
 he had not trusted. All the noble deeds that have beat their 
 marches through succeeding ages have proceeded from men of 
 truth and genuine courage. The man who is always true is both 
 virtuous and wise; and thus possesses the greatest guards of 
 safety : for the law has not power to strike the virtuous ; nor can 
 fortune subvert the wise. 
 
 The bases of Masonry being morality and virtue, it is by study- 
 ing one and practising the other, that the conduct of a Mason be- 
 comes irreproachable. The good of Humanity being its principal 
 object, disinterestedness is one of the first virtues that it requires 
 of its members; for that is the source of justice and benefi- 
 cence. 
 
 To pity the misfortunes of others ; to be humble, but without 
 meanness; to be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every 
 sentiment of hatred and revenge ; to show himself magnanimous 
 and liberal, without ostentation and without profusion ; to be the 
 enemy of vice ; to pay homage to wisdom and virtue ; to respect 
 innocence ; to be constant and patient in adversity, and modest in 
 prosperity ; to avoid every irregularity that stains the soul and dis- 
 tempers the body it is by following these precepts that a Mason 
 will become a good citizen, a faithful husband, a tender father, an 
 obedient son, and a true brother ; will honor friendship, and fulfill 
 with ardor the duties which virtue and the social relations impose 
 upon him. 
 
 It is because Masonry imposes upon us these duties that it is 
 properly and significantly styled zvork; and he who imagines that 
 he becomes a Mason by merely taking the first two or three De- 
 grees, and that he may, having leisurely stepped upon that small 
 elevation, thenceforward worthily wear the honors of Masonry, 
 without labor or exertion, or self-denial or sacrifice, and that there 
 is nothing to be done in Masonry, is strangely deceived. 
 
 Is it true that nothing remains to be clone in Masonry ? 
 
 Does one Brother no longer proceed by law against another 
 Brother of his Lodge, in regard to matters that coulrl be easily set- 
 tled within the Masonic family circle? 
 
 Has the duel, that hideous heritage of barbarism, interdicted 
 among Brethren by our fundamental laws, and denounced by the 
 municipal code, yet disappeared from the soil we inhabit ? Do Ma- 
 sons of high rank religiously refrain from it ; or do they not, bow- 
 13
 
 186 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ing to a corrupt public opinion, submit to its arbitrament, despite 
 the scandal which it occasions to the Order, and in violation of the 
 feeble restraint of their oath? 
 
 Do Masons no longer form uncharitable opinions of their Breth- 
 ren, enter harsh judgments against them, and judge themselves by 
 one rule and their Brethren by another ? 
 
 Has Masonry any well-regulated system of charity? Has it 
 done that which it should have done for the cause of education? 
 Where are its schools, its academies, its colleges, its hospitals, and 
 infirmaries ? 
 
 Are political controversies now conducted with no violence and 
 bitterness ? 
 
 Do Masons refrain from defaming and denouncing their Breth- 
 ren who differ with them in religious or political opinions ? 
 
 What grand social problems or useful projects engage our atten- 
 tion at our communications ? Where in our Lodges are lectures 
 habitually delivered for the real instruction of the Brethren? Do 
 not our sessions pass in the discussion of minor matters of busi- 
 ness, the settlement of points of order and questions of mere 
 administration, and the admission and advancement of Can- 
 didates, whom after their admission we take no pains to in- 
 struct ? 
 
 In what Lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated ; 
 corrupted as they are by time, until their true features can 
 scarcely be distinguished ; and where are those great primi- 
 tive truths of revelation taught, which Masonry has preserved to 
 the world ? 
 
 We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possess- 
 ors qualify themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the 
 aims and objects of Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates 
 who governed empires, does your influence enter into practical life 
 and operate efficiently in behalf of well-regulated and constitu- 
 tional liberty ? 
 
 Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need 
 concord, union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you 
 men who excite rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and 
 violent controversy and ambitious pretensions? How do your 
 own words and acts agree? If your Masonry is a nullity, how 
 can you exercise any influence on others? 
 
 Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high-
 
 SUBLIME ELECT Ol- THE TWELVE. 187 
 
 wrought eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that 
 you are what you should be, and nowhere do you look upon your- 
 selves as you are. Is it true that all our actions are so many acts 
 of homage to virtue ? Explore the recesses of your hearts ; let us 
 examine ourselves with an impartial eye, and make answer to our 
 own questioning! Can we bear to ourselves the consoling testi- 
 mony that we always rigidly perform our duties ; that we even half 
 perform them? 
 
 Let us away with this odious self-flattery ! Let us be men, if we 
 cannot be sages! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent, 
 cannot wholly change men's natures. They enlighten them, they 
 point out the true way ; but they can lead them in it, only by re- 
 pressing the fire of their passions, and subjugating their selfish- 
 ness. Alas, these conquer, and Masonry is forgotten ! 
 
 After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent 
 Brethren, who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every 
 one of us who dies, however useless his life, has been a model of 
 all the virtues, a very child of the celestial light. In Eg>pt, 
 among our old Masters, where Masonry was more cultivated than 
 vanity, no one could gain admittance to the sacred asylum of the 
 tomb until he had passed under the most solemn judgment. A 
 grave tribunal sat in judgment upon all, even the kings. They 
 said to the dead, "Whoever thou art, give account to thy country 
 of thy actions! What hast thou done with thy time and life? 
 The law interrogates thee, thy country hears thee, Truth sits in 
 judgment on thee!" Princes came there to be judged, escorted 
 only by their virtues and their vices. A public accuser recounted 
 the history of the dead man's life, and threw the blaze of the torch 
 of truth on all his actions. If it were adjudged that he had led 
 an evil life, his memory was condemned in the presence of the 
 nation, and his body was denied the honors of sepulture. What a 
 lesson the old Masonry taught to the sons of the people ! 
 
 Is 'it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered, 
 affords no shade ; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance- 
 guard of Truth? No. Is freedom yet universal? Have igno- 
 rance and prejudice disappeared from the earth? Are there no 
 longer enmities among men ? Do cupidity and falsehood no longer 
 exist? Do toleration and harmony prevail among religious and 
 political sects? There are works yet left for Masonry to accom- 
 plish, greater than the twelve labors of Hercules; to advance ever
 
 1 88 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 resolutely and steadily; to enlighten the minds of the people, to 
 reconstruct society, to reform the laws, and to improve the public 
 morals. The eternity in front of it is as infinite as the one be- 
 hind. And Masonry cannot cease to labor in the cause of social 
 progress, without ceasing to be true to itself, without ceasing to be 
 Masonry.
 
 1 
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 
 
 [Master Architect.] 
 
 THE great duties that are inculcated by the lessons taught by 
 the working-instruments of a Grand Master Architect, demanding 
 so much of us, and taking for granted the capacity to perform 
 them faithfully and fully, bring us at once to reflect upon the dig- 
 nity of human nature, and the vast powers and capacities of the 
 human soul ; and to that theme we invite your attention in this 
 Degree. Let us begin to rise from earth toward the Stars. 
 
 Evermore the human soul struggles toward the light, toward 
 God, and the Infinite. It is especially so in its afflictions. Words 
 go but a little way into the depths of sorrow. The thoughts that 
 writhe there in silence, that go into the stillness of Infinitude and 
 Eternity, have no emblems. Thoughts enough come there, such 
 as no tongue ever uttered. They do not so much want human 
 sympathy, as higher help. There is a loneliness in deep sorrow 
 which the Deity alone can relieve. Alone, the mind wrestles with 
 the great problem of calamity, and seeks the solution from the 
 Infinite Providence of Heaven, and thus is led directly to God. 
 
 There are many things in us of which we are not distinctly 
 conscious. To waken that slumbering consciousness into life, and 
 so to lead the soul up to the Light, is one office of every great 
 ministration to human nature, whether its vehicle be the pen, the 
 pencil, or the tongue. We are unconscious of the intensity and 
 awfulness of the life within us. Health and sickness, joy and sor- 
 row, success and disappointment, life and death, love and loss, are 
 
 189
 
 igO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 familiar words upon our lips ; and we do not know to what depths 
 they point \vithin us. 
 
 We seem never to know what any thing means or is worth until 
 we have lost it. Many an organ, nerve, and fibre in our bodily 
 frame performs its silent part for years, and we are quite uncon- 
 scious of !*s value. It is not until it is injured that we discover 
 that value, and find how'essential it was to our happiness and com- 
 fort. We never know the full significance of 'che words, "prop- 
 erty," "ease," and "health;" the wealth of meaning in the fond 
 epithets, "parent," "child," "beloved," and "friend," until the 
 thing or the person is taken away; until, in place of the bright, 
 visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow, where nothing 
 is : where we stretch out our hands in vain, and strain our eyes 
 upon dark and dismal vacuity. Yet, in that vacuity, we do not 
 lose the object that we loved. It becomes only the more real to us. 
 Our blessings not only brighten when they depart, but are fixed 
 in enduring reality ; and love and friendship receive their everlast- 
 ing seal under the cold impress of death. 
 
 A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies be- 
 neath all the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a 
 majesty around us, in all our little worldliness. The rude peasant 
 from the Apennines, asleep at the foot of a pillar in a majestic 
 Roman church, seems not to hear or see, but to dream only of the 
 herd he feeds or the ground he tills in the mountains. But the 
 choral symphonies fall softly upon his ear, and the gilded arches 
 are dimly seen through his half-slumbering eyelids. 
 
 So the soul, however given up to the occupations of daily life, 
 cannot quite lose the sense of where it is, and of what is above it 
 and around it. The scene of its actual engagements may be small ; 
 the path of its steps, beaten and familiar; the objects it handles, 
 easily spanned, and quite worn out with daily uses. So it may be, 
 and amidst such things that we all live. So we live our little life : 
 but Heaven is above us and all around and close to us ; and Eter- 
 nity is before us and behind us : and suns and stars are silent wit- 
 nesses and watchers over us. We are enfolded by Infinity. Infi- 
 nite Powers and Infinite spaces lie all around us. The dread arch 
 of Mystery spreads over us, and no voice ever pierced it. Eternity 
 is enthroned amid Heaven's myriad starry heights ; and no utter- 
 ance or word ever came from those far-off and silent spaces. 
 Above, is that awful majesty ; around us, everywhere, it stretches
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. IQI 
 
 off into infinity ; and beneath it is this little struggle of life, this 
 poor day's conflict, this busy ant-hill of Time. 
 
 But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the 
 sounds of music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude, 
 the shout of joy and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and 
 all-surrounding Infinitude ; but also, amidst the stir and noise of 
 visible life, from the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes 
 up an imploring call, a beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and 
 unutterable, for revelation, wailingly and in almost speechless 
 agony praying the dread arch of mystery to break, and the 
 stars that roll above the waves of mortal trouble, to speak ; 
 the enthroned majesty of those awful heights to find a voice ; 
 the mysterious and reserved heavens to come near; and all to 
 tell us what they alone know ; to give us information of the 
 loved and lost ; to make known to us what we are, and whither we 
 are going. 
 
 Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. 
 In him and about him is that which should fill his life with maj- 
 esty and sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has 
 thus flashed down from heaven into the heart of every one that 
 lives. There is no being so base and abandoned but hath some 
 traits of that sacredness left upon him ; something, so much per- 
 haps in discordance with his general repute, that he hides it from 
 all around him; some sanctuary in his soul, where no one may 
 enter; some sacred inclosure, where the memory of a child is, or 
 the image of a venerated parent, or the remembrance of a pure 
 love, or the echo of some word of kindness once spoken to him ; 
 an echo that will never die away. 
 
 Life is no negative, or superficial or worldly existence. Our 
 steps are evermore haunted with thoughts, far beyond their own 
 range, which some have regarded as the reminiscences of a pre- 
 existent state. So it is with us all, in the beaten and worn track 
 of this wordlv pilgrimage. There is more here, than the world 
 we live in. It is not all of life to live. An unseen and infinite 
 presence is here ; a sense of something greater than we possess ; a 
 seeking, through all the void wastes of life, for a good beyond it ; 
 a crying out of the heart for interpretation ; a memory of the 
 dead, touching continually some vibrating thread in this great tis- 
 sue of mystery. 
 
 We all not only have better intimations, but are capable of bet-
 
 IQ2 . MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ter things than we know. The pressure of some great emergency 
 would develop in us powers, beyond the worldly bias of our spir- 
 its; and Heaven so deals with us, from time to time, as to call 
 forth those better things. There is hardly a family in the world 
 so selfish, but that, if one in it were doomed to die one, to be 
 selected by the others, it would be utterly impossible for its mem- 
 bers, parents and children, to choose out that victim; but that 
 each would say, "I will die; but I cannot choose." And in how 
 many, if that dire extremity had come, would not one and another 
 step forth, freed from the vile meshes of ordinary selfishness, and 
 say, like the Roman father and son, "Let the blow fall on me !" 
 There are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes 
 account of, or than we take note of; if we would but find them 
 out. And it is one part of our Masonic culture to find these traits 
 of power and sublime devotion, to revive these faded impressions 
 of generosity and self-sacrifice, the almost squandered bequests of 
 God's love and kindness to our souls ; and to induce us to yield 
 ourselves to their guidance and control. 
 
 Upon all conditions of men presses down one impartial law. To 
 all situations, to all fortunes, high or low, the mind gives their 
 character. They are, in effect, not what they are in themselves, 
 but what they are to the feeling of their possessors. The King 
 may be mean, degraded, miserable; the slave of ambition, fear, 
 voluptuousness, and every low passion. The Peasant may be the 
 real Monarch, the moral master of his fate, a free and lofty being, 
 more than a Prince in happiness, more than a King in honor. 
 
 Man is no bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, helpless and 
 irresponsible upon the tide of events. Out of the same circum- 
 stances, different men bring totally different results. The same 
 difficulty, distress, poverty, or misfortune, that breaks down one 
 man, builds up another and makes him strong. It is the very attri- 
 bute and glory of a man, that he can bend the circumstances of 
 his condition to the intellectual and moral purposes of his nature, 
 and it is the power and mastery of his will that chiefly distinguish 
 him from the brute. 
 
 The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new ele- 
 ment of his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, 
 and a ruling power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human 
 being sunk so low that he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise. 
 Because God commands him to rise, it is certain that he can rise.
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. IQ3 
 
 Every man has the pcnver, and should use it, to make all situations, 
 trials, and temptations instruments to promote his virtue and hap- 
 piness ; and is so far from being the creature of circumstances, 
 that he creates and controls them, making them to be all that they 
 are, of evil or of good, to him as a moral being. 
 
 Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The 
 eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon 
 the same creation ; but very different are the aspects which it bear' 
 to them. To the one, it is all beauty and gladness ; the waves < 
 ocean roll in light, and the mountains are covered with day. Life, 
 to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that 
 trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than 
 the eye sees ; a presence of profound joy on hill and valley, and 
 bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully gazes at the 
 same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly aspect. 
 The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar of 
 the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music 
 of the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness, the 
 cheerful light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The 
 great train of the seasons passes before him like a funeral proces- 
 sion ; and he sighs, and turns impatiently away. The eye makes 
 that which it looks upon ; the ear makes its own melodies and 
 discords ; the world without reflects the world within. 
 
 Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we 
 make them by our social character ; by our adaptation, or want of 
 adaptation to the social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of 
 the world. To the selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the 
 haughty and presuming, to the proud, who demand more than 
 they are likely to receive, to the jealous, ever afraid they shall not 
 receive enough, to those who are unreasonably sensitive about the 
 good or ill opinions of others, to all violators of the social laws, 
 the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and the sensual, to all these, 
 the social condition, from its very nature, will present annoyances, 
 disappointments, and pains, appropriate to their several charac- 
 ters. The benevolent affections will not revolve around selfish- 
 ness ; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness ; the proud, 
 haughtiness ; the passionate, anger ; and the violent, rudeness. 
 Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if 
 their own are forgotten ; and those who stoop to the lowest em- 
 braces of sense must not wonder, if others are not concerned to
 
 194 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 find their prostrate honor, and lift it up to the remembrance and 
 respect of the world. 
 
 To the gentle, many will be gentle; to the kind, many will be 
 kind. A good man will find that there is goodness in the world ; 
 an honest man will find that there is honesty in the world ; and a 
 man of principle will find principle and integrity in the minds of 
 others. 
 
 There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the 
 bitterest of evils ; and no trials which it may not transform into 
 the noblest and divinest blessings. There are no temptations from 
 which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling be- 
 fore them, vanquished and subdued. It is true that temptations 
 have a great power, and virtue often falls ; but the might of these 
 temptations lies not in themselves, but in the feebleness of our 
 own virtue, and the weakness of our own hearts. We rely too 
 much on the strength of our ramparts and bastions, and allow the 
 enemy to make his approaches, by trench and parallel, at his lei- 
 sure. The offer of dishonest gain and guilty pleasure makes the 
 honest man more honest, and the pure man more pure. They 
 raise his virtue to the height of towering indignation. The fair 
 occasion, the safe opportunity, the tempting chance become the 
 defeat and disgrace of the tempter. The honest and upright man 
 does not wait until temptation has made its approaches and 
 mounted its batteries on the last parallel. 
 
 But to the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt, 
 and the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and 
 through every avenue of thought and imagination. He is pre- 
 pared to capitulate before the first approach is commenced ; and 
 sends out the white flag when the enemy's advance comes in sight 
 of his walls. He makes occasions; or, if opportunities come not. 
 evil thoughts come, and he throws wide open the gates of his heart 
 and welcomes those bad visitors, and entertains them with a lavish 
 hospitality. 
 
 The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one 
 mind, while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independ- 
 ence, integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and 
 a healthful refreshment to others. To one, the world is a great 
 harmony, like a noble strain of music vvith infinite modulations ; 
 to another, it is a huge factory, the clash and clang of whose ma- 
 chinery jars'upon^his ears and fre f .s him to madness. Life is sub-
 
 GKAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 195 
 
 stantially the same thing to all who partake of its lot. Yet some 
 rise to virtue and glory ; while others, undergoing the same disci- 
 pline, and enjoying the same privileges, sink to shame and per- 
 dition. 
 
 Thorough, faithful, and honest endeavor to improve, is always 
 successful, and the highest happiness. To sigh sentimentally over 
 human misfortune, is fit only for the mind's childhood; and the 
 mind's misery is chiefly its own fault ; appointed, under the good 
 Providence of God, as the punisher and corrector of its fault. In 
 the long run, the mind will be happy, just in proportion to its 
 fidelity and wisdom. When it is miserable, it has planted the 
 thorns in its own path ; it grasps them, and cries out in loud com- 
 plaint ; and that complaint is but the louder confession that the 
 thorns which grew there, it planted. 
 
 A certain kind and degree of spirituality enter into the largest 
 part of even the most ordinary life. You can carry on no busi- 
 ness, without some faith in man. You cannot even dig in the 
 ground, without a reliance on the unseen result. You cannot 
 think or reason or even step, without confiding in the inward, 
 spiritual principles of your nature. All the affections and bonds, 
 and hopes and interests of life centre in the spiritual ; and you 
 know that if that central bond were broken, the world would rush 
 to chaos. 
 
 Believe that there is a God ; that He is our father ; that He has 
 a paternal interest in our welfare and improvement ; that He has 
 given us powers, by means of which we may escape from sin and 
 ruin ; that He has destined us to a future life of endless progress 
 toward perfection and a knowledge of Himself believe this, as 
 every Mason should, and you can live calmly, endure patiently, 
 labor resolutely, deny yourselves cheerfully, hope steadfastly, and 
 be conquerors in the great struggle of life. Take away any one 
 of these principles, and what remains for us? Say that there is 
 no God ; or no way opened for hope and reformation and triumph, 
 no heaven to come, no rest for the weary, no home in the bosom 
 of God for the afflicted and disconsolate soul ; or that God is but 
 an ugly blind Chance that stabs in the dark; or a somewhat that 
 is, when attempted to be defined, a Jiowhat, emotionless, passion- 
 less, the Supreme Apathy to which all things, good and evil, are 
 alike indifferent ; or a jealous God who revengefully visits the sins 
 of the fathers on the children, and when the fathers have eaten
 
 196 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sour grapes, sets the children's teeth on edge; an arbitrary su- 
 preme Will, that has made it right to be virtuous, and wrong to 
 lie and steal, because IT pleased to make it so rather than other- 
 wise, retaining the power to reverse the law ; or a fickle, vacillat- 
 ing, inconstant Deity, or a cruel, bloodthirsty, savage Hebrew or 
 Puritanic one; and we are but the sport of chance and the vic- 
 tims of despair; hapless wanderers upon the face of a desolate, 
 forsaken, or accursed and hated earth ; surrounded by darkness, 
 struggling with obstacles, toiling for barren results and empty pur- 
 ooses, distracted with doubts, and misled by false gleams of light ; 
 wanderers with no way, no prospect, no home ; doomed and de- 
 serted mariners on a dark and stormy sea, without compass or 
 course, to whom no stars appear; tossing helmless upon the wel- 
 tering, angry waves, with no blessed haven in the distance whose 
 guiding-star invites us to its welcome rest. 
 
 The religious faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensable to 
 the attainment of the great ends of life ; and must therefore have 
 been designed to be a part of it. We are made for this faith ; and 
 there must be something, somewhere, for us to believe in. We 
 cannot grow healthfully, nor live happily, without it. It is there- 
 fore true. If we could cut off from any soul all the principles 
 taught by Masonry, the faith in a God, in immortality, in virtue, 
 in essential rectitude, that soul would sink into sin, misery, dark- 
 ness, and ruin. If we could cut off all sense of these truths, the 
 man would sink at once to the grade of the animal. 
 
 No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can 
 improve and be happy, otherwise than as the swine are, without 
 conscience, without hope, without a reliance on a just, wise, and 
 beneficent God. We must, of necessity, embrace the great truths 
 taught by Masonry, and live by them, to live happily. "/ put my 
 trust in God," is the protest of Masonry against the belief in a 
 cruel, angry, and revengeful God, to be feared and not reverenced 
 by His creatures. 
 
 Society, in its great relations, is as much the creation of Heaven 
 as is the system of the Universe. If that bond of gravitation 
 that holds all worlds and systems together, were suddenly severed, 
 the universe would fly into wild and boundless chaos. And if we 
 were to sever all the moral bonds that hold society together; if we 
 could cut off from it every conviction of Truth and Integrity, of 
 an authority above it, and of a conscience within it, it would im-
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. Ity/ 
 
 mediately rush to disorder and frightful anarchy and ruin. The 
 religion we teach is therefore as really a principle of things, and 
 as certain and true, as gravitation. 
 
 Faith in moral principles, in virtue, and in God, is as necessary 
 for the guidance of a man, as instinct is for the guidance of an ani- 
 mal. And therefore this faith, as a principle of man's nature, has 
 a mission as truly authentic in God's Providence, as the principle 
 of instinct. The pleasures of the soul, too, must depend on cer- 
 tain principles. They must recognize a soul, its properties and 
 responsibilities, a conscience, and the sense of an authority above 
 us ; and these are the principles of faith. No man can suffer and 
 be patient, can struggle and conquer, can improve and be happy, 
 without conscience, without hope, without a reliance on a just, 
 wise, and beneficent God. We must of necessity embrace the 
 great truths taught by Masonry, and live by them, to live happily. 
 Everything in the universe has fixed and certain laws and prin- 
 ciples for its action ; the star in its orbit, the animal in its activ- 
 ity, the physical man in his functions. And he has likewise fixed 
 and certain laws and principles as a spiritual being. His soul does 
 not die for want of alimenj: or guidance. For the rational soul 
 there is ample provision. From the lofty pine, rocked in the dark- 
 ening tempest, the cry of the young raven is heard ; and it would 
 be most strange if there were no answer for the cry and call of the 
 soul, tortured by want and sorrow and agony. The total rejection 
 of all moral and religious belief would strike out a principle from 
 human nature, as essential to it as gravitation to the stars, in- 
 stinct to animal life, the circulation of the blood to the human 
 body. 
 
 God has ordained that life shall be a social state. We are mem- 
 bers of a civil community. The life of that community depends 
 upon its moral condition. Public spirit, intelligence, uprightness, 
 temperance, kindness, domestic purity, will make it a happy com- 
 munity, and give it prosperity and continuance. Wide-spread self- 
 ishness, dishonesty, intemperance, libertinism, corruption, and 
 crime, will make it miserable, and bring about dissolution and 
 speedy ruin. A whole people lives one life; one mighty heart 
 heaves in its bosom ; it is one great pulse of existence that throbs 
 there. One stream of life flows there, with ten thousand inter- 
 mingled branches and channels, through all the homes of human 
 love. One sound as of many waters, a rapturous jubilee or a
 
 198 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 mournful sighing, comes up from the congregated dwellings of a 
 whole nation. 
 
 The Public is no vague abstraction; nor should that which is 
 done against that Public, against public interest, law, or virtue, 
 press but lightly on the conscience. It is but a vast expansion of 
 individual life; an ocean of tears, an atmosphere of sighs, or a 
 great whole of joy and gladness. It suffers with the suffering of 
 millions; it rejoices with the joy of millions. What a vast crime 
 does he commit, private man or public man, agent or contractor, 
 legislator or magistrate, secretary or president, who dares, with 
 indignity and wrong, to strike the bosom of the Public Welfare, to 
 encourage venality and corruption, and shameful sale of the elec- 
 tive franchise, or of office ; to sow dissension, and to weaken the 
 bonds of amity that bind a Nation together! What a huge ini- 
 quity, he who, with vices like the daggers of a parricide, dares to 
 pierce that mighty heart, in which the ocean of existence is flow- 
 ing! 
 
 What an unequalled interest lies in the virtue of every one whom 
 we love ! In his virtue, nowhere but in his virtue, is garnered up 
 the incomparable treasure. What care we for brother or friend, 
 compared with what we care for his honor, his fidelity, his reputa- 
 tion, his kindness? How venerable is the rectitude of a parent! 
 How sacred his reputation ! No blight that can fall upon a child, 
 is like a parent's dishonor. Heathen or Christian, every parent 
 would have his child do well ; and pours out upon him all the full- 
 ness of parental love, in the one desire that he may do well ; that 
 he may be worthy of his cares, and his freely bestowed pains ; that 
 he may walk in the way of honor and happiness. In that way he 
 cannot walk one step without virtue. Such is life, in its relation- 
 ships. A thousand ties embrace it, like the fine nerves of a deli- 
 cate organization ; like the strings of an instrument capable of 
 sweet melodies, but easily put out of tune or broken, by rudeness, 
 anger, and selfish indulgence. 
 
 If life could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and 
 pleasure ; if the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice, 
 ambition, and sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and 
 make it their beaten way; and none would wonder or protest. If 
 we could be patient under the load of a mere worldly life; if we 
 could bear that burden as the beasts bear it; then, like beasts, we 
 might bend all our thoughts to the earth ; and no call from the
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 199 
 
 great Heavens above us would startle us from our plodding and 
 earthly course. 
 
 But we are not insensible brutes, who can refuse the call of rea- 
 son and conscience. The soul is capable of remorse. When the 
 great dispensations of life press down upon us, we weep, and suffer 
 and sorrow. And sorrow and agony desire other companionships 
 than worldliness and irreligion. We are not willing to bear those 
 burdens of the heart, fear, anxiety, disappointment, and trouble, 
 without any object or use. We are not willing to suffer, to be sick 
 and afflicted, to have our days and months lost to comfort and joy, 
 and overshadowed with calamity and grief, without advantage or 
 compensation ; to barter away the dearest treasures, the very suf- 
 ferings, of the heart; to sell the life-blood from failing frame and 
 fading cheek, our tears of bitterness and groans of anguish, for 
 nothing. Human nature, frail, feeling, sensitive, and sorrowing, 
 cannot bear to suffer for nought. 
 
 Everywhere, human life is a great and solemn dispensation. 
 Man, suffering, enjoying, loving, hating, hoping, and fearing, 
 chained to the earth and yet exploring the far recesses of the uni- 
 verse, has the power to commune with God and His angels. 
 Around this great action of existence the curtains of Time are 
 drawn ; but there are openings through them which give us 
 glimpses of eternity. God looks down upon this scene of human 
 probation. The wise and the good in all ages have interposed for 
 it, with their teachings and their blood. Everything that exists 
 around us, every movement in nature, every counsel of Provi- 
 dence, every interposition of God, centres upon one point the 
 fidelity of man. And even if the ghosts of the departed and re- 
 membered could come at midnight through the barred doors of 
 our dwellings, and the shrouded dead should glide through the 
 aisles of our churches and sit in our Masonic Temples, their teach- 
 ings would be no more eloquent and impressive than the dread 
 realities of life ; than those memories of misspent years, those 
 ghosts of departed opportunities, that, pointing to our conscience 
 and eternity; cry continually in our ears, "H 7 ork while the 
 day lasts! for the night of death cometh, in ivhich no man can 
 work." 
 
 There are no tokens of public mourning for the calamity of the 
 soul. Men weep when the body dies ; and when it is borne to its 
 last rest, they follow it with sad and mournful procession. But
 
 2OO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 for the dying soul, there is no open lamentation ; for the lost soul 
 there are no obsequies. 
 
 And yet the minJ and soul of man have a value which nothing 
 else has. They are worth a care which nothing else is worth : and 
 to the single, solitary individual, they ought to possess an interest 
 which nothing else possesses. The stored treasures of the heart, 
 the unfathomable mines that are in the soul to be wrought, the 
 broad and boundless realms of Thought, the freighted argosy of 
 man's hopes and best affections, are brighter than gold and dearer 
 than treasure. 
 
 And yet the mind is in reality little known or considered. It is 
 all which man permanently is, his inward being, his divine energy, 
 his immortal thought, his boundless capacity, his infinite aspira- 
 tion ; and nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth., Few see 
 a brother-mind in others, through the rags with which poverty 
 has clothed it. beneath the crushing burdens of life, amidst the 
 close pressure of worldly troubles, wants and sorrows. Few 
 acknowledge and cheer it in that humble lot, and feel that 
 the nobility of earth, and the commencing glory of Heaven are 
 there. 
 
 Men do not feel the worth of their own souls. They are proud 
 of their mental powers ; but the intrinsic, inner, infinite worth of 
 their own minds they do not perceive. The poor man, admitted 
 to a palace, feels, lofty and immortal being as he is, like a mere 
 ordinary thing amid the splendors that surround him. He sees the 
 carriage of wealth roll by him, and forgets the intrinsic and eter j 
 nal dignity of his own mind in a poor and degrading envy, and 
 feels as an humbler creature, because others are above him, not in 
 mind, but in mensuration. Men respect themselves, according as 
 they are more wealthy, higher in rank or office, loftier in the 
 world's opinion, able to command more votes, more the favorites 
 of the people or of Fewer. 
 
 The difference among men is not so much in their nature and 
 intrinsic power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have 
 the capacity of uttering and embodying in words their thoughts. 
 All men, more or less, fed those thoughts. The glory of genius 
 and the rapture of virtue, when rightly revealed, are diffused and 
 shared among unnumbered minds. When eloquence and poetry 
 speak ; when those glorious arts, statuary, painting, and music, 
 take audible or visible shape ; when patriotism, charity, and virtue
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 2O1 
 
 speak with a thrilling potency, the hearts of thousands glow with 
 a kindred joy and ecstasy. If it were not so, there would be no 
 eloquence ; for eloquence is that to which other hearts respond ; it 
 is the faculty and power of making other hearts respond. No one 
 is so low or degraded, as not sometimes to be touched with the 
 beauty of goodness. No heart is made of materials so common, 
 or even base, as not sometimes to respond, through every chord of 
 it, to the call of honor, patriotism, generosity, and virtue. The 
 poor African Slave will die for the master or mistress, or in de- 
 fence of the children, whom he loves. The poor, lost, scorned, 
 abandoned, outcast woman will, without expectation of reward, 
 nurse those who are dying on every hand, utter strangers to her, 
 with a contagious and horrid pestilence. The pickpocket will 
 scale burning walls to rescue child or woman, unknown to him, 
 from the ravenous flames. 
 
 Most glorious is this capacity ! A power to commune with God 
 and His Angels ; a reflection of the Uncreated Light ; a mirror 
 that can collect and concentrate upon itself all the moral splen- 
 dors of the Universe. It is the soul alone that gives any value to 
 the things of this world ; and it is only by raising the soul to its 
 just elevation above all other things, that we can look rightly 
 upon the purposes of this earth. No sceptre nor throne, nor struc- 
 ture of ages, nor broad empire, can compare with the wonders and 
 grandeurs of a single thought. That alone, of all things that 
 have been made, comprehends the Maker of all. That alone is 
 the key which unlocks all the treasures of the Universe ; the 
 power that reigns over Space, Time, and Eternity. That, under 
 God, is the Sovereign Dispenser to man of all the blessings and 
 glories that lie within the compass of possession, or the range of 
 possibility. Virtue, Heaven, and Immortality exist not, nor ever 
 will exist for us except as they exist and will exist, in the percep- 
 tion, feeling, and thought of the glorious mind. 
 
 My Brother, in the hope that you have listened to and under- 
 stood the Instruction and Lecture of this Degree, and that you 
 feel the dignity of your own nature and the vast capacities of your 
 own soul for good or evil, I proceed briefly to communicate to you 
 the remaining instruction of this Degree. 
 
 The Hebrew word, in the old Hebrew and Samaritan character, 
 suspended in the East, over the five columns, is ADOXA'I. one of 
 the names of God, usually translated Lord ; and which the He- 
 14
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 brews, in reading, always substitute for the True Name, which is 
 for them ineffable. 
 
 The five columns, in the five different orders of architecture, are 
 emblematical to us of the five principal divisions of the Ancient 
 and Accepted Scottish Rite : 
 
 i. The Tuscan, of the three blue Degrees, or the primitive 
 Masonry. 
 
 2. The Doric, of the ineffable Degrees, from the fourth to the 
 fourteenth, inclusive. 
 
 3. The Ionic, of the fifteenth and sixteenth, or second temple 
 Degrees. 
 
 4. The Corinthian, of the seventeenth and eighteenth Degrees, 
 or those of the new law. 
 
 5. The Composite, of the philosophical and chivalric Degrees 
 intermingled, from the nineteenth to the thirty-second, in- 
 clusive. 
 
 The North Star, always fixed and immutable for us, represents 
 the point in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of 
 the Universe. It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To 
 it, and the seven that continually revolve around it, mystical 
 meanings are attached, which you will learn hereafter, if you 
 should be permitted to advance, when you are made acquainted 
 with the philosophical doctrines of the Hebrews. 
 
 The Morning Star, rising in the East, Jupiter, called by the 
 Hebrews Tsadoc or Tsydyk, Just, is an emblem to us of the ever- 
 approaching dawn of perfection and Masonic light. 
 
 The three great lights of the Lodge are symbols to us of the 
 Power, Wisdom, and Beneficence of the Deity. They are also 
 symbols of the first three Sephiroth, or Emanations of the Deity, 
 according to the Kabalah, Kether, the omnipotent divine will; 
 Chochmah, the divine intellectual power to generate thought, and 
 Bmah, the divine intellectual capacity to produce it the two lat- 
 ter, usually translated Wisdom and Understanding, being the 
 active and the passive, the positive and the negative, which we do 
 not yet endeavor to explain to you. They are the columns Jachin 
 and Boaz, that stand at the entrance to the Masonic Temple. 
 
 In another aspect of this Degree, the Chief of the Architects 
 [C*j2 21, Rab Banaim,] symbolizes the constitutional executive 
 head and chief of a free government ; and the Degree teaches us 
 that no free government can long endure, when the people cease
 
 GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 
 
 to select for their magistrates the best and the wisest of their 
 statesmen ; when, passing these by, they permit factions or sordid 
 interests to select for them the small, the low, the ignoble, and the 
 obscure, and into such hands commit the country's destinies. 
 There is, after all, a "divine right" to govern ; and it is vested tn 
 the ablest, wisest, best, of every nation. "Counsel is mine, and 
 sound wisdom : I am understanding : I am power : by me kings 
 do reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and 
 nobles, even all the magistrates of the earth." 
 
 For the present, my Brother, let this suffice. We welcome you 
 among us, to this peaceful retreat of virtue, to a participation in 
 our privileges, to a share in our joys and our sorrows.
 
 XIII. 
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 
 
 WHETHER the legend and history of this Degree are historically 
 true, or but an allegory, containing in itself a deeper truth and a 
 profounder meaning, we shall not now debate. If it be but a 
 legendary myth, you must find out for yourself what it means. It 
 is certain that the word which the Hebrews are not now permitted 
 to pronounce was in common use by Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, 
 Laban, Rebecca, and even among tribes foreign to the Hebrews, 
 before the time of Moses; and that it recurs a hundred times in 
 the lyrical effusions of David and other Hebrew poets. 
 
 We know that for many centuries the Hebrews have been for- 
 bidden to pronounce the Sacred Name ; that \vherever it occurs, 
 they have for ages read the word Adona'i instead; and that under 
 it, when the masoretic points, which represent the vowels, came to 
 be used, they placed those which belonged to the latter word. 
 The possession of the true pronunciation was deemed to confer on 
 him who had it extraordinary and supernatural powers ; and the 
 Word itself, worn upon the person, was regarded as an amulet, a 
 protection against personal danger, sickness, and evil spirits. We 
 know that all this was a vain superstition, natural to a rude peo- 
 ple, necessarily disappearing as the intellect of man became en- 
 lightened ; and wholly unworthy of a Mason. 
 
 It is noticeable that this notion of the sanctity of the Divine 
 Name or Creative Word was common to all the ancient nations. 
 The Sacred Word HOM was supposed by the ancient Persians (who 
 were among the earliest emigrants from Northern India) to be 
 
 2O4
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2O5 
 
 pregnant w.ui a mysteiious power; and they taught that by its 
 utterance the world was created. In India it was forbidden to 
 pronounce the word AUM or OM, the Sacred Name of the One 
 Deity, manifested as Brahma, Vishna, and Seeva. 
 
 These superstitious notions in regard to the efficacy of the Word, 
 and the prohibition against pronouncing it, could, being errors, 
 have formed no part of the pure primitive religion, or of the 
 esoteric doctrine taught by Moses, and the full knowledge of which 
 was confined to the Initiates ; unless the whole was but an ingeni- 
 ous invention for the concealment of some other Name or truth, 
 the interpretation and meaning whereof was made known only to 
 the select few. If so, the common notions in regard to the- Word 
 grew up in the minds of the people, like other errors and fables 
 among all the ancient nations, out of original truths and symbols 
 and allegories misunderstood. So it has always been that allego- 
 ries, intended as vehicles of truth, to be understood by the sages, 
 have become or bred errors, by being literally accepted. 
 
 It is true, that before the masoretic points were invented (which 
 was after the beginning of the Christian era), the pronunciation 
 of a word in the Hebrew language could not be known from the 
 characters in which it was written. It was, therefore, possible for 
 that of the name of the Deity to have been forgotten and lost. It 
 is certain that its true pronunciation is not that represented by the 
 word Jehovah ; and therefore that that is not the true name of 
 Deity, nor the Ineffable Word. 
 
 The ancient symbols and allegories always had more than one 
 interpretation. They always had a double meaning, and sometimes 
 more than two, one serving as the envelope of the other. Thus 
 the pronunciation of the word was a symbol ; and that pronuncia- 
 tion and the word itself were lost, when the knowledge of the true 
 nature and attributes of God faded out of the minds of the Jewish 
 people. That is one interpretation true, but not the inner and 
 profoundest one. 
 
 Men were figuratively said to forget the name of God, when they 
 lost that knowledge, and worshipped the heathen deities, and 
 burned incense to them on the high places, and passed their chil- 
 dren through the fire to Moloch. 
 
 Thus the attempts of the ancient Israelites and of the Initiates 
 to ascertain the True Name of the Deity, and its pronounciation. 
 and the loss of the True Word, are an allegory, in which are rep-
 
 2C6 MORALS AND DOGMA.. 
 
 resented the general ignorance of the true nature and attributes 
 of God, the proneness of the people of Judah and Israel to wor- 
 ship other deities, and their low -and erroneous and dishonoring 
 notions of the Grand Architect of the Universe, which all shared 
 except a few favored persons ; for even Solomon built altars and 
 sacrificed to Astarat, the goddess of the Tsidunim, and Malcum, 
 the Aamunite god, and built high places for Kamus, the Moabite 
 deity, and Malec the god of the Beni-Aamun. The true nature of 
 God was unknown to them, like His name ; and they worshipped 
 the calves of Jeroboam, as in the desert they did that made for 
 them by Aarun. 
 
 The mass of the Hebrews did not believe in the existence of one 
 only God until a late period in their history. Their early and 
 popular ideas of the Deity were singularly low and unworthy. 
 Even while Moses was receiving the law upon Mount Sinai, they 
 forced Aarun to make them an image of the Egyptian god Apis, 
 and fell down and adored it. They were ever ready to return to 
 the worship of the gods of the Mitzraim ; and soon after the death 
 of Joshua they became devout worshippers of the false gods of all 
 the surrounding nations. "Ye have borne," Amos, the prophet, 
 said to them, speaking of their forty years' journeying in the des- 
 ert, under Moses, "the tabernacle of your Malec and Kaiun your 
 idols, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." 
 
 Among them, as among other nations, the conceptions of God 
 formed by individuals varied according to their intellectual and 
 spiritual capacities; poor and imperfect, and investing God with 
 the commonest and coarsest attributes of humanity, among the 
 ignorant and coarse ; pure and lofty among the virtuous and richly 
 gifted. These conceptions gradually improved and became puri- 
 fied and ennobled, as the nation advanced in civilization being 
 lowest in the historical books, amended in the prophetic writings, 
 and reaching their highest elevation among the poets. 
 
 Among all the ancient nations there was one faith and one 
 idea of Deity for the enlightened, intelligent, and educated, and 
 another for the common people. To this rule the Hebrews were no 
 exception. Yehovah, to the mass of the people, was like the gods 
 of the nations around them, except that he was the peculiar God, 
 first of the family of Abraham, of that of Isaac, and of that of 
 Jacob, and afterward the National God; and, as they believed, 
 more powerful than the other god'e of the same nature worshipped
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 
 
 by their neighbors "Who among the Baalim is like unto thee, O 
 Yehovah?" expressed their whole creed. 
 
 The Deity of the early Hebrews talked to Adam and Eve in the 
 garden of delight, as he walked in it in the cool of the day ; he 
 conversed with Kayin ; he sat and ate with Abraham in his tent ; 
 that patriarch required a visible token, before he would believe in 
 his positive promise ; he permitted Abraham to expostulate with 
 him, and to induce him to change his first determination in regard 
 to Sodom ; he wrestled with Jacob ; he showed Moses his person, 
 though not his face ; he dictated the minutest police regulations 
 and the dimensions of the tabernacle and its furniture, to the 
 Israelites ; he insisted on and delighted in sacrifices and burnt- 
 offerings ; he was angry, jealous, and revengeful, as well as waver- 
 ing and irresolute ; he allowed Moses to reason him out of his 
 fixed resolution utterly to destroy his people ; he commanded the 
 performance of the most shocking and hideous acts of cruelty and 
 barbarity. He hardened the heart of Pharaoh ; he repented of 
 the evil that he had said he would do unto the people of Nineveh ; 
 and he did it not, to the disgust and anger of Jonah. 
 
 Such were the popular notions of the Deity ; and either the 
 priests had none better, or took little trouble to correct these no- 
 tions ; or the popular intellect was not enough enlarged to enable 
 them to entertain any higher conceptions of the Almighty. 
 
 But such were not the ideas of the intellectual and enlightened 
 few among the Hebrews. It is certain that they possessed a 
 knowledge of the true nature and attributes of God ; as the same 
 class of men did among the other nations Zoroaster, Menu, Con- 
 fucius, Socrates, and Plato. But their doctrines on this subject 
 were esoteric ; they did not communicate them to the people at 
 large, but only to a favored few ; and as they were communicated 
 in Egypt and India, in Persia and Phoenicia, in Greece and Samo- 
 thrace, in the greater mysteries, to the Initiates. 
 
 The communication of this knowledge and other secrets, some 
 of which are perhaps lost, constituted, under other names, what 
 we now call Masonry, or Free or Frank-Masonry. That knowl- 
 edge was, in one sense, the Lost Word, which was made known to 
 the Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Masons. It would be folly 
 to pretend that the forms of Masonry were the same in those ages 
 as they are now. The present name of the Order, and its titles, 
 and the names of the Degrees now in use, were not then known.
 
 2O8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Even Blue Masonry cannot trace back its authentic history, with 
 its present Degrees, further than the year 1700, if so far. But, by 
 whatever name it was known in this or the other country, Masonry 
 existed as it now exists, the same in spirit and at heart, not only 
 when Solomon builded the temple, but centuries before before 
 even the first colonies emigrated into Southern India, Persia, and 
 Egypt, from the cradle of the human, race. 
 
 The Supreme, Self-existent, Eternal, All-wise, All-powerful, In- 
 finitely Good, Pitying, Beneficent, and Merciful Creator and Pre- 
 server of the Universe was the same, by whatever name he was 
 called, to the intellectual and enlightened men of all nations. The 
 name was nothing, if not a symbol and representative hieroglyph 
 of his nature and attributes. The name AL represented his 
 remoteness above men, his inaccessibility; BAL and BALA, his 
 might; ALOHIM, his various potencies; IHUH, existence and the 
 generation of things. None of his names, among the Orientals, 
 were the symbols of a divinely infinite love and tenderness, and 
 all-embracing mercy. As MOLOCH or MALEK he was but an 
 omnipotent monarch, a tremendous and irresponsible Will; as 
 ADONAI, only an arbitrary LORD and Master; as AL Shada'i, 
 potent and a DESTROYER. 
 
 To communicate true and correct ideas in respect of the Deity 
 was one chief object of the mysteries. In them, Khurum the 
 King, and Khurum the Master, obtained their knowledge of him 
 and his attributes; and in them that knowledge was taught to 
 Moses and Pythagoras. 
 
 Wherefore nothing forbids you to consider the whole legend of 
 this Degree, like that of the Master's, an allegory, representing the 
 perpetuation of the knowledge of the True God in the sanctuaries 
 of initiation. By the subterranean vaults you may understand 
 the places of initiation, which in the ancient ceremonies were gen- 
 erally under ground. The Temple ef Solomon presented a sym- 
 bolic image of the Universe ; and resembled, in its arrangements 
 and furniture, all the temples of the ancient nations that practised 
 the mysteries. The system of numbers was intimately connected 
 with their religions and worship, and has come down to us in Ma- 
 sonry ; though the esoteric meaning with which the numbers used 
 by us are pregnant is unknown to the vast majority of those who 
 use them. Those numbers were especially employed that had a 
 reference to the Deity, represented his attributes, or figured in the
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2OO, 
 
 frame-work of the world, in time and space, and formed more or 
 less the bases of that frame-work. These were universally re- 
 garded as sacred, being the expression of order and intelligence, 
 the utterances of Divinity Himself. 
 
 The Holy of Holies of the Temple formed a cube ; in which, 
 drawn on a plane surface, there are 4 + 3 + 2 = 9 lines visible, 
 and three sides or faces. It corresponded with the number four, 
 by which the ancients presented Nature, it being the number of 
 substances or corporeal forms, and of the elements, the cardinal 
 points and seasons, and the secondary colors. The number three 
 everywhere represented the Supreme Being. Hence the name of 
 the Deity, engraven upon the triangular plate, and that sunken 
 into the cube of agate, taught the ancient Mason, and teaches us, 
 that the true knowledge of God, of His nature and His attributes, 
 is written by Him upon the leaves of the great Book of Universal 
 Nature, and may be read there by all who are endowed with the 
 requisite amount of intellect and intelligence. This knowledge 
 of God, so written there, and of which Masonry has in all ages 
 been the interpreter, is the Master Mason s Word. 
 
 Within the Temple, all the arrangements were mystically and 
 symbolically connected with the same system. The vault or ceil- 
 ing, starred like the firmament, was supported by twelve columns, 
 representing the twelve months of the year. The border that ran 
 around the columns represented the zodiac, and one of the twelve 
 celestial signs was appropriated to each column. The brazen sea 
 was supported by twelve oxen, three looking to each cardinal point 
 of the compass. 
 
 And so in our day every Masonic Lodge represents the Uni- 
 verse. Each extends, we are told, from the rising to the setting 
 sun, from the South to the North, from the surface of the Earth 
 to the Heavens, and from the same to the centre of the globe. In 
 it are represented the sun, moon, and stars ; three great torches in 
 the East, West, and South, forming a triangle, give it light ; and, 
 like the Delta or Triangle suspended in the East, and inclosing the 
 Ineffable Name, indicate, by the mathematical equality of the 
 angles and sides, the beautiful and harmonious proportions which 
 govern in the aggregate and details of the Universe ; while those 
 sides and angles represent, by their number, three, the Trinity of 
 Power, Wisdom, and Harmony, which presided at the building of 
 this marvellous work. These three great lights also represent the
 
 2IO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 great mystery of the three principles, of creation, dissolution or 
 destruction, and reproduction or regeneration, consecrated by all 
 creeds in their numerous Trinities. 
 
 The luminous pedestal, lighted by the perpetual flame within, is 
 a symbol of that light of Reason, given by God to man, by which 
 he is enabled to read in the Bock of Nature the record of the 
 thought, the revelation of the attributes of the Deity. 
 
 The three Masters, Adoniram, Joabert, and Stolkin, are types 
 of the True Mason, who seeks for knowledge from pure motives, 
 and that he may be the better enabled to serve and benefit his fel- 
 low-men ; while the discontented and presumptuous Masters who 
 were buried in the ruins of the arches represent those who strive 
 to acquire it for unholy purposes, to gain power over their fellows, 
 to gratify their pride, their vanity, or their ambition. 
 
 The Lion that guarded the Ark and held in his mouth the key 
 wherewith to open it, figuratively represents Solomon, the Lion of 
 the Tribe of Judah, who preserved and communicated the key to 
 the true knowledge of God, of His laws, and of the profound mys- 
 teries of the moral and physical Universe. 
 
 ENOCH ["pin, Khanoc], we are told, walked with God three 
 hundred years, after reaching the age of sixty-five "walked with 
 God, and he was no more, for God had taken him." His name 
 signified in the Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The legend of 
 the columns, of granite and brass or bronze, erected by him, is 
 probably symbolical. That of bronze, which survived the flood, is 
 supposed to symbolize the mysteries, of which Masonry is the legit- 
 imate successor from the earliest times the custodian and depos- 
 itory of the great philosophical and religious truths, unknown to 
 the world at large, and handed down from age to age by an un- 
 broken current of tradition, embodied in symbols, emblems, and 
 allegories. 
 
 The legend of this Degree is thus, partially, interpreted. It is of 
 little importance whether it is in anywise historical. For its value 
 consists in the lessons which it inculcates, and the duties which it 
 prescribes to those who receive it. The parables and allegories of 
 the Scriptures are not less valuable than history. Nay, they are 
 more so, because ancient history is little instructive, and truths are 
 concealed in and symbolized by the legend and the myth. 
 
 There are profounder meanings concealed in fhe symbols of this 
 Degree, connected with the philosophical s^stero of the Hebrew
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 211 
 
 Kabalists, which you will learn hereafter, if you should be so 
 fortunate as to advance. They are unfolded in the higher De- 
 grees. The lion (/HS, J7HN, Arai, Araiah, which also means the 
 altar] still holds in his mouth the key of the enigma of the 
 sphynx. 
 
 But there is one application of this Degree, that you are now 
 entitled to know ; and which, remembering that Khuriim, the Mas- 
 ter, is the symbol of human freedom, you would probably discover 
 for yourself. 
 
 It is not enough for a people to gain its liberty. It must secure 
 it. It must not intrust it to the keeping, or hold it at the pleasure, 
 of any one man. The keystone of the Royal Arch of the great 
 Temple of Liberty is a fundamental law, charter, or constitution ; 
 the expression of the fixed habits of thought of the people, em- 
 bodied in a written instrument, or the result of the slow accre- 
 tions and the consolidation of centuries ; the same in war as in 
 peace ; that cannot be hastily changed, nor be violated with impu- 
 nity, but is sacred, like the Ark of the Covenant of God, which 
 none could touch and live. 
 
 A permanent constitution, rooted in the affections, expressing 
 the will and judgment, and built upon the instincts and settled 
 habits of thought of the people, with an independent judiciary, an 
 elective legislature of two branches, an executive responsible to 
 the people, and the right of trial by jury, will guarantee the liber- 
 ties of a people, if it be virtuous and temperate, without luxury, 
 and without the lust of conquest and dominion, and the follies of 
 visionary theories of impossible perfection. 
 
 Masonry teaches its Initiates that the pursuits and occupations 
 of this life, its activity, care, and ingenuity, the predestined devel- 
 opments of the nature given us by God, tend to promote His great 
 design, in making the world ; and are not at war with the great 
 purpose of life. It teaches that everything is beautiful in its 
 time, in its place, in its appointed office ; that everything which 
 man is put to do, if rightly and faithfully done, naturally helps to 
 work out his salvation ; that if he obeys the genuine principles of 
 his calling, he will be a good man : and that it is only by neglect 
 and non-performance of the task set for him by Heaven, by wan- 
 dering into idle dissipation, or by violating their beneficent and 
 lofty spirit, that he becomes a bad man. The appointed action of 
 life is the great training of Providence; and if man yields himself
 
 212 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to it, he will need neither churches nor ordinances, except for the 
 expression of his religious homage and gratitude. 
 
 For there is a religion of toil. It is not all drudgery, a mere 
 stretching of the limbs and straining of the sinews to tasks. It 
 has a meaning and an intent. A living heart pours life-blood into 
 the toiling arm ; and warm affections inspire and mingle with 
 man's labors. They are the home affections. Labor toils a-field, 
 or plies its task in cities, or urges the keels of commerce over wide 
 oceans ; but home is its centre ; and thither it ever goes with its 
 earnings, with the means of support and comfort for others ; offer- 
 ings sacred to the thought of every true man, as a sacrifice at a 
 golden shrine. Many faults there are amidst the toils of life; 
 many harsh and hasty words are uttered; but still the toils go 
 on, weary and hard and exasperating as they often are. For in 
 that home is age or sickness, or helpless infancy, or gentle child- 
 hood, or feeble woman, that must not want. If man had no other 
 than mere selfish impulses, the scene of labor which we behold 
 around us would not exist. 
 
 The advocate who fairly and honestly presents his case, with a 
 feeling of true self-respect, honor, and conscience, to help the tri- 
 bunal on toward the right conclusion, with a conviction that God's 
 justice reigns there, is acting a religious part, leading that day a 
 religious life; or else right and justice are no part of religion. 
 Whether, during all that day, he has once appealed, in form or in 
 terms, to his conscience, or not ; whether he has once spoken of 
 religion and God, or not ; if there has been the inward purpose, 
 the conscious intent and desire, that sacred justice should tri- 
 umph, he has that day led a good and religions life, and made a 
 most essential contribution to that religion of life and of society, 
 the cause of equity between man and man, and of truth and right 
 action in tht world. 
 
 Books, to be of religious tendency in the Masonic sense, need 
 not be books of sermons, of pious exercises, or of prayers. What- 
 ever inculcates pure, noble, and patriotic sentiments, or touches 
 the heart with the beauty of virtue, and the excellence of an up- 
 right life, accords with the religion of Masonry, and is the Gospel 
 of literature and art. That Gospel is preached from many a book 
 and painting, from many a poem and fiction, and review and news- 
 paper ; and it is a painful error and miserable narrowness, not to 
 recognize these wide-spread agencies of Heaven's providing ; not
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 213 
 
 to see and welcome these many-handed coadjutors, to the great 
 and good cause. The oracles of God do not speak from the pulpit 
 alone. 
 
 There is also a religion of society. In business, there is much 
 more than sale, exchange, price, payment ; for there is the sacred 
 faith of man in man. When we repose perfect confidence in the 
 integrity of another ; when we feel that he will not swerve from 
 the right, frank, straightforward, conscientious course, for any 
 temptation; his integrity and conscientiousness are the image of 
 God to us ; and when we believe in it, it is as great and generous 
 an act, as when we believe in the rectitude of the Deity. 
 
 In gay assemblies for amusement, the good affections of life gush 
 and mingle. If they did not, these gathering-places would be as 
 dreary and repulsive as the caves and dens of outlaws and robbers. 
 When friends meet, and hands are warmly pressed, and the eye 
 kindles and the countenance is suffused with gladness, there is a 
 religion between their hearts ; and each loves and worships the 
 True and Good that is in the other. It is not policy, or self-inter- 
 est, or selfishness that spreads such a charm around that meeting, 
 but the halo of bright and beautiful affection. 
 
 The same splendor of kindly liking, and affectionate regard, 
 shines like the soft overarching sky, over all the world ; over all 
 places where men meet, and walk or toil together ; not over lovers' 
 bowers and marriage-altars alone, not over the homes of purity 
 and tenderness alone ; but over all tilled fields, and busy work- 
 shops, and dusty highways, and paved streets. There is not a 
 worn stone upon the sidewalks, but has been the altar of such 
 offerings of mutual kindness ; nor a wooden pillar or iron railing 
 against which hearts beating with affection have not leaned. How 
 many soever other elements there are in the stream of life flowing 
 through these channels, tJiat is surely here and everywhere; hon- 
 est, heartfelt, disinterested, inexpressible affection. 
 
 Every Masonic Lodge is a -temple of religion ; and its teachings 
 are instruction in religion. For here are inculcated disinterested- 
 ness, affection, toleration, devotedness, patriotism, truth, a generous 
 sympathy with those who suffer and mourn, pity for the fallen, 
 mercy for the erring, relief for those in want. Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity. Here we meet as brethren, to learn to know and love 
 each other. Here we greet each other gladly, are lenient to each 
 other's faults, regardful of each other's feelings, ready to relieve
 
 214 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 each other's wants. This is the true religion revealed to the an- 
 cient patriarchs; which Masonry has taught for many centuries, 
 and which it will continue to teach as long as time endures. If 
 unworthy passions, or selfish, bitter, or revengeful feelings, con- 
 tempt, dislike, hatred, enter here, they are intruders and not wel- 
 come, strangers uninvited, and not guests. 
 
 Certainly there are many evils and bad passions, and much hate 
 and contempt and unkindness everywhere in the world. We can- 
 not refuse to see the evil that is in life. But all is not evil. We 
 still see God in the world. There is good amidst the evil. The 
 hand of mercy leads wealth to the hovels of poverty and sorrow. 
 Truth and simplicity live amid many wiles and sophistries. There 
 are good hearts underneath gay robes, and under tattered gar- 
 ments also. 
 
 Love clasps the hand of love, amid all the envyings and dis- 
 tractions of showy competition; fidelity, pity, and sympathy hold 
 the long night-watch by the bedside of the suffering neighbor, 
 amidst the surrounding poverty and squalid misery. Devoted 
 men go from city to city to nurse those smitten down by the terri- 
 ble pestilence that renews at intervals its mysterious marches. 
 Women well-born and delicately nurtured nursed the wounded 
 soldiers in hospitals, before it became fashionable to do so ; and 
 even poor lost women, whom God alone loves and pities, tend the 
 plague-stricken with a patient and generous heroism. Masonry 
 and its kindred Orders teach men to love each other, feed the hun- 
 gry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, and bury the friendless 
 dead. Everywhere God finds and blesses the kindly office, the 
 pitying thought, and the loving heart. 
 
 There is an element of good in all men's lawful pursuits and a 
 divine spirit breathing in all their lawful affections. The ground 
 on which they tread is holy ground. There is a natural religion 
 of life, answering, with however many a broken tone, to the reli- 
 gion of nature. There is a beauty and glory in Humanity, in man, 
 answering, with however many a mingling shade, to the loveliness 
 of soft landscapes, and swelling hills, and the wondrous glory of 
 the starry heavens. 
 
 Men may be virtuous, self-improving, and religious in their em- 
 ployments. Precisely for that, those employments were made. All 
 their social relations, friendship, love, the ties of family, were made 
 to be holy. They may be religious, not by a kind of protest and
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 
 
 resistance against their several vocations; but by conformity to 
 their true spirit. Those vocations do not exclude religion ; but de- 
 mand it, for their own perfection. They may be religious laborers, 
 whether in field or factory; religious physicians, lawyers, sculp- 
 tors, poets, painters, and musicians. They may be religious in all 
 the toils and in all the amusements of life. Their life may be a 
 religion; the broad earth its altar; its incense the very breath of 
 life ; its fires ever kindled by the brightness of Heaven. 
 
 Bound up with our poor, frail life, is the mighty thought that 
 spurns the narrow span of all visible existence. Ever the soul 
 reaches outward, and asks for freedom. It looks forth from the 
 narrow and grated windows of sense, upon the wide immeasurable 
 creation ; it knows that around it and beyond it lie outstretched 
 the infinite and everlasting paths. 
 
 Everything within us and without us ought to stir our minds to 
 admiration and wonder. We are a mystery encompassed with 
 mysteries. The connection of mind with matter is a mystery; 
 the wonderful telegraphic communication between the brain and 
 every part of the body, the power and action of the will. Ev- 
 ery familiar step is more than a story in a land of enchantment. 
 The power of movement is as mysterious as the power of thought. 
 Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead mem- 
 ories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from in- 
 finite complication. The momentum of every step we take in our 
 dwelling contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We 
 are connected by ties of thought, and even of matter and its forces, 
 with the whole boundless Universe and all the past and coming 
 generations of men. 
 
 The humblest object beneath our eye as completely defies 
 our scrutiny as the economy of the most distant star. Every 
 leaf and every blade of grass holds within itself secrets 
 which no human penetration will ever fathom. No man can 
 tell what is its principle of life. No man can know what his power 
 of secretion is. Both are inscrutable mysteries. Wherever we 
 place our hand we lay it upon the locked bosom of mystery. Step 
 where we will, we tread upon wonders. The sea-sands, the clods 
 of the field, the water-worn pebbles on the hills, the rude masses 
 cf rock, are traced over and over, in every direction, with a hand- 
 writing older and more significant and sublime than all the ancient 
 ruins, and all the overthrown and buried cities that past genera-
 
 2l6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tions have left upon the earth ; for it is the handwriting of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 A Mason's great business with life is to read the book of its 
 teaching; to find that life is not the doing of drudgeries, but the 
 hearing of oracles. The old mythology is but a leaf in that book ; 
 for it peopled the world with spiritual natures ; and science, 
 many-leaved, still spreads before us the same tale of winder. 
 
 We shall be just as happy hereafter, as we are pure and upright, 
 and no more, just as happy as our character prepares us to be, and 
 no more. Our moral, like our mental character, is not formed in 
 a moment ; it is rhe habit of our minds ; the result of many 
 thoughts and feelings and efforts, bound togther by many natural 
 and strong ties. The great law of Retribution is, that all coming 
 experience is to be affected by every present feeling; every future 
 moment of being must answer for every present moment ; one 
 moment, sacrificed to vice, or lost to improvement, is forever sacri- 
 ficed and lost ; an hour's delay to enter the right path, is to put us 
 back so far, in the everlasting pursuit of happiness ; and every 
 sin, even of the best men, is to be thus answered for, if not accord- 
 ing to the full measure of its ill-desert, yet according to a rule of 
 unbending rectitude and impartiality. 
 
 The law of retribution presses upon every man, whether he 
 thinks of it or not. It pursues him through all the courses of 
 life, \vith a step that never falters nor tires, and with an eye that 
 never sleeps. If it were not so, God's government would not be 
 impartial ; there would be no discrimination ; no moral dominion : 
 no light shed upon the mysteries of Providence. 
 
 Whatsoever a man soweth, that, and not something else, shall 
 he reap. That which we are doing, good or evil, grave or gay ; 
 that which we do to-day and shall do to-morrow : each thought, 
 each feeling, each action, each event ; every passing hour, every 
 breathing moment ; all are contributing to form the character, 
 according to which we are to be judged. Every particle of influ- 
 ence that goes to form that aggregate, our character, will, in 
 that future scrutiny, be sifted out from the mass ; and, particle by 
 particle, with ages perhaps intervening, fall a distinct contribu- 
 tion to the sum of our joys or woes. Thus every idle word and 
 idle hour will give answer in the judgment. 
 
 Let us take care, therefore, what we sow. An evil temptation 
 comes upon us ; the opportunity of unrighteous gain, or of unhal-
 
 ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2IJ 
 
 lowed indulgence, either in the sphere of business or pleasure, 
 of society or solitude. We yield; and plant a seed of bitterness 
 and sorrow. To-morrow it will threaten discovery. Agitated and 
 alarmed, we cover the sin, and bury it deep in falsehood and hy- 
 pocrisy. In the bosom where it lies concealed, in the fertile soil 
 of kindred vices, that sin dies not, but thrives and grows ; and 
 other and still other germs of evil gather around the accursed 
 root ; until, from that single seed of corruption, there springs up 
 in the soul all that is horrible in habitual lying, knavery, or vice. 
 Loathingly, often, we take each downward step ; but a frightful 
 power urges us onward ; and the hell of debt, disease, ignominy, 
 or remorse gathers its shadows around our steps even on earth ; 
 and are yet but the beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed may be 
 done in a single moment ; but conscience never dies, memory never 
 sleeps ; guilt never can become innocence ; and remorse can never 
 whisper peace. 
 
 Beware, thou who art tempted to evil ! Beware what thou 
 layest up for the future ! Beware what thou layest up in the 
 archives of eternity ! Wrong not thy neighbor ! lest the thought 
 of him thou injurest, and who suffers by thy act, be to thee a pang 
 which years will not deprive of its bitterness ! Break not into the 
 house of innocence, to rifle it of its treasure; lest when many 
 years have passed over thee, the moan of its distress may not have 
 died away from thine ear ! Build not the desolate throne of ambi- 
 tion in thy heart; nor be busy with devices, and circumventings, 
 and selfish schemings; lest desolation and loneliness be on thy 
 path, as it stretches into the long futurity ! Live not a useless, 
 an impious, or an injurious life ! for bound up with that life is the 
 immutable principle of an endless retribution, and elements of 
 God's creating, which will never spend their force, but continue 
 ever to unfold with the ages of eternity. Be not deceived ! God 
 has formed thy nature, thus to answer to the future. His law 
 can never be abrogated, nor His justice eluded ; and forever and 
 ever it will be true, that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also he 
 shall reap." 
 
 15
 
 XIV. 
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME 
 
 MASON. 
 
 [Perfect Elu.] 
 
 IT is for each individual Mason to discover the secret of Ma- 
 sonry, by reflection upon its symbols and ;. wise consideration and 
 analysis of what is said and done in the work. Masonry does not 
 inculcate her truths. She states them, once and briefly ; or hints 
 them, perhaps, darkly ; or interposes a cloud between them and 
 eyes that would be dazzled by them. "Seek, and ye shall find," 
 knowledge and the truth. 
 
 The practical object of Masonry is the physical and moral 
 amelioration and the intellectual and spiritual improvement of 
 individuals and society. Neither can be effected, except by the 
 dissemination of truth. It is falsehood in doctrines and fallacy 
 in principles, to which most of the miseries of men and the mis- 
 fortunes of nations are owing. Public opinion is rarely right on 
 any point ; and there are and always will be important truths to 
 be substituted in that opinion in the place of many errors and 
 absurd and injurious prejudices. There are few truths that public 
 opinion has not at some time hated and persecuted as heresies ; 
 and few errors that have not at some time seemed to it truths radi- 
 ant from the immediate presence of God. There are moral mala- 
 dies, also, of man and society, the treatment of which requires not 
 only boldness, but also, and more, prudence and discretion ; since 
 they are more the fruit of false and pernicious doctrines, moral, 
 political, and religious, than of vicious inclinations. 
 
 Much of the Masonic secret manifests itself, without speech 
 218
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 
 
 revealing it, to him who even partially comprehends all the De- 
 grees in proportion as he receives them ; and particularly to those 
 who advance to the highest Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted 
 Scottish Rite. That Rite raises a corner of the veil, even in the 
 Degree of Apprentice ; for it there declares that Masonry is a 
 worship. 
 
 Masonry labors to improve the social order by enlightening 
 men's minds, warming their hearts with the love of the good, in- 
 spiring them with the great principle of human fraternity, and 
 requiring of its disciples that their language and actions shall con- ' 
 form to that principle, that they shall enlighten each other, con- 
 trol their passions, abhor vice, and pity the vicious man as one 
 afflicted with a deplorable malady. 
 
 It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God 
 planted it in the heart of universal humanity. No creed has ever 
 been long-lived that was not built on this foundation. It is the 
 base, and they are the superstructure. "Pure religion and unde- 
 filed before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
 world." "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the 
 bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the 
 oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" The ministers 
 of this religion are all Masons who comprehend it and are devoted 
 to it; its sacrifices to God are good works, the sacrifices of the 
 base and disorderly passions, the offering up of self-interest on the 
 altar of humanity, and perpetual efforts to attain to all the moral 
 perfection of which man is capable. 
 
 To make honor and duty the steady beacon-lights that shall 
 guide your life-vessel over the stormy seas of time; to do that 
 which it is right to do, not because it will insure you success, or 
 bring with it a reward, or gain the applause of men, or be "the 
 best policy," more prudent or more advisable ; but because it is 
 right, and therefore ought to be done; to war incessantly against 
 error, intolerance, ignorance, and vice, and yet to pity those who 
 err, to be tolerant even of intolerance, to teach the ignorant, and 
 to labor to reclaim the vicious, are some of the duties of a Mason. 
 
 A good Mason is one that can look upon death, and see its face 
 with the same countenance with which he hears its story; that 
 can endure all the labors of his life with his soul supporting his 
 body, that can equally despise riches when he hath them and
 
 220 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 when he hath them not ; that is not sadder if they are in his neigh- 
 bor's exchequer, nor more lifted up if they shine around about his 
 own walls; one that is not moved with good fortune coming to 
 him, nor going from him ; that can look upon another man's lands 
 with equanimity and pleasure, as if they were his own ; and yet 
 look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another 
 man's; that neither s r ends his goods prodigally and foolishly, nor 
 yet keeps them avariciously and like a miser ; that weighs not ben- 
 efits by weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances 
 of him who confers them ; that never thinks his charity expen- 
 sive, if a worthy person, be the receiver; that does nothing for 
 opinion's sake, but everything for conscience, being as careful of 
 his thoughts as of his acting in markets and theatres, and in as 
 much awe of himself as of a whole assembly ; that is bountiful 
 and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive his 
 enemies ; that loves his country, consults its honor, and obeys its 
 laws, and desires and endeavors nothing more than that he may 
 do his duty and honor God. And such a Mason may reckon his 
 life to be the life of a man, and compute his months, not by 
 the course of the sun, but by the zodiac and circle of his vir- 
 tues. 
 
 The whole world is but one republic, of which each nation is a 
 family, and every individual a child. Masonry, not in anywise 
 derogating from the differing duties which the diversity of states 
 requires, tends to create a new people, which, composed of men of 
 many nations and tongues, shall all be bound together by the 
 bonds of science, morality, and virtue. 
 
 Essentially philanthropic, philosophical, and progressive, it has 
 for the basis of its dogma a firm belief in the existence of God 
 and his providence, and of the immortality of the soul ; for its 
 object, the dissemination of moral, political, philosophical, and 
 religious truth, and the practice of all the virtues. In every age, 
 its device has been, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," with constitu- 
 tional government, law, order, discipline, and subordination to 
 legitimate authority government and not anarchy. 
 
 Rut it is neither a political party nor a religious sect. It em- 
 braces all parties and all sects, to form from among them all a vast 
 fraternal association. It recognizes the dignity of human nature, 
 and man's right to such freedom as he is fitted for; and it 
 knows nothing that should place one man below another, except
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 221 
 
 ignorance, debasement, and crime, and the necessity of subordina- 
 tion to lawful will and authority. 
 
 It is philanthropic ; for it recognizes the great truth that all 
 men are of the same origin, have common interests, and should 
 co-operate together to the same end. 
 
 Therefore it teaches its members to love one another, to give to 
 each other mutual assistance and support in all the circumstances 
 of life, to share each other's pains and sorrows, as well as their joys 
 and pleasures ; to guard the reputations, respect the opinions, and 
 be perfectly tolerant of the errors, of each other, in matters of 
 faith and beliefs. 
 
 It is philosophical, because it teaches the great Truths concern- 
 ing the nature and existence of one Supreme Deity, and the exist- 
 ence and immortality of the soul. It revives the Academy of 
 Plato, and the wise teachings of Socrates. It reiterates the max- 
 ims of Pythagoras, Confucius, and Zoroaster, and reverentially 
 enforces the sublime lessons of Him who died upon the Cross. 
 
 The ancients thought that universal humanity acted under the 
 influence of two opposing Principles, the Good and the Evil : of 
 which the Good urged men toward Truth, Independence, and De- 
 votedness ; and the Evil toward Ealsehood, Servility, and Selfish- 
 ness. Masonry represents the Good Principle and constantly wars 
 against the evil one. It is the Hercules, the Osiris, the Apollo, the 
 Mithras, and the Ormuzd, at everlasting and deadly feud with the 
 demons of ignorance, brutality, baseness, falsehood, slavishness of 
 soul, intolerance, superstition, tyranny, meanness, the insolence of 
 wealth, and bigotry. 
 
 When despotism and superstition, twin-powers of evil and dark- 
 ness, reigned everywhere and seemed invincible and immortal, it 
 invented, to avoid persecution, the mysteries, that is to say, the 
 allegory, the symbol, and the emblem, and transmitted its doc- 
 trines by the secret mode of initiation. Now, retaining its ancient 
 symbols, and in part its ancient ceremonies, it displays in every 
 cr'vilized country its banner, on which in letters of living light its 
 great principles are written ; and it smiles at the puny efforts of 
 kings and popes to crush it out by excommunication and inter- 
 diction. 
 
 Man's views in regard to God, will contain only so much posi- 
 tive truth as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether 
 that truth is attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated
 
 222 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 by revelation. It must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to 
 bring it within the competence of finite human intelligence. Be- 
 ing finite, we can form no correct or adequate idea of the Infinite ; 
 being material, we can form no clear conception of the Spiritual. 
 We do believe in and know the infinity of Space and Time, and 
 the spirituality of the Soul; but the idea of that infinity and 
 spirituality eludes us. Even Omnipotence cannot infuse infinite 
 conceptions into finite minds ; nor can God, without first entirely 
 changing the conditions of our being, pour a complete and full 
 knowledge of His own nature and attributes into the narrow capa- 
 city of a human soul. Human intelligence could not grasp it, 
 nor human language express it. The visible is, necessarily, the 
 measure of the invisible. 
 
 The consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone. His 
 knowledge cannot pass beyond the limits of his own being. His 
 conceptions of other things and other beings are only his concep- 
 tions. They are not those things or beings themselves. The living 
 principle of a living Universe must be INFINITE; while all our 
 ideas and conceptions are finite, and applicable only to finite beings. 
 
 The Deity is thus not an object of knowledge, but of faith; not 
 to be approached by the understanding, but by the moral sense; 
 not to be conceived, but to be felt. All attempts to embrace the 
 Infinite in the conception of the Finite are, and must be only ac- 
 commodations to the frailty of man. Shrouded from human com- 
 prehension in an obscurity from which a chastened imagination is 
 awed back, and Thought retreats in conscious weakness, the Divine 
 Nature is a theme on which man is little entitled to dogmatize. 
 Here the philosophic Intellect becomes most painfully aware of its 
 own insufficiency. 
 
 And yet it is here that man most dogmatizes, classifies and de- 
 scribes God's attributes, makes out his map of God's nature, and 
 his inventory of God's qualities, feelings, impulses, and passions ; 
 and then hangs and burns his brother, who, as dogmatically as he, 
 makes out a different map and inventory. The common under- 
 standing has no humility. Its God is an incarnate Divinity. Im- 
 perfection imposes its own limitations on the Illimitable, and 
 clothes the Inconceivable Spirit of the Universe in forms that 
 come within the grasp of the senses and the intellect, and are 
 derived from that infinite and imperfect nature which is but God's 
 creation.
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUDLIME MASON. 22J 
 
 We are all of us, though not all equally, mistaken. The cher- 
 ished dogmas of each of us are not, as we fondly suppose, the pure 
 truth of God ; but simply our own special form of error, our 
 guesses at truth, the refracted and fragmentary rays of light that 
 have fallen upon our own minds. Our little systems have their 
 day, and cease to be ; they are but broken lights of God ; and He 
 is more than they. Perfect truth is not attainable anywhere. We 
 style this Degree that of Perfection ; and yet what it teaches is 
 imperfect and defective. Yet we are not to relax in the pursuit 
 of truth, nor contentedly acquiesce in error. It is our duty always, 
 to press forward in the search ; for though absolute truth is unat- 
 tainable, yet the amount of error in our views is capable of pro- 
 gressive and perpetual diminution; and thus Masonry is a con- 
 tinual struggle toward the light. 
 
 All errors are not equally innocuous. That which is most inju- 
 rious is to entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and 
 attributes of God ; and it is this that Masonry symbolizes by igno- 
 rance of the True Word. The true word of a Mason is, not the 
 entire, perfect, absolute truth in regard to God; but the highest 
 and noblest conception of Him that our minds are capable of form- 
 ing; and this word is Ineffable, because one man cannot commu- 
 nicate to another his own conception of Deity ; since every man's 
 conception of God must be proportioned to his mental cultivation, 
 and intellectual powers, and moral excellence. God is, as man 
 conceives Him, the reflected image of man himself. 
 
 For every man's conception of God must vary with his mental 
 cultivation and mental powers. If any one contents himself with 
 any lozver image than his intellect is capable of grasping, then he 
 contents himself with that which is false to him, as well as false in 
 fact. If lower than he can reach, he must needs feel it to be false. 
 And if we, of the nineteenth century after Christ, adopt the con- 
 ceptions of the nineteenth century before Him ; if our conceptions 
 of God are those of the ignorant, narrow-minded, and vindictive 
 Israelite ; then we think worse of God, and have a lower, meaner, 
 and more limited view of His nature, than the faculties which He 
 has bestowed are capable of grasping. The highest view we can 
 form is nearest to the truth. If we acquiesce in any lower one. 
 we acquiesce in an untruth. We feel that it is an affront and an 
 indignity to Him, to conceive of Him as cruel, short-sighted, ca- 
 pricious, and unjust; as a jealous, an angry, a vindictive Being.
 
 224 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 When we examine our conceptions of His character, if we can 
 conceive of a loftier, nobler, higher, more beneficent, glorious, and 
 magnificent character, then this latter is to us the true conception 
 of Deity ; for nothing can be imagined more excellent than Pie. 
 
 Religion, to obtain currency and influence with the great mass 
 of mankind, must needs be alloyed with such an amount of error 
 as to place it far below the standard attainable by the higher hu- 
 man capacities. A religion as pure as the loftiest and most culti- 
 vated human reason could discern, would not be comprehended 
 by, or effective over, the less educated portion of mankind. What 
 is Truth to the philosopher, would not be Truth, nor have the 
 effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of the many must 
 necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective 
 few, not so much in its essence as in its forms, not so much in the 
 spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as in the sym- 
 bols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. The truest 
 religion would, in many points, not be comprehended by the igno- 
 rant, nor consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for 
 them. The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the 
 language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey 
 to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doc- 
 trine. A perfectly pure faith, free from all extraneous admixtures, 
 a system of noble theism and lofty morality, would find too little 
 preparation for it in the common mind and heart, to admit of 
 prompt reception by the masses of mankind ; and Truth might 
 not have reached us, if it had not borrowed the wings of Error. 
 
 The Mason regards God as a Moral Governor, as well as an 
 Original Creator ; as a God at hand, and not merely one afar off 
 in the distance of infinite space, and in the remoteness of Past 
 or Future Eternity. He conceives of Him as taking a watchful 
 and presiding interest in the affairs of the world, and as influenc- 
 ing the hearts and actions of men. 
 
 To him, God is the great Source of the World of Life and Mat- 
 ter; and man, with his wonderful corporeal and mental frame, 
 His direct work. He believes that God has made men with differ- 
 ent intellectual capacities ; and enabled some, by superior intellect- 
 ual power, to see and originate truths which are hidden from the 
 mass of men. He believes that when it is His will that mankind 
 should make some great step forward, or achieve some pregnant 
 discovery, He calls into being some intellect of more than ordi-
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 225 
 
 nary magnitude and power, to give birth to new ideas, and grander 
 conceptions of the Truths vital to Humanity. 
 
 We hold that God has so ordered matters in this beautiful and 
 harmonious, but mysteriously-governed Universe, that one great 
 mind after another will arise, from time to time, as such are 
 needed, to reveal to men the truths that are wanted, and the 
 amount of truth that can be borne. He so arranges, that nature 
 and the course of events shall send men into the world, endowed 
 with that higher mental and moral organization, in which grand 
 truths, and sublime gleams of spiritual light will spontaneously 
 and inevitably arise. These speak to men by inspiration. 
 
 Whatever Hiram really was, he is the type, perhaps an imag- 
 inary type, to us, of humanity in its highest phase ; an exemplar 
 of what man may and should become, in the course of ages, in his 
 progress toward the realization of his destiny ; an individual gifted 
 with a glorious intellect, a noble soul, a fine organization, and a 
 perfectly balanced moral being ; an earnest of what humanity may 
 be, and what we believe it will hereafter be in God's good time ; the 
 possibility of the race made real. 
 
 The Mason believes that God has arranged this glorious but per- 
 plexing world with a purpose, and on a plan. He holds that every 
 man sent upon this earth, and especially every man of superior 
 capacity, has a duty to perform, a mission to fulfill, a baptism to 
 be baptized with ; that every great and good man possesses some 
 portion of God's truth, which he must proclaim to the world, and 
 which must bear fruit in his own bosom. In a true and simple 
 sense, he believes all the pure, wise, and intellectual to be inspired, 
 and to be so for the instruction, advancement, and elevation of 
 mankind. That kind of inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is 
 not limited to the few writers claimed by Jews, Christians, or 
 Moslems, but is co-extensive with the race. It is the consequence 
 of a faithful use of our faculties. Each man is its subject, God is 
 its source, and Truth its only test. It differs in degrees, as the 
 intellectual endowments, the moral wealth of the soul, and the de- 
 gree of cultivation of those endowments and faculties differ. It is 
 limited to no sect, age, or nation. It is wide as the world and 
 common as God. It was not given to a few men. in the infancy 
 of mankind, to monopolize inspiration, and bar God out of the 
 soul. We are not born in the dotage and decay of the world. The 
 stars are beautiful as in their prime ; the most ancient Heavens
 
 226 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 are fresh and strong. God is still everywhere in nature. Wher- 
 ever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason utter 
 their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers and 
 prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man's heart ; 
 nothing is so full of God. This inspiration is not given to the 
 learned alone, not alone to the great and wise, but to every faithful 
 child of God. Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do the 
 pure in heart see God ; and he who lives truly, feels Him as a pres- 
 ence within the soul. The conscience is the very voice of Deity. 
 
 Masonry, arOund whose altars the Christian, the Hebrew, the 
 Moslem, the Brahmin, the followers of Confucius and Zoroaster, 
 can assemble as brethren and unite in prayer to the one God who 
 is above all the Baalim, must needs leave it to each of its Initiates 
 to look for the foundation of his faith and hope to the written 
 scriptures of his own religion. For itself it finds those truths 
 definite enough, which are written by the finger of God upon the 
 heart of man and on the pages of the book of nature. Views of 
 religion and duty, wrought out by the meditations of the studious, 
 confirmed by the allegiance of the good and wise, stamped as ster- 
 ling by the response they find in every uncorrupted mind, com- 
 mend themselves to Masons of every creed, and may well be ac- 
 cepted by all. 
 
 The Mason does not pretend to dogmatic certainty, nor vainly 
 imagine such certainty attainable. He considers that if there 
 were no written revelation, he could safely rest the hopes that ani- 
 mate him and the principles that guide him, on the deductions of 
 reason and the convictions of instinct and consciousness. He can 
 find a sure foundation for his religious belief, in these deductions 
 of the intellect and convictions of the heart. For reason proves 
 to him the existence and attributes of God ; and those spiritual 
 instincts which he feels are the voice of God in his soul, infuse 
 into his mind a sense of his relation to God, a conviction of the 
 beneficence of his Creator and Preserver, and a hope of future ex- 
 istence ; and his reason and conscience alike unerringly point to 
 virtue as the highest good, and the destined aim and purpose of 
 man's life. 
 
 He studies the wonders of the Heavens, the frame-work and 
 revolutions of the Earth, the mysterious beauties and adaptations 
 of animal existence, the moral and material constitution of the 
 human creature, so fearfully and wonderfully made ; and is satis-
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 22/ 
 
 fied that God IS ; and that a Wise and Good Being is the author 
 of the starry Heavens above him, and of the moral world within 
 him ; and his mind finds an adequate foundation for its hopes, its 
 worship, its principles of action, in the far-stretching Universe, in 
 the glorious firmament, in the deep, full soul, bursting with unut- 
 terable thoughts. 
 
 These are truths which every reflecting mind will unhesitatingly 
 receive, as not to be surpassed, nor capable of improvement ; and 
 fitted, if obeyed, to make earth indeed a Paradise, and man only a 
 little lower than the angels. The worthlessness of ceremonial 
 observances, and the necessity of active virtue ; the enforcement 
 of purity of heart as the security for purity of life, and of the 
 government of the thoughts, as the originators and forerunners of 
 action ; universal philanthropy, requiring us to love all men, and 
 to do unto others that and that only which we should think it 
 right, just, and generous for them to do unto us; forgiveness of 
 injuries ; the necessity of self-sacrifice in the discharge of duty ; 
 humility ; genuine sincerity, and being that which we seem to be ; 
 all these sublime precepts need no miracle, no voice from the 
 clouds, to recommend them to our allegiance, or to assure us of 
 their divine origin. They command obedience by virtue of their 
 inherent rectitude and beauty ; and have been, and are, and will 
 be the law in every age and every country of the world. God 
 revealed them to man in the beginning. 
 
 To the Mason, God is our Father in Heaven, to be Whose especial 
 children is the sufficient reward of the peacemakers, to see Whose 
 face the highest hope of the pure in heart ; Who is ever at hand to 
 strengthen His true worshippers ; to Whom our most fervent love is 
 due, our most humble and patient submission ; Whose most accept- 
 able worship is a pure and pitying heart and a beneficent life ; in 
 Whose constant presence we live and act, to W r hose merciful dispo- 
 sal we are resigned by that death which, we hope and believe, is 
 but the entrance to a better life ; and Whose wise decrees forbid a 
 man to lap his soul in an elyseum of mere indolent content. 
 
 As to our feelings toward Him and our conduct toward man, 
 Masonry teaches little about which men can differ, and little from 
 which they can dissent. He is our Father ; and we are all breth- 
 ren. This much lies open to the most ignorant and busy, as fully 
 as to those who have most leisure and are most learned. This 
 needs no Priest to teach it, and no authority to indorse it : and if
 
 228 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 every man did that only which is consistent with it, it would exile 
 barbarity, cruelty, intolerance, uncharitableness, perfidy, treachery, 
 revenge, selfishness, and all their kindred vices and bad passions 
 beyond the confines of the world. 
 
 The true Mason, sincerely holding that a Supreme God created 
 and governs this world, believes also that He governs it by laws, 
 which, though wise, just, and beneficent, are yet steady, unwaver- 
 ing, inexorable. He believes that his agonies and sorrows are or- 
 dained for his chastening, his strengthening, his elaboration and 
 development ; because they are the necessary results of the opera- 
 tion of laws, the best that could be devised for the happiness and 
 purification of the species, and to give occasion and opportunity 
 for the practice of all the virtues, from the homeliest and most 
 common, to the noblest and most sublime ; or perhaps not even 
 that, but the best adapted to work out the vast, awful, glorious, 
 eternal designs of the Great Spirit of the Universe. He believes 
 that the ordained operations of nature, which have brought misery 
 to him, have, from the very unswerving tranquillity of their ca- 
 reer, showered blessings and sunshine upon many another path ; 
 that the unrelenting chariot of Time, which has crushed or maimed 
 him in its allotted course, is pressing onward to the accomplish- 
 ment of those serene and mighty purposes, to have contributed to 
 which, even as a victim, is an honor and a recompense. He takes 
 this view of Time and Nature and God, and yet bears his lot with- 
 out murmur or distrust; because it is a portion of a system, the 
 best possible, because ordained by God. He does not believe that 
 God loses sight of him, while superintending the march of the 
 great harmonies of the Universe ; nor that it was not foreseen, 
 when the Universe was created, its laws enacted, and the long suc- 
 cession of its operations pre-ordained, that in the great march of 
 those events, he would suffer pain and undergo calamity. He be- 
 lieves that his individual good entered into God's consideration, as 
 well as the great cardinal results to which the course of all things 
 is tending. 
 
 Thus believing, he has attained an eminence in virtue, the high- 
 est, amid passive excellence, which humanity can reach. He finds 
 his reward and his support in the reflection that he is an unreluc- 
 tant and self-sacrificing co-operator with the Creator of the Uni- 
 verse ; and in the noble consciousness of being worthy and capable 
 of so sublime a conception, yet so sad a destiny. He is then truly
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 229 
 
 entitled to be called a Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason. 
 He is content to fall early in the battle, if his body may but form 
 a stepping-stone for the future conquests of humanity. 
 
 It cannot be that God, Who, we are certain, is perfectly good, can 
 choose us to suffer pain, unless either we are ourselves to receive 
 from it an antidote to what is evil in ourselves, or else as such pain 
 is a necessary part in the scheme of the Universe, which as a whole 
 is good. In either case, the Mason receives it with submission. 
 He would not suffer unless it was ordered so. Whatever his creed, 
 if he believes that God is, and that He cares for His creatures, he 
 cannot doubt that; nor that it would not have been so ordered, 
 unless it was either better for himself, or for some other persons, 
 or for some things. To complain and lament is to murmur against 
 God's will, and worse than unbelief. 
 
 The Mason, whose mind is cast in a nobler mould than those of 
 the ignorant and unreflecting, and is instinct with a diviner life, 
 who loves truth more than rest, and the peace of Heaven rather 
 than the peace of Eden, to whom a loftier being brings severer 
 cares, who knows that man does not live by pleasure or content 
 alone, but by the presence of the power of God, must cast be- 
 hind him the hope of any other repose or tranquillity, than that 
 which is the last reward of long agonies of thought ; he must re- 
 linquish all prospect of any Heaven save that of which trouble is 
 the avenue and portal ; he must gird up his loins, and trim his 
 lamp, for a work that must be done, and must not be negligently 
 done. If he does not like to live in the furnished lodgings of tra- 
 dition, he must build his own house, his own system of faith and 
 thought, for himself. 
 
 The hope of success, and not the hope of reward, should be our 
 stimulating and sustaining power. Our object, and not ourselves, 
 should be our inspiring thought. Selfishness is a sin, when tem- 
 porary, and for time. Spun out to eternity, it does not become 
 celestial prudence. We should toil and die, not for Heaven or 
 Bliss, but for Duty. 
 
 In the more frequent cases, where we have to join our efforts to 
 those of thousands of others, to contribute to the carrying forward 
 of a great cause ; merely to till the ground or sow the seed for a 
 very distant harvest, or to prepare the way for the future advent 
 of some great amendment; the amount which each one contrib- 
 utes to the achievement of ultimate success, the portion of the
 
 230 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 price which justice should assign to each as his especial produc- 
 tion, can never be accurately ascertained. Perhaps few of those 
 who have ever labored, in the patience of secrecy and silence, to 
 bring about some political or social change, which they felt con- 
 vinced would ultimately prove of vast service to humanity, lived 
 to see the change effected, or the anticipated good flow from it. 
 Fewer still of them were able to pronounce what appreciable 
 weight their several efforts contributed to the achievement of the 
 change desired. Many will doubt, whether, in truth, these exer- 
 tions have any influence whatever; and, discouraged, cease all 
 active effort. 
 
 Not to be thus discouraged, the Mason must labor to elevate 
 and purify his motives, as well as sedulously cherish the convic- 
 tion, assuredly a true one, that m this world there is no such thing 
 as effort thrown away; that in all labor there is profit; that all 
 sincere exertion, in a righteous and unselfish cause, is necessarily 
 followed, in spite of all appearance to the contrary, by an appro- 
 priate and proportionate success ; that no bread cast upon the 
 waters can be wholly lost ; that no seed planted in the ground can 
 fail to quicken in due time and measure ; and that, however we 
 may, in moments of despondency, be apt to doubt, not only 
 whether our cause will triumph, but whether, if it does, we shall 
 have contributed to its triumph, there is One, Who has not 
 only seen every exertion we have made, but Who can assign 
 the exact degree in which each soldier has assisted to gain the 
 great victory over social evil. No good work is done wholly in 
 vain. 
 
 The Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason will in nowise 
 deserve that honorable title, if he has. not that strength, that will, 
 that self-sustaining energy ; that Faith, that feeds upon no earthly 
 hope, nor ever thinks of victory, but, content in its own consum- 
 mation, combats because it ought to combat, rejoicing fights, and 
 still rejoicing falls. 
 
 The Augean Stables of the World, the accumulated uncleanness 
 and misery of centuries, require a mighty river to cleanse them 
 thoroughly away ; every drop we contribute aids to swell that 
 river and augment its force, in a degree appreciable by God, 
 though not by man ; and he whose zeal is deep and earnest, will 
 not be over-anxious that his individual drops should be distin- 
 guishable amid the mighty mass of cleansing and fertilizing wa-
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 231 
 
 ters; far less that, for the sake of distinction, it should flow in 
 ineffective singleness away. 
 
 The true Mason will not be careful that his name should be 
 inscribed upon the mite which he casts into the treasury of God. 
 It suffices him to know that if he has labored, with purity of pur- 
 pose, in any good cause, he must have contributed to its success; 
 that the degree in which he has contributed is a matter of infi- 
 nitely small concern ; and still more, that the consciousness of 
 having so contributed, however obscurely and unnoticed, is h: , 
 sufficient, even if it be his sole, reward. Let every Grand Elect, 
 Perfect, and Sublime Mason cherish this faith. It is a duty. It 
 is the brilliant and never-dying light that shines within and 
 through the symbolic pedestal of alabaster, on which reposes the 
 perfect cube of agate, symbol of duty, inscribed with the divine 
 name of God. He who industriously sows and reaps is a good 
 laborer, and worthy of his hire. But he who sows that which 
 shall be reaped by others, by those who will know not of and care 
 not for the sower, is a laborer of a nobler order, and worthy of a 
 more excellent reward. 
 
 The Mason does not exhort others to an ascetic undervaluing 
 of this life, as an insignificant and unworthy portion of existence; 
 for that demands feelings which are unnatural, and which, there- 
 fore, if attained, must be morbid, and if merely professed, insin- 
 cere; and teaches us to look rather to a future life for the com- 
 pensation of social evils, than to this life for their cure ; and so 
 does injury to the cause of virtue and to that of social progress. 
 Life is real, and is earnest, and it is full of duties to be performed. 
 It is the beginning of our immortality. Those only who feel a 
 deep interest and affection for this world will work resolutely for 
 its amelioration ; those whose affections are transferred to Heaven, 
 easily acquiesce in the miseries of earth, deeming them hopeless, 
 befitting, and ordained ; and console themselves with the idea of 
 the amends which are one day to be theirs. It is a sad truth, that 
 those most decidedly given to spiritual contemplation, and to 
 making religion rule in their hearts, are often most apathetic tow- 
 ard all improvement of this world's systems, and in many cases 
 virtual conservatives of evil, and hostile to political and social re- 
 form, as diverting men's energies from eternity. 
 
 The Mason does not war with his own instincts, macerate the 
 body into weakness and disorder, and disparage what he sees to be
 
 232 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 beautiful, knows to be wonderful, and feels to be unspeakably 
 dear and fascinating. He does not put aside the nature which 
 God has given him, to struggle after one which He has not be- 
 stowed. He knows that man is sent into the world, not a spir- 
 itual, but a composite being, made up of body and mind, the body 
 having, as is fit and needful in a material world, its full, rightful, 
 and allotted share. His life is guided by a full recognition of this 
 fact. He does not deny it in bold words, and admit it in weak- 
 nesses and inevitable failings. He believes that his spirituality 
 will come in the next stage of his being, when he puts on the spir- 
 itual body ; that his body will be dropped at death ; and that, until 
 then, God meant it to be commanded and controlled, but not neg- 
 lected, despised, or ignored by the soul, under pain of heavy con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Yet the Mason is not indifferent as to the fate of the soul, after 
 its present life, as to its continued and eternal being, and the char- 
 acter of the scenes in which that being will be fully developed. 
 These are to him topics of the profoundest interest, and the most 
 ennobling and refining contemplation. They occupy much of his 
 leisure ; and as he becomes familiar \vith the sorrows and calami- 
 ties of this life, as his hopes are disappointed and his visions of 
 happiness here fade away ; when life has wearied him in its 
 race of hours; when he is harassed and toil-worn, and the bur- 
 den of his years weighs heavy on him, the balance of attraction 
 gradually inclines in favor of another life; and he clings to his 
 lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no in- 
 junction, and will listen to no prohibition. They are the consol- 
 ing privilege of the aspiring, the wayworn, the weary, and the be- 
 reaved. 
 
 To him the contemplation of the Future lets in light upon the 
 Present, and develops the higher portions of his nature. He en- 
 deavors rightly to adjust the respective claims of Heaven and earth 
 upon his time and thought, so as to give the proper proportions 
 thereof to performing the duties and entering into the interests 
 of this world, and to preparation for a better ; to the cultivation 
 and purification of his own character, and to the public service of 
 his fellow-men. 
 
 The Mason does not dogmatize, but entertaining and uttering 
 his own convictions, he leaves every one else free to do the same ; 
 and only hopes that the time will come, even if after the lapse of
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 233 
 
 ages, when all men shall form one great family of brethren, and 
 one law alone, the law of love, shall govern God's whole Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Believe as you may, my brother; if the Universe is not, to you, 
 without a God, and if man is not like the beast that perishes, but 
 hath an immortal soul, we welcome you among us, to wear, as we 
 wear, with humility, and conscious of your demerits and short- 
 comings, the title of Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason. 
 
 It was not without a secret meaning, that twelve was the num- 
 ber of the Apostles of Christ, and scvcnty-tivo that of his Disciples : 
 that John addressed his rebukes and menaces to the Seven 
 churches, the number of the Archangels and the Planets. At 
 Babylon were the Seven Stages of Bersippa, a pyramid of Seven 
 stories, and at Ecbatana Seven concentric inclosures, each of a 
 different color. Thebes also had Seven gates, and the same number 
 is repeated again and again in the account of the flood. The 
 Sephiroth, or Emanations, ten in number, three in one class, and 
 seven in the other, repeat the mystic numbers of Pythagoras. 
 Seven Amschaspands or planetary spirits were invoked with 
 Ormuzd : Seven inferior Rishis of Hindustan were saved with the 
 head of their family in an ark: and Seven ancient personages 
 alone returned with the British just man, Hu, from the dale of 
 the grievous waters. There were Seven Heliadse, whose father 
 Helias, or the Sun, once crossed the sea in a golden cup ; Seven 
 Titans, children of the older Titan, Kronos or Saturn ; Seven 
 Corybantes ; and Seven Cabiri, sons of Sydyk ; Seven primeval 
 Celestial spirits of the Japanese, and Seven Karfesters who 
 escaped from the deluge and began to be the parents of a new 
 race, on the summit of Mount Albordi. Seven Cyclopes, also, 
 built the walls of Tiryus. 
 
 Celsus, as quoted by Origen, tells us that the Persians repre- 
 sented by symbols the two-fold motion of the stars, fixed and 
 planetary, and the passage of the Soul through their successive 
 spheres. They erected in their holy caves, in which the mystic 
 rites of the Mithriac Initiations were practised, what he denom- 
 inates a high ladder, on the Seven steps of which were Seven 
 gates or portals, according to the number of the Seven principal 
 heavenly bodies. Through these the aspirants passed, until they 
 reached the summit of the whole : and this passage was styled a 
 transmigration through the spheres. 
 16
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Jacob saw in his dream a ladder planted or set on the earth, 
 and its top reaching to Heaven, and the Malaki Alohim ascending 
 and descending- on it, and above it stood IHUH, declaring Himself 
 to be Ihuh-Alhi Abraham. The word translated ladder, is C-^D 
 Salam, from ^>D, Salal, raised, elevated, reared up, exalted, piled 
 up into a heap, Aggeravit. nbbn Salalah, means a heap, rampart, 
 or other accumulation of earth or stone, artificially made; and 
 ]jbn, Salaa or Sato, is a rock or cliff or boulder, and the name of 
 the city of Petra. There is no ancient Hebrew word to designate 
 a pyramid. 
 
 The symbolic mountain Meru was ascended by Seven steps or 
 stages ; and all the pyramids and artificial tumuli and hillocks 
 thrown up in flat countries were imitations of this fabulous and 
 mystic mountain, for purposes of worship. These were the "High 
 Places" so often mentioned in the Hebrew books, on which the 
 idolaters sacrificed to foreign gods. 
 
 The pyramids were sometimes square, and sometimes round. 
 The sacred Babylonian tower [^13D, Magdol], dedicated to the 
 great Father Bal, was an artificial hill, of pyramidal shape, and 
 Seven stages, built of brick, and each stage of a different color, 
 representing the Seven planetary spheres by the appropriate color 
 of each planet. Meru itself was said to be a single mountain, ter- 
 minating in three peaks, and thus a symbol of the Trimurti. The 
 great Pagoda at Tan j ore was of six stories, surmounted by a tem- 
 ple as the seventh, and on this three spires or towers. An ancient 
 pagoda at Deogur was surmounted by a tower, sustaining the 
 mystic egg and a trident. Herodotus tells us that the Temple of 
 Bal at Babylon was a tower composed of Seven towers, resting on 
 an eighth that served as basis, and successively diminishing in 
 size from the bottom to the top ; and Strabo tells us it was a pyr- 
 amid. 
 
 Faber thinks that the Mithriac ladder was really a pyramid with 
 Seven stages, each provided with a narrow door or aperture, 
 through each of which doors the aspirant passed, to reach the 
 summit, and then descended through similar doors on the opposite 
 side of the pyramid ; the ascent and descent of the Soul being 
 thus represented. 
 
 Each Mithriac cave and all the most ancient temples we're in- 
 tended to symbolize the Universe, which itself was habitually 
 called the Temple and habitation of Deity. Every temple was
 
 GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 235 
 
 the world in miniature ; and so the whole world was one grand 
 temple. The most ancient temples were roofless ; and therefore 
 the Persians, Celts, and Scythians strongly disliked artificial cov- 
 ered edifices. Cicero says that Xerxes burned the Grecian tem- 
 ples, on the express ground that the whole world was the Magnifi- 
 cent Temple and Habitation of the Supreme Deity. Macrobius 
 says that the entire Universe was judiciously deemed by many the 
 Temple of God. Plato pronounced the real Temple of the Deity 
 to be the world ; and Heraclitus declared that the Universe, varie- 
 gated with animals and plants and stars was the only genuine 
 Temple of the Divinity. 
 
 How completely the Temple of Solomon was symbolic, is 
 manifest, not only from the continual reproduction in it of 
 the sacred numbers and of astrological symbols in the histor- 
 ical descriptions of it; but also, and yet more, from the de- 
 tails of the imaginary reconstructed edifice, seen by Ezechiel 
 in his vision. The Apocalypse completes the demonstration, 
 and shows the kabalistic meanings of the whole. The Sym- 
 bola Architectonica are found on the most ancient edifices ; 
 and these mathematical figures and instruments, adopted by 
 the Templars, and identical with those on the gnostic seals and 
 abraxae, connect their dogma with the Chaldaic, Syriac, and 
 Egyptian Oriental philosophy. The secret Pythagorean doc- 
 trines of numbers were preserved by the monks of Thibet, by 
 the Hierophants of Egypt and Eleusis, at Jerusalem, and in 
 the circular Chapters of the Druids ; and they are especially 
 consecrated in that mysterious book, the Apocalypse of Saint 
 John. 
 
 All temples were surrounded by pillars, recording the number 
 of the constellations, the signs of the zodiac, or the cycles of the 
 planets ; and each was a microcosm or symbol of the Universe, 
 having for roof or ceiling the starred vault of Heaven. 
 
 All temples were originally open at the top, having for roof the 
 sky. Twelve pillars described the belt of the zodiac. Whatever 
 the number of the pillars, they were mystical everywhere. At 
 Abury, the Druidic temple reproduced all the cycles by its col- 
 umns. Around the temples of Chilminar in Persia, of Raalbec, 
 and of Tukhti Schlomoh in Tartary, on the frontier of China, 
 stood forty pillars. On each side of the temple at Psestum were 
 fourteen, recording the Egyptian cycle of the dark and light sides
 
 -'36 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of the moon, as described by Plutarch; the whole thirty-eight 
 that surrounded them recording the two meteoric cycles so often 
 found in the Druidic temples. 
 
 The theatre built by Scaurus, in Greece, was surrounded by 
 360 columns ; the Temple at Mecca, and that at lona in Scotland, 
 by 360 stones.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 CHAPTER OF ROSE CROIX.
 
 XV. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST OR OF THE 
 SWORD. 
 
 [Knight of the East, of the Sword, or of the Eagle.] 
 
 THIS Degree, like all others in Masonry, is symbolical. Based 
 upon historical truth and authentic tradition, it is still an alle- 
 gory. The leading lesson of this Degree is Fidelity to obligation, 
 and Constancy and Perseverance under difficulties and discour- 
 agement. 
 
 Masonry is engaged in her crusade, against ignorance, intoler- 
 ance, fanaticism, superstition, uncharitableness, and error. She 
 does not sail with the trade-winds, upon a smooth sea, with a 
 steady free breeze, fair for a welcoming harbor ; but meets and 
 must overcome many opposing currents, baffling winds, and dead 
 calms. 
 
 The chief obstacles to her success are the apathy and faithless- 
 ness of her own selfish children, and the supine indifference of 
 the world. Tn the roar and crush and hurry of life and business, 
 and the tumult and uproar of politics, the quiet voice of Masonry 
 is unheard and unheeded. The first lesson which one learns, who 
 engages in any great work of reform or beneficence, is, that men 
 are essentially careless, lukewarm, and indifferent as to every- 
 thing that does not concern their own personal and immediate 
 
 23?
 
 238 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 welfare. It is to single men, and not to the united efforts of 
 many, that all the great works of man, struggling toward perfec- 
 tion, are owing. The enthusiast, who imagines that he can in- 
 spire with his own enthusiasm the multitude that eddies around 
 'him, or even the few who have associated themselves with him as 
 co-workers, is grievously mistaken ; and most often the conviction 
 of his own mistake is followed by discouragement and disgust. 
 To do all, to pay all, and to suffer all, and then, when despite all 
 obstacles and hindrances, success is accomplished, and a great 
 work done, to see those who opposed or looked coldly on it, claim 
 and reap all the praise and reward, is the common and almost uni- 
 versal lot of the benefactor of his kind. 
 
 He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, 
 is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river 
 lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his 
 head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield 
 to the stress of the current, and float with it to the shore, or are 
 swept over the rapids ; and only here and there the stout, strong 
 heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success. 
 
 It is the motionless and stationary that most frets and impedes 
 the current of progress ; the solid rock or stupid dead tree, rested 
 firmly on the bottom, and around which the river whirls and 
 eddies : the Masons that doubt and hesitate and are discouraged ; 
 that disbelieve in the capability of man to improve; that are not 
 disposed to toil and labor for the interest and well-being of gen- 
 eral humanity ; that expect others to do all, even of that which 
 they do not oppose or ridicule; while they sit, applauding and 
 doing nothing, or perhaps prognosticating failure. 
 
 There were many such at the rebuilding of the Temple. There 
 were prophets of evil and misfortune the lukewarm and the in- 
 different and the apathetic ; those who stood by and. sneered ; and 
 those who thought they did God service enough if they now and 
 then faintly applauded. There were ravens croaking ill omen, 
 and murmurers who preached the folly and futility of the attempt. 
 The world is made up of such; and they were as abundant then 
 as they are now. 
 
 But gloomy and discouraging as was the prospect, with luke- 
 warmness within and bitter opposition without, our ancient breth- 
 ren persevered. Let us leave them engaged in the good work, 
 and whenever to us, as to them, success is uncertain, remote, and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST OR OF THE SWORD. 239 
 
 contingent, let us still remember that the only question for us to 
 ask, as true men and Masons, is, what does duty require ; and not 
 what will be the result and our reward if we do our duty. Work 
 on, with the Sword in one hand, and the Trowel in the other ! 
 
 Masonry teaches that God is a Paternal Being, and has an in- 
 terest in his creatures, such as is expressed in the title Father; an 
 interest unknown to all the systems of Paganism, untaught in all 
 the theories of philosophy ; an interest not only in the glorious 
 beings of other spheres, the Sons of Light, the dwellers in Heav- 
 enly worlds, but in us, poor, ignorant, and unworthy; that He 
 has pity for the erring, pardon for the guilty, love for the pure, 
 knowledge for the humble, and promises of immortal life for 
 those who trust in and obey Him. 
 
 Without a belief in Him, life is miserable, the world is dark, the 
 Universe disrobed of its splendors, the intellectual tie to nature 
 broken, the charm of existence dissolved, the great hope of being 
 lost; and the mind, like a star struck from its sphere, wanders 
 through the infinite desert of its conceptions, without attraction, 
 tendency, destiny, or end. 
 
 Masonry teaches, that, of all the events and actions, that take 
 place in the universe of worlds and the eternal succession of ages, 
 there is not one, even the minutest, which God did not forever 
 foresee, with all the distinctness of immediate vision, combining 
 all, so that man's free will should be His instrument, like all the 
 other forces of nature. 
 
 It teaches that the soul of man is formed by Him for a pur- 
 pose ; that, built up in its proportions, and fashioned in every 
 part, by infinite skill, an emanation from His spirit, its nature, 
 necessity, and design are virtue. It is so formed, so moulded, so 
 fashioned, so exactly balanced, so exquisitely proportioned in every 
 part, that sin introduced into it is misery ; that vicious thoughts 
 fall upon it like drops of poison ; and guilty desires, breathing on 
 its delicate fibres, make plague-spots there, deadly as those of pes- 
 tilence upon the body. It is made for virtue, and not for vice ; 
 for purity, as its end, rest, and happiness. Not more vainly would 
 we attempt to make the mountain sink to the level of the valley, 
 the waves of the angry sea turn back from its shores and cease to 
 thunder upon the beach, the stars to halt in their swift courses, 
 than to change any one law of our own nature. And one of those 
 laws, uttered by God's voice, and speaking through every nerve
 
 240 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and fibre, every force and element, of the moral constitution He 
 has given us, is that we must be upright and virtuous ; that if 
 tempted we must resist ; that we must govern our unruly pas- 
 sions, and hold in hand our sensual appetites. And this is hot the 
 dictate of an arbitrary will, nor of some stern and impracticable 
 law; but it is part of the great firm law of harmony that binds 
 the Universe together : not the mere enactment of arbitrary will ; 
 but the dictate of Infinite Wisdom. 
 
 We know that God is good, and that what He does is right. 
 This known, the works of creation, the changes of life, the desti- 
 nies of eternity, are all spread before us. as the dispensations and 
 counsels of infinite love. This known, we then know that the 
 love of God is working to issues, like itself, beyond all thought 
 and imagination good and glorious ; and that the only reason 
 why we do not understand it, is that it is too glorious for us to un- 
 derstand. God's love takes care for all, and nothing is neglected. 
 It watches over all, provides for all, makes wise adaptations for 
 all ; for age, for infancy, for maturity, for childhood ; in every 
 scene of this or another world ; for want, weakness, joy, sorrow, 
 and even for sin. All is good and well and right ; and shall be so 
 forever. Through the eternal ages the light of God's beneficence 
 shall shine hereafter, disclosing all, consummating all, rewarding 
 all that deserve reward. Then we shall see, what now we can only 
 believe. The cloud will be lifted up, the gate of mystery be 
 passed, and the full light shine forever ; the light of which that 
 of the Lodge is a symbol. Then that which caused us trial shall 
 yield us triumph ; and that which made our heart ache shall fill 
 us with gladness; and we shall then feel that there, as here, the 
 only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve ; which 
 could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance, 
 and imperfection. W T e must pass through the darkness, to reach 
 the light.
 
 XVI. 
 PRINCE OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 WE no longer expect to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. To 
 us it has become but a symbol. To us the whole world is God's 
 Temple, as is every upright heart. To establish all over the world 
 the New Law and Reign of Love, Peace, Charity, and Toleration, 
 is to build that Temple, most acceptable to God, in erecting which 
 Masonry is now engaged. No longer needing to repair to Jerusa- 
 lem to worship, nor to offer up sacrifices and shed blood to prop* 
 tiate the Deity, man may make the woods and mountains his 
 Churches and Temples, and worship God with a devout gratitude, 
 and with works of charity and beneficence to his fellow-mer. Wher- 
 ever the humble and contrite heart silently offers up its adoration, 
 under the overarching trees, in the open, level meadows, on the 
 hill-side, in the glen, or in the city's swarming streets ; there is 
 God's House and the New Jerusalem. 
 
 The Princes of Jerusalem no longer sit as magistrates to judge 
 between the people ; nor is their number limited to five. But 
 their duties still remain substantially the same, and their insignia 
 and symbols retain their old significance. Justice and Equity 
 are still their characteristics. To reconcile disputes and heal dis- 
 sensions, to restore amity and peace, to soothe dislikes and soften 
 prejudices, are their peculiar duties ; and they know that the 
 peacemakers are blessed. 
 
 Their emblems have been already explained. They are part of 
 the language of Masonry ; the same now as it was when Moses 
 learned it from the Egyptian Hierophants. 
 
 Still we observe the spirit of the Divine law, as thus enunciated 
 to our ancient brethren, when the Temple was rebuilt, and the 
 book of the law again opened : 
 
 "Execute true judgment; and show mercy and compassion 
 every man to his brother. Oppress not the widow nor the father- 
 less, the stranger nor the poor ; and let none of you imagine evil 
 against his brother in his heart. Speak ye every man the truth 
 
 241
 
 242 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to his neighbor; execute the judgment of Truth and Peace in 
 your gates ; and love no false oath ; for all these I hate, saith the 
 Lord. 
 
 "Let those who have power rule in righteousness, and Princes 
 in judgment. And let him that is a judge be as an hiding-place 
 from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; as rivers of water 
 in a dry place ; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
 Then the vile person shall no more be called liberal; nor the 
 churl bountiful; and the work ~>f justice shall be peace; and the 
 effect of justice, quiet and security; and wisdom and knowledge 
 shall be the stability of the times. Walk ye righteously and speak 
 uprightly ; despise the gains of oppression, shake from your hands 
 the contamination of bribes ; stop not your ears against the cries 
 of the oppressed, nor shut your eyes that you may not see the 
 crimes of the great ; and you shall dwell on high, and your place 
 of defence be like munitions of rocks." 
 
 Forget not these precepts of the old Law ; and especially do 
 not forget, as you advance, that every Mason, however humble, is 
 your brother, and the laboring man your peer ! Remember always 
 that all Masonry is work, and that the trowel is an emblem of the 
 Degrees in this Council. Labor, when rightly understood, is both 
 noble and ennobling, and intended to develop man's mo'a! and 
 spiritual nature, and not to be deemed a disgrace or a misiortune. 
 
 Everything around us is, in its bearings and influences, moral. 
 The serene and bright morning, when we recover our conscious 
 existence from the embraces of sleep; when, from that image of 
 Death God calls us to a new life, and again gives us existence, and 
 His mercies visit us in every bright ray and glad thought, and 
 call for gratitude and content ; the silence of that early dawn, the 
 hushed silence, as it were, of expectation; the holy eventide, its 
 cooling breeze, its lengthening shadows, its falling shades, its still 
 and sober hour ; the sultry noontide and the stern and solemn 
 midnight ; and Spring-time, and chastening Autumn ; and Sum- 
 mer, that unbars our gates, and carries us forth amidst the ever- 
 renewed wonders of the world ; and Winter, that gathers us around 
 the evening hearth : all these, as they pass, touch by turns the 
 springi; of the spiritual life in us, and are conducting that life to 
 good or evil. The idle watch-hand cften points to something 
 within us ; and the shadow 7 of the gnomon on the dial often falls 
 upon the conscience.
 
 PRINCE OF JERUSALEM. 43 
 
 A life of labor is not a state of inferiority or degradation. The 
 Almighty has not cast man's lot beneath the quiet shades, and 
 amid glad groves and lovely hills, with no task to perform ; with 
 nothing to do but to rise up and eat, and to lie down and rest. 
 He has ordained that Work shall be done, in all the dwellings of 
 life, in every productive field, in' every busy city, and on every 
 wave of every ocean. And this He has done, because it has 
 pleased Him to give man a nature destined to higher ends than 
 indolent repose and irresponsible profitless indulgence ; and be- 
 cause, for developing the energies of such a nature, work was the 
 necessary and proper element. We might as well ask why He 
 could not make two and two be six, as why He could not develop 
 these energies without the instrumentality of work. They are 
 equally impossibilities. 
 
 This, Masonry teaches, as a great Truth ; a great moral land- 
 mark, that ought to guide the course of all mankind. It teaches 
 its toiling children that the scene of their daily life is all spiritual, 
 that the very implements of their toil, the fabrics they weave, the 
 merchandise they barter, are designed for spiritual ends ; that so 
 believing, their daily lot may be to them a sphere for the noblest 
 improvement. That which we do in our intervals of relaxation, 
 our church-going, and our book-reading, are especially designed to 
 prepare our minds for the action of Life. We are to hear and read 
 and meditate, that we may act well ; and the action of Life is itself 
 the great field for spiritual improvement. There is no task of in- 
 dustry or business, in field or forest, on the wharf or the ship's 
 deck, in the office or the exchange, but has spiritual ends. There 
 is no care or cross of our daily labor, but was especially ordained 
 to nurture in us patience, calmness, resolution, perseverance, gen- 
 tleness, disinterestedness, magnanimity. Nor is there any tool or 
 implement of toil, but is a part of the great spiritual instrumen- 
 tality. 
 
 All the relations of life, those of parent, child, brother, sister, 
 friend, associate, lover and beloved, husband, wife, are moral, 
 throughout every living tie and thrilling nerve that bind them 
 together. They cannot subsist a day nor an hour without putting 
 the mind to a trial of its truth, fidelity, forbearance, and disinter- 
 estedness. 
 
 A great city is one extended scene of moral action. There is 
 no blow struck in it but has a purpose, ultimately good or bad,
 
 244 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and therefore moral. There is no action performed, but has a 
 motive; and motives are the special jurisdiction of morality. 
 Equipages, houses, and furniture are symbols of what is moral, 
 and they in a thousand ways minister to right or wrong feeling. 
 Everything that belongs to us, ministering to our comfort or lux- 
 ury, awakens in us emotions oT pride or gratitude, of selfishness 
 or vanity; thoughts of self-indulgence, or merciful remembrances 
 of the needy and the destitute. 
 
 Everything acts upon and influences us. God's great law of 
 sympathy and harmony is potent and inflexible as His law of 
 gravitation. A sentence embodying a noble thought stirs our 
 blood ; a noise made by a child frets and exasperates us, and influ- 
 ences our actions. 
 
 A world of spiritual objects, influences, and relations lies around 
 us all. We all vaguely deem it to be so ; but he only lives a 
 charmed life, like that of genius and poetic inspiration, who com- 
 munes with the spiritual scene around him, hears the voice of the 
 spirit in every sound, sees its signs in every passing form of things, 
 and feels its impulse in all action, passion, and being. Very near 
 to us lie the mines of wisdom ; unsuspected they lie all around us. 
 There is a secret in the simplest things, a wonder in the plainest, 
 a charm in the dullest. 
 
 We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see 
 the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary moun- 
 tains, great water-falls, and galleries of art. And yet the world- 
 wonder is all around us ; the wonder of setting suns, and evening 
 stars, of the magic spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the 
 strange transformations of the moth ; the wonder of the Infinite 
 Divinity and of -His boundless revelation. There is no splendor 
 beyond that which sets its morning throne in the golden East ; no 
 dome sublime as that of Heaven ; no beauty so fair as that of the 
 verdant, blossoming earth ; no place, however invested with the 
 sanctities of old time, like that home which is hushed and folded 
 within the embrace of the humblest wall and roof. 
 
 And all these are but the symbols of things far greater and 
 higher. All is but the clothing of the spirit. In this vesture of 
 time is wrapped the immortal nature : in this show of circum- 
 stance and form stands revealed the stupendous reality. Let man 
 but be, as he is, a living soul, communing with himself and with
 
 PRINCE OF JERUSALEM. 245 
 
 God, and his vision becomes eternity ; his abode, infinity ; his 
 home, the bosom of all-embracing love. 
 
 The great problem of Humanity is wrought out in the humblest 
 abodes ; no more than this is done in the highest. A human heart 
 throbs beneath the beggar's gabardine ; and that and no more stirs 
 with its beating the Prince's mantle. The beauty of Love, the 
 charm of Friendship, the sacredness of Sorrow, the heroism of 
 Patience, the noble Self-sacrifice, these and their like, alone, make 
 life to be life indeed, and are its grandeur and its power. They 
 are the priceless treasures and glory of humanity ; and they are 
 not things of condition. All places and all scenes are alike clothed 
 with the grandeur and charm of virtues such as these. 
 
 The million occasions will come to us all, in the ordinary paths 
 of our life, in our homes, and by our firesides, wherein we may 
 act as nobly, as if, all our life long, we led armies, sat in senates, 
 or visited beds of sickness and pain. Varying every hour, the 
 million occasions will come in which we may restrain our pas- 
 sions, subdue our hearts to gentleness and patience, resign our 
 own interest for another's advantage, speak words of kindness and 
 wisdom, raise the fallen, cheer the fainting and sick in spirit, and 
 soften and assuage the weariness and bitterness of their mortal lot. 
 To every Mason there will be opportunity enough for these. They 
 cannot be written on his tomb ; but they will be written deep in 
 the hearts of men, of friends, of children, of kindred all around 
 him, in the book of the great account, and, in their eternal influ- 
 ences, on the great pages of the Universe. 
 
 To such a destiny, at least, my Brethren, let us all aspire ! These 
 laws of Masonry let us all strive to obey ! And so may our hearts 
 become true temples of the Living God ! And may He encourage 
 our zeal, sustain our hopes, and assure us of success !
 
 XVII. 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 
 
 THIS is the first of the Philosophical Degrees of the Ancient 
 and Accepted Scottish Rite ; and the beginning of a course of in- 
 struction which will fully unveil to you the heart and inner mys- 
 teries of Masonry. Do not despair because you have often seemed 
 on the point of attaining the inmost light, and have as often been 
 disappointed. In all time, truth has been hidden under symbols, 
 and often under a succession of allegories : where veil after veil 
 had to be penetrated before the true Light was reached, and the 
 essential truth stood revealed. The Human Light is but an im- 
 perfect reflection of a ray of the Infinite and Divine. 
 
 We are about to approach those ancient Religions which once 
 246
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 247 
 
 ruled the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of 
 the great Past, as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie 
 bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before us, those 
 old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists 
 01 antiquity, and stalk dimly and undefined along the line which 
 divides Time from Eternity ; and forms of strange, wild, startling 
 beauty mingle in the vast throng of figures with shaoes monstrous, 
 grotesque, and hideous. 
 
 The religion taught by Moses, which, like the laws of Egypt, 
 enunciated the principle of exclusion, borrowed, at every period 
 of its existence, from all the creeds with which it came in contact. 
 While, by the studies of the learned and wise, it enriched itself 
 with the most admirable principles of the religions of Egypt and 
 Asia, it was changed, in the wanderings of the People, by every- 
 thing that was most impure or seductive in the pagan manners 
 r.nd superstitions. It was one thing in the times of Moses and 
 Aaron, another in those of David and Solomon, and still another 
 in those of Daniel and Philo. 
 
 At the time when John the Baptist made his appearance in the 
 desert, near the shores of the Dead Sea, all the old philosophical 
 ::nd religious systems were approximating toward each other. A 
 general lassitude inclined the minds of all toward the quietude of 
 that amalgamation of doctrines for which the expeditions of Alex- 
 ander and the more peaceful occurrences that followed, with the 
 establishment in Asia and Africa of many Grecian dynasties and 
 a great number of Grecian colonies, had prepared the way. After 
 the intermingling of different nations, which resulted from the 
 wars of Alexander in three-quarters of the globe, the doctrines of 
 Greece, of Egypt, of Persia, and of India, met and intermingled 
 everywhere. All the barriers that had formerly kept the nations 
 apart, were thrown down ; and while the People of the West 
 readily connected their faith with those of the East, those of the 
 Orient hastened to learn the traditions of Rome and the legends 
 of Athens. While the Philosophers of Greece, all (except the dis- 
 ciples of Epicurus) more or less Platonists, seized eagerly upon the 
 beliefs and doctrines of the East, the Jews and Egyptians, be- 
 fore then the most exclusive of all peoples, yielded to that eclecti- 
 cism which prevailed among their masters, the Greeks and Romans. 
 Under the same influences of toleration, even those who em- 
 braced Christianity, mingled together the old and the new, Chris- 
 17
 
 248 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tianity and Philosophy, the Apostolic teachings and the traditions 
 of Mythology. The man of intellect, devotee of one system, 
 rarely displaces it with another in all its purity. The people take 
 such a creed as is offered them. Accordingly, the distinction be- 
 tween the esoteric and the exoteric doctrine, immemorial in other 
 creeds, easily gained a foothold among many of the Christians ; 
 and it was held by a vast number, even during the preaching of 
 Paul, that the writings of the Apostles were incomplete ; that they 
 contained only the germs of another doctrine, which must receive 
 from the hands of philosophy, not only the systematic arrangement 
 wh'ich was wanting, but all the development which lay concealed 
 therein. The writings of the Apostles, they said, in addressing 
 themselves to mankind in general, enunciated only the articles cf 
 the vulgar faith; but transmitted the mysteries of knowledge to 
 superior minds, to the Elect, mysteries handed down from gen- 
 eration to generation in esoteric traditions ; and to this science of 
 the mysteries they gave the name of FVcocn.? [Gnosis]. 
 
 The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from 
 Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred 
 books of India and Egypt ; and thus introduced into the bosom 
 of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, 
 which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the 
 Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doc- 
 trines, which the Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occi- 
 dent. 
 
 Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive 
 degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, re- 
 demption and return of all to the purity of the Creator ; and, 
 after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a for- 
 tunate and truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God ; 
 such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius 
 of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, 
 dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin. 
 Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies, 
 and the mobility of the figurative style. 
 
 Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense 
 centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays ; so 
 do the spirits of Light emanate from the Divine Light. Behold, 
 all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the 
 Earth ; they emanate from one and the same ocean ; so from the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 249 
 
 bosom of the Divinity emanate so many streams, which form and 
 fill the universe of intelligences. Behold numbers, which all 
 emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are com- 
 posed of its essence, and still vary infinitely ; and utterances, de- 
 composable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in 
 the primitive Word, and still infinitely various ; so the world of 
 Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all 
 resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences. 
 
 It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the 
 Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the 
 Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in 
 parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language 
 of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible 
 rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the Ini- 
 tiates alone. 
 
 It is admitted that the cradle of Gnosticism is probably to be 
 looked for in Syria, and even in Palestine. Most of its expounders 
 wrote in that corrupted form of the Greek used by the Hellenistic 
 Jews, and in the Septuagint and the New Testament ; and there 
 was a striking analogy between their doctrines and those of the 
 Judaeo-Egyptian Philo, of Alexandria ; itself the seat of three 
 schools, at once philosophic and religious the Greek, the Egyp- 
 tian, and the Jewish. 
 
 Pythagoras and Plato, the most mystical of the Grecian Philos- 
 ophers (the latter heir to the doctrines of the former), and who 
 had travelled, the latter in Egypt, and the former in Phoenicia, 
 India, and Persia, also taught the esoteric doctrine and the distinc- 
 tion between the initiated and the profane. The dominant doc- 
 trines of Platonism were found in Gnosticism. Emanation of 
 Intelligences from the bosom of the Deity; the going astray in 
 error and the sufferings of spirits, so long as they are remote from 
 God, and imprisoned in matter; vain and long-continued efforts 
 to arrive at the knowledge of the Truth, and re-enter into their 
 primitive union with the Supreme Being; alliance of a pure and 
 divine soul with an irrational soul, the seat of evil desires ; angels 
 or demons who dwell in and govern the" planets, having but an 
 imperfect knowledge of the ideas that presided at the creation ; 
 regeneration of all beings by their return to the xofftwz vor/rnz, 
 [kosmos noetos], the world of Intelligences, and its Chief, the 
 Supreme Being; sole possible mode of re-establishing that primi-
 
 250 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 live harmony of the creation, of which the music of the spheres 
 of Pythagoras was the image ; these were the analogies of the two 
 systems ; and we discover in them some of the ideas that form a 
 part of Masonry ; in which, in the present mutilated condition of 
 the symbolic Degrees, they are disguised and overlaid with fiction 
 and absurdity, or present themselves as casual hints that are passed 
 by wholly unnoticed. 
 
 The distinction between the esoteric and exoteric doctrines (a 
 distinction purely Masonic), was always and from the very earliest 
 times preserved among the Greeks. It remounted to the fabulous 
 times of Orpheus ; and the mysteries of Theosophy were found in 
 all their traditions and myth?. And after the time of Alexander, 
 they resorted for instruction, dogma^, and mvsteries, to all the 
 schools, to those of Egypt and Asia, as well as those of Ancient 
 Thrace, Sicily, Etruria, and Attica. 
 
 The Jewish-Greek School of Alexandria is known only by two 
 of its Chiefs, Anstobulus and Philo, both Jews of Alexandria in 
 Egypt. Belonging to Asia by its origin, to Egypt by its residence, 
 to Greece by its language and studies, it strove to show that all 
 truths embedded in the philosophies of other countries were trans- 
 planted thither from Palestine. Aristobulus declared that all the 
 facts and details of the Jewish Scriptures were so many allegories, 
 concealing the most profound meanings, and that Plato had bor- 
 rowed from them all his finest ideas. Philo, who lived a century 
 after him, following the same theory, endeavored to show that the 
 Hebrew writings, by their system of allegcries, were the true 
 source of all religious and philosophical doctrines. According to 
 him, the literal meaning is for the vulgar alone. Whoever has 
 meditated on philosophy, purified himself by virtue, and raised 
 himself by contemplation, to God and the intellectual world, and 
 received their inspiration, pierces the gross envelope of the letter, 
 discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated into 
 mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers but 
 an imperfect image. A historical fact, a figure, a word, a letter, a 
 number, a rite, a custom, the parable or vision of a prophet, veils 
 the most profound truths ; and he who has the key of science will 
 interpret all according to the light he possesses. 
 
 Again we see the symbolism of Masonry, and the search of the 
 Candidate for light. "Let men of narrow minds withdraw," he 
 says, "with closed ears. We transmit the divine mysteries to
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST ANP '.VEST. 25! 
 
 those who have received the sacred initiation, to those who prac- 
 tise true piety, and who are not enslaved by the empty trappings 
 of words or the preconceived opinions of the pagans." 
 
 To Philo, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, or the 
 Archetype of Light, Source whence the rays emanate that illu- 
 minate Souls. He was also the Soul of the Universe, and as such 
 acted in all its parts. He Himself fills and limits His whole Being. 
 His Powers and Virtues fill and penetrate all. These Powers 
 [Awa/uets, dunameis] are Spirits distinct from God, the "Ideas" of 
 Plato personified. He is without beginning, and lives in the pro- 
 totype of Time [cutov, aion]. 
 
 His image is THE WORD [Aoyos], a form more brilliant thar 
 fire; that not being the pure light. This LOGOS dwells in God; 
 for the Supreme Being makes to Himself within His Intelligence 
 the types or ideas of everything that is to become reality in this 
 World. The LOGOS is the vehicle by which God acts on the Uni- 
 verse, and may be compared to the speech of man. 
 
 The LOGOS being the World of Ideas [KO<TJUO vorpn/sj, by means 
 whereof God has created visible things, He is the most ancient 
 God, in comparison with the World, which is the youngest pro- 
 duction. The LOGOS, Chief of Intelligence, of which He is the 
 general representative, is named Archangel, type and representa- 
 tive of all spirits, even those of mortals. He is also styled the 
 man-type and primitive man, Adam Kadmon. 
 
 God only is Wise. The wisdom of man is but the reflection and 
 image of that of God. He is the Father, and His WISDOM the 
 mother of creation: for He united Himself with WISDOM [lotfta, 
 Sophia], and communicated to it the germ of creation, and it 
 brought forth the material world. He created the ideal world 
 only, and caused the material world to b^ made real after its type, 
 by His LOGOS, which is His speech, and at the same time the Idea 
 of Ideas, the Intellectual World. The Intellectual City was but 
 the Thought of the Architect, who meditated the creation, accord- 
 ing to that plan of the Material City. 
 
 The Word is not only the Creator, but occupies the place of the 
 Supreme Being. Through Him all the Powers and Attributes of 
 God act. On the other side, as first representative of the Human 
 Family, He is the Protector of men and their Shepherd. 
 
 God gives to man the Soul or Intelligence, which exists before 
 the body and which he unites with the body. The reasoning
 
 252 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Principle comes from God through the Word, and communes with 
 God and with the Word; but there is also in man an irrational 
 Principle, that of the inclinations and passions which produce 
 disorder, emanating from inferior spirits who fill the air as 
 ministers of God. The body, taken from the Earth, and the 
 irrational Principle that animates it concurrently with the ra- 
 tional Principle, are hated by God, while the rational soul which 
 He has given it. is, as it were, captive in this prison, this coffin, 
 that encompasses it. The present condition of man is not his 
 primitive condition, when he was the image of the Logos. He 
 has fallen from his first estate. But he may raise himself again, 
 by following the directions of WISDOM [.To^a] and of the. Angels 
 which God has commissioned to aid him in freeing himself from 
 the bonds of the body, and combating Evil, the existence whereof 
 God has permitted, to furnish him the means of exercising his 
 liberty. The souls that are purified, not by the Law but by light, 
 rise to the Heavenly regions, to enjoy there a perfect felicity. 
 Those that persevere in evil go from body to body, the seats of 
 passions and evil desires. The familiar lineaments of these doc- 
 trines will be recognized by all who read the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 who wrote after Philo, the latter living till the reign of Caligula, 
 and being the contemporary of Christ. 
 
 And the Mason is familiar with these doctrines of Philo : that 
 the Supreme Being is a centre of Light whose rays or emanations 
 pervade the L'niverse ; for that is the Light for which all Masonic 
 journeys are a search, and of which the sun and moon in our 
 Lodges are only emblems : that Light and Darkness, chief enemies 
 from the beginning of Time, dispute with each other the empire 
 of the world ; which we symbolize by the candidate wandering in 
 darkness and being brought to light : that the world was created, 
 not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent, who is but 
 His \VoRD [the Aoyos], and by types which are but his ideas, 
 aided by an INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM [2o<fta], which gives one of 
 His Attributes ; in which we see the occult meaning of the ne- 
 cessity of recovering "the WORD" ; and of our two columns of 
 STRENGTH and WISDOM, which are also the two parallel lines that 
 bound the circle representing the Universe : that the visible world 
 is the image of the invisible world ; that the essence of the Human 
 Soul is the image of God, and it existed before the body ; that the 
 object of its terrestrial life is to disengage itself of its body or its
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 
 
 sepulchre ; and that it will ascend to the Heavenly regions when- 
 ever it shall be purified ; in which we see the meaning, now almost 
 forgotten in our Lodges, of the mode of preparation of the candi- 
 date for apprenticeship, and his tests and purifications in the first 
 Degree, according to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. 
 
 Philo incorporated in his eclecticism neither Egyptian nor Orien- 
 tal elements. But there were other Jewish Teachers in Alexandria 
 who did both. The Jews of Egypt were slightly jealous of, and a 
 little hostile to, those of Palestine, particularly after the erection 
 of the sanctuary at Leontopolis by the High-Priest Onias ; and 
 therefore they admired and magnified those sages, who, like Jere- 
 miah, had resided in Egypt. "The wisdom of Solomon" was 
 written at Alexandria, and, in the time of St. Jerome, was attrib- 
 uted to Philo; but it contains principles at variance with his. 
 It personifies Wisdom, and draws between its children and the 
 Profane, the same line of demarcation that Egypt had long before 
 taught to the Jews. That distinction existed at the beginning of 
 the Mosaic creed. Moshah himself was an Initiate in the mysteries 
 of Egypt, as he was compelled to be, as the adopted son of the 
 daughter of Pharaoh, Thouoris, daughter of Sesostris-Ramses; 
 who, as her tomb and monuments show, was, in the right of her 
 infant husband, Regent of Lower Egypt or the Delta at the time 
 of the Hebrew Prophet's birth, reigning at Heliopolis. She was 
 also, as the reliefs on her tomb show, a Priestess of HATHOR and 
 NEITH, the two great primeval goddesses. As her adopted son, 
 living in her Palace and presence forty years, and during that 
 time scarcely acquainted with his brethren the Jews, the law of 
 Egypt compelled his initiation : and we find in many of his enact- 
 ments the intention of preserving, between the common people 
 and the Initiates, the line of separation which he found in Egypt. 
 Moshah and Aharun his brother, the whole series of High-Priests. 
 the Council of the 70 Elders, Salomoh and the entire succession 
 of Prophets, were in possession of a higher science ; and of that 
 science Masonry is, at least, the lineal descendant. It was famili- 
 arly known as THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORD. 
 
 AMUN, at first the God of Lower Egypt only, where Moshah was 
 reared [a word that in Hebrew means Truth], was the Supreme 
 God. He was styled "the Celestial Lord, ivho sheds Light on 
 hidden things." He was the source of that divine life, of which 
 the crux ansata is the symbol ; and the source of all power. He
 
 254 "TORALS AND DOGM/ 
 
 united all the attributes that the Ancient Oriental Theosophy 
 assigned to the Supreme Being. He was the xtepa)/jia (Pleroma), 
 or "Fullness of things" for He comprehended in Himself every- 
 thing; and the LIGHT; for he was the Sun-God. He was un- 
 changeable in the midst of everything phenomenal in his worlds. 
 He created nothing; but everything emanated from Him; and of 
 Him all the other Gods were but manifestations. 
 
 The Ram was His living symbol ; which you see reproduced in 
 this Degree, lying on the book with seven seals on the tracing- 
 board. He caused the creation of the world by the Primitive 
 Thought [Ewota, Ennoia] , or Spirit [Hvcv/wt, Pneuma] , that issued 
 from him by means of his Voice or the WORD ; and which Thought 
 or Spirit was personified as the Goddess NEITH. She, too, was a 
 divinity of Light, and mother of the Sun; and the Feast of 
 Lamps was celebrated in her honor at Sais. The Creative Power, 
 another manifestation of Deity, proceeding to the creation con- 
 ceived of in her, the Divine Intelligence, produced with its Word 
 the Universe, symbolized by an egg issuing from the mouth of 
 KNEPH ; from which egg came PHTHA, image of the Supreme 
 Intelligence as realized in the world, and the type of that mani- 
 fested in man ; the principal agent, also, of Nature, or the creative 
 and productive Fire. PHRE or RE, the Sun, or Celestial Light, 
 whose symbol was O, the point within a circle, was the son of 
 PHTHA ; and TIPHE, his wife, or the celestial firmament, w 7 ith the 
 seven celestial bodies, animated by spirits of genii that govern 
 them, was represented on many of the monuments, clad in blue 
 or yellow, her garments sprinkled with stars, and accompanied by 
 the sun, moon, and five planets ; and she was the type of Wisdom, 
 and they of the Seven Planetary Spirits of the Gnostics, that with 
 her presided over and governed the sublunary world. 
 
 In this Degree, unknown for a hundred years to those who have 
 practised it, these emblems reproduced refer to these old doctrines. 
 The lamb, the yellow hangings strewed with stars, the seven 
 columns, candlesticks, and seals all recall them to us. 
 
 The Lion was the symbol of ATHOM-RE, the Great God of Up- 
 per Egypt ; the Hawk, of RA or PHRE ; the Eagle, of MENDES ; 
 the Bull, of APIS; and three of these are seen under the platform 
 on which our altar stands. 
 
 The first HERMES was the INTELLIGENCE or WORD of God. 
 Moved with compassion for a race living without law, and wishing
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 255 
 
 to teach them that they sprang from His bosom, and to point out 
 to them the way that they should go [the books which the first 
 Hermes, the same with Enoch, had written on the mysteries of 
 divine science, in the sacred characters, being unknown to those 
 who lived after the flood], God sent to man OSIRIS and Isis, ac- 
 companied by THOTH, the incarnation or terrestrial repetition of 
 the first HERMES; who taught men the arts, science, and the cer- 
 emonies of religion ; and then ascended to Heaven or the Moon. 
 OSIRIS was the Principle of Good. TYPHON, like AHRIMAN, wa.> 
 the principle and source of all that is evil in the moral and phys- 
 ical order. Like the Satan of Gnosticism, he was confounded 
 with Matter. 
 
 From Egypt or Persia the new Platonists borrowed the idea, and 
 the Gnostics received it from them, that man, in his terrestrial 
 career, is successively under the influence of the Moon, of Mer- 
 cury, of Venus, of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn, 
 until he finally reaches the Elysian Fields ; an idea again symbol- 
 ized in the Seven Seals. 
 
 The Jews of Syria and Judea were the direct precursors of Gnos- 
 ticism ; and in their doctrines were ample oriental elements. 
 These Jews had had with the Orient, at two different periods, inti- 
 mate relations, familiarizing them with the doctrines of Asia, and 
 especially of Chaldea and Persia ; their forced residence in Cen- 
 tral Asia under the Assyrians and Persians ; and their voluntary 
 dispersion over the whole East, when subjects of the Seleucidse 
 and the Romans. Living near two-thirds of a century, and many 
 of them long afterward, in Mesopotamia, the cradle of their race ; 
 speaking the same language, and their children reared with those 
 of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, and receiving 
 from them their names (as the case of Danayal, who was called 
 Baeltasatsar, proves), they necessarily adopted many of the doc- 
 trines of their conquerors. Their descendants, as Azra and Na- 
 hamaiah show us, hardly desired to leave Persia, when they were 
 allowed to do so. They had a special jurisdiction, and governors 
 and judges taken from their own people ; many of them held high 
 office, and their children were educated with those of the highest 
 nobles. Danayal was the friend and minister of the King, and 
 the Chief of the College of the Magi at Babylon ; if we may be- 
 lieve the book which bears his name, and trust to the incidents 
 related in its highly figurative and imaginative style. Mordecai,
 
 256 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 too, occupied a high station, no less than that of Prime Minister, 
 and Esther or Astar, his cousin, was the Monarch's wife. 
 
 The Magi of Babylon were expounders of figurative writings, 
 interpreters of nature, and of dreams, astronomers and divines ; 
 and from their influences arose among the Jews, after their rescue 
 from captivity, a number of sects, and a new exposition, the mys- 
 tical interpretation, with all its wild fancies and infinite caprices. 
 The Aions of the Gnostics, the Ideas of Plato, the Angels of the 
 Jews, and the Demons of the Greeks, all correspond to the 
 Ferouers of Zoroaster. 
 
 A great number of Jewish families remained permanently in 
 their new country ; and one of the most celebrated of their schools 
 was at Babylon. They were soon familiarized with the doctrine 
 of Zoroaster, which itself was more ancient than Kuros. From 
 the system of the Zend-Avesta they borrowed, and subsequently 
 gave large development to, everything that could be reconciled 
 with their own faith ; and these additions to the old doctrine were 
 soon spread, by the constant intercourse of commerce, into Syria 
 and Palestine. 
 
 In the Zend-Avesta, God is Illimitable Time. No origin can be 
 assigned to Him : He is so entirely enveloped in His glory, His 
 nature and attributes are so inaccessible to human Intelligence, 
 that He can be only the object of a silent Veneration. Creation 
 took place by emanation from Him. The first emanation was the 
 primitive Light, and from that the King of Light, ORMUZD. By 
 the "WORD/" Ormuzd created the world pure. He is its pre- 
 server and judge; a Being Holy and Heavenly; Intelligence and 
 Knowledge ; the First-born of Time without limits ; and invested 
 with all the Powers of the Supreme Being. 
 
 Still he is, strictly speaking, the Fourth Being. He had a 
 Ferouer, a pre-existing Soul [in the language of Plato, a type or 
 ideal] ; and it is said of Him, that He existed from the beginning, 
 in the primitive Light. But, that Light being but an element, 
 and His Ferouer a type, he is, in ordinary language, the First-born 
 of ZEROUANE-AKHERENE. Behold, again, "THE WORD" 
 of Masonry ; the Man, on the Tracing-Board of this Degree ; the 
 LIGHT toward which all Masons travel. 
 
 He created after his own image, six Genii called Amshaspands, 
 who surround his Throne, are his organs of communication with 
 inferior spirits and men, transmit to Him their prayers, solicit for
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 25/ 
 
 them His favors, and serve them as models of purity and perfec- 
 tion. Thus we have the Demiourgos of Gnosticism, and the six 
 Genii that assist him. These are the Hebrew Archangels of the 
 Planets. 
 
 The names of these Amshaspands are Bahman, Ardibehest, 
 Schariver, Sapandomad, Khordad, and Amerdad. 
 
 The fourth, the Holy SAPANDOMAD, created the first man and 
 woman. 
 
 Then ORMUZD created 28 Izeds, of whom MITHRAS is the chief. 
 They watch, with Ormuzd and the Amshaspands, over the happi- 
 ness, purity, and preservation of the world, which is under their 
 government; and they are also models for mankind and interpre- 
 ters of men's prayers. With Mithras and Ormuzd, they make a 
 pleroma [or complete number] of 30, corresponding to the thirty 
 Aions of the Gnostics, and to the ogdoade, dodecade, and decade of 
 the Egyptians. Mithras was the Sun-God, invoked with, and 
 soon confounded with him, becoming the object of a special wor- 
 ship, and eclipsing Ormuzd himself. 
 
 The third order of pure spirits is more numerous. They are 
 the Ferouers, the THOUGHTS of Ormuzd, or the IDEAS which he 
 conceived before proceeding to the creation of things. They too 
 are superior to men. They protect them during their life on 
 earth ; they will purify them from evil at their resurrection. They 
 are their tutelary genii, from the fall to the complete regeneration. 
 
 AHRIMAN, second-born of the Primitive Light, emanated from 
 it, pure like ORMUZD; but, proud and ambitious, yielded to jeal- 
 ousy of the First-born. For his hatred and pride, the Eternal 
 condemned him to dw^ell, for 12,000 years, in that part of space 
 where no ray of light reaches ; the black empire of darkness. In 
 that period the struggle between Light and Darkness, Good and 
 Evil, will be terminated. 
 
 AHRIMAN scorned to submit, and took the field against OR- 
 MUZD. To the good spirits created by his Brother, he opposed an 
 innumerable army of Evil Ones. To the seven Amshaspands he 
 opposed seven Archdevs, attached to the seven Planets ; to the 
 Izeds and Ferouers an equal number of Devs, which brought upon 
 the world all moral and physical evils. Hence Poverty. Maladies, 
 Impurity, Envy, Chagrin, Drunkenness. Falsehood. Calumny, and 
 their horrible array. 
 
 The image of Ahriman was the Dragon, confounded by the
 
 258 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Jews with Satan and the Serpent-Tempter. After a reign of 3000 
 years, Ormuzd had created the Material World, in six periods, 
 calling successively into existence the Light, Water, Earth, plants, 
 animals, and Man. But Ahriman concurred in creating the earth 
 and water; for darkness was already an element, and Ormuzd 
 could not exclude its Master. So also the two concurred in pro- 
 ducing Man. Ormuzd produced, by his Will and Word, a Being 
 that was the type and source of universal life for everything that 
 exists under Heaven. He placed in man a pure principle, or Life, 
 proceeding from the Supreme Being. But Ahriman destroyed 
 that pure principle, in the form wherewith it was clothed; and 
 when Ormuzd had made, of its recovered and purified essence, the 
 first man and woman, Ahriman seduced and tempted them with 
 wine and fruits ; the woman yielding first. 
 
 Often, during the three latter periods of 3000 years each, Ahri- 
 man and Darkness are, and are to be, triumphant. But the pure 
 souls are assisted by the Good Spirits ; the Triumph of Good is 
 decreed by the Supreme Being, and the period of that triumph 
 will infallibly arrive. When the world shall be most afflicted with 
 the evils poured out upon it by the spirits of perdition, three 
 Prophets will come to bring relief to mortals. SOSIOSCH, the 
 principal of the Three, will regenerate the earth, and restore to it 
 its primitive beauty, strength, and purity. He will judge the good 
 and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of the good, he 
 will conduct them to a home of everlasting happiness. Ahriman, 
 his evil demons, and all wicked men, will also be purified in a tor- 
 rent of melted metal. The law of Ormuzd will reign everywhere ; 
 all men will be happy; all, enjoying unalterable bliss, will sing 
 with Sosiosch the praises of the Supreme Being. 
 
 These doctrines, the details of which were sparingly borrowed 
 by the Pharisaic Jews, were much more fully adopted by the 
 Gnostics ; who taught the restoration of all things, their return to 
 their original pure condition, the happiness of those to be saved, 
 and their admission to the feast of Heavenly Wisdom. 
 
 The doctrines of Zoroaster came originally from Bactria, an 
 Indian Province of Persia. Naturally, therefore, it would include 
 Hindu or Buddhist elements, as it did. The fundamental idea of 
 Buddhism was, matter subjugating the intelligence, and intelli- 
 gence freeing itself from that slavery. Perhaps something came 
 to Gnosticism from China. "Before the chaos which preceded
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 259 
 
 the birth of Heaven and Earth," says Lao-Tseu, "a single Being 
 existed, immense and silent, immovable and ever active the 
 mother of the Universe. I know not its name : but I designate it 
 by the word Reason. Man has his type and model in the Earth ; 
 Earth in Heaven ; Heaven in Reason ; and Reason in Itself." 
 Here again are the Ferouers, the Ideas, the Aions the REASON 
 or INTELLIGENCE [Ewwa], SILENCE [2V^], WORD [Jopc], and 
 WISDOM [Zoyia] of the Gnostics. 
 
 The dominant system among the Jews after their captivity was 
 that of the Pharoschim or Pharisees. Whether their name was 
 derived from that of the Parsees,or followers of Zoroaster, or from 
 some other source, it is certain that they had borrowed much of 
 their doctrine from the Persians. Like them they claimed to have 
 the exclusive and mysterious knowledge, unknown to the mass. 
 Like them they taught that a constant war was waged between 
 the Empire of Good and that of Evil. Like th6m they attributed 
 the sin and fall of man to the demons and their chief; and like 
 them they admitted a special protection of the righteous by in- 
 ferior beings, agents of Jehovah. All their doctrines on these sub- 
 jects were at bottom those of the Holy Books; but singularly 
 developed; and the Orient was evidently the source from which 
 those developments came. 
 
 They styled themselves Interpreters; a name indicating their 
 claim to the exclusive possession of the true meaning of the Holy 
 Writings, by virtue of the oral tradition which Moses had received 
 on Mount Sinai, and which successive generations of Initiates had 
 transmitted, as they claimed, unaltered, unto them. Their very 
 costume, their belief in the influences of the stars, and in the im- 
 mortality and transmigration of souls, their system of angels and 
 their astronomy, were all foreign. 
 
 Sadduceeism arose merely from an opposition essentially Jewish, 
 to these foreign teachings, and that mixture of doctrines, adopted 
 by the Pharisees, and which constituted the popular creed. 
 
 We come at last to the Esscnes and Therapeuts, with whom this 
 Degree is particularly concerned. That intermingling of oriental 
 and occidental rites, of Persian and Pythagorean opinions, which 
 we have pointed out in the doctrines of Philo, is unmistakable in 
 the creeds of these two sects. 
 
 They were less distinguished by metaphysical speculations than 
 by simple meditations and moral practices. But the latter always
 
 2<3o MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 partook of the Zoroastrian principle, that it was necessary to free 
 the soul from the trammels and influences of matter; which led 
 to a system of abstinence and maceration entirely opposed to the 
 ancient Hebraic ideas, favorable as they were to physical pleasures. 
 
 In general, the life and manners of these mystical associa- 
 tions, as Philo and Josephus describe them, and particularly their 
 prayers at sunrise, seem the image of what the Zend-Avesta pre- 
 scribes to the faithful adorer or Ormuzd; and some of their 
 observances cannot otherwise be explained. 
 
 The Therapeuts resided in Egypt, in the neighborhood of Alex- 
 andria; and the Essenes in Palestine, in the vicinity of the Dead 
 Sea. But there was nevertheless a striking coincidence in their 
 ideas, readily explained by attributing it to a foreign influence. 
 The Jews of Egypt, under the influence of the School of Alexan- 
 dria, endeavored in general to make their doctrines harmonize 
 with the traditions of Greece; and thence came, in the doctrines 
 of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the many analogies between 
 the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and those of Ju- 
 daism on the other: while the Jews of Palestine, having less com- 
 munication with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather im- 
 bibed the Oriental doctrines, which they drank in at the source, 
 and with which their relations with Persia made them familiar. 
 This attachment was particularly shown in the Kabalah, which 
 belonged rather to Palestine than to Egypt, though extensively 
 known in the latter; and furnished the Gnostics with some of 
 their most striking theories. 
 
 It is a significant fact, that while Christ spoke often of the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees, He never once mentioned the Essenes, 
 bet ween whose doctrines and His there was so great a resemblance, 
 and, in many points, so perfect an identity. Indeed, they are not 
 named, nor even distinctly alluded to. anywhere in the New Tes- 
 tament. 
 
 John, the son of a Priest who ministered in the Temple at 
 Jerusalem, and whose mother was of the family of Aharun, was in 
 the deserts until the day of his showing unto Israel. He drank 
 neither wine nor strong- drink. Clad in hair-cloth, and with a 
 girdle of leather, and feeding upon such food as the desert afforded, 
 he preached, in the country about Jordan, the baptism of repent- 
 ance, for the remission of sins ; that is, the necessity of repent- 
 ance proven by reformation. He taught the people charity and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 26l 
 
 liberality; the publicans, justice, equity, and fair dealing; the 
 soldiery, peace, truth, and contentment; to do violence to none, 
 accuse none falsely, and be content with their pay. He incul- 
 cated the necessity of a virtuous life, and the folly of trusting to 
 their descent from Abraham. 
 
 He denounced both Pharisees and Sadducees as a generation of 
 vipers, threatened with the anger of God. He baptized those who 
 confessed their sins. He preached in the desert ; and therefore in 
 the country where the Essenes lived, professing the same doctrines. 
 He was imprisoned before Christ began to preach. Matthew men- 
 tions him without preface or explanation; as if, apparently, his 
 history was too well known to need any. "In those days," he 
 says, "came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of 
 Judea." His disciples frequently fasted; for we find them with 
 the Pharisees coming to Jesus to inquire why His Disciples did 
 not fast as often as they ; and He did not denounce tliem, as His 
 habit was to denounce the Pharisees ; but answered them kindly 
 and gently. 
 
 From his prison, John sent two of his disciples to inquire of 
 Christ: "Art thou he that is to come, or do we look for another?" 
 Christ referred them to his miracles as an answer; and declared 
 to the people that John was a prophet, and more than a prophet, 
 and that no greater man had ever been born ; but that the hum- 
 blest Christian was his superior. He declared him to be Elias, who 
 was to come. 
 
 John had denounced to Herod his marriage with his brother's 
 wife as unlawful ; and for this he was imprisoned, and finally exe- 
 cuted to gratify her. His disciples buried him ; and Herod and 
 others thought he had risen from the dead and appeared again in 
 the person of Christ. The people all regarded John as a prophet ; 
 and Christ silenced the Priests and Elders by asking them whether 
 he was inspired. They feared to excite the anger of the people by 
 saying that he was not. Christ declared that he came "in the way 
 of righteousness" ; and that the lower classes believed him. though 
 the Priests and Pharisees did not. 
 
 Thus John, who was often consulted by Herod, and to whom 
 that monarch showed great deference, and was often governed by 
 his advice ; whose doctrine prevailed very extensively among the 
 people and the publicans, taught some creed older than Chris- 
 tianity. That is plain: and it is equally plain, that the very large
 
 262 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 body of the Jews that adopted his doctrines, were neither Phari- 
 sees nor Sadducees, but the humble, common people. They must, 
 therefore, have been Essenes. It is plain, too, that Christ applied 
 for baptism as a sacred rite, well known and long practised. It 
 was becoming to him, he said, to fulfill all righteousness. 
 
 In the 1 8th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read thus: 
 "And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an elo- 
 quent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This 
 man was instructed in the way of the Lord, and, being fervent in 
 spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, know- 
 ing only the baptism of John; and he began to speak boldly in 
 the synagogue ; whom, when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they 
 took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God 
 more perfectly." 
 
 Translating this from the symbolic and figurative language 
 into the true ordinary sense of the Greek text, it reads thus : "And 
 a certain Jew, named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent 
 man, and of extensive learning, came to Ephesus. He had learned 
 in the mysteries the true doctrine in regard to God ; and, being a 
 zealous enthusiast, he spoke and taught diligently the truths in 
 regard to the Deity, having received no other baptism than that 
 of John." He knew nothing in regard to Christianity; for he 
 had resided in Alexandria, and had just then come to Ephesus; 
 being, probably, a disciple of Philo, and a Therapeut. 
 
 "That, in all times/' says St. Augustine, "is the Christian reli- 
 gion, which to know and follow is the most sure and certain 
 health, called according to that name, but not according to the 
 thing itself, of which it is the name; for the thing itself, which 
 is now called the Christian religion, really was known to the An- 
 cients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the 
 human race, until the time when Christ came in the flesh ; from 
 whence the true religion, which had previously existed, began xc 
 be called Christian ; and this in our days is the Christian religion, 
 not as having been wanting 1 in former times, but as having, in 
 later times, received this name." The disciples were first called 
 "Christians." at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began tc 
 preach there. 
 
 The Wandering or Itinerant Jews o^ Exorcises, who assumed to 
 employ the Sacred Name in exorcising evil spirits, were no doubt 
 Therapeutae or Es-senes.
 
 KNIGHT OF 1 HE EAST AND WEST. 263 
 
 "And it came to pass," we read in the I9th chapter of the Acts, 
 verses I to 4, "that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having 
 passed through the upper pai ts of Asia Minor, came to Ephesus ; 
 and finding certain disciples, he said to them, 'Have ye received 
 the Holy Ghost since ye bec.ime Believers?' And they said unto 
 him, 'We have not so mucn as heard that there is any Holy 
 Ghost.' And he said to them, 'In what, then, were you baptized ?' 
 And they said 'In John's Baptism.' Then said Paul, 'John in- 
 deed baptized with the baptism of repentence, saying to the people 
 that they should believe in Him who was to come after him, that 
 is, in Jesus Christ.' When they heard this, they were baptized in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus." 
 
 This faith, taught by John, and so nearly Christianity, could 
 have been nothing but the doctrine of the Essenes ; and there can 
 be no doubt that John belonged to that sect. The place where he 
 preached, his macerations and frugal diet, the doctrines he taught, 
 all prove it conclusively. There was no other sect to which he 
 could have belonged; certainly none so numerous as his, except 
 the Essenes. 
 
 Wa find, from the two letters written by Paul to the brethren at 
 Corinth, that City of Luxury and Corruption, that there were 
 contentions among them. Rival sects had already, about the 57th 
 year of our era, reared their banners there, as followers, some of 
 Paul, some of Apollos, and some of Cephas. Some of them de- 
 nied the resurrection. Paul urged them to adhere 1 j the doctrines 
 taught by himself, and had sent Timothy to them to bring them 
 afresh to their recollection. 
 
 According to Paul, Christ was to come again. He was to put 
 an end to all other Principles and Powers, and finally to Death, 
 and then be Himself once more merged in God; who should then 
 be all in all. 
 
 The forms and ceremonies of the Essenes were symbolical. 
 They had, according to Philo the Jew, four Degrees ; the members 
 being divided into two Orders, the Practici and Therapeutici; 
 the latter being the contemplative and medical Brethren ; and the 
 former the active, practical, business men. They were Jews by 
 birth; and had a greater affection for each other than the mem- 
 bers of any other sect. Their brotherly love was intense. They 
 fulfilled the Christian law, "Love one another." They despised 
 riches. No one was to be found among them, having more than 
 18
 
 264 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 another. The possessions of one were intermingled with those of 
 the others ; so that they all had but one patrimony, and were 
 brethren. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. Before 
 sunrise they never spake a word about profane matters; but put 
 up certain prayers which they had received from their forefathers. 
 At dawn of day, and before it was light, their prayers and hymns 
 ascended to Heaven. They were eminently faithful and true, and 
 the Ministers of Peace. They had mysterious ceremonies, and 
 initiations into their mysteries; and the Candidate promised that 
 he would ever practise fidelity to all men, and especially to those 
 in authority, "because no one obtains the government without 
 God's assistance." 
 
 Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath ; but they avoided 
 swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple 
 in their diet and mode of living, bore torture with fortitude, and 
 despised death. They cultivated the science of medicine and were 
 /ery skillful. They deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes. 
 They had their own courts, and passed righteous judgments. They 
 kept the Sabbath more rigorously than the Jews. 
 
 Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and 
 Hebron. Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem, 
 and Hebron about 20 miles south of that city. Josephus and 
 Eusebius speak of them as an ancient sect; and they were no 
 doubt the first among the Jews to embrace Christianity : with 
 whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many points of 
 resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same. Pliny 
 regarded them as a very ancient people. 
 
 In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the 
 Jews generally did toward the Temple. But they were no idola- 
 ters ; for they observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity. 
 They held all things in common, and despised riches, their wants 
 being supplied by the administration of Curators or Stewards. 
 The Tetractys, composed of round dots instead of jods, was re- 
 vered among them. This being a Pythagorean symbol, evidently 
 shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras ; but their 
 peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and Zoroaster; 
 and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in Persia; 
 which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer. 
 
 Their demeanor was sober and chaste. They submitted to the 
 superintendence of governors whom they appointed over them-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 265 
 
 selves. The whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, 
 and prayer; and they were most sedulously attentive to every call 
 of justice and humanity, and every moral duty. They believed 
 in the unity of God. They supposed the souls of men to have 
 fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of purity and light, 
 into the bodies which they occupy ; during their continuance in 
 which they considered them confined as in a prison. Therefore 
 they did not believe in the resurrection of the body ; but in that 
 of the soul only. They believed in a future state of rewards and 
 punishments ; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external 
 forms enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the worship 
 of God ; holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be un- 
 derstood in a mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to 
 their literal meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home ; 
 and by meditation they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate 
 the soul from the body, and carry it back to God. 
 
 Eusebius broadly admits "that the ancient Therapeutae were 
 Christians ; and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and 
 Epistles." 
 
 The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and 
 held PLATO in the highest esteem ; they believed that true philos- 
 ophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of God to mortals, was 
 scattered, in various portions, through all the different Seels ; and 
 that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it 
 from the several quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ 
 it, thus reunited, in destroying the dominion of impiety and 
 vice. 
 
 The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distin- 
 guished manner by the Essenes ; as would naturally be supposed, 
 from the fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a god, but as a 
 symbol of light and fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals 
 supposed God to be. They lived in continence and abstinence, 
 and had establishments similar to the monasteries of the early 
 Christians. 
 
 The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables, 
 enigmas, and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exote- 
 ric meanings of the Scriptures ; and, as we have already said, they 
 had a warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves. They found 
 it in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. 
 The Christian writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a
 
 266 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 truth, that all Scripture had an inner and an outer meaning. Thus 
 we find it said as follows, in one of the Gospels : 
 
 "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of 
 God ; but unto men that are without, all these things are done in 
 parables ; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing 
 they may hear and not understand. . . . And the disciples came 
 and said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in par-ables?' 
 He answered and said unto them, 'Because it is given unto you to 
 know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is 
 not given.' " 
 
 Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speak- 
 ing of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, asserts that they 
 are an allegory. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the 
 Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New Testament, 
 appointed by God ; "Not of the letter, but of the spirit ; for the 
 letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels 
 were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius ad- 
 monishes us that "Should we understand sacred writ according to 
 the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies." 
 
 Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Sepulchres, 
 philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by alle- 
 gory." 
 
 The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are 
 the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second 
 century, and the latter a little later; but containing materials 
 much older than themselves. In their most characteristic ele- 
 ments, they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the 
 teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a 
 source of infinite LIGHT. Before everything, existed THE AN- 
 CIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title often given to the 
 Creator in the Zend-Avesta and the code of the Sabccans. With 
 the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. THE 
 KING OF LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT is. He is not only 
 the real cause of all Existences; he is Infinite [AlNSOPH]. He is 
 HIMSELF : there is nothing in Him that We can call Thou. 
 
 In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real 
 cause of all, but he is the only real Existence: ?.ll the rest is illu- 
 sion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, 
 He is the Supreme Eeing unknown to all, the "Unknown Father." 
 The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attri-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 267 
 
 butes are reproduced there, with different modifications, and in 
 different degrees, so that the Universe is His Holy Spleador: it 
 is but His Mantle; but it must be revered in silence. All beings 
 have emanated from the Supreme Being : The nearer a being is to 
 Him, the more perfect it is ; the more remote in the scale, the less 
 its purity. 
 
 A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle 
 of all that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the 
 sublimest sense. It penetrates everything ; and without it nothing 
 can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the 
 two parts of the word I.*. H.'. U.'. H.'. emanated the FIRST-BORN 
 of God, the Universal FORM, in which are contained all beings ; 
 the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the 
 Infinite by the primitive ray of Light. 
 
 This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and ani- 
 mating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It 
 possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT, 
 and LIFE [<J>u><, Hveufw, and Zwr)]. As it has received what it 
 gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative 
 and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. 
 As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or Sephiroth, 
 which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all ; but 
 sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Creation. 
 They are Sovereignty or Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity, 
 Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency, and Empire. These 
 are attributes of God ; and this idea, that God reveals Himself by 
 His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or dis- 
 cern God Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting 
 Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only 
 what the Visible reveals. 
 
 Wisdom was called Nous and LOGOS [Nous and Ao-yoz], INTEL- 
 LECT or the WORD. Intelligence, source of the oil of anointing, 
 responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith. 
 
 Beauty is represented by green and yellow. Victory is YA- 
 HOVAH-TsABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column 
 fachin: Glory is the column Boas, on the left hand. And thus 
 our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, 
 the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. 
 The circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Ke- 
 ther, or the Crown.
 
 268 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of 
 Spirits, Azilnth, Briah, Yezirah, and Asiah, or of emanation, crea- 
 tion, formation, and fabrication, one inferior to and one emerging 
 from the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its 
 doctrine that, in all that exists, there is nothing purely material ; 
 that all comes from God, and in all He proceeds by irradiation ; 
 that everything subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates crea- 
 tion ; and all is united by the Spirit of God, which is the life of 
 life; so that all is God; the Existences that inhabit the four 
 worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from 
 the Great King of Light : the contest between the good and evil 
 Angels and Principles, to endure until the Eternal Himself comes 
 to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony ; the four distinct 
 parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure souls, 
 until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of 
 Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor 
 fills the Universe. 
 
 The WORD was also found in the Phoenician Creed. As in all 
 those of Asia, a WORD of God, written in starry characters, by the 
 planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as a 
 profound mystery, to the higher classes of the human race, to be 
 communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith 
 of the Phoenicians was an emanation from that ancient worship of 
 the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with 
 a faith in one God. Light and Fire are the most important agents 
 in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of the Light. 
 They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the Supreme 
 God. 
 
 Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive 
 Love, which is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light, 
 by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, 
 is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should 
 therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere 
 it governs and controls. 
 
 The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render 
 the phrase, DEBAR- YAHOVAH [mrT 1 12T] , the Word of God, a per- 
 sonalty, wherever they met with it. The phrase, "And God 
 created man;" is, in the Jerusalem Targum, "And the Word of 
 IHUH created man." 
 
 So, in xxviii. Gen. 20, 21, where Jacob says : If God
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 269 
 
 linn ALHIMJ will be with me ... then shall IHUH be my ALHIM 
 [CTi^N^ *b mrP JTiTi; UHIH IHUH Li LALHIM] ; and this stone shall 
 6e God's House [zrr6 JV3 nTP . . IHIH BITH ALHIM]: Onkelos 
 paraphrases it, "If the word of IHUH will be my help .... then 
 the Word of IHUH ohall be my God." 
 
 So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord God" [DV^N mn\ 
 IHUH ALHIM], we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH." 
 
 In ix. Wisdom, I, "O God of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! 
 who hast made all things with thy word. . iv \6yov wj." 
 
 And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty W r ord [Aoyos] leaped 
 down from Heaven." 
 
 Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with God. So in sev- 
 eral places he calls it "Sevrepo? dos Ao'yos," the Second Divinity ; 
 "lixwv roo 6sou t " the Image of God: the Divine Word that made 
 all things: "the wa^os," substitute, of God; and the like. 
 
 Thus, when John commenced to preach, had been for ages 
 agitated, by the Priests and Philosophers of the East and West, 
 the great questions concerning the eternity or creation of matter : 
 immediate or intermediate creation of the Universe by the Su- 
 preme God ; the origin, object, and final extinction of evil ; the 
 relations between the intellectual and material worlds, and be- 
 tween God and man ; and the creation, fall, redemption, and 
 restoration to his first estate, of man. 
 
 The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental 
 creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book 
 of Genesis commences, attributed the creation to the immediate 
 action of the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other 
 Eastern Peoples interposed more than one intermediary between 
 God and the world. To place between them but a single Being, 
 to suppose for the production of the world but a single interme- 
 diary, was, in their eyes, to lower the Supreme Majesty. The 
 interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and matter, which is 
 base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step. 
 Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus im- 
 poverish the Intellectual World. 
 
 Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo, 
 the Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient, 
 deemed the distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being 
 and the material world too great, to attribute to the former the 
 creation of the latter. Below, and emanating from, or created
 
 2/O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 by, the Ancient of Days, the Central Light, the Beginning, or 
 First Principle [Apx>]]> on e, two, or more Principles, Existences, or 
 Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or more of whom 
 [without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great 
 Immovable, Silent Deity], the immediate creation of the material 
 and mental universe was due. 
 
 We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this 
 point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, 
 first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, 
 the beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of 
 LIGHT, creating the principle of Light and Life. The Primitive 
 THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLI- 
 GENCES, the lynges of Zoroaster, his Amshaspands, Izeds, and 
 Ferouers, the Ideas of Plato, the Aions of the Gnostics, the 
 Angels of the Jews, the Nous, the Demiourgos, the DIVINE REA- 
 SON, the Pozvers or Forces of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or 
 Superior Gods of the ancient legend with which Genesis begins, 
 to these and other intermediaries the creation was owing. No re- 
 straints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The veriest 
 Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of 
 God, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences. 
 
 God was the Light of Light, Divine Fire, the Abstract Intellec- 
 tuality, the Root or Germ of the Universe. Simon Magus, founder 
 of the Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing Christians, 
 admitted that the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as FATHER, 
 or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many 
 different modes of Existence, or Forces [Suva/nets] of the same God. 
 To others they were, as were the multitude of Subordinate Intelli- 
 gences, real and distinct beings. 
 
 The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these Infe- 
 rior Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We 
 have spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. 
 In the Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost 
 every tongue has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is 
 the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL of water. Seven spirits assist 
 each ; those of fire being Seraphiel, Gabriel, Nitriel, Tammael, 
 Tchimschiel, Hadarniel, and Sarniel. These seven are represented 
 by the square columns of this Degree, while the columns JACHIN 
 and BOAZ represent the angels of fire and water. But the col- 
 umns are not representatives of these alone.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 27! 
 
 To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first contain- 
 ing and concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections ; 
 and when these are by Him displayed and manifested, there result 
 as many particular Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and 
 always Him. To the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the 
 West both devised this faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or 
 Manifestations of the Deity were so many Creations, so many Be- 
 ings, all God, nothing without Him, but more than what we now 
 understand by the word ideas. They emanated from and were 
 again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence be- 
 tween our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to 
 the rank of genii, of the Oriental mythology. 
 
 These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides, 
 were the UfHOTo-fovoz or First-born, Nous [Nous or Mind] : from it 
 emanates Aoyo* [Logos, or THE WORD] from it Qpovyai.-; : [Phro- 
 nesis, Intellect] : from it Soyia [Sophia, Wisdom} : from it AiW^us 
 [Dunamis, Power] : and from it AIKCUOOWT/ [Dikaiosune, Right- 
 eousness] : to which latter the Jews gave the name of Eipr/nj 
 [Eirene, Peace, or Calm] , the essential characteristic of Divinity, 
 and harmonious effect of all His perfections. The whole number 
 of successive emanations was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in 
 Greek letters, by the mystic word ABPAHA-' [Abraxas] ; desig- 
 nating God as manifested, or the aggregate of his manifestations ; 
 but not the Supreme and Secret God Himself. These three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five Intelligences compose altogether the Fullness 
 or Plenitude [nAr/pw/xa] of the Divine Emanations. 
 
 With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven infe- 
 rior spirits [inferior to laldabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Cre- 
 ator] : Michael, Suriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth, 
 and Athaniel, the genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the 
 Lion, the Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly 
 figured in the constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively 
 by those animals; as laldabaoth, lao, Adonai, Elo'i, Oral, and As- 
 taphai were the genii of Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, 
 Venus, and Mercury. 
 
 The WORD appears in all these creeds. It is the Ormuzd of 
 Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism 
 and Philonism, and the Sophia or Demiourgos of the Gnostics. 
 
 And all these creeds, while admitting there different manifesta- 
 tions of the Supreme Being, held that His identity was immutable
 
 272 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and permanent. That was Plato's distinction between the Being 
 always the same [TO ov] and the perpetual flow of things inces- 
 santly changing, the Genesis. 
 
 The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal. Those 
 who held that everything emanated from God, aspired to God, and 
 re-entered into God, believed that, among those emanations were 
 two adverse Principles, of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. 
 This prevailed in Central Asia and in Syria; while in Egypt it 
 assumed the form of Greek speculation. In the former, a second 
 Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its Empire of Dark- 
 ness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the Persians and 
 Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was Mat- 
 ter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad at- 
 tributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter 
 could be animated only by the low communication of a principle 
 of divine life. It resists the influences that would spiritualize it. 
 That resisting Power is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that 
 does not partake of God. 
 
 To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or 
 Supreme and Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light, 
 happy in the perfect purity of His being ; the other, eternal Mat- 
 ter, that inert, shapeless, darksome mass, which they considered as 
 the source of all evils, the mother and dwelling-place of Satan. 
 
 To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, cre- 
 ating visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme 
 Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by 
 that Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but 
 which He executes without comprehending them. 
 
 The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs 
 to the Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far 
 older than itself. It paints, with the strongest colors that the Ori- 
 ental genius ever employed, the closing scenes of the great strug- 
 gle of Light, and Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and 
 Evil ; personified in that between the New Religion on one side, 
 and Paganism and Judaism on the other. It is a particular appli- 
 cation of the ancient myth of Ormuzd and his Genii against Ahri- 
 man and his Devs ; and it celebrates the final triumph of Truth 
 against the combined powers of men and demons. The ideas and 
 imagery are borrowed from every quarter ; and allusions are found 
 in it to the doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 2/3 
 
 of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. 
 The Seven Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the 
 opening of the Grand Drama, and acting so important a part 
 throughout, everywhere the first instruments of the Divine Will 
 and Vengeance, are the Seven Amshaspands of Parsism ; as the 
 Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the Supreme Being the first 
 supplications and the first homage, remind us of the Mysterious 
 Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and repro- 
 duce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and in- 
 closed in an egg. 
 
 The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the 
 Resurrection, is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd 
 and Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah 
 and the Carpistes [Kap7rm/s] of the Gnostics. The idea that the 
 true Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once 
 Persian, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. And the definition of 
 the Supreme Being, that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the be- 
 ginning and the end He that was, and is, and is to come, 
 t. e., Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's definition of Zerouane-Ak- 
 herene. 
 
 The depths of Satan which no man can measure ; his triumph 
 for a time by fraud and violence ; his being chained by an angel ; 
 his reprobation and his precipitation into a sea of metal ; his 
 names of the Serpent and the Dragon ; the whole conflict of the 
 Good Spirits or celestial armies against the bad ; are so many 
 ideas and designations found alike in the Zend-Avesta, the Ka- 
 balah, and the Gnosis. 
 
 We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea, 
 which regards some of the lower animals as so many Devs or ve- 
 hicles of Devs. 
 
 The guardianship of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of 
 the earth and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy 
 men, are the same victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole 
 Orient looked. 
 
 The gold, and white raiments, of the twenty-four Elders are, as 
 in the Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine 
 purity. 
 
 Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself 
 for ages, to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to 
 be inexplicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering
 
 2/4 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in the imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible mean- 
 ing, an inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result. 
 
 But one grand idea ever emerged and stood prominent and un- 
 changeable over the weltering chaos of confusion. God is great, 
 and good, and wise. Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary, 
 and for wise and beneficent purposes. They must be consistent 
 with God's goodness, purity, and infinite perfection ; and there 
 must be a mode of explaining them, if we could but find it out; 
 as, in all ways we will endeavor to do. Ultimately, Good will pre- 
 vail, and Evil be overthrown. God alone can do this, and He will 
 do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming the Human form 
 and redeeming the world. 
 
 Behold the object, the end, the result, of the great speculations 
 and logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate annihilation of evil, 
 and restoration of Man to his first estate, by a Redeemer, a Ma- 
 sayah, a Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of Deity. 
 
 This Redeemer is the Word or Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, 
 the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and Philon- 
 ism ; He that was in the Beginning with God, and was God, and 
 by Whom everything was made. That He was looked for by all 
 the People of the East is abundantly shown by the Gospel of John 
 and the Letters of Paul ; wherein scarcely anything seemed neces- 
 sary to be said in proof that such a Redeemer was to come ; but 
 all the energies of the writers are devoted to showing that Jesus 
 was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting ; the 
 "Word," the Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One. 
 
 In this Degree the great contest between good and evil, in antici- 
 pation of the appearance and advent of the Word or Redeemer is 
 symbolized ; and the mysterious esoteric teachings of the Essenes 
 and the Cabalists. Of the practices of the former we gain but 
 glimpses in the ancient writers; but we know that, as their doc- 
 trines were taught by John the Baptist, they greatly resembled 
 those of greater purity and more nearly perfect, taught by Jesus ; 
 and that not only Palestine was full of John's disciples, so that the 
 Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny John's inspiration ; but 
 his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and had made converts 
 in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in Egypt ; and 
 that they readily embraced the Christian faith, of which they had 
 before not even heard. 
 
 These old controversies have died away, and the old faiths have
 
 KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 2/5 
 
 faded into oblivion. But Masonry still survives, vigorous and 
 strong, as when philosophy was taught in the schools of Alexan- 
 dria and under the Portico ; teaching the same old truths as the 
 Essenes taught by the shores of the Red Sea, and as John tho 
 Baptist preached in the Desert: truths imperishable as the Deity, 
 and undeniable as Light. Those truths were gathered by the 
 Essenes from the doctrines of the Orient and the Occident, from 
 the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras, from 
 India, Persia, Phoenicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and 
 from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights 
 of the East and West, because their doctrines came from both. 
 And these doctrines, the wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth 
 separated from Error, Masonry has garnered up in her heart of 
 hearts, and through the fires of persecution, and the storms of 
 calamity, has brought them and delivered them unto us. That 
 God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just and good; 
 that Light will finally overcome Darkness, Good conquer Evil, 
 and Truth be victor over Error; these, rejecting all the wild and 
 useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, theKabalah, the Gnostics, 
 and the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry. 
 
 Those speculations and fancies it is useful to study ; that know- 
 ing in what worthless and unfruitful investigations the mind may 
 engage, you may the more value and appreciate the plain, simple, 
 sublime, universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all ages 
 been the Light by which Masons have been guided on their way ; 
 the Wisdom and Strength that like imperishable columns have 
 sustained and will continue to sustain its glorious and magnificent 
 Temple.
 
 XVIII. 
 'KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 
 
 [Prince Rose Croix.] 
 
 EACH of us makes such applications to his own faith and creed, 
 of the symbols and ceremonies of this Degree, as seems to him 
 proper. With these special interpretations we have here nothing 
 to do. Like the legend of the Master Khurum, in which some 
 see figured the condemnation and sufferings of Christ; others 
 those of the unfortunate Grand Master of the Templars ; others 
 those of the first Charles, King of England ; and others still the 
 annual descent of the Sun at the winter Solstice to the regions of 
 darkness, the basis of many an ancient legend ; so the ceremonies 
 of this Degree receive different explanations ; each interpreting 
 them for himself, and being offended at the interpretation of no 
 other. 
 
 In no other way could Masonry possess its character of Univer- 
 sality ; that character which has ever been peculiar to it from its 
 origin ; and which enables two Kings, worshippers of different 
 Deities, to sit together as Masters, while the walls of the first tem- 
 ple arose ; and the men of Gebal, bowing down to the Phoenician 
 Gods, to work by the side of the Hebrews to whom those Gods 
 \vere abomination ; and to sit with them in the same Lodge as 
 brethren. 
 276
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 277 
 
 You have already learned that these. ceremonies have one gen- 
 eral significance, to every one, of every faith, who believes in God, 
 and the soul's immortality. 
 
 The primitive men met in no Temples made with human hands. 
 "God," said Stephen, the first Martyr, "dwelleth not in Temples 
 made with hands." In the open air, under the overarching mys- 
 terious sky, in the great World-Temple, they uttered their vows^ 
 and thanksgivings, and adored the God of Light ; of that Light 
 that was to them the type of Good, as darkness was the type of 
 Evil. 
 
 All antiquity solved the enigma of the existence of Evil, by 
 supposing the existence of a Principle of Evil, of Demons, fallen 
 Angels, an Ahriman, a Typhon, a Siva, a Lok, or a Satan, that, 
 first falling themselves, and plunged in misery and darkness, 
 tempted man to his fall, and brought sin into the world. All be- 
 lieved in a future life, to be attained by purification and trials ; in 
 a state or successive states of reward and punishment ; and in a 
 Mediator or Redeemer, by whom the Evil Principle was to be 
 overcome, and the Supreme Deity reconciled to His creatures. 
 The belief was general, that He was to be born of a Virgin, and 
 suffer a painful death. The Indians called him Chrishna ; the 
 Chinese, Kioun-tse ; the Persians, Sosiosch ; the Chaldeans, Dhou- 
 vanai ; the Egyptians, Har-Oeri ; Plato, Love ; and the Scandina- 
 vians, Balder. 
 
 Chrishna, the Hindoo Redeemer, was cradled and educated 
 among Shepherds. A Tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered 
 all the male children to be slain. He performed miracles, say his 
 legends, even raising the dead. He washed the feet of the Brah- 
 mins, and was meek and lowly of spirit. He was born of a Vir- 
 gin ; descended to Hell, rose again, ascended to Heaven, charged 
 his disciples to teach his doctrines, and gave them the gift of mir- 
 acles. 
 
 The first Masonic Legislator whose memory is preserved to us 
 by history, was Buddha, who, about a thousand years before the 
 Christian era, reformed the religion of Manous. He called to the 
 Priesthood all men, without distinction of caste, who felt them- 
 selves inspired by God to instruct men. Those who so associated 
 themselves formed a Society of Prophets under the name of Sa- 
 maneans. They recognized the existence of a single uncreated 
 God, in whose bosom everything- grows, is developed and trans-
 
 2/8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 formed. The worship of this God reposed upon the obedience of 
 all the beings He created. His feasts were those of the Solstices. 
 The doctrines of Buddha pervaded India, China, and Japan. The 
 Priests of Brahma, professing a dark and bloody creed, brutalized 
 by Superstition, united together against Buddhism, and with the 
 aid of Despotism, exterminated its followers. But their blood 
 fertilized the new doctrine, which produced a new Society under 
 the name of Gymnosophists ; and a large number, fleeing to 
 Ireland, planted their doctrines there, and there erected the round 
 towers, some of which still stand, solid and unshaken as at first, 
 visible monuments of the remotest ages. 
 
 The Phoenician Cosmogony, like all others in Asia, was the 
 Word of God, written in astral characters, by the planetary Divin- 
 ities, and communicated by the Demi-gods, as a profound mystery, 
 to the brighter intelligences of Humanity, to be propagated by 
 them among men. Their doctrines resembled the Ancient Sabe- 
 ism, and being the faith of Hiram the King and his namesake the 
 Artist, are of interest to all Masons. With them, the First Prin- 
 ciple was half material, half spiritual, a dark air, animated and 
 impregnated by the spirit ; and a disordered chaos, covered with 
 thick darkness. From this came the WORD, and thence creation 
 and generation ; and thence a race of men, children of light, who 
 adored Heaven and its Stars as the Supreme Being; and whose 
 different gods were but incarnations of the Sun, the Moon, the 
 Stars, and the Ether. Chryspr was the great igneous power of 
 Nature, and Baal and Malakarth representations of the Sun and 
 Moon, the latter word, in Hebrew, meaning Queen. 
 
 Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the serpent. For, 
 with the Phoenicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the 
 Divine Nature, and was sacred, as he was in Egypt. He was 
 deemed to be immortal, unless slain by violence, becoming young 
 again in his old age, by entering into and consuming himself. 
 Hence the Serpent in a circle, holding his tail in his mouth, was 
 an emblem of eternity. With the head of a hawk he was of a 
 Divine Nature, and a symbol of the sun. Hence one Sect of the 
 Gnostics took him ior their good genius, and hence the brazen ser- 
 pent reared by Moses in the Desert, on which the Israelites looked 
 and lived. 
 
 "Before the chaos, that preceded the birth of Heaven and 
 Earth," said the Chinese Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, im-
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 279 
 
 mense and silent, immutable and always acting; the mother of 
 the Universe. I know not the name of that Being-, but I designate 
 it by the word Reason. Man has his model in the earth, the 
 earth in Heaven, Heaven in Reason, and Reason in itself." 
 
 "I am," says Isis, "Nature ; parent of all things, the sovereign 
 of the Elements, the primitive progeny of Time, the most exalted 
 of the Deities, the first of the Heavenly Gods and Goddesses, the 
 Queen of the Shades, the uniform countenance ; who dispose 
 with my rod the numerous lights of Heaven, the salubrious breezes 
 of the sea, and the mournful silence of the dead ; whose single 
 Divinity the whole world venerates in many forms, with various 
 rites and by many names. The Egyptians, skilled in ancient lore, 
 worship me with proper ceremonies, and call me by my true name, 
 Isis the Queen." 
 
 The Hindu Vedas thus define the Deity: 
 
 "He who surpasses speech, and through whose power speech is 
 expressed, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perish- 
 able things that man adores. 
 
 "He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say 
 the sages, through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be 
 understood, know thou that He is Brahma ; and not these perish- 
 able things that man adores. 
 
 "He who cannot be seen by the organ of sight, and through 
 whose power the organ of seeing sees, know thou that He is 
 Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores. 
 
 "He who cannot be heard by the organ of hearing, and through 
 whose power the organ of hearing hears, know thou that He is 
 Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores. 
 
 "He who cannot be perceived by the organ of smelling, and 
 through whose power the organ of smelling smells, know thou that 
 He is Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores." 
 
 "When God resolved to create the human race." said Arius, 
 "He made a Being that He called The WORD, The Son, Wisdom, 
 to the end that this Being might give existence to men." This 
 WORD is the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, 
 the Noij? of Plato and Philo, the Wisdom or Dcmiourgos of the 
 Gnostics. 
 
 That is the True Word, the knowledge of which our ancient 
 brethren sought as the priceless reward of their labors on the 
 Holy Temple: the Word of Life, the Divine Reason, "in whom 
 19
 
 28O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 was Life, and that Life the Light of men" ; "which long shone in 
 darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" the Infinite 
 Reason that is the Soul of Nature, immortal, of which the Word 
 of this Degree reminds us ; and to believe wherein and revere it, is 
 the peculiar duty of every Mason. 
 
 "In the beginning," says the extract from some older work, 
 with which John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the 
 Word was near to God, and the Word was God. All things were 
 made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was 
 made. In Him was Life, and the life was the Light of man ; and 
 the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not contain it." 
 
 It is an old tradition that this passage was from an older work. 
 And Philostorgius and Nicephorus state, that when the Emperor 
 Julian undertook to rebuild the Temple, a stone was taken up, 
 that covered the mouth of a deep square cave, into which one of 
 the laborers, being let down by a rope, found in the centre of 
 the floor a cubical pillar, on which lay a roll or book, wrapped in 
 a fine linen cloth, in which, in capital letters, was the foregoing 
 passage. 
 
 However this may have been, it is plain that John's Gospel is a 
 polemic against the Gnostics ; and, stating at the outset the current 
 doctrine in regard to the creation by the Word, he then addresses 
 himself to show and urge that this Word was Jesus Christ. 
 
 And the first sentence, fully rendered into our language, would 
 read thus : "When the process of emanation, of creation or evolu- 
 tion of existences inferior to the Supreme God began, the Word 
 came into existence and was : and this word was [i-pos rov 0eov] 
 near to God ; /. e. the immediate or first emanation from God : and 
 it was God Himself, developed or manifested in that particular 
 mode, and in action. And by that Word everything that is was 
 created." And thus Tertullian says that God made the World out 
 of nothing, by means of His Word, Wisdom, or Power. 
 
 To Philo the Jew, as to the Gnostics, the Supreme Being was 
 the Primitive Light, or Archetype of Light, Source whence the 
 rays emanate that illuminate Souls. He is the Soul of the World, 
 and as such acts everywhere. He himself fills and bounds his 
 whole existence, and his forces fill and penetrate everything. His 
 Image is the WORD [Logos], a form more brilliant than fire, which 
 is not pure light. This WORD dwells in God ; for it is within His 
 Intelligence that the Supreme Being frame? for Himself the
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 28\ 
 
 Types of Ideas of all that is to assume reality in the Universe. 
 The WORD is the Vehicle by which God acts on the Universe ; the 
 World of Ideas by means whereof God has created visible things ; 
 the more Ancient God, as compared with the Material World ; 
 Chief and General Representative of all Intelligences ; the Arch- 
 angel, type and representative of all spirits, even those of Mortals ; 
 the type of Man ; the primitive man himself. These ideas are 
 borrowed from Plato. And this WORD is not only the Creator ["by 
 Him was everything made that was made"] ,but acts in the place of 
 God ; and through him act all the Powers and Attributes of God. 
 And also, as first representative of the human race, he is the pro- 
 tector of Men and their Shepherd, the "Ben H'Adam," or Son of 
 Man. 
 
 The actual condition of Man is not his primitive condition, that 
 in which he was the image of the Word. His unruly passions 
 have caused him to fall from his original lofty estate. But he may 
 rise again, by following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and 
 the Angels whom God commissions to aid him in escaping from 
 the entanglements of the body ; and by fighting bravely against 
 Evil, the existence of which God has allowed solely to furnish him 
 with the means of exercising his free will. 
 
 The Supreme Being of the Egyptians was Amun, a secret and 
 concealed God, the Unknown Father of the Gnostics, the Source 
 of Divine Life, and of all force, the Plenitude of all, comprehend- 
 ing all things in Himself, the original Light. He creates nothing ; 
 but everything emanates from Him : and all other Gods are but 
 his manifestations. From Him, by the utterance of a Word, ema- 
 nated Neith, the Divine Mother of all things, the Primitive 
 THOUGHT, the FORCE that puts everything in movement, the 
 SPIRIT everywhere extended, the Deity of Light and Mother of the 
 Sun. 
 
 Of this Supreme Being, Osiris was the image, Source of all 
 Good in the moral and physical world, and constant foe of Typhon, 
 the Genius of Evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, brute matter, deemed 
 to be always at feud with the spirit that flowed from the Deity; 
 and over whom Har-Oeri, the Redeemer, Son of Isis and Osiris, 
 is finally to prevail. 
 
 In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians the Supreme Being is 
 
 .Time withont limit, ZERUANE AKHERENE. No origin could be 
 
 assigned to Him ; for He was enveloped in His own Glory, and
 
 282 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 His Nature and Attributes were so inaccessible to human Intelli- 
 gence, that He was but the object of a silent veneration. The com- 
 mencement of Creation was by emanation from Him. The first 
 emanation was the Primitive Light, and from this Light emerged 
 Ormuzd, the King of Light, who, by the WORD, created the World 
 in its purity, is its Preserver and Judge, a Holy and Sacred Be- 
 ing, Intelligence and Knowledge, Himself Time without limit, 
 and wielding all the powers of the Supreme Being. 
 
 In this Persian faith, as taught many centuries before our era, 
 and embodied in the Zend-Avesta, there was in man a pure Prin- 
 ciple, proceeding from the Supreme Being, produced by the Will 
 and Word of Ormuzd. To that was united an impure principle, 
 proceeding from a foreign influence, that of Ahriman, the Dragon, 
 or principle of Evil. Tempted by Ahriman, the first man and wo- 
 man had fallen ; and for twelve thousand years there was to be 
 war between Ormuzd and the Good Spirits created by him, and 
 Ahriman and the Evil ones whom he had called into existence. 
 
 But pure souls are assisted by the Good Spirits, the Triumph of 
 the Good Principle is determined upon in the decrees of the Su- 
 preme Being, and the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive. 
 At the moment when the earth shall be most afflicted with the 
 evils brought upon it by the Spirits of perdition, three Prophets 
 will appear to bring assistance to mortals. Sosiosch, Chief of the 
 Three, will regenerate the world, and restore to it its primitive 
 Beauty, Strength, and Purity. He will judge the good and the 
 wicked. After the universal resurrection of the Good, the pure 
 Spirits will conduct them to an abode of eternal happiness. Ahri- 
 man, his evil Demons, and all the world, will be purified in a tor- 
 rent of liquid burning metal. The Law of Ormuzd will rule 
 everywhere : all men will be happy : all, enjoying an unalterable 
 bliss, will unite with Sosiosch in singing the praises of the Su- 
 pieme Being. 
 
 These doctrines, with some modifications, were adopted by the 
 Kabalists and afterward by the Gnostics. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana says : "We shall render the most appropri- 
 ate worship to the Deity, when to that God whom we call the 
 First, who is One, and separate from all, and after whom we recog- 
 nize the others, we present no offerings whatever, kindle to Him 
 no fire, dedicate to Him no sensible thing; for he needs nothing, 
 even of all that natures more exalted than ours could give. The
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 283 
 
 earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no animal, there is in 
 short nothing, which would not be impure in his sight. In address- 
 ing ourselves to Him, we must use only the higher word, that, I 
 mean, which is not expressed by the mouth, the silent inner word 
 
 of the spirit From the most Glorious of all Beings, we must 
 
 seek for blessings, by that which is most glorious in ourselves ; and 
 that is the spirit, which needs no organ." 
 
 Strabo says: "This one Supreme Essence is that which embraces 
 us all, the water and the land, that which we call the Heavens, 
 the World, the Nature of things. This Highest Being should be 
 worshipped, without any visible image, in sacred groves. In such 
 retreats the devout should lay themselves down to sleep, and 
 expect signs from God in dreams." 
 
 Aristotle says : "It has been handed down in a mythical form, 
 from the earliest times to posterity, that there are Gods, and that 
 The Divine compasses entire nature. All besides this has been 
 added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the 
 multitude, and for the interest of the laws and the advantage of 
 the State. Thus men have given to the Gods human forms, and 
 have even represented them under the figure of other beings, in 
 the train of which fictions followed many more of the same sort. 
 But if, from all this, we separate the original principle, and con- 
 sider it alone, namely, that the first Essences are Gods, we shall 
 find that this has been divinely said ; and since it is probable that 
 philosophy and the arts have been several times, so far as that is 
 possible, found and lost, such doctrines may have been preserved 
 to our times as the remains of ancient wisdom." 
 
 Porphyry says : "By images addressed to sense, the ancients 
 represented God and his powers by the visible they typified the 
 invisible for those who had learned to read, in these types, as in 
 a book, a treatise on the Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant 
 consider the images to be nothing more than wood or stone ; for 
 just so, they who are ignorant of writing see nothing in monu- 
 ments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a 
 tissue of papyrus." 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana held, that birth and death are only in ap- 
 pearance ; that which separates itself from the one substance (the 
 one Divine essence), and is caught up by matter, seems to be born ; 
 that, again, which releases itself from the bonds of matter, and is 
 reunited with the one Divine Essence, seems to die. There is, at
 
 284 . MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 most, an alteration between becoming visible and becoming in- 
 visible. In all there is, properly speaking, but the one essence, 
 which alone acts and suffers, by becoming all things to all ; the 
 Eternal God, whom men wrong, when they deprive Him of what 
 properly can be attributed to Him only, and transfer it to other 
 names and persons. 
 
 The New Platonists substituted the idea of the Absolute, for 
 the Supreme Essence itself ; as the first, simplest principle, ante- 
 rior to all existence; of which nothing determinate can be predi- 
 cated ; to which no consciousness, no self-contemplation can be 
 ascribed ; inasmuch as to do so, would immediately imply a qual- 
 ity, a distinction of subject and object. This Supreme Entity can 
 be known only by an intellectual intuition of the Spirit, trans- 
 scending itself, and emancipating itself from its own limits. 
 
 This mere logical tendency, by means of which men thought to 
 arrive at the conception of such an absolute, the #v, was united 
 with a certain mysticism, which, by a transcendent state of feel- 
 ing, communicated, as it were, to this abstraction what the mind 
 would receive as a reality. The absorption of the Spirit into that 
 superexistence (rd ir.lxs.iva r^c otWac), so as to be entirely 
 identified with it, or such a revelation of the latter to the spirit 
 raised above itself, was regarded as the highest end which the spir- 
 itual life could reach. 
 
 The New Platonists' idea of God, was that of One Simple Origi- 
 nal Essence, exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the 
 only true Being; unchangeable, eternal [E?c &v &t TW wv rb 
 dft 7:7rtyf)(oxe xal [JLOVOV lore TO xara TOUTOV 6Wftc <iuu]: 
 from whom all Existence in its several gradations has emanated 
 the world of Gods, as nearest akin to Himself, being first, and at 
 the head of all. In these Gods, that perfection, which in the 
 Supreme Essence was inclosed and unevolved, is expanded and 
 becomes knowable. They serve to exhibit in different forms the 
 image of that Supreme Essence, to which no soul can rise, except 
 by the loftiest flight of contemplation ; and after it has rid itself 
 from all that pertains to sense from all manifoldness. They are 
 the mediators between man (amazed and stupefied by manifold- 
 ness) and the Supreme Unity. 
 
 Philo says : "He who disbelieves the miraculous, simply as the 
 miraculous, neither knows God, nor has he ever sought after Him ; 
 for otherwise he would have understood, by looking at that truly
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 285 
 
 great and awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, that these 
 miracles (in God's providential guidance of His people) are but 
 child's play for the Divine Power. But the truly miraculous has 
 become despised through familiarity. The universal, on the con- 
 trary, although in itself insignificant, yet, through our love of 
 novelty, transports us with amazement." 
 
 In opposition to the anthropopathism of the Jewish Scriptures, 
 the Alexandrian Jews endeavored to purify the idea of God from 
 all admixture of the Human. By the exclusion of every human 
 passion, it was sublimated to a something devoid of all attributes, 
 and wholly transcendental ; and the mere Being [6V] ? the Good, 
 in and by itself, the Absolute of Platonism, was substituted for 
 the personal Deity [mrP] of the Old Testament. By soaring up- 
 ward, beyond all created existence, the mind, disengaging itself 
 from the Sensible, attains to the intellectual intuition of this Ab- 
 solute Being; of whom, however, it can predicate nothing but 
 existence, and sets aside all other determinations as not answering 
 to the exalted nature of the Supreme Essence. 
 
 Thus Philo makes a distinction between those who are in the 
 proper sense Sons of God, having by means of contemplation 
 raised themselves to the highest Being, or attained to a knowledge 
 of Him, in His immediate self-manifestation, and those who know 
 God only in his mediate revelation through his operation s,;ch as 
 He declares Himself in creation in the revelation 'still veiled in 
 the letter of Scripture those, in short, who attach themselves 
 simply to the Logos, and consider this to be the Supreme God ; 
 who are the sons of the Logos, rather than of the True Being, (ov). 
 
 "God," says Pythagoras, "is neither the object of sense, nor 
 subject to passion, but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely 
 intelligent. In His body He is like the light, and in His soul He re- 
 sembles truth. He is the universal spirit that pervades and dif- 
 fuseth itself over all nature. All beings receive their life from 
 Him. There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to 
 imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the Universe ; 
 but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that fill His 
 immensity; the only Principle, the Light of Heaven, the Father 
 of all. He produces everything; He orders and disposes every- 
 thing ; He is the REASON, the LIFE, and the MOTION of all being." 
 
 "I am the LIGHT of the world ; he that followeth Me shall not 
 walk in DARKNESS, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE." So said
 
 286 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Founder of the Christian Religion, as His words are reported 
 by John the Apostle. 
 
 God, say the sacred writings of the Jews, appeared to Moses in 
 a FLAME OF FIRE, in the midst of a bush, which was not consumed. 
 He descended upon Mount Sinai, as the smoke of a furnace; He 
 went before the children of Israel, by day, in a pillar of cloud, and, 
 by night, in a pillar of fire, to give them light. "Call you on the 
 name of your Gods," said Elijah the Prophet to the Priests of 
 Baal, "and I will call upon the name of ADONAI ; and the God 
 that answereth by fire, let him be God." 
 
 According to the Kabalah, as according to the doctrines of 
 Zoroaster, everything that exists has emanated from a source of 
 infinite light. Before all things, existed the Primitive Being, THE 
 ANCIENT OF DAYS, the Ancient King of Light; a title the more 
 remarkable, because it is frequently given to the Creator in the 
 Zend-Avesta, and in the Code of the Sabeans, and occurs in the 
 Jewish Scriptures. 
 
 The world was His Revelation, God revealed ; and subsisted 
 only in Him. His attributes were there reproduced with various 
 modifications and in different degrees ; so that the Universe was 
 His Holy Splendor, His Mantle. He was to be adored in silence ; 
 and perfection consisted in a nearer approach to Him. 
 
 Before the creation of worlds, the PRIMITIVE LIGHT filled all 
 space, so that there was no void. When the Supreme Being, ex- 
 isting in this Light, resolved to display His perfections, or mani- 
 fest them in worlds, He withdrew within Himself, formed around 
 Him avoid space, and shot forth His first emanation, a ray of light ; 
 the cause and principle of everything that exists, uniting both the 
 generative and conceptive power, which penetrates everything, 
 and without which nothing could subsist for an instant. 
 
 Man fell, seduced by the Evil Spirits most remote from the 
 Great King of Light ; those of the fourth world of spirits. Asian, 
 whose chief was Belial. They wage incessant war against the 
 pure Intelligences of the other worlds, who, like the Amshaspands. 
 Izeds, and Ferouers of the Persians are the tutelary guardians of 
 man. In the beginning, all was unison and harmony : full of the 
 same divine light and perfect purity. The Seven Kings of Evil 
 fell, and the Universe was troubled. Then the Creator took from 
 the Seven Kings the principles of Good and of Light, and divided 
 them among the four worlds of Spirits, giving to the first three
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 287 
 
 the Pure Intelligences, united in love and harmony, while to the 
 fourth were vouchsafed only some feeble glimmerings of light. 
 
 When the strife between these and the good angels shall have 
 continued the appointed time, and these Spirits enveloped in dark- 
 ness shall long and in vain have endeavored to absorb the Divine 
 light and life, then will the Eternal Himself come to correct them. 
 He will deliver them from the gross envelopes of matter that hold 
 them captive, will re-animate and strengthen the ray of light or 
 spiritual nature which they have preserved, and re-establish 
 throughout the Universe that primitive Harmony which was its 
 bliss. 
 
 Marcion, the Gnostic, said, "The Soul of the True Christian, 
 adopted as a child by the Supreme Being, to whom it has long 
 been a stranger, receives from Him the Spirit and Divine Life. It 
 is led and confirmed, by this gift, in a pure and holy life, like that of 
 God ; and if it so completes its earthly career, in charity, chastity, 
 and sanctity, it will one day be disengaged from its material en- 
 velope, as the ripe grain is detached from the straw, and as the 
 young bird escapes from its shell. Like the angels, it will share 
 in the bliss of the Good and Perfect Father, re-clothed in an aerial 
 body or organ, and made like unto the Angels in Heaven." 
 
 You see, my brother, what is the meaning of Masonic "Light." 
 You see why the EAST of the Lodge, where the initial letter of the 
 Name of the Deity overhangs the Master, is the place of Light. 
 Light, as contradistinguished from darkness, is Good, as contradis- 
 tinguished from Evil : and it is that Light, the true knowledge of 
 Deity, the Eternal Good, for which Masons in all ages have sought. 
 Still Masonry marches steadily onward toward that Light that 
 shines in the great distance, the Light of that day when Evil, 
 overcome and vanquished, shall fade away and disappear forever, 
 and Life and Light be the one law of the Universe, and its eternal 
 Harmony. 
 
 The Degree of Rose %t teaches three things ; the unity, im- 
 mutability and goodness of God ; the immortality of the Soul ; 
 and the ultimate defeat and extinction of evil and wrong and sor- 
 row, by a Redeemer or Messiah, yet to come, if he has not already 
 appeared. 
 
 It replaces the three pillars of the old Temple, with three that 
 have already been explained to you, Faith [in God, mankind, and 
 man's self], Hope [in the victory over evil, the advancement of
 
 288 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Humanity, and a hereafter], and Charity [relieving the wants, 
 and tolerant of the errors and faults of others]. To be trustful, to 
 be hopeful, to be indulgent ; these, in an age of selfishness, of ill 
 opinion of human nature, of harsh and bitter judgment, are the 
 most important Masonic Virtues, and the true supports of every 
 Masonic Temple. And they are the old pillars of the Temple 
 under different names. For he only is wise who judges others 
 charitably ; he only is strong who is hopeful ; and there is no 
 beauty like a firm faith in God, our fellows and ourself. 
 
 The second apartment, clothed in mourning, the columns of 
 the Temple shattered and prostrate, and the brethren bowed down 
 in the deepest dejection, represents the world under the tyranny of 
 the Principle of Evil ; where virtue is persecuted and vice reward- 
 ed ; where the righteous starve for bread, and the wicked live sump- 
 tously and dress in purple and fine linen ; where insolent ignorance 
 rules, and learning and genius serve; where King and Priest 
 trample on liberty and the rights of conscience; where freedom 
 hides in caves and mountains, and sycophancy and servility fawn 
 and thrive ; where the cry of the widow and the orphan starving 
 for want of food, and shivering with cold, rises ever to Heaven from 
 a million miserable hovels; where men, willing to labor, and 
 starving, they and their children and the wives of their bosoms, beg 
 plaintively for work, when the pampered capitalist stops his mills ; 
 where the law punishes her who, starving, steals a loaf, and lets 
 the seducer go free ; where the success of a party justifies murder, 
 and violence and rapine go unpunished; and where he who with 
 many years' cheating and grinding the faces of the poor grows rich, 
 receives office and honor in life, and after death brave funeral and 
 a splendid mausoleum : this world, where, since its making, war 
 has never ceased, nor man paused in the sad task of torturing and 
 murdering his brother; and of which ambition, avarice, envy, 
 hatred, lust, and the rest of Ahriman's and Typhon's army make 
 a Pandemonium : this world, sunk in sin, reeking with baseness, 
 clamorous with sorrow and misery. If any see in it also a type of 
 the sorrow of the Craft for the death of Hiram, the grief of the 
 Jews at the fall of Jerusalem, the misery of the Templars at the 
 ruin of their order and the death of DeMolay, or the world's agony 
 and pangs of woe at the death of the Redeemer, it is the right of 
 each to do so. 
 
 The third apartment represents the consequences of sin and
 
 kNIGHT ROSE CROJX. 269 
 
 vice, and the hell made of the human heart, by its fiery passions. 
 If any see in it also a typo of the Hades of the Greeks, the Gehenna 
 of the Hebrews, the Tartarus of the Romans, or the Hell of the 
 Christians, or only of the agonies of remorse and the tortures of 
 an upbraiding conscience, it is the right of each to do so. 
 
 The fourth apartment represents the Universe, freed from the 
 insolent dominion and tyranny of the Principle of Evil, and bril- 
 liant with the true Light that flows from the Supreme Deity ; 
 when sin and wrong, and pain and sorrow, remorse and misery 
 shall be no more forever ; when the great plans of Infinite Eternal 
 Wisdom shall be fully developed ; and all God's creatures, seeing 
 that all apparent evil and individual suffering and wrong were 
 but the drops that went to swell the great river of infinite good- 
 ness, shall know that vast as is the power of Deity, His goodness 
 and beneficence are infinite as His power. If any see in it a type 
 of the peculiar mysteries of any faith or creed, or an allusion to any 
 past occurrence, it is their right to do so. Let each apply its sym- 
 bols as he pleases. To all of us they typify the universal rule of 
 Masonry, of its three chief virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity; 
 of brotherly love and universal benevolence. We labor here to 
 no other end. These symbols need no other interpretation. 
 
 The obligations of our Ancient Brethren of the Rose tg< were to 
 fulfill all the duties of friendship, cheerfulness, charity, peace, lib- 
 erality, temperance and chastity : and scrupulously to avoid im- 
 purity, haughtiness, hatred, anger, and every other kind of vice. 
 They took their philosophy from the old Theology of the Egyp- 
 tians, as Moses and Solomon had done, and borrowed its hiero- 
 glyphics and the ciphers of the Hebrews. Their principal rules 
 were, to exercise the profession of medicine charitably and without 
 fee, to advance the cause of virtue, enlarge the sciences, and induce 
 men to live as in the primitive times of the world. 
 
 When this Degree had its origin, it is not important to inquire : 
 nor with what different rites it has been practised in different 
 countries and at various times. It is of very high antiquity. Its 
 ceremonies differ with the degrees of latitude and longitude, and 
 it receives variant interpretations. If we were to examine all the 
 different ceremonials, their emblems, and their formulas, we should 
 see that all that belongs to the primitive and essential elements 
 of the order, is respected in every sanctuary. All alike practise 
 virtue, that it may produce fruit. All labor, like us, for the ex-
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tirpation of vice, the purification of man, the development of the 
 arts and sciences, and the relief of humanity. 
 
 None admit an adept to their lofty philosophical knowledge, and 
 mysterious sciences, until he has been purified at the altar of the 
 symbolic Degrees. Of what importance are differences of opinion 
 as to the age and genealogy of the Degree, or variance in the prac- 
 tice, ceremonial and liturgy, or the shade of color of the banner 
 under which each tribe of Israel marched, if all revere the Holy 
 Arch of the symbolic Degrees, first and unalterable source of Free- 
 Masonry ; if all revere our conservative principles, and are with us 
 in the great put poses of our organization ? 
 
 If, anywhere, brethren of a particular religious belief have been 
 excluded from this Degree, it merely shows how gravely the pur- 
 poses and plan of Masonry may be misunderstood. For whenever 
 the door of any Degree is closed against him who believes in one 
 God and the soul's immortality, on account of the other tenets of 
 his faith, that Degree is Masonry no longer. No Mason has the 
 right to interpret the symbols of this Degree for another, or to re- 
 fuse him its mysteries, if he will not take them with the explana- 
 tion and commentary superadded. 
 
 Listen, my brother, to our explanation of the symbols of the De- 
 gree, and then give them such further interpretation as you think 
 fit. 
 
 The Cross has been a sacred symbol from the earliest Antiquity. 
 It is found upon all the enduring monuments of the world, in 
 Egypt, in Assyria, in Hindostan, in Persia, and on the Buddhist 
 towers of Ireland. Buddha was said to have died upon it. The 
 Druids cut an oak into its shape and held it sacred, and built their 
 temples in that form. Pointing to the four quarters of the world, 
 it was the symbol of universal nature. It was on a cruciform tree, 
 that Chrishna was said to have expired, pierced with arrows. It 
 was revered in Mexico. 
 
 But its peculiar meaning in this Degree, is that given to it by 
 the Ancient Egyptians. Thoth or Phtha is represented on the old- 
 est monuments carrying in his hand the Crux Ansata, or Ankh. 
 [a Tau cross, with a ring or circle over it]. He is so seen on the 
 double tablet of Shufu and Noh Shufu, builders of the greatest of 
 the Pyramids, at Wady Meghara, in the peninsula of Sinai. It was 
 the hieroglyphic for life, and with a triangle prefixed meant life- 
 giving. To us therefore it is the symbol of Life of that life
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 291 
 
 that emanated from the Deity, and of that Eternal Life for which 
 we all hope ; through our faith in God's infinite goodness. 
 
 The ROSE was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is 
 a symbol of Dawn, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal 
 of life, and therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more par- 
 ticularly of the resurrection : and the Cross and Rose together 
 are therefore hieroglyphically to be read, the Dawn of Eternal 
 Life which all Nations have hoped for by the advent of a Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 The Pelican feeding her young is an emblem of the large and 
 bountiful beneficence of Nature, of the Redeemer of fallen man, 
 and of that humanity and charity that ought to distinguish a 
 Knight of this Degree. 
 
 The Eagle was the living Symbol of the Egyptian God Mendes 
 or Menthra, whom Sesostris-Ramses made one with Amun-Re, 
 the God of Thebes and Upper Egypt, and the representative of the 
 Sun, the word RE meaning Sun or King. 
 
 The Compass surmounted with a crown signifies that notwith- 
 standing the high rank attained in Masonry by a Knight of the 
 Rose Croix, equity and impartiality are invariably to govern his 
 conduct. 
 
 To the word INRI, inscribed on the Crux Ansata over the 
 Master's Seat, many meanings have been assigned. The Christian 
 Initiate reverentially sees in it the initials of the inscription upon 
 the cross on which Christ suffered lesns Nazarenus Rex Indec- 
 orum. The sages of Antiquity connected it with one of the great- 
 est secrets of Nature, that of universal regeneration. They inter- 
 preted it thus, Igne Natura renovatur Integra; [entire nature is 
 renovated by fire] : The Alchemical or Hermetic Masons framed 
 for it this aphorism, Igne nitrum roris invenitnr. And the Jes- 
 uits are charged with having'applied to it this odious zxlomjustum 
 necarc rcges impios. The four letters are the initials of the Hebrew 
 words that represent the four elements laiumiui.tiie seas or water; 
 Nour, fire ; Rouach, the air, and lebeschah, the dry earth. How 
 we read it, I need not repeat to you. 
 
 The CROSS, X> was the Sign of the Creative Wisdom or Logos, 
 the Son of God. Plato says, "He expressed him upon the Uni- 
 verse in the figure of the letter X. The next Power to the Su- 
 preme God was decussated or figured in the shape of a Cross on 
 the Universe." Mithras signed his soldiers on the forehead with a
 
 292 MOfcALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Cross. )( is the mark of 600. the mysterious cycle of the Incar- 
 nations. -t~y 
 
 We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus -p. These 
 two letters, in the old Samaritan, as found in Arius, stand, the 
 first for 400, the second for 200=600. This is the Staff of Osiris, 
 also, and his monogram, and was adopted by the Christians as a 
 Sign. On a medal ~Q of Constantius is this inscription, "In hoc 
 signo inctor eris yf. " An inscription in the Duomo at Milan 
 reads, ")( et p. Christi Nomina Sancta - Tcne'i." 
 
 The Egyptians used as a Sign of their God Canobus, a "f or a 
 ^ indifferently. The Vaishnavas of India have also the same 
 Sacred Tau, which they also mark with Crosses, thus fy } and with 
 triangles, thus, ^% . The vestments of the priests of Horus were 
 covered with these Crosses^. So was the dress , of the Lama of 
 Thibet. The Sectarian marks of the Jains are r ^"*^* > The distinc- 
 tive badge of the Sect of Xac Japonicus is J3J- ^ * s ^ e ^g? 1 
 of Fo, identical with the Cross of Christ. ^ *" 
 
 On the ruins of Mandore, in India, among other mystic ^Ar-r 
 emblems, are the mystic triangle, and the interlaced triangle, Ar^ 
 This is also found on ancient coins and medals, excavated from the 
 ruins of Oojein and other ancient cities of India. 
 
 You entered here amid gloom and into shadow, and are clad in 
 the apparel of sorrow. Lament, with us, the sad condition of the 
 Human race, in this vale of tears ! the calamities of men and the 
 agonies of nations ! the darkness of the bewildered soul, oppressed 
 by doubt and apprehension ! 
 
 There is no human soul that is not sad at times. There is no 
 thoughtful soul that does not at times despair. There is perhaps 
 none, of all that think at all of anything beyond the needs and in- 
 terests of the body, that is not at times startled and terrified by the 
 awful questions which, feeling as though it were a guilty thing for 
 doing so, it whispers to itself in its inmost depths. Some Demon 
 seems to torture it with doubts, and to crush it with despair, ask- 
 ing whether, after all, it is certain that its convictions are true, 
 and its faith well founded : whether it is indeed sure that a God of 
 Infinite Love and Beneficence rules the Universe, or only some great 
 remorseless Fate and iron Necessity, hid in impenetrable gloom, 
 And to which men and their sufferings and sorrows, their hopes and 
 joys, their ambitions and deeds, are of no more interest or im- 
 portance than the motes that dance in the sunshine ; or a Being
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 293 
 
 that amuses Himself with the incredible vanity and folly, the wri- 
 things and contortions of the insignificant insects that compose 
 Humanity, and idly imagine that they resemble the Omnipotent. 
 "What are \ve," the Tempter asks, "but puppets in a show-box? 
 O Omnipotent destiny, pull our strings gently ! Dance us merci- 
 fully off our miserable little stage!" 
 
 "Is it not," the Demon whispers, "merely the inordinate vanity of 
 man that causes him now to pretend to himself that he is like unto 
 God in intellect, sympathies and passions, as it was that which, at 
 the beginning, made him believe that he was, in his bodily shape 
 and organs, the very image of the Deity? Is not his God merely 
 his own shadow, projected in gigantic outlines upon the clouds? 
 Does he not create for himself a God out of himself, by merely 
 adding indefinite extension to his own faculties, powers, and 
 passions ?" 
 
 "Who," the Voice that will not be always silent whispers, "has 
 ever thoroughly satisfied himself with his own arguments in re- 
 spect to his own nature? Who ever demonstrated to himself, with 
 a conclusiveness that elevated the belief to certainty, that he was an 
 immortal spirit, dwelling only temporarily in the house and envel- 
 ope of the body, and to live on forever after that shall have decay- 
 ed ? Who ever has demonstrated or ever can demonstrate that the 
 intellect of Man differs from that of the wiser animals, otherwise 
 than in degree? Who has ever done more than to utter nonsense 
 and incoherencies in regard to the difference between the instincts 
 of the dog and the reason of Man ? The horse, the dog, the ele- 
 phant, are as conscious of their identity as we are. They think, 
 dream, remember, argue with themselves, devise, plan, and reason. 
 What is the intellect and intelligence of the man but the intel- 
 lec>of the animal in a higher degree or larger quantity?" In the 
 real explanation of a single thought of a dog, all metaphysics will 
 be condensed. 
 
 And with still more terrible significance, the Voice asks, in what 
 respect the masses of men, the vast swarms of the human race, 
 have proven themselves either wiser or better than the animals in 
 whose eyes a higher intelligence shines than in their dull, unintel- 
 lectual orbs ; in what respect they have proven themselves wor- 
 thy of or suited for an immortal life. Would that be a prize of any 
 value to the vast majority? Do they show, here upon earth, any 
 capacity to improve, any fitness for a state of existence in which
 
 2^4 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 they could not crouch to power, like hounds dreading the lash, or 
 tyrannize over defenceless weakness ; in which they could not hate, 
 and persecute, and torture, and exterminate ; in which they could 
 not trade, and speculate, and over-reach, and entrap the unwary and 
 cheat the confiding, and gamble and thrive, and sniff with self- 
 righteousness at the short-comings of others, and thank God that 
 they were not like other men? What, to immense numbers of 
 men, would be the value of a Heaven where they could not lie and 
 libel, and ply base avocations for profitable returns? 
 
 Sadly we look around us, and read the gloomy and dreary rec- 
 ords of the old dead and rotten ages. More than eighteen centuries 
 have staggered away into the spectral realm of the Past, since 
 Christ, teaching the Religion of Love, was crucified, that it might 
 become a Religion of Hate ; and His Doctrines are not yet even 
 nominally accepted as true by a fourth of mankind. Since His 
 death, what incalculable swarms of human beings have lived and 
 died in total unbelief of all that we deem essential to Salvation ! 
 What multitudinous myriads of souls, since the darkness of idola- 
 trous superstition settled down, thick and impenetrable, upon the 
 earth, have flocked up toward the eternal Throne of God, to 
 receive His judgment? 
 
 The Religion of Love proved to be, for seventeen long cen- 
 turies, as much the Religion of Hate, and infinitely more the Re- 
 ligion of Persecution, thanMahometanism, its unconquerable rival. 
 Heresies grew up before the Apostles died ; and God hated the 
 Nicolaitans, while John, at Patmos, proclaimed His coming 
 wrath. Sects wrangled, and each, as it gained the power, persecuted 
 the other, until the soil of the whole Christian world was watered 
 with the blood, and fattened on the flesh, and whitened with the 
 bones, of martyrs, and human ingenuity was taxed to its utmost 
 to invent new modes by which tortures and agonies could be pro- 
 longed and made more exquisite. 
 
 "By what right," whispers the Voice, "does this savage, merciless, 
 persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of others 
 of its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensations, and 
 the mass of which care only to eat, sleep, be clothed, and wallow in 
 sensual pleasures, and the best of which wrangle, hate, envy, and, 
 with few exceptions, regard their own interests alone, with what 
 right does it endeavor to delude itself into the conviction that it is 
 not an animal, as the wolf, the hyena, and the tiger are, but a
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 295 
 
 somewhat nobler, a spirit destined to be immortal, a spark of the 
 essential Light, Fire and Reason, which are God? What other 
 immortality than one of selfishness could this creature enjoy? Of 
 what other is it capable? Must not immortality commence here 
 and is not life a part of it? How shall death change the base na- 
 ture of the base soul? Why have not those other animals that 
 only faintly imitate the wanton, savage, human cruelty and thirst 
 for blood, the same right as man has, to expect a resurrection and 
 an Eternity of existence, or a Heaven of Love? 
 
 The world improves. Man ceases to persecute, when the per- 
 secuted become too numerous and strong, longer to submit to it. 
 That source of pleasure closed, men exercise the ingenuities of 
 their cruelty on the animals and other livings things below them. 
 To deprive other creatures of the life which God gave them, and 
 this not only that we may eat their flesh for food, but out of mere 
 savage wantonness, is the agreeable employment and amusement of 
 man, who prides himself on being the Lord of Creation, and a lit- 
 tle lower than the Angels. If he can no longer use the rack, the 
 gibbet, the pincers, and the stake, he can hate, and slander, 
 and delight in the thought that he will, hereafter, luxuriously 
 enjoying the sensual beatitudes of Heaven, see with pleasure the 
 writhing agonies of those justly damned for daring to hold opin- 
 ions contrary to his own, upon subjects totally beyond the compre- 
 hension both of them and him. 
 
 Where the armies of the despots cease to slay and ravage, the 
 armies of "Freedom" take their place, and, the black and white 
 commingled, slaughter and burn and ravish. Each age re-enacts 
 the crimes as well as the follies of its predecessors, and still war 
 licenses outrage and turns fruitful lands into deserts, and God is 
 thanked in the Churches for bloody butcheries, and the remorse- 
 less devastators, even when swollen by plunder, are crowned with 
 laurels and receive ovations. 
 
 Of the whole of mankind, not one in ten thousand has any aspi- 
 rations beyond the daily needs of the gross animal life. In thb 
 age and in all others, all men except a few, in most countries, are 
 born to be mere beasts of burden, co-laborers with the horse and 
 the ox. Profoundly ignorant, even in "civilized" lands, they think 
 and reason like the animals by the side of which they toil. For 
 them, God, Soul, Spirit, Immortality, are mere words, without any 
 real meaning. The God of nineteen-twentieths of the Christian
 
 296 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 world is only Bel, Moloch, Zeus, or at best Osiris, Mithras, or 
 Adonai, under another name, worshipped with the old Pagan cere- 
 monies and ritualistic formulas. It is the Statue of Olympian Jove, 
 worshipped as the Father, in the Christian Church that was 'a 
 Pagan Temple ; it is the Statue of Venus, become the Virgin Mary. 
 For the most part, men do not in their hearts believe that God is 
 either just or merciful. They fear and shrink from His lightnings 
 and dread His wrath. For the most part, they only think they 
 believe that there is another life, a judgment, and a punishment 
 for sin. Yet they will none the less persecute as Infidels and Athe- 
 ists those who do not believe what they themselves imagine they 
 believe, and which yet they do not believe, because it is incompre- 
 hensible to them in their ignorance and want of intellect. To the 
 vast majority of mankind, God is but the reflected image, in infi- 
 nite space, of the earthly Tyrant on his Throne, only more power- 
 ful, more inscrutable, and more implacable. To curse Humanity, 
 the Despot need only be, what the popular mind has, in every age, 
 imagined God. 
 
 In the great cities, the lower strata of the populace are equally 
 without faith and without hope. The others have, for the most 
 part, a mere blind faith, imposed by education and circumstances, 
 and not as productive of moral excellence or even common honesty 
 as Mohammedanism. "Your property will be safe here," said the 
 Moslem ; "There are no Christians here." The philosophical 
 and scientific world becomes daily more and more unbelieving. 
 Faith and Reason are not opposites, in equilibrium ; but antago- 
 nistic and hostile to each other ; the result being the darkness and 
 despair of scepticism, avowed, or half-veiled as rationalism. 
 
 Over more than three-fourths of the habitable globe, humanity 
 still kneels, like the camels, to take upon itself the burthens to be 
 tamely borne for its tyrants. If a Republic occasionally rises like a 
 Star, it hastens with all speed to set in blood. The kings need not 
 make war upon it, to crush it out of their way. It is only neces- 
 sary to let it alone, and it soon lays violent hands upon itself. And 
 when a people long enslaved shakes off its fetters, it may well be 
 incredulously asked, 
 
 Shall the braggart shout 
 
 For some blind glimpse of Freedom, link itself, 
 Through madness, hated by the wise, to law, 
 
 System and Empire ?
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 
 
 Everywhere in the world labor is, in some shape, the slave of 
 capital ; generally, a slave to be fed only so long as he can work ; 
 or, rather, only so long as his work is profitable to the owner of 
 the human chattel. There are famines in Ireland, strikes and 
 starvation in England, pauperism and tenement-dens in Xew York, 
 misery, squalor, ignorance, destitution, the brutality of vice and 
 the insensibility to shame, of despairing beggary, in all the human 
 cesspools and sewers everywhere. Here, a sewing-woman fam- 
 ishes and freezes ; there, mothers murder their children, that those 
 spared may live upon the bread purchased with the burial allow- 
 ances of the dead starveling ; and at the next door young girls 
 prostitute themselves for food. 
 
 Moreover, the Voice says, this besotted race is not satisfied with 
 seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose 
 causes are unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the 
 human mind cannot conceive. It must also be ever at war. There 
 has not been a moment since men divided into Tribes, when all 
 the world was at peace. Always men have been engaged in mur- 
 dering each other somewhere. Always the armies have lived by 
 the toil of the husbandman, and war has exhausted the resources, 
 wasted the energies, and ended the prosperity of Nations. Now it 
 loads unborn posterity with crushing debt, mortgages all estates, 
 and brings upon States the shame and infamy of dishonest repudia- 
 tion. 
 
 At times, the baleful fires of war light up half a Continent at 
 once; as when- all the Thrones unite to compel a people to receive 
 again a hated and detestable dynasty, or States deny States the 
 right to dissolve an irksome union and create for themselves a 
 separate, government. Then again the flames flicker and die away, 
 and the fire smoulders in its ashes, to break out again, after a 
 time, with renewed and a more concentrated fury. At times, the 
 storm, revolving, howls over small areas only ; at times its lights 
 are seen, like the old beacon-fires on the hills, belting the whole 
 globe. No sea, but hears the roar of cannon : no river, but runs 
 red with blood ; no plain, but shakes, trampled by the hoofs of 
 charging squadrons ; no field, but is fertilized by the blood of the 
 dead ; and everywhere man slays, the vulture gorges, and the wolf 
 howls in the ear of the dying soldier. No city is not tortured 
 by shot and shell ; and no people fail to enact the horrid blas- 
 phemy of thanking a God of Love for victories and carnage. Te
 
 298 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Deums are still sung for the Eve of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian 
 Vespers. Man's ingenuity is racked, and all his inventive powers 
 are tasked, to fabricate the infernal enginery of destruction, by 
 which human bodies may be the more expeditiously and effectually 
 crushed, shattered, torn, and mangled ; and yet hypocritical Hu- 
 manity, drunk with blood and drenched with gore, shrieks to 
 Heaven at a single murder, perpetrated to gratify a revenge not 
 more unchristian, or to satisfy a cupidity not more ignoble, than 
 those which are the promptings of the Devil in the souls of Nations. 
 When we have fondly dreamed of Utopia and the Millennium, 
 when we have begun almost to believe that man is not, after all, a 
 tiger half tamed, and that the smell of blood will not wake the sav- 
 age within him, we are of a sudden startled from the delusive 
 dream, to find the thin mask of civilization rent in twain and thrown 
 contemptuously away. We lie down to sleep, like the peasant on 
 the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The mountain has been so long inert, 
 that we believe its fires extinguished. Round us hang the cluster- 
 ing grapes, and the green leaves of the olive tremble in the soft 
 night-air over us. Above us shine the peaceful, patient stars. The 
 crash of a new eruption wakes us, the roar of the subterranean thun- 
 ders, the stabs of the volcanic lightning into the shrouded bosom 
 of the sky ; and we see, aghast, the tortured Titan hurling up its 
 fires among the pale stars, its great tree of smoke and cloud, the 
 red torrents pouring down its sides. The roar and the shriekings 
 of Civil War are all around us : the land is a pandemonium : man 
 is again a Savage. The great armies roll along their hideous 
 waves, and leave behind them smoking and depopulated deserts. 
 The pillager is in every house, plucking even the morsel of bread 
 from the lips of the starving child. Gray hairs are dabbled in 
 blood, and innocent girlhood shrieks in vain to Lust for mercy. 
 Laws, Courts, Constitutions, Christianity, Mercy, Pity, disappear. 
 God seems to have abdicated, and Moloch to reign in His stead ; 
 while Press and Pulpit alike exult at universal murder, and urge 
 the extermination of the Conquered, by the sword and the flaming 
 torch ; and to plunder and murder entitles the human beasts of 
 prey to the thanks of Christian Senates. 
 
 Commercial greed deadens the nerves of sympathy of Nations, 
 and makes them deaf to the demands of honor, the impulses of 
 generosity, the appeals of those who suffer under injustice. Else- 
 where, the universal pursuit of wealth dethrones God and pays
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 299 
 
 divine honors to Mammon and Baalzebub. Selfishness rules su- 
 preme : to win wealth becomes the whole business of life. The villa- 
 nies of legalized gaming and speculation become epidemic ; treach- 
 ery is but evidence of shrewdness ; office becomes the prey of suc- 
 cessful faction; the Country, like Actaeon, is torn by its own 
 hounds, and the villains it has carefully educated to their trade, 
 most greedily plunder it, when it is in extremis. 
 
 By what right, the Voice demands, does a creature always 
 engaged in the work of mutual robbery and slaughter, and who 
 makes his own interest his God, claim to be of a nature superior 
 to the savage beasts of which he is the prototype ? 
 
 Then the shadows of a horrible doubt fall upon the soul that 
 would fain love, trust and believe ; a darkness, of which this that 
 surrounded you was a symbol. It doubts the truth of Revelation, 
 its own spirituality, the very existence of a beneficent God. It 
 asks itself if it is not idle to hope for any great progress of Human- 
 ity toward perfection, and whether, when it advances in one re- 
 spect, it does not retrogress in some other, by way of compensation : 
 whether advance in civilization is not increase of selfishness : 
 whether freedom does not necessarily lead to license and anarchy : 
 whether the destitution and debasement of the masses does not in- 
 evitably follow increase of population and commercial and manu- 
 facturing prosperity. It asks itself whether man is not the sport 
 of a blind, merciless Fate : whether all philosophies are not delu- 
 sions, and all religions the fantastic creations of human vanity and 
 self-conceit ; and, above all, whether, when Reason is abandoned as 
 a guide, the faith of Buddhist and Brahmin has not the same 
 claims to sovereignty and implicit, unreasoning credence, as any 
 other. 
 
 He asks himself whether it is not, after all, the evident and pal- 
 pable injustices of this life, the success and prosperity of the Bad, 
 the calamities, oppressions, and miseries of the Good, that are the 
 bases of all beliefs in a future state of existence ? Doubting man's 
 capacity for indefinite progress here, he doubts the possibility of it 
 anywhere ; and if he does not doubt whether God exists, and is 
 just and beneficent, he at least cannot silence the constantly recur- 
 ring whisper, that the miseries and calamities of men, their lives 
 and deaths, their pains and sorrows, their extermination by war 
 and epidemics, are phenomena of no higher dignity, significance, 
 and importance, in the eye of God, than what things of the same 
 nature occur to other organisms of matter ; and that the fish of
 
 300 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room for other spe- 
 cies, the contorted shapes in which they are found as fossils 
 testifying to their agonies ; the coral insects, the animals and 
 birds and vermin slain by man, have as much right as he to clam- 
 or at the injustice of the dispensations of God, and to demand an 
 immortality of life in a new universe, as compensation for their 
 pains and sufferings and untimely death in this world. 
 
 This is not a picture painted by the imagination. Many a 
 thoughtful mind has so doubted and despaired. How many of us 
 can say that our own faith is so w 7 ell grounded and complete that 
 we never hear those painful whisperings within the soul? Thrice 
 blessed are they who never doubt, who ruminate in patient con- 
 tentment like the kine, or doze under the opiate of a blind faith ; 
 on whose souls never rests that Awful Shadow which is the ab- 
 sence of the Divine Light. 
 
 To explain to themselves the existence of Evil and Suffering, 
 the Ancient Persians imagined that there were two Principles or 
 Deities in the Universe, the one of Good and the other of Evil, con- 
 stantly in conflict with each other in struggle for the mastery, and 
 alternately overcoming and overcome. Over both, for the SAGES, 
 was the One Supreme ; and for them Light was in the end to pre- 
 vail over Darkness, the Good over the Evil, and even'Ahriman and 
 his Demons to part with their wicked and vicious natures and 
 share the universal Salvation. It did not occur to them that the 
 existence of the Evil Principle, by the consent of the Omnipotent 
 Supreme, presented the same difficulty, and left the existence of 
 Evil as unexplained as before. The human mind is always con- 
 tent, if it can remove a difficulty a step further off. It cannot 
 believe that the world rests on nothing, but is devoutly content 
 when taught that it is borne on the back of an immense elephant, 
 who himself stands on the back of a tortoise. Given the tortoise, 
 Faith is always satisfied ; and it has been a great source of happi- 
 ness to multitudes that they could believe in a De\ il who could 
 relieve God of the odium of being the Author of Sin. 
 
 But not to all is Faith sufficient to overcome this great dih. 
 culty. They say, with the Apostle, "Lord! I believe!" but like 
 him they are constrained to add, "Help Thou my unbelief!" Rea- 
 son must, for these, co-operate and coincide \vith Faith, or they 
 remain still in the darkness of doubt, most miserable of all con- 
 ditions of the human mind.
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 30 1 
 
 Those, only, who care for nothing beyond the interests and pur- 
 suits of this life, are uninterested in these great Problems. The 
 animals, also, do not consider them. It is the characteristic of an 
 immortal Soul, that it should seek to satisfy itself of its immortal- 
 ity, and to understand this great enigma, the Universe. If the 
 Hottentot and the Papuan are not troubled and tortured by these 
 doubts and speculations, they are not, for that, to be regarded as 
 either wise or fortunate. The swine, also, are indifferent to the 
 great riddles of the Universe, and are happy in being wholly un- 
 aware that it is the vast Revelation and Manifestation, in Time and 
 Space, of a Single Thought of the Infinite God. 
 
 Exalt and magnify Faith as we will, and say that it begins where 
 Reason ends, it must, after all, have a foundation, either in Reason, 
 Analogy, the Consciousness, or human testimony. The worship- 
 per of Brahma also has implicit Faith in what seems to us palpa- 
 bly false and absurd. His faith rests neither in Reason, Analogy, 
 or the Consciousness, but on the testimony of his Spiritual teach- 
 ers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem also believes, on the 
 positive testimony of the Prophet ; and the Mormon also can 
 say, "/ believe this, because it is impossible." No faith, however ab- 
 surd or degrading, has ever wanted these foundations, testimony, 
 and the books. Miracles, proven by unimpeachable testimony 
 have been used as a foundation for Faith, in every age ; and the 
 modern miracles are better authenticated, a hundred times, than 
 the ancient ones. 
 
 So that, after all, Faith must flow out from some source within 
 us, when the evidence of that which we are to believe is not pre- 
 sented to our senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the 
 truth of what is believed. 
 
 The Consciousness, or inhering and innate conviction, or the 
 instinct divinely implanted, of the- verity of things, is the highest 
 possible evidence, if not the only real proof, of the verity of certain 
 things, but only of truths of a limited class. 
 
 What we call the Reason, that is, our imperfect human reason, 
 not only may, but assuredly will, lead us away from the Truth in 
 regard to things invisible and especially those of the Infinite, if 
 we determine to believe nothing but that which it can demonstrate, 
 or not to believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove 
 to be contradictory, unreasonable, or absurd. Its tape-line cannot 
 measure the arcs of Infinity. For example, to the Human reason,
 
 3O2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 an Infinite Justice and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same Be- 
 ing, are inconsistent and impossible. One, it can demonstrate, 
 necessarily excludes the other. So it can demonstrate that as the 
 Creation had a beginning, it necessarily follows that an Eternity 
 had elapsed before the Deity began to create, during which He 
 was inactive. 
 
 When we gaze, of a moonless clear night, on the Heavens glit- 
 tering with stars, and know that each fixed star of all the myriads 
 is a Sun, and each probably possessing its retinue of worlds, all 
 peopled with living beings, we sensibly feel our own unimportance 
 in the scale of Creation, and at once reflect that much of what has 
 in different ages been religious faith, could never have been be- 
 lieved, if the nature, size, and distance of those Suns, and of our 
 own Sun, Moon, and Planets, had been known to the Ancients as 
 they are to us. 
 
 To them, all the lights of the firmament were created only to 
 give light to the earth, as its lamps or candles hung above it. The 
 earth was supposed to be the only inhabited portion of the Uni- 
 verse. The world and the Universe were synonymous terms. Of 
 the immense size and distance of the heavenly bodies, men had 
 no conception. The Sages had, in Chaldsea, Egypt, India, China, 
 and in Persia, and therefore the sages always had, an esoteric 
 creed, taught only in the mysteries and unknown to the vulgar. No 
 Sage, in either country, or in Greece or Rome, believed the popular 
 creed. To them the Gods and the Idols of the Gods were sym- 
 bols, and symbols of great and mysterious truths. 
 
 The Vulgar imagined the attention of the Gods to be continu- 
 ally centred upon the earth and man. The Grecian Divinities in- 
 habited Olympus, an insignificant mountain of the Earth. There 
 was the Court of Zeus, to which Neptune came from the Sea, and 
 Pluto and Persephone from the glooms of Tartarus in the unfath- 
 omable depths of the Earth's bosom. God came down from 
 Heaven and on Sinai dictated laws for the Hebrews to His servant 
 Moses. The Stars were the guardians of mortals whose fates and 
 fortunes were to be read in their movements, conjunctions, and 
 oppositions. The Moon was the Bride and Sister of the Sun, at 
 the same distance above the Earth, and, like the Sun, made for the 
 service of mankind alone. 
 
 If, with the great telescope of Lord Rosse, we examine the vast 
 nebul?e of Hercules, Orion, and Andromeda, and find them re-
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 303 
 
 solvable into Stars more numerous than the sands on the sea- 
 shore; if we reflect that each of these Stars is a Sun, like and 
 even many times larger than ours, each, beyond a doubt, with its 
 retinue of worlds swarming with life; if we go further in imagi- 
 nation, and endeavor to conceive of all the infinities of space, 
 filled with similar suns and worlds, we seem at once to shrink intc 
 an incredible insignificance. 
 
 The Universe, which is the uttered Word of God, is infinite in 
 extent. There is no empty space beyond creation on any side. 
 The Universe, which is the Thought of God pronounced, never 
 was not, since God never was inert ; nor WAS, without thinking and 
 creating. The forms of creation change, the suns and worlds live 
 and die like the leaves and the insects, but the Universe itself is 
 infinite and eternal, because God Is, Was, and Will forever Be, and 
 never did not think and create. 
 
 Reason is fain to admit that a Supreme Intelligence, infinitely 
 powerful and wise, must have created this boundless Universe ; 
 but it also tells us that we are as unimportant in it as the zoophytes 
 and entozoa, or as the invisible particles of animated life that float 
 upon the air or swarm in the water-drop. 
 
 The foundations of our faith, resting upon the imagined inter- 
 est of God in our race, an interest easily supposable when man 
 believed himself the only intelligent created being, and therefore 
 eminently worthy the especial care and watchful anxiety of a God 
 who had only this earth to look after, and its house-keeping alone 
 to superintend, and who was content to create, in all the infinite 
 Universe, only one single being, possessing a soul, and not a mere 
 animal, are rudely shaken as the Universe broadens and expands 
 for us ; and the darkness of doubt and distrust settles heavy upon 
 the Soul. 
 
 The modes in which it is ordinarily endeavored to satisfy our 
 doubts, only increase them. To demonstrate the necessity for a 
 cause of the creation, is equally to demonstrate the necessity of a 
 cause for that cause. The argument from plan and design only 
 removes the difficulty a step further off. We rest the world on 
 the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise, and the tortoise on 
 nothing. 
 
 To tell us that the animals possess instinct only and that Rea- 
 son belongs to us alone, in no way tends to satisfy us of the radi- 
 cal difference between us and them. For if the mental phenomena
 
 304 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 exhibited by animals that think, dream, remember, argue from 
 cause to effect, plan, devise, combine, and communicate their 
 thoughts to each other, so as to act rationally in concert, if their 
 love, hate, and revenge, can be conceived of as results of the or- 
 ganization of matter, like color and perfume, the resort to the 
 hypothesis of an immaterial Soul to explain phenomena of the 
 same kind, only more perfect, manifested by the human being, is 
 supremely absurd. That organized matter can think or even feel, 
 at all, is the great insoluble mystery. "Instinct" is but a word 
 without a meaning, or else it means inspiration. It is either the 
 animal itself, or God in the animal, that thinks, remembers, and 
 reasons ; and instinct, according to the common acceptation of the 
 term, would be the greatest and most wonderful of mysteries, 
 no less a thing than the direct, immediate, and continual prompt- 
 ings of the Deity, for the animals are not machines, or automata 
 moved by springs, and the ape is but a dumb Australian. 
 
 Must we alzi'ays remain in this darkness of uncertainty, of 
 doubt? Is there no mode of escaping from the labyrinth except 
 by means of a blind faith, which explains nothing, and in many 
 creeds, ancient and modern, sets Reason at defiance, and leads to 
 the belief either in a God without a Universe, a Universe without 
 a God, or a Universe which is itself a God? 
 
 We read in the Hebrew Chronicles that Schlomoh the wise 
 King caused to be placed in front of the entrance to the Temple 
 two huge columns of bronze, one of which was called YAKAYIN 
 and the other BAHAZ ; and these words are rendered in our ver- 
 sion Strength and Establishment. The Masonry of the Blue 
 Lodges gives no explanation of these symbolic columns ; nor do 
 the Hebrew Books advise us that they were symbolic. If not so 
 intended as symbols, they were subsequently understood to be 
 such. 
 
 But as we are certain that everything within the Temple was 
 symbolic, and that the whole structure was intended to represent 
 the Universe, we may reasonably conclude that the columns of the 
 portico also had a symbolic signification. It would be tedious to 
 repeat all the interpretations which fancy or dullness has found 
 for them. 
 
 The key to their true meaning is not undiscoverable. The per- 
 fect and eternal distinction of the two primitive terms of the cre- 
 ative syllogism, in order to attain to the demonstration of their
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX 305 
 
 harmony by the analogy of contraries, is the second grand prin- 
 ciple of that occult philosophy veiled under the name "Kabalah," 
 and indicated by all the sacred hieroglyphs of the Ancient Sanctu- 
 aries, and of the rites, so little understood by the mass of the 
 Initiates, of the Ancient and Modern Free-Masonry. 
 
 The Sohar declares that everything in the Universe proceeds by 
 the mystery of "the Balance," that is, of Equilibrium. Of the 
 Sephiroth, or Divine Emanations, Wisdom and Understanding, 
 Severity and Benignity, or Justice and Mercy, and Victory and 
 Glory, constitute pairs. 
 
 Wisdom, or the Intellectual Generative Energy, and Under- 
 standing, or the Capacity to be impregnated by the Active Energy 
 and produce intellection or thought, are represented symbolically 
 in the Kabalah as male and female. So also are Justice and 
 Mercy. Strength is the intellectual Energy or Activity ; Estab- 
 lishment or Stability is the intellectual Capacity to produce, a 
 passivity. They are the POWER of generation and the CAPACITY 
 of production. By WISDOM, it is said, God creates, and by UN- 
 DERSTANDING establishes. These are the two Columns of the 
 Temple, contraries like the Man and Woman, like Reason and 
 Faith, Omnipotence and Liberty, Infinite Justice and Infinite 
 Mercy, Absolute Power or Strength to do even what is most un- 
 just and unwise, and Absolute Wisdom that makes it impossible to 
 do it ; Right and Duty. They were the columns of the intellectual 
 and moral world, the monumental hieroglyph of the antinomy 
 necessary to the grand law of creation. 
 
 There must be for every Force a Resistance to support it, to 
 every light a shadow, for every Royalty a Realm to govern, for 
 every affirmative a negative. 
 
 For the Kabalists, Light represents the Active Principle, and 
 Darkness or Shadow is analogous to the Passive Principle. There- 
 fore it was that they made of the Sun and Moon emblems of the 
 two Divine Sexes and the two creative forces ; therefore, that they 
 ascribed to woman the Temptation and the first sin, and then the 
 first labor, the maternal labor of the redemption, because it is 
 from the bosom of the darkness itself that \ve see the Light born 
 again. The Void attracts the Full : and so it is that the abyss of 
 poverty and misery, the Seeming Evil, the seeming empty noth- 
 ingness of life, the temporary rebellion of the creatures, eternally 
 attracts the overflowing ocean of being, of riches, of pity, and of
 
 306 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 love. Christ completed the Atonement on the Cross by descend- 
 ing into Hell. 
 
 o 
 
 Justice and Mercy are contraries. If each be infinite, their co- 
 existence seems impossible, and being equal, one cannot even 
 annihilate the other and reign alone. The mysteries of the Divine 
 Nature are beyond our finite comprehension; but so indeed are 
 the mysteries of our own finite nature ; and it is certain that in 
 all nature harmony and movement are the result of the equilibrium 
 of opposing or contrary forces. 
 
 The analogy of contraries gives the solution of the most inter- 
 esting and most difficult problem of modern philosophy, the 
 definite and permanent accord of Reason and Faith, of Author- 
 ity and Liberty of examination, of Science and Belief, of Perfec- 
 tion in God and Imperfection in Man. If science or knowledge 
 is the Sun, Belief is the Man ; it is a reflection of the day in the 
 night. Faith is the veiled Isis, the Supplement of Reason, in the 
 shadows which precede or follow Reason. It emanates from the 
 Reason, but can never confound it nor be confounded with it. The 
 encroachments of Reason upon Faith, or of Faith on Reason, are 
 eclipses of the Sun or Moon ; when they occur, they make useless 
 both the Source of Light and its reflection, at once. 
 
 Science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs ; and 
 Faith succumbs to reasoning. For the two Columns of the Tem- 
 ple to uphold the edifice, they must remain separated and be 
 parallel to each other. As soon as it is attempted by violence to 
 bring them together, as Samson did, they are overturned, and the 
 whole edifice falls upon the head of the rash blind man or the 
 revolutionist whom personal or national resentments have in ad- 
 vance devoted to death. 
 
 Harmony is the result of an alternating preponderance of 
 forces. Whenever this is wanting in government, government is 
 a failure, because it is either Despotism or Anarchy. All theoret- 
 ical governments, however plausible the theory, end in one or the 
 other. Governments that are to endure are not made in the closet 
 of Locke or Shaftesbury, or in a Congress or a Convention. In a 
 Republic, forces that seem contraries, that indeed are contraries, 
 alone give movement and life. The Spheres are held in their 
 orbits and made to revolve harmoniously and unerringly, by the 
 concurrence, which seems to be the opposition, of two contrary 
 forces. If the centripetal force should overcome the centrifugal.
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 307 
 
 and the equilibrium of forces cease, the rush of the Spheres to the 
 Central Sun would annihilate the system. Instead of consolida- 
 tion, the whole would be shattered into fragments. 
 
 Man is a free agent, though Omnipotence is above and all 
 around him. To be free to do good, he must be free to do evil. 
 The Light necessitates the Shadow. A State is free like an indi- 
 vidual in any government worthy of the name. The State is less 
 potent than the Deity, and therefore the freedom of the individual 
 citizen is consistent with its Sovereignty. These are opposites, 
 but not antagonistic. So, in a union of States, the freedom of the 
 States is consistent with the Supremacy of the Nation. When 
 either obtains the permanent mastery over the other, and they 
 cease to be in equilibria, the encroachment continues with a ve- 
 locity that is accelerated like that of a falling body, until the 
 feebler is annihilated, and then, there being no resistance to sup- 
 port the stronger, it rushes into ruin. 
 
 So, when the equipoise of Reason and Faith, in the individual 
 or the Nation, and the alternating preponderance cease, the result 
 is, according as one or the other is permanent victor, Atheism or 
 Superstition, disbelief or blind credulity ; and the Priests either 
 of Unfaith or of Faith become despotic. 
 
 ''Whomsoever God loveth, him he chasteneth," is an expression 
 that formulates a whole dogma. The trials of life are the bless- 
 ings of life, to the individual or the Nation, if either has a Soul 
 that is truly worthy of salvation. "Light and darkness," said 
 ZOROASTER, "are the ivorld's eternal ways," The Light and the 
 Shadow are everywhere and always in proportion ; the Light being 
 the reason of being of the Shadow. It is by trials only, by the 
 agonies of sorrow and the sharp discipline of adversities, that men 
 and Nations attain initiation. The agonies of the garden of Geth- 
 semane and those of the Cross on Calvary preceded the Resurrec- 
 tion and were the means of Redemption. It is with prosperity 
 that God afflicts Humanity. 
 
 The Degree of Rose >J< is devoted to and symbolizes the final 
 triumph of truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery, of light 
 over darkness, of life over death, and of good over evil. The 
 great truth it inculcates is, that notwithstanding the existence of 
 Evil, God is infinitely wise, just, and good : that though the affairs 
 of the world proceed by no rule of right and wrong known to us 
 in the narrowness of our views, yet all is right, for it is the work of
 
 308 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 God ; and all evils, all miseries, all misfortunes, are but as drops in 
 the vast current that is sweeping onward, guided by Him, to a 
 great and magnificent result : that, at the appointed time, He will 
 redeem and regenerate the world, and the Principle, the Power, and 
 the existence of Evil will then cease; that this will be brought 
 about by such means and instruments as He chooses to employ; 
 whether by the merits of a Redeemer that has already appeared, or 
 a Messiah that is yet waited for, by an incarnation of Himself, 
 or by an inspired prophet, it does not belong to us as Masons to 
 decide. Let each judge and believe for himself. 
 
 In the mean time, we labor to hasten the coming of that day. 
 The morals of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity, 
 are ours. We recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer, 
 as a brother in this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of 
 Liberty, the Compasses of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and 
 our order of Fraternity. Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity as our armor, we will wait with patience for the final 
 triumph of Good and the complete manifestation of the Word of 
 God. 
 
 No one Mason has the right to measure for another, within the 
 walls of a Masonic Temple, the degree of veneration which he shall 
 feel for any Reformer, or the Founder of any Religion. We teach 
 a belief in no particular creed, as we teach unbelief in none. What- 
 ever higher attributes the Founder of the Christian Faith may, in 
 our belief, have had or not have had, none can deny that He taught 
 and practised a pure and elevated morality, even at the risk and to 
 the ultimate loss of His life. He was not only the benefactor of a 
 disinherited people, but a model for mankind. Devotedly He loved 
 the children of Israel. To them He came, and to them alone He 
 preached that Gospel which His" disciples afterward carried among 
 foreigners. He would fain have freed the chosen People from their 
 spiritual bondage of ignorance and degradation. As a lover of all 
 mankind, laying down His life for the emancipation of His Breth- 
 ren, He should be to all, to Christian, to Jew, and to Mahometan, 
 an object of gratitude and veneration. 
 
 The Roman world felt the pangs of approaching dissolution. 
 Paganism, its Temples shattered by Socrates and Cicero,had spoken 
 its last word. The God of the Hebrews was unknown beyond the 
 limits of Palestine. The old religions had failed to give happiness 
 arid peace to the world. The babbling and wrangling philosophers
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. $Cf) 
 
 had confounded all men's ideas, until they doubted of everything 
 and had faith in nothing : neither in God nor in his goodness and 
 mercy, nor in the virtue of man, nor in themselves. Mankind was 
 divided into two great classes, the master and the slave ; the pow- 
 erful and the abject, the high and the low, the tyrants and the 
 mob; and even the former were satiated with the servility of the 
 latter, sunken by lassitude and despair to the lowest depths of deg- 
 radation. 
 
 When,lo,a voice, in the inconsiderable Roman Province of Judea 
 proclaims a new Gospel a new "God's Word," to crushed, suffer- 
 ing bleeding humanity. Liberty of Thought, Equality of all men in 
 the eye of God, universal Fraternity ! a new doctrine, a new 
 religion ; the old Primitive Truth uttered once again ! 
 
 Man is once more taught to look upward to his God. No longer 
 to a God hid in impenetrable mystery, and infinitely remote from 
 human sympathy, emerging only at intervals from the darkness to 
 smite and crush humanity : but a God, good, kind, beneficent, and 
 merciful : a Father, loving the creatures He has made, with a love 
 immeasurable and exhaustless ; Who feels for us, and sympathizes 
 with us, and sends us pain and want and disaster only that they 
 may serve to develop in us the virtues and excellences that befit us 
 to live with Him hereafter. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of man," is the expounder of the 
 new Law of Love. He calls to Him the humble, the poor, the Pariahs 
 of the world. The first sentence that He pronounces blesses the 
 world, and announces the new gospel : "Blessed are they that mourn 
 for they shall be comforted." He pours the oil of consolation and 
 peace upon every crushed and bleeding heart. Every sufferer is 
 His proselyte. He shares their sorrows, and sympathizes with all 
 their afflictions. 
 
 He raises up the sinner and the Samaritan woman, and teaches 
 them to hope for forgiveness. He pardons the woman taken in 
 adultery. He selects his disciples not among the Pharisees or the 
 Philosophers, but among the low and humble, even of the fishermen 
 of Galilee. He heals the sick and feeds the poor. He lives among 
 the destitute and the friendless. "Suffer little children," He said, 
 "to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven ! Blessed 
 are the humble-minded, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven ; the 
 meek, for they shall inherit the Earth : the merciful, for they shall 
 obtain mercy ; the pure in heart, for they shall see God ; the peace-
 
 31O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 makers, for they shall be called the children of God ! First be rec- 
 onciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift at the altar. 
 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of 
 thee turn not away ! Love your enemies ; bless them that curse you ; 
 do good to them that hate you ; and pray for them which despite- 
 f ully use you and persecute you ! All things whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye also unto them ; for this is the 
 law and the Prophets ! He that taketh not his cross, and followeth 
 after Me, is not worthy of Me. A new commandment I give unto 
 you, that ye love one another : as I have loved you, that ye also love 
 one another : by this shall all know that ye are My disciples. 
 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life 
 for his friend." 
 
 The Gospel of Love He sealed with His life. The cruelty of 
 the Jewish Priesthood, the ignorant ferocity of the mob, and the 
 Roman indifference to barbarian blood, nailed Him to the cross, 
 and He expired uttering blessings upon humanity. 
 
 Dying thus, He bequeathed His teachings to man as an ines- 
 timable inheritance. Perverted and corrupted, they have served as 
 a basis for many creeds, and been even made the warrant for intol- 
 erance and persecution. We here teach them in their purity. 
 They are our Masonry ; for to them good men of all creeds can 
 subscribe. 
 
 That God is good and merciful, and loves and sympathizes with 
 the creatures He has made ; that His finger is visible in all the 
 movements of the moral, intellectual, and material universe ; that 
 we are His children, the objects of His paternal care and regard ; 
 that all men are our brothers, whose wants we are to supply, their 
 errors to pardon, their opinions to tolerate, their injuries to for- 
 give ; that man has an immortal soul, a free will, a right to free- 
 dom of thought and action ; that all men are equal in God's sight ; 
 that we best serve God by humility, meekness, gentleness, kind- 
 ness, and the other virtues which the lowly can practise as well as 
 the lofty; this is "the new Law," the "WORD," for which the 
 world had waited and pined so long; and every true Knight of 
 the Rose *& will revere the memory of Him who taught it, and 
 look indulgently even on those who assign to Him a character far 
 above his own conceptions or belief, even to the extent of deeming 
 Him Divine. 
 
 Hear Philo, the Greek Jew. "The contemplative soul, une-
 
 KNIGHT ROSE CKOIX. 311 
 
 qually guided, sometimes toward abundance and sometimes to- 
 ward barrenness, though ever advancing, is illuminated by the 
 primitive ideas, the rays that emanate from the Divine Intelli- 
 gence, whenever it ascends toward the Sublime Treasures. When, 
 on the contrary, it descends, and is barren, it falls within the do- 
 main of those Intelligences that are termed Angels. . . for, when 
 the soul is deprived of the light of God, which leads it to the 
 knowledge of things, it no longer enjoys more than a feeble and 
 secondary light, which gives it, not the understanding of things, 
 but that of words only, as in this baser world. . . ." 
 
 "... Let the narrow-souled withdraw, having their ears sealed 
 up ! We communicate the divine mysteries to those only who 
 have received the sacred initiation, to those who practise true piety, 
 and who are not enslaved by the empty pomp of words, or the 
 doctrines of the pagans. ..." 
 
 " . . . O, ye Initiates, ye whose ears are purified, receive this in 
 your souls, as a mystery never to be lost ! Reveal it to no Profane ! 
 Keep and contain it within yourselves, as an incorruptible treas- 
 ure, not like gold or silver, but more precious than everything 
 besides ; for it is the knowledge of the Great Cause, of Nature, and 
 of that which is born of both. And if you meet an Initiate, be- 
 siege him with your prayers, that he conceal from you no new 
 mysteries that he may know, and rest not until you have obtained 
 them ! For me, although I was initiated' in the Great Mysteries 
 by Moses, the Friend of God, yet, having seen Jeremiah, I recog- 
 nized him not only as an Initiate, but as a Hierophant ; and I fol- 
 low his school." 
 
 We, like him, recognize all Initiates as our Brothers. We be- 
 long to no one creed or school. In all religions there is a basis of 
 Truth ; in all there is pure Morality. All that teach the cardinal 
 trnets of Masonry we respect ; all teachers and reformers of man- 
 kind we admire and revere. 
 
 Masonry also has her mission to perform. With her traditions 
 reaching back to the earliest times, and her symbols dating further 
 back than even the monumental history of Egypt extends, she in- 
 vites all men of all religions to enlist under her banners and to 
 war against evil, ignorance, and wrong. You are now her knight, 
 and to her service your sword is consecrated. May you prove a 
 worthy soldier in a worthy cause! 
 
 31
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 COUNCIL OF KADOSH.
 
 XIX. 
 GRAND PONTIFF. 
 
 THE true Mason labors for the benefit of those who are to come 
 after him, and for the advancement and improvement of his race. 
 That is a poor ambition which contents itself within the limits of 
 a single life. All men who deserve to live, desire to survive their 
 funerals, and to live afterward in the good that they have done 
 mankind, rather than in the fad.ng characters written in men's 
 memories. Most men desire to leave some work behind them that 
 may outlast their own day and brief generation. That is an in- 
 stinctive impulse, given by God, and often found in the rudest 
 human heart ; the surest proof of the soul's immortality, and of 
 the fundamental difference between man and the wisest brutes. 
 To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children, 
 is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted. 
 The rudest unlettered husbandman, painfully conscious of his own 
 inferiority, the poorest widowed mother, giving her life-blood to 
 those who pay only for the work of her needle, will toil and stint 
 themselves to educate their child, that he may take a higher sta- 
 tion in the world than they ; and of such are the world's greatest 
 benefactors. 
 
 In his influences that survive him, man becomes immortal, be- 
 fore the general resurrection. The Spartan mother, who, giving 
 her son his shield, said, "WITH IT, OR UPON IT !" afterward shared 
 the government of Lacedjemon with the legislation of Lycurgus : 
 for she too made a law, that lived after her ; and she inspired the 
 Spartan soldiery that afterward demolished the walls of Athens, 
 and aided Alexander to conquer the Orient. The widow who gave 
 Marion the fiery arrows to burn her own house, that it might no 
 longer shelter the enemies of her infant country, the house where 
 she had lain upon her husband's bosom, and where her children 
 had been born, legislated more effectually for her State than Locke 
 or Shaftesbury, or than many a Legislature has done, since that 
 State won its freedom. 
 
 It was of slight importance to the Kings of Egypt and the 
 312
 
 GRAND PONTIFF. 313 
 
 Monarchs of Assyria and Phoenicia, that the son of a Jewish wo- 
 man, a foundling, adopted by the daughter of Sesostris Ramses, 
 slew an Egyptian that oppressed a Hebrew slave, and fled into the 
 desert, to remain there forty years% But Moses, who might other- 
 wise have become Regent of Lower Egypt, known to us only by a 
 tablet on a tomb or monument, became the deliverer of the Jews, 
 and led them forth from Egypt to the frontiers of Palestine, and 
 made for them a law, out of which grew the Christian faith ; and 
 so has shaped the destinies of the world. He and the old Roman 
 lawyers, with Alfred of England, the Saxon Thanes and Norman 
 Barons, the old judges and chancellors, and the makers of the 
 canons, lost in the mists and shadows of the Past, these are our 
 legislators ; and we obey the laws that they enacted. 
 
 Napoleon died upon the barren rock of his exile. His bones, 
 borne to France by the son of a King, rest in the Hopital des In- 
 valides, in the great city on the Seine. His Thoughts still govern 
 France. He, and not the People, dethroned the Bourbon, and 
 drove the last King of the House of Orleans into exile. He, in 
 his coffin, and not the People, voted the crown to the Third Napo- 
 leon; and he, and not the Generals of France and England, led 
 their united forces against the grim Northern Despotism. 
 
 Mahomet announced to the Arabian idolaters the new creed, 
 "There is but one God, andMahomet, likeMoses and Christ, is His 
 apostle." For many years unaided, then with the help of his fam- 
 ily and a few friends, then with many disciples, and last of all 
 with an army, he taught and preached the Koran. The religion 
 of the wild Arabian enthusiast converting the fiery Tribes of the 
 Great Desert, spread over Asia, built up the Saracenic dynasties, 
 conquered Persia and India, the Greek Empire, Northern Africa, 
 and Spain, and dashed the surges of its fierce soldiery against the 
 battlements of Northern Christendom. The law of Mahomet still 
 governs a fourth of the human race ; and Turk and Arab, Moor 
 and Persian and Hindu, still obey the Prophet, and pray with their 
 faces turned toward Mecca ; and he, and not the living, rules and 
 reigns in the fairest portions of the Orient. 
 
 Confucius still enacts the law for China; and the thoughts and 
 ideas of Peter the Great govern Russia. Plato and the other great 
 Sages of Antiquity still reign as the Kings of Philosophy, and 
 have dominion over the human intellect. The great Statesmen 
 of the Past still preside in the Councils of Nations, Burke still
 
 314 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 lingers in the House of Commons ; and Berryer's sonorous tones 
 will long ring in the Legislative Chambers of France. The in- 
 fluences of Webster and Calhoun, conflicting, rent asunder the 
 American States, and the doctrine of each is the law and the ora- 
 cle speaking from the Holy of Holies for his own State and all 
 consociated with it: a faith preached and proclaimed by each at 
 the cannon's mouth and consecrated by rivers of blood. 
 
 It has been well said, that when Tamerlane had builded his pyr- 
 amid of fifty thousand human skulls, and wheeled away with his 
 vast armies from the gates of Damascus, to find new conquests, 
 and build other pyramids, a little boy was playing in the streets 
 of Mentz, son of a poor artisan, whose apparent importance in the 
 scale of beings was, compared with that of Tamerlane, as that of 
 a grain of sand to the giant bulk of the earth ; but Tamerlane 
 and all his shaggy legions, that swept over the East like a hurri- 
 cane, have passed away, and become shadows ; while printing, the 
 wonderful invention of John Faust, the boy of Mentz, has exerted 
 a greater influence on man's destinies and overturned more thrones 
 and dynasties than all the victories of all the blood-stained con- 
 querors from Nimrod to Napoleon. 
 
 Long ages ago, the Temple built by Solomon and our Ancient 
 Brethren sank into ruin, when the Assyrian Armies sacked Jeru- 
 salem. The Holy City is a mass of hovels cowering under the 
 dominion of the Crescent ; and the Holy Land a desert. The 
 Kings of Egypt and Assyria, who were contemporaries of Solomon, 
 are forgotten, and their histories mere fables. The Ancient Ori- 
 ent is a shattered wreck, bleaching on the shores of Time. The 
 Wolf and the Jackal howl among the ruins of Thebes and of 
 Tyre, and the sculptured images of the Temples and Palaces of 
 Babylon and Nineveh are dug from their ruins and carried into 
 strange lands. But the quiet and peaceful Order, of which the 
 Son of a poor Phrenician Widow was one of the Grand Masters, 
 with the Kings of Israel and Tyre, has continued to increase in 
 stature and influence, defying the angry waves of time and the 
 storms of persecution. Age has not weakened its wide founda- 
 tions, nor shattered its columns, nor marred the beauty of its har- 
 monious proportions. Where rude barbarians, in the time of Sol- 
 omon, peopled inhospitable howling wildernesses, in France and 
 Britain, and in that New World, not known to Jew or Gentile, 
 until the glories of the Orient had faded, that Order has builded
 
 GRAND PONTIFF. 315 
 
 new Temples, and teaches to its million of Initiates those lessons 
 of peace, good-will, and toleration, of relk.ncc on God and confi- 
 dence in man, which it learned when Hebrew and Gitletaite 
 worked side by side on the slopes of Lebanon, and the Servant of 
 Jehovah and the Phoenician Worshippc" of Bel sat with the hum- 
 ble artisan in Council at Jerusalem. 
 
 It is the Dead that govern. The Li>. :ng only obey. And if 
 the Soul sees, after death, what passes on Jiis earth, and watches 
 over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happi- 
 ness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences 
 widening out from ?ge to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and 
 aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the 
 World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences 
 causing mischief and misery, and cursing and afflicting men, long 
 after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name 
 and memory are forgotten. 
 
 We know not who among the Dead control our destinies. The 
 universal human race is linked and bound together by those influ- 
 ences and sympathies, which in the truest sense do make men's 
 fates. Humanity is the unit, of which the man is but a fraction. 
 What other men in the Past have done, said, thought, makes the 
 great iron network of circumstance that environs and controls us 
 all. We take our faith on trust. We think and believe as the Old 
 Lords of Thought command us ; and Reason is powerless before 
 Authority. 
 
 We would make or annul a particular contract ; but the 
 Thoughts of the dead Judges of England, living when their ashes 
 have been cold for centuries, stand between us and that which we 
 would do, and utterly forbid it. We would settle our estate in a 
 particular way; but the prohibition of the English Parliament, 
 its uttered Thought when the first or second Edward reigned, 
 comes echoing down the long avenues of time, and tells us we 
 shall not exercise the power of disposition as we wish. We would 
 gain a particular advantage of another ; and the thought of the 
 old Roman lawyer who died before Justinian, or that of Rome's 
 great orator Cicero, annihilates the act, or makes the intention in- 
 effectual. This act, Moses forbids; that. Alfred. We would sell 
 our land ; but certain marks on a perishable paper tell us that our 
 father or remote ancestor ordered otherwise ; and the arm of tin 
 dead, emerging from the grave, with peremptory gesture prohibits
 
 316 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the alienation. About to sin or err, the thought or wish of our 
 dead mother, told us when we were children, by words that died 
 upon the air in the utterance, and many a long year were forgot- 
 ten, flashes on our memory, and holds us back with a power that 
 is resistless. 
 
 Thus we obey the dead ; and thus shall the living, when we are 
 dead, for weal or woe, obey us. The Thoughts of the Past are the 
 Laws of the Present and the Future. That which we say and do, 
 if its effects last not beyond our lives, is unimportant. That 
 which shall live when we are dead, as part of the great body of 
 law enacted by the dead, is the only act worth doing, the only 
 Thought worth speaking. The desire to do something that shall 
 benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy will reach us 
 where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest ambition en- 
 tertained by man. 
 
 It is the ambition of a true and genuine Mason. Knowing the 
 slow processes by which the Deity brings about great results, he 
 does not expect to reap as well as sow, in a single lifetime. It is 
 the inflexible fate and noblest destiny, with rare exceptions, of the 
 great and good, to work, and let others reap the harvest of their 
 labors. He who does good, only to be repaid in kind, or in thanks 
 and gratitude, or in reputation and the world's praise, is like him 
 who loans his money, that he may, after certain months, receive it 
 back with interest. To be repaid for eminent services with slan- 
 der, obloquy, or ridicule, or at best with stupid indifference or cold 
 ingratitude, as it is common, so it is no misfortune, except to those 
 who lack the wit to see or sense to appreciate the service, or the 
 nobility of soul to thank and reward with eulogy, the benefactor 
 of his kind. Kis influences live, and the great Future will obey ; 
 whether it recognize or disown the lawgiver. 
 
 Miltiades was fortunate that he was exiled ; and Aristides that 
 he was ostracized, because men wearied of hearing him called "The 
 Just." Not the Redeemer was unfortunate ; but those only who 
 repaid Him for the inestimable gift He offered them, and for a life 
 passed in toiling for their good, by nailing Him upon the cross, as 
 though He had been a slave or malefactor. The persecutor dies 
 and rots, and Posterity utters his name with execration : but his 
 victim's memory he has unintentionally made glorious and im- 
 mortal. 
 
 If not for slander and persecution, the Mason who would bene-
 
 GRAND PONTIFF. JI7 
 
 fit his race must look for apathy and cold indifference in those 
 whose good he seeks, in those who ought to seek the good of 
 others. Except when the sluggish depths of the Human Mind 
 are broken up and tossed as with a storm, when at the appointed 
 time a great Reformer comes, and a new Faith springs up and 
 grows with supernatural energy, the progress of Truth is slower 
 than the growth of oaks; and he who plants need not expect to 
 gather. The Redeemer, at His death, had twelve disciples, and 
 one betrayed and one deserted and denied Him. It is enough for 
 us to know that the fruit will come in its due season. When, or 
 who shall gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know. 
 It is our business to plant the seed. It is God's right to give the 
 fruit to whom He pleases ; and if not to us, then is our action by 
 so much the more noble. 
 
 To sow, that others may reap ; to work and plant for those who 
 are to occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influ- 
 ences far into the future, and live beyond our time ; to rule as the 
 Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn ; to bless with 
 the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will 
 neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his 
 unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the 
 proudest destiny of a man. 
 
 All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced 
 by slow and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction 
 and devastation only is violent and rapid. The Volcano and the 
 Earthquake, the Tornado and the Avalanche, leap suddenly into 
 full life and fearful energy, and smite with an unexpected blow. 
 Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in a night; and Lis- 
 bon fell prostrate before God in a breath, when the earth rocked 
 and shuddered ; the Alpine village vanishes and is erased at one 
 bound of the avalanche ; and the ancient forests fall like grass be- 
 fore the mower, when the tornado leaps upon them. Pestilence 
 slays its thousands in a day ; and the storm in a night strews the 
 sand with shattered navies. 
 
 The Gourd of the Prophet Jonah grew up, and was withered, in 
 a night. But many years ago, before the Norman Conqueror 
 stamped his mailed foot on the neck of prostrate Saxon England, 
 some wandering barbarian, of the continent then unknown to the 
 world, in mere idleness, with hand or foot, covered an acorn with 
 a little earth, and passed on regardless, on his journey to the dim
 
 318 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Past. He died and was forgotten; but the acorn lay there still, 
 the mighty force within it acting in the darkness. A tender shoot 
 stole gently up ; and fed by the light and air and frequent dews, 
 put forth its little leaves, and lived, because the elk or buffalo 
 chanced not to place his foot upon and crush it. The years 
 marched onward, and the shoot became a sapling, and its green 
 leaves went and came with Spring and Autumn. And still the 
 years came and passed away again, and William, the Norman Bas- 
 tard, parcelled England out among his Barons, and still the sapling 
 grew, and the dews fed its leaves, and the birds builded their nests 
 among its small limbs for many generations. And still the years 
 came and went, and the Indian hunter slept in the shade of the 
 sapling, and Richard Lion-Heart fought at Acre and Ascalon, and 
 John's bold Barons wrested from him the Great Charter ; and lo ! 
 the sapling had become a tree ; and still it grew, and thrust its 
 great arms wider abroad, and lifted its head still higher toward 
 the Heavens ; strong-rooted, and defiant of the storms that roared 
 and eddied through its branches ; and when Columbus ploughed 
 with his keels the unknown Western Atlantic, and Cortez and 
 Pizarro bathed the cross in blood ; and the Puritan, the Huguenot, 
 the Cavalier, and the follower of Penn sought a refuge and a rest- 
 ing-place beyond the ocean, the Great Oak still stood, firm-rooted, 
 vigorous, stately, haughtily domineering over all the forest, heed- 
 less of all the centuries that had hurried past since the wild Indian 
 planted the little acorn in the forest ; a stout and hale old tree, 
 with wide circumference shading many a rood of ground ; and fit 
 to furnish timbers for a ship, to carry the thunders of the Great 
 Republic's guns around the world. And yet, if one had sat and 
 watched it even instant, from the moment A'hen the feeble shoot 
 first pushed its way to the light until the eagles built among its 
 branches, he would never have seen the tree 3r sapling grow. 
 
 Many long centuries ago, before the Chaldsean Shepherds 
 watched the Stars, or Shufu built the Pyramids, one could have 
 sailed in a seventy-four where now a thousand islands gem the sur- 
 face of the Indian Ocean ; and the deep-sea lead would nowhere 
 have found any bottom. But below these waves were myriads 
 upon myriads, beyond the power of Arithmetic to number, of 
 minute existences, each a perfect living creature, made by the Al- 
 mighty Creator, and fashioned by Him for the work it had to do. 
 There they toiled beneath the waters, each doing its allotted work.
 
 RAND PONTIFF. 519 
 
 and wholly ignorant of the result which God intended. They 
 lived and died, incalculable in numbers and almost infinite in the 
 succession of their generations, each adding his mite to the gigan- 
 tic work that went on there under God's direction. Thus hath He 
 chosen to create great Continents and Islands ; and still the coral- 
 insects live and work, as when they made the rocks that underlie 
 the valley of the Ohio. 
 
 Thus God hath chosen to create. Where now is firm land, once 
 chafed and thundered the great primeval ocean. For ages upon 
 ages the minute shields of. infinite myriads of infusoria, and the 
 stony stems of encrinites sunk into its depths, and there, under 
 the vast pressure of its waters, hardened into limestone. Raised 
 slowly from the Profound by His hand, its quarries underlie the 
 soil of all the continents, hundreds of feet in thickness ; and we, 
 of these remains of the countless dead, build tombs and palaces, 
 as the Egyptians, whom we call ancient, built their pyramids. 
 
 On all the broad lakes and oceans the Great Sun looks earnestly 
 and lovingly, and the invisible vapors rise ever up to meet him. 
 No eye but God's beholds them as they rise. There, in the upper 
 atmosphere, they are condensed to mist, and gather into clouds. 
 and float and swim around in the ambient air. They sail with its 
 currents, and hover over the ocean, and roll in huge masses round 
 the stony shoulders of great mountains. Condensed still more by 
 change of temperature, they drop upon the thirsty earth in gentle 
 showers, or pour upon it in heavy rains, or storm against its bosom 
 at the angry Equinoctial. The shower, the rain, and the storm 
 pass away, the clouds vanish, and the bright stars again shine 
 clearly upon the glad earth. The rain-drops sink into the ground, 
 and gather in subterranean reservoirs, and run in subterranean 
 channels, and bubble up in springs and fountains ; and from the 
 mountain-sides and heads of valleys the silver threads of water 
 begin their long journey to the ocean. Uniting, they widen into 
 brooks and rivulets, then into streams and rivers ; and, at last, a 
 Nile, a Ganges, a Danube, an Amazon, or a Mississippi rolls be- 
 tween its banks, mighty, majestic, and resistless, creating vast allu- 
 vial valleys to be the granaries of the world, ploughed by the 
 thousand keels of commerce and serving as great highways, and 
 as the impassable boundaries of -rival nations ; ever returning to 
 the ocean the drops that rose from it in vapor, and descended in 
 rain and snow and hail upon the level plains and lofty moun-
 
 J2O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tains ; and causing him to recoil for many a mile before the head- 
 long rush of their great tide. 
 
 So it is with the aggregate of Human endeavor. As the invis- 
 ible particles of vapor combine and coalesce to form the mists and 
 clouds that fall in rain on thirsty continents, and bless the great 
 green forests and wide grassy prairies, the waving meadows and 
 the fields by which men live ; as the infinite myriads of drops that 
 the glad earth drinks are gathered into springs and rivulets and 
 rivers, to aid in levelling the mountains and elevating the plains, 
 and to feed the large lakes and restless oceans ; so all Human 
 Thought, and Speech and Action, all that is done and said and 
 thought and suffered upon the Earth combine together, and flow 
 onward in one broad resistless current toward those great results 
 to which they are determined by the will of God. 
 
 We build slowly and destroy swiftly. Our Ancient Brethren 
 who built the Temples at Jerusalem, with many myriad blows 
 felled, hewed, and squared the cedars, and quarried the stones, and 
 carved the intricate ornaments, which were to be the Temples. 
 Stone after stone, by the combined effort and long toil of Appren- 
 tice, Fellow-Craft, and Master, the walls arose; slowly the roof 
 was framed and fashioned ; and many years elapsed, before, at 
 length, the Houses stood finished, all fit and ready for the Worship 
 of God, gorgeous in the sunny splendors of the atmosphere of 
 Palestine. So they were built. A single motion of the arm of a 
 rude, barbarous Assyrian Spearman, or drunken Roman or Gothic 
 Legionary of Titus, moved by a senseless impulse of the brutal 
 will, flung in the -blazing brand; and, with no further human 
 agency, a few short hours sufficed to consume and melt each Tem- 
 ple to a smoking mass of black unsightly ruin. 
 
 Be patient, therefore, my Brother, and wait! 
 
 Yhe issues are with God: To do, 
 Of right belongs to us. 
 
 Therefore faint not, nor be weary in well-doing ! Be not dis- 
 couraged at men's apathy, nor disgusted with their follies nor 
 tired of their indifference ! Care not for returns and results ; but 
 see only what there is to do, and do it, leaving the results to God ! 
 Soldier of the Cross ! Sworn Knight of Justice, Truth, and Tol- 
 eration! Good Knight and True! be patient and work! 
 
 The Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic Sum-
 
 GRAND PONTIFF. 321 
 
 mary of all the occult figures, divides its images into three Sep- 
 tenaries, after each of which there is silence in Heaven. There 
 are Seven Seals to be opened, that is to say, Seven mysteries to 
 know, and Seven difficulties to overcome, Seven trumpets to sound, 
 and Seven cups to empty. 
 
 The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree, 
 the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, 
 and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the 
 Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit 
 of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who 
 bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, 
 sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not! for traditions are full of 
 Divine Revelations and Inspirations : and Inspiration is not of 
 one Age nor of one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired. 
 
 The Apocalypse, indeed, is a book as obscure as the Sohar. 
 
 It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and images ; and 
 the Apostle often appeals to the intelligence of the Initiated. 
 "Let him who hath knowledge, understand ! let him who under- 
 stands, calculate !" he often says, after an allegory or the mention 
 of a number. Saint John, the favorite Apostle, and the Depositary 
 of all the Secrets of the Saviour, therefore did not write to be un- 
 derstood by the multitude. 
 
 The Sephar Yezirah, the Sohar, and the Apocalypse are the 
 completest embodiments of Occultism. They contain more mean- 
 ings than words ; their expressions are figurative as poetry and 
 exact as numbers. The Apocalypse sums up, completes, and sur- 
 passes all the Science of Abraham and of Solomon. The visions 
 of Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, and of the new Symbolic Temple, 
 are equally mysterious expressions, veiled by figures of the enig- 
 matic dogmas of the Kabalah, and their symbols are as little un- 
 derstood by the Commentators, as those of Free Masonry. 
 
 The Septenary is the Crown of the Numbers, because it unites 
 the Triangle of the Idea to the Square of the Form. 
 
 The more the great Hierophants were at pains to conceal their 
 absolute Science, the more they sought to add grandeur to and 
 multiply its symbols. The huge pyramids, with their triangular 
 sides of elevation and square bases, represented their Metaphysics, 
 founded upon the knowledge of Nature. That knowledge of Na- 
 ture had for its symbolic key the gigantic form of that huge 
 Sphinx, which has hollowed its deep bed in the sand, while keep-
 
 322 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ing \vatch at the feet of the Pyramids. The Seven grand monu- 
 ments called the Wonders of the World, were the magnificent 
 Commentaries on the Seven lines that composed the Pyramids, 
 and on the Seven mystic gates of Thebes. 
 
 The Septenary philosophy of Initiation among the Ancients 
 may be summed up thus : 
 
 Three Absolute Principles which are but One Principle : four 
 elementary forms.which are but one ; all forming a Single Whole, 
 compounded of the Idea and the Form. 
 
 The three Principles were these : 
 
 i. BEING is BEING. 
 
 In Philosophy, identity of the Idea and of Being or Verity ; in 
 Religion, the first Principle, THE FATHER. 
 2. BEING is REAL. 
 
 In Philosophy, identity of Knowing and of Being or Reality ; 
 in Religion, the LOGOS of Plato, the Demiourgos, the WORD. 
 3. BEING is LOGIC. 
 
 In Philosophy, identity of the Reason and Reality ; in Religion, 
 Providence, the Divine Action that makes real the Good, that 
 which in Christianity we call THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 The union of all the Seven colors is the White, the analogous 
 symbol of the GOOD: the absence of all is the Black, the analogous 
 symbol of the EVIL. There are three primary colors, Red, Yellow, 
 and Blue; and four secondary, Orange, Green, Indigo, and Vio- 
 let; and all these God displays to man in the rainbow ; and they 
 have their analogies also in the moral and intellectual world. The 
 same number, Seven, continually reappears in the Apocalypse, 
 compounded of three and four ; and these numbers relate to the 
 last Seven of the Sephiroth, three answering to BENIGNITY or 
 MERCY, SEVERITY or JUSTICE, and BEAUTY or HARMONY; and 
 four to Ketzach, Hdd, Ycsod, and Malakoth, VICTORY, GLORY, 
 STABILITY, and DOMINATION. The same numbers also represent 
 the first three Sephiroth, K ETHER, KHOKMAH, and BAINAH, or 
 Will, Wisdom, and Understanding, which, with DAATH or Intel- 
 lection or Thought, are also four, DAATH not being regarded as a 
 Sephirah, not as the Deity acting, or as a potency, energy, or at- 
 tribute, but as the Divine Action. 
 
 The Sephiroth are commonly figured in the Kabalah as consti- 
 tuting a human form, the ADAM KADMON or MACROCOSM. Thus 
 arranged, the universal law of Equipoise is three times exempli-
 
 GRAND PONTIFF. 
 
 fied. From that of the Divine Intellectual, Active, Masculine 
 ENERGY, and the Passive CAPACITY to produce Thought, the 
 action of THINKING results. From that of BENIGNITY and SE- 
 VERITY, HARMONY flows ; and from that of VICTORY or an Infi- 
 nite overcoming 1 , and GLORY, which, being Infinite, would seem to 
 forbid the existence of obstacles or opposition, result'; STABILITY 
 or PERMANENCE, which is the perfect DOMINION of the Infinite 
 WILL. 
 
 The last nine SepV.ir,?th are included in, at the same time that 
 they have flowed forth from, the first of all, KETIIER, or the 
 CROWN. Each also, in succession flowed from, and yet still re- 
 mains included in, the one preceding it. The Will of God includes 
 His Wisdom, and His Wisdom is His Will specially developed and 
 acting. This Wisdom is the LOGOS that creates, mistaken and 
 personified by Simon Magus and the succeeding Gnostics. By 
 means of its utterance, the letter YUD, it creates the worlds, first 
 in the Divine Intellect as an Idea, which invested with form be- 
 came the fabricated World, the Universe of material reality. YUD 
 and HE, two letters of the Ineffable Name of the Manifested 
 Deity, represent the Male and the Female, the Active and the 
 Passive in Equilibrium, and the VAV completes the Trinity and 
 the Triliteral Name in" 1 , the Divine Triangle, which with the repe- 
 tition of the He becomes the Tetragrammaton. 
 
 Thus the ten Sephiroth contain all the Sacred Numbers, three, 
 five, seven, and nine, and the perfect Number Ten, and correspond 
 with the Tetractys of Pythagoras. 
 
 BEING Is BEING, pPntf IffK TTIK, Ahayah Asar Ahayah. This 
 is the Principle, the "BEGINNING." 
 
 In the Beginning was, that is to say, IS, WAS, and WILL BE, 
 the WORD, that is to say, the REASON that Speaks. 
 Ev anffl TJV '0 Aofo:, \ 
 
 The Word is the reason of belief, and in it also is the expression 
 of the Faith which makes Science a living thing. The Word, 
 Jofoc, is the Source of Logic. Jesus is the Word Incarnate. The 
 accord of the Reason with Faith, of Knowledge with Belief, of 
 Authority with Liberty, has become in modern times the verita- 
 ble enigma of the Sphinx. 
 
 Tt is WISDOM that, in the Kabalistic Books of the Proverbs and 
 Ecclesiasticus, is the Creative Agent of God. Elsewhere in the 
 Hebrew writings it is mrP *O"J, Debar laharah, the WORD of God
 
 324 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It is by His uttered Word that God reveals Himself to us; not 
 alone in the visible and invisible but intellectual creation, but also 
 in our convictions, consciousness, and instincts. Hence it is that 
 certain beliefs are universal. The conviction of all men that God 
 is good led to a belief in a Devil, the fallen Lucifer or Light- 
 bearer, Shaitan the Adversary, Ahriman and Tuphon, as an at- 
 tempt to explain the existence of Evil, and make it consistent with 
 the Infinite Power, Wisdom, and Benevolence of God. 
 
 Nothing surpasses and nothing equals, as a Summary of all the 
 doctrines of the Old World, those brief words engraven by 
 HERMES on a Stone, and known under the name of "The Tablet 
 of Emerald:" the Unity of Being and the Unity of the Harmo- 
 nies, ascending and descending, the progressive and proportional 
 scale of the Word ; the immutable law of the Equilibrium, and 
 the proportioned progress of the universal analogies ; the relation 
 of the Idea to the Word, giving the measure of the relation be- 
 tween the Creator and the Created, the necessary mathematics of 
 the Infinite, proved by the measures of a single corner of the 
 Finite ; all this is expressed by this single proposition of the 
 Great Egyptian Hierophant : 
 
 "What is Superior is as that which is Inferior, and what is 
 Below is as that which is Above, to form the Marvels of the 
 Unity."
 
 XX. 
 
 GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC 
 LODGES. 
 
 THE true Mason is a practical Philosopher, who, under religious 
 emblems, in all ages adopted by wisdom, builds upor. plans traced 
 by nature and reason the moral edifice of knowledge. He ought 
 to find, in the symmetrical relation of all the parts of this rational 
 edifice, the principle and rule of all his duties, the source of all 
 his pleasures. He improves his moral nature, becomes a better man, 
 and finds in the reunion of virtuous men, assembled with pure 
 views, the means of multiplying his acts of beneficence. Masonry 
 and Philosophy, without being one and the same thing, have the 
 same object, and propose to themselves the same end, the worship 
 of the Grand Architect of the Universe, acquaintance and familiar- 
 ity with the wonders of nature, and the happiness of humanity 
 attained by the constant practice of all the virtues. 
 
 As Grand Master of all Symbolic Lodges, it is your especial duty 
 to aid in restoring Masonry to its primitive purity. You have be- 
 come an instructor. Masonry long wandered in error. Instead 
 of improving, it degenerated from its primitive simplicity, and re- 
 trograded toward a system, distorted by stupidity and ignorance, 
 which, unable to construct a beautiful machine, made a complica- 
 ted one. Less than two hundred years ago, its organization was 
 simple, and altogether moral, its emblems, allegories, and ceremo- 
 nies easy to be understood, and their purpose and object readily to 
 be seen. It was then confined to a very small number of Degrees. 
 Its constitutions were like those of a Society of Essenes, written 
 in the first century of our era. There could be seen the primitive 
 Giristianity, organized into Masonry, the school of Pythagoras 
 without incongruities or absurdities; a Masonry simple and signifi- 
 cant, in which it was not necessary to torture the mind to discover 
 reasonable interpretations ; a Masonry at once religious and philo- 
 sophical, worthy of a good citizen and an enlightened philanthro- 
 pist. 
 
 Innovators and inventors overturned that primitive simplicity. 
 
 22 325
 
 326 MORAL6 AND DOGMA. 
 
 Ignorance engaged in the work of making Degrees, and trifles and 
 gewgaws and pretended mysteries, absurd or hideous, usurped the 
 place of Masonic Truth. The picture of a horrid vengeance, the 
 poniard and the bloody head, appeared in the peaceful Temple of 
 Masonry, without sufficient explanation of their symbolic meaning. 
 Oaths out of all proportion with their object, shocked the candi- 
 date, and then became ridiculous, and were wholly disregarded. 
 Acolytes were exposed to tests, and compelled to perform acts, 
 which, if real, would have been abominable ; but being mere chi- 
 meras, were preposterous, and excited contempt and laughter only. 
 Eight hundred Degrees of one kind and another were invented : 
 Infidelity and even Jesuitry were taught under the mask of 
 Masonry. The rituals even of the respectable Degrees, copied and 
 mutilated by ignorant men, became nonsensical and trivial ; and 
 the words so corrupted that it has hitherto been found impossible 
 to recover many of them at all. Candidates were made to degrade 
 themselves, and to submit to insults not tolerable to a man of 
 spirit and honor. 
 
 Hence it was that, practically, the largest portion of the Degrees 
 claimed by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and before 
 it by the Rite of Perfection, fell into disuse, were merely commu- 
 nicated, and their rituals became jejune and insignificant. These 
 Rites resembled those old palaces and baronial castles, the differ- 
 ent parts of which, built at different periods remote from one 
 another, upon plans and according to tastes that greatly varied, 
 formed a discordant and incongruous whole. Judaism and chiv- 
 alry, superstition and philosophy, philanthropy and insane hatred 
 and longing for vengeance, a pure morality and unjust and illegal 
 revenge, were found strangely mated and standing hand in hand 
 within the Temples of Peace and Concord ; and the whole system 
 was one grotesque commingling of incongruous things, of contrasts 
 and contradictions, of shocking and fantastic extravagances, of- parts 
 repugnant to good taste, and fine conceptions overlaid and disfigured 
 by absurdities engendered by ignorance, fanaticism, and a senseless 
 mysticism. 
 
 An empty and sterile pomp, impossible indeed to be carried out, 
 and to which no meaning whatever was attached, with far-fetched 
 explanations that were either so many stupid platitudes or them- 
 selves needed an interpreter ; lofty titles, arbitrarily assumed, and 
 to which the inventors had not condescended to attach any expla-
 
 GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 
 
 nation that should acquit them of the folly of assuming temporal 
 rank, power, and titles of nobility, made the world laugh, and the 
 Initiate feel ashamed. 
 
 Some of these titles we retain ; but they have with us meanings 
 entirely consistent with that Spirit of Equality which is the foun- 
 dation and peremptory law of its being of all Masonry. The 
 Knight, with us, is he who devotes his hand, his heart, his brain, 
 to the Science of Masonry, and professes himself the Sworn Soldier 
 of Truth: the Prince is he who aims to be Chief [Princeps], first, 
 leader, among his equals, in virtue and good deeds : the Sovereign 
 is he who, one of an order whose members are all Sovereigns, is 
 Supreme only because the law and constitutions are so, which he 
 administers, and by which he, like every other brother, is governed. 
 The titles, Puissant, Potent, Wise, and Venerable, indicate that 
 power of Virtue, Intelligence, and Wisdom, which those ought to 
 strive to attain who are placed in high office by the suffrages of 
 their brethren: and all our other titles and designations have an 
 esoteric meaning, consistent with modesty and equality, and which 
 those who receive them should fully understand. As Master of a 
 Lodge it is your duty to instruct your Brethren that they are all 
 so many constant lessons, teaching the lofty qualifications which 
 are required of those who claim them, and not merely idle gew- 
 gaws worn in ridiculous imitation of the times when the Nobles 
 and Priests were masters and the people slaves: and that, in all 
 true Masonry, tfie Knight, the Pontiff, the Prince, and the Sov- 
 ereign are but the first among their equals : and the cordon, the 
 clothing, and the jewel but symbols and emblems of the virtues 
 required of all good Masons. 
 
 The Mason kneels, no longer to present his petition for admittance 
 or to receive the answer, no longer to a man as his superior, who 
 is but his brother, but to his God ; to whom he appeals for the rec- 
 titude of his intentions, and whose aid he asks to enable him to 
 keep his vows. No one is degraded by bending his knee to God 
 at the altar, or to receive the honor of Knighthood as Bayard and 
 Du Guesclin knelt. To kneel for other purposes, Masonry does 
 not require. God gave to man a head to be borne erect, a port up- 
 right and majestic. We assemble in our Temples to cherish and 
 inculcate sentiments that conform to that loftiness of bearing which 
 the just and upright man is entitled to maintain, and we do not 
 require those who desire to be admitted among us, ignominious!}'
 
 3^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to bow the head. We respect man, because we respect ourselves 
 that he may conceive a lofty idea of his dignity as a human being 
 free and independent. If modesty is a virtue, humility and obsequi- 
 ousness to man are base: for there is a noble pride which is the 
 most real and solid basis of virtue. Man should humble himself 
 before the Infinite God ; but not before his erring and imperfect 
 brother. 
 
 As Master of a Lodge, you will therefore be exceedingly careful 
 that no Candidate, in any Degree, be required to submit to any 
 degradation whatever ; as has been too much the custom in some 
 of the Degrees : and take it as a certain and inflexible rule, to which 
 there is no exception, that real Masonry requires of no man any- 
 thing to which a Knight and Gentleman cannot honorably, and 
 without feeling outraged or humiliated, submit. 
 
 The Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United 
 States at length undertook the indispensable and long-delayed task 
 of revising and reforming the work and rituals of the thirty Degrees 
 under its jurisdiction. Retaining the essentials of the Degrees and 
 all the means by which the members recognize one another, it has 
 sought out and developed the leading idea of each Degree, rejected 
 the puerilities and absurdities with which many of them were dis- 
 figured, and made of them a connected system of moral, religious, 
 and philosophical instruction. Sectarian of no creed, it has yet 
 thought it not improper to use the old allegories^ based on occur- 
 rences detailed in the Hebrew and Christian books, and drawn 
 from the Ancient Mysteries of Egypt, Persia, Greece, India, the 
 Druids and the Essenes, as vehicles to communicate the Great Ma- 
 sonic Truths ; as it has used the legends of the Crusades, and the 
 ceremonies of the orders of Knighthood. 
 
 It no longer inculcates a criminal and wicked vengeance. It 
 has not allowed Masonry to play the assassin : to avenge the death 
 either of Hiram, of Charles the ist, or of Jaques De Molay and the 
 Templars. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry 
 has now become, what Masonry at first was meant to be, a Teacher 
 of Great Truths, inspired by an upright and enlightened reason, a 
 firm and constant wisdom, and an affectionate and liberal philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 It is no longer a system, over the composition and arrangement 
 of the different parts of which. want of reflection, chance, ignorance, 
 and perhaps motives still more ignoble presided : a system unsuited
 
 GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 329 
 
 to our habits, our manners, our ideas, or the world-wide philan- 
 thropy and universal toleration of Masonry ; or to bodies small in 
 number, whose revenues should be devoted to the relief of the un- 
 fortunate, and not to empty show ; no longer a heterogeneous 
 aggregate of Degrees, shocking by its anachronisms and contra- 
 dictions, powerless to disseminate light, information, and moral 
 and philosophical ideas. 
 
 As Master, you will teach those who are under you, and to whom 
 you will owe your office, that the decorations of many of the De- 
 grees are to be dispensed with, whenever the expense would inter- 
 fere with the duties of charity, relief, and benevolence ; and to be 
 indulged in only by wealthy bodies that will thereby do no wrong 
 to those entitled to their assistance. The essentials of all the De- 
 grees may be procured at slight expense; and it is at the option 
 of every Brother to procure or not to procure, as he pleases, the 
 dress, decorations, and jewels of any Degree other than the I4th, 
 i8th, 3Oth, and 32d. 
 
 We teach the truth of none of the legends we recite. They are to 
 us but parables and allegories, involving and enveloping Masonic 
 instruction ; and vehicles of useful and interesting information. 
 They represent the different phases of the human mind, its efforts 
 and struggles to comprehend nature, God, the government of the 
 Universe, the permitted existence of sorrow and evil. To teach 
 us wisdom, and the folly of endeavoring to explain to ourselves 
 that which we are not capable of understanding, we reproduce the 
 speculations of the Philosophers, the Kabalists, the Mystagogues 
 and the Gnostics. Every one being at liberty to apply our symbols 
 and emblems as he thinks most consistent with truth and reason 
 and with his own faith, we give them such an interpretation only 
 as maybe accepted byall. Our Degrees maybe conferred in France 
 or Turkey, at Pekin, Ispahan, Rome, or Geneva, in the city of Penn 
 or in Catholic Louisiana, upon the subject of an absolute govern- 
 ment or the citizen of a Free State, upon Sectarian or Theist. To 
 honor the Deity, to regard all men as our Brethren, as children, 
 equally dear to Him, of the Supreme Creator of the Universe, and 
 to make himself useful to society and himself by his labor, are its 
 teachings to its Initiates in all the Degrees. 
 
 Preacher of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, it desires them to 
 be attained by making men fit to receive them, and by the moral 
 power of an intelligent and enlightened People. It lays no plots
 
 3JO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and conspiracies. It hatches no premature revolutions ; it encour- 
 ages no people to revolt against the constituted authorities; but 
 recognizing the great truth that freedom follows fitness for free 
 dom as the corollary follows the axiom, it strives to prepare men 
 to govern themselves. 
 
 Where domestic slavery exists, it teaches the master humanity 
 and the alleviation of the condition of his slave, and moderate cor- 
 rection and gentle discipline ; as it teaches them to the master of 
 the apprentice: and as it teaches to the employers of other men, 
 in mines, manufactories, and workshops, consideration and human- 
 ity for those who depend upon their labor for their bread, and to 
 whom want of employment is starvation, and overwork is fever, 
 consumption, and death. 
 
 As Master of a Lodge, you are to inculcate these duties on your 
 brethren. Teach the employed to be honest, punctual, and faithful 
 as well as respectful and obedient to all proper orders : but also 
 teach the employer that every man or woman who desires to work, 
 has a right to have work to do ; and that they, and those who from 
 sickness or feebleness, loss of limb or of bodily vigor, old age or 
 infancy, are not able to work, have a right to be fed, clothed, and 
 sheltered from the inclement elements : that he commits an awful 
 sin against Masonry and in the sight of God, if he closes his work- 
 shops or factories, or ceases to work his mines, when they do not 
 yield him what he regards as sufficient profit, and so dismisses his 
 workmen and workwomen to starve ; or when he reduces the wages 
 of man or woman to so low a standard that they and their families 
 cannot be clothed and fed and comfortably housed ; or by overwork 
 must give him their blood and life in exchange for the pittance 
 of their wages : and that his duty as a Mason and Brother per- 
 emptorily requires him to continue to employ those who else will 
 be pinched with hunger and cold, or resort to theft and vice : and 
 to pay them fair wages, though it may reduce or annul his profits or 
 even eat into his capital ; for God hath but loaned him his wealth, 
 and made him His almoner and agent to invest it. 
 
 Except as mere symbols of the moral virtues and intellectual 
 qualities, the tools and implements of Masonry belong exclusively 
 to the first three Degrees. They also, however, serve to remind the 
 Mason who has advanced further, that his new rank is based upon 
 the humble labors of the symbolic Degrees, as they are improperly 
 termed, inasmuch as all the Degree? are symbolic.
 
 GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 33! 
 
 Thus the Initiatesare inspired with a just idea of Masonry, to wit, 
 that it is essentially WORK; both teaching and practising LABOR; 
 and that it is altogether emblematic. Three kinds of work are nec- 
 essary to the preservation and protection of man and society : man- 
 ual labor, specially belonging to the three blue Degrees; labor in 
 arms, symbolized by the Knightly or chivalric Degrees ; and intel- 
 lectual labor, belonging particularly to the Philosophical Degrees. 
 
 We have preserved and multiplied such emblems as have a true 
 and profound meaning. We reject many of the old and senseless 
 explanations. We have not reduced Masonry to a cold metaphy- 
 sics that exiles everything belonging to the domain of the imagina- 
 tion. Tli'v.- ignorant, and those /za/^-wise in reality, but over-wise 
 in their own conceit, may assail our symbols with sarcasms ; but 
 they are nevertheless ingenious veils that cover the Truth, respected 
 by all who know the means by which the heart of man is reached 
 and his feelings enlisted. The Great Moralists often had recourse 
 to allegories, in order to instruct men without repelling them. 
 But we have been careful not to allow our emblems to be too ob- 
 scure, so as to require far-fetched and forced interpretations. In 
 our days, and in the enlightened land in which we live, we do not 
 need to wrap ourselves in veils so strange and impenetrable, as to 
 prevent or hinder instruction instead of furthering it ; or to induce 
 the suspicion that we have concealed meanings which we commu- 
 nicate only to the most reliable adepts, because they are contrary 
 to good order or the well-being of society. 
 
 The Duties of the Gass of Instructors, that is, the Masons of the 
 Degrees from the 4th to the 8th, inclusive, are, particularly, to per- 
 fect the younger Masons in the words, signs and tokens and other 
 work of the Degrees they have received ; to explain to them the 
 meaning of the different emblems, and to expound the moral in- 
 struction which they convey. And upon their report of proficiency 
 alone can their pupils be allowed to advance and receive .in in- 
 crease of wages. 
 
 The Directors of the Work, or those of the Qth, loth.and I ith De- 
 grees are to report to the Chapters upon the regularity, activity and 
 proper direction of the work of bodies in the lower Degrees, and 
 what is needed to be enacted for their prosperity and usefulness. 
 In the Symbolic Lodges, they are particularly charged to stimulate 
 the zeal of the workmen, to induce them to engage in new labors 
 and enterprises for the good of Masonry, their country and mankind, 
 and to give them fraternal advice when they fall short of their
 
 jjj MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 duty ; or, in cases that require it, to invoke against them the rigor 
 of Masonic law. 
 
 The Architects, or those of the I2th, I3th, and I4th, should be 
 selected from none but Brothers well instructed in the preceding 
 Degrees ; zealous, and capable of discoursing upon that Masonry ; 
 illustrating it, and discussing the simple questions of moral phil- 
 osophy. And one of them, at every communication, should be pre- 
 pared with a lecture, communicating useful knowledge or giving 
 good advice to the Brethren. 
 
 The Knights, of the I5th and i6th Degrees, wear the sword. 
 They are bound to prevent and repair, as far as may be in their 
 power, all injustice, both in the world and in Masonry ; to protect 
 the weak and to bring oppressors to justice. Their works and lec- 
 tures must be in this spirit. They should inquire whether Masonry 
 fulfills, as far as it ought and can, its principal purpose, which is 
 to succor the unfortunate. That it may do so, they should pre- 
 pare propositions to be offered in the Blue Lodges calculated to 
 attain that end, to put an end to abuses, and to prevent or correct 
 negligence. Those in the Lodges who have attained the rank of 
 Knights, are most fit to be appointed Almoners, and charged to 
 ascertain and make known who need and are entitled to the charity 
 of the Order. 
 
 In the higher Degrees those only should be received who have 
 sufficient reading and information to discuss the great questions 
 of philosophy. From them the Orators of the Lodges should be 
 selected, as well as those of the Councils and Chapters. They are 
 charged to suggest such measures as are necessary to make Masonry 
 entirely faithful to the spirit of its institution, both as to its charita- 
 ble purposes, and the diffusion of light and knowledge; such as 
 are needed to correct abuses that have crept in, and offences against 
 the rules and general spirit of the Order ; and such as will tend to 
 make it, as it was meant to be, the great Teacher of Mankind. 
 
 As Master of a Lodge, Council, or Chapter,it will be your duty to 
 impress upon the minds of your Brethren these views of the general 
 plan and separate parts of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ; 
 of its spirit and design ; its harmony and regularity ; of the duties 
 of the officers and members ; and of the particular lessons inten- 
 ded to be taught by each Degree. 
 
 Especially you are not to allow any assembly of the body over 
 which you may preside, to close, without recalling to the minds of
 
 GKANU MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 333 
 
 the Brethren the Masonic virtues and duties which are represented 
 upon the Tracing Board of this Degree. That is an imperative 
 duty. Forget not that, more than three thousand years ago, ZORO- 
 ASTER said : "Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your 
 fclloivs; console t\ie afflicted; pardon .those who hare done you 
 wrong." Nor that more than two thousand three hundred years ago 
 GONFUCIUS repeated, also quoting the language of those who had 
 lived before himself: "Love thy neighbor as thyself: Do not to oth- 
 ers what thou wouldst not wish should be done to thyself: Forgive 
 injuries. Forgive your enemy, be reconciled to him, give him as- 
 sistance, invoke God in his behalf!" 
 
 Let not the morality of your Lodge be inferior to that of the 
 Persian or the Chinese Philosopher. 
 
 Urge upon your Brethren the teaching and the unostentatious 
 practice of the morality of the Lodge, without regard to mes, 
 places, religions, or peoples. 
 
 Urge them to love one another, to be devoted to one another, to 
 be faithful to the country, the government, and the laws: 5or to 
 serve the country is to pay a dear and sacred debt : 
 
 To respect all forms of worship, to tolerate all political ,nd 
 religious opinions ; not to blame, and still less to condemn the 
 religion of others : not to seek to make converts ; but to be content 
 if they have the religion of Socrates ; a veneration for the Creator, 
 the religion of good works, and grateful acknowledgment of God's 
 blessings : 
 
 To fraternize with all men ; to assist all who are unfortunate ; 
 and to cheerfully postpone their own interests to that of the Order: 
 
 To make it the constant rule of their lives, to think well, to speak 
 well, and to act well: 
 
 To place the sage above the soldier, the noble, or the prince : 
 and take the wise and good as their models : 
 
 To see that their professions and practice, their teachings and 
 conduct, do always agree : 
 
 To make this also their motto: Do that which thou oughtest 
 to do ; let the result be what it will. 
 
 Such, my Brother, are some of the duties of that office which 
 you have sought to be qualified to exercise. May you perform them 
 well ; and in so doing gain honor for yourself, and advance the 
 great cause of Masonry, Humanity, and Progress.
 
 XXI. 
 
 NOACHITE, OR PRUSSIAN KNIGHT. 
 
 You are especially charged in this Degree to be modest and 
 humble, and not vain-glorious nor filled with self-conceit. Be not 
 wiser in your own opinion than the Deity, nor find fault with His 
 works, nor endeavor to improve upon what He has done. Be mod- 
 est also in your intercourse with your fellows, and slow to enter- 
 tain evil thoughts of them, and reluctant to ascribe to them evil 
 intentions. A thousand presses, flooding the country with their 
 evanescent leaves, are busily and incessantly engaged in maligning 
 the motives and conduct of men and parties, and in making one 
 man think worse of another ; while, alas, scarcely one is found 
 that ever, even accidentally, labors to make man think better of 
 nis fellow. 
 
 Slander and calumny were never so insolently licentious in any 
 country as they are this day in ours. The most retiring disposition, 
 the most unobtrusive demeanor, is no shield against their poi- 
 soned arrows. The most eminent public service only makes their 
 vituperation and invective more eager and more unscrupulous, 
 when he who has done such service presents himself as a candidate 
 for the people's suffrages. 
 
 The evil is wide-spread and universal. No man, no woman, no 
 household, is sacred or safe from this new Inquisition. No act is so 
 pure or so praiseworthy, that the unscrupulous vender of lies who 
 lives by pandering to a corrupt and morbid public appetite will 
 not proclaim it as a crime. No motive is so innocent or so laud- 
 able, that he will not hold it up as villainy. Journalism pries 
 into the interior of private houses, gloats over the details of do- 
 mestic tragedies of sin and shame, and deliberately invents and 
 industriously circulates the most unmitigated and baseless false- 
 hoods, to coin money for those who pursue it as a trade, or to 
 effect a temporary result in the wars of faction. 
 
 We need not enlarge upon these evils. They are apparent to all 
 and lamented over by all, and it is the duty of a Mason to do all 
 334
 
 NOACHITE, OR PRUSSIAN KNIGHT. 335 
 
 in his power to lessen, if not to remove them. With the errors 
 and even sins of other men, that do not personally affect us or ourr<, 
 and need not our condemnation to be odious, we have nothing to 
 do; and the journalist has no patent that makes him the Censor 
 of Morals. There is no obligation resting on us to trumpet forth 
 our disapproval of every wrongful or injudicious or improper act 
 that every other man commits. One would be ashamed to stand 
 on the street corners and retail them orally for pennies. 
 
 One ought, in truth, to write or speak against no other one in this 
 world. Each man in it has enough to do, to watch and keep guard 
 over himself. Each of us is sick enough in this great Lazaretto : 
 and journalism and polemical writing constantly remind us of a 
 scene once witnessed in a little hospital ; where it was horrible to 
 hear how the patients mockingly reproached each other with their 
 disorders and infirmities : how one, who was wasted by consumption, 
 jeered at another who was bloated by dropsy : how one laughed at 
 another's cancer of the face ; and this one again at his neighbor's 
 lock-jaw or squint ; until at last the delirious fever-patient sprang 
 out of his bed, and tore away the coverings from the wounded 
 bodies of his companions, and nothing was to be seen but hideous 
 misery and mutilation. Such is the revolting work in which jour- 
 nalism and political partisanship, and half the world outside of 
 Masonry, are engaged. 
 
 Very generally, the censure bestowed upon men's acts, by those 
 who have appointed and commissioned themselves Keepers of the 
 Public Morals, is undeserved. Often it is not only undeserved, 
 but praise is deserved instead of censure, and, when the latter 
 is not undeserved, it is always extravagant, and therefore un- 
 just. 
 
 A Mason will wonder what spirit they are endowed withal, that 
 can basely libel at a man, even, that is fallen. If they had any 
 nobility of soul, they would with him condole his disasters, and 
 drop some tears in pity of his folly and wretchedness : and if they 
 were merely human and not brutal, Nature did grievous wrong to 
 human bodies, to curse them with souls so cruel as to strive to add 
 to a wretchedness already intolerable. When a Mason hears of 
 any man that hath, fallen into public disgrace, he should have a 
 mind to commiserate his mishap, and not to make him more dis- 
 consolate. To envenom a name by libels, that already is openly 
 tainted, is to add stripes with an iron rod to one that is flayed with
 
 JJu MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 whipping; and to every well-tempered mind will seem most inhu- 
 man and unmanly. 
 
 Even the man who does wrong and commits errors often has a 
 quiet home, a fireside of his own, a gentle, loving wife and innocent 
 children, who perhaps do not know of his past errors and lapses 
 past and long repented of ; or if they do, they love him the better, 
 because, being mortal, he hath erred, and being in the image of 
 God, he hath repented. That every blow at this husband and 
 father lacerates the pure and tender bosoms of that wife and those 
 daughters, is a consideration that doth not stay the hand of the 
 brutal journalist and partisan : but he strikes home at these shrink- 
 ing, quivering, innocent, tender bosoms ; and then goes out upon 
 the great arteries of cities, where the current of life pulsates, and 
 holds his head erect, and calls on his fellows to laud him and 
 admire him, for the chivalric act he hath done, in striking 
 his dagger through one heart into another tender and trusting 
 one. 
 
 If you seek for high and strained carriages, you shall, for the 
 most part, meet with them in low men. Arrogance is a weed that 
 ever grows on a dunghill. It is from the rankness of that soil that 
 she hath her height and spreadings. To be modest and unaffected 
 with our superiors is duty ; with our equals, courtesy ; with our in- 
 feriors, nobleness. There is no arrogance so great as the proclaim- 
 ing of other men's errors and faults, by those who understand 
 nothing but the dregs of actions, and who make it their business 
 to besmear deserving fames. Public reproof is like striking a deer 
 in the herd : it not only wounds him, to the loss of blood, but 
 betrays him to the hound, his enemy. 
 
 The occupation of the spy hath ever been held dishonorable, 
 and it is none the less so, now that with rare exceptions editors 
 and partisans have become perpetual spies upon the actions of 
 other men. Their malice makes them nimble-eyed, apt to note a 
 fault and publish it, and, with a strained construction, to deprave 
 even those things in which the doer's intents were honest. Like 
 the crocodile, they slime the way of others, to make them fall : 
 and when that has happened, they feed their insulting envy on the 
 life-blood of the prostrate. They set the vices of .other men on high, 
 for the gaze of the world, and place their virtues under-ground, 
 that none may note them. If thev cannot wound upon proofs, they 
 will do it upon likelihoods : and if not upon them, they manufac-
 
 NOACHITE, OR PRUSSIAN KNIGHT. 337 
 
 hire lies, as God created the world, out of nothing: and so corrupt 
 the fair tempter of men's reputations ; knowing that the multitude 
 will believe them, because affirmations are apter to win belief, than 
 negatives to uncredit them ; and that a lie travels faster than an 
 eagle flies, while the contradiction limps after it at a snail's pace, 
 and, halting, never overtakes it. Nay, it is contrary to the morality 
 of journalism, to allow a lie to be contradicted in the place that 
 spawned it. And even if that great favor is conceded, a slander 
 once raised will scarce ever die, or fail of finding many that will 
 allow it both a harbor and trust. 
 
 This is, beyond any other, the age of falsehood. Once, to be 
 suspected of equivocation was enough to soil a gentleman's escut- 
 cheon ; but now it has become a strange merit in a partisan or 
 statesman, always and scrupulously to tell the truth. Lies are part 
 of the regular ammunition of all campaigns and controversies, 
 valued according as they are profitable and effective ; and are stored 
 up and have a market price, like saltpetre and sulphur ; being even 
 more deadly than they. 
 
 If men weighed the imperfections of humanity, they would 
 breathe less condemnation. Ignorance gives disparagement a 
 louder tongue than knowledge does. Wise men had rather know, 
 than tell. Frequent dispraises are but the faults of uncharitable 
 wit : and it is from where there is no j udgment, that the heaviest 
 judgment comes; for self-examination would make all judgments 
 charitable. If we even do know vices in men, we can scarce show 
 ourselves in a nobler virtue than in the charity of concealing them : 
 if that be not a flattery persuading to continuance. And it is 
 the basest office man can fall into, to make his tongue the defamer 
 of the worthy man. 
 
 There is but one rule for the Mason in this matter. If there be 
 virtues, and he is called upon to speak of him who owns them, let 
 him tell them forth impartially. And if there be vices mixed with 
 them, let him be content the world shall know them by some other 
 tongue than his. For if the evil-doer deserve no pity, his wife, his 
 parents, or his children, or other innocent persons who love him 
 may ; and the bravo's trade, practised by him who stabs the de- 
 fenceless for a price paid by individual or party, is really no more 
 respectable now than it was a hundred years ago, in Venice. Where 
 we want experience. Charity bids us think the best, and leave what 
 we know not to the Searcher of Hearts : for mistakes, suspicions,
 
 338 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and envy often injure a clear fame ; and there is least danger in a 
 charitable construction. 
 
 And, finally, the Mason should be humble and modest toward 
 the Grand Architect of the Universe, and not impugn His Wisdom, 
 nor set up his own imperfect sense of Right against His Providence 
 and dispensations, nor attempt too rashly to explore the Mysteries 
 of God's Infinite Essence and inscrutable plans, and of that Great 
 Nature which we are not made capable to understand. 
 
 Let him steer far away from all those vain philosophies, which 
 endeavor to account for all that is, without admitting that there is 
 a God, separate and apart from the Universe which is his work: 
 which erect Universal Nature into a God, and worship it alone : 
 which annihilate Spirit, and believe no testimony except that of 
 the bodily senses : which, by logical formulas and dextrous colloca- 
 tion of words, make the actual, living, guiding, and protecting God 
 fade into the dim mistiness of a mere abstraction and unreality, 
 itself a mere logical formula. 
 
 Nor let him have any alliance with those theonsts who chide the 
 delays of Providence and busy themselves to hasten the slow march 
 which it has imposed upon events : who neglect the practical, to 
 struggle after impossibilities : who are wiser than Heaven ; know 
 the aims and purposes of the Deity, and can see a short and 
 more direct means of attaining them, than it pleases Him to em- 
 ploy : who would have no discords in the great harmony of the 
 Universe of things ; but equal distribution of property, no subjec- 
 tion of one man to the will of another, no compulsory labor, and 
 still no starvation, nor destitution, nor pauperism. 
 
 Let him not spend his life, as they do, in building a new Tower 
 of Babel ; in attempting to change that which is fixed by an in- 
 flexible law of God's enactment: but let him, yielding to the 
 Superior Wisdom of Providence, content to believe that the march 
 of events is rightly ordered by an Infinite Wisdom, and leads, 
 though we cannot see it, to a great and perfect result, let him 
 be satisfied to follow the path pointed out by that Providence, and 
 to labor for the good of the human race in that mode in which 
 God has chosen to enact that that good shall be effected: and 
 above all, let him build no Tower of Babel, under the belief that 
 by ascending he will mount so high that God will disappear or be su- 
 perseded by a great monstrous aggregate of material forces, or mere 
 glittering, logical formula; but, evermore, standing humbly and
 
 NOACBITE, OR PRUSSIAN KNIGHT. 
 
 339 
 
 reverently upon the earth and looking with awe and confidence 
 toward Heaven, let him be satisfied that there is a real God; a 
 person, and not a formula; a Father and a protector, who loves, 
 and sympathizes, and compassionates ; and that the eternal ways 
 by which He rules the world are infinitely wise, no matter how 
 far they may be above the feeble comprehension and limited vision 
 of man.
 
 XXII. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE 
 
 PRINCE OF LIBANUS. 
 
 SYMPATHY with the great laboring classes, respect for labor itself, 
 and resolution to do some good ivork in our day and generation, 
 these are the lessons of this Degree, and they are purely Masonic. 
 Masonry has made a working-man and his associates the Heroes 
 of her principal legend, and himself the companion of Kings. 
 The idea is as simple and true as it is sublime. From first to last, 
 Masonry is work. It venerates the Grand Architect of the Uni- 
 verse. It commemorates the building of a Temple. Its princi- 
 pal emblems are the working tools of Masons and Artisans. It 
 preserves the name of the first worker in brass and iron as one of 
 its pass-words. When the Brethren meet together, they are at 
 labor. The Master is the overseer who sets the craft to work and 
 gives them proper instruction. Masonry is the apotheosis of WORK. 
 
 It is the hands of brave, forgotten men that have made this great, 
 populous, cultivated world a world for us. It is all work, and 
 forgotten work. The real conquerors, creators, and eternal propri- 
 etors of every great and civilized land are all the heroic souls that 
 ever were in it, each in his degree : all the men that ever felled a 
 forest-tree or drained a marsh, or contrived a wise scheme, or did 
 or said a true or valiant thing therein. Genuine work alone, done 
 faithfully, is eternal, even as the Almighty Founder and World- 
 builder Himself. All work is noble : a life of ease is not for any 
 man, nor for any God. The Almighty Maker is not like one who. 
 in old immemorial ages, having made his machine of a Universe, 
 sits ever since, and sees it go. Out of that belief comes Atheism. 
 The faith in an Invisible, Unnameable. Directing Deity, present 
 everywhere in all that we see. and work, and suffer, is the essence 
 of all faith whatsoever. 
 
 The life of all Gods figures itself to us as a Sublime Earnestness, 
 34o
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE. 34! 
 
 of Infinite battle against Infinite labor. Our highest religion 
 is named the Worship of Sorrow. For the Son of Man there is no 
 noble crown, well-worn, or even ill-worn, but is a crown of thorns. 
 Man's highest destiny is not to be happy, to love pleasant things 
 and find them. His only true ;mappiness should be that he 
 cannot work, and get his destiny as a man fulfilled. The day passes 
 swiftly over, our life passes swiftly over, and the night cometh, 
 wherein no man can work. That night once come, our happiness 
 and unhappiness are vanished, and become as things that never 
 were. But our work is not abolished, and has not vanished. It 
 remains, or the want of it remains, for endless Times and Eterni- 
 ties. 
 
 Whatsoever of morality and intelligence ; what of patience, per- 
 severance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy ; in 
 a word, whatsoever of STRENGTH a man has in him, will lie written 
 in the WORK he does. To work is to try himself against Nature and 
 her unerring, everlasting laws : and they will return true verdict 
 as to him. The noblest Epic is a mighty Empire slowly built to- 
 gether, a mighty series of heroic deeds, a mighty conquest over 
 chaos. Deeds are greater than words. They have a life, mute, 
 but undeniable ; and grow. They people the vacuity of Time, and 
 make it green and worthy. 
 
 Labor is the truest emblem of God, the Architect and Eter- 
 nal Maker ; nobleJLabor, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, 
 and sit on the highest Throne. Men without duties to do, are 
 like trees planted on precipices ; from the roots of which all the 
 earth has crumbled. Nature owns no man who is not also a Mar- 
 tyr. She scorns the man who sits screened from all work, from 
 want, danger, hardship, the victory over which is work ; and has 
 all his work and battling done by other men ; and yet there are 
 men who pride themselves that they and theirs have done no work 
 time out of mind. So neither have the swine. 
 
 The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men, fronting 
 the peril which frightens back all others, and if not vanquished 
 would devour them. Hercules was worshipped for twelve labors. 
 The Czar of Russia became a toiling shipwright, and worked with 
 his axe in the docks of Saardam ; and something came of that. 
 Cromwell worked, and Napoleon ; and effected somewhat. 
 
 There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. Re 
 he never so benighted and forgetful o* his high calling, there is 
 23
 
 34 2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works : in Idleness 
 alone is there perpetual Despair. Man perfects himself by working. 
 Jungles are cleared away. Fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately 
 cities ; and withal, the man himself first ceases to be a foul un- 
 wholesome jungle and desert thereby. Even in the meanest sort 
 of labor, the whole soul of man is composed into a kind of real 
 harmony, the moment he begins to work. Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, 
 Remorse, Indignation, and even Despair shrink murmuring far off 
 into their caves, whenever the man bends himself resolutely against 
 his task. Labor is life. From the inmost heart of the worker rises 
 his God-given Force, the Sacred Celestial Life-essence, breathed 
 into him by Almighty God ; and awakens him to all nobleness, 
 as soon as work fitly begins. By it man learns Patience, Courage, 
 Perseverance, Openness to light, readiness to own himself mistaken, 
 resolution to do better and improve. Onl> by labor will man contin- 
 ually learn the virtues. There is no Religion in stagnation and 
 inaction ; but only in activity and exertion. There was the deep- 
 est truth in that saying of the old monks, "laborare est orare." "He 
 prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small ;" and 
 can man love except by working earnestly to benefit that being 
 whom he loves? 
 
 "Work ; and therein have well-being," is the oldest of Gospels ; 
 unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, and Enduring forever. 
 To make Disorder, wherever found, an eternal enemy ; to attack 
 and subdue him, and make order of him, the subject not of Chaos, 
 but of Intelligence and Divinity, and of ourselves ; to attack igno- 
 rance, stupidity and brute-mindedness, wherever found, to smite 
 it wisely and umveariedly, to rest not while we live and it lives, in 
 the name of God, this is our duty as Masons ; commanded us by the 
 Highest God. Even He, with his unspoken voice, more awful than 
 the thunders of Sinai, or the syllabled speech of the Hurricane, 
 speaks to us. The Unborn Ages : the old Graves, with their long- 
 moldering dust speak to us. The deep Death-Kingdoms, the Stars 
 in their never-resting course, all Space and all Time, silently and 
 continually admonish us that we too must work while it is called 
 to-day. Labor, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. 
 To toil, whether with the sweat of the brow, or of the brain or 
 heart, is worship, the noblest thing yet discovered beneath the 
 Stars. Let the weary cease to think that labor is a curse and 
 doom pronounced by Deity. Without it there could be no true
 
 IINIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE. 343 
 
 excellence in human nature. Without it, and pain, and sorrow, 
 where would be the human virtues? Where Patience, Perseverance, 
 Submission, Energy, Endurance, Fortitude, Bravery, Disinteres- 
 tedness, Self-Sacrifice, the noblest excellencies of the Soul ? 
 
 Let him who toils complain not, nor feel humiliated ! Let him 
 look up, and see his fellow-workmen there, in God's Eternity ; 
 they alone surviving there. Even in the weak human memory 
 they long survive, as Saints, as Heroes, and as Gods : they alone 
 survive, and people the unmeasured solitudes of Time. 
 
 To the primeval man, whatsoever good came, descended on him 
 (as in mere fact, it ever does) direct from God ; whatsoever duty 
 lay visible for him, this a Supreme God had prescribed. For the 
 primeval man, in whom dwelt Thought, this Universe was all a 
 Temple, life everywhere a Worship. 
 
 Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle. To work 
 with the hands or brain, according to our acquirements and our 
 capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable 
 than rank and title. Ploughers, spinners and builders, inventors, 
 and men of science, poets, advocates, and writers, all stand upon 
 one common level, and form one grand, innumerable host, march- 
 ing ever onward since the beginning of the world : each entitled 
 to our sympathy and respect, each a man and our brother. 
 
 It was well to give the earth to man as a dark mass, whereon to 
 labor. It was well to provide rude and unsightly materials in the 
 ore-bed and the forest, for him to fashion into splendor and beauty. 
 It was well, not because of that splendor and beauty ; but because 
 the act creating them is better than the things themselves ; be- 
 cause exertion is nobler than enjoyment ; because the laborer is 
 greater and more worthy of honor than the idler. Masonry stands 
 up for the nobility of labor. It is Heaven's great ordinance for 
 human improvement. It has been broken down for ages ; and 
 Masonry desires to build it up again. It has been broken down, 
 because men toil only because they must, submitting to it as. in 
 some sort, a degrading necessity ; and desiring nothing so much 
 on earth as to escape from it. They fulfill the great law of labor 
 in the letter, but break it in the spirit: they fulfill it with the 
 muscles, but break it with the mind. 
 
 Masonry teaches that every idler ought to hasten to some field 
 of labor, manual or mental, as a chosen and coveted theatre of 
 improvement ; but he is not impelled to do so, under the teachings
 
 344 MORALS AND DOOM A. 
 
 of an imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds 
 his hands, and blesses and glorifies himself in his idleness. It is 
 time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. To be ashamed 
 of toil; of the dingy workshop and dusty labor-field; of the hard 
 hand, stained with service more honorable than that of war; of 
 the soiled and weather-stained garments, on which Mother Nature 
 has stamped, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own her- 
 aldic honors ; to be ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envi- 
 ous of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity, is treason 
 to Nature, impiety to Heaven, a breach of Heaven's great Ordi- 
 nance. TOIL, of bjain, heart, or hand, is the only true manhood 
 and genuine nobility. 
 
 Labor is a more beneficent ministration than man's ignorance 
 comprehends, or his complainings will admit. Even when its end 
 is hidden from him, it is not mere blind drudgery. It is all a 
 training, a discipline, a development of energies, a nurse of virtues, 
 a school of improvement. From the poor boy who gathers a few 
 sticks for his mother's hearth, to the strong man who fells the oak 
 or guides the ship or the steam-car, every human toiler, with every 
 weary step and every urgent task, is obeying a wisdom far above 
 his own wisdom, and fulfilling a design far beyond his own design. 
 
 The great law of human industry is this : that industry, working 
 either with the hand or the mind, the application of our powers 
 to some task, to the achievement of some result, lies at the foun- 
 dation of all human improvement. We are not sent into the world 
 like animals, to crop the spontaneous herbage of the field, and 
 then to lie down in indolent repose : but we are sent to dig 
 the soil and plough the sea ; to do the business of cities and the 
 work of manufactories. The world is the great and appointed 
 school of industry. In an artificial state of society, mankind is 
 divided into the idle and the laboring classes ; but such was not 
 the design of Providence. 
 
 Labor is man's great function, his peculiar distinction and his 
 privilege. From being an animal, that eats and drinks and sleeps 
 only, to become a worker, and with the hand of ingenuity to pour 
 his own thoughts int the moulds of Nature, fashioning them into 
 forms of grace and fabrics of convenience, and converting them 
 to purposes of improvement and happiness, is the greatest possible 
 step in privilege. 
 
 The Earth and the Atmosphere are man's laboratory. With
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE. 345 
 
 spade and plough, with mining-shafts and furnaces and forges, 
 with fire and steam; midst the noise and. whirl of swift and bright 
 machinery, and abroad in the silent fields, man was made to be 
 ever working, ever experimenting. And while he and all his dwell- 
 ings of care and toil are borne onward with the circling skies, and 
 the splendors of Heaven are around him, and their infinite depths 
 image and invite his thought, still in all the worlds of philosophy, 
 in the universe of intellect, man must be a worker. He is nothing, he 
 can be nothing, can achieve nothing, fulfill nothing, without work- 
 ing. Without it, he can gain neither lofty improvement nor tolerable 
 happiness. The idle must hunt down the hours as their prey. To 
 them Time is an enemy, clothed with armor ; and they must kill 
 him, or themselves die. It never yet did answer, and it never will 
 answer, for any man to do nothing, to be exempt from all care and 
 effort, to lounge, to walk, to ride, and to feast alone. No man can 
 live in that way. God made a law against it: which no human 
 pov.-'er can annul, no human ingenuity evade. 
 
 The idea that a property is to be acquired in the course of ten 
 or twenty years, which shall suffice for the rest of life ; that by 
 some prosperous traffic or grand speculation, all the labor of a 
 whole life is to be accomplished in a brief portion of it; that by 
 dexterous management, a large part of the term of human existence 
 is to be exonerated from the cares of industry and self-denial, is 
 founded upon a grave mistake, upon a misconception of the true 
 nature and design of business, and of the conditions of human 
 well-being. The desire of accumulation for the sake of securing a 
 life of ease and gratification, of escaping from exertion and self- 
 denial, is wholly wrong, though very common. 
 
 It is better for the Mason to live while he lives, and enjoy life as it 
 passes : to live richer and die poorer. It is best of all for him to 
 banish from the mind that empty dream of future indolence and 
 indulgence ; to address himself to the business of 'ife, as the scliDol 
 of his earthly education ; to settle it with himself now that independ- 
 ence, if he gains it, is not to give him exemption from employment. 
 It is best for him to know, that, in order to be a happy man, he 
 must always be a laborer, with the mind or the body, or with 
 both : and that the reasonable exertion of his powers, bodily and 
 mental, is not to be regarded as mere drudgery, but as a good dis- 
 cipline, a wise ordination, a training in this primary school of our 
 being, for nobler endeavors, and spheres of higher activity hereafter.
 
 346 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 There are reasons why a Mason may lawfully and even earnestly 
 desire a fortune. If he can fill some fine palace, itself a work of 
 art, with the productions of lofty genius ; if he can be the friend 
 and helper of humble worth ; if he can seek it out, where failing 
 health or adverse fortune presses it hard, and soften or stay the 
 bitter hours that are hastening it to madness or to the grave ; if 
 he can stand between the oppressor and his prey, and bid the fetter 
 and the dungeon give up their victim ; if he can build up great insti- 
 tutions of learning, and academies of art ; if he can open fountains 
 of knowledge for the people, and conduct its streams in the right 
 channels; if he can do better for the poor than to bestow alms 
 upon them even to think of them, and devise plans for their ele- 
 vation in knowledge and virtue, instead of forever opening the old 
 reservoirs and resources for their improvidence ; if he has sufficient 
 heart and soul to do all this, or part of it ; if wealth would be 
 to him the handmaid of exertion, facilitating effort, and giving 
 success to endeavor ; then may he lawfully, and yet warily and 
 modestly, desire it. But if it is to do nothing for him, but to min- 
 ister ease and indulgence, and to place his children in the same 
 bad school, then there is no reason why he should desire it. 
 
 What is there glorious in the world, that is not the product of 
 labor, either of the body or of the mind ? What is history, but its 
 record? What are the treasures of genius and art, but its work? 
 What are cultivated fields, but its toil? The busy marts, the ris- 
 ing cities, the enriched empires of the world are but the great 
 treasure-houses of labor The pyramids of Egypt, the castles and 
 towers and temples of Europe, the buried cities of Italy and 
 Mexico, the canals and railroads of Christendom, are but tracks, 
 all round the world, of the mighty footsteps of labor. Without it 
 antiquity would not have been. Without it, there would be no 
 memory of the past, and no hope for the future. 
 
 Even utter indolence reposes on treasures that labor at some 
 time gained and gathered. He that does nothing, and yet does 
 not starve, has still his significance ; for he is a standing proof that 
 somebody has at some time worked. But not to such does Masonry 
 do honor. It honors the Worker, the Toiler; him who produces 
 and not alone consumes ; him who puts forth his hand to add to 
 the treasury of human comforts, and not alone to take away. It 
 honors him who goes forth amid the struggling elements to fight 
 his battle, and who shrinks not, with cowardly effeminacy, behind
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE. 347 
 
 pillows of ease. It honors the strong muscle, and the manly nerve, 
 and the resolute and brave heart, the sweating brow, and the toil- 
 ing brain. It honors the great and beautiful offices of humanity, 
 manhood's toil and woman's task; paternal industry and mater- 
 nal watching and weariness ; wisdom teaching and patience learn- 
 ing; the brow of care that presides over the State, and many- 
 handed labor that toils in workshop, field, and study, beneath its 
 mild and beneficent sway. 
 
 God has not made a world of rich men ; but rather a world of 
 poor men ; or of men, at least, who must toil for a subsistence. 
 That is, then, the best condition for man, and the grand sphere of 
 human improvement. If the whole world could acquire wealth, 
 (and one man is as much entitled to it as another, when he is 
 born) ; if the present generation could lay up a complete provision 
 for the next, as some men desire to do for their children ; the 
 world would be destroyed at a single blow. All industry would 
 cease with the necessity for it ; all improvement would stop 
 with the demand for exertion ; the dissipation of fortunes, the 
 mischiefs of which are now countervailed by the healthful tone of 
 society, would breed universal disease, and break out into universal 
 license ; and the world would sink, rotten as Herod, into the grave 
 of its own loathsome vices. 
 
 Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the 
 world, have been achieved by poor men ; poor scholars, poor pro- 
 fessional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, 
 and men of genius. A certain staidness and sobriety, a certain 
 moderation and restraint, a certain pressure of circumstances, are 
 good for man. His body was not made for luxuries. It sickens, 
 sinks, and dies under them. His mind was not made for indul- 
 gence. It grows weak, effeminate, and dwarfish, under that condi- 
 tion. And he who pampers his body with luxuries and his mind 
 with indulgence, bequeaths the consequences to the minds and bod- 
 ies of his descendants, without the wealth which was their cause. 
 For wealth, without a law of entail to help it, has always lacked 
 the energy even to keep its own treasures. They drop from its 
 imbecile hand. The third generation almost inevitably goes clown 
 the rolling wheel of fortune, and there learns the energy necessary 
 to rise again, if it rises at all; heir, as it is, to the bodily diseases, 
 and mental weaknesses, and the soul's vices of its ancestors, and 
 not heir to their wealth. And yet we are. almost all of us, anxious
 
 34$ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to put our children, or to insure that our grand-children shall be 
 put, on this road to indulgence, luxury, vice, degradation, and 
 ruin ; this heirship of hereditary disease, soul malady, and mental 
 leprosy. 
 
 If wealth were employed in promoting mental culture at home 
 and works of philanthropy abroad ; if it were multiplying studies 
 of art, and building up institutions of learning around us; if it 
 were in every way raising the intellectual character of the world, 
 Jhere could scarcely be too much of it. But if the utmost aim, 
 effort, and ambition of wealth -be, to procure rich furniture/ and 
 provide costly entertainments, and build luxurious houses, and 
 minister to vanity, extravagance, and ostentation, there could 
 scarcely be too little of it. To a certain extent it may laudably be 
 the minister of elegancies and luxuries, and the servitor of hospi- 
 tality and physical enjoyment: but just in proportion as its 
 tendencies, divested of all higher aims and tastes, are running that 
 way, they are running to peril and evil. 
 
 Nor does that peril attach to individuals and families alone. It 
 stands, a fearful beacon, in the experience of Cities, Republics, and 
 Empires. The lessons of past times, on this subject, are emphatic 
 and solemn. The history of wealth has always been a history of 
 corruption and downfall. The people never existed that could 
 stand the trial. Boundless profusion is too little likely to spread 
 for any people the theatre of manly energy, rigid self-denial, and 
 lofty virtue. You do not look for the bone and sinew and 
 strength of a country, its loftiest talents and virtues, its martyrs 
 to patriotism or religion, its men to meet the days of peril and 
 disaster, among the children of ease, indulgence, and luxury. 
 
 In the great march of the races of men over the earth, we 
 have always seen opulence and luxury sinking before poverty and 
 toil and hardy nurture. That is the law which has presided over 
 the great processions of empire. Sidon and Tyre, whose mer- 
 chants possessed the wealth of princes ; Babylon and Palmyra, 
 the seats of Asiatic luxury ; Rome, laden with the spoils of a world, 
 overwhelmed by her own vices more than by the hosts of her ene- 
 mies ; all these, and many more, are examples of the destructive 
 tendencies of immense and unnatural accumulation : and men 
 must become more generous and benevolent, not more selfish and 
 effeminate, as they become more rich, or the history of modern 
 wealth will follow in the sad train of all past examples.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE. 349 
 
 All men desire distinction, and feel the need of some ennobling 
 object in life. Those persons are usually most happy and satisfied 
 in their pursuits, who have the loftiest ends in view. Artists, 
 mechanicians, and inventors, all who seek to find principles or de- 
 velop beauty in their work, seem most to enjoy it. The farmer 
 who labors for the beautifying and scientific cultivation of his 
 estate, is more happy in his labors than one who tills his own land 
 for a mere subsistence. This is one of the signal testimonies 
 which all human employments give to the high demands of our 
 nature. To gather wealth never gives such satisfaction as to bring 
 the humblest piece of machinery to perfection : at least, when 
 wealth is sought for display and ostentation, or mere luxury, and 
 ease, and pleasure; and not for ends of philanthropy, the relief 
 of kindred, or the payment of just debts, or as a means to attain 
 some other great and noble object. 
 
 With the pursuits of multitudes is connected a painful conviction 
 that they neither supply a sufficient object, nor confer any satis- 
 factory honor. Why work, if the world is soon not to know that 
 such a being ever existed ; and when one can perpetuate his name 
 neither on canvas nor on marble, nor in books, nor by lofty elo- 
 quence, nor statesmanship? 
 
 The answer is, that every man has a work to do in himself, greater 
 and sublimer than any work of genius ; and works upon a nobler 
 material than wood or marble upon his own soul and intellect, 
 and may so attain the highest nobleness and grandeur known on 
 earth orinHeaven ; mayso be the greatest of artists, and of authors, 
 and his life, which is far more than speech, may be eloquent. 
 
 The great author or artist only portrays what every man should 
 be. He conceives, what we should do. He conceives, and represents 
 moral beauty, magnanimity, fortitude, love, devotion, forgiveness, 
 the soul's greatness. He portrays virtues, commended to our 
 admiration and imitation. To embody these portraitures in our 
 lives is the practical realization of those great ideals of art. The 
 magnanimity of Heroes, celebrated on the historic or poetic page ; 
 the constancy and faith of Truth's martyrs ; the beauty of love 
 and piety glowing on the canvas ; the delineations of Truth and 
 Right, that flash from the lips of the Eloquent, are, in their essence 
 only that which every man may feel and practise in the daily 
 walks of life. The work of virtue is nobler than any work of 
 genius ; for it is a nobler thing to be a hero than to describe one.
 
 35 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to endure martyrdom than to paint it, to do right than to plead 
 for it. Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler 
 object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two 
 things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; 
 and to write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of 
 these is the doing. 
 
 Every man has to do the noblest thing that any man can do or 
 describe. There is a wide field for the courage, cheerfulness, en- 
 ergy, and dignity of human existence. Let therefore no Mason 
 deem his life doomed to mediocrity or meanness, to vanity or un- 
 profitable toil, or to any ends less than immortal. No one can 
 truly say that the grand prizes of life are for others, and he can 
 do nothing. No matter how magnificent and noble an act the 
 author can describe or the artist paint, it will be still nobler for 
 you to go and do that which one describes, or be the model which 
 the other draws. 
 
 The loftiest action that ever was described is not more magnani- 
 mous than that which we may find occasion to do, in the daily walks 
 of life ; in temptation, in distress, in bereavement, in the solemn ap- 
 proach to death. In the great Providence of God, in the great ordi- 
 nances of our being, there is opened to every man a sphere for the 
 noblest action. It is not even in extraordinary situations, where all 
 eyes are upon us, where all our energy is aroused, and all our vigi- 
 lance is awake, that the highest efforts of virtue are usually demand- 
 ed of us; but rather in. silence and seclusion, amidst our occupa- 
 tions and our homes ; in wearing sickness, that makes no complaint ; 
 in sorely-tried honesty, that asks no praise ; in simple disinterest- 
 edness, hiding the hand that resigns its advantage to another. 
 
 Masonry seeks to ennoble common life. Its work is to go down 
 into the obscure and unsearched records of daily conduct and 
 feeling ; and to portray, not the ordinary virtue of an extraordi- 
 nary life ; but the more extraordinary virtue of ordinary life. What 
 is done and borne in the shades of privacy, in the hard and beaten 
 path of daily care and toil, full of uncelebrated sacrifices ; in the 
 suffering, and sometimes insulted suffering, that wears to the 
 world a cheerful brow ; in the long strife of the spirit, resisting 
 pain, penury, and neglect, carried on in the inmost depths of the 
 heart ; what is done, and borne, and wrought, and won there, is 
 a higher glory, and shall inherit a brighter crown. 
 
 On the volume of Masonic life one bright word is written, from
 
 KNIGHT OK THE ROYAL AXE. 351 
 
 which on every side blazes an ineffable splendor. That word is 
 DUTY. 
 
 To aid in securing to all labor permanent employment and its 
 just reward: to help to hasten the coming of that time when no 
 one shall suffer from hunger or destitution, because, though will- 
 ing and able to work, he can find no employment, or because he 
 has been overtaken by sickness in the midst of his labor, are part 
 of your duties as a Knight of the Royal Axe. And if we can succeed 
 in making some small nook of God's creation a little more fruitful 
 and cheerful, a little better and more worthy of Him, or in mak- 
 ing some one or two human hearts a little wiser, and more manful 
 and hopeful and happy, we shall have done work, worthy of Ma- 
 sons, and acceptable to our Father in Heaven.
 
 XXIII. 
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 AMONG most of the Ancient Nations there was, in addition to 
 their public worship, a private one styled the Mysteries ; to which 
 those only were admitted who had been prepared by certain cere- 
 monies called initiations. 
 
 The most widely disseminated of the ancient worships were 
 those of Isis, Orpheus, Dionusos, Ceres, and Mithras. Many bar- 
 barous nations received the knowledge of the Mysteries in honor 
 of these divinities from the Egyptians, before they arrived in 
 Greece; and even in the British Isles the Druids celebrated those 
 of Dionusos, learned by them from the Egyptians. 
 
 The Mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated at Athens in honor of Ceres, 
 swallowed up, as it were, all the others. All the neighboring na- 
 tions neglected their own, to celebrate those of Eleusis ; and in a 
 little while all Greece and Asia Minor were filled with the Initi- 
 ates. They spread into the Roman Empire, and even beyond its 
 limits, "those holy and august Eleusinian Mysteries," said Cicero, 
 "in which the people of the remotest lands are initiated." Zosi- 
 mus says that they embraced the whole human race ; and Aristides 
 termed them the common temple of the whole world. 
 
 There were, in the Eleusinian feasts, two sorts of Mysteries, the 
 great, and the little. The latter were a kind of preparation for 
 the former; and everybody was admitted to them. Ordinarily 
 there was a novitiate of three, and sometimes of four years. 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria says that what was taught in the great 
 Mysteries concerned the Universe, and was the completion and 
 perfection of all instruction ; wherein things were seen as they 
 were, and nature and her works were made known. 
 
 The ancients said that the Initiates would be more happy after 
 death than other mortals ; and that, while the souls of the Profane 
 on leaving their bodies, would be plunged in the mire, and remain 
 buried in darkness, those of the Initiates would fly to the Fortu- 
 nate Isles, the abode of the Gods. 
 352
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 Plato said that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish 
 the soul in its primitive purity, and in that state of perfection 
 which it had lost. Epictetus said, "whatever is met with therein 
 has been instituted by our Masters, for the instruction of man and 
 the correction of morals." 
 
 Proclus held that initiation elevated the soul, from a material, 
 sensual, and purely human life, to a communion and celestial in- 
 tercourse with the Gods ; and that a variety of things, forms, and 
 species were shown Initiates, representing the first generation of 
 the Gods. 
 
 Purity of morals and elevation of soul were required of the Initi- 
 ates. Candidates were required to be of spotless reputation and 
 irreproachable virtue. Nero, after murdering his mother, did not 
 dare to be present at the celebration of the Mysteries : and Antony 
 presented himself to be initiated, as the most infallible mode of 
 proving his innocence of the death of Avidius Cassius. 
 
 The Initiates were regarded as the only fortunate men. "It is 
 upon us alone," says Aristophanes, "shineth the beneficent day- 
 star. We alone receive pleasure from the influence of his rays ; 
 we, who are initiated, and who practise toward citizen and strax- 
 ger every possible act of justice and piety." And it is therefore 
 not surprising that, in time, initiation came to be considered as 
 necessary as baptism afterward was to the Christians ; and 
 that not to have been admitted to the Mysteries was held a 
 dishonor. 
 
 "It seems to me," says the great orator, philosopher, and moral- 
 ist, Cicero, "that Athens, among many excellent inventions, divine 
 and very useful to the human family, has produced none compar- 
 able to the Mysteries, which for a wild and ferocious life have 
 substituted humanity and urbanity of manners. It is with good 
 reason they use the term initiation; for it is through them that 
 we in reality have learned the first principles of life; and they 
 not only teach us to live in a manner more consoling and agree- 
 able, but they soften the pains of death by the hope of a better 
 life hereafter." 
 
 Where the Mysteries originated is not known. It is supposed 
 that they came from India, by the way of Chaldasa, into Egypt, and 
 thence were carried into Greece. Wherever they arose, they were 
 practised among all the ancient nations; and, as was usual, the 
 Thracians, Cretans, and Athenians each claimed the honor of in-
 
 354 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 vention, and each insisted that they had borrowed nothing from 
 any other people. 
 
 In Egypt and the East, all religion, even in its most poetical 
 forms, was more or less a mystery ; and the chief reason why, in 
 Greece, a distinct name and office were assigned to the Mysteries, 
 was because the superficial popular theology left a want unsatis- 
 fied, which religion in a wider sense alone could supply. They 
 were practical acknowledgments of the insufficiency of the popular 
 religion to satisfy the deeper thoughts and aspirations of the mind. 
 The vagueness of symbolism might perhaps reach what a more 
 palpable and conventional creed could not. The former, by its 
 indefiniteness, acknowledged the abstruseness of its subject; it 
 treated a mysterious subject mystically ; it endeavored to illustrate 
 what it could not explain ; to excite an appropriate feeling, if it 
 could not develop an adequate idea ; and made the image a mere 
 subordinate conveyance for the conception, which itself never 
 became too obvious or familiar. 
 
 The instruction now conveyed by books and letters was of old 
 conveyed by symbols ; and the priest had to invent or to perpetu- 
 ate a display of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more 
 attractive to the eye than words, but often to the mind more sug- 
 gestive and pregnant with meaning. 
 
 Afterward, the institution became rather moral and political, 
 than religious. The civil magistrates shaped the ceremonies to 
 political ends in Egypt ; the sages who carried them from that 
 country to Asia, Greece, and the North of Europe, were all kings 
 or legislators. The chief magistrate presided at those of Eleusis, 
 represented by an officer styled King: and the Priest played but 
 a subordinate part. 
 
 The Powers revered in the Mysteries were all in reality Nature- 
 Gods ; none of whom could be consistently addressed as mere 
 heroes, because their nature was confessedly super-heroic. The 
 Mysteries, only in fact a more solemn expression of the religion of 
 the ancient poetry, taught that doctrine of the Theocracia or 
 Divine Oneness, which even poetry does not entirely conceal. 
 They were not in any open hostility with the popular religion, but 
 only a more solemn exhibition of its symbols ; or rather a part 
 of itself in a more impressive form. The essence of all Mysteries, 
 as of all polytheism, consists in this, that the conception of an 
 unapproachable Being, single, eternal, and unchanging, and that
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 355 
 
 of a God of Nature, whose manifold power is immediately revealed 
 to the senses in the incessant round of movement, life, and death, 
 fell asunder in the treatment, and were separately symbolized. 
 They offered a perpetual problem to excite curiosity, and con- 
 tributed to satisfy the all-pervading religious sentiment, which if it 
 obtain no nourishment among the simple and intelligible, finds 
 compensating excitement in a reverential contemplation of the 
 obscure. 
 
 Nature is as free from dogmatism as from tyranny ; and th . 
 earliest instructors of mankind not only adopted her lessons, but 
 as far as possible adhered to her method of imparting them. 
 They attempted to reach the understanding through the eye ; and 
 the greater part of all religious teaching was conveyed through 
 this ancient and most impressive mode of "exhibition" or demon- 
 stration. The Mysteries were a sacred drama, exhibiting some 
 legend significant of Nature's change, of the visible Universe in 
 which the divinity is revealed, and whose import was in many 
 respects as open to the Pagan, as to the Christian. Beyond the 
 current traditions or sacred recitals of the temple, few explanations 
 were given to the spectators, who were left, as in the school of 
 nature, to make inferences for themselves. 
 
 The method of indirect suggestion, by allegory or symbol, is a 
 more efficacious instrument of instruction than plain didactic 
 language ; since we are habitually indifferent to that which is 
 acquired without effort : "The initiated are few, though many 
 bear the thyrsus." And it would have been impossible to provide 
 a lesson suited to every degree of cultivation and capacity, unless 
 it were one framed after Nature's example, or rather a representa- 
 tion of Nature herself, employing her universal symbolism instead of 
 technicalities of language, inviting endless research, yet rewarding 
 the humblest inquirer, and disclosing its secrets to every one in pro- 
 portion to his preparatory training and power to comprehend them. 
 
 Even if destitute of any formal or official enunciation of those 
 important truths, which even in a cultivated age it was often found 
 inexpedient to assert except under a veil of allegory, and which 
 moreover lose their dignity and value in proportion as they are 
 learned mechanically as dogmas, the shows of the Mysteries certainly 
 contained suggestions if not lessons, which in the opinion not of 
 one competent witness only, but of many, were adapted to elevate 
 the character of the spectators, enabling them to augur something
 
 35^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of the purposes of existence, as well as of the means of improving 
 it, to live better and to die happier. 
 
 Unlike the religion of books or creeds, these mystic shows and 
 performances were not the reading of a lecture, but the opening 
 of a problem, implying neither exemption from research, nor hos- 
 tility to philosophy : for, on the contrary, philosophy is the great 
 Mystagogue or Arch-Expounder of symbolism : though the inter- 
 pretations by the Grecian Philosophy of the old myths and symbols 
 were in many instances as ill-founded, as in others they are correct. 
 
 No better means could be devised to rouse a dormant intellect, 
 than those impressive exhibitions, which addressed it through the 
 imagination : which, instead of condemning it to a prescribed 
 routine of creed, invited it to seek, compare, and judge. The alter- 
 ation from symbol to dogma is as fatal to beauty of expression, as 
 that from faith to dogma is to truth and wholesomeness of thought. 
 
 The first philosophy often reverted to the natural mode of teach- 
 ing ; and Socrates, in particular, is said to have eschewed dogmas, 
 endeavoring, like the Mysteries, rather to awaken and develop in 
 the minds of his hearers the ideas with which they were already 
 endowed or pregnant, than to fill them with ready-made adven- 
 titious opinions. 
 
 So Masonry still follows the ancient manner of teaching. Her 
 symbols are the instruction she gives; and the lectures are but 
 often partial and insufficient one-sided endeavors to interpret 
 those symbols. He who would become an accomplished Mason, 
 must not be content merely to hear or even to understand the lect- 
 ures, but must, aided by them, and they having as it were marked 
 out the way for him, study, interpret, and develop the symbols 
 for himself. 
 
 The earliest speculation endeavored to express far more than it 
 could distinctly comprehend ; and the vague impressions of the 
 mind found in the mysterious analogies of phenomena their most 
 apt and energetic representations. The Mysteries, like the sym- 
 bols of Masonry, were but an image of the eloquent analogies of 
 Nature ; both those and these revealing no new secret to such as 
 were or are unprepared, or incapable of interpreting their signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Everywhere in the old Mysteries, and in all the symbolisms and 
 ceremonial of the Hierophant was found the same mythical per- 
 sonage, who, like Hermes, or Zoroaster, unites Human Attributes
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 357 
 
 with Divine, and is himself the God whose worship he intro- 
 duced, teaching rude men the commencements of civilization 
 through the influence of song, and connecting with the symbol of 
 his death, emblematic of that of Nature, the most essential conso- 
 lations of religion. 
 
 The Mysteries embraced the three great doctrines of Ancient 
 Theosophy. They treated of God, Man, and Nature. Dionusos, 
 whose Mysteries Orpheus is said to have founded, was the God of 
 Nature, or of the moisture which is the life of Nature, who pre- 
 pares in darkness the return of life and vegetation, or who is him- 
 self the Light and Change evolving their varieties. He was 
 theologically one with Hermes, Prometheus, and Poseidon. In the 
 Egean Islands he is Butes,Dardanus,Himeros,or Imbros. In Crete 
 he appears as lasius or Zeus, whose worship remaining unveiled 
 by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to profane curiosity the 
 symbols which, if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be 
 misunderstood. In Asia he is the long-stoled Bassareus coales- 
 cing with the Sabazius of the Phrygian Corybantes : the same 
 with the mystic lacchus, nursling or son of Ceres, and with 
 the dismembered Zagreus, son of Persephone. 
 
 In symbolical forms the Mysteries exhibited THE ONE, of 
 which THE MANIFOLD is an infinite illustration, containing a 
 moral lesson, calculated to guide the soul through life, and to 
 cheer it in death. The story of Dionusos was profoundly significant. 
 He was not only creator of the world, but guardian, liberator, and 
 Savior of the soul. God of the many-colored mantle, he was the 
 resulting manifestation personified, the all in the many, the varied 
 year, life passing into innumerable forms. 
 
 The spiritual regeneration of man was typified in the Mysteries 
 by the second birth of Dionusos as offspring of the Highest ; and 
 the agents and symbols of that regeneration were the elements 
 that affected Nature's periodical purification the air, indicated 
 by the mystic fan or winnow ; the fire, signified by the torch ; and 
 the baptismal water, for water is not only cleanser of all things, 
 but the genesis or source of all. 
 
 These notions, clothed in ritual, eug^es^d the soul's reformation 
 and training, the moral purity formally proclaimed at Eleusis. 
 He only was invited to approach, who was "of clean hands and 
 ingenuous speech, free from all pollution, and with a clear con- 
 science." "Happy the man," say the initiated in Euripides and 
 24
 
 358 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Aristophanes, "who purifies his life, and who reverently conse- 
 crates his soul in the thiasos of the God. Let him take heed 
 to his lips that he utter no profane word; let him be just and 
 kind to the stranger, and to his neighbor; let him give way to 
 no vicious excess, lest he make dull and heavy the organs of the 
 spirit. Far from the mystic dance of the thiasos be the impure, 
 the evil speaker, the seditious citizen, the selfish hunter after 
 gain, the traitor ; all those, in short, whose practices are more akin 
 to the riot of Titans than to the regulated life of the Orphici, or 
 the Curetan order of the Priests of Idsean Zeus." 
 
 The votary, elevated beyond the sphere of his ordinary faculties, 
 and unable to account for the agitation which overpowered him, 
 seemed to become divine in proportion as he ceased to be human ; 
 to be a daemon or god. Already, in imagination, the initiated 
 were numbered among the beatified. They alone enjoyed the 
 true life, the Sun's true lustre, while they hymned their God 
 beneath the mystic groves of a mimic Elysium, and were really 
 renovated or regenerated under the genial influence of their 
 dances. 
 
 "They whom Proserpina guides in her mysteries," it was said, 
 "who imbibed her instruction and spiritual nourishment, rest 
 from their labors and know strife no more. Happy they who 
 witness and comprehend these sacred ceremonies ! They are made 
 to know the meaning of the riddle of existence by observing its 
 aim and termination as appointed by Zeus ; they partake a benefit 
 more valuable and enduring than the grain bestowed by Ceres ; for 
 they are exalted in the scale of intellectual existence, and obtain 
 sweet hopes to console them at their death." 
 
 No doubt the ceremonies of initiation were originally few and 
 simple. As the great truths of the primitive revelation faded out 
 of the memories of the masses of the People, and wickedness 
 became rife upon the earth, it became necessary to discriminate, 
 to require longer probation and satisfactory tests of the candidates, 
 and by spreading around what at first were rather schools of 
 instruction than mysteries, the veil of secrecy, and the pomp of 
 ceremony, to heighten the opinion of their value and importance. 
 
 Whatever pictures later and especially Christian writers may 
 draw of the Mysteries, they must, not only originally, but for many 
 ages, have continued pure: and the doctrines of natural religion 
 and morals there taught, have been of the highest importance ;
 
 CHIEF OF TliE TABERNACLE. 359 
 
 because both the most virtuous as well as the most learned and 
 philosophic of the ancients speak of them in the loftiest terms. 
 That they ultimately became degraded from their high estate, and 
 corrupted, we know. 
 
 The rites of initiation became progressively more complicated. 
 Signs and tokens were invented by which the Children of Light 
 could with facility make themselves known to each other. Differ- 
 ent Degrees were invented, as the number of Initiates enlarged, 
 in order that there might be in the inner apartment of the Temple a 
 favored few, to whom alone the more valuable secrets were en- 
 trusted, and who could wield effectually the influence and power 
 of the Order. 
 
 Originally the Mysteries were meant to be the beginning of a 
 new life of reason and virtue. The initiated or esoteric compan- 
 ions were taught the doctrine of the One Supreme God, the 
 theory of death and eternity, the hidden mysteries of Nature, the 
 prospect of the ultimate restoration of the soul to that state of 
 perfection from which it had fallen, its immortality, and the states 
 of reward and punishment after death. The uninitiated were 
 deemed Profane, unworthy of public employment or private confi- 
 dence, sometimes proscribed as Atheists, and certain of everlast- 
 ing punishment beyond the grave. 
 
 All persons were initiated into the lesser Mysteries; but few 
 attained the greater, in which the true spirit of them, and most 
 of their secret doctrines were hidden. The veil of secrecy was 
 impenetrable, sealed by oaths and penalties the most tremendous 
 and appalling. It was by initiation only, that a knowledge of 
 the Hieroglyphics could be obtained, with which the walls, 
 columns, and ceilings of the Temples were decorated, and which, 
 believed to have been communicated to the Priests by revelation 
 from the celestial deities, the youth of all ranks were laudably 
 ambitious of deciphering. 
 
 The ceremonies were performed at dead of night, generally in 
 apartments under-ground, but sometimes in the centre of a vast 
 pyramid, with every appliance that could alarm and excite the 
 candidate. Innumerable ceremonies, v/i!d ar"t romantic, dreadful 
 and appalling, had by degrees been added to the few expressive 
 symbols of primitive observances, under which there were instan- 
 ces in which the terrified aspirant actually expired with fear. 
 
 The pyramids were probably used for the purposes of initiation,
 
 360 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 as were caverns, pagodas, and labyrinths ; for the ceremonies 
 required many apartments and cells, long passages and wells. In 
 Egypt a principal place for the Mysteries was the island of Philse 
 on the Nile, where a magnificent Temple of Osiris stood, and his 
 relics were said to be preserved. 
 
 With their natural proclivities, the Priesthood, that select and 
 exclusive class, in Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Judea, and Greece, as 
 well as in Britain and Rome, and wherever else the Mysteries were 
 known, made use of them to build wider and higher the fabric 
 of their own power. The purity of no religion continues long. 
 Rank and dignities succeed to the primitive simplicity. Unprin- 
 cipled, vain, insolent, corrupt, and venal men put on God's livery 
 to serve the Devil withal ; and luxury, vice, intolerance, and pride 
 depose frugality, virtue, gentleness, and humility, and change the 
 altar where they should be servants, to a throne on which they 
 reign. 
 
 But the Kings, Philosophers, and Statesmen, the wise and great 
 and good who were admitted to the Mysteries, long postponed 
 their ultimate self-destruction, and restrained the natural tenden- 
 cies of the Priesthood. And accordingly Zosimus thought that 
 the neglect of the Mysteries after Diocletian abdicated, was the 
 chief cause of the decline of the Roman Empire ; and in the year 
 364, the Proconsul of Greece would not close the Mysteries, not- 
 withstanding a law of the Emperor Valentinian, lest the people 
 should be driven to desperation, if prevented from performing 
 them ; upon which, as they believed, the welfare of mankind 
 wholly depended. They were practised in Athens until the 8th 
 century, in Greece and Rome for several centuries after Christ; 
 and in Wales and Scotland down to the I2th century. 
 
 The inhabitants of India originally practised the Patriarchal 
 religion. Even the later worship of Vishnu was cheerful and 
 social ; accompanied with the festive song, the sprightly dance, 
 and the resounding cymbal, with libations of milk and honey, 
 garlands, and perfumes from aromatic woods and gums. 
 
 There perhaps the Mysteries commenced ; and in them, under 
 allegories, were taught the primitive truths. We cannot, within 
 the limits of this lecture, detail the ceremonies of initiation ; and 
 shall use general language, except where something from those 
 old Mysteries still remains in Masonry. 
 
 The Initiate was invested with a cord of three threads, so twined
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 361 
 
 as to make three times three, and called sennar. Hence comes our 
 cable-tow. It was an emblem of their tri-une Deity, the remem- 
 brance of whom we also preserve in the three chief officers of 
 our Lodges, presiding in the three quarters of that Universe 
 which our Lodges represent ; in our three greater and three lesser 
 lights, our three movable and three immovable jewels, and the 
 three pillars that support our Lodges. 
 
 The Indian Mysteries were celebrated in subterranean caverns 
 and grottos hewn in the solid rock; and the Initiates adored the 
 Deity, symbolized by the solar fire. The candidate, long wander- 
 ing in darkness, truly wanted Light, and the worship taught him 
 was the worship of God, the Source of Light. The vast Temple 
 of Elephanta, perhaps the oldest in the world, hewn out of the 
 rock, and 135 feet square, was used for initiations; as were the 
 still vaster caverns of Salsette, with their 300 apartments. 
 
 The periods of initiation were regulated by the increase and 
 decrease of the moon. The Mysteries were divid^u into four 
 steps or Degrees. The candidate migh* receive the first at eight 
 years of age, when he was invested with the z^nnar. Each Degree 
 dispensed something of perfection. <J Le* thfe wretched man," 
 says the Hitopadesa, "practise virtue, whenever he enjoys one of 
 the three or four religious Degrees; let. "flwi oe even-minded with 
 all created things, and that disposition will be the source of 
 virtue." 
 
 After various ceremonies, chiefly relating to the unity and 
 trinity of the Godhead, the candidate was clothed in a linen gar- 
 ment without a seam, and remained under the c^r^ of a Brahmin 
 until he was twenty years of age, constantly studying and practis- 
 ing the most rigid virtue. Then he underwent the severest pro- 
 bation for the second Degree, in which he was sanctified by the 
 sign of the cross, which, pointing to the four quarters of the com- 
 pass, was honored as a striking symbol of the Universe by many 
 nations of antiquity, and was imitated by the Indians in the 
 shape of their temples. 
 
 Then he was admitted to the Holy Cavern, blazing with light, 
 where, in costly robes, sat, in the East, West, and South, the 
 three chief Hierophants, representing the Indian tri-une Deity. 
 The ceremonies there commenced with an anthem to the Great 
 God of Nature ; and then followed this apostrophe : "O mighty 
 Being ! greater than Brahma ! \vc bow down before Thee as the
 
 362 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 primal Creator ! Eternal God of Gods ! The World's Mansion ! 
 Thou art the Incorruptible Being, distinct from all things tran- 
 sient ! Thou art before all Gods, the Ancient Absolute Existence, 
 and the Supreme Supporter of the Universe ! Thou art the 
 Supreme Mansion ; and by Thee, O Infinite Form, the Universe 
 was spread abroad." 
 
 The candidate, thus taught the first great primitive truth, was 
 called upon to make a formal declaration, that he would be tract- 
 able and obedient to his superiors; that he would keep his body 
 pure ; govern his tongue, and observe a passive obedience in receiv- 
 ing the doctrines and traditions of the Order ; and .the firmest 
 secrecy in maintaining inviolable its hidden and abstruse myste- 
 ries. Then he was sprinkled with water (whence our baptism) ; 
 certain w r ords, now unknown, were whispered in his ear; and he 
 was divested of his shoes, and made to go three times around the 
 cavern. Hence our three circuits ; hence we were neither barefoot 
 nor shod : and the words were the Pass-words of that Indian 
 Degree. 
 
 The Gymnosophist Priests came from the banks of the Eu- 
 phrates into Ethiopia, and brought with them their sciences and 
 their doctrines. Their principal College was at Meroe, and their 
 Mysteries were celebrated in the Temple of Amun, renowned for 
 his oracle. Ethiopia was then a powerful State, which preceded 
 Egypt in civilization, and had a theocratic government. Above 
 the King was the Priest, who could put him to death in the name 
 of the Deity. Egypt was then composed of the Thebaid only. 
 Middle Egypt and the Delta were a gulf of the Mediterranean. The 
 Nile by degrees formed an immense marsh, which, afterward 
 drained by the labor of man, formed Lower Egypt; and was for 
 many centuries governed by the Ethiopian Sacerdotal Caste, of 
 Arabic origin ; afterward displaced by a dynasty of warriors. The 
 magnificent ruins of Axoum, with its obelisks and hieroglyphics, 
 temples, vast tombs and pyramids, around ancient Meroe, are far 
 older than the pyramids near Memphis. 
 
 The Priests, taught by Hermes, embodied in books the occult 
 and hermetic sciences, with their own discoveries and the revela- 
 tions of the Sibyls. They studied particularly the most abstract 
 sciences, discovered the famous geometrical theorems which Py- 
 thapror^s afterward learned from them, calculated eclipses, and 
 regulated, nineteen centuries before Caesar, the Julian year. They
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 3^3 
 
 descended to practical investigations as to the necessities of life, 
 and made known their discoveries to the people ; they cultivated 
 the fine arts, and inspired the people with that enthusiasm which 
 produced the avenues of Thebes, the Labyrinth, the Temples of 
 Karnac, Demlerah, Edfou, and Philae, the monolithic obelisks, and 
 the great Lake Moeris, the fertilizer of the country. 
 
 The wisdom of the Egyptian Initiates, the high sciences and 
 lofty morality which they taught, and their immense knowledge, 
 excited the emulation of the most eminent men, whatever their 
 rank and fortune ; and led them, despite the complicated and ter- 
 rible trials to be undergone, to seek admission into the Mysteries 
 of Osiris and Isis. 
 
 From Egypt, the Mysteries went to Phoenicia, and were cele- 
 brated at Tyre. Osiris changed his name, and became Adoni or 
 Dionusos, still the representative of the Sun ; and afterward these 
 Mysteries were introduced successively into Assyria, Babylon, Per- 
 sia, Greece, Sicily, and Italy. In Greece and Sicily, Osiris took the 
 name of Bacchus, and Isis that of Ceres, Cybele, Rhea, and Venus. 
 
 Bar Hebraeus says : "Enoch was the first who invented books 
 and different sorts of writing. The ancient Greeks declare that 
 Enoch is the same as Mercury Trismegistus [Hermes], and that he 
 taught the sons of men the art of building cities, and enacted 
 some admirable laws. . . He discovered the knowledge of the 
 Zodiac, and the course of the Planets ; and he pointed out to the 
 sons of men, that they should worship God, that they should fast, 
 that they should pray, that they should give alms, votive offerings, 
 and tenths. He reprobated abominable foods and drunkenness, 
 and appointed festivals for sacrifices to the Sun, at each of the 
 Zodiacal Signs." 
 
 Manetho extracted his history from certain pillars which he dis- 
 covered in Egypt, whereon inscriptions had been made by Thoth, 
 or the first Mercury [or Hermes], in the sacred letters and dia- 
 lect : but which were after the flood translated from that dialect 
 into the Greek tongue, and laid up in the private recesses of the 
 Egyptian Temples. These pillars were found in subterranean cav- 
 erns, near Thebes and beyond the Nile, not far from the sounding 
 statue of Memnon, in a place called Syringes ; which are described 
 to be certain winding apartments underground ; made, it is said, 
 by those who were skilled in ancient rites ; who, foreseeing the 
 coming of the Deluge, and fearing lest the memory of their cere-
 
 364 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 monies should be obliterated, built and contrived vaults, dug with 
 vast labor, in several places. 
 
 From the bosom of Egypt sprang a man of consummate wis- 
 dom, initiated in the secret knowledge of India, of Persia, and of 
 Ethiopia, named Thoth or Phtha by his compatriots, Taaut by the 
 Phoenicians, Hermes Trismegistus by the Greeks, and Adris by the 
 Rabbins. Nature seemed to have chosen him for her favorite, and 
 to have lavished on him all the qualities necessary to enable him 
 to study her and to know her thoroughly. The Deity had, so to 
 say, infused into him the sciences and the arts, in order that he 
 might instruct the whole world. 
 
 He invented many things necessary for the uses of life, and gave 
 them suitable names ; he taught men how to write down their 
 thoughts and arrange their speech; he instituted the ceremonies 
 to be observed in the worship of each of the Gods ; he observed 
 the course of the stars ; he invented music, the different bodily 
 exercises, arithmetic, medicine, the art of working in metals, the 
 lyre with three strings ; he regulated the three tones of the voice, 
 the sharp, taken from autumn, the grave from winter, and the mid- 
 dle from spring, there being then but three seasons. It was he 
 who taught the Greeks the mode of interpreting terms and things, 
 whence they gave him the name of l EpjJLr^ [Hermes\ t which sig- 
 nifies Interpreter. 
 
 In Egypt he instituted hieroglyphics : he selected a certain 
 number of persons whom he judged fitted to be the depositaries 
 of his secrets, of such only as were capable of attaining the throne 
 and the first offices in the Mysteries ; he united them in a body, 
 created them Priests of the Living God, instructed them in the 
 sciences and arts, and explained to them the symbols by which 
 they were veiled. Egypt, 1500 years before the time of Moses, 
 revered in the Mysteries ONE SUPREME GOD, called the ONLY UN- 
 CREATED. Under Him it paid homage to seven principal deities. 
 It is to Hermes, who lived at that period, that we must attribute 
 the concealment or veiling [velation] of the Indian worship, which 
 Moses unveiled or revealed, changing nothing of the laws of 
 Hermes, except the plurality of his mystic Gods. 
 
 The Egyptian Priests related that Hermes, dying, said : "Hith- 
 erto I have lived an exile from my true country: now I return 
 thither. Do not weep for me : I return to that celestial country 
 whither each goes in his turn. There is God. This life is but a
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 3&5 
 
 death." This is precisely the creed of the old Buddhists or Sama- 
 neans, who believed that from time to time God sent Buddhas on 
 earth, to reform men, to wean them from their vices, and lead them 
 back into the paths of virtue. 
 
 Among the sciences taught by Hermes, there were secrets which 
 he communicated to the Initiates only upon condition that they 
 should bind themselves, by a terrible oath, never to divulge them, 
 except to those who, after long trial, should be found worthy to 
 succeed them. The Kings even prohibited the revelation of them 
 on pain of death. This secret was styled the Sacerdotal Art, and 
 included alchemy, astrology, magism [magic] , the science of spir- 
 its, etc. He gave them the key to the Hieroglyphics of all these 
 secret sciences, which were regarded as sacred, and kept concealed 
 in the most secret places of the Temple. 
 
 The great secrecy observed by the initiated Priests, for many 
 years, and the lofty sciences which they professed, caused them to 
 be honored and respected throughout all Egypt, which was re- 
 garded by other nations as the college, the sanctuary, of the sci- 
 ences and arts. The mystery which surrounded them strongly 
 excited curiosity. Orpheus metamorphosed himself, so to say, into 
 an Egyptian. He was initiated into Theology and Physics. And 
 he so completely made the ideas and reasonings of his teachers his 
 own, that his Hymns rather bespeak an Egyptian Priest than a 
 Grecian Poet: and he was the first who carried into Greece the 
 Egyptian fables. 
 
 Pythagoras, ever thirsty for learning, consented even to be cir- 
 cumcised, in order to become one of the Initiates : and the occult 
 sciences were revealed to him in the innermost part of the sanc- 
 tuary. ^ ' 
 
 The Initiates in a particular science, having been instructed by 
 fables, enigmas, allegories, and hieroglyphics, wrote mysteriously 
 whenever in their works they touched the subject of the Myste- 
 ries, and continued to conceal science under a veil of fictions. 
 
 When the destruction by Cambyses of many cities, and the ruin 
 of nearly all Egypt, in the year 528 before our era, dispersed most 
 of the Priests into Greece and elsewhere, -they bore with them 
 their sciences, which they continued to teach enigmatically, that 
 is to say, ever enveloped in the obscurities of fables and hiero- 
 glyphics ; to the end that the vulgar herd, seeing, might see noth- 
 ing, and hearing, might comprehend nothing. All the writers
 
 366 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 drew from this source: but these Mysteries, concealed unaer so 
 many unexplained envelopes, ended in giving birth to a swarm of 
 absurdities, which, from Greece, spread over the whole earth. 
 
 In the Grecian Mysteries, as established by Pythagoras, there 
 were three Degrees. A preparation of five years' abstinence and 
 silence was required. If the candidate was found to be passionate 
 or intemperate, contentious, or ambitious of worldly honors and 
 distinctions, he was rejected. 
 
 In his lectures, Pyi hagoras taught the mathematics, as a me- 
 dium whereby to prove the existence of God from observation and 
 by means of reason ; grammar, rhetoric, and logic, to cultivate 
 and improve that reason, arithmetic, because he conceived that 
 the ultimate benefit of man consisted in the science of numbers, 
 and geometry, music, and astronomy, because he conceived that 
 man is indebted to them for a knowledge of what is really good 
 and useful. 
 
 He taught the true method of obtaining a knowledge of the Di- 
 vine laws of purifying the soul from its imperfections, of search- 
 ing for truth, and of practising virtue ; thus imitating the perfec- 
 tions of God. He thought his system vain, if it did not contribute 
 to expel vice and introduce virtue into the mind. He taught that 
 the t\vo most excellent things were, to speak the truth, and to 
 render benefits to one another. Particularly he inculcated Silence, 
 Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice. He taught the 
 immortality of the soul, the Omnipotence of God, and the necessity 
 of personal holiness to qualify a man for admission into the 
 Society of the Gods. 
 
 Thus we owe the particular mode of instruction in the Degree 
 of Fellow-Craft to Pythagoras ; and that Degree is but an imper- 
 fect reproduction of his lectures. From him, too, we have many 
 of our explanations of the symbols. He arranged his assemblies 
 due East and West, because he held that Motion began in the 
 East and proceeded to the West. Our Lodges are said to be due 
 East and West, because the Master represents the rising Sun, and 
 of course must be in the East. The pyramids, too, were built 
 precisely by the four cardinal points. And our expression, that 
 our Lodges extend upward to the Heavens, comes from the Per- 
 sian and Druidic custom of having to their Temples no roofs but 
 the sky. 
 
 Plato developed and spiritualized the philosophy of Pythagoras.
 
 CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE. 367 
 
 Even Eusebius the Christian admits, that he reached to the vesti- 
 bule of Truth, and stood upon its threshold. 
 
 The Druidical ceremonies undoubtedly came from India ; and 
 the Druids were originally Buddhists. The word Druidh, like 
 the word Magi, signifies wise or learned men ; and they were at 
 once philosophers, magistrates, and divines. 
 
 There was a surprising uniformity in the Temples, Priests, doc- 
 trines, and worship of the Persian Magi and British Druids. The 
 Gods of Britain were the same as the Cabiri of Samothrace. 
 Osiris and Isis appeared in their Mysteries, under the names of Hu 
 and Ceridwen ; and like those of the primitive Persians, their 
 Temples were enclosures of huge unhewn stones, some of which 
 still remain, and are regarded by the common people with fear 
 and veneration. They were generally either circular or oval. 
 Some were in the shape of a circle to which a vast serpent was 
 attached. The circle was an Eastern symbol of the Universe, gov- 
 erned by an Omnipotent Deity whose centre is everywhere, and 
 his circumference nowhere : and the egg was an universal symbol 
 of the world. Some of the Temples were winged, and some in 
 the shape of a cross; the winged ones referring to Kneph, the 
 winged Serpent-Deity of Egypt ; whence the name of Navestock, 
 where one of them stood. Temples in the shape of a cross were 
 also found in Ireland and Scotland. The length of one of these 
 vast structures, in the shape of a serpent, was nearly three miles. 
 
 The grand periods for initiation into the Druidical Mysteries, 
 were quarterly ; at the equinoxes and solstices. In the remote 
 times when they originated, these were the times corresponding 
 with the 1 3th of February, ist of May, iQth of August, and ist of 
 November. The time of annual celebration was May-Eve, and 
 the ceremonial preparations commenced at midnight, on the 2Qth 
 of April. When the initiations were over, on May-Eve, fires were 
 kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs in the island, which 
 burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day. The festival 
 was in honor of the Sun. The initiations were performed at 
 midnight ; and there were three Degrees. 
 
 The Gothic Mysteries were carried Northward from the East, by 
 Odin ; who, being a great warrior, modelled and varied them to 
 suit his purposes and the genius of his people. He placed over 
 their celebration twelve Hierophants.who were alike Priests. Coun- 
 sellors of State. and Judges from whose decision there was noappeal.
 
 368 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 He held the numbers three and nine in peculiar veneration, 
 and was probably himself the Indian Buddha. Every thrice-three 
 months, thrice-three victims were sacrificed to the tri-une God. 
 
 The Goths had three great festivals; the most magnificent of 
 which commenced at the winter Solstice, and was celebrated in 
 honor of Thor, the Prince of the Power of the Air. That being 
 the longest night in the year, and the one after which the Sun 
 comes Northward, it was commemorative of the Creation ; and 
 they termed it mother-night, as the one in which the creation of 
 the world and light from the primitive darkness took place. This 
 was the Yule, Jnnl, or Yeol feast, which afterward became Christ- 
 mas. At this feast the initiations were celebrated. Thor was the 
 Sun, the Egyptian Osiris and Kneph, the Phoenician Bel or Baal. 
 The initiations were had in huge intricate caverns, terminating, as 
 all the Mithriac caverns did, in a spacious vault, where the candi- 
 date was brought to light. 
 
 Joseph was undoubtedly initiated. After he had interpreted 
 Pharaoh's dream, that Monarch made him his Prime Minister, let 
 him ride in his second chariot, while they proclaimed before him, 
 ABRECH !* and set him over the land of Egypt. In addition to 
 this, the King gave him a new name, Tsapanat-Paanakh, and 
 married him to Asanat, daughter of Potai Parang, a Priest of An 
 or Hieropolis, where was the Temple of Athom-Re, the Great God 
 of Egypt ; thus completely naturalizing him. He could not have 
 contracted this marriage, nor have exercised that high dignity, 
 without being first initiated in the Mysteries. When his Brethren 
 came to Egypt the second time, the Egyptians of his court could 
 not eat with them, as that would have been abomination, though 
 they ate with Joseph ; who was therefore regarded not as a for- 
 eigner, but as one of themselves: and when he sent and brought 
 his brethren back, and charged them with taking his cup, he said, 
 "Know ye not that a man like me practises divination?" thus 
 assuming the Egyptian of high rank initiated into the Mysteries, 
 and as such conversant with the occult sciences. 
 
 So also must Moses have been initiated: for he was not only 
 brought up in the court of the King, as the adopted son of the 
 King's daughter, until he was forty years of age ; but he was in- 
 structed in all the learning of the Egyptians, and married after- 
 
 *An Egyptian word, meaning, "Bent down,"
 
 CHIEF OK THE TABERNACLE. 369 
 
 ward the daughter of Yethru, a Priest of An likewise. Strabo and 
 Diodorus both assert that he was himself a Priest of Heliopolis. 
 Before he went into the Desert, there were intimate relations 
 between him and the Priesthood ; and he had successfully com- 
 manded, Josephus informs us, an army sent by the King against 
 the Ethiopians. Simplicius asserts that Moses received from the 
 Egyptians, in the Mysteries, the doctrines which he taught to the 
 Hebrews : and Clemens of Alexandria and Philo say that he was 
 a Theologian and Prophet, and interpreter of the Sacred Laws. 
 Manetho, cited by Josephus, says he was a Priest of Heliopolis, 
 and that his true and original (Egyptian) name was Asersaph or 
 Osarsiph. 
 
 And in the institution of the Hebrew Priesthood, in the powers 
 and privileges, as well as the immunities and sanctity which he con- 
 ferred upon them, he closely imitated the Egyptian institutions ; 
 making public the worship of that Deity whom the Egyptian Ini- 
 tiates worshipped in private ; and strenuously endeavoring to keep 
 the people from relapsing into their old mixture of Chaldaic and 
 Egyptian superstition and idol-worship, as they were ever ready 
 and inclined to do ; even Ahariin, upon their first clamorous dis- 
 content, restoring the worship of Apis ; as an image of which 
 Egyptian God he made the golden calf. 
 
 The Egyptian Priests taught in their great Mysteries, that there 
 was one God, Supreme and Unapproachable, who had conceived 
 the Universe by His Intelligence, before He created it by His 
 Power and Will. They were no Materialists nor Pantheists ; but 
 taught that Matter was not eternal or co-existent with the great 
 First Cause, but created by Him. 
 
 The early Christians, taught by the founder of their Religion, 
 but in greater perfection, those primitive truths that from the 
 Egyptians had passed to the Jews, and been preserved among 
 the latter by the Essenes, received also the institution of the Mys- 
 teries ; adopting as their object the building of the symbolic Tem- 
 ple, preserving the old Scriptures of the Jews as their sacred book, 
 and as the fundamental law, which furnished the new veil of 
 initiation with the Hebraic words and formulas, that, corrupted 
 and disfigured by time and ignorance, appear in many of our 
 Degrees. 
 
 Such, my Brother, is the doctrine of the first Degree of the 
 Mysteries, or that of Chief of the Tabernacle, to which you have
 
 3/O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 now been admitted, and the moral lesson of which is, devotion to 
 the service of God, and disinterested zeal and constant endeavor 
 for the welfare of men. You have here received only hints of the 
 true objects and purposes of the Mysteries. Hereafter, if you are 
 permitted to advance, you will arrive at a more complete under- 
 standing of them and of the sublime doctrines which they teach. 
 Be content, therefore, with that which you have seen and heard, 
 and await patiently the advent of the greater light.
 
 XXIV. 
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 SYMBOLS were the almost universal language of ancient theology. 
 They were the most obvious method of instruction ; for, like na- 
 ture herself, they addressed the understanding through the eye; 
 and the most ancient expressions denoting communication of re- 
 ligious knowledge, signify ocular exhibition. The first teachers 
 of mankind borrowed this method of instruction ; and it com- 
 prised an endless store of pregnant hieroglyphics. These lessons 
 of the olden time were the riddles of the Sphynx, tempting the 
 curious by their quaintness, but involving the personal risk of the 
 adventurous interpreter. "The Gods themselves," it was said, 
 "disclose their intentions to the wise, but to fools their teaching 
 is unintelligible;" and the King of the Delphic Oracle was said 
 not to declare, nor on the other hand to conceal; but emphatic- 
 ally to "intimate or signify." 
 
 The Ancient Sages, both barbarian and Greek, involved their 
 meaning in similar indirections and enigmas; their lessons were 
 conveyed either in visible symbols, or in those "parables and 
 dark sayings of old," which the Israelites considered it a sacred 
 duty to hand down unchanged to successive generations. The 
 explanatory tokens employed by man, whether emblematical ob- 
 jects or actions, symbols or mystic ceremonies, were like the mys- 
 tic signs and portents either in dreams or by the wayside, supposed 
 to be significant of the intentions of the Gods ; both required the 
 aid of anxious thought and skillful interpretation. It was only by 
 a correct appreciation of analogous problems of nature, that the 
 will of Heaven could be understood by the Diviner, or the lessons 
 of Wisdom become manifest to the Sage. 
 
 The Mysteries were a series of symbols ; and what was spoken 
 there consisted wholly of accessory explanations of the act or im- 
 age ; sacred commentaries, explanatory of established symbols ; 
 with little of those independent traditions embodying physical or 
 moral speculation, in which the elements or planets were the 
 37i
 
 372 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 actors, and the creation and revolutions of the world were inter- 
 mingled with recollections of ancient events : and yet with so 
 much of that also, that nature became her own expositor through 
 the medium of an arbitrary symbolical instruction ; and the 
 ancient views of the relation between the human and divine 
 received dramatic forms. 
 
 There has ever been an intimate alliance between the two sys- 
 tems, the symbolic and the philosophical, in the allegories of the 
 monuments of all ages, in the symbolic writings of the priests 'of 
 all nations, in the rituals of all secret and mysterious societies ; 
 there has been a constant series, an invariable uniformity of prin- 
 ciples, which come from an aggregate, vast, imposing, and true, 
 composed of parts that fit harmoniously only there. 
 
 Symbolical instruction is recommended by the constant and 
 uniform usage of antiquity ; and it has retained its influence 
 throughout all ages, as a system of mysterious communication. 
 The Deity, in his revelations to man, adopted the use of material 
 images for the purpose of enforcing sublime truths ; and Christ 
 taught by symbols and parables. The mysterious knowledge of 
 the Druids was embodied in signs and symbols. Taliesin, de- 
 scribing his initiation, says : "The secrets were imparted to me 
 by the old Giantess (Ceridwen, or I sis}, without the use of audi- 
 ble language." And again he says, "I am a silent proficient." 
 
 Initiation was a school, in which were taught the truths of 
 primitive revelation, the existence and attributes of one God, the 
 immortality of the Soul, rewards and punishments in a future life, 
 the phenomena of Nature, the arts, the sciences, morality, legis- 
 lation, philosophy, and philanthropy, and what we now style 
 psychology and metaphysics, with animal magnetism, and the 
 other occult sciences. 
 
 All the ideas of the Priests of Hindostan, Persia, Syria, Arabia, 
 Chaldaea, Phoenicia, were known to the Egyptian Priests. The 
 rational Indian philosophy, after penetrating Persia and Chakhea, 
 gave birth to the Egyptian Mysteries. We find that the use of 
 Hieroglyphics was preceded in Egypt by that of the easily under- 
 stood symbols and figures, from the mineral, animal, and vegeta- 
 ble kingdoms, used by the Indians, Persians, and Chaldocans to 
 express their thoughts ; and this primitive philosophy was the basis 
 of the modern philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato. 
 
 All the philosophers and legislators that made Antiquity illus-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 373 
 
 trious, were pupils of the initiation; and all the beneficent modi- 
 fications in the religions of the different people instructed by them 
 were owing to their institution and extension of the Mysteries. 
 In the chaos of popular superstitions, those Mysteries alone kept 
 man from lapsing into absolute brutishness. Zoroaster and Con- 
 fucius drew their doctrines from the Mysteries. Clemens of Alex- 
 andria, speaking of the Great Mysteries, says: "Here ends all 
 instruction. Nature and all things are seen and known." Had 
 moral truths alone been taught the Initiate, the Mysteries could 
 never have deserved nor received the magnificent eulogiums of 
 the most enlightened men of Antiquity, of Pindar, Plutarch, 
 Isocrates, Diodorus, Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Aristophanes, 
 Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others ; philosophers 
 hostile to the Sacerdotal Spirit, or historians devoted to the inves- 
 tigation of Truth. No : all the sciences were taught there ; and 
 those oral or written traditions briefly communicated, which 
 reached back to the first age of the world. 
 
 Socrates said, in the Phasdo of Plato: "It well appears that 
 those who established the Mysteries, or secret assemblies of the 
 initiated, were no contemptible personages, but men of great 
 genius, who in the early ages strove to teach us, under enigmas, 
 that he who shall go to the invisible regions without being puri- 
 fied, will be precipitated into the abyss ; while he who arrives 
 there, purged of the stains of this world, and accomplished in 
 virtue, will be admitted to the dwelling-place of the Deity . . . The 
 initiated are certain to attain the company of the Gods." 
 
 Pretextatus, Proconsul of Achaia, a man endowed with all the 
 virtues, said, in the 4th century, that to deprive the Greeks of 
 those Sacred Mysteries which bound together the whole human 
 race, would make life insupportable. 
 
 Initiation was considered to be a mystical death ; a descent into 
 the infernal regions, where every pollution, and the stains and 
 imperfections of a corrupt and evil life were purged away by fire 
 and water ; and the perfect Epopt was tfien said to be regenerated, 
 new-born, restored to a renovated existence of life, light, and 
 purity; and placed under the Divine Protection. 
 
 A new language was adapted to these celebrations, and also a lan- 
 guage of hieroglyphics, unknown .to any but those who had re- 
 ceived the highest Degree. And to them ultimately were confined 
 the learning, the morality, and the political power of every people 
 
 25
 
 374 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 among which the Mysteries were practised. So effectually was the 
 knowledge of the hieroglyphics of the highest Degree hidden from 
 all but a favored few, that in process of time their meaning was 
 entirely lost, and none could interpret them. If the same hiero- 
 glyphics were employed in the higher as in the lower Degrees, they 
 had a different and more abstruse and figurative meaning. It 
 was pretended, in later times, that the sacred hieroglyphics and 
 language were the same that were used by the Celestial Deities. 
 Everything that could heighten the mystery of initiation was 
 added, until the very name of the ceremony possessed a strange 
 charm, and yet conjured up the wildest fears. The greatest rap- 
 ture came to be expressed by the word that signified to pass 
 through the Mysteries. 
 
 The Priesthood possessed one third of Egypt. They gained 
 much of their influence by means of the Mysteries, and spared no 
 means to impress the people with a full sense of their importance. 
 They represented them as the beginning of a new life of reason 
 and virtue : the initiated, or esoteric companions were said to enter- 
 tain the most agreeable anticipations respecting death and eter- 
 nity, to comprehend all the hidden mysteries of Nature, to have 
 their souls restored to the original perfection from which man had 
 fallen ; and at their death to be borne to the celestial mansions of 
 the Gods. The doctrines of a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments formed a prominent feature in the Mysteries ; and they 
 were also believed to assure much temporal happiness and good- 
 fortune, and afford absolute security against the most imminent 
 dangers by land and sea. Public odium was cast on those who 
 refused to be initiated. They were considered profane, unworthy 
 of public employment or private confidence ; and held to be 
 doomed to eternal punishment as impious. To betray the secrets 
 of the Mysteries, to wear on the stage the dress of an Initiate, or 
 to hold the Mysteries up to derision, was to incur death at the 
 hands of public vengeance. 
 
 It is certain that up to the time of Cicero, the Mysteries still 
 retained much of their original character of sanctity and purity. 
 And at a later day, as we know, Nero, after committing a horrible 
 crime, did not dare, even in Greece, to aid in the celebration of 
 the Mysteries ; nor at a still later day was Constantine, the Chris- 
 tian Emperor, allowed to do so. after his murder of his relatives. 
 
 Everywhere, and in all their forms, the Mysteries were funereal;
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 375 
 
 and celebrated the mystical death and restoration to life of some 
 divine or heroic personage : and the details of the legend and the 
 mode of the death varied in the different Countries where the 
 Mysteries were practised. 
 
 Their explanation belongs both to astronomy and mythology, 
 and the Legend of the Master's Degree is but another form of that 
 of the Mysteries, reaching back, in one shape or other, to the 
 remotest antiquity. 
 
 Whether Egypt originated the legend, or borrowed it from India 
 or Chaldaea, it is now impossible to know. But the Hebrews 
 received the Mysteries from the Egyptians ; and of course were 
 familiar with their legend, known as it was to those Egyptian 
 Initiates, Joseph and Moses. It was the fable (or rather the truth 
 clothed in allegory and figures) of OSIRIS, the Sun, Source of Light 
 and Principle of Good, and TYPHON, the Principle of Darkness 
 and Evil. In all the histories of the Gods and Heroes lay couched 
 and hidden astronomical details and the history of the operations 
 of visible Nature; and those in their turn were also symbols of 
 higher and profounder truths. None but rude uncultivated 
 intellects could long consider the Sun and Stars and the Powers 
 of Nature as Divine, or as fit objects of Human Worship ; and they 
 will consider them so while the world lasts ; and ever remain 
 ignorant of the great Spiritual Truths of which these are the 
 hieroglyphics and expressions. 
 
 A brief summary of the Egyptian legend will serve to show the 
 leading idea on which the Mysteries among the Hebrews were 
 based. 
 
 Osiris, said to have been an ancient King of Egypt, was the 
 Sun; and Isis, his wife, the Moon: and his history recounts, in 
 poetical and figurative style, the annual journey of the Grer.c 
 Luminary of Heaven through the different Signs of the Zodiac. 
 
 In the absence of Osiris, Typhon, his brother, filled with envy 
 and malice, sought to usurp hi.s throne ; but his plans were frus- 
 trated by Isis. Then he resolved to kill Osiris. This he d'd, by 
 persuading him to enter a coffin or sarcophagus, which he then 
 flung into the Nile. After a long search, Isis found the body, and 
 concealed it in the depths of a forest ; but Typhon, finding it there, 
 cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them hither and thither. 
 After tedious search, Isis found thirteen pieces, the fishes having 
 eaten the other (the privates), which she replaced of wood, and
 
 376 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 buried the body at Philae; where a temple of surpassing magnifi- 
 cence was erected in honor of Osiris. 
 
 Isis, aided by her son Orus, Horus or Har-oeri, warred against 
 Typhon, slew him, reigned gloriously, and at her death was re- 
 united to her husband, in the same tomb. 
 
 Typhon was represented as born of the earth ; the upper part of 
 his body covered with feathers, in stature reaching the clouds, his 
 arms and legs covered with scales, serpents darting from him on 
 every side, and fire flashing from his mouth. Horus, who aided in 
 slaying him, became the God of the Sun, answering to the Grecian 
 Apollo; and Typhon is but the anagram of Python, the great 
 serpent slain by Apollo. 
 
 The word Typhon, like Eve, signifies a serpent, and life.* By 
 its form the serpent symbolizes life, which circulates through all 
 nature. When, toward the end of autumn, the Woman (Virgo), 
 in the constellations seems (upon the Chaldzean sphere) to crush 
 with her heel the head of the serpent, this figure foretells the 
 coming of winter, during which life seems to retire from all beings, 
 and no longer to circulate through nature. This is why Typhon 
 signifies also a serpent, the symbol of winter, which, in the Catholic 
 Temples, is represented surrounding the Terrestrial Globe, which 
 surmounts the heavenly cross, emblem of redemption. If the word 
 Typhon is derived from Tuponl, it signifies a tree which produces 
 apples (mala, evils), the Jewish origin of the fall of man. Typhon 
 means also one who supplants, and signifies the human passions, 
 which expel from our hearts the lessons of wisdom. In the Egyp- 
 tian Fable, Isis wrote the sacred word for the instruction of men, 
 and Typhon efifaced it as fast as she wrote it. In morals, his name 
 signifies Pride, Ignorance, and Falsehood. 
 
 When Isis first found the body, where it had floated ashore near 
 Byblos, a shrub of erica or tamarisk near it had, by the virtue of 
 the body, shot up into a tree around it, and protected it ; and 
 hence our sprig of acacia. Isis was also aided in her search by 
 Anubis, in the shape of a dog. He was Sirius or the Dog-Star, 
 the friend and counsellor of Osiris, and the inventor of language, 
 grammar, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic, music, and medical 
 science ; the first maker of laws ; and who taught the worship of 
 the Gods, and the building of Temples. 
 
 Tsapanai, in Hebrew, means a serpent.
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 377 
 
 In the Mysteries, the nailing up of the body of Osiris in the 
 chest or ark was termed the aphanism, or disappearance fof the 
 Sun at the Winter Solstice, below the Tropic of Capricorn], and 
 the recovery of the different parts of his body by Isis, the Enresis, 
 or finding. The candidate went through a ceremony representing 
 this, in all the Mysteries everywhere. The main facts in the fable 
 were the same in all countries; and the prominent Deities were 
 everywhere a male and a female. 
 
 In Egypt they were Osiris and Isis : in India, Mahadeva and 
 Bhavani : in Phoenicia, Thammuz (or Adonis) and Astarte : 
 in Phrygia, Atys and Cybele : in Persia, Mithras and Asis: in 
 Samothrace and Greece. Dionusos or Sabazeus and Rhea : in 
 Britain, Hu and Ceridwen : and in Scandinavia, Woden and Frea : 
 and in every instance these Divinities represented the Sun and 
 the Moon. 
 
 The Mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, seem to have been the 
 model of all other ceremonies of initiation subsequently estab- 
 lished among the different peoples of the world. Those of 
 Atys and Cybele, celebrated in Phrygia ; those of Ceres and Pro- 
 serpine, at Eleusis and many other places in Greece, were but 
 copies of them. This we learn from Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, 
 Lactantius, and other writers ; and in the absence of direct testi- 
 mony should necessarily infer it from the similarity of the adven- 
 tures of these Deities ; for the ancients held that the Ceres of the 
 Greeks was the same as the Isis of the Egyptians ; and Dionusos 
 or Bacchus as Osiris. 
 
 In the legend of Osiris and Isis, as given by Plutarch, are many 
 details and circumstances other than those that we have briefly 
 mentioned ; and all of which we need not repeat here. Osiris 
 married his sister Isis ; and labored publicly with her to ameliorate 
 the lot of men. He taught them agriculture, while Isis invented 
 laws. He built temples to the Gods, and established their worship. 
 Both were the patrons of artists and their useful inventions ; and 
 introduced the use of iron for defensive weapons and implements 
 of agriculture, and of gold to adorn the temples of the Gods. He 
 went forth with an army to conquer men to civilization, teaching 
 the people whom he overcame to plant the vine and sow grain 
 for food. 
 
 Typhon. his brother, slew him when the sun was in the sign of 
 the Scorpion, that is to say, at the Autumnal Equinox, They had
 
 378 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 been rival claimants, says Synesius, for the throne of Egypt, as 
 Light and Darkness contend ever for the empire of the world. 
 Plutarch adds, that at the time when Osiris was slain, the moon 
 was at its full ; and therefore it was in the sign opposite the 
 Scorpion, that is, the Bull, the sign of the Vernal Equinox. 
 
 Plutarch assures us that it was to represent these events and 
 details that Isis established the Mysteries, in which they were re- 
 produced by iir.ages, symbols, and a religious ceremonial, whereby 
 they were imitated : and in which lessons of piety were given, and 
 consolations under the misfortunes that afflict us here below. 
 Those who instituted these Mysteries meant to strengthen religion 
 jind console men in their sorrows by the lofty hopes found in a 
 religious faith, whose principles were represented to them covered 
 by a pompous ceremonial, and under the sacred veil of allegory. 
 
 Diodorus speaks of the famous columns erected near Nysa, in 
 Arabia, where, it was said, were two of the tombs of Osiris and 
 Isis. On one was this inscription : "I am Isis, Queen of this 
 country. I was instructed by Mercury. No one can destroy the 
 laws which I have established. I am the eldest daughter of 
 Saturn, most ancient of the Gods. I am the wife and sister of 
 Osiris the King. I first made known to mortals the use of wheat. 
 I am the mother of Orus the King. In my honor was the city of 
 Bubaste built. Rejoice, O Egypt, rejoice, land that gave me 
 birth !" . . . And on the other was this : "I am Osiris the King, 
 who led my armies into all parts of the world, to the most thickly 
 inhabited countries of India, the North, the Danube, and the 
 Ocean. I am the eldest son of Saturn : I was born of the brilliant 
 and magnificent egg, and my substance is of the same nature as 
 that which composes light. There is no place in the Universe 
 where I have not appeared, to bestow my benefits and make known 
 my discoveries." The rest was illegible. 
 
 To aid her in the search for the body of Osiris, and to nurse her 
 infant child Horus. Isis sought out and took with her Anubis, son 
 of Osiris, and his sister Nephte. He, as we have said, was Sinus, 
 the brightest star in the Heavens. After finding him. she went to 
 Byblos, and seated herself near a fountain, where she had learned 
 that the sacred chest had stopped which contained the body of 
 Osiris. There she sat. sad and silent, shedding a torrent of tears. 
 Thither came the women of the Court of Queen Astarte. and she 
 spoke to them, and dressed their hair, pouring upon it deliciously
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 379 
 
 perfumed ambrosia. This known to the Queen, Isis was engaged 
 as nurse for her child, in the palace, one of the columns of which 
 was made of the erica or tamarisk, that had grown up over the 
 chest containing Osiris, cut down by the King, and unknown to 
 him, still enclosing the chest : which column Isis afterward 
 demanded, and from it extracted the chest and the body, which, 
 the latter wrapped in thin drapery and perfumed, she .carried away 
 with her. 
 
 Blue Masonry, ignorant of its import, still retains among its em- 
 blems one of a woman weeping over a broken column, holding in 
 her hand a branch of acacia, myrtle, or tamarisk, while Time, we 
 are told, stands behind her combing out the ringlets of her hair. 
 We need not repeat the vapid and trivial explanation there given, of 
 this representation of Isis, weeping at Byblos, over the column 
 torn from the palace of the King, that contained the body of 
 Osiris, while Horus, the God of Time, pours ambrosia on her 
 hair. 
 
 Nothing of this recital was historical ; but the whole was an 
 allegory or sacred fable, containing a meaning known only to 
 those who were initiated into the Mysteries. All the incidents 
 were astronomical, with a meaning still deeper lying behind that 
 explanation, and so hidden by a double veil. The Mysteries, in 
 which these incidents were represented and explained, were like 
 those of Eleusis in their object, of which Pausanias, who was ini- 
 tiated, says that the Greeks, from the remotest antiquity, regarded 
 them as the best calculated of all things to lead men to piety : and 
 Aristotle says they were the most valuable of all religious institu- 
 tions, and thus were called mysteries par excellence; and the 
 Temple of Eleusis was regarded as, in some sort, the common 
 sanctuary of the whole earth, where religion had brought together 
 all that was most imposing and most august. 
 
 The object of all the Mysteries was to inspire men with piety, 
 and to console them in the miseries of life. That consolation, so 
 afforded, was the hope of a happier future, and of passing, after 
 death, to a state of eternal felicity. 
 
 Cicero says that the Initiates not only received lessons which 
 made life more agreeable, but drew from the ceremonies happy 
 hopes for the moment of death. Socrates says that those who were 
 so fortunate as to be admitted to the Mysteries, possessed, when 
 dying, the most glorious hopes for eternity. Aristides says that
 
 380 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 they not only procure the Initiates consolations in the present life, 
 and means of deliverance from the great weight of their evils, but 
 also the precious advantage of passing after death to a happier 
 state. 
 
 Isis was the Goddess of Sais ; and the famous Feast of Lights 
 was celebrated there in her honor. There were celebrated the 
 Mysteries, in. which were represented the death and subsequent 
 restoration to life of the God Osiris, in a secret ceremony and 
 scenic representation of his sufferings, called the Mysteries of 
 Night. 
 
 The Kings of Egypt often exercised the functions of the Priest- 
 hood ; and they were initiated into the sacred science as soon 
 as they attained the throne. So at Athens, the First Magis- 
 trate, or Archon-King, superintended the Mysteries. This was an 
 image of the union that existed between the Priesthood and Roy- 
 alty, in those early times when legislators and kings sought in 
 religion a potent political instrument. 
 
 Herodotus says, speaking of the reasons why animals were dei- 
 fied in Egypt: "If I were to explain these reasons, I should be 
 led to the disclosure of those holy matters which I particularly 
 wish to avoid, and which, but from necessity, I should not have 
 discussed at all." So he says, "The Egyptians have at Sais the 
 tomb of a certain personage, whom I do not think myself permit- 
 ted to specify. It is behind the Temple of Minerva." [The lat- 
 ter, so called by the Greeks, was really Isis, whose was the 
 often-cited enigmatical inscription, "I am what was and is and is 
 to come. No mortal hath yet unveiled me."] So again he says: 
 "Upon this lake are represented by night the accidents which 
 happened to him whom I dare not name. The Egyptians call 
 them their Mysteries. Concerning these, at the same time that I 
 confess myself sufficiently informed, I feel myself compelled to be 
 silent. Of the ceremonies also in honor of Ceres, I may not ven- 
 ture to speak, further than the obligations of religion will allow me." 
 
 It is easy to see what was the great object of initiation and the 
 Mysteries ; whose first and greatest fruit was, as all the ancients 
 testify, to civilize savage hercles, to soften their ferocious manners, 
 to introduce among them social intercourse, and lead them into a 
 way of life more worthy of men. Cicero considers the establish- 
 ment of the Eleusinian Mysteries to be the greatest of all the ben- 
 efits conferred by Athens on other commonwealths ; their effects
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 381 
 
 having been, he says, to civilize men, soften their savage and fero- 
 cious manners, and teach them the true principles of morals, 
 which initiate man into the only kind of life worthy of him. 
 The same philosophic orator, in a passage where he apostrophizes 
 Ceres and Proserpine, says that mankind owes these Goddesses the 
 first elements of moral life, as well as the first means of sustenance 
 of physical life; knowledge of the laws, regulation of morals, and 
 those examples of civilization which have improved the manners 
 of men and cities. 
 
 Bacchus in Euripides says to Pentheus, that his new institution 
 (the Dionysiac Mysteries) deserved to be known, and that one of 
 its great advantages, was, that it proscribed all impurity: that 
 these were the Mysteries of Wisdom, of which it would be impru- 
 dent to speak to persons not initiated: that they were established 
 among the Barbarians, who in that showed greater wisdom than 
 the Greeks, who had not yet received them. 
 
 This double object, political and religious, one teaching our 
 duty to men, and the other what we owe to the Gods ; or rather, 
 respect for the Gods calculated to maintain that which we owe the 
 laws, is found in that well-known verse of Virgil, borrowed by him 
 from the ceremonies of initiation : "Teach me to respect Justice 
 and the Gods." This great lesson, which the Hierophant 
 impressed on the Initiates, after they had witnessed a representa- 
 tion of the Infernal regions, the Poet places after his description 
 of the different punishments suffered by the wicked in Tartarus, 
 and immediately after the description of that of Sisyphus. 
 
 Pausanias, likewise, at the close of the representation of the 
 punishments of Sisyphus and the daughters of Danaus, in the 
 Temple at Delphi, makes this reflection ; that the crime or im- 
 piety which in them had chiefly merited this punishment, was 
 the contempt which they had shown for the Mysteries of Eleusis. 
 From this reflection of Pausanias, who was an Initiate, it is easy to 
 'see that the Priests of Eleusis, who taught the dogma of punish- 
 ment in Tartarus, included among the great crimes deserving 
 these punishments, contempt for and disregard of the Holy Mys- 
 teries ; whose object was to lead men to piety, and thereby to 
 respect for justice and the laws, chief object of their institution, if 
 not the only one, and to which the needs and interest of religion 
 itself were subordinate ; since the latter was but a means to lead 
 more surely to the former ; for the whole force of religious opin-
 
 32 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ions being in the hands of the legislators to be wielded, they were 
 sure of being better obeyed. 
 
 The Mysteries were not mereiy simple lustrations and the obser- 
 vation of some arbitrary formulas and ceremonies ; nor a means of 
 reminding men of the ancient condition of the race prior to civili- 
 zation : but they led men to piety by instruction in morals and 
 as to a future life; which at a very early day, if not originally, 
 formed the chief portion of the ceremonial. 
 
 Symbols wero used in the ceremonies, which referred to agricul- 
 ture, as Masonry has preserved the ear of wheat in a symbol and 
 in one of her words ; but their principal reference was to astronom- 
 ical phenomena. Much was no doubt said as to the condition 
 of brutality and degradation in which man was sunk before the 
 institution of the Mysteries ; but the allusion was rather meta- 
 physical, to the ignorance of the uninitiated, than to the wild life 
 of the earliest men. 
 
 The great object of the Mysteries of Isis, and in general of all 
 the Mysteries, was a great and truly politic one. It was to ameli- 
 orate our race, to perfect its manners and morals, and to restrain 
 society by stronger bonds than those that human laws impose. 
 They were the invention of that ancient science and wisdom which 
 exhausted all its resources to make legislation perfect ; and of that 
 philosophy which has ever sought to secure the happiness of man, 
 by purifying his soul from the passions which can trouble it, and 
 as a necessary consequence introduce social disorder. And that 
 they were the work of genius is evident from their employment of 
 all the sciences, a profound knowledge of the human heart, and 
 the means cf subduing it. 
 
 It is a still greater mistake to imagine that they were the inven- 
 tions of charlatanism, and means of deception. They ma}' in thj 
 lapse of time have degenerated into imposture and schools of false 
 ideas ; but they were not so at the beginning ; or else the wisest 
 and best men of antiquity have uttered the most willful falsehoods. 
 In process of time the very allegories of the Mysteries themselves. 
 Tartarus and its punishments. Minos and the other judges of the 
 dead, came to be misunderstood, arid to be false because they were 
 so ; while at first they were true, because they were recognized as 
 merely the arbitrary forms in which truths were enveloped. 
 
 The object of the Mysteries was to procure for man a real felic- 
 ity on earth by the means of virtue ; and to that end he was
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 383 
 
 taught that his soul was immortal ; and that error, sin, and vice 
 must needs, by an inflexible law, produce their consequences. The 
 rude representation of physical torture in Tartarus was but an 
 image of the certain, unavoidable, eternal consequences that flow 
 by the law of God's enactment from the sin committed and the 
 vice indulged in. The poets and mystagogues labored to propa- 
 gate these doctrines of the soul's immortality and the certain pun- 
 ishment of sin and vice, and to accredit them with the people, by 
 teaching them the former in their poems, and the latter in the 
 sanctuaries ; and they clothed them with the charms, the one of 
 poetry, and the other of spectacles and magic illusions. 
 
 They painted, aided by all the resources of art, the virtuous 
 man's happy life after death, and the horrors of the frightful pris- 
 ons destined to punish the vicious. In the shades of the sanctua- 
 ries, these delights and horrors were exhibited as spectacles, and 
 the Initiates witnessed religious dramas, under the name of initia- 
 tion and mysteries. Curiosity was excited by secrecy, by the dif- 
 ficulty experienced in obtaining admission, and by the tests to be 
 undergone. The candidate was amused by the variety of the 
 scenery, the pomp of the decorations, the appliances of ma- 
 chinery. Respect was inspired by the gravity and dignity of the 
 actors and the majesty of the ceremonial ; and fear and hope, sad- 
 ness and delight, were in turns excited. 
 
 The Hierophants, men of intellect, and well understanding the 
 disposition of the people and the art of controlling them, used 
 every appliance to attain that object, and give importance and im- 
 pressiveness to their ceremonies. As they covered those ceremo- 
 nies with the veil of Secrecy, so they preferred that Night should 
 cover them with its wings. Obscurity adds to impressiveness, and 
 assists illusion ; and they used it to produce an effect upon the 
 astonished Initiate. The ceremonies were conducted in caverns 
 dimly lighted : thick groves were planted around the Temples, to 
 produce that gloom that impresses the mind with a religious 
 awe. 
 
 The very word mystery, according to Demetrius Phalereus, was 
 a metaphorical expression that denoted the secret awe which dark- 
 ness and gloom inspired. The night was almost always the time 
 fixed for their celebration ; and they were ordinarily termed noc- 
 turnal ceremonies. Initiations into the Mysteries of Samothrace 
 took place at night : as d ; d those of Tsis, of which Apuleius speaks.
 
 384 MORALS A.ND DOGMA. 
 
 Euripides makes Bacchus say, that his Mysteries were celebrated 
 at night, because there is in night something august and im- 
 posing. 
 
 Nothing excites men's curiosity so much as Mystery, concealing 
 things which they desire to know : and nothing so much increases 
 curiosity as obstacles that interpose to prevent them from indulg- 
 ing in the gratification of their desires. Of this the Legislators 
 and Hierophants took advantage, to attract the people to their 
 sanctuaries, and to induce them to seek to obtain lessons from 
 which they would perhaps have turned away with indifference, if 
 they had been pressed upon them. In this spirit of mystery they 
 professed to imitate the Deity, who hides Himself from our senses, 
 and conceals from us the springs by which He moves the Universe. 
 They admitted that they concealed the highest truths under the 
 veil of allegory, the more to excite the curiosity of men, and to 
 urge them to investigation. The secrecy in which they buried 
 their Mysteries, had that end. Those to whom they were con- 
 fided, bound themselves, by the most fearful oaths, never to reveal 
 them. They were not allowed even to speak of these important 
 secrets with any others than the initiated ; and the penalty of 
 death was pronounced against any one indiscreet enough to reveal 
 them, or found in the Temple without being an Initiate ; and any 
 one who had betrayed those secrets, was avoided by all, as excom- 
 municated. 
 
 Aristotle was accused of impiety, by the Hierophant Euryme- 
 don, for having sacrificed to the manes of his wife, according to 
 the rite used in the worship of Ceres. He was compelled to flee 
 to Chalcis ; and to purge his memory from this stain, he directed, 
 by his will, the erection of a Statue to th?t Goddess. Socrates, 
 dying, sacrificed to Esculapius, to exculpate himself from the sus- 
 picion of Atheism. A price was set on the head of Diagoras, be- 
 cause he had divulged the Secret of the Mysteries. Andocide.s 
 was accused of the same crime, as was Alcibiades, and both were 
 cited to answer the charge before the inquisition at Athens, where 
 the People were the Judges. ^Eschylus the Tragedian was accused 
 of having represented the Mysteries on the stage ; and was acquit- 
 ted only on proving that he had never been initiated. 
 
 Seneca, comparing Philosophy to initiation, says that the most 
 sacred ceremonies could be known to the adepts alone : but that 
 many of their precepts were known even to the Profane. Such
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 385 
 
 was the case with the doctrine of a future life, and a state of re- 
 wards and punishments beyond the grave. The ancient legislators 
 clothed this doctrine in the pomp of a mysterious ceremony, in 
 mystic words and magical representations, to impress upon the 
 mind the truths they taught, by the strong influence of such 
 scenic displays upon the senses and imagination. 
 
 In the same way they taught the origin of the soul, its fall to 
 the earth past the spheres and through the elements, and its final 
 return to the place of its origin, when, during the continuance of 
 its union with earthly matter, the sacred fire, which formed its 
 essence, had contracted no stains, and its brightness had not been 
 marred by foreign particles, which, denaturalizing it, weighed it 
 down and delayed its return. These metaphysical ideas, with diffi- 
 culty comprehended by the mass of the Initiates, were represented 
 by figures, by symbols, and by allegorical analogies ; no idea being 
 so abstract that men do not seek to give it expression by, and 
 translate it into, sensible images. 
 
 The attraction of Secrecy was enhanced by the difficulty of ob- 
 taining admission. Obstacles and suspense redoubled curiosity. 
 Those who aspired to the initiation of the Sun and in the Myste- 
 ries of Mithras in Persia, underwent many trials. They com- 
 menced by easy tests and arrived by degrees at those that were 
 most cruel, in which the life of the candidate was often endan- 
 gered. Gregory Nazianzen terms them tortures and mystic pun- 
 ishments. No one can be initiated, says Suidas, until after he has 
 proven, by the most terrible trials, that he possesses a virtuous 
 soul, exempt from the sway of every passion, and as it were im- 
 passible. There were twelve principal tests ; and some make the 
 number larger. 
 
 The trials of the Eleusinian initiations were not so terrible ; but 
 they were severe ; and the suspense, above all, in which the aspi- 
 rant was kept for several years [the memory of which is retained 
 in Masonry by the ages of those of the different Degrees], 
 or the interval between admission to the inferior and initiation in 
 the great Mysteries, was a species of torture to the curiosity which 
 it was desired to excite. Thus the Egyptian Priests tried Pythago- 
 ras before admitting him to know the secrets of the sacred science. 
 He succeeded, by his incredible patience and the courage with 
 which he surmounted all obstacles, in obtaining admission to their 
 society and receiving their lessons. Amonc^ the Jews, the Essenes
 
 386 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 admitted none among them, until they had passed the tests of sev- 
 eral Degrees. 
 
 By initiation, those who before were fellow-citizens only, became 
 brothers, connected by a closer bond than before, by means of a 
 religious fraternity, which, bringing men nearer together, united 
 them more strongly : and the weak and the poor could more read- 
 ily appeal for assistance to the powerful and the wealthy, with 
 whom religious association gave them a closer fellowship. 
 
 The Initiate was regarded as the favorite of the Gods. For him 
 alone Heaven opened its treasures. Fortunate during life, he 
 could, by virtue and the favor of Heaven, promise himself after 
 death an eternal felicity. 
 
 The Priests of the Island of Samothrace promised favorable 
 winds and prosperous voyages to those who were initiated. It was 
 promised them that the CABIRI, and Castor and Pollux, the DI- 
 OSCURI, should appear to them when the storm raged, and give 
 them calms and smooth seas : and the Scholiast of Aristophanes 
 says that those initiated in the Mysteries there were just men, who 
 were privileged to escape from great evils and tempests. 
 
 The Initiate in the Mysteries of Orpheus, after he was purified, 
 was considered as released from the empire of evil, and transferred 
 to a condition of life which gave him the happiest hopes. "I have 
 emerged from evil," he was made to say, "and have attained good." 
 Those initiated in the Mysteries of Eleusis believed that the Sun 
 blazed with a pure splendor for them alone. And, as we see in the 
 case of Pericles, they flattered themselves that Ceres and Proser- 
 pine inspired them and gave them wisdom and counsel. 
 
 Initiation dissipated errors and banished misfortune : and after 
 having filled the heart of man with joy during life, it gave him 
 the most blissful hopes at the moment of death. We owe it to 
 the Goddesses of Eleusis, says Socrates, that we do not lead the 
 wild life of the earliest men : and to them are due the flattering 
 hopes which initiation gives us for the moment of death and for 
 all eternity. The benefit which we reap from these august cere- 
 monies, says Aristides, is not only present joy, a deliverance and 
 enfranchisement from the old ills ; but also the sweet hope which 
 we have in death of passing to a more fortunate state. And 
 Theon says that participation of the Mysteries is the finest of all 
 things, and the source of the greatest blessing. The happiness 
 promised there was not limited to this mortal life ; but it extended
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 387 
 
 beyond the grave. There a new life was to commence, during 
 which the Initiate was to enjoy a bliss without alloy and without 
 limit. The Corybantes promised eternal life to the Initiates of the 
 Mysteries of Cybele and Atys. 
 
 Apuleius represents Lucius, while still in the form of an ass, as 
 addressing his prayers to Isis, whom he speaks of as the same as 
 Ceres, Venus, Diana, and Proserpine, and as illuminating the walls 
 of many cities simultaneously with her feminine lustre, and sub- 
 stituting her quivering light for the bright rays of the Sun. She 
 appears to him in his vision as a beautiful female, "over whose 
 divine neck her long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets." Ad- 
 dressing him, she says, "The parent of Universal nature attends 
 thy call. The mistress of the Elements, initiative germ of 
 generations, Supreme of Deities, Queen of departed Spirits, first 
 inhabitant of Heaven, and uniform type of all the Gods and God- 
 desses, propitiated by thy prayers, is with thee. She governs with 
 her nod the luminous heights of the firmament, the salubrious 
 breezes of the ocean ; the silent deplorable depths of the shades 
 below ; one Sole Divinity under many forms, worshipped by the 
 different nations of the Earth under many titles, and with various 
 religious rites." 
 
 Directing him how to proceed, at her festival, to re-obtain his 
 human shape, she says : "Throughout the entire course of the 
 remainder of thy life, until the very last breath has vanished from 
 thy lips, thou art devoted to my service .... Under my protection 
 will thy life be happy and glorious : and when, thy days being 
 spent, thou shalt descend to the shades below, and inhabit the 
 Elysian fields, there also, even in the subterranean hemisphere, 
 shalt thou pay frequent worship to me, thy propitious patron : and 
 yet further: if through sedulous obedience, religious devotion to 
 my ministry, and inviolable chastity, thou shalt prove thyself a 
 worthy object of divine favor, then shalt thou feel the influence 
 of the power that I alone possess. The number of thy days shall 
 be prolonged beyond the ordinary decrees of fate." 
 
 In the procession of the festival, Lucius saw the image of the 
 Goddess, on either side of which were female attendants, that, 
 "with ivory combs in their hands, made believe, by the motion 
 of their arms and the twisting of their fingers, to comb and orna- 
 ment the Goddess' royal hair." Afterward, clad in linen robes, 
 came the initiated. "The hair of the women was moistened bv
 
 388 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 perfume, and enveloped in a transparent covering; but the men, 
 terrestrial stars, as it were, of the great religion, were thoroughly 
 shaven, and their bald heads shone exceedingly.'' 
 
 Afterward came the Priests, in robes of white linen. The first 
 bore a lamp- in the form of a boat, emitting flame from an orifice 
 in the middle : the second, a small altar : the third, a golden palm- 
 tree : and the fourth displayed the figure of a left hand, the palm 
 open and expanded, "representing thereby a symbol of equity and 
 fair-dealing, of which the left hand, as slower than the right hand, 
 and more void of skill and craft, is therefore an appropriate 
 emblem." 
 
 After Lucius had, by the grace of Isis, recovered his human form, 
 the Priest said to him, "Calamity hath no hold on those whom 
 our Goddess hath chosen for her service, and whom her majesty 
 hath vindicated." And the people declared that he was fortu- 
 nate to be "thus after a manner born again, and at once betrothed 
 to the service of the Holy Ministry." 
 
 When he urged the Chief Priest to initiate him, he was answered 
 that there was not "a single one among the initiated, of a mind 
 so depraved, or so bent on his own destruction, as, without receiv- 
 ing a special command from Isis, to dare to undertake her minis- 
 try rashly and sacrilegiously, and thereby commit an act certain 
 to bring upon himself a dreadful injury." "For," continued the 
 Chief Priest, "the gates of the shades below, and the care of our 
 life being in the hands of the Goddess, the ceremony of initiation 
 into the Mysteries is, as it were, to suffer death, with the precarious 
 chance of resuscitation. Wherefore the Goddess, in the wisdom 
 of her Divinity, hath been accustomed to select as persons to 
 whom the secrets of her religion can with propriety be entrusted, 
 those who, standing as it were on the utmost limit of the course 
 of life they have completed, may through her Providence be in a 
 manner born again, and commence the career of a new existence." 
 
 When he was finally to be initiated, he was conducted to the 
 nearest baths, and after having bathed, the Priest first solicited for- 
 giveness of the Gods, and then sprinkled him all over with the 
 clearest and purest water, and conducted him back to the Temple ; 
 "where," says Apuleius, "after giving me some instruction, that 
 mortal tongue is not permitted to reveal, he bade me for the suc- 
 ceeding ten days restrain my appetite, eat no animal food, and 
 drink no wine."
 
 PRINCE OF THE TAUKKN ACLE. 389 
 
 These ten days elapsed, the Priest led him into the inmost 
 recesses of the Sanctuary. "And here, studious reader," he con- 
 tinues, "peradventure thou wilt be sufficiently anxious to know all 
 that was said and done, which, were it lawful to divulge, I would 
 tell thee ; and, wort thou permitted to hear, thou shouldst know. 
 Nevertheless, although the disclosure would affix the penalty of 
 rash curiosity to my tongue as well as thy ears, yet will I, for 
 fear thou shouldst be too long tormented with religious longing, 
 and suffer the pain of protracted suspense, tell the truth not- 
 withstanding. Listen then to what I shall relate. / approached 
 the abode of death; with my foot I pressed the threshold of Pros- 
 erpine's Palace. I zvas transported through the elements, and 
 conducted back again. At midnight I saw the bright light of the 
 sun shining. I stood in the presence of the Gods, the Gods of 
 Heaven and of the Shades below; ay, stood near and worshipped. 
 And now have I told thee such things that, hearing, thou neces- 
 sarily canst not understand ; and being beyond the comprehen- 
 sion of the Profane, I can enunciate without committing a crime." 
 
 After night had passed, and the morning had dawned, the 
 usual ceremonies were at an end. Then he was consecrated by 
 twelve stoles being put upon him, clothed, crowned with palm- 
 leaves, and exhibited to the people. The remainder of that day 
 was celebrated as his birthday and passed in festivities ; and on 
 the third day afterw r ard, the same religious ceremonies were 
 repeated, including a religious breakfast, "follow'cd by a final 
 consummation of ceremonies." 
 
 A year afterward, he was warned to prepare for initiation into 
 the Mysteries of "the Great God, Supreme Parent of all the other 
 Gods, the invincible OSIRIS." "For," says Apuleius, "although 
 there is a strict connexion between the religions of both Deities. 
 
 AND EVEN THE ESSENCE OF ROTH DIVINITIES IS IDENTICAL, the 
 
 ceremonies of the respective initiations are considerably different." 
 Compare with this hint the following language of the prayer of 
 Lucius, addressed to Tsis ; and we may judge what doctrines were 
 taught in the Mysteries, in regard to the Deity : "O Holy and 
 Perpetual Preserver of the Human Race! ever ready to cherish 
 mortals by Thy munificence, and to afford Thy sweet maternal af- 
 fection to the wretched under misfortune : Whose bounty is nevei 
 at rest, neither by day nor by night, nor throughout the verv 
 minutest particle of duration: Thou who stretchiest forth Th-
 
 39O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 health-bearing right hand over the land and over the sea for the 
 protection of mankind, to disperse the storms of life, to unravel the 
 inextricable entanglement of the web of fate, to mitigate Ihe 
 tempests of fortune, and restrain the malignant influences of the 
 stars, the Gods in Heaven adore Thee, the Gods in the shades be- 
 low do Thee homage, the stars obey Thee, the Divinities rejoice in 
 Thee, the elements and the revolving seasons serve Thee! At Thy 
 nod the winds breathe, clouds gather, seeds grow, buds germinate ; 
 in obedience to Thee the Earth revolves AND THE SUN GIVES us 
 LIGHT. IT IS TlIOU WHO GOVERNEST THE UNIVERSE AND TREADEST 
 TARTARUS UNDER THY FEET." 
 
 Then he was initiated into the nocturnal Mysteries of Osiris 
 and Serapis : and afterward into those of Ceres at Rome : but of 
 the ceremonies in these initiations, Apuleius says nothing. 
 
 Under the Archonship of Euclid, bastards and slaves were 
 excluded from initiation ; and the same exclusion obtained against 
 the Materialists or Epicureans who denied Providence and conse- 
 quently the utility of initiation. By a natural progress, it came at 
 length to be considered that the gates of Elysium would open only 
 for the Initiates, whose souls had been purified and regenerated 
 in the sanctuaries. But it was never held, on the other hand, 
 that initiation alone sufficed. \Ye learn from Plato, that it \vas 
 also necessary for the soul to be purified from every stain : and 
 that the purification necessary was such as gave virtue, truth, 
 wisdom, strength, justice, and temperance. 
 
 Entrance to the Temples was forbidden to all who had com- 
 mitted homicide, even if it were involuntary. So it is stated by 
 both Isocrates and Theon. Magicians and Charlatans who made 
 trickery a trade, and impostors pretending to be possessed by evil 
 spirits, were excluded from the sanctuaries. Every impious person 
 and criminal was rejected; and Lampridius states that before the 
 celebration of the Mysteries, public notice was given, that none 
 need apply to enter but those against whom their consciences 
 uttered no reproach, and who were certain of their own inno- 
 cence. 
 
 It was required of the Initiate that his heart and hands should 
 be free from any stain. Porphyry says that man's soul, at death, 
 should be enfranchised from all the passions, from hate. envy, and 
 the others ; and. in a word, be as pure as it is required to be in the 
 Mysteries. Of course it is not surprising that parricides and per-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TAP.ERNACLE. 391 
 
 jurers, and others who had committed crimes against God or man, 
 could not be admitted. 
 
 In the Mysteries of Mithras, a lecture was repeated to the Initiate 
 on the subject of Justice. And the great moral lesson of the 
 Mysteries, to which all their mystic ceremonial tended, expressed 
 in a single line by Virgil, was to practise Justice and revere the 
 Deity; thus recalling men to justice, by connecting it with the 
 justice of the Gods, who require it and punish its infraction. The 
 Initiate could aspire to the favors of the Gods, only because and 
 while he respected the rights of society and those of humanity. 
 "The sun," says the chorus of Initiates in Aristophanes, "burns 
 with a pure light for us alone, who, admitted to the Mysteries, 
 observe the laws of piety in our intercourse with strangers and 
 our fellow-citizens." The rewards of initiation were attached 
 to the practice of the social virtues. It was not enough to be 
 initiated merely. It was necessary to be faithful to the laws of 
 initiation, which imposed on men duties in regard to their kind. 
 Bacchus allowed none to participate in his Mysteries, but men who 
 conformed to the rules of piety and justice. Sensibility, above all, 
 and compassion for the misfortunes of others, were precious vir- 
 tues, which initiation strove to encourage. "Nature," says Juvenal, 
 "has created us compassionate, since it has endowed us with tears. 
 Sensibility is the most admirable of our senses. What man is truly 
 worthy of the torch of the Mysteries ; who such as the Priest 
 of Ceres requires him to be, if he regards the misfortunes of others 
 as wholly foreign to himself?" 
 
 All who had not used their endeavors to defeat a conspiracy ; 
 and those who had on the contrary fomented one ; those citizens 
 who had betrayed their country, who had surrendered an advan- 
 tageous post or place, or the vessels of the State, to the enemy; 
 all who had supplied the enemy with money ; and in general, all 
 who had come short of their duties as honest men and good citi- 
 zens, were excluded from the Mysteries of Eleusis. To be admitted 
 there, one must have lived equitably, and with sufficient good 
 fortune not to be regarded as hated by the Gods. 
 
 Thus the Society of the Initiates was, in its principle, and 
 according to the true purpose of its institution, a society of virtuous 
 men, who labored to free their souls from the tyranny of the pas- 
 sions, and to develop the germ of 'all the social virtues. And this 
 was the meaning of the idea, afterward misunderstood, that entry
 
 392 MORALS A1SO DOGMA. 
 
 into Elysium was only allowed to the Initiates : because entrance 
 to the sanctuaries was allowed to the virtuous only, and Elysium 
 was created for virtuous souls alone. 
 
 The precise nature and details of the doctrines as to a future 
 life, and rewards and punishments there, developed in the Mys- 
 teries, is in a measure uncertain. Little direct information in 
 regard to it has come down to us. No doubt, in the ceremonies, 
 there was a scenic representation of Tartarus and the judgment of 
 the dead, resembling that which we find in Virgil : but there is as 
 little doubt that these representations were explained to be alle- 
 gorical. It is not our purpose here to repeat the descriptions given 
 of Elysium and Tartarus. That would be aside from our object. 
 We are only concerned with the great fact that the Mysteries 
 taught the doctrine of the soul's immortality, and that, in some 
 shape, suffering, pain, remorse, and agony, ever follow sin as its 
 consequences. 
 
 Human ceremonies are indeed but imperfect symbols ; and the 
 alternate baptisms in fire and water intended to purify us into 
 immortality, are ever in this world interrupted at the moment of 
 their anticipated completion. Life is a mirror which reflects only 
 to deceive, a tissue perpetually interrupted and broken, an urn 
 forever fed, yet never full. 
 
 All initiation is but introductory to the great change of death. 
 Baptism, anointing, embalming, obsequies by burial or fire, are 
 preparatory symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descend- 
 ing to the Shades, pointing out the mental change which ought to 
 precede the renewal of existence. Death is the true initiation, to 
 which sleep is the introductory or minor mystery. It is the final 
 rite which united the Egyptian with his God, and which opens the 
 jame promise to all who are duly prepared for it. 
 
 The body was deemed a prison for the soul ; but the latter was 
 not condemned to eternal banishment and imprisonment. The 
 Father of the Worlds permits its chains to be broken, and has 
 provided in the course of Nature the means of its escape. It was 
 a doctrine of immemorial antiquity, shared alike by Egyptians, 
 Pythagoreans, the Orphici, and by that characteristic Bacchic 
 Sage, "the Preceptor of the Soul," Silenus, that death is far better 
 than life ; that the real death belongs to those who on earth are im- 
 mersed in theLethe of its passions and fascinations.and that the true 
 life commences only when the soul is emancipated for its return.
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 393 
 
 And in this sense, as presiding over life and death, Di onuses is 
 in the highest sense the LIBERATOR : since, like Osiris, he frees the 
 soul, and guides it in its migrations beyond the grave, preserving 
 it from the risk of again falling under the slavery of matter or 
 of some inferior animal form, the purgatory of Metempsychosis; 
 and exalting and perfecting its nature through the purifying dis- 
 cipline of his Mysteries. "The great consummation of all philos- 
 ophy," said Socrates, professedly quoting from traditional and 
 mystic sources, "is Death: He who pursues philosophy aright, is 
 studying hou' to die." 
 
 All soul is part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos ; 
 and it is therefore he who, as Spirit of Spirits, leads ba,ck the 
 vagrant spirit to its home, and accompanies it through the purify- 
 ing processes, both real and symbolical, of its earthly transit. He 
 is therefore emphatically the Mystes or Hierophant, the great 
 Spiritual Mediator of Greek religion. 
 
 The human soul is itself 8at/zonos, a God within the mind, 
 capable through its own power of rivalling the canonization of the 
 Hero, of making itself immortal by the practice of the good, and 
 the contemplation of the beautiful and true. The removal to the 
 I lappy Islands could only be understood mythically ; everything 
 earthly must die ; Man, like CEdipus, is wounded from his birth, 
 his real elysium can exist only beyond the grave. Dionusos died 
 and descended to the Shades. His passion was the great Secret of 
 the Mysteries ; as Death is the Grand Mystery of existence. His 
 death, typical of Nature's Death, or of her periodical decay and 
 restoration, was one of the many symbols of the palingenesia or 
 second birth of man. 
 
 Man descended from the elemental Forces or Titans [Elohim], 
 who fed on the body of the Pantheistic Deity creating the Universe 
 by self-sacrifice, commemorates in sacramental observance this 
 mysterious passion ; and while partaking of the raw flesh of the 
 victim, seems to be invigorated by a fresh draught from the foun- 
 tain of universal life, to receive a new pledge of regenerated exist- 
 ence. Death is the inseparable antecedent of life ; the seed dies in 
 order to produce the plant, and earth itself is rent asunder and 
 dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence the significancy of the 
 phallus, or of its inoffensive substitute, the obelisk, rising as 'an 
 emblem of resurrection by 'the tomb of buried Deity at Lerna or 
 at Sais.
 
 394 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Dionusos-Orpheus descended to the Shades to recover the lost 
 Virgin of the Zodiac, to bring back his mother to the sky as 
 Thyone ; or what has the same meaning, to consummate his 
 eventful marriage with Persephone, thereby securing, like the 
 nuptials of his father with Semele or Danae, the perpetuity of 
 Nature. His under-earth office is the depression of the year, the 
 wintry aspect in the alternations of bull and serpent, whose united 
 series makes up the continuity of Time, and in which, physically 
 speaking, the stern and dark are ever the parents of the beautiful 
 and bright. 
 
 It was this aspect, sombre for the moment, but bright by anti- 
 cipation, which was contemplated in the Mysteries : the human 
 sufferer was consoled by witnessing the severer trials of the Gods ; 
 and the vicissitudes of life and death, expressed by apposite sym- 
 bols, such as the sacrifice or submersion of the Bull, the extinction 
 and re-illumination of the torch, excited corresponding emotions 
 of alternate grief and joy, that play of passion which was present 
 at the origin of Nature, and which accompanies all her changes. 
 
 The greater Eleusinise were celebrated in the month Boedromion, 
 when the seed was buried in the ground, and when the year, verg- 
 ing to its decline, disposes the mind to serious reflection. The 
 first days of the ceremonial were passed in sorrow and anxious 
 silence, in fasting and expiatory or lustral offices. On a sudden, 
 the scene was changed : sorrow and lamentation were discarded, 
 the glad name of lacchus passed from mouth to mouth, the image 
 of the God, crowned with myrtle and bearing a lighted torch, was 
 borne in joyful procession from the Ceramicus to Eleusis, where, 
 during the ensuing night, the initiation was completed by an im- 
 posing revelation. The first scene was in the Trporaos, or outer 
 court of the sacred enclosure, where amidst utter darkness, or 
 while the mediating God, the star illuminating the Nocturnal 
 Mystery, alone carried an unextinguished torch, the candidates 
 were overawed with terrific sounds and noises, while they painfully 
 groped their way, as in the gloomy cavern of the soul's sublunar 
 migration ; a scene justly compared to the passage of the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death. For by the immutable law exemplified 
 in the trials of Psyche, man must pass through the terrors of the 
 under-world, before he can reach the height of Heaven. At length 
 the gates of the adytum were thrown open, a supernatural light 
 streamed from the illuminated statue of the Goddess, and enchant-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 395 
 
 ing sights and sounds, mingled with songs and dances, exalted 
 the communicant to a rapture of supreme felicity, realizing, as far 
 as sensuous imagery could depict, the anticipated reunion with 
 the Gods. 
 
 In the dearth of direct evidence as to the detail of the ceremo- 
 nies enacted, or of the meanings connected with them, their ten- 
 dency must be inferred from the characteristics of the contem- 
 plated deities with their accessory symbols and mythi, or from 
 direct testimony as to the value of the Mysteries generally. 
 
 The ordinary phenomena of vegetation, the death of the seed in 
 giving birth to the plant, connecting the sublimest hopes with 
 the plainest occurrences, was the simple yet beautiful formula 
 assumed by the great mystery in almost all religions, from the 
 Zend-Avesta to the Gospel. As Proserpina, the divine power is 
 as the seed decaying and destroyed ; as Artemis, she is the prin- 
 ciple of its destruction ; but Artemis Proserpina is also Core Sote- 
 ria, the Saviour, who leads the Spirits of Hercules and Hyacinthus 
 to Heaven. 
 
 Many other emblems were employed in the Mysteries, as the 
 dove, the myrtle-wreath, and others, all significant of life rising 
 out of death, and of the equivocal condition of dying yet immortal 
 man. 
 
 The horrors and punishments of Tartarus, as described in the 
 Phredo and the /Eneid, with all the ceremonies of the judgments 
 of Minos, Eacus, and Rhadamanthus, were represented, sometimes 
 more and sometimes less fully, in the Mysteries; in order to 
 impress upon the minds of the Initiates this great lesson, that we 
 should be ever prepared to appear before the Supreme Judge, with 
 a heart pure and spotless ; as Socrates teaches in the Gorgias. 
 For the soul stained with crimes, he says, to descend to the Shades, 
 is the bitterest ill. To adhere to Justice and Wisdom, Plato holds, 
 is our duty, that we may some day take that lofty road that leads 
 toward the heavens, and avoid most of the evils to which the 
 soul is exposed in its subterranean journey of a thousand years. 
 And so in the Phaedo, Socrates teaches that we should seek here 
 below to free our soul of its passions, in order to be ready to enter 
 our appearance, whenever Destiny summons us to the Shades. 
 
 Thus the Mysteries inculcated a great moral truth, veiled with 
 a fable of huge proportions and the appliances of an impressive 
 spectacle, to which, exhibited in the sanctuaries, art and natural
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 magic lent all they had that was imposing. They sought to 
 strengthen men against the horrors of death and the fearful idea 
 of utter annihilation. Death, says the author of the dialogue, 
 entitled Axiochus, included in the works of Plato, is but a passage 
 to a happier state; but one must have lived well, to attain that 
 most fortunate result. So that the doctrine of the immortality 
 of the soul was consoling to the virtuous and religious man alone ; 
 while to all others it came with menaces and despair, surrounding 
 them with terrors and alarms that disturbed their repose during 
 all their life. 
 
 For the material horrors of Tartarus, allegorical to the Initiate, 
 were real to the mass of the Profane ; nor in latter times, did, per- 
 haps many Initiates read rightly the allegory. The triple-walled 
 prison, which the condemned soul first met, round which swelled 
 and surged the fiery waves of Phlegethon, wherein rolled roaring, 
 huge, blazing rocks ; the great gate with columns of adamant, 
 which none save the Gods could crush ; Tisiphone, their warder, 
 with her bloody robes ; the lash resounding on the mangled bod- 
 ies of the miserable unfortunates, their plaintive groans, mingled 
 in horrid harmony with the clashings of their chains ; the 
 Furies, lashing the guilty with their snakes ; the awful abyss 
 where Hydra howls with its hundred heads, greedy to devour ; 
 Tityus, prostrate, and his entrails fed upon by the cruel vulture ; 
 Sisyphus, ever rolling his rock ; Ixion on his wheel ; Tantalus 
 tortured by eternal thirst and hunger, in the midst of water and 
 with delicious fruits touching his head ; the daughters of Danaus 
 at their eternal, fruitless task ; beasts biting and venomous reptiles 
 stinging ; and devouring flame eternally consuming bodies ever 
 renewed in endless agony ; all these sternly impressed upon the 
 people the terrible consequences of sin and vice, and urged them 
 to pursue the paths of honesty and virtue. 
 
 And if, in the ceremonies of the Mysteries, these material hor- 
 rors were explained to the Initiates as mere symbols of the unim- 
 aginable torture, remorse, and agony that would rend the imma- 
 terial soul and rack the immortal spirit, they were feeble and 
 insufficient in the same mode and measure only, as all material 
 images and symbols fall short of that which is beyond the cogni- 
 zance of our senses : and the grave Hierophant, the imagery, the 
 paintings, the dramatic horrors, the funeral sacrifices, the august 
 mvsteries. the solemn silence of the sanctuaries, were none the
 
 PRINCE OF TilK 1 AliKUX ACl.E. 397 
 
 less impressive, because they were known to be but symbols, that 
 with material shows and images made the imagination to be the 
 teacher of the intellect. 
 
 So, too, it was represented, that except for the gravest sins there 
 was an opportunity for expiation ; and the tests of water, air, 
 and fire were represented ; by means of which, during the march 
 of many years, the soul could be purified, and rise toward the 
 ethereal regions ; that ascent being more or less tedious and labo- 
 rious, according as each soul was more or less clogged by the gross 
 impediments of its sins and vices. Herein was shadowed forth, 
 (how distinctly taught the Initiates we know not), the doctrine 
 that pain and sorrow, misfortune and remorse, are the inevitable 
 consequencesthat flow from sin and vice,as effect flows from cause ; 
 that by each sin and every act of vice the soul drops back and 
 loses ground in its advance toward perfection : and that the ground 
 so lost is and will be in reality never so recovered as that the sin 
 shall be as if it never had been committed; but that throughout 
 all the eternity of its existence, each soul shall be conscious that 
 every act of vice or baseness it did on earth has made the distance 
 greater between itself and ultimate perfection. 
 
 We see this truth glimmering in the doctrine, taught in the 
 Mysteries, that though slight and ordinary offences could be expi- 
 ated by penance, repentance, acts of beneficence, and prayers, grave 
 crimes were mortal sins, beyond the reach of all such remedies. 
 Eleusis closed her gates against Nero : and the Pagan Priests told 
 Constantine that among all their modes of expiation there was 
 none so potent as could wash from his soul the dark spots left 
 by the murder of his wife, and his multiplied perjuries and assas- 
 sinations. 
 
 The object of the ancient initiations being to ameliorate man- 
 kind and to perfect the intellectual part of man, the nature of the 
 human soul, its origin, its destination, its relations to the body 
 and to universal nature, all formed part of the mystic science : 
 and to them in part the lessons given to the Initiate were directed. 
 For it was believed that initiation tended to his perfection, and 
 to preventing the divine part within him, overloaded with matter 
 gross and earthy, from being plunged into gloom, and impeded 
 in its return to the Deity. The soul, with them, was not a mere 
 conception or abstraction ; but a reality including in itself life and 
 thought : or. rather, of whose essence it was to live and think.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It was material ; but not brute, inert, inactive, lifeless, motionless, 
 formless, lightless matter. It was held to be active, reasoning, 
 thinking; its natural home in the highest regions of the Universe, 
 whence it descended to illuminate, give form and movement to, 
 vivify, animate, and carry with itself the baser matter; and 
 whither it unceasingly tends to reascend,when and as soon as it can 
 free itself from its connection with that matter. From that sub- 
 stance, divine, infinitely delicate and active, essentially luminous, 
 the souls of men were formed, and by it alone, uniting with and 
 organizing their bodies, men lived. 
 
 This was the doctrine of Pythagoras, who learned it when he 
 received the Egyptian Mysteries: and it was the doctrine of all 
 who, by means of the ceremonial of initiation, thought to purify 
 the soul. Virgil makes the spirit of Anchises teach it to tineas : 
 and all the expiations and lustrations used in the Mysteries were 
 but symbols of those intellectual ones by which the soul was to be 
 purged of its vice-spots and stains, arid freed of the incumbrance 
 of its earthly prison, so that it might rise unimpeded to the source 
 from which it came. 
 
 Hence sprung the doctrine of the transmigration of souls ; 
 which Pythagoras taught as an allegory, and those who came 
 after him received literally. Plato, like him, drew his doctrines 
 from the East and the Mysteries, and undertook to translate the 
 language of the symbols used there, into that of Philosophy ; and 
 to prove by argument and philosophical deduction, what, felt by 
 the consciousness, the Mysteries taught by symbols as an indisputa- 
 ble fact, the immortality of the soul. Cicero did the same ; and 
 followed the Mysteries in teaching that the Gods were but mortal 
 men, who for their great virtues and signal services had deserved 
 that their souls should, after death, be raised to that lofty rank. 
 
 It being taught in the Mysteries, either by way of allegory, the 
 meaning of which was not made known except to a. select few, 
 or, perhaps only at a later day, as an actual reality, that the souls 
 of the vicious dead passed into the bodies of those animals to 
 whose nature their vices had most affinity, it was also taught that 
 the soul could avoid these transmigrations, often successive and 
 numerous, by the practice of virtue, which would acquit it of 
 them, free it from the circle of successive generations, and restore 
 it at once to its source. Hence nothing was so ardently prayed 
 for by the Initiates, says Proclus. as this happy fortune, whi^h,
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 399 
 
 delivering them from the empire of Evil, would restore them to 
 their true life, and conduct them to the place of final rest. To 
 this doctrine probably referred those figures of animals and mon- 
 sters which were exhibited to the Initiate, before allowing him to 
 see the sacred light for which he sighed. 
 
 Plato says, that souls will not reach the term of their ills, until 
 the revolutions of the world have restored them to their primitive 
 condition, and purified them from the stains which they have con- 
 tracted by the contagion of fire, earth, and air. And he held that 
 they could not be allowed to enter Heaven, until they had distin- 
 guished themselves by the practice of virtue in some one of three 
 several bodies. The Manicheans allowed five : Pindar, the same 
 number as Plato ; as did the Jews. 
 
 And Cicero says, that the ancient soothsayers, and the interpre- 
 ters of the will of the Gods, in their religious ceremonies and ini- 
 tiations, taught that we expiate here below the crimes committed 
 in a prior life ; and for that are born. It was taught in these Mys- 
 teries, that the soul passes through several states, and that the 
 pains and sorrows of this life are an expiation of prior faults. 
 
 This doctrine of transmigration of souls obtained, as Porphyry 
 informs us, among the Persians and Magi. It was held in the 
 East and the West, and that from the remotest antiquity. Hero- 
 dotus found it among the Egyptians, who made the term of the 
 circle of migrations from one human body, through animals, 
 fishes, and birds, to another human body, three thousand years. 
 Empedocles even held that souls went into plants. Of these, the 
 laurel was the noblest, as of animals the lion ; both being conse- 
 crated to the Sun, to which, it was held in the Orient, virtuous 
 souls were to return. The Curds, the Chinese, the Kabbalists, all 
 held the same doctrine. So Origen held, and the Bishop Synesius, 
 the latter of whom had been initiated, and who thus prayed to 
 God : "O Father, grant that my soul, reunited to the light, may 
 not be plunged again into the defilements of earth !" So the Gnos- 
 tics held ; and even the Disciples of Christ inquired if the man 
 who was born blind, was not so punished for some sin that he had 
 committed before his birth. 
 
 Virgil, in the celebrated allegory in which he develops the doc- 
 trines taught in the Mysteries, enunciated the doctrine, held by 
 most of the ancient philosophers, of the pre-existenee of souls, in 
 the eternal fire from which they emanate; that fire which, ani-
 
 400 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 mates the stars, and circulates in every part of Nature: and the 
 purifications of the soul, by fire, water, and air, of which he 
 speaks, and which three modes were employed in the Mysteries of 
 Bacchus, were symbols of the passage of the soul into different 
 bodies. 
 
 The relations of the human soul with the rest of nature were a 
 chief object of the science of the Mysteries. The man was there 
 brought face to face with entire nature. The world, and the spher- 
 ical envelope that surrounds it, were represented by a mystic egg, 
 by the side of the image of the Sun-God whose Mysteries were 
 celebrated. The famous Orphic egg was consecrated to Bacchus 
 in his Mysteries. It was, says Plutarch, an image of the Uni- 
 verse, which engenders everything, and contains everything in its 
 bosom. "Consult/' says Macrobius, "the Initiates of the Myste- 
 ries of Bacchus, who honor with special veneration the sacred egg." 
 The rounded and almost spherical form of its shell, he says, which 
 encloses it on every side, and confines within itself the principles 
 of life, is a symbolic image of the world ; and the world is the 
 universal principle of all things. 
 
 This symbol was borrowed from the Egyptians, who also conse- 
 crated the egg to Osiris, germ of Light, himself born, says Diodo- 
 rus, from that famous egg. In Thebes, in Upper Egypt, he was 
 represented as emitting it from his mouth, and causing to issue 
 from it the first principle of heat and light, or the Fire-God, Vul- 
 can, or Phtha. We find this egg even in Japan, between the horns 
 of the famous Mithriac Bull, whose attributes Osiris, Apis, and 
 Bacchus all borrowed. 
 
 Orpheus, author of the Grecian Mysteries, which he carried from 
 Egypt to Greece, consecrated this symbol : and taught that matter, 
 uncreated and informous, existed from all eternity, unorganized, 
 as chaos ; containing in itself the Principles of all Existences 
 confused and intermingled, light with darkness, the dry with the 
 humid, heat with cold ; from which, it after long ages taking tfk 
 shape of an immense egg, issued the purest matter, or first sub- 
 stance, and the residue was divided into the four elements, from 
 which proceeded heaven and earth and all things else. This grand 
 Cosmogonic idea he taught in the Mysteries ; and thus the Hiero- 
 phant explained the meaning of the mystic egg, seen by the Initi- 
 ates in the Sanctuary. 
 
 Thus entire Nature, in her primitive organization, was presented
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 4OI 
 
 to him whom it was wished to instruct in her secrets and initiate 
 in her mysteries ; and Clemens of Alexandria might well say that 
 initiation was a real physiology. 
 
 So Phanes, the Light-God, in the Mysteries of the New Or- 
 phics, emerged from the egg of chaos : and the Persians had the 
 great egg of Ormuzd. And Sanchoniathon tells us that in tfie 
 Phoenician theology, the matter of chaos took the form of an egg ; 
 and he adds: "Such are the lessons which the Son of Thabion, 
 first Hierophant of the Phoenicians, turned into allegories, in 
 which physics and astronomy intermingled, and which he taught 
 to the other Hierophants, whose duty it was to preside at orgies 
 and initiations ; and who, seeking to excite the astonishment and 
 admiration of mortals, faithfully transmitted these things to their 
 successors and the Initiates." 
 
 In the Mysteries was also taught the division of the Universal 
 Cause into an Active and a Passive cause ; of which two, Osiris 
 and Isis, the heavens and the earth were symbols. These two 
 First Causes, into which it was held that the great Universal First 
 Cause at the beginning of things divided itself, were the two great 
 Divinities, whose worship was, according to Varro, inculcated upon 
 the Initiates at Samothrace. "As is taught," he says, "in the ini- 
 tiation into the Mysteries at Samothrace, Heaven and Earth are 
 regarded as the two first Divinities. They are the potent Gods 
 worshipped in that Island, and whose names are consecrated in the 
 books of our Augurs. One of them is male and the other female ; 
 and they bear the same relation to each other as the soul does to 
 the body, humidity to dryness." The Curetes, in Crete, had 
 builded an altar to Heaven and to Earth ; whose Mysteries they 
 celebrated at Gnossus, in a cypress grove. 
 
 These two Divinities, the Active and Passive Principles of the 
 Universe, were commonly symbolized by the generative parts of 
 man and woman ; to which, in remote ages, no idea of indecency 
 was attached ; the Phallus and Ctcis, emblems of generation and 
 production, and which, as such, appeared in the Mysteries. The 
 Indian Lingam was the union of both, as were the boat and mast, 
 and the point within a circle: all of which expressed the same 
 philosophical idea as to the Union of the two great Causes of Na- 
 ture, which concur, one actively and the other passively, in the 
 generation of all beings: which were symbolized by what we now 
 term Gemini, the Twins, at that remote period when the Sun was
 
 4O2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in that Sign at the Vernal Equinox, and when they were Male and 
 Female; and of which the Phallus was perhaps taken from the 
 generative organ of the Bull, when about twenty-five hundred 
 years before our era he opened that equinox, and became to the 
 Ancient World the symbol of the creative and generative Power. 
 
 The Initiates at Eleusis commenced, Proclus says, by invoking 
 the two great causes of nature, the Heavens and the Earth, on 
 which in succession they fixed their eyes, addressing to each a 
 prayer. And they deemed it their duty to do so, he adds, because 
 they saw in them the Father and Mother of all generations. The 
 concourse of these two agents of the Universe was termed in theo- 
 logical language a marriage. Tertullian, accusing the Valentin- 
 ians of having borrowed these symbols from the Mysteries of 
 Eleusis, yet admits that in those Mysteries they were explained in 
 a manner consistent with decency, as representing the powers of 
 nature. He was too little of a philosopher to comprehend the 
 sublime esoteric meaning of these emblems, which will, if you ad- 
 vance, in other Degrees be unfolded to you. 
 
 The Christian Fathers contented themselves with reviling and 
 ridiculing the use of these emblems. But as they in the earlier 
 times created no indecent ideas, and were worn alike by the most 
 innocent youths and virtuous women, it will be far wiser for us to 
 seek to penetrate their meaning. Not only the Egyptians, says 
 Diodorus Siculus, but every other people that consecrate this sym- 
 bol (the Phallus), deem that they thereby do honor to the Active 
 Force of the universal generation of all living things. For the 
 same reason, as we learn from the geographer Ptolemy, it was 
 revered among the Assyrians and Persians. Proclus remarks that 
 in the distribution of the Zodiac among the twelve great Divini- 
 ties, by ancient astrology, six signs were assigned to the male and 
 six to the female principle. 
 
 There is another division of nature, which has in all ages struck 
 all men, and which was not forgotten in the Mysteries ; that of 
 Light and Darkness, Day and Night, Good and Evil ; which min- 
 gle with, and clash against, and pursue or are pursued by each 
 other throughout the Universe. The Great Symbolic Egg dis- 
 tinctly reminded the Initiates of this great division of the world. 
 Plutarch, treating of the dogma of a Providence, and of that of 
 the two principles of Light and Darkness, which he regarded as 
 the basis of the Ancient Theology, of the Orgies and the Myste-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 403 
 
 ries, as well among the Greeks as the Barbarians, a doctrine 
 whose origin, according to him, is lost in the night of time, cites, 
 in support of his opinion, the famous Mystic Egg of the disciples 
 of Zoroaster and the Initiates in the Mysteries of Mithras. 
 
 To the Initiates in the Mysteries of Eleusis was exhibited the 
 spectacle of these two principles, in the successive scenes of Dark- 
 ness and Light which passed before their eyes. To the profound- 
 est darkness, accompanied with illusions and horrid phantoms, 
 succeeded the most brilliant light, whose splendor blazed round 
 the statue of the Goddess. The candidate, says Dion Chrysosto- 
 mus, passed into a mysterious temple, of astonishing magnitude 
 and beauty, where were exhibited to him many mystic scenes; 
 where his ears were stunned with many voices ; and where Dark- 
 ness and Light successively passed before hirr\. And Themistius 
 in like manner describes the Initiate, when about to enter into that 
 part of the sanctuary tenanted by the Goddess, as filled with fear 
 and religious awe, wavering, uncertain in what direction to ad- 
 vance through the profound darkness that envelops him. But 
 when the Hierophant has opened the entrance to the inmost sanc- 
 tuary, and removed the robe that hides the Goddess, he exhibits 
 her to the Initiate, resplendent with divine light. The thick 
 shadow and gloomy atmosphere which had environed the candi- 
 date vanish ; he is filled with a vivid and glowing enthusiasm, that 
 lifts his soul out of the profound dejection in which it was plunged ; 
 and the purest light succeeds to the thickest darkness. 
 
 In a fragment of the same writer, preserved by Stobaeus, we 
 learn that the Initiate, up to the moment when his initiation is to 
 be consummated, is alarmed by every kind of sight : that aston- 
 ishment and terror take his soul captive ; he trembles ; cold 
 sweat flows from his body ; until the moment when the Light is 
 shown him, a most astounding Light, the brilliant scene of 
 Elysium, where he sees charming meadows overarched by a clear 
 sky, and festivals celebrated by dances ; where he hears harmoni- 
 ous voices, and the majestic chants of the Hierophants ; and 
 views the sacred spectacles. Then, absolutely free, and enfran- 
 chised from the dominion of all ills, he mingles with the crowd 
 of Initiates, and, crowned with flowers, celebrates with them the 
 holy orgies, in the brilliant realms of ether, and the dwelling-place 
 of Ormuzd. 
 
 In the Mysteries of Isis, the candidate first passed through the
 
 404 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 dark valley of the shadow of death; then into a place represent- 
 ing the elements or sublunary world, where the two principles 
 clash and contend ; and was finally admitted to a luminous region, 
 where the sun, with his most brilliant light, put to rout the shades 
 of night. Then he himself put on the costume of the Sun-God, 
 or the Visible Source of Etherial Light, in whose Mysteries he was 
 initiated; and passed from the empire of darkness to that of light. 
 After having set his feet on the threshold of the palace of Pluto, 
 he ascended to the Empyrean, to the bosom of the Eternal Prin- 
 ciple of Light of the Universe, from which all souls and intelli- 
 gences emanate. 
 
 Plutarch admits that this theory of two Principles was the basis 
 of all the Mysteries, and consecrated in the religious ceremonies 
 and Mysteries of Greece. Osiris and Typhon, Ormuzd and Ahri- 
 man, Bacchus and the Titans and Giants, all represented these 
 principles. Phanes. the luminous God that issued from the Sacred 
 Egg, and Night, bore the sceptres in the Mysteries of the New 
 Bacchus. Night and Day were two of the eight Gods adored in 
 the Mysteries of Osiris. The sojourn of Proserpine and also of 
 Adonis, during six months of each year in the upper world, abode 
 of light, and six months in the lower or abode of darkness, alle- 
 gorically represented the same division of the Universe. 
 
 The connection of the different initiations with the Equinoxes 
 which separate the Empire of the Nights from that of the Days, 
 and fix the moment when one of these principles begins to prevail 
 over the other, shows that the Mysteries referred to the continual 
 contest between the two principles of light and darkness, each 
 alternately victor and vanquished. The very object proposed by 
 them shows that their basis was the theory of the two principles 
 and their relations with the soul. "We celebrate the august Mys- 
 teries of Ceres and Proserpine." "TS the Emneror Julian, "at the 
 Autumnal Equinox, to obtain of the Gods that the soul may not 
 experience the mali.crnnt nction of the Power of Dnrkness that is 
 then about to have sway and rule in Nature." Sallust the Philos- 
 opher makes almost the samr remark ns to the relations of the 
 soul with the periodical march of Kent and darkness, during: an 
 annual revolution : and assures us that the mysterious festivals of 
 Greece related to the same. And in all the explanations given by 
 Macrobim of the Sacred Fables in regard to the Sun. adored under 
 the names of Osiris, Horus, Adonis, Atvs, Bacchus, etc., we inva-
 
 PRliNCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 405 
 
 riably see that they refer to the theory of the two Principles, Light 
 and Darkness, and the triumphs gained by one over the other. In 
 April was celebrated the first triumph obtained by the light of day 
 over the length of the nights; and the ceremonies of mourning 
 and rejoicing had, Alacrobius says, as their object, the vicissitudes 
 of the annual administration of the world. 
 
 This brings us naturally to the tragic portion of these religious 
 scenes, and to the allegorical history of the different adventures 
 of the Principle, Light, victor and vanquished by turns, in the 
 combats waged with Darkness during each annual period. Here 
 we reach the most mysterious part of the ancient initiations, and 
 that most interesting to the Mason who laments the death of his 
 Grand Master Khir-Om. Over it Herodotus throws the august 
 veil of mystery and silence. Speaking of the Temple of Minerva, or 
 of that Isis who was styled the Mother of the Sun-God, and whose 
 Mysteries were termed Isiac, at Sais, he speaks of a Tomb in tne 
 Temple, in the rear of the Chapel and against the wall ; and says, 
 "It is the tomb of a man, whose name respect requires me to con- 
 ceal. Within the Temple \vere great obelisks of stone [phalli], 
 and a circular lake paved with stones and revetted with a parapet. 
 It seemed to me as large as that at Delos" [where the Mysteries of 
 Apollo were celebrated]. "In this lake the Egyptians celebrate, 
 during the night, what they style the Mysteries, in which are rep- 
 resented the sufferings of the God of whom I have spoken above." 
 This God was Osiris, put to death byTyphon,andwho descended to 
 the Shades and was restored to life ; of which he had spoken before. 
 
 We are reminded, by this passage, of the Tomb of Khir-Om, his 
 death, and his rising from the grave, symbolical of restoration of 
 life ; and also of the brazen Sea in the Temple at Jerusalem. He- 
 rodotus adds: "I impose upon myself a profound silence in regard 
 to these Mysteries, with most of which I am acquainted. As little 
 will I speak of the initiations of Ceres, known among the Greeks 
 as Thesmophoria. What I shall say will not violate the respect 
 which I owe to religion." 
 
 Athenagoras quotes this passage to show that not only the Statue 
 but the Tomb of Osiris was exhibited in Egypt, and a tragic rep- 
 resentation of his sufferings ; and remarks that the Egyptians had 
 mourning ceremonies in honor of their Gods, whose deaths they 
 lamented ; and to whom they afterward sacrificed as having passed 
 to a state of immortality. 
 a?
 
 406 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It is, however, not difficult, combining the different rays of light 
 that emanate from the different Sanctuaries, to learn the genius 
 and the object of these secret ceremonies. We have hints, and not 
 details. 
 
 We know that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun, under the 
 name of Osiris. The misfortunes and tragical death of this God 
 were an allegory relating to the Sun. Typhon, like Ahriman, rep- 
 resented Darkness. The sufferings and death of Osiris in the 
 Mysteries of the Night were a mystic image of the phenomena of 
 Nature, and the conflict of the two great Principles which share 
 the empire of Nature, and most influence our souls. The Sun is 
 neither born, dies, nor is raised to life: and the recital of these 
 events was but an allegory, veiling a higher truth. 
 
 Horus, son of Isis, and the same as Apollo or the Sun, also died 
 and was restored again to life and to his mother ; and the priests 
 cf Isis celebrated these great events by mourning and joyous fes- 
 tival succeeding each other. 
 
 In the Mysteries of Phoenicia, established in honor of Thammuz 
 or Adoni, also the Sun, the spectacle of his death and resurrec- 
 tion was exhibited to the Initiates. As we learn from Meursius 
 and Plutarch, a figure was exhibited representing the corpse of a 
 young man. Flowers were strewed upon his body , the women 
 mourned for him ; a tomb was erected to him. Aiid these feasts, 
 as we learn from Plutarch and Ovid, passed into Greece. 
 
 In the Mysteries of Mithras, the Sun-God, in Asia Minor, Ar- 
 menia and Persia, the death of that God was lamented, and his 
 resurrection was celebrated with the most enthusiastic expressions 
 of joy. A corpse, we learn from Julian Firmicus, was shown the 
 Initiates, representing Mithras dead ; and afterward his resurrec- 
 tion was announced; and they were then invited to rejoice that 
 the dead God was restored to life, and had by means of his suffer- 
 ings secured their salvation. Three months before, his birth had 
 been celebrated, under the emblem of an infant, born on the 
 25th of December, or the eighth day before the Kalends of Jan- 
 uary. 
 
 In Greece, in the Mysteries of the same God. honored under the 
 name of Bakchos, a representation was given of his death, slain 
 by the Titans ; of his descent into hell, his subsequent resurrec- 
 tion, and his return toward his Principle or the pure abode whence 
 he had descended to unite himself with matter. In the islands
 
 PRINCE OF THE iABERNACLE. 407 
 
 of Chios and Tenedos, this death was represented by the sacrifice 
 of a man, actually immolated. 
 
 The mutilation and sufferings of the same Sun-God, honored 
 in Phrygia under the name of Atys, caused the tragic scenes that 
 were, as we learn from Diodorus Siculus, represented annually in 
 the Mysteries of Cybele, mother of the Gods. An image was 
 borne there, representing the corpse of a young man, over whose 
 tomb tears were shed, and to whom funeral honors were paid. 
 
 At Samothrace, in the Mysteries of the Cabiri or great Gods, a 
 representation was given of the death of one of them. This name 
 was given to the Sun, because the Ancient Astronomers gave the 
 name of Gods Cabiri and of Samothrace to the two Gods in the 
 Constellation Gemini; whom others term Apollo and Hercules, 
 two names of the Sun. Athenion says that the young Cabirus so 
 slain was the same as the Dionusos or Bakchos of the Greeks. The 
 Pelasgi, ancient inhabitants of Greece, and who settled Samo- 
 thrace, celebrated these Mysteries, whose origin is unknown : and 
 they worshipped Castor and Pollux as patrons of navigation. 
 
 The tomb of Apollo was at Delphi, where his body was laid, 
 after Python, the Polar Serpent that annually heralds the coming 
 of autumn, cold, darkness, and winter, had slain him, and over 
 whom the God triumphs, on the 25th of March, on his return to 
 the lamb of the Vernal Equinox. 
 
 In Crete, Jupiter Ammon, or the Sun in Aries, painted with the 
 attributes of that equinoctial sign, the Ram or Lamb ; that Am- 
 mon who, Martianus Copella says, is the same as Osiris, Adoni, 
 Adonis, Atys, and the other Sun-Gods, had also a tomb, and a 
 religious initiation ; one of the principal ceremonies of which con- 
 sisted in clothing the Initiate with the skin of a white lamb* And 
 in this we see the origin of the apron of white sheep-skin, used in 
 Masonry. 
 
 All these deaths and resurrections, these funeral emblems, these 
 anniversaries of mourning and joy, these cenotaphs raised in dif- 
 ferent places to the Sun-God, honored under different names, had 
 but a single object, the allegorical narration of the events which 
 happened here below to the Light of Nature, that sacred fire from 
 which our souls were deemed to emanate, warring with Matter and 
 the dark Principle resident therein, ever at varianae with the Prin- 
 ciple of Good and Light poured upon itself by the Supreme Divin- 
 ity. All these Mysteries, says Clemens of Alexandria, displaying
 
 408 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to us murders and tombs alone, all these religious tragedies, had a 
 common basis, variously ornamented : and that basis was the ficti- 
 tious death and resurrection of the Sun, Soul of the World, princi- 
 ple of life and movement in the Sublunary World, and source of 
 our intelligences, which are but a portion of the Eternal Light 
 blazing in that Star, their chief centre. 
 
 It was in the Sun that Souls, it was said, were purified : and to 
 it they repaired. It was one of the gates of the soul, through 
 which the theologians, says Porphyry, say that it re-ascends 
 toward the home oi Light and the Good. Wherefore, in the Mys- 
 teries of Eleusis the Dadoukos (the first officer after the Hiero- 
 phant, who icpresented the Grand Demiourgos or Maker of the 
 Universe), who was posted in the interior of the Temple, and there 
 received the candidates, represented the Sun. 
 
 It was also held that the vicissitudes experienced by the Father 
 of Light had an influence on the destiny of souls ; which, of the 
 same substance as he, shared his fortunes. This we learn from the 
 Emperor Julian and Sallust the Philosopher. They are afflicted 
 when he suffers : they rejoice when he triumphs over the Power 
 of Darkness which opposes his sway and hinders the happiness of 
 Souls, to whom nothing is so terrible as darkness. The fruit of 
 the sufferings of the God, father of light and Souls, slain by the 
 Chief of the Powers of Darkness, and again restored to life, was 
 received in the Mysteries. "His death works your Salvation ;" 
 said the High Priest of Mithras. That was the great secret of this 
 religious tragedy, and its expected fruit ; the resurrection of a 
 God, who, repossessing Himself of His dominion over Darkness, 
 should associate with Him in His triumph those virtuous Souls 
 that bV their purity were worthy to share His glory ; and that 
 strove not against the divine force that drew them to Him, when 
 He had thus conquered. 
 
 To the Initiate were also displayed the spectacles of the chief 
 agents of the Universal Cause, and of the distribution of the world, 
 in the detail of its parts arranged in most regular order. The 
 Universe itself supplied man with the model of the first Temple 
 reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the Temple of Solo- 
 mon, the symbolic ornaments which formed its chief decorations, 
 and the dress of the High Priest, all. as Clemens of Alexandria, 
 Josephus and Philo state, had reference to the order of the world. 
 Clemens informs us that the Temple contained many emblems of
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 409 
 
 the Seasons, the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the constellations 
 Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the elements, and the other 
 parts of the world. 
 
 Josephus, in his description of the High Priest's Vestments, 
 protesting against the charge of impiety brought against the He- 
 brews by other nations, for contemning the Heathen Divinities, 
 declares it false, because, in the construction of the Tabernacle, in 
 the vestments of the Sacrificers, and in the Sacred vessels, the 
 whole World was in some sort represented. Of the three parts, he 
 says, into which the Temple was divided, two represent Earth and 
 Sea, open to all men, and the third, Heaven, God's dwelling-place, 
 reserved for Him alone. The twelve loaves of Shew-bread signify 
 the twelve months of the year. The Candlestick represented the 
 twelve signs through which the Seven Planets run their courses ; 
 and the seven lights, those planets ; the veils, of four colors, the 
 four elements ; the tunic of the High Priest, the earth ; the 
 Hyacinth, nearly blue, the Heavens ; the ephod, of four colors, 
 the whole of nature ; the gold, Light ; the breast-plate, in the 
 middle, this earth in the centre of the world ; the two Sardonyxes, 
 used as clasps, the Sun and Moon ; and the twelve precious stones 
 of the breast-plate arranged by threes, like the Seasons, the twelve 
 months, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Even the loaves were ar- 
 ranged in two groups of six, like the zodiacal signs above and 
 below the Equator. Clemens, the learned Bishop of Alexandria, 
 and Philo, adopt all these explanations. 
 
 Hermes calls the Zodiac, the Great Tent, Tabernaculum. In 
 the Royal Arch Degree of the American Rite, the Tabernacle has 
 four veils, of different colors, to each of which belongs a banner. 
 The colors of the four are White, Blue, Crimson, and Purple, and 
 the banners bear the images of the Bull, the Lion, the Man. and 
 the Eagle, the Constellations answering 2500 years before our era 
 to the Equinoctial and Solstitial points : to which belong four stars, 
 Aldebaran, Regulus. Fomalhaut, and Antares. At each of these 
 veils there are three words : and to each division of the Zodiac, 
 belonging to each of these Stars, are three Signs. The four signs, 
 Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, were termed the fixed signs, 
 and are appropriately assigned to the four veils. 
 
 So the Cherubim, according to Clemens and Philo, represented 
 the two hemispheres ; their wings, the rapid course of the firma- 
 ment, and of time which revolves in the Zodiac. "For the Heavens
 
 4IO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 fly ;" says Philo, speaking of the wings of the Cherubim : which 
 were winged representations of the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, and 
 the Man ; of tw-o of which, the human-headed, winged bulls and 
 lions, so many have been found at Nimroud ; adopted as beneficent 
 symbols, when the Sun entered Taurus at the Vernal Equinox and 
 Leo at the Summer Solstice: and when, also, he entered Scorpio, for 
 which, on account of its malignant influences, Aquila, the eagle 
 was substituted, at the autumnal equinox; and Aquarius (the 
 water-bearer) at the Winter Solstice. 
 
 So, Clemens says, the candlestick with seven branches represent- 
 ed the seven planets, like which the seven branches were arranged 
 and regulated, preserving that musical proportion and system of 
 harmony of which the sun was the centre and connection. -They 
 were arranged, says Philo, by threes, like the planets above and 
 those below the sun ; between which two groups was the branch 
 that represented him, the mediator or moderator of the celestial 
 harmony. He is, in fact, the fourth in the musical scale, as Philo 
 remarks, and Martianus Capella in his hymn to the Sun. 
 
 Near the candlestick were other emblems representing the heav- 
 ens, earth, and the vegetative matter out of whose bosom the vapors 
 arise. The whole temple was an abridged image of the world. 
 There were candlesticks with four branches, symbols of the ele- 
 ments and the seasons ; with twelve, symbols of the signs ; and 
 even with three hundred and sixty, the number of days in the 
 year, without the supplementary days. Imitating the famous Tem- 
 ple of Tyre, where were the great columns consecrated to the winds 
 and fire, the Tyrian artist placed two columns of bronze at the 
 entrance of the porch of the temple. The hemispherical brazen 
 sea, supported by four groups of bulls, of three each, looking to the 
 four cardinal points of the compass, represented the bull of the 
 Vernal Equinox, and at Tyre were consecrated toAstarte; to whom 
 Hiram, Josephus says, had builded a temple, and who wore on her 
 head a helmet bearing the image of a bull. And the throne of Sol- 
 omon, with bulls adorning its arms, and supported on lions, like 
 those of Horus in Egypt and of the Sun at Tyre, likewise referred 
 to the Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice. 
 
 Those who in Thrace adored the sun, under the name of Saba- 
 Zeus, the Grecian Bakchos. builded to him, says Macrobius, a 
 temple on Mount Zelmisso, its round form representing the world 
 and the sun. A circular aperture in the roof admitted the light,
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 4! I 
 
 and introduced the image of the sun into the body of the sanctu- 
 ary, where he seemed to blaze as in the heights of Heaven, and to 
 dissipate the darkness within that temple which was a representa- 
 tive symbol of the world. There the passion, death, and resurrec- 
 tion of Bakchos were represented. 
 
 So the Temple of Eleusis was lighted by a window in the roof. 
 The sanctuary so lighted, Dion compares to the Universe, from 
 which he says it differed in size alone; and in it the great lights 
 of nature played a great part and were mystically represented. 
 The images of the Sun, Moon, and Mercury were represented there, 
 (the latter the same as Anubis who accompanied Isis) ; and they 
 are still the three lights of a Masonic Lodge ; except that for Mer- 
 cury, the Master of the Lodge has been absurdly substituted. 
 
 Eusebius names as the principal Ministers in the Mysteries of 
 Eleusis, first, the Hicrophaiit, clothed with the attributes of the 
 Grand Architect (Demiourgos) of the Universe. After him came 
 the Dadoukos, or torch-bearer, representative of the Sun : then 
 the altar-bearer, representing the Moon : and last, the Hicroceryx, 
 bearing the caduceus, and representing Mercury. It was not 
 permissible to reveal the different emblems and the mysterious 
 pageantry of initiation to the Profane ; and therefore we do not 
 know the attributes, emblems, and ornaments of these and other 
 officers ; of which Apuleius and Pausanias dared not speak. 
 
 We know only that everything recounted there was marvellous ; 
 everything done there tended to astonish the Initiate : and that 
 eyes and ears were equally astounded. The Hierophant, of lofty 
 height, and noble features, with long hair, of a great age, grave 
 and dignified, with a voice sweet and sonorous, sat upon a throne, 
 clad in a long trailing robe ; as the Motive-God of Nature was 
 held to be enveloped in His work and hidden under a veil which 
 no mortal can raise. Even His name was concealed, like that of 
 the Demiourgos, whose name was ineffable. 
 
 The Dadoukos also wore a long robe, his hair long, and a ban- 
 deau on his forehead. Callias, when holding that office, fighting 
 on the great day of Marathon, clothed with the insignia of his 
 office, was taken by the Barbarians to be a King. The Dadoukos 
 led the procession of the Initiates, and was charged with the 
 purifications. 
 
 We do not know the functions of the Epibomos or assistant at 
 the altar, who represented the moon. That planet was one of the
 
 412 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 two homes of souls, and one of the two great gates by which they 
 descended and reascended. Mercury was charged with the con- 
 ducting of souls through the two great gates ; and in going from 
 the sun to the moon they passed immediately by him. He ad- 
 mitted or rejected them as they were more or less pure, and there- 
 fore the Hieroceryx or Sacred Herald, who represented Mercury, 
 was charged with the duty of excluding the Profane from the 
 Mysteries. 
 
 The same officers are found in the procession of Initiates of Isis, 
 described by Apuleius. All clad in robes of white linen, drawn 
 tight across the breast, and close-fitting down to the very feet, 
 came, first, one bearing a lamp in the shape of a boat ; second, one 
 carrying an altar; and third, one carrying a golden palm-tree 
 and the caduceus. These are the same as the three officers at Eleu- 
 sis, after the Hierophant. Then one carrying an open hand, and 
 pouring milk on the ground from a golden vessel in the shape of 
 a woman's breast. The hand was that of justice: and the milk 
 alluded to the Galaxy or Milky Way, along which souls descended 
 and remounted. Two others followed, one bearing a winnowing 
 fan, and the other a water-vase ; symbols of the purification of 
 souls by air and water ; and the third purification, by earth, was 
 represented by an image of the animal that cultivates it, the cow 
 or ox, borne by another officer. 
 
 Then followed a chest or ark, magnificently ornamented, con- 
 taining an image of the organs of generation of Osiris,, or perhaps 
 of both sexes ; emblems of the original generating and producing 
 Powers. When Typhon, said the Egyptian fable, cut up the body 
 of Osiris into pieces, he flung his genitals into the Nile, where a 
 fish devoured them. Atys multilated himself, as his Priests after- 
 ward did in imitation of him ; and Adonis was in that part of his 
 body wounded by the boar : all of which represented the loss by 
 the Sun of his vivifying and generative power, when he reached 
 the Autumnal Equinox (the Scorpion that on old monuments bites 
 those parts of the Vernal Bull), and descended toward the region 
 of darkness and Winter. 
 
 Then, says Apuleius, came "one who carried in his bosom an 
 object that rejoiced the heart of the bearer, a venerable effigy of 
 the Supreme Deity, neither bearing resemblance to man, cattle, 
 bird, beast, or any living creature : an exquisite invention, veneia- 
 ble from the novel originality of the fashioning; a wonderful,
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 413 
 
 ineffable symbol of religious mysteries, to be looked upon in pro- 
 found silence. Such as it was, its figure was that of a small urn 
 of burnished gold, hollowed very artistically, rounded at the bot- 
 tom, and covered all over the outside with the wonderful hiero- 
 glyphics of the Egyptians. The spout was not elevated, but 
 extended laterally, projecting like a long rivulet; while on the 
 opposite side was the handle, which, with similar lateral extension, 
 bore on its summit an asp, curling its body into folds, and stretch- 
 ing upward, its wrinkled, scaly, swollen throat." 
 
 The salient basilisk, or royal ensign of the Pharaohs, of ten occurs 
 on the monuments a serpent in folds, with his head raised erect 
 above the folds. The basilisk was the Phoenix of the serpent- 
 tribe ; and the vase or urn was probably the vessel, shaped like a 
 cucumber, with a projecting spout, out of which, on the monu- 
 ments of Egypt, the priests are represented pouring streams of 
 the cruz ansata or Tau Cross, and of sceptres, over the kings. 
 
 In the Mysteries of Mithras, a sacred cave, representing the 
 whole arrangement of the world, was used for the reception of the 
 Initiates. Zoroaster, says Eubulus, first introduced this custom 
 of consecrating caves. They were also consecrated, in Crete, to 
 Jupiter ; in Arcadia, to the Moon and Pan ; and in the Island 
 of Naxos, to Bacchus. The Persians, in the cave where the Mys- 
 teries of Mithras were celebrated, fixed the seat of that God, 
 Father of Generation, or Demiourgos, near the equinoctial point 
 of Spring, with the Northern portion of the world on his right, 
 and the Southern on his left. 
 
 Mithras, says Porphyry,, presided over the Equinoxes, seated on 
 a Bull, the symbolical animal of the Demiourgos, and bearing a 
 sword. The equinoxes were the gates through which souls passed 
 to and fro, between the hemisphere of light and that of darkness. 
 The milky way was also represented, passing near each of these 
 gates : and it was, in the old theology, termed the path\vay of souls. 
 It is. according to Pythagoras, vast troops of souls that form that 
 luminous belt. 
 
 The route followed by souls, according to Porphyry, or rather 
 their progressive march in the world, lying through the fixed stars 
 and planets, the Mithriac cave not only displayed the zodiacal 
 and other constellations, and marked gates at the four equinoctial 
 and solstitial points of the zodiac, whereat souls enter into and 
 escape from the world of generations ; and through which they
 
 414 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 pass to and fro between the realms of light and darkness ; but it 
 represented the seven planetary spheres which they needs must 
 traverse, in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the 
 elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates were marked, 
 one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending or 
 returning. 
 
 We learn this from Celsus, in Origen; who says that the sym- 
 bolical image of this passage among the Stars, used in the Mith- 
 riac Mysteries, was a ladder, reaching from earth to Heaven, di- 
 vided into seven steps or stages, to each of which was a gate, and at 
 the summit an eighth, that of the fixed stars. The first gate, says 
 Celsus, was that of Saturn, and of lead, by the heavy nature 
 whereof his dull slow progress was symbolized. The second, of 
 tin, was that of Venus, symbolizing her soft splendor and easy flex- 
 ibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his 
 solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, 
 expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth, of 
 copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and varia- 
 ble nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon : and the 
 seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real 
 order of these Planets ; but a mysterious one, like that of the days 
 of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and 
 retrograding to Sunday. It was dictated, Celsus says, by certain 
 harmonic relations, those of the fourth. 
 
 Thus there was an intimate connection between the Sacred 
 Science of the Mysteries, and ancient astronomy and physics ; and 
 the grand spectacle of the Sanctuaries was that of the order of the 
 Known Universe, or the spectacle of Nature itself, surrounding 
 the soul of the Initiate, as it surrounded it when it first descended 
 through the planetary gates, and by the equinoctial and solstitial 
 doors, along the Milky Way, to be for the first time immured in 
 its prison-house of matter. But the Mysteries also represented to 
 the candidate, by sensible symbols, the invisible forces which move 
 this visible Universe, and the virtues, qualities, and powers attached 
 to matter, and which maintain the marvellous order observed 
 therein. Of this Porphyry informs us. 
 
 The world, according to the philosophers of antiquity, was not a 
 purely material and mechanical machine. A great Soul, diffused 
 everywhere, vivified all the members of the immense body of the 
 Universe ; and an Intelligence, equally great, directed all its move-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 415 
 
 ments, and maintained the eternal harmony that resulted there- 
 from*. Thus the Unity of the Universe, represented by the sym- 
 bolic egg, contained in itself two unities, the Soul and the Intelli- 
 gence, which pervaded all its parts : and they were to the Universe, 
 considered as an animated and intelligent being, what intelligence 
 and the soul of life are to the individuality of man. 
 
 The doctrine of the Unity of God, in this sense, was taught by 
 Orpheus. Of this his hymn or palinode is a proof ; fragments of 
 which are quoted by many of the Fathers, as Justin, Tatian, Clem- 
 ens of Alexandria, Cyril, and Theodoret, and the whole by Euse- 
 bius, quoting from Aristobulus. The doctrine of the LOGOS 
 (word) or the Noos (intellect), his incarnation, death, resurrec- 
 tion or transfiguration ; of his union with matter, his division 
 in the visible world, which he pervades, his return to the original 
 Unity, and the whole theory relative to the origin of the soul and 
 its destiny, were taught in the Mysteries, of which they were the 
 great object. 
 
 The Emperor Julian explains the Mysteries of Atys and Cybele 
 by the same metaphysical principles, respecting the clemiurgical 
 Intelligence, its descent into matter, and its return to its origin: 
 and extends this explanation to those of Ceres. And so likewise 
 does Sallust the Philosopher, who admits in God a secondary intel- 
 ligent Force, which descends into the generative matter to organ- 
 ize it. These mystical ideas naturally formed a part of the sacred 
 doctrine and of the ceremonies of initiation, the object of which, 
 Sallust remarks, was to unite man with the World and the Deity ; 
 and the final term of perfection whereof was, according to Cle- 
 mens, the contemplation of nature, of real beings, and of causes. 
 The definition of Sallust is correct. The Mysteries were practised 
 as a means of perfecting the soul, of making it to know its own 
 dignity, of reminding it of its noble origin and immortality, and 
 consequently of its relations with the Universe and the Deity. 
 
 What was meant by real beings, was invisible beings, genii, the 
 faculties or powers of nature ; everything not a part of the visible 
 world, which was called, by way of opposition, apparent existence. 
 The theory of Genii, or Powers of Nature, and its Forces, person- 
 ified, made part of the Sacred Science of initiation, and of that 
 religious spectacle of different beings exhibited in the Sanctuary. 
 It resulted from that belief in the providence and superintendence 
 of the Gods, which was one of the primary bases of initiation. The
 
 416 MOfeALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 administration of the Universe by Subaltern Genii, to whom it is 
 confided, and by whom good and evil are dispensed in the world, 
 was a consequence of this dogma, taught in the Mysteries of 
 Mithras, where was shown that famous egg, shared between 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman, each of whom commissioned twenty-four 
 Genii to dispense the good and evil found therein ; they being 
 under twelve Superior Gods, six on the side of Light and Good, 
 and six on that of Darkness and Evil. 
 
 This doctrine of the Genii, depositaries of the Universal Provi- 
 dence, was intimately connected with the Ancient Mysteries, and 
 adopted in the sacrifices and initiations both of Greeks and Barba- 
 rians. Plutarch says that the Gods, by means of Genii, who are 
 intermediates between them and men, draw near to mortals in the 
 ceremonies of initiation, at which the Gods charge them to assist, 
 and to distribute punishment and blessing. Thus not the 
 Deity, but His ministers, or a Principle and Power of Evil, were 
 deemed the authors of vice and sin and suffering: and thus the 
 Genii or angels differed in character like men, some being good 
 and some evil ; some Celestial Gods, Archangels, Angels, and 
 some Infernal Gods, Demons and fallen Angels. 
 
 At the head of the latter was their Chief, Typhon, Ahriman, or 
 Shaitan, the Evil Principle; who, having wrought disorder in na- 
 ture, brought troubles on men by land and sea, and caused the 
 greatest ills, is at last punished for his crimes. It was these events 
 and incidents, says Plutarch, which Isis desired to represent in the 
 ceremonial of the Mysteries, established by her in memory of her 
 sorrows and wanderings, whereof she exhibited an image and rep- 
 resentation in her Sanctuaries, where also were afforded encour- 
 agements to piety and consolation in misfortune. The dogma of 
 a Providence, he says, administering the Universe by means of 
 intermediary Powers, who maintain the connection of man with 
 the Divinity, was consecrated in the Mysteries of the Egyptians, 
 Phrygians, and Thracians, of the Magi and the Disciples of Zoro- 
 aster; as is plain by their initiations, in which mournful and 
 funereal ceremonies mingled. It was an essential part of the les- 
 sons given the Initiates, to teach them the relations of their own 
 souls with Universal Nature, the greatest lessons of all, meant to 
 dignify man in his own eyes, and teach him his place in the Uni- 
 verse of things. 
 
 Thus the whole system of the Universe was displayed in all its
 
 PRINCE Ol' THE TABKRXACLE. 
 
 parts to the eyes of the Initiate ; and the symbolic cave which rep- 
 resented it was adorned and clothed with all the attributes of that 
 Universe. To this world so organized, endowed with a double 
 force, active and passive, divided between light and darkness, 
 moved by a living' and intelligent Force, governed by Genii or 
 Angels who preside over its different parts, and whose nature and 
 character are more lofty or low in proportion as they possess a 
 greater or less portion of dark matter, to this world descends the 
 soul, emanation of the ethereal fire, and exiled from the luminous 
 region above the world. It enters into this dark matter, wherein 
 the hostile Principles, each seconded by his troops of Genii, are 
 ever in conflict, there to submit to one or more organizations in 
 the body which is its prison, until it shall at last return to its place 
 of origin, its true native country, from which during this life it is 
 an exile. 
 
 But one thing remained. to represent its return, through the 
 constellations and planetary spheres, to its original home. The 
 celestial fire, the philosophers said, soul of the world and of fire, 
 an universal principle, circulating above the Heavens, in a region 
 infinitely pure and wholly luminous, itself pure, simple, and un- 
 mixed, is above the world by its specific lightness. If any part of it 
 (say a human soul) descends, it acts against its nature in doing so, 
 urged by an inconsiderate desire of the intelligence, a perfidious 
 love for matter which causes it to descend, to know what passes 
 here below, where good and evil are in conflict. The Soul, a 
 simple substance, when unconnected with matter, a ray or parti- 
 cle of the Divine Fire, whose home is in Heaven, ever turns to- 
 ward that home, while united with the body, and struggles to 
 return thither. 
 
 Teaching this, the Mysteries strove to recall man to his divine 
 origin, and point out to him the means of returning thither. The 
 great science acquired in the Mysteries was knowledge of man's 
 self, of the nobleness of his origin, the grandeur of his destiny, and 
 his superiority over the animals, which can never acquire this 
 knowledge, and whom he resembles so long as he does not reflect 
 upon his existence and sound the depths of his own nature. 
 
 By doing and suffering, by virtue and piety and good deeds, the 
 soul was enabled at length to free itself from the body, and ascend 
 along the path of the Milky Way, by the gate of Capricorn and by 
 the seven spheres, to the place whence by many gradations and
 
 418 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 successive lapses and enthralments it had descended. And thus the 
 theory of the spheres, and of the signs and intelligences which pre- 
 side there, and the whole system of astronomy, were connected 
 with that of the soul and its destiny ; and so were taught in the 
 Mysteries, in which were developed the great principles of physics 
 and metaphysics as to the origin of the soul, its condition here 
 below, its destination, and its future fate. 
 
 The Greeks fix the date of the establishment of the Mysteries of 
 Eleusis at the year 1423 B. C, during the reign of Erechtheus at 
 Athens. According to some authors, they were instituted by Ceres 
 herself; and according to others, by that Monarch, who brought 
 them from Egypt, where, according to Diodorus of Sicily, he was 
 born. Another tradition was, that Orpheus introduced them into 
 Greece, together with the Dionisiac ceremonies, copying the latter 
 from the Mysteries of Osiris, and the former from those of Isis. 
 
 Nor was it at Athens only, that the worship and Mysteries of 
 Isis, metamorphosed into Ceres, were established. The Boeotians 
 worshipped the Great or Cabiric Ceres, in the recesses of a sacred 
 grove, into which none but Initiates could enter ; and the ceremo- 
 nies there observed, and the sacred traditions of their Mysteries, 
 were connected with those of the Cabiri in Samothrace. 
 
 So in Argos, Phocis, Arcadia, Achaia, Messenia, Corinth, and 
 many other parts of Greece, the Mysteries were practised, revealing 
 everywhere their Egyptian origin and everywhere having the same 
 general features ; but those of Eleusis, in Attica, Pausanius in- 
 forms us, had been regarded by the Greeks, from the earliest 
 times, as being as far superior to all the others, as the Gods are 
 to mere Heroes. 
 
 Similar to these were the Mysteries of Bona Dea, the Good God- 
 dess, whose name, say Cicero and Plutarch, it was not permitted 
 to any man to know, celebrated at Rome from the earliest times of 
 that city. It was these Mysteries, practised by women alone, the 
 secrecy of which was impiously violated by Clodius. They were 
 held at the Kalends of May ; and. according to Plutarch, much of 
 the ceremonial greatly resembled that of the Mysteries of Bakchos. 
 
 The Mysteries of Venus and Adonis belonged principally to Sy- 
 ria and Phoenicia, whence they passed into Greece and Sicily. 
 Venus or Astarte was the Great Female Deity of the Phoenicians, 
 as Hercules, Melkarth or Adoni was their Chief God. Adoni, 
 called by the Greeks Adonis, was the lover of Venus. Slain by a
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 wound in the thigh inflicted by a wild boar in the chase, the flower 
 called anemone sprang from his blood. Venus received the corpse 
 and obtained from Jupiter the boon that her lover should thereaf- 
 ter pass six months of each year with her, and the other six in the 
 Shades with Proserpine ; an allegorical description of the alternate 
 residence of the Sun in the two hemispheres. In these Mysteries 
 his death was represented and mourned, and after this maceration 
 and mourning were concluded, his resurrection and ascent to 
 Heaven were announced. 
 
 Ezekiel speaks of the festivals of Adonis under the name of 
 those of Thammuz,an Assyrian Deity, whom every year the women 
 mourned, seated at the doors of their dwellings. These Mysteries, 
 like the others, were celebrated in the Spring, at the Vernal Equi- 
 nox, when he was restored to life ; at which time, when they were 
 instituted, the Sun (ADON, Lord, or Master) was in the Sign Tau- 
 rus, the domicile of Venus. He was represented with horns, 
 and the hymn of Orpheus in his honor styles him "the two-horned 
 God;" as in Argos Bakchos was represented with the feet of a 
 bull. 
 
 Plutarch says that Adonis and Bakchos were regarded as one 
 and the same Deity ; and that this opinion was founded on the 
 great similarity in very many respects between the Mysteries of 
 these two Gods. 
 
 The Mysteries of Bakchos were known as the Sabazian, Orphic, 
 and Dionysiac Festival's. They went back to the remotest antiq- 
 uity among the Greeks, and were attributed by some to Bakchos 
 himself, and by others to Orpheus. The resemblance in ceremo- 
 nial between the observances established in honor of Osiris in 
 Egypt, and those in honor of Bakchos in Greece, the mythological 
 traditions of the two Gods, and the symbols used in the festivals 
 of each, amply prove their identity. Neither the name of Bakchos, 
 nor the word orgies applied to his feasts, nor the sacred words 
 used in his Mysteries, are Greek, but of foreign origin. Bakchos 
 was an Oriental Deity, worshipped in the East, and his orgies 
 celebrated there, long before the Greeks adopted them. In the 
 earliest times he was worshipped in India, Arabia, and Bactria. 
 
 He was honored in Greece with public festivals, and in simple 
 or complicated Mysteries, varying in ceremonial in various places, 
 as was natural, because his worship had come thither from different 
 countries and at different periods. The people who celebrated the
 
 42O . MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 complicated Mysteries were ignorant of the meaning of many 
 words which they used, and of many emblems which they revered. 
 In the Sabazian Feasts, for example [from Saba-Zeus, an oriental 
 name of this Deity], the words Evoi, SABOI, were used, which are 
 in nowise Greek; and a serpent of gold was thrown into the 
 bosom of the Initiate, in allusion to the fable that Jupiter had, in 
 the form of a serpent, had connection with Proserpina, and begot- 
 ten Bakchos, the bull ; whence the enigmatical saying, repeated 
 to the Initiates, that a bull engendered a dragon or serpent, and 
 the serpent in turn engendered the bull, who became Bakchos : the 
 meaning of which was, that the bull [Taurus, which then opened 
 the Vernal Equinox, and the Sun in which Sign, figuratively repre- 
 sented by the Sign itself, was Bakchos, Dionusos, Saba-Zeus, Osiris, 
 etc.], and the Serpent, another constellation, occupied such relative 
 positions in the Heavens, that when one rose the other set, and 
 vice versa. 
 
 The serpent was a familiar symbol in the Mysteries of Bakchos. 
 The Initiates grasped them with their hands, as Ophiucus does 
 on the celestial globe, and the Orpheo-telestes, or purifier of can- 
 didates did the same, crying, as Demosthenes taunted /Eschines 
 with doing in public at the head of the women w r hom his mother 
 was to imitate, Evoi, SABOI, HYES ATTE, ATTE, HYES ! 
 
 The Initiates in these Mysteries had preserved the ritual and 
 ceremonies" that accorded with the simplicity of the earliest ages, 
 and the manners of the first men. The rules of Pythagoras were 
 followed there. Like the Egyptians, who held wool unclean, they 
 buried no Initiate in woolen garments. They abstained from 
 bloody sacrifices ; and lived on fruits or vegetables or inanimate 
 things. They imitated the life of the contemplative Sects of the 
 Orient; thus approximating to the tranquillity of the first men, 
 who lived exempt from trouble and crimes in the bosom of a pro- 
 found peace. One of the most precious advantages promised by 
 their initiation was, to put a man in communion with the Gods, 
 by purifying his soul of all the passions that interfere with that 
 enjoyment, and dim the rays of divine light that are communicated 
 to every soul capable of receiving them, and that imitate their 
 purity. One of the degrees of initiation was the state of inspira- 
 tion to which the adepts were claimed to attain. The Initiates in 
 the Mysteries of the Lamb, at Pepuza, in Phrygia, professed to be 
 inspired, and prophesied ; and it was claimed that the soul, by
 
 I'RINCE CF THE TABERNACLE. 421 
 
 means of these religious ceremonies, purified of all stain, could see 
 the Gods in this life, and certainly, in all cases, after death. 
 
 The sacred gates of the Temple, where the ceremonies of initia- 
 tion were performed, were opened but once in each year, and no 
 stranger was ever allowed to enter it. Night threw her veil over 
 these august Mysteries, which could be revealed to no one. There 
 the sufferings of Bakchos were represented, who, like Osiris, died, 
 descended to hell and rose to life again ; and raw flesh was distrib- 
 uted to the Initiates, which each ate, in memory of the death of 
 the Deity, torn in pieces by the Titans. 
 
 These Mysteries also were celebrated at the Vernal Equinox ; 
 and the emblem of generation, to express the active energy and 
 generative power of the Divinity, was a principal symbol. The 
 Initiates wore garlands and crowns of myrtle and laurel. 
 
 In these Mysteries, the aspirant was kept in terror and darkness 
 three days and nights ; and was then made to perform the A$a- 
 vLnfjLOf, or ceremony representing 'the death of Bakchos, the same 
 mythological personage with Osiris. This was effected by confining 
 him in a close cell, that he might seriously reflect, in solitude and 
 darkness, on the business he was engaged in : and his mind be 
 prepared for the reception of the sublime and mysterious truths 
 of primitive revelation and philosophy. This was a symbolic 
 death ; the deliverance from it, regeneration ; after which he was 
 called 8i.<f>vr)<; or twin-born. While confined in the cell, the pur- 
 suit of Typhon after the mangled body of Osiris, and the search 
 of Rhea or Isis for the same, were enacted in his hearing ; the 
 initiated crying aloud the names of that Deity derived from the 
 Sanscrit. Then it was announced that the body was found ; and 
 the aspirant was liberated amid shouts of joy and exultation. 
 
 Then he passed through a representation of Hell and Elysium. 
 '"Then," said an ancient writer, "they are entertained with 
 hymns and dances, with the sublime doctrines of sacred knowledge. 
 and with wonderful and holy visions. And now become perfect 
 and initiated, they are FREE, and no longer under restraint ; but, 
 crowned and triumphant, they walk up and down the regions 
 of the blessed, converse with pure and holy men. and celebrate the 
 sacred Mysteries at pleasure." They were taught the nature and 
 objects of the Mysteries, and the means of making themselves 
 known, and received the name of Epopts; were fully instructed 
 in the nature and attributes of the Divinity, and the doctrine of a 
 38
 
 $22 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 future state; and made acquainted with the unity and attributes 
 of the Grand Architect of the Universe, and t'.ie true meaning of 
 the fables in regard to the Gods of Paganism : the great Truth 
 being often proclaimed, that "Zeus is the primitive Source of all 
 things ; there is ONE God ; ONE power, and ONE rule over all." 
 And after full explanation of the many symbols and emblems that 
 surrounded them, they were dismissed with the barbarous words 
 A 07^ and 0/0r, corruptions of the Sanscrit words, Kanska Aom 
 Pakscha; meaning, object of our wishes, God, Silence, or Worship 
 the Deity in Silence. 
 
 Among the emblems used was the rod of Bakchos ; which once, 
 it was said, he cast on the ground, and it became a serpent ; and 
 at another time he struck the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes with it, 
 and the waters receded and he passed over dry-shod. Water was 
 obtained, during the ceremonies, by striking a rock with it. The 
 Bakchse crowned their heads with serpents, carried them in vases 
 and baskets, and at the Eupyffei;, or finding, of the body of Osiris, 
 cast one, alive, into the aspirant's bosom. 
 
 The Mysteries of Atys in Phrygia, and those of Cybele his mis- 
 tress, like their worship, much resembled those of Adonis and 
 Bakchos, Osiris and Isis. Their Asiatic origin is universally 
 admitted, and was with great plausibility claimed by Phrygia, 
 which contested the palm of antiquity with Egypt. They, more 
 than any other people, mingled allegory with their religious 
 worship, and were great inventors of fables ; and their sacred tra- 
 ditions as to Cybele and Atys, whom all admit to be Phrygian 
 Gods, were very various. In all, as we learn from Julius Firmicus, 
 they represented by allegory the phenomena of nature, and the 
 succession of physical facts, under the veil of a marvellous 
 history 
 
 Their feasts occurred at the equinoxes, commencing with lamen- 
 tation, mourning, groans, and pitiful cries for the death of Atys ; 
 and ending with rejoicings at his restoration to life. 
 
 We shall not recite the different versions of the legend of Atys 
 and Cybele, given by Julius Firmicus, Diodorus, Arnobius, Lac- 
 tantius. Servius, Saint Augustine, and Pausanias. It is enough to 
 say that it is in substance this : that Cybele, a Phrygian Princess, 
 who invented musical instruments and dances, was enamored of 
 Atys, a youth : that either he in a fit of frenzy mutilated himself 
 or was mutilated by her in a paroxysm of jealousy ; that he died.
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 423 
 
 and afterward, like Adonis, was restored to life. It is the Phoe- 
 nician fiction as to the Sun-God, expressed in other terms, under 
 other forms, and with other names. 
 
 Cybele was worshipped in Syria, under the name of Rhea. 
 Lucian says that the Lydian Atys there established her worship 
 and built her temple. The name of Rhea is also found in the ancient 
 cosmogony of the Phoenicians by Sanchoniathon. It was Atys 
 the Lydian, says Lucian, who, having been mutilated, first estab- 
 lished the Mysteries of Rhea, and taught the Phrygians, the Lyd- 
 ians, and the people of Samothrace to celebrate them. Rhea, like 
 Cybele, was represented drawn by lions, bearing a drum, and 
 crowned with flowers. According to Varro, Cybele represented 
 the earth. She partook of the characteristics of Minerva, Venus, 
 the Moon, Diana, Nemesis, and the Furies; was clad in precious 
 stones ; and her High Priest wore a robe of purple and a tiara of 
 gold. 
 
 The Grand Feast of the Syrian Goddess, like that of the Mother 
 of the Gods at Rome, was celebrated at the Vernal Equinox. Pre- 
 cisely at that equinox the Mysteries of Atys were celebrated, in 
 which the Initiates were taught to expect the rewards of a future 
 life, and the flight of Atys from the jealous fury of Cybele was 
 described, his concealment in the mountains and in a cave, and 
 his self-mutilation in a fit of delirium ; in which act his priests 
 imitated him. The feast of the passion of Atys continued three 
 days ; the first of which was passed in mourning and tears ; to 
 which afterward clamorous rejoicings succeeded ; by which, Ma- 
 crobius says, the Sun was adored under the name of Atys. The 
 ceremonies were all allegorical, some of which, according to the 
 Emperor Julian, could be explained, but more remained covered 
 with the veil of mystery. Thus it is that symbols outlast their 
 explanations, as many have done in Masonry, and ignorance and 
 rashness substitute new ones. 
 
 In another legend, given by Pausanias, Atys dies, wounded like 
 Adonis by a wild boar in the organs of generation ; a mutilation 
 with which all the legends ended. The pine-tree under which he 
 was said to have died, was sacred to him ; and was found upon 
 many monuments, with a bull and a ram near it ; one the sign of 
 exaltation of the Sun, and the other of that of the Moon. 
 
 The worship of the Sun under the name of Mithras belonged to 
 Persia, whence that name came, as did the erudite svmbols of that
 
 4.24 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 worship. The Persians, adorers of Fire, regarded the Sun as the 
 most brilliant abode of the fecundating energy of that element, 
 which gives life to the earth, and circulates in every part of the 
 Universe, of which it is, as it were, the soul. This worship passed 
 from Persia into Armenia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia, long before it 
 was known at Rome. The Mysteries of Mithras flourished more 
 than any others in the imperial city. The worship of Mithras com- 
 menced to prevail there under Trajan. Hadrian prohibited these 
 Mysteries, on account of the cruel scenes represented in their cere- 
 monial : for human victims were immolated therein, and the events 
 of futurity looked for in their palpitating entrails. They reap- 
 peared in greater splendor than ever under Commodus, who with 
 his own hand sacrificed a victim to Mithras : and they were still 
 more practised under Constantine and his successors, when the 
 Priests of Mithras were found everywhere in the Roman Empire, 
 and the monuments of his worship appeared even in Britain. 
 
 Caves were consecrated to Mithras, in which were collected a 
 multitude of astronomical emblems ; and cruel tests were required 
 of the Initiates. 
 
 The Persians built no temples ; but worshipped upon the sum- 
 mits of hills, in enclosures of unhewn stones. They abominated 
 images, and made the Sun and Fire emblems of the Deity The 
 Jews borrowed this from them, and represented God as appearing 
 to Abraham in a flame of fire, and to Moses as a fire at Horeb and 
 on Sinai. 
 
 With the Persians, Mithras, typified in the Sun, was the invisi- 
 ble Deity, the Parent of the Universe, the Mediator. In Zoroas- 
 ter's cave of initiation, the Sun and Planets were represented 
 over-head, in gems and gold, as also was the Zodiac. The Sun 
 appeared emerging from the back of Taurus. Three great pillars, 
 Eternity, Fecundity, and Authority, supported the roof: and the 
 whole was an emblem of the Universe. 
 
 Zoroaster, like Moses, claimed to have conversed face to face, as 
 man with man, with the Deity ; and to have received from Him a 
 system of pure worship, to be communicated only to the virtuous, 
 and those who would devote themselves to the study of Philosophy. 
 His fame spread over the world, and pupils came to him from 
 even' country. Even Pythagoras was his scholar. 
 
 After his novitiate, the candidate entered the cavern of initiation, 
 and was received on the point of a sword presented to his naked
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABEKNACtE. 42$ 
 
 left breast, by which he was slightly wounded. Being crowned 
 with olive, anointed with balsam of benzoin, and otherwise pre- 
 pared, he was purified with fire and water, and went through seven 
 stages of initiation. The symbol of these stages was a high ladder 
 with seven rounds or steps. In them, he went through many fearful 
 trials, in which darkness displayed a principal part. He saw a 
 representation of the wicked in Hades ; and finally emerged from 
 darkness into light. Received in a place representing Elysium, in 
 the brilliant assembly of the initiated, where the Archimagus pre- 
 sided, robed in blue, he assumed the obligations of secrecy, and was 
 entrusted with the Sacred Words, of which the Ineffable Name of 
 God was the chief. 
 
 Then all the incidents of his initiation were explained to him: 
 he was taught that these ceremonies brought him nearer the 
 Deity ; and that he should adore the consecrated Fire, the gift of 
 that Deity and His visible residence. He was taught the sacred 
 characters known only to the initiated; and instructed in regard 
 to the creation of the world, and the true philosophical meaning 
 of the vulgar mythology ; and especially of the legend of Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman, and the symbolic meaning of the six Amshaspands 
 created by the former: Bahman, the Lord of Light; Ardibehest, 
 the Genius of Fire; Sharivcr, the Lord of Splendor and Metals; Sta- 
 pandomad,i\\& Source of Fruitfulness ; Khordad,\\\& Genius of Wa- 
 ter and Time ; and Amerdad, the protector of the Vegetable World, 
 and the prime cause of growth. And finally he was taught the 
 true nature of the Supreme Being, Creator of Ormuzd and Ahri- 
 man. the Absolute First Cause, styled ZERUANE AKHERENE. 
 
 In the Mithriac initiation were several Degrees. The first, Ter- 
 tullian says, was that of Soldier of Mithras. The ceremony of 
 reception consisted in presenting the candidate a crown, supported 
 by a sword. It was placed near his head, and he repelled it, say- 
 ing, "Mithras is my crown." Then he was declared the soldier of 
 Mithras, and had the right to call the other Initiates fellow-soldiers 
 or companions in arms. Hence the title Companions in the Royal 
 Arch Degree of the American Rite. 
 
 Then he passed. Porphyry says, through the Degree of the Lion, 
 the constellation Leo, domicile of the Sun and symbol of Mithras, 
 found on his monuments. These ceremonies were termed at 
 Rome Leontic and Heliac ; and Coracia or Hiero-Coracia, of the 
 Raven, a bird consecrated to the Sun, and a sign placed in the
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Heavens below the Lion, with the Hydra, and also appearing on 
 the Mithriac monuments. 
 
 Thence he passed to a higher Degree, where the Initiates were 
 called Perses and children of the Sun. Above them were the 
 Fathers, whose chief or Patriarch was styled Father of Fathers, or 
 Pater Patratus. The Initiates also bore the title of Eagles and 
 Hawks, birds consecrated to the Sun in Egypt, the former sacred 
 to the God Mendes, and the latter the emblem of the Sun and 
 Royalty. 
 
 The little island of Samothrace was long the depository of cer- 
 tain august Mysteries, and many went thither from all parts of 
 Greece to be initiated. It was said to have been settled by the 
 ancient Pelasgi, early Asiatic colonists in Greece. The Gods 
 adored in the Mysteries of this island were termed CABIRI, an ori- 
 ental word, from Cabar, great. Varro calls the Gods of Samo- 
 thrace, Potent Gods. In Arabic, Venus is called Cabar. Varro 
 says that the Great Deities whose Mysteries were practised there, 
 were Heaven and Earth. These were but symbols of the Active 
 and Passive Powers or Principles of universal generation. The two 
 Twins, Castor and Pollux, or the Dioscuri, were also called the 
 Gods of Samothrace ; and the Scholiast of Apollonius, citing Mna- 
 seas, gives the names of Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto, and Mercury, as 
 the four Cabiric Divinities worshipped at Samothrace, as Axieros. 
 Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmillus. Mercury \vas, there as 
 everywhere, the minister and messenger of the Gods ; and the 
 young servitors of the altars and the children employed in the 
 Temples were called Mercuries or Casmilli, as they were in Tus- 
 cany, by the Etrusci and Pelasgi, who worshipped the Great 
 Gods. 
 
 Tarquin the Etruscan was an Initiate of the Mysteries of Samo- 
 thrace ; and Etruria had its Cabiri as Samothrace had. For the 
 worship of the Cabiri spread from that island into Etruria, Phrygia, 
 and Asia Minor : and it probably came from Phoenicia into Samo- 
 thrace : for the Cabiri are mentioned by Sanchoniathon ; and the 
 word Cabar belongs to the Hebrew, Phoenician, and Arabic lan- 
 guages. 
 
 The Dioscuri, tutelary Deities of Navigation, with Venus, were 
 invoked in the Mysteries of Samothrace. The constellation Auri- 
 ga, or Phaeton, was also honored there with imposing ceremonies. 
 Upon the Argonautic expedition, Orpheus, an Initiate of these
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 427 
 
 Mysteries, a storm arising, counselled his companions to put into 
 Samothrace. They did so, the storm ceased, and they were initia- 
 ted into the Mysteries there, and sailed again with the assurance 
 of a fortunate voyage, under the auspices of the Dioscuri, patrons 
 of sailors and navigation. 
 
 But much more than that was promised the Initiates. The Hier- 
 ophants of Samothrace made something infinitely greater to be the 
 object of their initiations; to wit, the consecration of men to the 
 Deity, by pledging them to virtue; and the assurance of those re- 
 wards which the justice of the Gods reserves for Initiates after 
 death. This, above all else, made these ceremonies august, and 
 inspired everywhere so great a respect for them, and so great a 
 desire to be admitted to them. That originally caused the island 
 to be styled Sacred. It was respected by all nations. The Ro- 
 mans, when masters of the world, left it its liberty and laws. It 
 was an asylum for the unfortunate, and a sanctuary inviolable. 
 There men were absolved 01 the crime of homicide, if not commit- 
 ted in a temple. 
 
 Children of tender age were initiated there, and invested with 
 the sacred robe, the purple cincture, and the crown of olive, and 
 seated upon a throne, like other Initiates. In the ceremonies was 
 represented the death of the youngest of the Cabiri, slain by his 
 brothers, who fled into Etruria, carrying with them the chest or 
 ark that contained his genitals : and there the Phallus and the 
 sacred ark were adored. Herodotus says that the Samothracian 
 Initiates understood the object and origin of this reverence paid 
 the Phallus, and why it was exhibited in the Mysteries. Clemens 
 of Alexandria says that the Cabiri taught the Tuscans to revere 
 it. It was consecrated at Heliopolis in Syria, where the Mysteries 
 of a Divinity having many points of resemblance with Atys and 
 Cybele were represented. The Pelasgi connected it with Mercury ; 
 and it appears on the monuments of Mithras ; always and every- 
 where a symbol of the life-giving power of the Sun at the Vernal 
 Equinox. 
 
 In the Indian Mysteries, as the candidate made his three cir- 
 cuits, he paused each time he reached the South, and said, "I copy 
 the example of the Sun, and follow his beneficent course/' Blue 
 Masonry has retained the Circuits, but has utterly lost the expla- 
 nation ; which is. that in the Mysteries the candidate invariably 
 represented the Sun, descending Southward toward the reign of
 
 428 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Evil Principle, Ahriman, Siba, or Typhon (darkness and win- 
 ter) ; there figuratively to be slain, and after a few days to rise 
 again from the dead, and commence to ascend to the Northward. 
 
 Then the death of Sita was bewailed; or that of Cama, slain by 
 Iswara, and committed to the waves on a chest, like Osiris and 
 Bacchus ; during- which the candidate was terrified by phantoms 
 and horrid noises. 
 
 Then he was made to personify Vishnu, and perform his ava- 
 tars, or labors. In the first two he was taught in allegories the 
 legend of the Deluge : in the first he took three steps at right 
 angles, representing the three huge steps taken by Vishnu in that 
 avatar ; and hence the three steps in the Master's Degree ending 
 at right angles. 
 
 The nine avatars finished, he was taught the necessity of faith, 
 as superior to sacrifices, acts of charity, or mortifications of the 
 flesh. Then he was admonished against five crimes, and took a 
 solemn obligation never to commit them. He was then introduced 
 into a representation of Paradise ; the Company of the Members 
 of the Order, magnificently arrayed, and the Altar with a fire 
 Hazing upon it, as an emblem of the Deity. 
 
 Then a new name was given him, and he was invested in a white 
 robe and tiara, and received the signs, tokens, and lectures. A 
 cross was marked on his forehead, and an inverted level, or the 
 Tau Cross, on his breast. He received the sacred cord, and divers 
 amulets or talismans ; and was then invested with the sacred 
 Word or Sublime Name, known only to the initiated, the Trilit- 
 eral A. U. M. 
 
 Then the multitude of emblems was explained to the candid- 
 ate ; the arcana of science hidden under them, and the different 
 virtues of which the mythological figures were mere personifica- 
 tions. And he thus learned the meaning of those symbols, which, 
 to the uninitiated, were but a maze of unintelligible figures. 
 
 The third Degree was a life of seclusion, after the Initiate's chil- 
 dren were capable of providing for themselves ; passed in the for- 
 est, in the practice of prayers and ablutions, and living only on 
 vegetables. He was then said to be born again. 
 
 The fourth was absolute renunciation of the world, self-con- 
 templation and self-torture ; by which Perfection was thought to 
 be attained, and the soul merged in the Deity. 
 
 In the second Degree, the Initiate was taught the Unity of the
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 429 
 
 Godhead, the happiness of the patriarchs, the destruction by the 
 Deluge, the depravity of the heart, and the necessity of a media- 
 tor, the instability of life, the final destruction of all created 
 things, and the restoration of the world in a more perfect form. 
 They inculcated the Eternity of the Soul, explained the meaning 
 of the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and held the doctrine of a 
 state of future rewards and punishments : and they also earnestly 
 urged that sins could only be atoned for by repentance, reforma- 
 tion, and voluntary penance ; and not by mere ceremonies and 
 sacrifices. 
 
 The Mysteries among the Chinese and Japanese came from 
 India, and were founded on the same principles and with similar 
 rites. The word given to the new Initiate was O-MI-TO Fo, in 
 which we recognize the original name A. u. M., coupled at a much 
 later time with that of Fo, the Indian Buddha, to show that he 
 was the Great Deity Himself. 
 
 The equilateral triangle was one of their symbols ; and so was 
 the mystical Y ; both alluding to the Triune God, and the latter 
 being the ineffable name of the Deity. A ring supported by two 
 serpents was emblematical of the world, protected by the power 
 and wisdom of the Creator ; and that is the origin of the two par- 
 allel lines (into which time has changed the two serpents), that 
 support the circle in our Lodges. 
 
 Among the Japanese, the term of probation for the highest De- 
 gree was twenty years. 
 
 The main features of the Druidical Mysteries resembled those 
 of the Orient. 
 
 The ceremonies commenced with a hymn to the sun. The can- 
 didates were arranged in ranks of threes, fives, and sevens, accord- 
 ing to their qualifications ; and conducted nine times around the 
 Sanctuary, from East to West. The candidate underwent many 
 trials, one of which had direct reference to the legend of Osiris. 
 He was placed in a boat, and sent out to sea alone, having to rely 
 on his own skill and presence of mind to reach the opposite shore 
 in safety. The death of Hu was represented in his hearing, with 
 every external mark of sorrow, while he was in utter darkness. 
 He met with many obstacles, had to prove his courage, and expose 
 his life against armed enemies; represented various animals, and 
 at last, attaining the permanent light, he was instructed by the 
 Arch-Druid in regard to the Mysteries, and in the morality of the
 
 43O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Order, incited to act bravely in war, taught the great truths of 
 the immortality of the soul and a future state, solemnly enjoined 
 not to neglect the worship of the Deity, nor the practice of rigid 
 morality ; and to avoid sloth, contention, and folly. 
 
 The aspirant attained only the exoteric knowledge in the first 
 two Degrees. The third was attained only by a few, and they per- 
 sons of rank and consequence, and after long purification, and 
 study of all the arts and sciences known to the Druids, in solitude, 
 for nine months. This was the symbolical death and burial of 
 these Mysteries. 
 
 The dangerous voyage upon the actual open sea, in a small boat 
 covered with a skin, on the evening of the 2gth of April, was the 
 last trial, and closing scene, of initiation. If he declined this 
 trial, he was dismissed with contempt. If he made it and suc- 
 ceeded, he was termed thrice-born, was eligible to all the dignities 
 of the State, and received complete instruction in the philosophi- 
 cal and religious doctrines of the Druids. 
 
 The Greeks also styled the ExoTtrr^, Tyrf-ovo^, thrice-born ; 
 and in India perfection was assigned to the Yogee who had ac- 
 complished many births. 
 
 The general features of the initiations among the Goths were 
 the same as in all the Mysteries. A long probation, of fasting and 
 mortification, circular processions, representing the march of the 
 celestial bodies, many fearful tests and trials, a descent into the 
 infernal regions, the killing of the God Balder by the Evil Prin- 
 ciple, *Lok, the placing of his body in a boat and sending it abroad 
 upon the waters ; and, in short, the Eastern Legend, under differ- 
 ent names, and with some variations. 
 
 The Egyptian Anubis appeared there, as the dog guarding the 
 gates of death. The candidate was immured in the representa- 
 tion of a tomb ; and when released, goes in search of the body of 
 Balder, and finds him, at length, restored to life, and seated upon 
 a throne. He was obligated upon a naked sword (as is still the 
 custom in the Rit Moderne}, and sealed his obligation by drink- 
 ing mead out of a human skull. 
 
 Then all the ancient primitive truths were made known to him, 
 so far as they had survived the assaults of time : and he was in- 
 formed as to the generation of the Gods, the creation of the world, 
 the deluge, and the resurrection, of which that of Balder was a type. 
 
 He was marked with the sign of the cross, and a ring was given
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 43 1 
 
 to him as a symbol of the Divine Protection ; and also as an em- 
 blem of Perfection ; from which comes the custom of giving a 
 .ring to the Aspirant in the I4th Degree. 
 
 The point within a Circle, and the Cube, emblem of Odin, were 
 explained to him ; and lastly, the nature of the Supreme God, 
 "the author of everything that existeth, the Eternal; the Ancient, 
 the Living and Awful Being, the Searcher into concealed things, 
 the' Being that never changeth ;" with whom Odin the Conqueror 
 was by the vulgar confounded : and the Triune God of the In- 
 dians was reproduced, as ODIN, the Almighty FATHER, FREA, 
 (Rhca or Phre), his wife (emblem of universal matter), and Thor 
 his son (the Mediator). Here we recognize Osiris, Isis, and Hor 
 or Horus. .Around the head of Thor, "as if to show his eastern 
 origin, twelve stars were arranged in a circle. 
 
 He was also taught the ultimate destruction of the world, and 
 the rising of a new one, in which the brave and virtuous shall en- 
 joy everlasting happiness and delight: as the means of securing 
 which happy fortune, he was taught to practise the strictest mo- 
 rality and virtue. 
 
 The Initiate was prepared to receive the great lessons of all the 
 Mysteries, by long trials, or by abstinence and chastity. For 
 many days he was required to fast and be continent, and to drink 
 liquids calculated to diminish his passions and keep him chaste. 
 
 Ablutions we're also required, symbolical of the purity necessary 
 to enable the soul to escape from its 'bondage in matter. Sacred 
 baths and preparatory baptisms were used, lustrations, immer- 
 sions, lustral sprinklings, and purifications of every kind. At 
 Athens they bathed in the Ilissus, which thence became a sacred 
 river ; and before entering the Temple of Eleusis, all were re- 
 quired to wash their hands in a vase of lustral water placed near 
 the entrance. Clean hands and a pure heart were required of the 
 candidates. Apuleius bathed seven times in the sea, symbolical 
 of the Seven Spheres through which the Soul must reascend: and 
 the Hindus must bathe in the sacred river Ganges. 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria cites a passage of Menander, who speaks 
 of a purification by sprinkling three times with salt and water. 
 Sulphur, resin, and the laurel also served for purification, as did 
 air, earth, water, and fire. The Initiates at Heliopolis, in Syria, 
 says Lucian, sacrificed the sacred lamb, symbol of Aries, then the 
 sign of the Vernal Equinox ; ate his flesh, as the Israelites did at
 
 432 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Passover; and then touched his head and feet to theirs, and 
 knelt upon the fleece. Then they bathed in warm water, drank of 
 the same, and slept upon the ground. 
 
 There was a distinction between the lesser and greater Myste- 
 ries. One must have been for some years admitted to the former, 
 before he could receive the latter, which were but a preparation 
 for them, the Vestibule of the Temple, of which those of Eleusis 
 were the Sanctuary. There, in the lesser Mysteries, they were 
 prepared to receive the holy truths taught in the greater. The 
 Initiates in the lesser were called simply Mystes, or Initiates ; but 
 those in the greater, Epoptes, or Seers. An ancient poet says that 
 the former were an imperfect shadow of the latter, as sleep is of 
 Death. After admission to the former, the Initiate was taught 
 lessons of morality, and the rudiments of the sacred science, the 
 most sublime and secret part of which was reserved for the Epopt, 
 who saw the Truth in its nakedness, while the Mystes only viewed 
 it through a veil and under emblems fitter to excite than to satisfy 
 his curiosity. 
 
 Before communicating the first secrets and primary dogmas of 
 initiation, the priests required the candidate to take a fearful oath 
 never to divulge the secrets. Then he made his vows, prayers, and 
 sacrifices to the Gods. The skins of the victims consecrated to 
 Jupiter were spread on the ground, and he was made to set his 
 feet upon them. He was then taught some enigmatic formulas, as 
 answers to questions, by which to make himself known. He was 
 then enthroned, invested with a purple cincture, and crowned with 
 flowers, or branches of palm or olive. 
 
 We do not certainly know the time that was required to elapse 
 between the admission to the Lesser and Greater Mysteries of 
 Eleusis.' Most writers fix it at five years. It was a singular mark 
 of favor when Demetrius was made Mystes and Epopt in one and 
 the same ceremony. When at length admitted to the Degree of 
 Perfection, the Initiate was brought face to face with entire nature, 
 and learned that the soul was the whole of man ; that earth was 
 but his place of exile ; that Heaven was his native country ; that 
 for the soul to be born is really to die : and that death was for it the 
 return to a new life. Then he entered the sanctuary ; but he did 
 not receive the whole instruction at once. It continued through 
 several years. There were, as it were, many apartments, through 
 which he advanced by degrees, and between which thick veils in-
 
 PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE. 433 
 
 tervened. There were Statues and Paintings, says Proclus, in the 
 inmost sanctuary, showing the forms assumed by the Gods. 
 Finally the last veil fell, the sacred covering dropped from the 
 image of the Goddess, and she stood revealed in all her splendor, 
 surrounded by a divine light, which, filling the whole sanctuary, 
 dazzled the eyes and penetrated the soul of the Initiate. Thus is 
 symbolized the final revelation of the true doctrine as to the nature 
 of Deity and of the soul, and of the relations of each to matter. 
 
 This was preceded by frightful scenes, alternations of fear and 
 joy, of light and darkness ; by glittering lightning and the crash 
 of thunder, and apparitions of spectres, or magical illusions, im- 
 pressing at once the eyes and ears. This Claudian describes, in 
 his poem on the rape of Proserpine, where he alludes to what 
 passed in her Mysteries. "The temple is shaken," he cries ; 
 "fiercely gleams the lightning, by which the Deity announces his 
 presence. Earth trembles ; and a terrible noise is heard in the 
 midst of these terrors. The Temple of the Son of Cecrops re- 
 sounds with long-continued roars; Eleusis uplifts her sacred 
 torches ; the serpents of Triptolemus are heard to hiss ; and fear- 
 ful Hecate appears afar." 
 
 The celebration of the Greek Mysteries continued, according to 
 the better opinion, for nine days. 
 
 On the first the Initiates met. It was the day of the full moon, of 
 the month Boedromion ; when the moon was full at the end of the 
 sign Aries, near the Pleiades and the place of her exaltation in 
 Taurus. 
 
 The second day there was a procession to the sea, for purifica- 
 tion by bathing. 
 
 The third was occupied with offerings, expiatory sacrifices, and 
 other religious rites, such as fasting, mourning, continence, etc. 
 A mullet was immolated, and offerings of grain and living ani- 
 mals made. 
 
 On the fourth they carried in procession the mystic wreath of 
 flowers, representing that which Proserpine dropped when seized 
 by Pluto, and the Crown of Ariadne in the Heavens. It was 
 borne on a triumphal car drawn by oxen ; and women followed 
 bearing mystic chests or boxes, wrapped with purple cloths, con- 
 taining grains of sesame, pyramidal biscuits, salt, pomegranates 
 and the mysterious serpent, and perhaps the mystic phallus. 
 
 On the fifth was the superb procession of torches, commemora-
 
 434 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tive of the search for Proserpine by Ceres ; the Initiates marching 
 by trios, and each bearing a torch; while at the head of the pro- 
 cession marched the Dadoukos. 
 
 The sixth was consecrated to lakchos, the young Light-God, 
 son of Ceres, reared in the sanctuaries and bearing the torch of 
 the Sun-God. The chorus in Aristophanes terms him the lumin- 
 ous star that lights the nocturnal initiation. He was brought 
 from the sanctuary, his head crowned with myrtle, and borne from 
 the gate of the Ceramicus to Eleusis, along the sacred way, amid 
 dances, sacred songs,every mark of joy, and mystic cries of lakchos. 
 
 On the seventh there were gymnastic exercises and combats, the 
 victors in which were crowned and rewarded. 
 
 On the eighth was the feast of ^Esculapius. 
 
 On the ninth the famous libation was made for the souls of the 
 departed. The Priests, according to Athenseus, filled two vases, 
 placed one in the East and one in the West, toward the gates of 
 day and night, and overturned them, pronouncing a formula of 
 mysterious prayers. Thus they invoked Light and Darkness, the 
 two great principles of nature. 
 
 During all these days no one could be arrested, nor any suit 
 brought, on pain of death, or at least a heavy fine : and no one 
 was allowed, by the display of unusual wealth or magnificence, to 
 endeavor to rival this sacred pomp. Everything was for religion. 
 
 Such were the Mysteries ; and such the Old Thought, as in scat- 
 tered and widely separated fragments it has come down to us. 
 The human mind still speculates upon the great mysteries of na- 
 ture, and still finds its ideas anticipated by the ancients, whose 
 profoundest thoughts are to be looked for, not in their philoso- 
 phies, but in their symbols, by which they endeavored to express 
 the great ideas that vainly struggled for utterance in words, as 
 they viewed the great circle of phenomena, Birth, Life, Death, 
 or Decomposition, and New Life out of Death and Rottenness, 
 to them the greatest of mysteries. Remember, while you study 
 their symbols, that they had a profounder sense of these wonders 
 than we have. To them the transformations of the worm were a 
 greater wonder than the stars ; and hence the poor dumb scara- 
 baeus or beetle was sacred to them. Thus their faiths are con- 
 densed into symbols or expanded into allegories, which they under- 
 stood, but were not always able to explain in language ; for there 
 are thought? and ideas which no language ever spoken by man has 
 words to express.
 
 XXV. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 THIS Degree is both philosophical and moral. While it teaches 
 the necessity of reformation as well as repentance, as a means of 
 obtaining mercy and forgiveness, it is also devoted to an explana- 
 tion of the symbols of Masonry; and especially to those which 
 are connected with that ancient and universal legend, of which 
 that of Khir-Om Abi is but a variation ; that legend which, repre- 
 senting a murder or a death, and a restoration to life, by a drama 
 in which figure Osiris, Isis and Horus, Atys and Cybele, Adonis 
 and Venus, the Cabiri, Dionusos, and many another representative 
 of the active and passive Powers of Nature, taught the Initiates 
 in the Mysteries that the rule of Evil and Darkness is but tempo- 
 rary, and that that of Light and Good will be eternal. 
 
 Maimonides says : "In the days of Enos, the son of Seth. men 
 fell into grievous errors, and even Enos himself partook of their 
 infatuation. Their language was, that since God has placed on 
 high the heavenly bodies, and used them as His ministers, it was 
 evidently His will that they should receive from man the same
 
 43^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 veneration as the servants of a great prince justly claim from the 
 subject multitude. Impressed with this notion, they began to 
 build temples to the Stars, to sacrifice to them, and to worship 
 them, in the vain expectation that they should thus please the 
 Creator of all things. At first, indeed, they did not suppose thf 
 Stars to be the only Deities, but adored in conjunction with them 
 the Lord God Omnipotent. In process of time, however, that 
 great and venerable Name was totally forgotten, and the whole 
 human race retained no other religion than the idolatrous wor- 
 ship of the Host of Heaven." 
 
 The first learning in the world consisted chiefly in symbols, 
 The wisdom of the Chaldaeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Jews ; ot 
 Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socra- 
 tes, Plato, of all the ancients, that is come to our hand, is sym- 
 bolic. It was the mode, says Serranus on Plato's Symposium, of 
 the Ancient Philosophers, to represent truth by certain symbols 
 and hidden images. - 
 
 "All that can be said concerning the Gods," says Strabo, "must 
 be by the exposition of old opinions and fables ; it being the cus- 
 tom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their 
 thoughts and discourses concerning Nature; which are therefore 
 not easily explained." 
 
 As you learned in the 24th Degree, my Brother, the ancient 
 Philosophers regarded the soul of man as having had its origin 
 in Heaven. That was, Macrobius says, a settled opinion among 
 them all ; and they held it to be the only true wisdom, for the 
 soul, while united with the body, to look ever toward its source, 
 and strive to return to the place whence it came. Among the 
 fixed stars it dwelt, until, seduced by the desire of animating a 
 body, it descended to be imprisoned in matter. Thenceforward it 
 has no other resource than recollection, and is ever attracted 
 toward its birth-place and home. The means of return are to be 
 sought for in itself. To re-ascend to its source, it must do and 
 suffer in the body. 
 
 Thus the Mysteries taught the great doctrine of the divine nature 
 and longings alter immortality of the soul, of the nobility of its 
 origin, the grandeur of its destiny, its superiority over the ani- 
 mals who have no aspirations heavenward. If they struggled in 
 vain to express its nature, by comparing it to Fire and Light,-- 
 if they erred as to its original place of abode, and the mode 01 its
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 43? 
 
 descent, and the path which, descending and ascending, it pursued 
 among the stars and spheres, these were the accessories of the 
 Great Truth, and mere allegories designed to make the idea more 
 impressive, and, as it were, tangible, to the human mind. 
 
 Let us, in order to understand this old Thought, first follow the 
 soul in its descent. The sphere or Heaven of the fixed stars was 
 that Holy Region, and those Elysian Fields, that were the native 
 domicile of souls, and the place to which they re-ascended, when 
 they had recovered their primitive purity and simplicity. From that 
 luminous region the soul set forth, when it journeyed toward the 
 body ; a destination which it did not reach until it had undergone 
 three degradations, designated by the name of Deaths ; and until 
 it had passed through the several spheres and the elements. All 
 souls remained in possession of Heaven and of happiness, so long 
 as they were wise enough to avoid the contagion of the body, and 
 to keep themselves from any contact with matter. But those who, 
 from that lofty dbocie, where they were lapped in eternal light, have 
 looked longingly toward the body, and toward that which we here 
 below call life, but which is to the soul a real death; and who have 
 conceived for it a secret desire, those souls, victims of their con- 
 cupiscence, are attracted by degrees toward the inferior regions of 
 the world, by the mere weight of thought and of that terrestrial 
 desire. The soul, perfectly incorporeal, does not at once invest 
 itself with the gross envelope of the body, but little by little, by suc- 
 cessive and insensible alterations, and in proportion as it removes 
 further and further from the simple and perfect substance in 
 which it dwelt at first. It first surrounds itself with a body com- 
 posed of the substance of the stars ; and afterward, as it descends 
 through the several spheres, with ethereal matter more and more 
 gross, thus by degrees descending to an earthly body; and its 
 n limber of degradations or deaths being the same as that of the 
 spheres which it traverses. 
 
 The Galaxy, Macrobius says, crosses the Zodiac in two opposite 
 points. Cancer and Capricorn, the tropical points in the sun's 
 course, ordinarily called the Gates of the Sun. These two tropics, 
 before his time, corresponded with those constellations, but in his 
 day with Gemini and Sagittarius, in consequence of the preces- 
 sion of the equinoxes : but the signs of the Zodiac remained 
 unchanged ; and the Milky Way crossed at the signs Cancer and 
 Capricorn, though not at those constellations. 
 29
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Through these gates souls were supposed to descend to earth 
 and re-ascend to Heaven. One, Macrobius says, in hig dream of 
 Scipio, was styled the Gate of Men ; and the other, the Gate of 
 the Gods. Cancer was the former, because souls descended by it 
 to the earth ; and Capricorn the latter, because by it they re- 
 ascended to their seats of immortality, and became Gods. From 
 the Milky Way, according to Pythagoras, diverged the route to 
 the dominions of Pluto. Until they left the Galaxy, they were 
 not deemed to have commenced to descend toward the terrestrial 
 bodies. From that they departed, and to that they returned. 
 Until they reached the sign Cancer, they had not left it, and were 
 still Gods. When they reached Leo, they commenced their 
 apprenticeship for their future condition ; and when they were 
 at Aquarius, the sign opposite Leo, they were furthest removed 
 from human life. 
 
 The soul, descending from the celestial limits, where the Zodiac 
 and Galaxy unite, loses its spherical shape, the shape of all Divine 
 Nature, and is lengthened into a cone, as a point is lengthened 
 into a line ; and then, an indivisible monad before, it divides itself 
 and becomes a duad that is, unity becomes division, disturbance, 
 and conflict. Then it begins to experience the disorder which 
 reigns in matter, to which it unites itself^ becoming, as it were, 
 intoxicated by draughts of grosser matter : of which inebriation 
 the cup of Bakchos, between Cancer and Leo, is a symbol. It is 
 for them the cup of forgetfulness. They assemble, says Plato, in 
 the fields of oblivion, to drink there the water of the river Ameles, 
 which causes men to forget everything. This fiction is also found 
 in Virgil. "If souls," says Macrobius, "carried with them into 
 the bodies they occupy all the knowledge which they had acquired 
 of divine things, during their sojourn in the Heavens, men would 
 not differ in opinion as to the Deity ; but some of them forget 
 more, and some less, of that which they had learned." 
 
 W 7 e smile at these notions of the ancients : but we must learn 
 to look through these material images and allegories, to the ideas, 
 struggling for utterance, the great speechless thoughts which they 
 envelop : and it is well for us to consider whether we ourselves 
 have yet found out any better way of representing to ourselves the 
 soul's origin and its advent into this body, so entirely foreign to 
 it ; if, indeed, we have ever thought about it at all ; or have not 
 ceased to think, in despair.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 439 
 
 The highest and purest portion of matter, which nourishes and 
 constitutes divine existences, is what the poets term nectar, the bev- 
 erage of the Gods. The lower, more disturbed and grosser portion, 
 is what intoxicates souls. The ancients symbolized it as the River 
 Lethe, dark stream of oblivion. How do ttr explain the soul's 
 forgetfulness of its antecedents, or reconcile that utter absence 
 of remembrance of its former condition, with its essential immor- 
 tality ? In truth, we for the most part dread and shrink from any 
 attempt at explanation of it to ourselves. 
 
 Dragged down by the heaviness produced by. this inebriating 
 draught, the soul falls along the zodiac and the milky way to the 
 lower spheres, and in its descent not only takes, in each sphere, a 
 new envelope of the material composing the luminous bodies of 
 the planets, but receives there the different faculties which it is to 
 exercise while it inhabits the body. 
 
 In Saturn, it acquires the power of reasoning and intelligence, 
 or what is termed the logical and contemplative faculty. From 
 Jupiter it receives the power of action. Mars gives it valor, enter- 
 prise, and impetuosity. From the Sun it receives the senses and 
 imagination, which produce sensation, perception, and thought. 
 Venus inspires it with desires. Mercury gives it the faculty of 
 expressing and enunciating what it thinks and feels. And, on 
 entering the sphere of the Moon, it acquires the force of genera- 
 tion and growth. This lunary sphere, lowest and basest to divine 
 bodies, is first and highest to terrestrial bodies. And the lunary 
 body there assumed by the soul, while, as it were, the sediment of 
 celestial matter, is also the first substance of animal matter. 
 
 The celestial bodies, Heaven, the Stars, and the other Divine ele- 
 ments, ever aspire to rise. The soul reaching the region which 
 mortality inhabits, tends toward terrestrial bodies, and is deemed 
 to die. Let no one, says Macrobius, be surprised that we so fre- 
 quently speak of the death of this soul, which yet we call immor- 
 tal. It is neither annulled nor destroyed by such death : but 
 merely enfeebled for a time ; and does not thereby forfeit its pre- 
 rogative of immortality ; for afterward, freed from the body, when 
 it has been purified from the vice-stains contracted during that 
 connection, it is re-established in all its privileges, and returns to 
 the luminous abode of its immortality. 
 
 On its return, it restores to each sphere through which it as- 
 cends, the passions and earthly faculties received from them : to
 
 44O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Moon, the faculty of increase and diminution of the body ; to 
 Mercury, fraud, the architect of evils ; to Venus, the seductive love 
 of pleasure ; to the Sun, the passion for greatness and empire ; to 
 Mars, audacity and temerity ; to Jupiter, avarice ; and to Saturn, 
 falsehood and deceit : and at last, relieved of all, it enters naked 
 and pure into the eighth sphere or highest Heaven. 
 
 All this agrees with the doctrine of Plato, that the soul cannot 
 re-enter into Heaven, until the revolutions of the Universe shall 
 have restored it to its primitive condition, and purified it from the 
 effects of its contact with the four elements. 
 
 This opinion of the pre-existence of souls, as pure and celestial 
 substances, before their union with our bodies, to put on and ani- 
 mate which they descend from Heaven, is one of great antiquity. A 
 modern Rabbi, Manasseh Ben Israel, says it was always the belief 
 of the Hebrews. It was that of most philosophers who admitted 
 the immortality of the soul : and therefore it was taught in the 
 Mysteries ; for, as Lactantius says, they could not see how it was 
 possible that the soul should exist after the body, if it had not 
 existed before it, and if its nature was not independent of that of 
 the body. The same doctrine was adopted by the most learned of 
 the Greek Fathers, and by many of the Latins : and it would 
 probably prevail largely at the present day, if men troubled them- 
 selves to think upon this subject at all, and to inquire whether the 
 soul's immortality involved its prior existence. 
 
 Some philosophers held that the soul was incarcerated in the 
 body, by way of punishment for sins committed by it in a prior 
 state. How they reconciled this with the same soul's unconscious- 
 ness of any such prior state, or of sin committed there, does not 
 appear. Others held that God, of his mere will, sent the soul to 
 inhabit the body. The Kabalists united the two opinions. They 
 held that there are four worlds, Azilnth, Briarth, Jczirath, and 
 Asiath; the world of emanation, that of creation, that of forms, 
 and the material world ; one above and more perfect than the 
 other, in that order, both as regards their own nature and that of 
 the beings who inhabit them. All souls are originally in the world 
 Aziluth, the Supreme Heaven, abode of God, and of pure and im- 
 mortal spirits. Those who descend from it without fault of their 
 own, by God's order, are gifted with a divine fire, which preserves 
 them from the contagion of matter, and restores them to Heaven 
 so soon as their mission is ended. Those who descend through
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 441 
 
 their own fault, go from world to world, insensibly losing their 
 love of Divine things, and their self-contemplation ; until they 
 reach the world Aziath, falling by their own weight. This is a 
 pure Platonism, clothed with the images and words peculiar to the 
 Kabalists. It was the doctrine of the Essenes, who, says Por- 
 phyry, "believe that souls descend from the most subtile ether, 
 attracted to bodies by the seductions of matter." It was in sub- 
 stance the doctrine of Origen ; and it came from the Chaldaeans, 
 who largely studied the theory of the Heavens, the spheres, and 
 the influences of the signs and constellations. 
 
 The Gnostics made souls ascend and descend through eight 
 Heavens, in each of which were certain Powers that opposed their 
 return, and often drove them back to earth, when not sufficiently 
 purified. The last of these Powers, nearest the luminous abode 
 of souls, was a serpent or dragon. 
 
 In the ancient doctrine, certain Genii were charged with the 
 duty of conducting souls to the bodies destined to receive them, 
 and of withdrawing them from those bodies. According to Plu- 
 tarch, these were the functions of Proserpine and Mercury. Tn 
 Plato, a familiar Genius accompanies man at his birth, follows and 
 watches him all his life, and at death conducts him to the tribunal 
 of the Great Judge. These Genii are the media of communication 
 between man and the Gods ; and the soul is ever in their presence. 
 This doctrine is taught in the oracles of Zoroaster : and these 
 Genii were the Intelligences tViat resided in the planets. 
 
 Thus the secret science and mysterious emblems of initiation 
 were connected with the Heavens, the Spheres, and the Constel- 
 lations : and this connection must be studied by whomsoever 
 would understand the ancient mind, and be enabled to interpret 
 the allegories, and explore the meaning of the symbols, in which 
 the old sages endeavored to delineate the ideas that struggled 
 within them for utterance, and could be but insufficiently and in- 
 adequately expressed by language, whose words are images of 
 those things alone that can be grasped by and are within the em- 
 pire of the senses. 
 
 It is not possible for us thoroughly to appreciate the feelings 
 with which the ancients regarded the Heavenly bodies, and the 
 ideas to which their observation of the Heavens gave rise, because 
 we cannot put ourselves in their places, look at the stars with theii 
 eyes in the world's youth, and divest ourselves of the knowledge
 
 442 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 which even the commonest of us have, that makes us regard the 
 Stars and Planets and all the Universe of Suns and Worlds, as a 
 mere inanimate machine and aggregate of senseless orbs, no more 
 astonishing, except in degree, than a clock or an orrery. We won- 
 der and are amazed at the Power and Wisdom (to most men it 
 seems only a kind of Infinite Ingenuity) of the MAKER : they won- 
 dered at the Work, and endowed it with Life and Force and mys- 
 terious Powers and mighty Influences. 
 
 Memphis, in Egypt, was in Latitude 29 5" North, and in Lon- 
 gitude 30 1 8' East. Thebse, in Upper Egypt, in Latitude 25 45' 
 North, and Longitude 32 43' East. Babylon was in Latitude 32 
 30' North, and Longitude 44 23' East : while Saba, the ancient 
 Sabsean capital of Ethiopia, was about in Latitude 15 North. 
 
 Through Egypt ran the great River Nile, coming from beyond 
 Ethiopia, its source in regions wholly unknown, in the abodes of 
 heat and fire, and its course from South to North, Its inunda- 
 tions had formed the alluvial lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, 
 which they continued to raise higher and higher, and to fertilize 
 by their deposits. At first, as in all newly-settled countries, those 
 inundations, occurring annually and always at the same period of 
 the year, were calamities : until, by means of levees and drains and 
 artificial lakes for irrigation,they became blessings, and were looked 
 for with joyful anticipation, as they had before been awaited with 
 terror. Upon the deposit left by the Sacred River, as it withdrew 
 into its banks, the husbandman sowed his seed ; and the rich soil 
 and the genial sun insured him an abundant harvest. 
 
 Babylon lay on the Euphrates, which ran from Southeast to 
 Northwest, blessing, as all rivers in the Orient do, the arid country 
 through which it flowed ; but its rapid and uncertain overflows 
 bringing terror and disaster. 
 
 To the ancients, as yet inventors of no astronomical instruments. 
 and looking at the Heavens with the eyes of children, this earth 
 was a level plain of unknown extent. About its boundaries there 
 was speculation, but no knowledge. The inequalities of its surface 
 were the irregularities of a plane. That it was a globe, or that 
 anything lived on its under surface, or on what it rested, they 
 had no idea. Every twenty-four hours the sun came up from be- 
 yond the Eastern rim of the world, and travelled across the sky, 
 over the earth, always South of. but sometimes nearer and some- 
 times further from the point overhead ; and sunk below the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 443 
 
 world's Western rim. With him went light, and after him fol- 
 lowed darkness. 
 
 And every twenty-four hours appeared in the Heavens another 
 body, visible chiefly at night, but sometimes even when the sun 
 shone, which likewise, as if following the sun at a greater or less 
 distance, travelled across the sky ; sometimes as a thin crescent, 
 and thence increasing to a full orb resplendent with silver light ; 
 and sometimes more and sometimes less to the Southward of the 
 point overhead, v/ithin the same limits as the Sun. 
 
 Man, enveloped by the thick darkness of profoundest night, 
 when everything around him has disappeared, and he seems alone 
 with himself and the black shades that surround him, feels his 
 existence a blank and nothingness, except so far as memory recalls 
 to him the glories and splendors of light. Everything is dead to 
 him, and he, as it were, to Nature. How crushing and overwhelm- 
 ing the thought, the fear, the dread, that perhaps that darkness 
 may be eternal, and that day may possibly never return ; if it ever 
 occurs to his mind, while the solid gloom closes up against him 
 like a wall ! What then can restore him to life, to energy, to ac- 
 tivity, to fellowship and communion with the great world which 
 God has spread around him, and which perhaps in the darkness 
 may be passing away? LIGHT restores him to himself and to 
 nature which seemed lost to him. Naturally, therefore, the prim- 
 itive men regarded light as the principle of their real existence, 
 without which life would be but one continued weariness and de- 
 spair. This necessity for light, and its actual creative energy, 
 were felt by all men : and nothing was more alarming to them 
 than its absence. It became their first Divinity, a single ray of 
 which, flashing into the dark tumultuous bosom of chaos, caused 
 man and all the Universe to emerge from it. So all the poets sung 
 who imagined Cosmogonies ; such was the first dogma of Orpheus, 
 Moses, and the Theologians. Light was Ormiml, adored by the 
 Persians, and Darkness Ahriman, origin of all evils. Light was 
 the life of the Universe, the friend of man. the substance of the 
 Gods and of the Soul. 
 
 The sky was to them a great, solid, concave arch ; a hemisphere 
 of unknown material, at an unknown distance above the flat level 
 earth ; and along it journeyed in their courses the Sun, the Moon, 
 the Planets, and the Stars. 
 
 The Sun was to them a great globe of fire, of unknown dimen-
 
 444 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sions, at an unknown distance. The Moon was a mass of softer 
 light; the stars and planets lucent bodies, armed with unknown 
 and supernatural influences. 
 
 It could not fail to be soon observed, that at regular intervals 
 the days and nights were equal ; and that two of these intervals 
 measured the same space of time as elapsed between the success- 
 ive inundations, and between the returns of spring-time and har- 
 vest. Nor could it fail to be perceived that the changes of the 
 moon occurred regularly; the same number'of days always elaps- 
 ing between the first appearance of her silver crescent in the West 
 at evening and that of her full orb rising in the East at the same 
 hour; and the same again, between that and the new appearance 
 of the crescent in the West. 
 
 It was also soon observed that the Sun crossed the Heavens in 
 a different line each day, the days being longest and the nights 
 shortest when the line of his passage was furthest North, and the 
 days shortest and nights longest when that line was furthest 
 South: that his progress North and South w r as perfectly regular, 
 marking four periods that were always the same. those \vhen the 
 days and nights were equal, or the Vernal and Autumnal Equi- 
 noxes ; that when the days were longest, or the Summer Solstice ; 
 and that when they were shortest, or the Winter Solstice. 
 
 With the Vernal Equinox, or about the 25th of March of our 
 Calendar, they found that there unerringly came soft winds, the 
 return of warmth, caused by the Sun turning back +o the North- 
 ward from the middle ground of his course, the vegetation of the 
 new year, and the impulse to amatory action on the part of the 
 animal creation. Then the Bull and the Ram, animals most val- 
 uable to the agriculturist, and symbols themselves of vigorous 
 generative power, recovered their vigor, the birds mated and 
 builded their nests, the seeds germinated, the grass grew, and the 
 trees put forth leaves. With the Summer Solstice, when the Sun 
 reached the extreme northern limit of his course, came great heat, 
 and burning winds, and lassitude and exhaustion : then vegetation 
 withered, man longed for the cool breezes of Spring and Autumn, 
 and the cool water of the wintry Nile or Euphrates, and the Lion 
 soueht for that element far from his home in the desert. 
 
 With the Autumnal Equinox came ripe harvests, and fruits of 
 the tree and vine, and falling leaves, and cola cvenir/rs presaging 
 wintry frosts; and the Principle and Powers of Darkness, pre-
 
 KMGHT OF THE BRAZEX SliKl'ENT. 445 
 
 vailing over those of Light, drove the Sun further to the South, 
 so that the nights grew longer than the days. And at the Winter 
 Solstice the earth was wrinkled with frost, the trees were leafless, 
 and the Sun, reaching the most Southern point in his career, 
 seemed to hesitate whether to continue descending, to leave the 
 world to darkness and despair, or to turn upon his steps and 
 retrace his course to the Northward, bringing back seed-time 
 and Spring, and green leaves and flowers, and all the delights of 
 love. 
 
 Thus, naturally and necessarily, time was divided, first into 
 days, and then into moons or months, and years ; and with these 
 divisions and the movements of the Heavenly bodies that marked 
 them, were associated and connected all men's physical enjoy- 
 ments and privations. Wholly agricultural, and in their frail 
 habitations greatly at the mercy of the elements and the changing 
 seasons, the primitive people of the Orient were most deeply inter- 
 ested in the recurrence of the periodical phenomena presented by 
 the two great luminaries of Heaven, on whose regularity all their 
 prosperity depended. 
 
 And the attentive observer soon noticed that the smaller lights 
 of Heaven were, apparently, even more regular than the Sun and 
 Moon, and foretold with unerring certainty, by their risings and 
 settings, the periods of recurrence of the different phenomena and 
 seasons on which the physical w r ell-being of all men depended. 
 They soon felt the necessity of distinguishing the individual stars, 
 or groups of stars, and giving them names, that they might 
 understand each other, when referring to and designating them. 
 Necessity produced designations at once natural and artificial. 
 Observing that, in the circle of the year, the renewal and periodi- 
 cal appearance of the productions of the earth were constantly asso- 
 ciated, not only with the courses of the Sun, but also with the 
 rising and Setting of certain Stars, and with their position rela- 
 tively to the Sun, the centre to which they referred the whole 
 starry host, the mind naturally connected the celestial and terres- 
 trial objects that were in fact connected: and they commenced 
 by giving to particular Stars or groups of Stars the names of those 
 terrestrial objects which seemed connected with them ; and for 
 those which still remained unnamed by this nomenclature, they, 
 to complete a system, assumed arbitrary and fanciful names. 
 
 Thus the Ethiopian of Thebes or Saba styled those Stars under
 
 446 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 which the Nile commenced to overflow, Stars of Inundation, or 
 that poured out water (AQUARIUS). 
 
 Those Stars among which the Sun was, when he had reached 
 the Northern Tropic and began to retreat Southward, were termed, 
 from his retrograde motion, the Crab (CANCER). 
 
 As he approached, in Autumn, the middle point between the 
 Northern and Southern extremes of his journeying, the days and 
 nights became equal ; and the Stars among which he was then 
 found were called Stars of the Balance (LIBRA). 
 
 Those stars among which the Sun was, when the Lion, driven 
 from the Desert by thirst, came to slake it at the Nile, were called 
 Stars of the Lion (LEO). 
 
 Those among which the Sun was at harvest, were called those 
 of the Gleaning Virgin, holding a Sheaf of Wheat ( VIRGO). 
 
 Those among which he was found in February, when the Ewes 
 brought forth their young, were called Stars of the Lamb (ARIES). 
 
 Those in March, when it was time to plough, were called Stars 
 of the Ox (TAURUS). 
 
 Those under which hot and burning winds came from the 
 desert, venomous like poisonous reptiles, were called Stars of the 
 Scorpion ( SCORPIO). 
 
 Observing that the annual return of the rising of the Nile was 
 always accompanied by the appearance of a beautiful Star, which at 
 that period showed itself in the direction of the sources of that 
 river, and seemed to warn the husbandman to be careful not to be 
 surprised by the inundation, the Ethiopian compared this act of 
 that Star to that of the Animal which by barking gives warning 
 of danger, and styled it the Dog (SiRius). 
 
 Thus commencing, and as astronomy came to be more studied, 
 imaginary figures were traced all over the Heavens, to which the 
 different Stars were assigned. Chief among them were those that 
 lay along the path which the Sun travelled as he climbed toward 
 the North and descended to the South : lying within certain 
 limits and extending to an equal distance on each side of the line 
 of equal nights and clays. This belt, curving like a Serpent, was 
 termed the Zodiac, and divided into twelve Signs. 
 
 At the Vernal Equinox. 2455 years before our Era, the Sun was 
 entering the sign and constellation Taurus, or the Bull ; having 
 passed through, since he commenced, at the Winter Solstice, to 
 ascend Northward, the Signs Aquarius, Pisces and Aries; on enter-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE URAXKN SERPENT. 447 
 
 ing the first of which he reached the lowest limit of his journey 
 Southward. 
 
 From TAURUS, he passed through Gemini and Cancer, and 
 reached LEO when he arrived at the terminus of his journey 
 Northward. Thence, through Leo, Virgo, and Libra, he entered 
 SCORPIO at the Autumnal Equinox, and journeyed Southward 
 through Scorpio, .Sagittarius, and Capricornus to AQUARIUS, the 
 terminus of his journey South. 
 
 The path by which he journeyed through these signs became 
 the Ecliptic; and that which passes through the two equinoxes, 
 the Equator. 
 
 They knew nothing of the immutable laws of nature ; and 
 whenever the Sun commenced to tend Southward, they feared lest 
 he might continue to do so, and by degrees disappear forever, leav- 
 ing the earth to be ruled forever by darkness, storm, and cold. 
 
 Hence they rejoiced when he commenced to re-ascend after the 
 Winter Solstice, struggling against the malign influences of Aqua- 
 rius and Pisces, and amicably received by the Lamb. And when 
 at the Vernal Equinox he entered Taurus, they still more rejoiced 
 at the assurance that the days would again be longer than the 
 nights, that the season of seed-time had come, and the Summer 
 and harvest would follow. 
 
 And they lamented when, after the Autumnal Equinox, the 
 malign influence of the venomous Scorpion, and vindictive Ar- 
 cher, and the filthy and ill-omened He-Goat dragged him down 
 toward the Winter Solstice. 
 
 Arriving there, they said he had been slain, and had gone to the 
 realm of darkness. Remaining there three days, he rose again, 
 and again ascended Northward in the heavens, to redeem the 
 earth from the gloom and darkness of Winter, which soon became 
 emblematical of sin, and evil, and suffering; as the Spring, Sum- 
 mer, and Autumn became emblems of happiness and immortality. 
 
 Soon they personified the Sun, and worshipped him under the 
 name of OSIRIS, and transmuted the legend of his descent among 
 the Winter Signs, into a fable of his death, his descent into the in- 
 fernal regions, and his resurrection. 
 
 The Moon became Isis, the wife of Osiris ; and \Vinter, as well as 
 the desert or the ocean into which the Sun descended, became 
 TYPHON, the Spirit or Principle of Evil, warring against and 
 destroying Osiris.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 From the journey of the Sun through the twelve signs came the 
 legend of the twelve labors of Hercules, and the incarnations of 
 Vishnu and Buddha. Hence came the legend of the murder of 
 Khurum, representative of the Sun, by the three Fellow-crafts, 
 symbols of the three Winter signs, Capricornus, Aquarius, and 
 Pisces, who assailed him at the three gates of Heaven and slew him 
 at the Winter Solstice. Hence the search for him by the nine Fel- 
 low-crafts, the other nine signs, his finding, burial, and resurrection. 
 
 The celestial Taurus, opening the new year, was the Creative 
 Bull of the Hindus and Japanese, breaking with his horn the egg 
 out of which the world is born. Hence the bull APIS was wor- 
 shipped by the Egyptians, and reproduced as a golden calf by 
 Aaron in the desert. Hence the cow was sacred to the Hindus. 
 Hence, from the sacred and beneficent signs of Taurus and Leo, 
 the human-headed winged lions and bulls in the palaces at Kou- 
 younjik and Nimroud, like which were the Cherubim set by Sol- 
 omon in his Temple : and hence the twelve brazen or bronze oxen, 
 on which the laver of brass was supported. 
 
 The Celestial Vulture or Eagle, rising and setting with the 
 Scorpion, was substituted in its place, in many cases, on account of 
 the malign influences of the latter : and thus the four great periods 
 of the year were marked by the Bull, the Lion, the Alan (Aqua- 
 rius) and the Eagle; which were upon the respective standards of 
 Ephraim, Judah, Reuben, and Dan ; and still appear on the shield 
 of American Royal Arch Masonry. 
 
 Afterward the Ram or Lamb became an object of adoration, 
 when, in his turn, he opened the equinox, to deliver the world from 
 the wintry reign of darkness and evil. 
 
 Around the central and simple idea of the annual death and 
 resurrection of the Sun a multitude of circumstantial details soon 
 clustered. Some were derived from other astronomical phenom- 
 ena ; while many w r ere merely poetical ornaments and inventions. 
 
 Besides the Sun and Moon, those ancients also saw a beautiful 
 Star, shining with a soft, silvery light, always following the Sun at 
 no great distance when he set. or preceding him when he rose. 
 Another of a red and angry color, and still another more kingly 
 and brilliant than all. early attracted their attention, by their free 
 movements among the fixed hosts of Heaven : and the latter by 
 his unusual brilliancy, and the regularity wit 1 ^ which he rose and 
 set. These were Venns, Mars, and Jupiter. Mercury and Saturn
 
 KNIGHT OF THE KKAZEN SEKl'ENT. 449 
 
 could scarcely have been noticed in the world's infancy, or until 
 astronomy began to assume the proportions of a science. 
 
 In the projection of the celestial sphere by the astronomical 
 priests, the zodiac and constellations, arranged in a circle, pre- 
 sented their halves in diametrical opposition ; and the hemisphere 
 of Winter was said to be adverse, opposed, contrary, to that of Sum- 
 mer. Over the angels of the latter ruled a king ( OSIRIS or OR- 
 MUZD) , enlightened, intelligent, creative, and beneficent. Over the 
 fallen angels or evil genii of the former, the demons or Devs of 
 the subterranean empire of darkness and sorrow, and its stars, 
 ruled also a chief. In Egypt the Scorpion first ruled, the sign 
 next the Balance, and long the chief of the Winter signs ; and then 
 the Polar Bear or Ass, called Typhon, that is, deluge, on account of 
 the rains which inundated the earth while that constellation dom- 
 ineered. In Persia, at a later day, it was the serpent, which, per- 
 sonified as Ahriman, was the Evil Principle of the religion of Zo- 
 roaster. 
 
 > 
 
 The Sun does not arrive at the same moment in each year at 
 the equinoctial point on the equator. The explanation of his 
 anticipating that point belongs to the science of astronomy ; and 
 to that we refer you for it. The consequence is. what is termed 
 the precession of the equinoxes, by means of which the Sun is 
 constantly changing his place in the zodiac, at each vernal equinox ; 
 so that now, the signs retaining the names which they had 300 
 years before Christ, they and the constellations do not correspond ; 
 the Sun being now in the constellation Pisces, when he is in the 
 sign Aries. 
 
 The annual amount of precession is 50 seconds and a little 
 over [50" i.] . The period of a complete Revolution of the Equinoxes, 
 25.856 years. The precession amounts to 30 or a sign, in 2155.6 
 years. So that, as the sun now enters Pisces at the Vernal Equi- 
 nox, he entered Aries at that period, 300 years B. C., and Taurus 
 2455 B. C. And the division of the Ecliptic, now called Taurus, 
 lies in the Constellation Aries : while the sign Gemini is in the 
 Constellation Taurus. Four thousand six hundred and ten years 
 before Christ, the sun entered Gemini at the Vernal Equinox. 
 
 At the two periods. 2455 and 300 years before Christ, and now, 
 the entrances of the sun at the Equinoxes and Solstices into the 
 signs, were and are as follows :
 
 45 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 B. C. 2455. 
 
 Vern. Equinox, he entered Taurus . . from Aries. 
 
 Summer Solstice . . . Leo . . . from Cancer. 
 
 Autumnal Equinox . . Scorpio . . from Libra. 
 
 Winter Solstice . . . Aquarius . from Capricornus. 
 
 B. C. 300. 
 
 Vern. Eq Aries . . from Pisces. 
 
 Summer Sols Cancer . . from Gemini. 
 
 Autumn Eq Libra . . from Virgo. 
 
 Winter Sols Capricornus from Sagittarius. 
 
 1872. 
 
 Vern. Eq Pisces . . from Aquarius. 
 
 Sum. Sols Gemini . . from Taurus. 
 
 Aut. Eq Virgo . . from Leo. 
 
 Winter Sols Sagittarius . from Scorpio. 
 
 From confounding signs with causes came the worship of the 
 sun and stars. "If," says Job, "I beheld the sun when it shined, 
 or the moon progressive in brightness ; and my heart hath been 
 secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this were an 
 iniquity to be punished by the Judge ; for I should have denied 
 the God that is above." 
 
 Perhaps we are not, on the whole, much wiser than those sim- 
 ple men of the old time. For what do we know of effect and 
 cause, . except that one thing regularly or habitually follozvs 
 another? 
 
 So, because the heliacal rising of Sirius preceded the rising of 
 the Nile, it was deemed to cause it ; and other stars were in like 
 manner held to cause extreme heat, bitter cold, and watery storm. 
 
 A religious reverence for the zodiacal Hull [TAURUS] appears, 
 from a very early period, to have been pretty general, perhaps it 
 was universal, throughout Asia ; from that chain or region of 
 Caucasus to which it gave name ; and which is still known under 
 the appellation of Mount Taurus, to the Southern extremities of 
 the Indian Peninsula ; extending itself also into Europe, and 
 through the Eastern parts of Africa. 
 
 This evidently originated during those remote ages of the world, 
 when the colure of the vernal equinox passed across the stars in 
 the head of the sign Taurus [among which was Aldebaran] ; a
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 451 
 
 period when, as the most ancient monuments of all the oriental 
 nations attest, the light of arts and letters first shone forth. : 
 
 The Arabian word AL-DE-BARAN, means the foremost, or lead- 
 ing, star: and it could only have been so named, when it did pre- 
 cede, or lead, all others. The year then opened with the sun in 
 Taurus ; and the multitude of ancient sculptures, both in Assyria 
 and Egypt, wherein the bull appears with lunette or crescent 
 horns, and the disk of the sun between them, are direct allusions 
 to the important festival of the first new moon of the year : and 
 there was everywhere an annual celebration of the festival of the 
 first new moon, when the year opened with Sol and Luna in 
 Taurus. 
 
 David sings: "Blow the trumpet in the New Moon; in the time 
 appointed ; on our solemn feast-day : for this is a statute unto 
 Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob. This he ordained to Jo- 
 seph, for a testimony, when he came out of the land of Egypt." 
 
 The reverence paid to Taurus continued long after, by the pre- 
 cession of the Equinoxes, the colure of the vernal equinox had 
 come to pass through Aries. The Chinese still have a temple, 
 called "The Palace of the horned Bull" ; and the same symbol is 
 worshipped in Japan and all over Hindostan. The Cimbrians 
 carried a brazen bull with them, as the image of their God, when 
 they overran Spain and Gaul ; and the representation of the Crea- 
 tion, by the Deity in the shape of a bull, breaking the shell of an 
 egg with his horns, meant Taurus, opening the year, and bursting 
 the symbolical shell of the annually-recurring orb of the new 
 year. 
 
 Theophilus says that the Osiris of Egypt was supposed to be 
 dead or absent fifty days in each year. Landseer thinks that this 
 was because the Sabaean priests were accustomed to see, in the 
 lower latitudes of Egypt and Ethiopia, the first or chief stars of 
 the Husbandman f BOOTES] sink achronically beneath the Western 
 horizon ; and then to begin their lamentations, or hold forth the 
 signal for others to weep: and when his prolific virtues were sup- 
 posed to be transferred to the vernal sun, bacchanalian revelry 
 became devotion. 
 
 Before the colure of the Vernal Equinox had passed into Aries, 
 and after it had left Aldebaran and the Hyades. the Pleiades were, 
 for seven or eight centuries, the leading stars of the Sabaean year. 
 And thus we see, on the monuments, the disk and crescent, svm-
 
 45-2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 bols of the sun and moon in conjunction, appear successively, 
 first on the head, and then on the neck and back of the Zodiacal 
 Bull, and more recently on the forehead of the Ram. 
 
 The diagrammatical character or symbol, still in use to denote 
 Taurus, a, is this very crescent and disk: a symbol that has come 
 down to us from those remote ages when this memorable conjunc- 
 tion in Taurus, by marking the commencement, at once of the 
 Sabsean year and of the cycle of the Chaldean Saros, so pre-emi- 
 nently distinguished that sign as to become its characteristic sym- 
 bol. On a bronze bull from China, the crescent is attached to the 
 back of the Bull, by means of a cloud, and a curved groove is pro- 
 vided for the occasional introduction of the disk of the sun, when 
 solar and lunar time were coincident and conjunctive, at the com- 
 mencement of the year, and of the lunar cycle. When that was 
 made, the year did not open with the stars in the head of the Bull, 
 but when the colure of the vernal equinox passed across the mid- 
 dle or later degrees of the asterism Taurus, and the Pleiades were, 
 in China, as in Canaan, the leading stars of the year. 
 
 The crescent and disk combined always represent the conjunc- 
 tive Sun and Moon ; and when placed on the head of the Zodiacal 
 Bull, the commencement of the cycle termed SARDS by the Chal- 
 deans, and Metonic by the Greeks ; and supposed to be alluded to 
 in Job, by the phrase, "Mazzaroth in his season" ; that is to say, 
 when the first new Moon and new Sun of the year were coinci- 
 dent, which happened once in eighteen years and a fraction. 
 
 On the sarcophagus of Alexander, the same symbol appears on 
 the head of a Ram, \yhich, in the time of that monarch, was the 
 learding sign. So too in the sculptured temples of the Upper Nile, 
 the crescent and disk appear, not on the head of Taurus, but on 
 the forehead of the Ram or the Ram-headed God, whom the Gre- 
 cian Mythologists called Jupiter Ammon, really the Sun in Aries. 
 
 If we now look for a moment at the individual stars which 
 composed and were near to the respective constellations, we may 
 find something that will connect itself with the symbols of the 
 Ancient Mysteries and of Masonry. 
 
 Tt is to be noticed that when the Sun is in a particular constel- 
 lation, no part of that constellation will be seen, except just before 
 sunrise and just after sunset: and then only the edge of it: but 
 the constellations opposite to it will be visible. When the Sun is 
 in Taurus, for example, that is. when Taurus sets u'ith the Sun.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 453 
 
 Scorpio rises as he sets, and continues visible throughout the night. 
 And if Taurus rises and sets with the Sun to-day, he will, six 
 months hence, rise at sunset and set at sunrise ; for the stars thus 
 gain on the Sun two hours a month. 
 
 Going back to the time when, watched by the Chaldean shep- 
 herds, and the husbandmen of Ethiopia and Egypt, 
 "The milk-white Bull with golden horns 
 
 "Led on the new-born year," 
 
 we see in the neck of TAURUS, the Pleiades, and in his face the 
 Hyades, "which Greciafrom their showering names, "and of whom 
 the brilliant Aldebaran is the chief; while to the southwestward 
 is that most splendid of all the constellations, Orion, with Betel- 
 gueux in his right shoulder, Bellatrix in his left shoulder, Rigel 
 on the left foot, and in his belt the three stars known as the Three 
 Kings, and now as the Yard and Ell. Orion, ran the legend ; 
 persecuted the Pleiades; and to save them from his fury, Jupittr 
 placed them in the Heavens, where he still pursues them, but in 
 vain. They, with Arcturus and the Bands of Orion, are mentioned 
 in the Book of Job. They are usually called the Seven Stars, 
 and it is said there ivere seven, before the fall of Troy ; though 
 now only six are visible. 
 
 The Pleiades were so named from a Greek word signifying to 
 sail. In all ages they have been observed for signs and seasons. 
 Virgil says that the sailors gave names to "the Pleiades, Hyades, 
 and the Northern Car: Plciadas, Hyadas, Clarainquc Lycaonis 
 Arcton." And Palinurus, he says, 
 
 Arcturum, pluviasqne Hyadas, Geminosque Triones, 
 Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona, 
 
 studied Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and the Twin Triones, and 
 Orion cinctured with gold. 
 
 Taurus was the prince and leader of the celestial host for more 
 than two thousand years ; and when his head set with the Sun 
 about the last of May, the Scorpion was seen to ris-e in the South- 
 east. 
 
 The Pleiades were sometimes called Vergilice, or the Virgins of 
 Spring ; because the Sun entered this cluster of stars in the season 
 of blossoms. Their Syrian name was Snccoth, or Succothbeneth, 
 derived from a Chaldean woid signifying to speculate or observe. 
 
 The Hyades are five stars in the form of a V, 1 1 southeast of 
 30
 
 454 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Pleiades. The Greeks counted them as seven. When the 
 Vernal Equinox was in Taurus, Aldebaran led up the starry host ; 
 and as he rose in the East, Aries was about 27 high. 
 
 When he was close upon the meridian, the Heavens presented 
 their most magnificent appearance. Capella was a little further 
 from the meridian, to the north ; and Orion still further from it 
 to the southward. Procyon, Sirius, Castor and Pollux had climbed 
 about half-way from the horizon to the meridian. Regulus had 
 just risen upon the ecliptic. The Virgin still lingered below the 
 horizon. Fomalhaut was half-way to the meridian in the South- 
 west; and to the Northwest were the brilliant constellations, Per- 
 seus, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda; while the Pleiades had 
 just passed the meridian. 
 
 ORION is visible to all the habitable world. The equinoctial 
 line passes through the centre of it. When Aldebaran rose in 
 the East, the Three Kings in Orion followed him ; and as Taurus 
 set, the Scorpion, by whose sting it was said Orion died, rose in the 
 East. 
 
 Orion rises at noon about the pth of March. His rising was 
 accompanied with great rains and storms, and it became very ter- 
 rible to mariners. 
 
 In Bootes, called by the ancient Greeks Lyca-on, from lukos, a 
 wolf, and by the Hebrews, Caleb Anubach, the Barking Dog, is 
 the Great Star ARCTURUS, which, when Taurus opened the year, 
 corresponded with a season remarkable for its great heat. 
 
 Next comes GEMINI, the Twins, two human figures, in the heads 
 of which are the bright Stars CASTOR and POLLUX, the Dioscuri, 
 and the Cabiri of Samothrace, patrons of navigation ; while South 
 of Pollux are the brilliant Stars SIRIUS and PROCYON, the greater 
 and lesser Dog: and still further South. Canopus, in the Ship 
 Argo. 
 
 Sirius is apparently the largest and brightest Star in the Heav- 
 ens. When the Vernal Equinox was in Taurus, he rose heliacally, 
 that is, just before the Sun, when, at the Summer Solstice, the 
 Sun entered Leo, about the 2ist of June, fifteen days previous to 
 the swelling of the Nile. The heliacal rising of Canopus was also 
 a precursor of the rising of the Nile. Procyon was the forerunner 
 of Sirius, and rose before him. 
 
 There are no important Stars in CANCER. In the Zodiacs of 
 Esne and Denrlera, and in most of the astrological remains of
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 455 
 
 Egypt, the sign of this constellation was a beetle (Scarabaus), 
 which thence became sacred, as an emblem of the gate through 
 which souls descended from Heaven. In the crest of Cancer is a 
 cluster of Stars formerly called Prasepc, the Manger, on each 
 side of which is a small Star, the two of which were called Aselli, 
 little asses. 
 
 In Leo are the splendid Stars, REGULUS, directly on the ecliptic, 
 and DENEBOLA in the Lion's tail. Southeast of Regulus is the 
 fine Star COR HYDR.E. 
 
 The combat of Hercules with the Nemaean lion was his first 
 labor. It was the first sign into which the Sun passed, after fall- 
 ing below the Summer Solstice ; from which time he struggled to 
 re-ascend. 
 
 The Nile overflowed in this sign. It stands first in the Zodiac 
 of Dendera, and is in all the Indian and Egyptian Zodiacs. 
 
 In the left hand of VIRGO (Isis or Ceres) is the beautiful Star 
 SPICA Virginis, a little South of the ecliptic. VIXDEMIATRIX, of 
 less magnitude, is in the right arm ; and Northwest of Spica, in 
 Bootes (the husbandman, Osiris), is the splendid Star ARCTU- 
 
 RUS. 
 
 The division of the first Decan of the Virgin, Aben Ezra says, 
 represents a beautiful Virgin with flowing hair, sitting in a chair, 
 with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an infant. In 
 an Arabian MS. in the Royal Library at Paris, is a picture of the 
 Twelve Signs. That of Virgo is a young girl with an infant by 
 her side. Virgo was Isis ; and her representation, carrying a child 
 (Horus) in her arms, exhibited in her temple, was accompanied 
 by this inscription: "I AM ALL THAT is, THAT WAS, AND THAT 
 SHALL BE; and the fruit which I brought forth is the Sun." 
 
 Nine months after the Sun enters Virgo, he reaches the Twins. 
 When Scorpio begins to rise, Orion sets : when Scorpio comes to 
 the meridian, Leo begins to set, Typhon reigns, Osiris is slain, and 
 Isis (the Virgin) his sister and wife, follows him to the tomb, 
 weeping. 
 
 The Virgin and Bootes, setting heliacally at the Autumnal Equi- 
 nox, delivered the v/orld to the v.'intry constellations, and intro- 
 duced into it the genius of Evil, .represented by Ophiucus, the 
 Serpent. 
 
 At the moment of the Winster Solstice, the Virgin rose helia- 
 cally (with the Sun), having the Sun (Horus) in her bosom.
 
 456 M ORALS AND DOG M A. 
 
 In LIBRA are four Stars of the second and third magnitude, 
 which we shall mention hereafter. They are Zuben-es-Chamali, 
 Zuben-el-Gemabi, Zuben-hak-rabi, and Zuben-el-Gubi. Near the 
 last of these is the brilliant and malign Star, ANTARES in Scor- 
 pio. 
 
 In SCORPIO, ANTARES, of the ist magnitude, and remarkably 
 red, was one of the four great Stars, FOMALHAUT, in Cetus, 
 ALDEBARAN in Taurus, REGULUS in Leo, and ANTARES, that 
 formerly answered to the Solstitial and Equinoctial points, and 
 were much noticed by astronomers. This sign was sometimes 
 represented by a Snake, and sometimes by a Crocodile, but gen- 
 erally by a Scorpion, which last is found on the Mithriac Monu- 
 ments, and on the Zodiac of Dendera. It was considered a sign 
 accursed, and the entrance of the Siin into it commenced the 
 reign of Typhon. 
 
 In Sagittarius, Capricornus, and Aquarius there are no Stars 
 of importance. 
 
 Near Pisces is the brilliant Star FOMALHAUT. No sign in the 
 Zodiac is considered cf more malignant influence than this. It 
 was deemed indicative of Violence and Death. Both the Syrians 
 and Egyptians abstained from eating fish, out of dread and abhor- 
 rence ; and when the latter would represent anything as odious, or 
 express hatred by Hieroglyphics, they painted a fish. 
 
 In Auriga is the bright Star CAPELLA, which to the Egyptians 
 never set. 
 
 And, circling ever round the North Pole are Seven Stars, known 
 as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, which have been an object of 
 universal observation in all ages of the world. They were vener- 
 ated alike by the Priests of Bel, the Magi of Persia, the Shepherds 
 of Chaldea, and the Phoenician navigators, as well as by the astron- 
 omers of Egypt. Two of them, MERAK and DUBHE, always 
 point to the North Pole. 
 
 The Phoenicians and Egyptians, says Eusebius, were the first 
 who ascribed divinity to the Sun, Moon, and Stars, and regarded 
 them as the sole causes of the production and destruction of all 
 beings. From them went abroad over all the world all known 
 opinions as to the generation and descent cf the Gods. Only the 
 Hebrews looked beyond the visible world to an invisible Creator. 
 .All the rest of the world regarded as Gods those luminous bodies 
 tint blaze in the firmament, offered them sacrifices, bowed down
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN* SERPENT. 457 
 
 before them, and raised neither their souls nor their worship above 
 the visible heavens. 
 
 The Chaldeans, Canaanites, and Syrians, among whom Abraham 
 lived, did the same. The Canaanites consecrated horses and char- 
 iots to the Sun. The inhabitants of Emesa in Phoenicia adored 
 him under the name of Elagabalus; and the Sun, as Hercules, was 
 the great Deity of the Tyrians. The Syrians worshipped, with fear 
 and dread, the Stars of the Constellation Pisces, and consecrated 
 images of them in their temples. The Sun as Adonis was worship- 
 ped in Byblos and about Mount Libanus. There was a magnificent 
 Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, which was pillaged by the soldiers 
 of Aurelian, who rebuilt it and dedicated it anew. The Pleiades, 
 under the name of Succoth-Beneth, were worshipped by the Baby- 
 lonian colonists who settled in the country of the Samaritans. Sat- 
 urn, under the name of Rcmphan.was worshipped among the Copts. 
 The planet Jupiter was worshipped as Bel or Baal ; Mars as Malec, 
 Melech, or Moloch; Venus as Ashtaroth or Astarte, and Mercury 
 as Nebo, among the Syrians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Canaanites. 
 
 Sanchoniathon says that the earliest Phoenicians adored the Sun, 
 whom they deemed sole Lord of the Heavens ; and honored him 
 under the name of BEEL-SAMIN, signifying King of Heaven. They 
 raised columns to the dements, fire, and air or wind, and worshipped 
 them ; and Sabseism, or the worship of the Stars, flourished every- 
 where in Babylonia. The Arabs, under a sky always clear and 
 serene, adored the Sun, Moon, and Stars. Abulfaragius so informs 
 us, and that each of the twelve Arab Tribes invoked a particular 
 Star as its Patron. The Tribe Hamyar was consecrated to the Sun, 
 the Tribe Cennah to the Moon ; the Tribe Misa was under the pro- 
 tection of the beautiful Star in Taurus, Aldebaran ; the Tribe Tai 
 under that of Canopus ; theTribe Kais,of Sirius ; the Tribes Lacha- 
 musand Idamus.of Jupiter; the Tribe Asad, of Mercury ; and so on. 
 
 The Saracens, in the time of Heraclius, worshipped Venus, 
 whom they called CABAR, or The Great; and they swore by the 
 Sun, Moon, and Stars. Shahristan, an Arabic author, says that the 
 Arabs and Indians before his time had temples dedicated to the 
 seven Planets. Abulfaragius says that the seven great primitive 
 nations, from \vhom all others descended, the Persians, Clialda?ans, 
 Greeks, Egyptians, Turks, Indians, and Chinese, all originally were 
 Sabaeists, and worshipped the Stars. They all. he says, like the 
 Chaldaeans, prayed, turning toward the North pole, three times a
 
 45$ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 day, at Sunrise, Noon, and Sunset, bowing themselves three times 
 before the Sun. They invoked the Stars and the Intelligences 
 which inhabited them, offered them sacrifices, and called the fixed 
 stars and planets gods. Philo says that the Chaldseans regarded 
 the stars as sovereign arbiters of the order of the world, and did not 
 look beyond the visible causes to any invisible and intellectual being. 
 They regarded NATURE as the great divinity, that exercised its 
 powers through the action of its parts, the Sun, Moon, Planets, and 
 Fixed Stars, the successive revolutions of the seasons, and the com- 
 bined action of Heaven and Earth. The great feast of the Sabaeans 
 was when the Sun reached the Vernal Equinox : and they had 
 five other feasts, at the times when the five minor planets entered 
 the signs in which they had their exaltation. 
 
 Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Egyptians recognized two 
 great Divinities, primary and eternal, the Sun and Moon, which 
 they thought governed the world, and from which everything re- 
 ceives its nourishment and growth : that on them depended all 
 the great work of generation, and the perfection of all effects pro- 
 duced in nature. We know that the two great Divinities of Egypt 
 were Osiris and Isis, the greatest agents of nature ; according to 
 some, the Sun and Moon, and according to others, Heaven and 
 Earth, or the active and passive principles of generation. 
 
 And we learn from Porphyry that Chgeremon, a learned priest of 
 Egypt, an d many other learned men of that nation, said that the 
 Egyptians recognized as gods the stars composing the zodiac, and 
 all those that by their rising or setting marked its divisions ; the 
 subdivisions of the signs into decans, .the horoscope and the stars 
 that presided therein, and which were called Potent Chiefs of 
 Heaven : that considering the Sun as the Great God, Architect, 
 and Ruler of the World, they explained not only the fable of 
 Osiris and Isis, but generally all their sacred legends, by the stars, 
 by their appearance and disappearance, by their ascension, by the 
 phases of the moon, and the increase and diminution of her light ; 
 by the march of the sun, the division of time and the heavens into 
 two parts, one assigned to darkness and the other to light ; by the 
 Nile and, in fine, by the whole round of physical causes. 
 
 Lucian tells us that the bull Apis, sacred to the Egyptians, was 
 the image of the celestial Bull, or Taurus; and that Jupiter 
 Ammon, horned like a ram, was an image of the constellation 
 Aries. And Clemens of Alexandria assures us that the four prin-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 459 
 
 cipal sacred animals, carried in their processions, were emblems of 
 the four signs or cardinal points which fixed the seasons at the 
 equinoxes and solstices, and divided into four parts the yearly 
 march of the sun. They worshipped fire also, and water, and the 
 Nile, which river they styled Father, Preserver of Egypt, sacred 
 emanation from the Great God Osiris ; and in their hymns in which 
 they called it the god crowned with millet (which grain, repre- 
 sented by the pschent, was part of the head-dress of their kings), 
 bringing with him abundance. The other elements were also 
 revered by them : and the Great Gods, whose names are found 
 inscribed on an ancient column, are the Air, Heaven, the Earth, 
 the Sun, the Moon, Night, and Day. And, in fine, as Eusebius 
 says, they regarded the Universe as a great Deity, composed of a 
 great number of gods, the different parts of itself. 
 
 The same worship of the Heavenly Host extended into every 
 part of Europe, into Asia Minor, and among the Turks, Scythians, 
 and Tartars. The ancient Persians adored the Sun as Mithras, 
 and also the Moon, Venus, Fire, Earth, Air, and Water ; and, 
 having no statues or altars, they sacrificed on high places to the 
 Heavens and to the Sun. On seven ancient pyrea they burned in- 
 cense to the Seven Planets, and considered the elements to be 
 divinities. In the Zend-Avesta we find invocations addressed to 
 Mithras, the stars, the elements, trees, mountains, and every part 
 of nature. The Celestial Bull is invoked there, to which the 
 Moon unites herself; and the four great stars, Taschter, Satevis, 
 Haftorang, and Yenant, the great Star Rapitan, and the other con- 
 stellations which watch over the different portions of the earth. 
 
 The Magi, like a multitude of ancient nations, worshipped fire, 
 above all the other elements and powers of nature. In India, the 
 Ganges and the Indus were worshipped, and the Sun was the Great 
 Divinity. They worshipped the Moon also, and kept up the sacred 
 fire. In Ceylon, the Sun, Moon, and other planets were worship- 
 ped : in Sumatra, the Sun, called Iri, and the Moon, called Handa. 
 And the Chinese built Temples to Heaven, the Earth, and genii 
 of the air, of the water, of the mountains, and of the stars, to the 
 sea-dragon, and to the planet Mars. 
 
 The celebrated Labyrinth was built in honor of the Sun ; and 
 its twelve palaces, like the twelve superb columns of the Temple 
 at Hieropolis, covered with symbols relating to the twelve signs 
 and the occult qualities of the elements, were consecrated to the 
 twelve gods or tutelary genii of the signs of the Zodiac. The
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 figure of the pyramid and that of the obelisk, resembling the 
 shape of a flame, caused these monuments to be consecrated to the 
 Sun and to Fire. And Timseus of Locria says : "The equilateral 
 triangle enters into the composition of the pyramid, which has 
 four equal faces and equal angles, and which in this is like fire, the 
 most subtle and mobile of the elements." They and the obelisks 
 were erected in honor of the Sun, termed in an inscription upon 
 one of the latter, translated by the Egyptian Hermapion, and to 
 be found in Ammianus Marcellinus, "Apollo the strong, Son of 
 God, He who made the world, true Lord of the diadems, who pos- 
 sesses Egypt and fills it with His glory." 
 
 The two most famous divisions of the Heavens, by seven, which 
 is that of the planets, and by twelve, which is that of the signs, 
 are found on the religious monuments of all the people of the an- 
 cient world. The twelve Great Gods of Egypt are met with every- 
 where. They were adopted by the Greeks and Romans ; and the 
 latter assigned one of them to each sign of the Zodiac. Their 
 images were seen at Athens, where an altar \vas erected to each ; 
 and they were painted on the porticos. The People of the North 
 had their twelve Azes, or Senate of twelve great gods, of whom 
 Odin was chief. The Japanese had the same number, and like 
 the Egyptians divided them into classes, seven, who were the most 
 ancient, and five, afterward added : both of which numbers are 
 well known and consecrated in Masonry. 
 
 There is no more striking proof of the universal adoration paid 
 the stars and constellations, than the arrangement of the Hebrew 
 camp in the Desert, and the allegory in regard to the twelve Tribes 
 of Israel, ascribed in the Hebrew legends to Jacob. The Hebrew 
 camp was a quadrilateral, in sixteen divisions, of which the cen- 
 tral four were occupied by images of the four elements. The four 
 divisions at the four angles of the quadrilateral exhibited the four 
 signs that the astrologers call fixed, and which they regard as sub- 
 ject to the influence of the four great Royal Stars, Regulus in 
 Leo, Aldebaran in Taurus, Antares in Scorpio, and Fomalhaut in 
 the mouth of Pisces, on which falls the water poured out by Aqua- 
 rius ; of which constellations the Scorpion was represented in the 
 Hebrew blazonry by the Celestial Vulture or Eagle, that rises at 
 the same time \vith it and is its paranatellon. The other signs 
 were arranged on the four faces of the quadrilateral, and in the 
 parallel and interior divisions,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 461 
 
 There is an astonishing coincidence between the characteristics 
 assigned by Jacob to his sons, and those of the signs of the Zodiac, 
 or the planets that have their domicile in those signs. 
 
 Reuben is compared to running water, unstable, and that cannot 
 excel ; and he answers to Aquarius, his ensign being a man. The 
 water poured out by Aquarius flows toward the South Pole, and it 
 is the first of the four Royal Signs, ascending from the Winter 
 Solstice. 
 
 The Lion (Leo) is the device of Judah; and Jacob compares 
 him to that animal, whose constellation in the Heavens is the 
 domicile of the Sun ; the Lion of the Tribe of Judah ; by whose 
 grip, when that of apprentice and that of fellow-craft, of Aqua- 
 rius at the Winter Solstice and of Cancer at the Vernal ^Equinox, 
 had not succeeded in raising him, Khurum was lifted out of the 
 grave. 
 
 Ephraim, on whose ensign appears the Celestial Bull, Jacob 
 compares to the ox. Dan, bearing as his device a Scorpion, he 
 compares to the Cerastes or horned Serpent, synonymous in astro- 
 logical language with the vulture or pouncing eagle ; and which 
 bird was often substituted on the flag of Dan, in place of the ven- 
 omous scorpion, on account of the terror which that reptile in- 
 spired, as the symbol of Typhon and his malign influences ; 
 wherefore the Eagle, as its paranatellon, that is, rising and setting 
 at the same time with it, was naturally used in its stead. Hence 
 the four famous figures in the sacred pictures of the Jews and 
 Christians, and in Royal Arch Masonry, of the Lion, the Ox, the 
 Man, and the Eagle, the four creatures of the Apocalypse, copied 
 there from Ezekiel, in whose reveries and rhapsodies they are seen 
 revolving around blazing circles. 
 
 The Ram, domicile of Mars, chief of the Celestial Soldiery and 
 of the twelve Signs, is the device of Gad, whom Jacob character- 
 izes as a warrior, chief of his army. 
 
 Cancer, in which are the stars termed AsclH, or little asses, is 
 the device of the flag of Issachar, whom Jacob compares to an ass. 
 
 Capricorn, of old represented with the tail of a fish, and called 
 by astronomers the Son of Neptune, is the device of Zcbulon. of 
 whom Jacob says that he dwells on the shore of the sea. 
 
 Sagittarius, chasing the Celestial Wolf, is the emblem of Benja- 
 min, whom Jacob compares to a hunter: and in that constellation 
 the Romans placed the domicile of Diana the huntress. Virgo,
 
 4O2 MOkALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the domicile of Mercury, is borne on the flag of Naphtali, whose 
 eloquence and agility Jacob magnifies, both of which are attri- 
 butes of the Courier of the Gods. And of Simeon and Levi, he 
 speaks as united, as are the two fishes that make the Constellation 
 Pisces, which is their armorial emblem. 
 
 Plato, in his Republic, followed the divisions of the Zodiac and 
 the planets. So also did Lycurgus at Sparta, and Cecrops in the 
 Athenian Commonwealth. Chun, the Chinese legislator, divided 
 China into twelve Tcheou, and specially designated twelve moun- 
 tains. The Etruscans divided themselves into twelve Cantons. 
 Romulus appointed twelve Lictors. There were twelve tribes of 
 Ishmael and twelve disciples of the Hebrew Reformer. The New 
 Jerusalem, of the Apocalypse has twelve gates. 
 
 The Souciet, a Chinese book, speaks of a palace composed of 
 four buildings, whose gates looked toward the four corners of the 
 world. That on the East was dedicated to the new moons of the 
 months of Spring ; that on the West to those of Autumn ; that 
 on the South to those of Summer ; and that on the North to those 
 of Winter : and in this palace the Emperor and his grandees sac- 
 rificed a lamb, the animal that represented the Sun at the Vernal 
 Equinox. 
 
 Among the Greeks, the march of the Choruses in their theatres 
 represented the movements of the Heavens and the planets, and 
 the Strophe and Anti-Strophe imitated, Aristoxenes says, the 
 movements of the Stars. The number five was sacred among the 
 Chinese, as that of the planets other than the Sun and Moon. As- 
 trology consecrated the numbers twelve, seven, thirty, and three 
 hundred and sixty ; and everywhere seven, the number of the 
 planets, was as sacred as twelve, that of the signs, the months, the 
 oriental cycles, and the sections of the horizon. We shall speak- 
 more at large hereafter, in another Degree, as to these and other 
 numbers, to which the ancients ascribed mysterious powers. 
 
 The Signs of the Zodiac and the Stars appeared on many of the 
 ancient coins and medals. On the public seal of the Locrians, 
 Ozoles was Hesperus, or the planet Venus. On the medals of An- 
 tioch on the Orontes was the ram and crescent : and the Ram was 
 the special Deity of Syria, assigned to it in the division of the 
 earth among the twelve signs. Oft the Cretan coins was the Equi- 
 noctial Bull : and he also appeared on those of the Mamertins and 
 of Athens. Sagittarius appeared nn those of the Persians. In
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 463 
 
 India the twelve signs appeared upon the ancient coins. The 
 Scorpion was engraved on the medals of the Kings of Comagena, 
 and Capricorn on those of Zeugma, Anazorha, and other cities. 
 On the medals of Antoninus are found nearly all the signs of the 
 Zodiac. 
 
 Astrology was practised among all the ancient nations. In Egypt, 
 the book of Astrology was borne reverentially in the religious pro- 
 cessions ; in which the few sacred animals were also carried, as em- 
 blems of the equinoxes and solstices. The same science flourished 
 among the Chaldeans, and over the whole of Asia and Africa. 
 When Alexander invaded India, the astrologers of the Oxydraces 
 came to him to disclose the secrets of their science of Heaven and 
 the Stars. The Brahmins whom Apollonius consulted, taught him 
 the secrets of Astronomy, with the ceremonies and prayers where- 
 by to appease the gods and learn the future from the stars. In 
 China, astrology taught the mode of governing the State and 
 families. In Arabia it was deemed the mother of the sciences ; and 
 old libraries are full of Arabic books on this pretended science. It 
 flourished at Rome. Constantine had his horoscope drawn by the 
 astrologer Yalens. It was a science in the middle ages, and even 
 to this day is neither forgotten nor unpractised. Catherine de 
 Medici was fond of it. Louis XIV. consulted his horoscope, and 
 the learned Casini commenced his career as an astrologer. 
 
 The ancient Sabaeans established feasts in honor of each planet, 
 on the day, for each, when it entered its place of exaltation, or 
 reached the particular degree in the particular sign of the zodiac 
 in which astrology had fixed the place of its exaltation ; that is, the 
 place in the Heavens where its influence was supposed to be great- 
 est, and where it acted on Nature with the greatest energy. The 
 place of exaltation of the Sun was in Aries, because, reaching that 
 point, he awakens all Nature, and warms into life all the germs of 
 vegetation ; and therefore his most solemn feast among all nations, 
 for many years before our Era, was fixed at the time of his entrance 
 into that sign. In Egypt, it was called the Feast of Eire and 
 Light. It was the Passover, when the Paschal Lamb was slain and 
 eaten, among the Jews, and Neurouz among the Persians. The 
 Romans preferred the place of domiciled that of exaltation ; and 
 celebrated the feasts of the planets under the signs that were their 
 houses. The Chaldeans, whom, and not the Egyptians, the Sabae- 
 ans followed in this, preferred the places of exaltation.
 
 464 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Saturn, from the length of time required for his apparent revolu- 
 tion, was considered the most remote, and the Moon the nearest 
 planet. After the Moon came Mercury and Venus, then the Sun, 
 and then Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 
 
 So the risings and settings of the Fixed Stars, and their conjunc- 
 tions with the Sun, and their first appearance as they emerged from 
 his rays, fixed the epochs for the feasts instituted in their honor ; 
 and the Sacred Calendars of the ancients were regulated accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 In the Roman games of the circus, celebrated in honor of the 
 Sun and of entire Nature, the Sun, Moon, Planets, Zodiac, Ele- 
 ments, and the most apparent parts and potent agents of Nature 
 were personified and represented, and the courses of the Sun in 
 the Heavens were imitated in the Hippodrome ; his chariot being 
 drawn by four horses of different colors, representing the four ele- 
 ments and seasons. The courses were from East to West, like the 
 circuits round the Lodge, and seven in number, to correspond 
 with the number of planets. The movements of the Seven Stars 
 that revolve around the pole were also represented, as were those of 
 Capella, which by its heliacal rising at the moment when the 
 Sun reached the Pleiades, in Taurus, announced the commence- 
 ment of the annual revolution of the Sun. 
 
 The intersection of the Zodiac by the colures at the Equinoctial 
 and Solstitial points, fixed four periods, each of which has, by one 
 or more nations, and in some cases by the same nation at different 
 periods, been taken for the commencement of the year. Some 
 adopted the Vernal Equinox, because then day began to prevail 
 over night, and light gained a victory over darkness. Sometimes 
 the Summer Solstice was preferred ; because then day attained its 
 maximum of duration, and the acme of its glory and perfection. In 
 Egypt, another reason was, that then the Nile began to overflow, 
 at the heliacal rising of Sirius. Some preferred the Autumnal 
 Equinox, because then the harvests were gathered, and the hopes 
 of a new crop were deposited in the bosom of the earth And some 
 preferred the Winter Solstice, because then, the shortest day hav- 
 ing arrived, their length commenced to increase, and Light began 
 the career destined to end in victory at the Vernal Equinox. 
 
 The Sun was figuratively said to die and be born again at the 
 Winter Solstice ; the games of the Circus, in honor of the invin- 
 cible God-Sun, were then celebrated, and the Roman year, estab-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 465 
 
 lished or reformed by Numa, commenced. Many peoples of Italy 
 commenced their year, Macrobius says, at that time ; and repre- 
 sented by the four ages of man the gradual succession of periodi- 
 cal increase and diminution of day, and the light of the Sun; 
 likening him to an infant born at the Winter Solstice, a young 
 man at the Vernal Equinox, a robust man at the Summer Solstice, 
 and an old man at the Autumnal Equinox. 
 
 This idea was borrowed from the Egyptians, who adored the 
 Sun at the Winter Solstice, under the figure of an infant. 
 
 The image of the Sign in which each of the four seasons com- 
 menced, became the form under which was figured the Sun of that 
 particular season. The Lion's skin was worn by Hercules ; the 
 horns of the Bull adorned the forehead of Bacchus ; and the au- 
 tumnal serpent wound its long folds round the Statue of Serapis, 
 2500 years before our era ; when those Signs corresponded with 
 the commencement of the Seasons. When other constellations 
 replaced them at those points, by means of the precession of the 
 Equinoxes, those attributes were changed. Then the Ram fur- 
 nished the horns for the head of the Sun, under the name of Ju- 
 piter Ammon. He was no longer born exposed to the waters of 
 Aquarius, like Bacchus, nor enclosed in an urn like the God Ca- 
 nopus ; but in the Stables of Augeas or the Celestial Goat. He 
 then completed his triumph, mounted on an ass, in the constella- 
 tion Cancer, which then occupied the Solstitial point of Summer. 
 
 Other attributes the images of the Sun borrowed from the con- 
 stellations which, by their rising and setting, fixed the points of 
 departure of the year, and the commencements of its four princi- 
 pal divisions. 
 
 First the Bull and afterward the Ram (called by the Persians 
 the Lamb), was regarded as the regenerator of Nature, through 
 his union with the Sun. Each, in his turn, was an emblem of the 
 Sun overcoming the winter darkness, and repairing the disorders 
 of Nature, which every year was regenerated under these Signs, 
 after the Scorpion and Serpent of Autumn had brought upon it 
 barrenness, disaster, and darkness. Mithras w?s represented sit- 
 ting on a Bull ; and that animal was an image of Osiris : while 
 the Greek Bacchus armed his front with its horns, and was pic- 
 tured with its tail and feet. 
 
 The Constellations also became noteworthy to the husbandman, 
 which by their rising or setting, at morning or evening, indicated
 
 460 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the coming of this period of renewed fruitfulness and new life. 
 Capella, or the kid Amalthea, whose horn is called that of abun- 
 dance, and whose place is over the equinoctial point, or Taurus ; 
 and the Pleiades, that long indicated the Seasons, and gave rise to 
 a multitude of poetic fables, were the most observed and most cele- 
 brated in antiquity. 
 
 The original Roman year commenced at the Vernal Equinox. 
 July was formerly called Quintilis, the 5th month, and August 
 Sextilis, the 6th, as September is still the 7th month, October the 
 8th, and so on. The Persians commenced their year at the same 
 time, and celebrated their great feast of Neurouz when the Sun 
 entered Aries and the Constellation Perseus rose, Perseus, who 
 first brought down to earth the heavenly fire consecrated in their 
 temples : and all the ceremonies then practised reminded men of 
 the renovation of Nature and the triumph of Ormuzd, the Light- 
 God, over the powers of Darkness and Ahriman their Chief. 
 
 The Legislator of the Jews fixed the commencement of their 
 year in the month Xisan, at the Vernal Equinox, at which season 
 the Israelites marched out of Egypt and were relieved of their 
 long bondage ; in commemoration of which Exodus, they ate the 
 Paschal Lamb at that Equinox. And when Bacchus and his army 
 had long marched in burning deserts, they were led by a Lamb or 
 Ram into beautiful meadows, and to the Springs that watered the 
 Temple of Jupiter Ammon. For, to the Arabs and Ethiopians, 
 whose great Divinity Bacchus was, nothing was so perfect a type 
 of Elysium as a Country abounding in springs and rivulets. 
 
 Orion, on the same meridian with the Stars of Taurus, died of 
 the sting of the celestial Scorpion, that rises when he sets ; as 
 dies the Bull of Mithras in Autumn : and in the Stars that corre- 
 spond with the Autumnal Equinox we find those malevolent genii 
 that ever war against the Principle of good, and that take from 
 the Sun and the Heavens the fruit-producing power that they 
 communicate to the earth. 
 
 With the Vernal Equinox, dear to the sailor as to the husband- 
 man, came the Stars that, with the Sun, open navigation, and rule 
 the stormy Seas. Then the Twins plunge into the solar fires, or 
 disappear at setting, going down with the Sun into the bosom of 
 the waters. And these tutelary Divinities of mariners, the Dios- 
 curi or Chief Cabiri of Samothrace, sailed with Jason to possess 
 themselves of the golden-fleeced ram, or Aries, whose rising in the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 467 
 
 morning announced the Sun's entry into Taurus, when the Ser- 
 pent-bearer Jason rose in the evening, and, in aspect with the 
 Dioscuri, was deemed their brother. And Orion, son of Neptune, 
 and most potent controller of the tempest-tortured ocean, an- 
 nouncing sometimes calm and sometimes tempest, rose after Tau- 
 rus, rejoicing in the forehead of the new year. 
 
 The Summer Solstice was not less an important point in the 
 Sun's march than the Vernal Equinox, especially to the Egyp- 
 tians, to whom it not only marked the end and term of the in- 
 creasing length of the days and of the domination of light, and 
 the maximum of the Sun's elevation ; but also the annual recur- 
 rence of that phenomenon peculiar to Egypt, the rising of the 
 Nile, which, ever accompanying the Sun in his course, seemed to 
 rise and fall as the days grew longer and shorter, being lowest at 
 the Winter Solstice, and highest at that of Summer. Thus the 
 Sun seemed to regulate its swelling; and the time of his arrival 
 at the solstitial point being that of the first rising of the Nile, 
 was selected by the Egyptians as the beginning of a year which 
 they called the Year of God, and of the Sothiac Period, or the 
 period of Sothis, the Dog-Star, who, rising in the morning, fixed 
 that epoch, so important to the people of Egypt. This year was 
 also called the Heliac, that is the Solar year, and the Canicular 
 year ; and it consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days, with- 
 out intercalation ; so that at the end of four years, or of four 
 times three hundred and sixty-five days, making 1460 days, it 
 needed to add a day, to make four complete revolutions of the. 
 Sun. To correct this, some Nations made every fourth year con- 
 sist, as we do now, of 366 days : but the Egyptians preferred to 
 add nothing to the year of 365 days, which, at the end of 120 
 years, or of 30 times 4 years, was short 30 days or a month ; that 
 is to say, it required a month more to complete the 120 revolutions 
 of the Sun, though so many were counted, that is, so many years. 
 Of course the commencement of the I2ist year would not corre- 
 spond with the Summer Solstice, but would precede it by a month : 
 so that, when the Sun arrived at the Solstitial point whence he at 
 first set out, and whereto he must needs return, to make in reality 
 1 20 years, or 120 complete revolutions, the first month of the 
 I2ist year would have ended. 
 
 Thus, if the commencement of the year went back 30 days 
 every 120 years, this commencement of the year, continuing to
 
 468 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 recede, would, at the end of 12 times 120 years, or of 1460 years, 
 get back to the Solstitial point, or primitive point of departure of 
 the period. The Sun would then have made but 1459 revolutions, 
 though 1460 were counted ; to make up which, a year more would 
 need to be added. So that the Sun would not have made his 1460 
 revolutions until the end of 1461 years of 365 days each, each 
 revolution being in reality not 365 days exactly, but 365^- 
 
 This period of 1461 years, each of 365 days, bringing back the 
 commencement of the Solar year to the Solstitial point, at the 
 rising of Sirius, after 1460 complete Solar revolutions, was called 
 in Egypt the Sothiac period, the point of departure whereof was 
 the Summer Solstice, first occupied by the Lion and afterward by 
 Cancer, under which sign is Sirius, which opened the period. It 
 was, says Porphyry, at this Solstitial New Moon, accompanied by 
 the rising of Seth or the Dog-Star, that the beginning of the year 
 was fixed, and that of the generation of all things, or, as it were, 
 the nat?.l hour of the world. 
 
 Not Sirius alone determined the period of the rising of the Nile.. 
 Aquarius, his urn, and the stream flowing from it, in opposition 
 to the sign of the Summer Solstice then occupied by the Sun, 
 opened in the evening the march of Night, and received the full 
 Moon in his cup. Above him and with him rose the feet of Peg- 
 asus, struck wherewith the waters flow forth that the Muses 
 drink. The Lion and the Dog, indicating, were supposed to cause 
 the inundation, and so were worshipped. While the Sun passed 
 through Leo, the waters doubled their depth ; and the sacred foun- 
 tains poured their streams through the heads of lions. Hydra, 
 rising between Sirius and Leo, extended under three si^ns. Its 
 head rose with Cancer, and its tail with the feet of the Virgin and 
 the beginning of Libra : and the inundation continued while the 
 Sun passed along its whole extent. 
 
 The successive contest of light and darkness for the possession 
 of the lunar disk, each being by turns victor and vanquished, ex- 
 actly resembled what passed upon the earth bv t^e action of the 
 Sun and his journeys from one Solstice to t^e other. The lunnry 
 revolution presented the same periods of lieht and darkness as 
 the rear, and was the obiect of the same relieion? fictions. Above 
 the Moon, Pliny said, everything is pure, and filled with eternal 
 light. There ends the cone of shadow which the earth projects, 
 and which produces night; there ends the sojourn of night and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 469 
 
 darkness ; to it the air extends ; but there we enter the pure sub- 
 stance. 
 
 The Egyptians assigned to the Moon the demiu/gic or creative 
 force of Osiris, who united himself to her in the spring, when the 
 Sun communicated to her the principles of generation which she 
 afterward disseminated in the air and all the elements- The 
 Persians considered the Moon to have been impregnated by the 
 Celestial Bull, first of the signs of spring. In all ages, the Moon 
 has been supposed to have great influence upon vegetation, and the 
 birth and growth of animals ; and the belief is as widely enter- 
 tained now as ever, and that influence regarded as a mysterious 
 and inexplicable one. Not the astrologers alone, but Naturalists 
 like Pliny, Philosophers like Plutarch and Cicero, Theologians 
 like the Egyptian Priests, and Metaphysicians like Proclus, be- 
 lieved firmly in these lunar influences. 
 
 "The Egyptians," says Diodorus Siculus, "acknowledged two 
 great gods, the Sun and Moon, or Osiris and Isis, who govern the 
 world and regulate its administration by the dispensation of the 
 seasons. . . .Such is the nature of these two great Divinities, that 
 they impress an active and fecundating force, by which the gene- 
 ration of beings is effected ; the Sun, by heat and that spiritual 
 principle that forms the breath of the winds ; the Moon by humid- 
 ity and dryness ; and both by the forces of the air which they 
 share in common. By this beneficial influence everything is born, 
 grows, and vegetates. Wherefore this whole huge body, in which 
 nature resides, is maintained by the combined action of the Sun 
 and Moon, and their five qualities, the principles spiritual, fiery, 
 dry, humid, and airy." 
 
 So five primitive powers, elements, or elementary qualities, arc 
 united with the Sun and Moon in the Indian theology, air, spirit. 
 fire, water, and earth: and the same five elements are recognized 
 by the Chinese. The Phoenicians, like the Egyptians, regarded 
 the Sun and Moon and Stars as sole causes of generation and 
 destruction here below. 
 
 The Moon, like the Sun, changed continually the track in which 
 she crossed the Heavens, moving ever to and fro between the upper 
 and lower limits of the Zodiac; and her different places, phases, 
 and aspects there, and her relations with the Sun and the constel- 
 lations, have been a fruitful source of mythological fables. 
 
 All the planets had what astrology termed their houses, in the
 
 47 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Zodiac. The House of the Sun was in Leo, and that of the Moort 
 in Cancer. Each other planet had two signs ; Mercury had Gemini 
 and Virgo ; Venus, Taurus and Libra ; Mars, Aries and Scorpio ; 
 Jupiter, Pisces and Sagittarius ; and Saturn, Aquarius and Cap- 
 ricornus. From this distribution of the signs also came many 
 mythological emblems and fables ; as also many came from the 
 places of exaltation of the planets. Diana of Ephesus, the Moon, 
 wore the image of a crab on her bosom, because in that sign was 
 the Moon's domicile ; and lions bore up the throne of Horus, the 
 Egyptian Apollo, the Sun personified, for a like reason : while the 
 Egyptians consecrated the tauriform scarabseus to the Moon, 
 because she had her place of exaltation in Taurus ; and for the 
 same reason Mercury is said to have presented Isis with a helmet 
 like a bull's head. 
 
 A further division of the Zodiac was of each sign into three 
 parts of 10 each, called Decans, or, in the whole Zodiac. 36 parts, 
 among which the seven planets were apportioned anew, each 
 planet having an equal number of Decans, except the first, which, 
 opening and closing the series of planets five times repeated, nec- 
 essarily had one Decan more than the others. This subdivision 
 was not invented until after Aries opened the Vernal Equinox ; 
 and accordingly Mars, having his house in Aries, opens the series 
 of decans and closes it ; the planets following each other, five times 
 in succession, in the following order, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mer- 
 cury, the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc. ; so that to each sign 
 are assigned three planets, each occupying 10 degrees. To each 
 Decan a God or Genius was assigned, making thirty-six in all, 
 one of whom, the Chaldeans said, came down upon earth every ten 
 days, remained so many days, and re-ascended to Heaven. This 
 division is found on the Indian sphere, the Persian, and that Bar- 
 baric one which Aben Ezra describes. Each genius of the Decans 
 had a name and special characteristics. They concur and aid in the 
 effects produced by the Sun, Moon, and other planets charged with 
 the administration of the world : and the doctrine in regard to 
 them, secret and august as it was held, was considered of the 
 gravest importance ; and its principles, Firmicus says, were not 
 entrusted by the ancients, inspired as they were by the Deity, to 
 any but the Initiates, and to them only with great reserve, and a 
 kind of fear, and when cautiously enveloped with an obscure veil, 
 that they might not come to be known by the profane.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 4? I 
 
 With these Decans were connected the paranatcllcns or those 
 stars outside of the Zodiac, that rise and set at the same moment 
 with the several divisions of 10 of each sign. As there were an- 
 ciently only forty-eight celestial figures or constellations, of which 
 twelve were in the Zodiac, it follows that there were, outside of the 
 Zodiac, thirty-six other asterisms, paranatellons of the several 
 thirty-six Decans. For example, as when Capricorn set, Sirius 
 ainJ Procyon, or Canis Major and Canis Minor, rose, they were the 
 Paranatellons of Capricorn, though at a great distance from it in 
 the heavens. The rising of Cancer was known from the setting 
 of Corona Borealis and the rising of the Great and Little Dog, 
 its three paranatellons. 
 
 The risings and settings of the Stars are always spoken of as 
 connected with the Sun. In that connection there are three kinds 
 of them, cosmical, achronical, and heliacal, important to be dis- 
 tinguished by all who would understand this ancient learning. 
 
 When any Star rises or sets with the same degree of the same 
 sign of the Zodiac that the Sun occupies at the time, it rises and 
 sets simultaneously with the Sun, and this is termed rising or set- 
 ting costnically ; but a star that so rises and sets can never be 
 seen, on account of the light that precedes, and is left behind by 
 the Sun. It is therefore necessary, in order to know his place 
 in the Zodiac, to observe stars that rise just before or set just 
 after him. 
 
 A Star that is in the East when night commences, and in the 
 West when it ends, is said to rise and set achronically. A Star so 
 rising or setting was in opposition to the Sun, rising at the end of 
 evening twilight, and setting at the beginning of morning twi- 
 light, and this happened to each Star but once a year, because 
 the Sun moves from West to East, with reference to the Stars, one 
 degree a day. 
 
 When a Star rises as night ends in the morning, or sets as night 
 commences in the evening, it is said to rise or set heliacally, 
 because the Sun (Helios} seems to touch it with his luminous 
 atmosphere. A Star thus re-appears after a disappearance, often, 
 of several months, and thenceforward it rises an hour earlier each 
 day. gradually emerging from the Sun's rays, until at the end of 
 three months it precedes the Sun six hours, and rises at midnight. 
 A Star sets heliacally, when no longer remaining visible above the 
 western horizon after sunset, the dav arrives when thev cease to
 
 4/2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 be seen setting in the West. They so remain invisible, until the 
 Sun passes so far to the Eastward as not to eclipse them with his 
 light ; and tnen they re-appear, but in the East, about an hour 
 and a half before sunrise : and this is their heliacal rising. In 
 this interval, the cosmical rising and setting take place. 
 
 Besides the relations of the constellations and their paranatel- 
 lons with the houses and places of exaltation of the Planets, and 
 with their places in the respective Signs and Decans, the Stars 
 were supposed to produce different effects- according as they rose 
 or set, and according as they did so either cosmically, achronically, 
 or heliacally ; and also according to the different seasons of the 
 year in which these phenomena occurred ; and these differences 
 were carefully marked on the old Calendars ; and many things in 
 the ancient allegories are referable to them. 
 
 Another and most important division of the Stars was into 
 good and bad, beneficent and malevolent. With the Persians, the 
 former, of the Zodiacal Constellations, were from Aries to Virgo, 
 inclusive ; and the latter from Libra to Pisces, inclusive. Hence 
 the good Angels and Genii, and the bad Angels, Devs, Evil Genii, 
 Devils, Fallen Angels, Titans, and Giants of the Mythology. The 
 other thirty-six Constellations were equally divided, eighteen on 
 each side, or, with those of the Zodiac, twenty-four. 
 
 Thus the symbolic Egg, that issued from the mouth of the 
 
 .. <j O ' 
 
 invisible Egyptian God KNEPH ; known in the Grecian Mysteries 
 as the Orphic Egg; from which issued the God CHUMONG of the 
 Coresians, and the Egyptian OSIRIS, and PHANES, God and Prin- 
 ciple of Light; from which, broken by the Sacred Bull of the 
 Japanese, the world emerged ; and which the Greeks placed at the 
 feet of BACCHUS TAURI-CORXUS ; the Magian Egg of ORMUZD, 
 from which came the Amshaspands and Devs ; was divided into 
 two halves, and equally apportioned between the Good and Evil 
 Constellations and Angels. Those of Spring, as for example Aries 
 and Taurus, Auriga and Capella, were the beneficent stars ; and 
 those of Autumn, as the Babnce, Scorpio, the Serpent of Ophiu- 
 cus, and the Dragon of the Hesperides, were types and subjects of 
 the Evil Principle, and regarded as malevolent causes of the ill 
 effects experienced in Autumn and Winter. Thus are explained 
 the mysteries of the journeyings of the human soul through the 
 spheres, when it descends to the earth by the Sign of the Serpent, 
 and returns to the Empire of light by that of the Lamb or Bull.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 473 
 
 The creative action of Heaven was manifested, and all its de- 
 miurgic energy developed, most of all at the Vernal Equinox, to 
 which refer all the fables that typify the victory of Light over 
 Darkness, by the triumphs of Jupiter, Osiris, Ormuzd, and Apollo. 
 Always the triumphant god takes the form of the Bull, the Ram, 
 or the Lamb. Then Jupiter wrests from Typhon his thunderbolts, 
 of which that malignant Deity had possessed himself during the 
 Winter. Then the God of Light overwhelms his foe, pictured as a 
 huge Serpent. Then Winter ends ; the Sun, seated on the Bull 
 and accompanied by Orion, blazes in the Heavens. All nature 
 rejoices at the victory ; and Order and Harmony are everywhere 
 re-established, in place of the dire confusion that reigned while 
 gloomy Typhon domineered, and Ahriman prevailed against 
 Ormuzd. 
 
 The universal Soul of the World, motive power of Heaven and 
 of the Spheres, it was held, exercises its creative energy chiefly 
 through the medium of the Sun, during his revolution along the 
 signs of the Zodiac, with which signs unite the paranatellons that 
 modify their influence, and concur in furnishing the'symbolic at- 
 tributes of the Great Luminary that regulates Nature and is the 
 depository of her greatest powers. The action of this Universal 
 Soul of the World is displayed in the movements of the Spheres, 
 and above all in that of the Sun, in the successions of the risings 
 and settings of the Stars, and in their periodical returns. By these 
 are explainable all the metamorphoses of that Soul, personified as 
 Jupiter, as Bacchus, as Vishnu, or as Buddha, and all the various 
 attributes ascribed to it ; and also the worship of those animals 
 that were consecrated in the ancient Temples, representatives on 
 earth of the Celestial Signs, and supposed to receive by transmis- 
 sion from them the rays and emanations which in them flow from 
 the Universal Soul. 
 
 All the old Adorers of Nature, the Theologians, AstroTogera, 
 and Poets, as well as the most distinguished Philosophers, sup- 
 posed that the Stars were so many animated and intelligent being:;, 
 or eternal bodies, active causes of effect here below, animated by 21 
 living principle, and directed by an intelligence that was itself but 
 an emanation from and a part of the life and universal intel- 
 ligence of the world : and we find in the hierarchical order and 
 distribution of their eternal and divine Intelligences, known by 
 the names of Gods, Angels, and Genii, the same distributions and
 
 474 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the same divisions as those by which the ancients divided the visi- 
 ble Universe and distributed its parts. And the famous divisions 
 by seven and by twelve, appertaining to the planets and the signs 
 of the zodiac, is everywhere found in the hierarchical order 
 of the Gods, and Angels, and the other Ministers that are the 
 depositaries of that Divine Force which moves and rules the 
 world. 
 
 These, and the other Intelligences assigned to the other Stars, 
 have absolute dominion over all parts of Nature ; over the elements, 
 the animal and vegetable kingdoms, over man and all his actions, 
 over his virtues and vices, and over good and evil, which divide be- 
 tween them his life. The passions of his soul and the maladies 
 of his body, these and the entire man are dependent on the heav- 
 ens and the genii that there inhabit, who preside at his birth, con- 
 trol his fortunes during life, and receive his soul or active and 
 intelligent part when it is to be re-united to the pure life of the 
 lofty Stars. And all through the great body of the world are dis- 
 seminated portions of the universal Soul, impressing movement on 
 everything that seems to move of itself, giving life to the plants 
 and trees, directing by a regular and settled plan the organization 
 and development of their germs, imparting constant mobility to 
 the running waters and maintaining their eternal motion, impell- 
 ing the winds and changing their direction or stilling them, calm- 
 ing and arousing the ocean, unchaining the storms, pouring out 
 the fires of volcanoes, or with earthquakes shaking the roots of 
 huge mountains and the foundations of vast continents ; by means 
 of a force that, belonging to Nature, is a mystery to man. 
 
 And these invisible Intelligences, like the stars, are marshalled 
 in two great divisions, under the banners of the two Principles of 
 Good and Evil, Light and Darkness : under Ormuzd and Ahriman, 
 Osiris and Typhon. The Evil Principle was the motive power of 
 brute matter ; and it, personified as Ahriman and Typhon, had its 
 hosts and armies of Devs and Genii, Fallen Angels and Malevo- 
 lent Spirits, who waged continual war with the Good Principle, the 
 Principle of Empyreal Light and Splendor, Osiris, Ormuzd, Jupi- 
 ter or Dionusos, with his bright hosts of Amshaspands, Izeds. 
 Angels, and Archangels ; a warfare that goes on from birth until 
 death, in the soul of every man that lives. 
 
 We have heretofore, in the 24th Degree, recited the principal in- 
 cidents in the legend of Osiris and Ids, and it remains but to point
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRA/KN SKRPKNT. 475 
 
 out the astronomical phenomena which it has converted into 
 mythological facts. 
 
 The Sun, at the Vernal Equinox, was the fruit-compelling star 
 that by his warmth provoked generation and poured upon the sub- 
 lunary world all the blessings of Heaven ; the beneficent god, 
 tutelary genius of universal vegetation, that communicates to the 
 dull earth new activity, and stirs her great heart, long chilled by 
 Winter and his frosts, until from her bosom burst all the greenness 
 and perfume of spring, making her rejoice in leafy forests and 
 grassy lawns and flower-enamelled meadows, and the promise of 
 abundant crops of grain and fruits and purple grapes in their 
 due season. 
 
 He was then called Osiris, Husband of Isis, God of Cultivation 
 and Benefactor of Men, pouring on them and on the earth the 
 choicest blessings within the gift of the Divinity. Opposed to him 
 was Typhon, his antagonist in the Egyptian mythology, as 
 Ahriman was the foe of Ormuzd, the Good Principle, in the the- 
 ology of the Persians. 
 
 The first inhabitants of Egypt and Ethiopia, as Diodorus Siculus 
 informs us, saw in the Heavens two first eternal causes of things, 
 or great Divinities, one the Sun, whom they called Osiris, and the 
 other the Moon, whom they called Isis ; and these they considered 
 the causes of all the generations of earth. This idea, we learn 
 from Eusebius, was the same as that of the Phoenicians. On these 
 two great Divinities the administration of the world depended. 
 All sublunary bodies received from them their nourishment and 
 increase, during the annual revolution which they controlled, and 
 the different seasons into which it was divided. 
 
 To Osiris and Isis, it was held, were owing civilization, the 
 discovery of agriculture, laws, arts of all kinds, religious worship, 
 temples, the invention of letters, astronomy, the gymnastic arts. 
 and music ; and thus they were the universal benefactors. Osiris 
 travelled to civilize the countries which he passed through, and 
 communicate to them his valuable discoveries. He built cities, 
 and taught men to cultivate the earth. Wheat and wine were his 
 first presents to men. Europe, Asia, and Africa partook of the 
 blessings which he communicated, and the most remote regions of 
 India remembered him, and claimed him as one of their great god?- 
 
 You have learned how Typhon, his brother, slew him. His body 
 was cut into pieces, all of which were collected by Isis, except his
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 organs of generation, which had been thrown into and devoured in 
 the waters of the river that every year fertilized Egypt. The other 
 portions were buried by Isis, and over them she erected a tomb. 
 Thereafter she remained single, loading her subjects with blessings. 
 She cured the sick, restored sight to the blind, made the paralytic 
 whole, and even raised the dead. From her Horus or Apollo 
 learned divination and the science of medicine. 
 
 Thus the Egyptians pictured the beneficent action of the two 
 luminaries that, from the bosom of the elements, produced all 
 animals and men, and all bodies that are born, grow, and die in 
 the eternal circle of generation arid destruction here below. 
 
 When the Celestial Bull opened the new year at the Vernal Equi- 
 nox, Osiris, united with the Moon, communicated to her the seeds 
 of fruitfulness which she poured upon the air, and therewith im- 
 pregnated the generative principles which gave activity to universal 
 vegetation. Apis, represented by a bull, was the living and sensible 
 image of the Sun or Osiris, when in union with Isis or the Moon 
 at the Vernal Equinox, concurring with her in provoking everything 
 that lives to generation. This conjunction of the Sun with the 
 Moon at the Vernal Equinox, in the constellation Taurus, required 
 the Bull Apis to have on his shoulder a mark resembling the 
 Crescent Moon. And the fecundating influence of these two lumi- 
 naries was expressed by images that would now be deemed gross 
 and indecent, but which then were not misunderstood. 
 
 Everything good in Nature comes fromOsiris, order, harmony, 
 and the favorable temperature of the seasons and celestial periods. 
 From Typhon come the stormy passions and irregular impulses 
 that agitate the brute and material part of man ; maladies of the 
 body, and violent shocks that injure the health and derange the 
 system ; inclement weather, derangement of the seasons, and 
 eclipses. Osiris and Typhon were the Ormuzd and Ahriman of 
 the Persians ; principles of good and evil, of light and darkness, 
 ever at war in the administration of the Universe. 
 
 Osiris was the image of generative power. This was expressed 
 by his symbolic statues, and by the sign into which he entered nt 
 the Vernal Equinox. He especially dispensed the humid principle 
 of Nature, generative element of all things ; and the Nile and all 
 moisture were regarded as emanations from him. without which 
 there could be no vegetation. 
 
 That Osiris and Isis were the Sun and Moon, is attested by many
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 477 
 
 ancient writers ; by Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Lucian, Suidas, 
 Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and others. His power was sym- 
 bolized by an Eye over a Sceptre. The Sun was termed by the 
 Greeks the Eye of Jupiter, and the Eye of the World ; and his is 
 the All-Seeing Eye in our Lodges. The oracle of Claros styled 
 him King of the Stars and of the Eternal Eire, that engenders 
 the year and the seasons, dispenses rain and winds, and brings 
 about daybreak and night. And Osiris was invoked as the God 
 that resides in the Sun and is enveloped by his rays, the invisible 
 and eternal force that modifies the sublunary world by means of 
 the Sun. 
 
 Osiris was the same God known as Bacchus, Dionusos, and Se- 
 rapis. Serapis is the author of the regularity and harmony of the 
 world. Bacchus, jointly with Ceres (identified by Herodotus with 
 Isis) presides over the distribution of all our blessings ; and from 
 the two emanates everything beautiful and good in Nature. One 
 furnishes the germ and principle of every good ; the other receives 
 and preserves it as a deposit ; and the latter is the function of the 
 Moon in the theology of the Persians. In each theology, Persian 
 and Egyptian, the Moon acts directly on the earth ; but she is 
 fecundated, in one by the Celestial Bull and in the other by Osiris, 
 with whom she is united at the Vernal Equinox, in the sign Tau- 
 rus, the place of her exaltation or greatest influence on the earth. 
 The force of Osiris, says Plutarch, is exercised through the Moon. 
 She is the passive cause relatively to him, and the active cause 
 relatively to the earth, to which she transmits the germs of fruit- 
 fulness received from him. 
 
 In Egypt the earliest movement in the waters of the Nile began 
 to appear at the Vernal Equinox, when the new Moon occurred at 
 the entrance of the Sun into the constellation Taurus ; and thus 
 the Nile was held to receive its fertilizing power from the com- 
 bined action of the equinoctial Sun and the new Moon, meeting 
 in Taurus. Osiris was often confounded with the Nile, and Isis 
 with the earth ; and Osiris was deemed to act on the earth, and 
 to transmit to it his emanations, through both the Moon and the 
 Nile ; whence the fable that his generative organs were thrown 
 into that river. Typhon, on the other hand, was the principle of 
 aridity and barrenness : and by his mutilation of Osiris was meant 
 that drought which caused the Nile to retire within his bed and 
 shrink up in Autumn.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Elsewhere than in Egypt, Osiris was the symbol of the refresh- 
 ing rains that descend to fertilize the earth ; and Typhon the burn- 
 ing winds of Autumn; the stormy rains that rot the flowers, the 
 plants, and leaves ; the short, cold days ; and everything injurious 
 in Nature, and that produces corruption and destruction. 
 
 In short, Typhon is the principle of corruption, of darkness, of 
 the lower world from which come earthquakes, tumultuous com- 
 motions of the air, burning heat, lightning, and fiery meteors, and 
 plague and pestilence. Such too was the Ahriman of the Per- 
 sians ; and this revolt of the Evil Principle against the Principle 
 of Good and Light, lias been represented in every cosmogony, 
 under many varying forms. Osiris, on the contrary, by the inter- 
 mediation of Isis, fills the material world with happiness, purity, 
 and order, by which the harmony of Nature is maintained. It 
 was said that he died at the Autumnal Equinox, when Taurus or 
 the Pleiades rose in the evening, and that he rose to life again in 
 the Spring, when vegetation was inspired with new activity. 
 
 Of course the two signs of Taurus and Scorpio will figure most 
 largely in the mythological history of Osiris, for they marked the 
 two equinoxes, 2500 years before our Era ; and next to them the 
 other constellations, near the equinoxes, that fixed the limits of 
 the duration of the fertilizing action of the Sun ; and it is also to 
 be remarked that Venus, the Goddess of Generation, has her 
 domicile in Taurus, as the Moon has there her place of exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 When the Sun was in Scorpio, Osiris lost his life, and that fruit- 
 fulness which, under the form of the Bull, he had communicated, 
 through the Moon, to the Earth. Typhon, his hands and feet hor- 
 rid with serpents, and whose habitat in the Egyptian planisphere 
 was under Scorpio, confined him in a chest and flung him into the 
 Nile, under the i/th degree of Scorpio. Under that sign he lost 
 his life and virility ; and he recovered them in the Spring, when he 
 had connection with the Moon. When he entered Scorpio, his 
 light diminished, Night reassumed her dominion, the Nile shrunk 
 within its banks, and the earth lost her verdure and the trees their 
 leaves. Therefore it is that on the Mithriac Monuments, the 
 Scorpion bites the testicles of the Equinoctial Bull, on which sits 
 Mithras, the Sun of Spring and God of Generation ; and that, on 
 the same monuments, we see two trees, one covered with young 
 leaves, and at its foot a little bull and a torch burning; and the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BR/VZEN SERPENT. 479 
 
 other loaded with fruit, and at its foot a Scorpion, and a torch re- 
 versed and extinguished. 
 
 Ormuzd or Osiris, the beneficent Principle that gives the world 
 light, was personified by the Sun, apparent source of light. Dark- 
 ness, personified by Typhon or Ahriman, was his natural enemy. 
 The Sages of Egypt described the necessary and eternal rivalry or 
 opposition of these principles, ever pursuing one the other, and 
 one dethroning the other in every annual revolution, and at a par- 
 ticular period, one in the Spring under the Bull, and the other in 
 Autumn under the Scorpion, by the legendary history of Osiris 
 and Typhon, detailed to us by Diodorus and Synesius ; in which 
 history were also personified the Stars and constellations Orion, 
 Capella, the Twins, the Wolf, Sirius, and Hercules, whose risings 
 and settings noted the advent of one or the other equinox. 
 
 Plutarch gives us the positions in the Heavens of the Sun and 
 Moon, at the moment when Osiris was murdered by Typhon. The 
 Sun, he says, was in the Sign of the Scorpion, which he then en- 
 tered at the Autumnal Equinox. The Moon was full, he adds ; and 
 consequently, as it rose at sunset, it occupied Taurus, which, op- 
 posite to Scorpio, rose as it and the Sun sank together, so that she 
 was then found alone in the sign Taurus, where, six months be- 
 fore, she had been in union or conjunction with Osiris, the Sun, 
 receiving from him those germs of universal fertilization which he 
 communicated to her. It was the sign through which Osiris first 
 ascended into his empire of light and good. It rose with the Sun 
 on the day of the Vernal Equinox ; it remained six months in the 
 luminous hemisphere, ever preceding the Sun and above the hori- 
 zon during the day ; until in Autumn, the Sun arriving at Scorpio, 
 Taurus was in complete opposition with him, rose when he set, and 
 completed its entire course above the horizon during the night ; 
 presiding, by rising in the evening, over the commencement of the 
 long nights. Hence in the sad ceremonies commemorating the 
 death of Osiris, there was borne in procession a golden bull cov- 
 ered with black crape, image of the darkness into which the famil- 
 iar sign of Osiris was entering, and which was to spread over the 
 Northern regions, while the Sun. prolonging the nights, was to be 
 absent, and each to remain under the dominion of Typhon, Prin- 
 ciple of Evil and Darkness. 
 
 Setting out from the sign Taurus, Isis, as the Moon, went seek- 
 ing for Osiris through all the superior signs, in each of which she
 
 480 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 became full in the successive months from the Autumnal to the 
 Vernal Equinox, without finding him in either. Let us follow her 
 in her allegorical wanderings. 
 
 Osiris was slain by Typhon his rival, with whom conspired a 
 Queen of Ethiopia, by whom, says Plutarch, were designated the 
 winds. The paranatellons of Scorpio, the sign occupied by the 
 Sun when Osiris was slain, were the Serpents, reptiles which sup- 
 plied the attributes of the Evil Genii and of Typhon, who him- 
 self bore the form of a serpent in the Egyptian planisphere. And 
 in the division of Scorpio is also found Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethi- 
 opia, whose setting brings stormy winds. 
 
 Osiris descended to the shades or infernal regions. There he 
 took the name of Serapis, identical with Pluto, and assumed his 
 nature. He was then in conjunction with Serpentarius, identical 
 with ^Esculapius, whose form he took in his passage to the lower 
 signs, where he takes the names of Pluto and Ades. 
 
 Then Isis wept for the death of Osiris, and the golden bull cov- 
 ered with crape was carried in procession. Nature mourned the im- 
 pending loss of her Summer glories, and the advent of the empire 
 of night, the withdrawing of the waters, made fruitful by the Bull 
 in Spring, the cessation of the winds that brought rains to swell 
 the Nile, the shortening of the clays, and the despoiling of the 
 earth. Then Taurus, directly opposite the Sun, entered into the 
 cone of shadow which the earth projects, by which the Moon is 
 eclipsed at full, and with which, making night, the Bull rises and 
 descends as if covered with a veil, while he remains above our 
 horizon. 
 
 The body of Osiris, enclosed in a chest or coffin, was cast into 
 the Nile. Pan and the Satyrs, near Chemmis, first discovered his 
 death, announced it by their cries, and everywhere created sorrow 
 and alarm. Taurus, with the full Moon, then entered into the 
 cone of shadow, and under him was the Celestial River, most prop- 
 erly called the Nile, and below. Perseus, the God of Chemmis, and 
 Auriga, leading a she-goat, himself identical with Pan, whose wife 
 Aiga the she-goat was styled. 
 
 Then Isis went in search of the body. She first met certain 
 children who had seen it. received from them their information, 
 and gave them in return the gift of divination. The second full 
 Moon occurred in Gemini, the Twins, who presided over the oracles 
 of Didymus, and one of whom was Apollo, the God of Divination.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPEN'T. 481 
 
 She learned that Osiris had, through mistake, had connection 
 with her sister Nephte, which she discovered by a crown of leaves 
 of the melilot, which he had left behind him. Of this connection 
 a child was born, whom Isis, aided by her dogs, sought for, found, 
 reared, and attached to herself, by the name of Anubis, her faithful 
 guardian. The third full Moon occurs in Cancer, domicile of the 
 Moon. The paranatellons of that sign are, the crown of Ariadne 
 or Proserpine, made of leaves of the melilot, Procyon and Canis 
 Major, one star of which was called the Star of Isis, while Sirius 
 himself was honored in Egypt under the name of Anubis. 
 
 Isis repaired to Byblos, and seated herself near a fountain, where 
 she was found by the women of the Court of a King. She was 
 induced to visit his Court, and became the nurse of his son. The 
 fourth full Moon was in Leo, domicile of the Sun, or of Adonis, 
 King of Byblos. The paranatellons of this sign are the flowing 
 water of Aquarius, and Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, called Regulus, 
 or simply The King. Behind him rise Cassiopeia his wife, Queen 
 of Ethiopia, Andromeda his daughter, and Perseus his son-in-law, 
 all paranatellons in part of this sign, and in part of Virgo. 
 
 Isis suckled the child, not at her breast, but with the end of her 
 finger, at night. She burned all the mortal parts of its body, and 
 then, taking the shape of a swallow, she flew to the great column 
 of the palace, made of the tamarisk-tree that grew up round the 
 cofHn containing the body of Osiris, and within which it was still 
 enclosed. The fifth full Moon occurred in Virgo, the true image of 
 Isis, and which Eratosthenes calls by that name. It pictured a 
 woman suckling an infant, the son of Isis, born near the Winter 
 Solstice. This sign has for paranatellons the mast of the Celestial 
 Ship, nnd the swallow-tailed fish or sw.llow above it, and a portion 
 of Perseus, son-in-law of the King of Ethiopia. 
 
 Isis, having recovered the sacred coffer, sailed from Byblos in a 
 vessel with the eldest son of the King, toward Boutos, where 
 Anubis was. having charge of her son Horus : and in the morning 
 dried up a river, whence arose a strong wind. Landing, she hid the 
 coffer in a forest. Typhon, hunting a wild boar by moonlight. 
 discovered it, recognized the body of his rival, and cut it into four- 
 teen pieces, the number of days between the full and new Moon, 
 and in everyone of which days the Moon loses a portion of the light 
 that at the commencement filled her whole disk. The sixth full 
 Moon occurred in Libra, over the divisions separating which from
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Virgo are the Celestial Ship, Perseus, son of the King of Ethiopia 
 and Bootes, said to have nursed Horus. The river of Orion that 
 sets in the morning is also a paranatellon of Libra, as are Ursa 
 Major, the Great Bear or Wild Boar of Erymanthus, and the 
 Dragon of the North Pole, or the celebrated Python from which 
 the attributes of Typhon were borrowed. All these surround the 
 full Moon of Libra, last of the Superior Signs, and the one that 
 precedes the new Moon of Spring, about to be reproduced in 
 Taurus, and there be once more in conjunction with the Sun- 
 
 Isis collects the scattered fragments of the body of Osiris, buries 
 them, and consecrates the phallus, carried in pomp at the Pamylia, 
 or feasts of the Vernal Equinox, at which time the congress of Osiris 
 and the Moon was celebrated. Then Osiris had returned from the 
 shades, to aid Horus his son and Isis his wife against the forces of 
 Typhon. He thus reappeared, say some, under the form of a wolf, 
 or, others say, under that of a horse. The Moon, fourteen days 
 after she is full in Libra, arrives at Taurus and unites herself to 
 the Sun, whose fires she thereafter for fourteen days continues to 
 accumulate on her disk from new Moon to full. Then she unites 
 with herself all the months in that superior portion of the world 
 where light always reigns, with harmony and order, and she bor- 
 rows from him the force which is to destroy the germs of evil that 
 Typhon had, during the winter, planted everywhere in nature. 
 This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes 
 on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked 
 by the rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by 
 the heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which 
 thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in hi? 
 triumph over the darkness or Typhon. 
 
 Isis, during the absence of Osiris, and after she had hidden the 
 coffer in the place where Typhon found it, had rejoined that ma- 
 lignant enemy ; indignant at which, Horus her son deprived her of 
 her ancient diadem, when she rejoined Osiris as he was about to at- 
 tack Typhon : but Mercury gave her in its place a helmet shaped 
 like the head of a bull. Then Horus, as a mighty warrior, such as 
 Orion was described, fought with and defeated Typhon : who, in 
 the shape of the Serpent or Dragon of the Pole, had assailed his 
 father. So, in Ovid, Apollo destroys the same Python, when To. fasci- 
 nated by Jupiter, is metamorphosed into a cow. and placed in the 
 sign of the Celestial Bull, where she becomes Isis. The equinoctial
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 483 
 
 year ends at the moment when the Sun and Moon, at the Vernal 
 Equinox, are united with Orion, the Star of Horus, placed in the 
 Heavens under Taurus. The new Moon becomes young again in 
 Taurus, and shows herself as a crescent, for the first time, in the 
 next sign, Gemini, the domicile of Mercury. Then Orion, in con- 
 junction with the Sun, with whom he rises, precipitates the 
 Scorpion, his rival, into the shades of night, causing him to set 
 whenever he himself re-appears on the eastern horizon, with the 
 Sun. Day lengthens and the germs of evil are by degrees eradi- 
 cated : and Horus (from Aur, Light) reigns triumphant, symbol- 
 izing, by his succession to the characteristics of Osiris, the eternal 
 renewal of the Sun's youth and creative vigor at the Vernal 
 Equinox. 
 
 Such are the coincidences of astronomical phenomena with the 
 legend of Osiris and Isis ; sufficing to show the origin of the 
 legend, overloaded as it became at length with all the ornamenta- 
 tion natural to the poetical and figurative genius of the Orient. 
 
 Not only into this legend, but into those of all the ancient 
 nations, enter the Bull, the Lamb, the Lion, and the Scorpion or 
 the Serpent ; and traces of the worship of the Sun yet linger in 
 all religions. Everywhere, even in our Order, survive the equi- 
 noctial and solstitial feasts. Our ceilings still glitter with the 
 greater and lesser luminaries of the Heavens, and our lights, in 
 their number and arrangement, have astronomical references. In 
 all churches and chapels, as in all Pagan temples and pagodas, the 
 altar is in the East ; and the ivy over the east windows of old 
 churches is the Hedera Helix of Bacchus. Even the cross had an 
 astronomical origin ; and our Lodges are full of the ancient sym- 
 bols. 
 
 The learned author of the Sabaean Researches, Landseer, advan- 
 ces another theory in regard to the legend of Osiris ; in which he 
 makes the constellation Bootes play a leading part. He observes 
 that, as none of the stars were visible at the same time with the 
 Sun, his actual place in the Zodiac, at any given time, could only 
 be ascertained by the Sataean astronomers by their observations 
 of the stars, and of their heliacal and achronical risings and set- 
 tings. There were many solar festivals among the Sabaeans, and 
 part of them agricultural ones ; and the concomitant signs oi 
 those festivals were the risings and settings of the stars of the 
 Husbandman. Rear-driver, or Hunter. BOOTES. His stars were,
 
 484 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 among' the Hierophants, the established nocturnal indices or signs 
 of the Sun's place in the ecliptic at different seasons of the year, 
 and the festivals were named, one, that of the Aphanism or dis- 
 appearance ; another, that of the Zetesis, or search, etc., of Osiris 
 or Adonis, that is, of Bootes. 
 
 The returns of certain stars, as connected with their concom- 
 itant seasons of spring (or seed-time) and harvest, seemed to the 
 ancients, who had not yet discovered that gradual change, result- 
 ing from the apparent movement of the stars in longitude, which 
 has been termed the precession of the equinoxes, to be eternal 
 and immutable ; and those periodical returns were to the initiated, 
 even more than to the vulgar, celestial oracles, announcing the 
 approach of those important changes, upon which the prosperity, 
 and even the very existence of man must ever depend ; and the 
 oldest of the Sabaean constellations seem to have been, an astro- 
 nomical Priest, a King, a Queen, a Husbandman, and a Warrior; 
 and these more frequently recur on the Sabsean cylinders than any 
 other constellations whatever. The King was Cepheus or Chcpheus 
 of Ethiopia : the Husbandman, Osiris, Bacchus, Sabazeus, Noah 
 or Bootes. To the latter sign, the Egyptians were nationally, tra- 
 ditionally and habitually grateful ; for they conceived that from 
 Osiris all the greatest of terrestrial enjoyments were derived. The 
 stars of the Husbandman were the signal for those successive 
 agricultural labors on which the annual produce of the soil 
 depended ; and they came in consequence to be considered and 
 hailed, in Egypt and Ethiopia, as the genial stars of terrestrial 
 productiveness ; to which the oblations, prayers, and vows of the 
 pious Sabaean were regularly offered up. 
 
 Landseer says that the stars in Bootes, reckoning down to those 
 of the 5th magnitude inclusive, are twenty-six, which, seeming 
 achronically to disappear in succession, produced the fable of the 
 cutting of Osiris into twenty-six pieces by Typhon. There are 
 more stars than this in the constellation : but no more that the 
 ancient votaries of Osiris, even in the clear atmosphere of the 
 Sabnean climates, could observe without telescopes. 
 
 Plutarch savs Osiris was cut into fourteen pieces : Diodorus, 
 into twenty-sir; in regard to which, and to the whole legend, 
 Landsecr's ideas, van-ing from those commonly entertained, are 
 as follows : 
 
 Typhon, Landseer thinks, was the ocean, which the ancients
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 485 
 
 fabled or believed surrounded the Earth, and into which all the 
 stars in their turn appear successively to sink ; [perhaps it was 
 DARKNESS personified, which the ancients called TYPHON. He 
 was hunting by moonlight, says the old legend, when he met with 
 Osiris.] 
 
 The ancient Saba must have been near latitude 15 north. 
 Axoum is nearly in 14, and the Western Saba or Meroe is to the 
 north of that. Forty-eight centuries ago, Aldebaran, the leading 
 star of the year, had, at the Vernal Equinox, attained at daylight 
 in the morning, an elevation of about 14 degrees, sufficient for him 
 to have ceased to be combust, that is, to have emerged from the 
 Sun's rays, so as to be visible. The ancients allowed twelve days 
 for a star of the first magnitude to emerge from the solar rays ; and 
 there is less twilight, the further South we go. 
 
 At the same period, too, Cynosura was not the pole-star, but 
 Alpha Draconis was ; and the stars rose and set with very different 
 degrees of obliquity from thoseoftheirpresentrisings and settings. 
 By having a. globe constructed with circumvolving poles, capable of 
 any adjustment with regard to the colures, Mr. Landseer ascer- 
 tained that, at that remote period, in lat. 15 north, the 26 stars in 
 Bootes, or 27, including Arcturus, did not set achronically in suc- 
 cession; but several set simultaneously in couples, and six by threes 
 simultaneously ; so that, in all, there were but fourteen separate 
 settings or disappearances, corresponding with the fourteen pieces 
 into which Osiris was cut, according to Plutarch. Kappa, Iota, 
 and Theta, in the uplifted western hand, disappeared together, and 
 last of all. They really skirted the horizon; but were invisible 
 in that low latitude, for the three or four days mentioned in some 
 of the versions ; while the Zetesis or search was proceeding, and 
 the women of Phoenicia and Jerusalem sat weeping for the Won- 
 der, Thammuz ; after which they immediately reappeared, below 
 and to the eastward of a Draconis. 
 
 And, on the very morning after the achronical departure of the 
 last star of the Husbandman, Aldebaran rose heliacally, and 
 became visible in the East in the morning before day. 
 
 And precisely at the moment of the heliacal rising of Arcturus, 
 also rose Spica Virginis. One is near the middle of the Husband- 
 man, and the other near that of the Virgin ; and Arcturus may 
 have been the part of Osiris which Isis did not recover with the 
 other pieces of the body. 
 32
 
 486 MORALS AND DOGMAv- 
 
 At Dedan and Saba it was thirty-six days, from the beginning 
 of the aphanis;n, i. e. the disappearances of these stars, to the 
 heliacal rising of Aldebaran. During these days, or forty at 
 Medina, or a few more at Babylon and Byblos, the stars of the 
 Husbandman successively sank out of sight, during the crepusculum 
 or short-lived morning twilight of those Southern climes. They 
 disappear during the glancings of the dawn, the special season of 
 ancient sidereal observation. 
 
 Thus the forty days of mourning for Osiris were measured out 
 by the period of the departure of his Stars. When the last had 
 sunken out of sight, the vernal season was ushered in ; and the 
 Sun arose with the splendid Aldebaran, the Tauric leader of the 
 Hosts of Heaven ; ard the whole East rejoiced and kept holiday. 
 
 With the exception of the Stars x, : and $, Bootes did not begin to 
 reappear in the Eastern quarter of the Heavens till after the lapse 
 of about four months. Then the Stars of Taurus had declined 
 Westward, and Virgo was rising heliacally. In that latitude, also, 
 the Stars of Ursa Major [termed anciently the Ark of Osiris] 
 set; and Benetnasch, the last of them, returned to the Eastern 
 horizon, with those in the head of Leo, a little before the Summer 
 Solstice. In about a month, followed the Stars of the Husband- 
 man; the chief of them, Ras, Mirach, and Arcturus, being very 
 nearly simultaneous in their heliacal rising. 
 
 Thus the Stars of Bootes rose in the East immediately after 
 Vindemiatrix, and as if under the genial influence of its rays ; he 
 had his annual career of prosperity; he revelled orientally for a 
 quarter of a year, and attained his meridian altitude with Virgo ; 
 and then, as the Stars of the \Vater-Urn rose, and Aquarius began 
 to pour forth his annual deluge, he declined Westward, preceded 
 by the Ark of Osiris. In the East, he was the sign of that hap- 
 piness in which Nature, the great Goddess of passive production, 
 rejoiced. Now, in the West, as he declines toward the Northwest- 
 ern horizon, his generative vigor gradually abates ; the Solar 
 year gro\vs old ; and as his Stars descend beneath the W r estern 
 Wave, Osiris dies, and the world mourns. 
 
 The Ancient Astronomers saw all the great Symbols of Masonry 
 in the Stars. Sirius still glitters in our Lodges as the Blazing 
 Star, (I'Etoile Flamboyante} . The Sun is still symbolized by the 
 point within a Circle ; and, with the Moon and Mercury or Anu- 
 bis, in the three Great Lights of the Lodge. Not only to these, but
 
 kNlGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 487 
 
 to the figures and numbers exhibited by the Stars, were ascribed 
 peculiar and divine powers. The veneration paid to numbers had 
 its source there. The three Kings in Orion are in a straight line, 
 and equidistant from each other, the two extreme Stars being 3 
 apart, and each of the three distant from the one nearest it i 30'. 
 And as the number three is peculiar to apprentices, so the straight 
 line is the first principle of Geometry, having length but no 
 breadth, and bejng but the extension of a point, and an emblem 
 of Unity, and thus of Good, as the divided or broken line is of 
 Duality or Evil. Near these Stars are the Hyades, five in number, 
 appropriate to the Fellow-Craft; and close to them the Pleiades, 
 of the master's number, seven; and thus these three sacred num- 
 bers, consecrated in Masonry as they were in the Pythagorean 
 philosophy, always appear together in the Heavens, when the Bull, 
 emblem of fertility and production, glitters among the Stars, and 
 Aldebaran leads the Hosts of Heaven (Tsbanth). 
 
 Algenib in Perseus and Almaach and Algol in Andromeda 
 form a right-angled triangle, illustrate the 47th problem, and 
 display the Grand Master's square upon the skies. Denebola in 
 Leo, Arcturus in Bootes, and Spica in Virgo form an equilateral 
 triangle, universal emblem of Perfection, and the Deity with His 
 Trinity of Infinite Attributes, Wisdom. Power, and Harmony ; and 
 that other, the generative, preserving, and destroying Powers. The 
 Three Kings form, with Rigel in Orion, two triangles included 
 in one : and Capella and Menkalina in Auriga, with Bellatrix and 
 Betelgueux in Orion, form two isosceles triangles with/3Tauri, that 
 is equidistant from each pair ; while the first four make a right- 
 angled parallelogram, the oblong square so often mentioned in 
 our Degrees. 
 
 Julius Firmicus, in his description of the Mysteries, says, "But 
 in those funerals and lamentations which are annually celebrated in 
 honor of Osiris, their defenders pretend a physical reason. They 
 call the seeds of fruit, Osiris; the Earth, Isis ; the natural heat, 
 Typhon : and because the fruits are ripened by the natural heat, 
 and collected for the life of man, and are separated from their mar- 
 riage to the earth, and are sown again when. Winter approaches, 
 this they would have to be the death of Osiris : but when the fruits, 
 by the genial fostering of the earth, begin again to be generated by 
 a new procreation, this is the finding of Osiris." 
 
 No doubt the decay of vegetation and the falling of the leaves,
 
 488 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 emblems of dissolution and evidences of the action of that jPower 
 that changes Life into Death, in order to bring Life again out of 
 Death, were regarded as signs of that Death that seemed coming 
 upon all Nature ; as the springing of leaves and buds and flowers 
 in the spring was a sign of restoration to life : but these were all 
 secondary, and referred to the Sun as first cause. It was his figu- 
 rative death that was mourned, and not theirs ; and with that death, 
 as with his return to life, many of the stars were, connected. 
 
 We have already alluded to the relations which the twelve signs 
 of the Zodiac bear to the legend of the Master's Degree. Some 
 other coincidences may have sufficient interest to warrant mention. 
 
 Khir-Om was assailed at the East, West, and South Gates of the 
 Temple. The two equinoxes were called, we have seen, by all the 
 Ancients, the Gates of Heaven, and the Syrians and Egyptians 
 considered the Fish (the Constellation near Aquarius, and one of 
 the Stars whereof is Fomalhaut) to be indicative of violence and 
 death. 
 
 Khir-Om laid several days in the grave ; and, at the Winter 
 Solstice, for five or six days, the length of the days did not per- 
 ceptibly increase. Then, the Sun commencing again to climb 
 Northward, as Osiris was said to arise from the dead, so Khir-Om 
 was raised, by the powerful attraction of the Lion (Leo), w r ho 
 waited for him at the Summer Solstice, and drew him to himself. 
 
 The names of the three assassins may have been adopted from 
 three Stars that we have already named. We search in vain in the 
 Hebrew or Arabic for the names Jubelo, Jubcla, and Jubelum. 
 They embody an utter absurdity, and are capable of no explanation 
 in those languages. Nor are the names Gibs, Gravelot, Hoblien, 
 and the like, in the Ancient and Accepted Rite, any more plausible, 
 or better referable to any ancient language. But when, by the 
 precession of the Equinoxes, the Sun was in Libra at the Autumnal 
 Equinox, he met in that sign, where the reign of Typhon com- 
 menced, three Stars forming a triangle, ZH/;<?7/-r.r Cliamali in the 
 West, Zuben-Hak-Rabi in the East, and Zubcn-El-Gubi in the 
 South, the latter immediately below the Tropic of Capricorn, and 
 so within the realm of Darkness. From these names, those of the 
 murderers have perhaps been corrupted. In Zuben-Hak-T\abi we 
 may see the original of Jubelum Akirop ; and in Zuben-El-Gubi, 
 that of Jubelo Gibs : and time and ignorance may even have trans- 
 muted the words Es Chamali into one as little like them as Gravelot.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 489 
 
 Isis, the Moon personified, sorrowing sought for her husband. 
 Nine or twelve Fellow-Crafts (the Rites vary as to the number), 
 in white aprons, were sent to search for Khir-Om, in the Legend of 
 the Master's Degree; or, in this Rite, the Nine Knights Elu. 
 Along the path that the Moon travels are nine conspicuous Stars, 
 by which nautical men determine their longitude at Sea ; Arietis, 
 Aldebaran, Pollux, Regulus, Spica, Virginis, Antares, Altair, Fo- 
 malhaut, and Markab. These might well be said to accompany 
 Isis in her search. 
 
 In the York Rite, twelve Fellow-Crafts were sent to search for 
 the body of Khir-Om and the murderers. Their number corresponds 
 with that of the Pleiades and Hyades in Taurus, among which 
 Stars the Sun was found when Light began to prevail over Dark- 
 ness, and the Mysteries were held. These Stars, we have shown, 
 received early and particular attention from the astronomers and 
 poets. The Pleiades were the Stars of the ocean to the benighted 
 mariner; the Virgins of Spring, heralding the season of blos- 
 soms. 
 
 As six Pleiades only are now visible, the number twelve may 
 have been obtained by them, with Aldebaran, and five far more 
 brilliant Stars than any other of the Hyades, in the same region 
 of the Heavens, and which were always spoken of in connection 
 with the Pleiades ; the Three Kings in the belt of Orion, and 
 Bellatrix and Betelgueux on his shoulders ; brightest of the flash- 
 ing starry hosts. 
 
 "Canst thou," asks Job, "bind the sweet influences of the 
 Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion ?" And in the book of Amos 
 we find these Stars connected with the victory of Light over Dark- 
 ness : "Seek Him," says that Seer, "that maketh the Seven Stars 
 (the familiar name of the Pleiades), and Orion, AND TURNETH 
 
 THE SHADOW OF DEATH INTO MORNING/' 
 
 An old legend in Masonry says that a dog led the Nine Elus to 
 the cavern where Abiram was hid. Bootes was anciently called 
 Caleb Anubach, a Barking Dog; and was personified in Anubis, 
 who bore the head of a dog, and aided Isis in her search. Arctu- 
 rus, one of his Stars, fiery red, as if fervent and zealous, is also 
 connected by Job with the Pleiades and Orion. When Taurus 
 opened the year, Arcturus rose after the Sun, at the time of the 
 Winter Solstice, and seemed searching him through the darkness, 
 until, sixty days afterward, he rose at the same hour. Orion then
 
 49O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 also, at the Winter Solstice, rose at noon, and at night seemed to 
 be in search of the Sun. 
 
 So, referring again to the time when the Sun entered the Autum- 
 nal Equinox, there are nine remarkable Stars that come to the 
 meridian nearly at the same time, rising as Libra sets, and so 
 seeming to chase that Constellation. They are Capella and Men- 
 kalina in the Charioteer, Aldebaran in Taurus, Bellatrix, Betel- 
 gueux, the Three Kings, and Rigel in Orion. Aldebaran passes 
 the meridian first, indicating his right to his peculiar title of 
 Leader. Nowhere in the heavens are there, near the same me- 
 ridian, so many splendid Stars. And close behind them, but fur- 
 ther South, follows Sirius, the Dog-Star, who showed the nine 
 Elus the way to the murderer's cave. 
 
 Besides the division of the signs into the ascending and de- 
 scending series (referring to the upward and downward progress 
 of the soul), the latter from Cancer to Capricorn, and the former 
 from Capricorn to Cancer, there was another division of them not 
 less important ; that of the six superior and six inferior signs ; the 
 former, 2455 years before our era, from Taurus to Scorpio, and 300 
 years before our era, from Aries to Libra; and the latter, 2455 
 years B. C. from Scorpio to Taurus, and 300 years B. C. from Libra 
 to Aries ; of which we have already spoken, as the two Hemi- 
 spheres, or Kingdoms of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness ; of 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman among the Persians, and Osiris and Typhon 
 among the Egyptians. 
 
 With the Persians, the first six Genii, created by Ormuzd, pre- 
 sided over the first six signs, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, 
 and Virgo : and the six evil Genii, or Devs, created by Ahriman, 
 over the six others, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aqua- 
 rius, and Pisces. The soul was fortunate and happy under the 
 Empire of the first six ; and began to be sensible of evil, when it 
 passed under the Balance or Libra, the seventh sign. Thus the 
 soul entered the realm of Evil and Darkness when it passed into 
 the Constellations that belong to and succeed the Autumnal Equi- 
 nox ; and it re-entered the realm of Good and Light, when it 
 arrived, returning, at those of the Vernal Equinox. It lost its 
 felicity by means of the Balance, and regained it by means of the 
 Lamb. This is a necessary consequence of the premises ; and it 
 is confirmed by the authorities and by emblems still extant. 
 
 Sallust the Philosopher, speaking of the Feasts of Rejoicing
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 49! 
 
 celebrated at the Vernal Equinox, and those of Mourning, in 
 memory of the rape of Proserpine, at the Autumnal Equinox, says 
 that the former were celebrated, because then is effected, as it 
 were, the return of the soul toward the Gods ; that the time when 
 the principle of Light recovered its superiority over that of Dark- 
 ness, or day over night, was the most favorable one for souls that 
 tend to re-ascend to their Principle ; and that when Darkness and 
 the Night again become victors, was most favorable to the descent 
 of souls toward the infernal regions. 
 
 For that reason, the old astrologers, as Firmicus states, fixed 
 the locality of the river Styx in the 8th degree of the Balance. 
 And he thinks that by Styx was allegorically meant the earth. 
 
 The Emperor Julian gives the same explanation, but more fully 
 developed. He states, as a reason why the august Mysteries of 
 Ceres and Proserpine were celebrated at the Autumnal Equinox, 
 that at that period of the year men feared lest the impious and 
 dark power of the Evil Principle, then commencing to conquer, 
 should do harm to their souls. They were a precaution and 
 means of safety, thought to be necessary at the moment when the 
 God of Light was passing into the opposite or adverse region of 
 the world ; while at the Vernal Equinox there was less to be 
 feared, because then that God, present in one portion of the world, 
 recalled souls to Him, he says, and showed Himself to be their 
 Saviour. He had a little before developed that theological' idea, 
 of the attractive force which the Sun exercises over souls, draw- 
 ing them to him and raising them to his luminous sphere. He 
 attributes this effect to him at the feasts of Atys, dead and re- 
 stored to life, or the feasts of Rejoicing, which at the end of three 
 days succeeded the mourning for that death ; and he inquires why 
 those Mysteries were celebrated at the Vernal Equinox. The rea- 
 son, he says, is evident. As the sun, arriving at the equinoctial 
 point of Spring, drawing nearer to us, increases the length of the 
 days, that period seems most appropriate for those ceremonies. 
 For, besides that there is a great affxiity between the substance of 
 Light and the nature of the Gods, the Sun has that occult force 
 of attraction, by which he draws matter toward himself, by means 
 of his warmth, making plants to shoot and grow, etc. ; and why 
 can he not, by the same divine and pure action of his rays, attract 
 and draw to him fortunate souls ? Then, as light is analogous to 
 the Divine Nature, and favorable to souls struggling to return to
 
 49 2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 their First Principle, and as that light so increases at the Vernal 
 Equinox, that the days prevail in duration over the nights, and as 
 the Sun has an attractive force, besides the visible energy of his 
 rays, it follows that souls are attracted toward the solar light. He 
 does not further pursue the explanation ; because, he says, it be- 
 longs to a mysterious doctrine, beyond the reach of the vulgar 
 and known only to those who understand the mode of action of 
 Deity, like the Chaldean author whom he cites, who had treated 
 of the Mysteries of Light, or the God with seven rays. 
 
 Souls, the Ancients held, having emanated from the Principle 
 of Light, partaking of its destiny here below, cannot be indiffer- 
 ent to nor unaffected by these revolutions of the Great Luminary, 
 alternately victor and overcome during every Solar revolution. 
 
 This will be found to be confirmed by an examination of some 
 of the Symbol- used in the Mysteries. One of the most famous 
 of these was TH SERPENT, the peculiar Symbol also of this De- 
 gree. The Cosmc. ->ny of the Hebrews and that of the Gnostics 
 designated this repti.o as the author of the fate of Souls. It was 
 consecrated in the Mysteries of Bacchus and in those of Eleusis. 
 Pluto overcame the virtue of Proserpine under the form of a ser- 
 pent; and, like the Egyptian God Serapis, was always pictured 
 seated on a serpent, or with that reptile entwined about him. It 
 is found on the Mithriac Monuments, and supplied with attributes 
 of Typhon to the Egyptians. The sacred basilisc, in coil, with 
 head and neck erect, was the royal ensign of the Pharaohs. Two 
 of them were entwined around and hung suspended from the 
 winged Globe on the Egyptian Monuments. On a tablet in one 
 of the Tombs at Thebes, a God with a spear pierces a serpent's 
 head. On a tablet from the Temple of Osiris at Philge is a tree, 
 with a man on one side, and a woman on the other, and in front 
 of the woman an erect basilisc, with horns on its head and a disk 
 between the horns. The head of Medusa was encircled by winged 
 snakes, which, the head removed, left the Hierogram or Sacred 
 Cypher of the Ophites or Serpent-worshippers. And the Serpent, 
 in connection with the Globe or circle, is found upon the monu- 
 ments of all the Ancient Nations. 
 
 Over Libra, the sign through which souls were said to descend 
 or fall, is found, on the Celestial Globe, the Serpent, grasped by 
 Serpentarius, the Serpent-bearer. The head of the reptile is under 
 Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, called by Ovid, Libera, or
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 4Q3 
 
 Proserpine; and the two Constellations rise, with the Balance, 
 after the Virgin (or Isis), whose feet rest on the eastern horizon at 
 Sunrise on the day of the equinox. As the Serpent extends over 
 both signs, Libra and Scorpio, it has been the gate through which 
 souls descend, during the whole time that those two signs in suc- 
 cession marked the Autumnal Equinox. To this alluded the Ser- 
 pent, which, in the Mysteries of Bacchus Saba-Zeus, was flung 
 into the bosom of the Initiate. 
 
 And hence came the enigmatical expression, the Serpent engen- 
 ders the Bull, and the Bull the Serpent; alluding to the two ad- 
 verse constellations, answering to the two equinoxes, one of which 
 rose as the other set, and which were at the two points of the 
 heavens through which souls passed, ascending and descending. 
 By the Serpent of Autumn, souls fell ; and they were regenerated 
 again by the Bull on which Mithras sate, and whose attributes 
 Bacchus-Zagreus and the Egyptian Osiris assumed, in their Mys- 
 teries, wherein were represented the fall and regeneration of souls. 
 by the Bull slain and restored to life. 
 
 Afterward the regenerating Sun assumed the attributes of Aries 
 or the Lamb ; and in the Mysteries of Ammon, souls were regen- 
 erated by passing through that sign, after having fallen through 
 the Serpent. 
 
 The Serpent-bearer, or Ophiucus, was ^Esculapius, God of 
 Healing. In the Mysteries of Eleusis, that Constellation was 
 placed in the eighth Heaven : and on the eighth day of those Mys- 
 teries, the feast of ^sculapius was celebrated. It was also termed 
 Epidaurus, or the feast of the Serpent of Epidaurus. The Ser- 
 pent was sacred to yEsculapius ; and was connected in various 
 ways with the mythological adventures of Ceres. 
 
 So the libations to Souls, by pouring wine on the ground, and 
 looking toward the two gates of Heaven, those of day and night, 
 referred to the ascent and descent of Souls. 
 
 Ceres and the Serpent, Jupiter Ammon and the Bull, all figured 
 in the Mysteries of Bacchus. Suppose Aries, or Jupiter Ammon 
 occupied by the Sun setting in the West; Virgo (Ceres) will be 
 on the Eastern horizon, and in her train the Crown, or Proserpine. 
 Suppose Taurus setting ; then the Serpent is in the East ; and 
 reciprocally : so that Jupiter Ammon. or the Sun of Aries, causes 
 the Crown to rise after the Virgin, in the train of which comes 
 the Serpent Place reciprocally the Sun at the other equinox,
 
 494 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 with the balance in the West, in conjunction with the Serpent 
 under the Crown ; and we shall see the Bull and the Pleiades rise 
 in the East. Thus are explained all the fables as to the genera- 
 tion of the Bull by the Serpent and of the Serpent by the Bull, 
 the biting of the testicles of the Bull by the Scorpion, on the 
 Mithriac Monuments ; and that Jupiter made Ceres with child by 
 tossing into her bosom the testicles of a Ram. 
 
 In the Mysteries of the bull-horned Bacchus, the officers held 
 serpents in their hands, raised them above their heads, and cried 
 aloud "Eva!" the generic oriental name of the serpent, and the 
 particular name of the constellation in which the Persians placed 
 Eve and the serpent. The Arabians call it Hevan, Ophiucus 
 himself, Hawa, and the brilliant star in his head, Ras-al-Hau'a. 
 The use of this word Eva or Evoe caused Clemens of Alexandria 
 to say that the priests in the Mysteries invoked Eve, by whom evil 
 was brought into the world. 
 
 The mystic winnowing-fan, encircled by serpents, was used in 
 the feasts of Bacchus. In the Isiac Mysteries a basilisc twined 
 round the handle of the mystic vase. The Ophites fed a serpent 
 in a mysterious ark, from which they took him when they cele- 
 brated the Mysteries, and allowed him to glide among the sacred 
 bread. The Romans kept serpents in the Temples of Bona Dea 
 and ^sculapius. In the Mysteries of Apollo, the pursuit of La- 
 tona by the serpent Python was represented. In the Egyptian 
 Mysteries, the dragon Typhon pursued Isis. 
 
 According to Sanchoniathon, TAAUT, the interpreter of Heaven 
 to men, attributed something divine to the nature of the dragon 
 and serpents, in which the Phoenicians and Egyptians followed 
 him. They have more vitality, more spiritual force, than any 
 other creature : of a fiery nature, shown by the rapidity of their 
 motions, without the limbs of other animals. They assume many 
 shapes and attitudes, rnd dart with extraordinary quickness and 
 force. When they have reached old age, they throw off that age 
 and are young again, and increase in size and strength, for a cer- 
 tain period of years. 
 
 The Egyptian Priests fed the sacred serpents in the temple at 
 Thebes. Taaut himself had in his writings discussed these mys- 
 teries in regard to the serpent. Sanchoniathon said in another 
 work, that the serpent was immortal, and re-entered into himself ; 
 which, according to some ancient theosophists, particularly those
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 495 
 
 of India, was an attribute of the Deity. And he also said that the 
 serpent never died, unless by a violent death. 
 
 The Phoenicians called the serpent Agathodemon [the good 
 spirit] ; and Kneph was the Serpent-God of the Egyptians. 
 
 The Egyptians, Sanchoniathon said, represented the serpent 
 with the head of a hawk, on account of the swift flight of that 
 bird : and the chief Hierophant, the sacred interpreter, gave very 
 mysterious explanations of that symbol ; saying that such a ser- 
 pent was a very divine creature, and that, opening his eyes, he 
 lighted with their rays the whole of first-born space : when he 
 closes them, it is darkness again. In reality, the hawk-headed ser- 
 pent, genius of light, or good genius, was the symbol of the Sun. 
 
 In the hieroglyphic characters, a snake was the letter T or DJ. 
 It occurs many times on the Rosetta stone. The horned serpent 
 was the hieroglyphic for a God. 
 
 According to Eusebius, the Egyptians represented the world by 
 a blue circle, sprinkled with flames, within which was extended 
 a serpent with the head of a hawk. Proclus says they represented 
 the four quarters of the world by a cross, and the soul of the 
 world, or Kneph, by a serpent surrounding it in the form of a 
 circle. 
 
 We read in Anaxagoras, that Orpheus said, that the water, and 
 the vessel that produced it, were the primitive principles of things, 
 and together gave existence to an animated being, which was a 
 serpent, with two heads, one of a lion and the other of a bull, be- 
 tween which was the figure of a God whose name was Hercules or 
 Kronos : that from Hercules came the egg of the world, which 
 produced Heaven and earth, by dividing itself into two hemi- 
 spheres : and that the God Phanes, which issued from that egg, 
 was in the shape of a serpent. 
 
 The Egyptian Goddess Ken, represented standing naked on a 
 lion, held two serpents in her hand. She is the same as the 
 Astarte or Ashtaroth of the Assyrians. Hera, worshipped in the 
 Great Temple at Babylon, held in her right hand a serpent by the 
 head ;'and near Khca, also worshipped there, were two large silver 
 serpents. 
 
 In a sculpture from Kouyunjik, two serpents attached to poles 
 are near a fire-altar, at which two eunuchs are standing. Upon 
 it is the sacred fire, and a bearded figure leads a wild goat to the 
 sacrifice.
 
 496 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The serpent of the Temple of Epidaurus was sacred to sEscn- 
 lapiits, the God of Medicine, and 462 years after the building of 
 the city, was taken to Rome after a pestilence. 
 
 The Phoenicians represented the God Nomu (Kneph or Amun- 
 Kneph) by a serpent. In Egypt, a Sun supported by two asps was 
 the emblem of Horhat the good genius ; and the serpent with the 
 winged globe was placed over the doors and windows of the Tem- 
 ples as a tutelary God. Antipater of Sidon calls Amun "the re- 
 nowned Serpent," and the Cerastes is often found embalmed in 
 the Thebaid. 
 
 On ancient Tyrian coins and Indian medals, a serpent was rep- 
 resented, coiled round the trunk of a tree. Python, the Serpent 
 Deity, was esteemed oracular; and the tripod at Delphi was a 
 triple-headed serpent of gold. 
 
 The portals of all the Egyptian Temples are decorated with the 
 hierogram of the Circle and the Serpent. It is also found upon 
 the Temple of Naki-Rustan in Persia ; on the triumphal arch at 
 Pechin, in China ; over the gates of the great Temple of Chaundi 
 Teeva, in Java ; upon the walls of Athens ; and in the Temple 
 of Minerva at Tegea. The Mexican hierogram was formed by the 
 intersecting of two great Serpents, which described the circle with 
 their bodies, and had each a human head in its mouth. 
 
 All the Buddhist crosses in Ireland had serpents carved upon 
 them. Wreaths of snakes are on the columns of the ancient 
 Hindu Temple at Burwah-Sangor. 
 
 Among the Egyptians, it was a symbol of Divine Wisdom, when 
 extended at length ; and, \vith its tail in its mouth, of Eternity. 
 
 In the ritual of Zoroaster, the Serpent was a symbol of the 
 Universe. In China, the ring between two Serpents was the 
 symbol of the world governed by the power and wisdom of the 
 Creator. The Bacchanals carried serpents in their hands or round 
 their heads. 
 
 The Serpent entwined round an Egg, was a symbol common to 
 the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Druids. It referred to the 
 creation of the Universe. A Serpent with an egg in his mouth 
 was a symbol of the Universe containing within itself the germ 
 of all things that the Sun develops. 
 
 The property possessed by the Serpent, of casting its skin, and 
 apparently renewing its youth, made it an emblem of eternity and 
 immortality. The Syrian women still employ it as a charm agains!
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 497 
 
 barrenness, as did the devotees of Mithras and Saba-Zeus. The 
 Earth-born civilizers of the early world, Fohi, Cecrops, and Erech- 
 theus, were half-man, half-serpent. The snake was the guardian 
 of the Athenian Acropolis. NAKIIUSTAN, the brazen serpent of 
 the wilderness, became naturalized among the Hebrews as a token 
 of healing power. "Be ye," said Christ, "wise as serpents, and 
 harmless as doves." 
 
 The Serpent was as often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. 
 It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of deso- 
 lation and death : it is the bane of Aepytus, Idom, Archeroorus, 
 and Philoctetes ; it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, 
 and bites the heel of unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it 
 is generally a type of evil ; and is particularly so in the Indian and 
 Persian Mythologies. When the Sea is churned by Mount Mandar 
 rotating within the coils of the Cosmical Serpent Vasouki, to pro- 
 duce the Amrita or water of immortality, the serpent vomits a 
 hideous poison, which spreads through and infects the Universe, 
 but which Vishnu renders harmless by swallowing it. Ahriman 
 in serpent-form invades the realm of Ormuzd ; and the Bull, em- 
 blem of life, is wounded by him and dies. It was therefore a 
 religious obligation with every devout follower of Zoroaster to 
 exterminate reptiles, and other impure animals, especially serpents. 
 The moral and astronomical significance of the Serpent were 
 connected. It became a maxim of the Zend-Avesta, that Ahri- 
 man, the Principle of Evil, made the Great Serpent of Winter, 
 who assaulted the creation of Ormuzd. 
 
 A serpent-ring was a well-known symbol of time : and to ex- 
 press dramatically how time preys upon itself, the Egvptian priests 
 fed vipers in a subterranean chamber, as it were in the sun's Win- 
 ter abode on the fat of bulls, or the year's plenteousness. The drag- 
 on of Winter pursues Ammon, the golden ram, to Mount Casius. 
 The Virgin of the zodiac is bitten in the heel by Serpens. who, with 
 Scorpio, rises immediately behind her ; and as honey, the emblem 
 of purity and salvation, was thought to be an antidote to the ser- 
 pent's bite, so the bees of Aristeeus, the emblems of nature's abun- 
 dance, are destroyed through the agency of the serpent, and re- 
 generated within the entrails of the Vernal Bull. 
 
 The Sun-God is finally victorious. Chrishna crushes the head of 
 the serpent Calyia ; Apollo destroys Python, and Hercules that 
 Lernsean monster whose poison festered in the foot of Philoctetes,
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of Mopsus, of Chiron, or of Sagittarius. The infant Hercules 
 destroys the pernicious snakes detested of the gods, and ever, like 
 St. George of England and Michael the Archangel, wars against 
 hydras and dragons. 
 
 The eclipses of the sun and moon were believed by the orientals 
 to be caused by the assaults of a daemon in dragon-form ; and they 
 endeavored to scare away the intruder by shouts and menaces. 
 This was the original Leviathan or Crooked Serpent of old, trans- 
 fixed in the olden time by the power of Jehovah, and suspended as 
 a glittering trophy in the sky ; yet also the Power of Darkness, 
 supposed to be ever in pursuit of the Sun and Moon. When it 
 finally overtakes them, it will entwine them in its folds, and pre- 
 vent their shining. In the last Indian Avatara, as in the Eddas, a 
 serpent vomiting flames is expected to destroy the world. The 
 serpent presides over the close of the year, where it guards the ap- 
 proach to the golden fleece of Aries, and the three apples or sea- 
 sons of the Hesperides ; presenting a formidable obstacle to the 
 career of the Sun-God. The Great Destroyer of snakes is occa- 
 sionally married to them ; Hercules with the northern dragon be- 
 gets the three ancestors of Scythia ; for the Sun seems at one time 
 to rise victorious from the contest with darkness, and at another to 
 sink into its embraces. The northern constellation Draco, whose 
 sinuosities wind like a river through the wintry bear, was made 
 the astronomical cincture of the Universe, as the serpent encircles 
 the mundane egg in Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
 
 The Persian Ahriman was called "The old serpent, the liar from 
 the beginning, the Prince of Darkness, and the rover up and down." 
 The Dragon was a well-known symbol of the waters and of great 
 rivers ; and it was natural that by the pastoral Asiatic Tribes, the 
 powerful nations of the alluvial plains in their neighborhood who 
 adored the dragon or Fish, should themselves be symbolized under 
 the form of dragons ; and overcome by the superior might of the 
 Hebrew God, as monstrous Leviathans maimed, and destroyed by 
 him. Ophioneus, in the old Greek Theology, warred against 
 Kronos, and was overcome and cast into his proper element, the 
 sea. There he is installed as the Sea-God Cannes or Dagon, the 
 Leviathan of the watery half of creation, the dragon who vomited 
 a flood of water after the persecuted woman of the Apocalypse, 
 the monster who threatened to devour Hesione and Andromeda, 
 and who for a time became the grave of Hercules and Jonah ; and
 
 KNIGHT OP THE BRAZEN SEKI'ENT. 
 
 he corresponds with the obscure name of Raliab, whom Jehovah 
 is said in Job to have transfixed and overcome. 
 
 In the Spring, the year or Sun-God appears as Mithras or 
 Europa mounted on the Bull ; but in the opposite half of the 
 Zodiac he rides the emblem of the waters, the winged horse of 
 Nestor or Poseidon : and the Serpent, rising heliacally at the 
 Autumnal Equinox, besetting with poisonous influence the cold 
 constellation Sagittarius, is explained as the reptile in the path 
 who "bites the horse's heels, so that his rider falls backward." 
 The same serpent,' the Cannes Aphrenos or Musaros of Syncellus, 
 was the Midgard Serpent which Odin sunk beneath the sea, but 
 which grew to such a size as to encircle the whole earth. 
 
 For these Asiatic symbols of the contest of the Sun-God with 
 the Dragon of darkness and Winter were imported not only into 
 the Zodiac, but into the more homely circle of European legend ; 
 and both Thor and Odin fight with dragons, as Apollo did with 
 Python, the great scaly snake, Achilles with the Scamander, and 
 Bellerophon with the Chimsera. In the apocryphal book of 
 Esther, dragons herald "a day of darkness and obscurity" ; and 
 St. George of England, a problematic Cappadocian Prince, was 
 originally only a varying form of Mithras. Jehovah is said to 
 have "cut Rahab and wounded the dragon." The latter is not 
 only the type of earthly desolation, the dragon of the deep waters, 
 but also the leader of the banded conspirators of the sky, of the 
 rebellious stars, which, according to Enoch, "came not at the right 
 time" ; and his tail drew a third part of the Host of Heaven, and 
 cast them to the earth. Jehovah "divided the sea by his strength, 
 and broke the heads of the Dragons in the waters." And accord- 
 ing to the Jewish and Persian belief, the Dragon would, in the 
 latter days, the Winter of time, enjoy a short period of licensed 
 impunity, which would be a season of the greatest suffering to the 
 people of the earth ; but he would finally be bound or destroyed 
 in the great battle of Messiah ; or, as it seems intimated by the 
 Rabbinical figure of being eaten by the faithful, be, like Ahriman 
 or Vasouki, ultimately absorbed by and united with the Principle 
 of good. 
 
 Near the image of Rhea, in the Temple of Bel at Babylon, were 
 two large serpents of silver, says Diodorus, each weighing thirty 
 talents ; and in the same temple was an image of Juno, holding 
 in her right hand the head of a serpent. The Greeks called Bel
 
 SOQ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Beliar; and Hesychius interprets that word to mean a dragon or 
 great serpent. We learn from the book of Bel and the Dragon, 
 that in Babylon was kept a great, live serpent, which the people 
 worshipped. 
 
 The Assyrians, the Emperors of Constantinople, the Parthians, 
 Scythians, Saxons, Chinese, and Danes all bore the serpent as a 
 standard, and among the spoils taken by Aurelian from Zenobia 
 were such standards, Persici Dracones. The Persians represented 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman by two serpents, contending for the mun- 
 dane egg. Mithras is represented with a lion's 'head and 'human 
 body, encircled by a serpent. In the Sadder is this precept: 
 "When you kill serpents, you will repeat the Zend-Avesta, and 
 thence you will obtain great merit ; for it is the same as if you 
 had killed so many devils." 
 
 Serpents encircling rings and globes, and issuing from globes, 
 are common in the Persian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian monu- 
 ments. Vishnu is represented reposing on a coiled serpent, whose 
 folds form a canopy over him. Mahadeva is represented with a 
 snake around his neck, one around his hair, and armlets of ser- 
 pents on both arms. Bhairava sits on the coils of a serpent, whose 
 head rises above his own. Parvati has snakes about her neck 
 and waist. Vishnu is the Preserving Spirit, Mahadeva is Siva, 
 the Evil Principle, Bhairava is his son, and Parvati his consort. 
 The King of Evil Demons was called in Hindu Mythology, Naga, 
 the King of Serpents, in which name we trace the Hebrew Nacfa- 
 ash, serpent. 
 
 In Cashmere were seven hundred places where carved images of 
 serpents were worshipped ; and in Thibet the great Chinese 
 Dragon ornamented the Temples of the Grand Lama. In China, 
 the dragon was the stamp and symbol of royalty, sculptured in 
 all the Temples, blazoned on the furniture of the houses, and 
 interwoven with the vestments of the chief nobility. The Empe- 
 ror bears it as his armorial device ; it is engraved on his sceptre 
 and diadem, and on all the vases of the imperial palace. The 
 Chinese believe that there is a dragon of extraordinary strength 
 and sovereign power, in Heaven, in the air, on the waters, and on 
 the mountains. The God Fohi is said to have had the form of 
 a man, terminating in the tail of a snake, a combination to be 
 more fully explained to you in a subsequent Degree. 
 
 The dragon and serpent are the 5th and 6th signs of the Chi-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SliHJ'KNT. 5 Ql 
 
 nese Zodiac; and the Hindus and Chinese believe that, at every 
 eclipse, the sun or moon is seized by a huge serpent or dragon, 
 the serpent Asootcc of the Hindus, which enfolds the globe and 
 the constellation Draco ; to which also refers "the War in Heaven, 
 when Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon." 
 
 Sanchoniathon says that Taaut was the author of the worship 
 of serpents among the Phoenicians. He "consecrated," he says, 
 "the species of dragons and serpents ; and the Phoenicians and 
 Egyptians followed him in this superstition." He was "the first 
 who made an image of Coelus" ; that is, who represented the 
 Heavenly Hosts of Stars by visible symbols; and was probably 
 the same as the Egyptian Thoth. On the Tyrian coins of the 
 age of Alexander, serpents are represented in many positions and 
 attitudes, coiled around trees, erect in front of altars, and 
 crushed by the Syrian Hercules. 
 
 The seventh letter of the Egyptian alphabet, called Zenta or 
 Life, was sacred to Thoth, and was expressed by a serpent stand- 
 ing on his tail ; and that Deity, the God of healing, like ^scu- 
 lapius, to whom the serpent was consecrated, leans on a knotted 
 stick around which coils a snake. The Isiac tablet, describing 
 the Mysteries of Isis, is charged with serpents in every part, as 
 her emblems. The Asp was specially dedicated to her, and is 
 seen on the heads of her statues, on the bonnets of her priests, 
 and on the tiaras of the Kings of Egypt. Serapis was sometimes 
 represented with a human head and serpentine tail : and in one 
 engraving two minor Gods are represented with him, one by a 
 serpent with a bull's head, and the other by a serpent with the 
 radiated head of a lion. 
 
 On an ancient sacrificial vessel found in Denmark, having 
 several compartments, a serpent is represented attacking a kneel- 
 ing boy, pursuing him, retreating before him, appealed to beseech- 
 ingly by him, and conversing with him. We are at once reminded 
 of the Sun at the new year represented by a child sitting on a 
 lotus, and of the relations of the Sun of Spring with the Autum- 
 nal Serpent, pursued by and pursuing him, and in conjunction 
 with him. Other figures on this vessel belong to the Zodiac. 
 
 The base of the tripod of the Pythian Priestess was a triple- 
 headed serpent of brass, whose body, folded in circles growing 
 wider and wider toward the ground, formed a conical column, 
 while the three heads, disposed triangularly, upheld the tripod 
 33
 
 5O2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of gold. A similar column was placed on a pillar in the Hippo- 
 drome at Constantinople, by the founder of that city; one of the 
 heads of which is said to have been broken off by Mahomet the 
 Second, by a blow with his iron mace. 
 
 The British God Hu was called "The Dragon Ruler of the 
 World," and his car was drawn by serpents. His ministers were 
 styled adders. A Druid in a poem of Taliessin says, "I am a Druid, 
 I am an Architect, I am a Prophet, I am a Serpent (Gnadi)." 
 The Car of the Goddess Ceridwen also was drawn by serpents. 
 
 In the elegy of Uther Pendragon, this passage occurs in a des- 
 cription of the religious rites of the Druids : "While the Sanctu- 
 ary is earnestly invoking The Gliding King, before whom the Fair 
 One retreats, upon the evil that covers the huge stones ; whilst 
 the Dragon moves round over the places which contain vessels of 
 drink-offering, whilst the drink-offering is in the Golden Horns;" 
 in which we readily discover the mystic and obscure allusion to 
 the Autumnal Serpent pursuing the Sun along the circle of the 
 Zodiac, to the celestial cup or crater, and the Golden horns of 
 Virgil's milk-white Bull ; and, a line or two further on, we find 
 the Priest imploring the victorious Bell, the Sun-God of the 
 Babylonians. 
 
 With the serpent, in the Ancient Monuments, is very often 
 found associated the Cross. The Serpent upon a Cross was an 
 Egyptian Standard. It occurs repeatedly upon the Grand Stair- 
 case of the Temple of Osiris at Philse ; and on the pyramid of 
 Ghizeh are represented two kneeling figures erecting a Cross, on 
 the top of which is a serpent erect. The Crux Ansata was a Cross 
 with a coiled Serpent above it ; and it is perhaps the most common 
 of all emblems on the Egyptian Monuments, carried in the hand 
 of almost every figure of a Deity or a Priest. It was, as we learn 
 by the monuments, the form of the iron tether-pins, used for mak- 
 ing fast to the ground the cords by which young animals were 
 confined : and as used by shepherds, became a symbol of Royalty 
 to the Shepherd Kings. 
 
 A Cross like a Teutonic or Maltese one, formed by four curved 
 lines within a circle, is also common on the Monuments, and rep- 
 resented the Tropics and the Colures. 
 
 The Caduceus, borne by Hermes or Mercury, and also by Cybele. 
 Minerva, Anubis, Hercules Ogmius the God of the Celts, and the 
 personified Constellation Virgo, was a winged wand, entwined by
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 503 
 
 two serpents. It \vas originally a simple Cross, symbolizing the 
 equator and equinoctial Colure, and the four elements proceeding 
 from a common centre. This Cross, surmounted by a circle, and 
 that by a crescent, became an emblem of the Supreme Deity 
 or of the active power of generation and the passive power of 
 production conjoined, and was appropriated to Thoth or Mer- 
 cury. It then assumed an improved form, the arms of the Cross 
 being changed into wings, and the circle and crescent being formed 
 by two snakes, springing from the wand, forming a circle by 
 crossing each other, and their heads making the horns of the 
 crescent ; in which form it is seen in the hands of Anubis. 
 
 The triple Tan, in the centre of a circle and a triangle, typifies 
 the Sacred Name ; and represents the Sacred Triad, the Creating, 
 Preserving, and Destroying Powers ; as well as the three great 
 lights of Masonry. If to the Masonic point within a Circle, and 
 the two parallel lines, we add the single Tau Cross, we have the 
 Ancient Egyptian Triple Tau. 
 
 A column in the form of a cross, with a circle over it, was used 
 by the Egyptians to measure the increase of the inundations of 
 the Nile. The Tau and Triple Tau are found in many Ancient 
 Alphabets. 
 
 With the Tau or the Triple Tau may be connected, within two 
 circles, the double cube, or perfection ; or the perfect ashlar. 
 
 The Crux Ansata is found on the sculptures of Khorsabad ; on 
 the ivories from Nimroud, of the same age, carried by an Assyrian 
 Monarch ; and on cylinders of the later Assyrian period. 
 
 As the single Tau represents the one God, so, no doubt, the 
 Triple Tau, the origin of which cannot be traced, was meant to 
 represent the Trinity of his attributes, the three Masonic pillars, 
 WISDOM, STRENGTH , and HARMONY. 
 
 The Prophet Ezekiel, in the 4th verse of the 9th chapter, says: 
 "And the Lord said unto him, 'Go through the midst of the city, 
 through the midst of Jerusalem, and mark the letter TAU upon 
 the foreheads of those that sigh and mourn for all the abomina- 
 tions that be done in the midst thereof/ " So the Latin Vulgate, 
 and the probably most ancient copies of the Septuagint translate 
 the passage. This Tau was in the form of the cross of this De- 
 gree, and it was the emblem of life .and sal-cation. The Samaritan 
 Tau and the Ethiopic Tattv are the evident prototype of the 
 Greek T; and we learn from Tertullian, Origen, and St. Jerome,
 
 5O4 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 that the Hebrew Tau was anciently written in the form of a 
 Cross. 
 
 In ancient times the mark Tau was set on those who had been 
 acquitted by their judges, as a symbol of innocence. The military 
 commanders placed it on soldiers who escaped unhurt from the 
 field of battle, as a sign of their safety under the Divine Pro- 
 tection. 
 
 It was a sacred symbol among the Druids. Divesting a tree of 
 part of its branches, they left it in the shape of a Tau Cross, pre- 
 served it carefully, and consecrated it with solemn ceremonies. On 
 the tree they cut deeply the word THAU, by which they meant God. 
 On the right arm of the Cross, they inscribed the word HESULS, 
 on the left BELEX or BELENUS, and on the middle of the trunk 
 THARAMIS. This represented the sacred Triad. 
 
 It is certain that the Indians, Egyptians, and Arabians paid 
 veneration to the sign of the Cross, thousands of years before the 
 coming of Christ. Everywhere it was a sacred symbol. The 
 Hindus and the Celtic Druids built many of their Temples in the 
 form of a Cross, as the ruins still remaining clearly show, and 
 particularly the ancient Druidical Temple at Classerniss in the 
 Island of Lewis in Scotland. The Circle is of 12 Stones. On 
 each of the sides, east, west, and south, are three. In the centre 
 was the image of the Deity ; and on the north an avenue of twice 
 nineteen stones, and one at the entrance. The Supernal Pagoda 
 at Benares is in the form of a Cross ; and the Druidical subterra- 
 nean grotto at New Grange in Ireland. 
 
 The Statue of Osiris at Rome had the same emblem. Isis and 
 Ceres also bore it ; and the caverns of initiation were constructed 
 in that shape with a pyramid oyer the Saccllum. 
 
 Crosses were cut in the stones of the Temple of Serapis in Al- 
 exandria ; and many Tau Crosses are to be seen in the sculptures 
 of Alabastion and Esne, in Egypt. On coins, the symbol of the 
 Egyptian God Kneph was a Cross within a Circle. 
 
 The Crux Ansata was the particular emblem of O-siris. and his 
 sceptre ended with that figure. It was also the emblem of Hermes, 
 and was considered a Sublime Hieroglyphic, possessing mysterious 
 powers and virtues, as a wonder-working amulet. 
 
 The Sacred Tau occurs in the hands of the mummy-shaped fig- 
 ures between the forelegs of the row of Sphynxes, in the great 
 avenue leading from Luxor to Karnac. By the Tau Cross the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 505 
 
 Cabalists expressed the number 10, a perfect number, denoting 
 Heaven, and the Pythagorean Tetractys, or incommunicable name 
 of God. The Tau Cross is also found on the stones in front of 
 the door of the Temple of Amunoth III, at Thebes, who reigned 
 about the time when the Israelites took possession of Canaan : and 
 the Egyptian Priests carried it in all the sacred processions. 
 
 Tertullian, who had been initiated, informs us that the Tau 
 was inscribed on the forehead of every person who had been ad- 
 mitted into the Mysteries of Mithras. 
 
 As the simple Tau represented Life, so, when the Circle, symbol 
 of Eternity, was added, it represented Eternal Life. 
 
 At the Initiation of a King, the Tau, as the emblem of life and 
 key of the Mysteries, was impressed upon his lips. 
 
 In the Indian Mysteries, the Tau Cross, under the name of 
 Tiluk, was marked upon the body of the candidate, as a sign that 
 he was set apart for the Sacred Mysteries. 
 
 On the upright tablet of the King, discovered at Nimroud. are 
 the names of thirteen Great Gods (among which are YAV and 
 BEL) ; and the left-hand character of every one is a cross com- 
 posed of two cuneiform characters. 
 
 The Cross appears upon an Ancient Phoenician medal found in 
 the ruins of Citium ; on the very ancient Buddhist Obelisk near 
 Ferns in Ross-shire ; on the Buddhist Round Towers in Ireland, 
 and upon the splendid obelisk of the same era at Forres in Scot- 
 land. 
 
 Upon the fagade of a temple at Kalabche in Nubia are three 
 regal figures, each holding a Crux Ansata. 
 
 Like the Subterranean Mithriatic Temple at New Grange in 
 Scotland, the Pagodas of Benares and Mathura were in the form 
 of a Cross. Magnificent Buddhist Crosses were erected, and are 
 still standing, at Clonmacnoise, Finglas, and Kilcullen in Ireland. 
 Wherever the monuments of Buddhism are found, in India, Cey- 
 lon, or Ireland, we find the Cross : for Buddha or Boudh was rep- 
 resented to have been crucified. 
 
 All the planets known to the Ancients were distinguished by 
 the Mystic Cross, in conjunction with the solar or lunar symbols; 
 Saturn by a cross over a crescent, Jupiter by a cross under a cres- 
 cent, Mars by a cross resting obliquely on a circle, Venus by a 
 cross under a circle, and Mercury by a cross surmounted by a 
 circle and that by a crescent.
 
 506 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Solstices, Cancer and Capricorn, the two Gates of Heaven, 
 are the two pillars of Hercules, beyond which he, the Sun, never 
 journeyed : and they still appear in our Lodges, as the two great 
 columns, Jachin and Boaz, and also as the two parallel lines that 
 bound the circle, with a point in the centre, emblem of the Sun, 
 between the two tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. 
 
 The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents 
 Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our 
 Ancient English brethren also considered it an emblem of the 
 Sun. In the old Lectures they said : "The Blazing Star or Glory 
 in the centre refers us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which 
 enlightens the Earth, and by its genial influence dispenses bless- 
 ings to mankind." It is also said in those lectures to be an em- 
 blem of Prudence. The word Pntdentia means, in its original 
 and fullest signification, Foresight: and accordingly the Blazing 
 Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All- 
 Seeing Eye, which to the Ancients was the Sun. 
 
 Even the Dagger of the Elu of Nine is that used in the Mys- 
 teries of Mithras ; which, with its blade black and hilt white, was 
 an emblem of the two principles of Light and Darkness. 
 
 Isis, the same as Ceres, was, as we learn from Eratosthenes, the 
 Constellation Virgo, represented by a woman holding an ear of 
 wheat. The different emblems which accompany her in the de- 
 scription given by Apuleius, a serpent on either side, a golden 
 vase, with a serpent twined round the handle, and the animals 
 that marched in procession, the bear, the ape, and Pegasus, repre- 
 sented the Constellations that, rising with the Virgin, when on the 
 day of the Vernal Equinox she stood in the Oriental gate of 
 Heaven, brilliant with the rays of the full moon, seemed to march 
 in her train. 
 
 The cup, consecrated in the Mysteries both of Isis and Eleusis. 
 was the Constellation Crater or the Cup. The sacred vessel of the 
 Isiac ceremony finds its counterpart in the Heavens. The Olympic 
 robe presented to the Initiate, a magnificent mantle, covered with 
 figures of serpents and animals, and under which were twelve 
 other sacred robes, wherewith he was clothed in the sanctuary, 
 alluded to the starry Heaven and the twelve signs : while the seven 
 preparatory immersions in the sea alluded to the seven spheres, 
 through which the soul plunged, to arrive here below and take up 
 its abode in a body.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 507 
 
 The Celestial Virgin, during the last three centuries that pre- 
 ceded the Christian era, occupied the horoscope or Oriental point, 
 and that gate of Heaven through which the Sun and Moon 
 ascended above the horizon at the two equinoxes. Again it occu- 
 pied it at midnight, at the Winter Solstice, the precise moment when 
 the year commenced. Thus it was essentially connected with the 
 march of times and seasons, of the Sun, the Moon, and day 
 and night, at the principal epochs of the year. At the equinoxes 
 were celebrated the greater and lesser Mysteries of Ceres. When 
 souls descended past the Balance, at the moment when the Sun oc- 
 cupied that point, the Virgin rose before him ; she stood at the gates 
 of day and opened them to him. Her brilliant Star, Spica Virginis, 
 and Arcturus, in Bootes, northwest of it, heralded his coming. 
 When he had returned to the Vernal Equinox, at the moment when 
 souls were generated, again it was the Celestial Virgin that led 
 the march of the signs of night ; and in her stars came the beauti- 
 ful full moon of that month. Night and day were in succession 
 introduced by her, when they began to diminish in length ; and 
 souls, before arriving at the gates of Hell, were also led by her. 
 In going through these signs, they passed the Styx in the 8th De- 
 gree of Libra. She was the famous Sibyl who initiated Eneas, 
 and opened to him the way to the infernal regions. 
 
 This peculiar situation of the Constellation Virgo, has caused it 
 to enter into all the sacred fables in regard to nature, under differ- 
 ent names and the most varied forms. It often takes the name of 
 Isis or the Moon, which, when at its full at the Vernal Equinox. 
 was in union with it or beneath its feet. Mercury (or Anubis") 
 having his domicile and exaltation in the sign Virgo, was, in all the 
 sacred fables and Sanctuaries, the inseparable companion of Isis, 
 without whose counsels she did nothing. 
 
 This relation between the emblems and mysterious recitnls of the 
 initiations, and the Heavenly bodies and order of the world, was 
 still more clear in the Mysteries of Mithrns, adored as the Sun in 
 Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Armenia, and Persia, and whose Mys- 
 teries went to Rome in the time of Sylla. This is amply proved by 
 the descriptions we have of the Mithriac cave, in which were fig- 
 ured the two movements of the Heavens, that of the fixed Stars 
 and that of the Planets, the Constellations, the eight mystic gates 
 of the spheres, and the symbols of the elements. So on a cele- 
 brated monument of that religion, found at Rome, were figured,
 
 508 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Serpent or Hydra under Leo, as in the Heavens, the Celestial 
 Dog, the Bull, the Scorpion, the Seven Planets, represented by 
 seven altars, the Sun, Moon, and emblems relating to Light, to 
 Darkness, and to their succession during the year, where each in 
 turn triumphs for six months. 
 
 The Mysteries of Atys were celebrated when the Sun entered 
 Aries ; and among the emblems was a ram at the foot of a tree 
 which was being cut down. 
 
 Thus, if not the whole truth, it is yet a large part of it, that the 
 Heathen Pantheon, in its infinite diversity of names and personifi- 
 cations, was but a multitudinous, though in its origin unconscious 
 allegory, of which physical phenomena, and principally the Heav- 
 enly Bodies, were the fundamental types. The glorious images of 
 Divinity which formed Jehovah's Host, were the Divine Dynasty 
 or real theocracy which governed the early world ; and the men of 
 the golden age, whose looks held commerce with the skies, and who 
 watched the radiant rulers bringing Winter and Summer to mortals, 
 might be said with poetic truth to live in immediate communication 
 with Heaven, and, like the Hebrew Patriarchs, to see God face to 
 face. Then the Gods introduced their own worship amongmankind : 
 then Cannes, Oe or Aquarius rose from the Red Sea to impart 
 science to the Babylonians ; then the bright Bull legislated for In- 
 dia and Crete ; and the Lights of Heaven, personified as Liber and 
 Ceres, hung the Boeotian hills with vineyards, and gave the golden 
 sheaf to Eleusis. The children of men were, in a sense, allied or 
 married, to those sons of God who sang the jubilee of creation ; and 
 the encircling vault with its countless Stars, which to the excited 
 imagination of the solitary Chaldean wanderer appeared as ani- 
 mated intelligences, might naturally be compared to a gigantic 
 ladder, on which, in their rising and setting, the Angel luminaries 
 appeared to be ascending and descending between earth and Heav- 
 en. The original revelation died out of men's memories ; they wor- 
 shipped the Creature instead of the Creator ; and holding all earthly 
 things as connected by eternal links of harmony and sympathy 
 with the heavenly bodies, they united in one view astronomy, 
 astrology, and religion. Long wandering thus in error, they at 
 length ceased to look upon the Stars and external nature as Gods ; 
 and by directing their attention to the microcosm or narrower 
 world of self, they again became acquainted with the True Ruler 
 and Guide of the Universe, and used the old fables and super-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 5OQ 
 
 stitions as symbols and allegories, by which to convey and under 
 which to hide the great truths which had faded out of most men's 
 remembrance. 
 
 In the Hebrew writings, the term "Heavenly Hosts" includes 
 not only the counsellors and emissaries of Jehovah, but also the 
 celestial luminaries ; and the stars, imagined in the East to be 
 animated intelligences, presiding over human weal and woe, are 
 identified with the more distinctly impersonated messengers or 
 angels, who execute the Divine decrees, and whose predominance 
 in Heaven is in myterious correspondence and relation with 
 the powers and dominions of the earth. In Job, the Morning 
 Stars and the Sons of God are identified; they join in the same 
 chorus of praise to the Almighty ; they are both susceptible of 
 joy ; they walk in brightness ; and are liable to impurity and 
 imperfection in the sight of God. The Elohim originally included 
 not only foreign superstitious forms, but also all that host of 
 Heaven which was revealed in poetry to the shepherds of the 
 desert, now as an encampment of warriors, now as careering in 
 chariots of fire, and now as winged messengers, ascending and 
 descending the vault of Heaven, to communicate the will of God 
 to mankind. 
 
 "The Eternal," says the Bereshith Rabba to Genesis, "called 
 forth Abraham and his posterity out of the dominion of the stars ; 
 by nature, the Israelite was a servant to the stars, and born under 
 their influence, as are the heathen ; but by virtue of the law 
 given on Mount Sinai, he became liberated from this degrading 
 servitude." The Arabs had a similar legend. The Prophet Amos 
 explicitly asserts that the Israelites, in the desert, worshipped, not 
 Jehovah, but Moloch, or a Star-God, equivalent to Saturn. The 
 Gods El or Jehovah were not merely planetary or solar. Their 
 symbolism, like that of every other Deity, was coextensive with 
 nature, and with the mind of man. Yet the astrological char- 
 acter is assigned even to Jehovah. He is described as seated on 
 the pinnacle of the Universe, leading forth the Hosts of Heaven, 
 and telling them unerringly by name and number. His stars are 
 His sons and His eyes, which run through the whole world, keep- 
 ing watch over men's deeds. The stars and planets were prop- 
 erly the angels. In Pharisaic tradition, as in the phraseology of 
 the New Testament, the Heavenly Host appears as an Angelic 
 Army, divided into regiments and brigades, under the command
 
 5IO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of imaginary chiefs, such as Massaloth, Legion, Kartor Gistra, 
 etc., each Gistra being captain of 365,000 myriads of stars. 
 The Seven Spirits which stand before the throne, spoken of by 
 several Jewish writers, and generally presumed to have been 
 immediately derived from the Persian Amshaspands, were ulti- , 
 mately the seven planetary intelligences, the original model of 
 the seven-branched golden candlestick exhibited to Moses on 
 God's mountain. The stars w-ere imagined to have fought in 
 their courses against Sisera. The heavens were spoken of as hold- 
 ing a predominance over earth, as governing it by signs and ordi- 
 nances, and as containing the elements of that astrological wisdom, 
 more especially cultivated by the Babylonians and Egyptians. 
 
 Each nation w r as supposed by the Hebrews to have its own 
 guardian angel, and its own provincial star. One of the chiefs 
 of the Celestial Powers, at first Jehovah Himself in the character 
 of the Sun, standing in the height of Heaven, overlooking and 
 governing all things, afterward one of the angels or subordinate 
 planetary genii of Babylonian or Persian mythology-, was the 
 patron and protector of their own nation, "the Prince that stand- 
 eth for the children of thy people." The discords of earth were 
 accompanied by a warfare in the sky ; and no people underwent 
 the visitation of the Almighty, without a corresponding chastise- 
 ment being inflicted on its tutelary angel. 
 
 The fallen Angels were also fallen Stars ; and the first allusion 
 to a feud among the spiritual powers in early Hebrew Mythology, 
 where Rahab and his confederates are defeated, like the Titans in 
 a battle against the Gods, seems to identify the rebellious Spirits 
 as part of the visible Heavens, where the "high ones on high" 
 are punished or chained, as a signal proof of God's power and 
 justice. God, it is said 
 
 "Stirs the sea with His might by His understanding He smote 
 Rahab His breath clears the face of Heaven His hand pierced 
 ^e crooked Serpent. . . .God withdraws not His anger; beneath 
 Him bow the confederates of Rahab." 
 
 Rahab always means a sea-monster : probably some such legend- 
 ary monstrous dragon, as in almost all mythologies is the adver- 
 sary of Heaven and demon of eclipse, in whose belly, significantly 
 called the belly of Hell, Hercules, like Jonah, passed three days, 
 ultimately escaping with the loss of his hair or rays. Chesil, the 
 rebellious giant Orion, represented in Job as riveted to the sky, was
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SEKI'ENT. $11 
 
 compared to Ninus or Nimrod, the mythical founder of Nineveh 
 (City of Fish) the mighty hunter, who slew lions and panthers 
 before the Lord. Rahab's confederates are probably the "High 
 ones on High," the Chesilim or constellations in Isaiah, the Heav- 
 enly Host or Heavenly Powers, among whose number were found 
 folly and disobedience. 
 
 "I beheld," says Pseudo-Enoch, "seven stars like great blazing 
 mountains, and like Spirits, entreating me. And the angel said, 
 This place, until the consummation of Heaven and Earth, will be 
 the prison of the Stars and of the Host of Heaven. These are the 
 Stars which overstepped God's command before their time arrived ; 
 and came not at their proper season ; therefore was he offended 
 with them, and bound them, until the time of the consumma- 
 tion of their crimes in the secret year." And again ; "These 
 Seven Stars are those which have transgressed the commandment 
 of the Most High God, and which are here bound until the 
 number of the days of their crimes be completed." 
 
 The Jewish and early Christian writers looked on the worship 
 of the sun and the elements with comparative indulgence. Justin 
 Martyr and Clemens of Alexandria admit that God had appointed 
 the stars as legitimate objects of heathen worship, in order to 
 preserve throughout the world some tolerable notions of natural 
 religion. It seemed a middle point between Heathenism and 
 Christianity ; and to it certain emblems and ordinances of that 
 faith seemed to relate. The advent of Christ was announced by 
 a Star from the East ; and His nativity was celebrated on the 
 shortest day of the Julian Calendar, the day when, in the physical 
 commemorations of Persiaand Egypt, Mithras or Osiris was newly 
 found. It was then that the acclamations of the Host of Heaven, 
 the unfailing attendants of the Sun, surrounded, as at the spring- 
 dawn of creation, the cradle of His birth-place, and that, in the 
 words of Ignatius, "a star, with light inexpressible, shone forth in 
 the Heavens, to destroy the power of magic and the bonds of wick- 
 edness ; for God Himself had appeared, in the form of man, for 
 the renewal of eternal life." 
 
 But however infinite the variety of objects which helped to 
 develop the notion of Deity, and eventually assumed its place, 
 substituting the worship of the creature for that of the creator: 
 of parts of the body, for that of the soul, of the Universe, still 
 the notion itself was essentially one of unity. The idea of one
 
 512 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 God, of a creative, productive, governing unity, resided in the 
 earliest exertion of thought: and this monotheism of the primi- 
 tive ages, makes every succeeding epoch, unless it be the present, 
 appear only as a stage in the progress of degeneracy and aberration. 
 Everywhere in the old faiths we find the idea of a supreme or pre- 
 siding Deity. Amun or Osiris presides among the many gods of 
 Egypt ; Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs the chorus of the 
 constellations, as Zeus leads the solemn procession of the celestial 
 troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans. "Amidst 
 an infinite diversity of opinions on all other subjects," says Max- 
 imus Tyrius, "the whole world is unanimous in the belief of one 
 only almighty King and Father of all." 
 
 There is always a Sovereign Power, a Zeus or Deus, Mahadeva or 
 Adideva, to whom belongs the maintenance of the order of the 
 Universe. Among the thousand gods of India, the doctrine of 
 Divine Unity is never lost sight of; and the ethereal Jove, wor- 
 shipped by the Persian in an age long before Xenophanes or Anax- 
 agoras, appears as supremely comprehensive and independent of 
 planetary or elemental subdivisions, as the "Vast One" or "Great 
 Soul" of the Vedas. 
 
 But the simplicity of belief of the patriarchs did not exclude 
 the employment of symbolical representations. The mind never 
 rests satisfied with a mere feeling. That feeling ever strives to 
 assume precision and durability as an idea, by some outward delin- 
 eation of its thought. Even the ideas that are above and beyond 
 the senses, as all ideas of God are, require the aid of the senses 
 for their expression and communication. Hence come the repre- 
 sentative forms and symbols which constitute the external investi- 
 ture of every religion ; attempts to express a religious sentiment that 
 is essentially one, and that vainly struggles for adequate external 
 utterance, striving to tell to one man, to paint to him, an idea 
 existing in the mind of another, and essentially incapable of utter- 
 ance or description, in a language all the w r ords of which have a 
 sensuous meaning. Thus, the idea being perhaps the same in all, 
 its expressions and utterances are infinitely various, and branch 
 into an infinite diversity of creeds and sects. 
 
 All religions expression is symbolism ; since we can describe 
 only what we see; and the true objects of religion are unseen. 
 The earliest instruments of education were symbols ; and they 
 And all other religious forms differed and still rKfl^r according to
 
 kNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 
 
 external circumstances and imagery, and according to differences 
 of knowledge and mental cultivation. To present a visible sym- 
 bol to the eye of another is not to inform him of the meaning 
 which that symbol has to you. Hence the philosopher soon super- 
 added to these symbols, explanations addressed to the ear, suscep- 
 tible of more precision, but less effective, obvious, and impressive 
 than the painted or sculptured forms which he despised. Out of 
 these explanations grew by degrees a variety of narratives, whose 
 true object and meaning were gradually forgotten. And when 
 these were abandoned, and philosophy resorted to definitions and 
 formulas, its language was but a more refined symbolism, grap- 
 pling with and attempting to picture ideas impossible to be ex- 
 pressed. For the most abstract expression for Deity which lan- 
 guage can supply, is but a sign or symbol for an object unknown, 
 ind no more truthful and adequate than the terms Osiris and 
 Vishnu, except as being less sensuous and explicit. To say that 
 He is a Spirit, is but to say that He is not matter. What spirit is, 
 we can only define as the Ancients did, by resorting, as if in des- 
 pair, to some sublimized species of matter, as Light, Fire, or Ether. 
 
 No symbol of Deity can be appropriate or durable except in a 
 relative or moral sense. We cannot exalt words that have only a 
 sensuous meaning, above sense. To call Him a Power or a Force, 
 or an Intelligence, is merely to deceive ourselves into the belief 
 that we use words that have a meaning to us, when they have 
 none, or at least no more than the ancient visible symbols had. 
 To call Him Sovereign, Father, Grand Architect of the Universe, 
 Extension, Time, Beginning, Middle, and End, whose face is 
 turned on all sides, the Source of life and death, is but to present 
 other men with symbols by which we vainly endeavor to com- 
 municate to them the same vague ideas which men in all ages have 
 impotently struggled to express. And it may be doubted whether we 
 have succeeded either in communicating, or in forming in our own 
 minds, any more distinct and definite and true and adequate idea 
 of the Deity, with all our metaphysical conceits and logical sub- 
 tleties, than the rude ancients did, who endeavored to symbolize 
 and so to express His attributes, by the Fire, the Light, the Sun 
 and Stars, the Lotus and the Scaraba?us : all of them types of 
 what, except by types, more or less sufficient, could not be ex- 
 pressed at all. 
 
 The primitive man recognized the Divine Presence under a va-
 
 514 MORALS AND boGMA. 
 
 riety of appearances, without losing his faith in this unity and 
 Supremacy. The invisible God, manifested and on one of His 
 many sides visible, did not cease to be God to him. He recognized 
 Him in the evening breeze of Eden, in the whirlwind of Sinai, in 
 the Stone of Beth-El: and identified Him with the fire or thun- 
 der or the immovable rock adored in Ancient Arabia. To him the 
 image of the Deity was reflected in all that was pre-eminent in 
 excellence. He saw Jehovah, like Osiris and Bel, in the Sun as 
 well as in the Stars, which were His children, His eyes, "which run 
 through the whole world, and watch over the Sacred Soil of Pal- 
 estine, from the year's commencement to its close." He was the 
 sacred fire of Mount Sinai, of the burning bush, of the Persians, 
 those Puritans of Paganism. 
 
 Naturally it followed that Symbolism soon became more compli- 
 cated, and all the powers of Heaven were re-produced On earth, 
 until a web of fiction and allegory was woven, which the wit of 
 man, with his limited means of explanation, will never unravel. 
 Hebrew Theism itself became involved in symbolism and image- 
 worship, to which all religions ever tend. We have already seen 
 what \vas the symbolism of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the 
 Ark. The Hebrew establishment tolerated not only the use of 
 emblematic vessels, vestments, and cherubs, of Sacred Pillars and 
 Seraphim, but symbolical representations of Jehovah Himself, not 
 even confined to poetical or illustrative language. 
 
 "Among the Adityas," says Chrishna, in the Bagvat Ghita, "I 
 am Vishnu, the radiant Sun among the Stars ; among the waters, 
 I am ocean ; among the mountains, the Himalaya ; and among 
 the mountain-tops, Meru." The Psalms and Isaiah are full of 
 similar attempts to convey to the mind ideas of God, by ascribing 
 to Him sensual proportions. He rides on the clouds, and sits on 
 the wings of the wind. Heaven is His pavilion, and out of His 
 mouth issue lightnings. Men cannot worship a mere abstraction. 
 They require some outward form in which to clothe their concep- 
 tions, and invest their sympathies. If they do not shape and 
 carve or paint visible images, they have invisible ones, perhaps 
 quite as inadequate and unfaithful, within their own minds. 
 
 The incongruous and monstrous in the Oriental images came 
 from the desire to embody the Infinite, and to convey by multi- 
 plied, because individually inadequate symbols, a notion of the 
 Divine Attributes to the understanding. Perhaps we should find
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 515 
 
 that we mentally do the same thing, and make within ourselves 
 images quite as incongruous, if judged of by our own limited con- 
 ceptions, if we were to undertake to analyze and gain a clear idea 
 of the mass of infinite attributes which we assign to the Deity ; 
 and even of His infinite Justice and infinite Mercy and Love. 
 
 We may well say, in the language of Maximus Tyrius : "If, in 
 the desire to obtain some faint conception of the Universal Father, 
 the Nameless Lawgiver, men had recourse to words or names, to 
 silver or gold, to animals or plants, to mountain-tops or flowing 
 rivers, every one inscribing the most valued and most beautiful 
 things with the name of Deity, and with the fondness of a lover 
 clinging with rapture to each trivial reminiscence of the Beloved, 
 why should we seek to reduce this universal practice of symbol- 
 ism, necessary, indeed, since the mind often needs the excitement 
 of the imagination to rouse it into activity, to one monotonous 
 standard of formal propriety? Only let the image duly perform 
 its task, and bring the divine idea with vividness and truth before 
 the mental eye ; if this be effected, whether by the art of Phidias, 
 the poetry of Homer, the Egyptian Hieroglyph, or the Persian 
 element, we need not cavil at external differences, or lament the 
 seeming fertility of unfamiliar creeds, so long as the great essential 
 is attained, THAT MEN ARE MADE TO REMEMBER, TO UNDERSTAND, 
 
 AND TO LOVE/' 
 
 Certainly, when men regarded Light and Fire as something 
 spiritual, and above all the corruptions and exempt from all the 
 decay of matter ; when they looked upon the Sun and Stars and 
 Planets as composed of this finer element, and as themselves 
 great and mysterious Intelligences, infinitely superior to man, 
 living Existences, gifted with mighty powers and wielding vast 
 influences, those elements and bodies conveyed to them, when 
 used as symbols of Deity, a far more adequate idea than they can 
 now do to us, or than we can comprehend, now that Fire and 
 Light are familiar to us as air and water, and the Heavenly Lu- 
 minaries are lifeless worlds like our own. Perhaps they gave 
 them ideas as adequate as we obtain from the mere words by 
 which we endeavor to symbolize and shadow forth the ineffable 
 mysteries and infinite attributes of God. 
 
 There are, it is true, dangers inseparable from svmbolism. which 
 countervail its advantages, and affoid an impressive lesson i ft re- 
 gard to the similar risks attendant on the use of language. The
 
 516 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 imagination, invited to assist the reason, usurps its place, or leaves 
 its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for 
 things are confounded with them ; the means are mistaken for 
 the end: the instrument of interpretation for the object; and 
 thus symbols come to usurp an independent character as truths 
 and persons. Though perhaps a necessary path, they were a dan- 
 gerous one by which to approach the Deity ; in which "many," 
 says Plutarch, "mistaking the sign for the thing signified, fell into 
 a ridiculous superstition ; while others, in avoiding one extreme, 
 plunged into the no less hideous gulf of irreligion and impiety." 
 
 All great Reformers have warred against this evil, deeply feel- 
 ing the intellectual mischief arising out of ? degraded idea of the 
 Supreme Being : and have claimed for their own God an existence 
 or personality distinct from the objects of ancient superstition; 
 disowning in His name the symbols and images that had profaned 
 His Temple. But they have not seen that the utmost which can 
 be effected by human effort, is to substitute impressions relatively 
 correct, for others whose falsehood has been detected, and to re- 
 place a gross symbolism by a purer one. Every man, without 
 being aware of it, worships a conception of his own mind ; for all 
 symbolism, as well as all language, shares the subjective character 
 of the ideas it represents. The epithets we apply to God only 
 recall either visible or intellectual symbols to the eye or mind. 
 The modes or forms of manifestation of the reverential feeling 
 that constitutes the religious sentiment, are incomplete and pro- 
 gressive ; each term and symbol predicates a partial truth, remain- 
 ing always amenable to improvement or modification, and, in its 
 turn, to be superseded by others more accurate and comprehensive. 
 
 Idolatry consists in confounding the symbol with the thing sig- 
 nified, the substitution of a material for a mental object of wor- 
 ship, after a higher spiritualism has become possible ; an ill- 
 judged preference of the inferior to the superior symbol, an 
 inadequate and sensual conception of the Deity : and every reli- 
 gion and every conception of God is idolatrous, in so far as it is 
 imperfect, and as it substitutes a feeble and temporary idea in the 
 shrine of that Undiscoverable Being who can be known only in 
 part, and who can therefore be honored, even by the most enlight- 
 ened among His worshippers, only in proportion to their limited 
 powers of understanding and imagining to themselves His perfec- 
 tions.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 517 
 
 Like the belief in a Deity, the belief in the soul's immortality is 
 rather a natural feeling, an adjunct of self-consciousness, than a 
 dogma belonging to any particular age or country. It gives eternity 
 to man's nature, and reconciles its seeming anomalies and contra- 
 dictions; it makes him strong in weakness andperfectable in imper- 
 fection ; and it alone gives an adequate object for his hopes and 
 energies, and value and dignity to his pursuits. It is concurrent 
 with the belief in an infinite, eternal Spirit, since it is chiefly 
 through consciousness of the dignity of the mind within us, that 
 we learn to appreciate its evidences in the Universe. 
 
 To fortify, and as far as -possible to impart this hope, was the 
 great aim of ancient wisdom, whether expressed in forms of poetry 
 or philosophy ; as it was of the Mysteries, and as it is of Masonry. 
 Life rising out of death was the great mystery, which symbolism 
 delighted to represent under a thousand ingenious forms. Nature 
 was ransacked for attestations to the grand truth which seems to 
 transcend all other gifts of imagination, or rather to be their es- 
 sence and consummation. Such evidences were easily discovered. 
 They were found in the olive and the lotus, in the evergreen myrtle 
 of the Mystce and of the grave of Polydorus, in the deadly but self- 
 renewing serpent, the wonderful moth emerging from the coffin of 
 the worm, the phenomena of germination, the settings and risings 
 of the sun and stars, the darkening and growth of the moon, and in 
 sleep, "the minor mystery of death." 
 
 The stories of the birth of Apollo from Latona, and of dead 
 herces, like Glaucus, resuscitated in caves, were allegories of the 
 natural alternations of life and death in nature, changes that are 
 but expedients to preserve her virginity and purity inviolable in the 
 general sum of her operations, whose aggregate presents only a 
 majestic calm, rebuking alike man's presumption and his despair. 
 The typical death of the Nature-God, Osiris, Atys, Adonis, Hiram, 
 was a profound but consolatory mystery : the healing charms of 
 Orpheus were connected with his destruction ; and his bones, those 
 valued pledges of fertility and victory, \vere, by a beautiful contri- 
 vance, often buried within the sacred precincts of his immortal 
 equivalent. 
 
 In their doctrines as to the immortality of the soul, the Greek 
 
 Philosophers merely stated with more precision ideas long before 
 
 extant independently among themselves, in the form of symbolical 
 
 suggestion. Egypt and Ethiopia in these matters learned from 
 
 u
 
 5l8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 India, where, as everywhere else, the origin of the doctrine was as 
 remote and untraceable as the origin of man himself. Its natural 
 expression is found in the language of Chrishna, in the Bagvat 
 Ghita : "I myself never was non-existent, nor thou,nor these princes 
 of the Earth ; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. . . The 
 soul is not a thing of which a man may say, it hath been, or is about 
 to be, or is to be hereafter ; for it is a thing without birth ; it is 
 pre-existent, changeless, eternal, and is not to be destroyed with 
 this mortal frame." 
 
 According to the dogma of antiquity, the thronging forms of life 
 are a series of purifying migrations, through which the divine 
 principle re-ascends to the unity of its source. Inebriated in the 
 bowl of Dionusos, and dazzled in the mirror of existence, the souls, 
 those fragments or sparks of the Universal Intelligence, forgot their 
 native dignity, and passed into the terrestrial frames they coveted. 
 The most usual type of the spirit's descent was suggested by the 
 sinkingof theSun andStars from the upper to the lower hemisphere. 
 When it arrived within the portals of the proper empire of Dionusos, 
 the God of this World, the scene of delusion and change, its indi- 
 viduality became clothed in a material form; and as individual 
 bodies were compared to a garment, the world was the investiture 
 of the Universal Spirit. Again, the body was compared to a vase or 
 urn, the soul's recipient ; the world being the mighty bowl which 
 received the descending Deity. In another image, ancient as the 
 Grottoes of the Magi and the denunciations of Ezekiel, the world 
 was as a dimly illuminated cavern, where shadows seem realities, 
 and where the soul becomes forgetful of its celestial origin in pro- 
 portion to its proneness to material fascinations. By another, the 
 period of the Soul's embodiment is as when exhalations are con- 
 densed, and the aerial element assumes the grosser form of water. 
 
 But if vapor .'alls in water, it was held, water is again the birth 
 of vapors, which ascend and adorn the Heavens. If our mortal 
 existence be the death of the spirit, our death may be the renewal 
 of its life ; as physical bodies are exalted from earth to water, from 
 water to air, from air to fire, so the man may rise into the Hero, the 
 Hero into the God. In the course of Nature, the soul, to recover its 
 lost estate, must pass through a series of trials and migrations. 
 The scene of those trials is the Grand Sanctuary of Initiations, the 
 world : their primary agents are the elements ; and Dionusos, as 
 Sovereign of Nature, or the sensuous world personified, is official
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. S 1 9 
 
 Arbiter of the Mysteries, and guide of the soul, which he introduces 
 into the body and dismisses from it. He is the Sun, that liberator 
 of the elements, and his spiritual mediation was suggested by the 
 same imagery which made the Zodiac the supposed path of the 
 spirits in their descent and their return, and Cancer and Capricorn 
 the gates through which they passed. 
 
 He was not only Creator of the World, but guardian, liberator, 
 and Saviour of the Soul. Ushered into the world amidst lightning 
 and thunder, he became the Liberator celebrated in the Mysteries 
 of Thebes, delivering earth from Winter's chain, conducting the 
 nightly chorus of the Stars and the celestial revolution of the 
 year. His symbolism was the inexhaustible imagery employed to 
 fill up the stellar devices of the Zodiac : he was the Vernal Bull, 
 the Lion, the Ram, the Autumnal Goat, the Serpent : in short, the 
 varied Deity, the resulting manifestation personified, the all in the 
 many, the varied year, life passing into innumerable forms ; 
 essentially inferior to none, yet changing with the seasons, and 
 undergoing their periodical decay. 
 
 He mediates and intercedes for man, and reconciles the Uni- 
 versal Unseen Mind with the individualized spirit of which he is 
 emphatically the Perfecter ; a consummation which he effects, first 
 through the vicissitudes of the elemental ordeal, the alternate fire 
 of Summer and the showers of Winter, ''the trials or test of 
 an immortal Nature"; and secondarily and symbolically through 
 the Mysteries. He holds not only the cup of generation, but also 
 that of wisdom or initiation, whose influence is contrary to that 
 of the former, causing the soul to abhor its material bonds, and to 
 long for its return. The first was the Cup of Forgetfulness ; 
 while the second is the Urn of Aquarius, quaffed by the returning 
 spirit, as by the returning Sun at the Winter Solstice, and emblem- 
 atic of the exchange of worldly impressions for the recovered 
 recollections of the glorious sights and enjoyments of its pre- 
 existence. Water nourishes and purifies ; and the urn from which 
 it flows was thought worthy to be a symbol of Deity, as of the 
 Osiris-Canobus who with living water irrigated the soil of Egypt ; 
 and also an emblem of Hope that should cheer the dwellings of 
 the de^d. 
 
 The second birth of Dionusos, like the rising of Osiris and Atys 
 from the dead, and the raising of Khurum,is a type of the spiritual 
 regeneration of man. Psyche (the Soul), like Ariadne, had two
 
 52O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 lovers, an earthly and an immortal one. The immortal suitor is 
 Dionusos, the Eros-Phanes cf the Orphici, gradually exalted by 
 the progress of thought, out of the symbol of Sensuality into the 
 torch-bearer of the Nuptials of the Gods ; the Divine Influence 
 which physically called the world into being, and which, awaken- 
 ing the soul from its Stygian trance, restores it from earth to 
 Heaven. 
 
 Thus the scientific theories of the ancients, expounded in the 
 Mysteries, as to the origin of the soul, its descent, its sojourn here 
 below, and its return, w r ere not a mere barren contemplation of 
 the nature of the world, and of the intelligent beings existing there. 
 They were not an idle speculation as to the order of the world, 
 and about the soul, but a study of the means for arriving at the 
 great object proposed, the perfecting of the soul; and, as a 
 necessary consequence, that of morals and society. This Earth, to 
 them, was not the Soul's home, but its place of exile. Heaven 
 was its home, &nd there was its birth-place. To it, it ought inces- 
 santly to turn its eyes. Man was not a terrestrial plant. His roots 
 were in Heaven. The soul had lost its wings, clogged by the 
 viscosity of matter. It would recover them when it extricated 
 itself from matter and commenced its upward flight. 
 
 Matter being, in their view, as it was in that of St. Paul, the 
 principle of all the passions that trouble reason, mislead the 
 intelligence, and stain the purity of the soul, the Mysteries taught 
 man how to enfeeble the action of matter on the soul, and to 
 restore to the latter its natural dominion. And lest the stains 
 so contracted should continue after death, lustrations were use 1. 
 fastings, expiations, macerations, continence, and above all, initia- 
 tions. Many of these practices were at first merely symbolical. 
 material signs indicating the moral purity required of the Initiates ; 
 but they afterward came to be regarded as actual productive 
 causes of that purity. 
 
 The effect of initiation was meant to be the same as that of 
 philosophy, to purify the soul of its passions, to weaken the 
 empire of the body over the divine portion of man, and to give 
 him here below r a hap' iness ?nticipatory of the felicity to be one 
 day enjoyed by him, and of the future vision by him of the Divine 
 Beings. And therefore Proclus and the other Platonists taught 
 "that the Mysteries and initiations withdrew souls from this mor- 
 tal and material life, to re-unite them to the gods ; and dissipated
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 521 
 
 for the adepts the shades of ignorance by the splendors of the 
 Deity." Such were the precious fruits of the last Degree of the 
 Mystic Science, to see Nature in her springs and sources, and to 
 become familiar with the causes of things and with real existences. 
 
 Cicero says that the soul must exercise itself in the practice of 
 the virtues, if it would speedily return to its place of origin. It 
 should, while imprisoned in the body, free itself therefrom by the 
 contemplation of superior beings, and in some sort be divorced 
 from the body and the senses. Those who remain enslaved, sub- 
 jugated by their passions and violating the sacred laws of religion 
 and society, will re-ascend to Heaven, only after they shall have 
 been purified through a long succession of ages. 
 
 The Initiate was required to emancipate himself from his pas- 
 sions, and to free himself from the hindrances of the senses and 
 of matter, in order that he might rise to the contemplation of 
 the Deity, or of that incorporeal and unchanging light in which 
 live and subsist the causes of created natures. "We must," says 
 Porphyry, "flee from everything sensual, that the soul may with 
 ease re-unite itself with God, and live happily with Him." "This 
 is the great work of initiation," says Hierocles, "to recall the 
 soul to what is truly good and beautiful, and make it familiar 
 therewith, and they its own; to deliver it from the pains and ills 
 it endures here below, enchained in matter as in a dark prison ; 
 to facilitate its return to the celestial splendors, and to establish it 
 in the Fortunate Isles, by restoring it to its first estate. Thereby, 
 when the hour of death arrives, the soul, freed of its mortal gar- 
 menting, which it leaves behind it as a legacy to earth, will rise 
 buoyantly to its home among the Stars, there to re-take its ancient 
 condition, and approach toward the Divine nature as far as man 
 may do." 
 
 Plutarch compares Isis to knowledge, and Typhon to ignorance, 
 obscuring the light of the sacred doctrine whose blaze lights the 
 soul of the Initiate. No gift of the gods, he holds, is so precious 
 as the knowledge of the Truth, and that of the Nature of the 
 gods, so far as our limited capacities allow us to rise toward 
 them. The Valentinians termed initiation LIGHT. The Initiate, 
 says Psellus, becomes an Epopt, when admitted to see THE DIVINE 
 LIGHTS. Clemens of Alexandria, imitating the language of an 
 Initiate in the Mysteries of Bacchus, and inviting this Initiate, 
 whom he terms blind like Tiresias, to come to see Christ. Who will
 
 522 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 blaze upon his eyes with greater glory than the Sun, exclaims : 
 "Oh Mysteries most truly holy! Oh pure Light! When the 
 torch of the Dadoukos gleams, Heaven and th;. Deity are displayed 
 to my eyes! I am initiated, and become holy!" This was the 
 true object of initiation; to be sanctified, and TO SEE, that is, to 
 have just and faithful conceptions of the Deity, the knowledge of 
 Whom was THE LIGHT of the Mysteries. It was promised the 
 Initiate at Samothrace, that he should become pure and just. 
 Clemens says that by baptism, souls are illuminated, and led to 
 the pure light with which mingles no darkness, nor anything mate- 
 rial. The Initiate, become an Epopt, was called A SEER. "HAIL, 
 NEW-BORN LIGHT !" the Initiates cried in the Mysteries of Bac- 
 chus. 
 
 Such was held to be the effect of complete initiation. It lighted 
 up the soul with rays from the Divinity, and became for it, as it 
 were, the eye with which, according to the Pythagoreans, it con- 
 templates the field of Truth; in its mystical abstractions, wherein 
 it rises superior to the body, whose action on it, it annuls for the 
 time, to re-enter into itself, so as entirely to occupy itsdf with the 
 view of the Divinity, and the means of coming to resemble Him. 
 
 Thus enfeebling the dominion of the senses and the passions 
 over the soul, and as it were freeing the latter from a sordid slav- 
 ery, and by the steady practice of all the virtues, active and 
 contemplative, our ancient brethren strove to fit themselves to 
 return to the bosom of the Deity. Let not our objects as Masons 
 fall below theirs. We use the symbols which they used ; and 
 teach the same great cardinal doctrines that they taught, of the 
 existence of an intellectual God, and the immortality of the soul 
 of man. If the details of their doctrines as to the soul seem to us 
 to verge on absurdity, let us compare them with the common 
 notions of our own day, and be silent. If it seems to us that 
 they regarded the symbol in some cases as the thing symbolized, 
 and worshipped the sign as if it were itself Deity, let us reflect 
 how insufficient are our own ideas of Deity, and how we worship 
 those ideas and images formed and fashioned in our own minds, 
 and not the Deity Himself : and if we are inclined to smile at the 
 importance they attached to lustrations and fasts, let us pause and 
 inquire whether the same weakness of human nature does nut 
 exist to-day, causing rites and ceremonies to be regarded as 
 actively efficient for the salvation of souls.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. 523 
 
 And let us ever remember the words of an old writer, with which 
 we conclude this lecture : "It is a pleasure to stand on the shore, 
 and to see ships tossed upon the sea : a pleasure to stand in the 
 window of a castle, and see a battle and the adventures thereof : 
 but no pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage- 
 ground of TRUTH (a hill not to be commanded, and where the 
 air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wander- 
 ings, and mists and tempests, in the vale below ; so always that this 
 prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly 
 it is Heaven upon Earth to have a man's mind move in charity, 
 rest in Providence, AND TURN UPON THE POLES OF TRUTH."
 
 XXVI. 
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH 
 TRINITARIAN. 
 
 WHILE you were veiled in darkness, you heard repeated by the 
 Voice of the Great Past its most ancient doctrines. None has the 
 right to object, if the Christian Mason sees foreshadowed inChrish- 
 na and Sosiosch, in Mithras and Osiris, the Divine WORD that, 
 as he believes, became Man, and died upon the cross to redeem a 
 fallen race. Nor can he object if others see reproduced, in the 
 WORD of the beloved Disciple, that was in the beginning with 
 God, and that was God, and by Whom everything was made, only 
 the LOGOS of Plato, and the WORD or Uttered THOUGHT or first 
 Emanation of LIGHT, or the Perfect REASON of the Great, Silent, 
 Supreme, Uncreated Deity, believed in and adored by all. 
 
 We do not undervalue the importance of any Truth. We utter 
 no word that can be deemed irreverent by any one of any faith. 
 We do not tell the Moslem that it is only important for him to 
 believe that there is but one God, and wholly unessential whether 
 Mahomet was His prophet. We do not tell the Hebrew that the 
 Messiah whom he expects was born in Bethlehem nearly two thou- 
 sand years ago ; and that he is a heretic because he will not so 
 believe. And as little do we tell the sincere Christian that Jesus 
 of Nazareth was but a man like us, or His history but the unreal 
 revival of an older legend. To do either is beyond our jurisdic- 
 tion. Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time ; of no one reli- 
 gion, it finds its great truths in all. 
 
 To every Mason, there is a GOD ; ONE, Supreme, Infinite in 
 Goodness, Wisdom, Foresight, Justice, and Benevolence ; Creator, 
 Disposer, and Preserver of all things. How, or by what interme- 
 diates He creates and acts, and in what way He unfolds and man- 
 ifests Himself, Masonry leaves to creeds and Religions to inquire. 
 
 To every Mason, the soul of man is immortal. Whether it 
 524
 
 fRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 52$ 
 
 emanates from and will return to God, and what its continued 
 mode of existence hereafter, each judges for himself. Masonry 
 was not made to settle that. 
 
 To every Mason, WISDOM or INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, 
 and HARMONY, or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the 
 attributes of God. With the subtleties of Philosophy concerning 
 them Masonry does not meddle, nor decide as to the reality of the 
 supposed Existences which are their Personifications : nor whether 
 the Christian Trinity be such a personification, or a Reality of the 
 gravest import and significance. 
 
 To every Mason, the Infinite Justice and Benevolence of God 
 give ample assurance that Evil will ultimately be dethroned, and 
 the Good, the True, and the Beautiful reign triumphant and eter- 
 nal. It teaches, as it. feels and knows, that Evil, and Pain, and 
 Sorrow exist as part of a wise and beneficent plan, all the parts 
 of which work together under God's eye to a result which shall be 
 perfection. Whether the existence of evil is rightly explained in 
 this creed or in that, by Typhon the Great Serpent, by Ahriman 
 and his Armies of Wicked Spirits, by the Giants and Titans that 
 war against Heaven, by the two co-existent Principles of Good 
 and Evil, by Satan's temptation and the fall of Man, by Lok and 
 the Serpent Fenris, it is beyond the domain of Masonry to decide, 
 nor does it need to inquire. Nor is it within its Province to 
 determine how the ultimate triumph of Light and Truth and 
 Good, over Darkness and Error and Evil, is to be achieved ; nor 
 whether the Redeemer, looked and longed for by all nations, hath 
 appeared in Judea, or is yet to come. 
 
 It reverences all the great reformers. It sees in Moses, the Law- 
 giver of the Jews, in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, and in the Arabian Iconoclast, Great Teachers of Morality. 
 and Eminent Reformers, if no more : and allows every brother of 
 the Order to assign to each such higher and even Divine Charac- 
 ter as his Creed and Truth require. 
 
 Thus Masonry disbelieves no truth, and teaches unbelief in no 
 creed, except so far as such creed may lower its lofty estimate 
 of the Deity, degrade Him to the level of the passions of human- 
 ity, deny the high destiny, of man. impugn the goodness and 
 benevolence of the Supreme God, strike at those great columns 
 of Masonry, Faith, Hope, and Charity, or inculcate immorality, 
 and disregard of the active duties of the Order.
 
 526 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can 
 unite ; for it does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to 
 settle those great mysteries, that are above the feeble comprehen- 
 sion of our human intellect. It trusts in God, and HOPES; it 
 BELIEVES, like a child, and is humble. It draws no sword to 
 compel others to adopt its belief, or to be happy with its hopes. 
 And it WAITS with patience to understand the mysteries of Na- 
 ture and Nature's God hereafter. 
 
 The greatest mysteries in the Universe are those which are ever 
 going on around us ; so trite and common to us that we never 
 note them nor reflect upon them. Wise men tell us of the laws 
 that regulate the motions of the spheres, which, flashing in huge 
 circles and spinning on their axes, are also ever darting with incon- 
 ceivable rapidity through the infinities of Space ; while we atoms 
 sit here, and dream that all was made for us. They tell us learn- 
 edly of centripetal and centrifugal forces, gravity and attraction, 
 and all the other sounding terms invented to hide a want of 
 meaning. There are other forces in the Universe than those that 
 are mechanical. 
 
 Here are two minute seeds, not much unlike in appearance, and 
 two of larger size. Hand them to the learned Pundit, Chemistry, 
 who tells us how combustion goes on in the lungs, and plants are 
 fed with phosphorus and carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let 
 her decompose them, analyze them, torture them in all the ways 
 she knows. The net result of each is a little sugar, a little fibrin, 
 a little water carbon, potassium, sodium, and the like one 
 cares not to know what. 
 
 We hide them in the ground : and the slight rains moisten 
 them, and the Sun shines upon them, and little slender shoots 
 spring up and grow ; and what a miracle is the mere growth ! 
 the force, the power, the capacity by which the little feeble shoot, 
 that a small worm can nip off with a single snap of its mandibles, 
 extracts from the earth and air and water the different elements, so 
 learnedly catalogued, with which it increases in stature, and rises 
 imperceptibly toward the sky. 
 
 One grows to be a slender, fragile, feeble stalk, soft of texture, 
 like an ordinary weed ; another a strong bush, of woody fibre, 
 armed with thorns, and sturdy enough to bid defiance to the winds ; 
 the third a tender tree, subject to be blighted by the frost, and 
 looked down upon by all the forest : while another spreads its
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 527 
 
 rugged arms abroad, and cares for neither frost nor ice, nor the 
 snows that for months lie around its roots. 
 
 But lo ! out of the brown foul earth, and colorless invisible air, 
 and limpid rain-water, the chemistry of the seeds has extracted 
 colors four different shades of green, that paint the leaves which 
 put forth in the spring upon our plants, our shrubs, and our trees. 
 Later still come the flowers the vivid colors of the rose, the 
 beautiful brilliance of the carnation, the modest blush of the 
 apple, and the splendid white of the orange. Whence come the 
 colors of the leaves and flowers? By what process of chemistry 
 are they extracted from the carbon, the phosphorus, and the lime? 
 Is it any greater miracle to make something out of nothing? 
 
 Pluck the flowers. Inhale the delicious perfumes; each perfect, 
 and all delicious. Whence have they come? By what combina- 
 tion of acids and alkalies could the chemist's laboratory produce 
 them? 
 
 And now on two comes the fruit the ruddy apple and the 
 golden orange. Pluck them open them ! The texture and 
 fabric how totally different ! The taste how entirely dissimilar 
 the perfume of each distinct from its flower and from the other. 
 Whence the taste and this new perfume? The same earth and air 
 and water have been made to furnish a different taste to each fruit, 
 a different perfume not only to each fruit, but to each fruit and its 
 own flower. 
 
 Is it any more a problem whence come thought and will and 
 perception and all the phenomena of the mind, than this, whence 
 come the colors, the perfumes, the taste, of the fruit and flower ? 
 
 And lo ! in each fruit new seeds, each gifted with the same 
 wondrous power of reproduction each with the same wondrous 
 forces wrapped up in it to be again in turn evolved. Forces that 
 had lived three thousand years in the grain of wheat found in 
 the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy ; forces of which learning 
 and science and wisdom know no more than they do of the nature 
 and laws of action of God. What can we know of the nature, and 
 how can u'C understand the powers and mode of operation of the 
 human soul, when the glossy leaves, the pearl-white flower, and 
 the golden fruit of the orange are miracles wholly beyond our 
 comprehension ? 
 
 We but hide our ignorance in a cloud of words ; and the words 
 too often are mere combinations of sounds without any meaning.
 
 528 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 What is the centrifugal force? A tendency to go in a particular 
 direction! What external "force," then, produces that tendency? 
 
 What force draws the needle round to the north? What force 
 moves the muscle that raises the arm, when the will determines it 
 shall rise? Whence comes the -will itself? Is it spontaneous a 
 first cause, or an effect ? These too are miracles ; inexplicable as 
 the creation, or the existence and self-existence of God. 
 
 Who will explain to us the passion, the peevishness, the anger, the 
 memory, and affections of the small canary-wren? the conscious- 
 ness of identity and the dreams of the dog? the reasoning powers 
 of the elephant? the wondrous instincts, passions, government, 
 and civil policy, and modes of communication of ideas of the ant 
 and bee ? 
 
 Who has yet made us to understand, with all his learned words, 
 how heat comes to us from the Sun, and light from the remote 
 Stars, setting out upon its journey earth- ward from some, at the 
 time the Chaldeans commenced to build the Tower of Babel ? Or 
 how the image of an external object comes to and fixes itself upon 
 the retina of the eye ; and when there, how that mere empty, 
 unsubstantial image becomes transmuted into the wondrous 
 thing that we call SIGHT? Or how the waves of the atmosphere 
 striking upon the tympanum of the ear those thin, invisible 
 waves produce the equally wondrous phenomenon of HEARING, 
 and become the roar of the tornado, the crash of the thunder, the 
 mighty voice of the ocean, the chirping of the cricket, the delicate 
 sweet notes and exquisite trills and variations of the wren and 
 mocking-bird, or the magic melody of the instrument of Paganini ? 
 
 Our senses are mysteries to us, and we are mysteries to ourselves. 
 Philosophy has taught us nothing as to the nature of our sensa- 
 tions, our perceptions, our cognizances, the origin of our thoughts 
 and ideas, but words. By no effort or degree of reflection, never 
 so long continued, can man become conscious of a personal iden- 
 tity in himself, separate and distinct from his body and his brain. 
 We torture ourselves in the effort to gain an idea of ourselves, and 
 weary with the exertion. Who has yet made us understand how, 
 from the contact with a foreign body, the image in the eye, the 
 wave of air impinging on the ear, particular particles entering the 
 nostrils, and coming in contact with the palate, come sensations in 
 the nerves,( and from that, perception in the mind, of the animal 
 or the man?
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 529' 
 
 What do we know of Substance? Men even doubt yet whether 
 it exists. Philosophers tell us that our senses make known to us 
 only the attributes of substance, extension, hardness, color, and 
 the like; but not the thing itself that is extended, solid, black or 
 white; as we know the attributes of the Soul, its thoughts and its 
 perceptions, and not the Soul itself which perceives and thinks. 
 What a wondrous mystery is there in heat and light, existing, we 
 know not how, within certain limits, narrow in comparison with 
 infinity, beyond which on every side stretch out infinite space and 
 the blackness of unimaginable darkness, and the intensity of in- 
 conceivable cold ! Think only of the mighty Power required to 
 maintain warmth and light in the central point of such an infinity, 
 to whose darkness that of Midnight, to whose cold that of the 
 last Arctic Island is nothing ! And yet GOD is everywhere. 
 
 And what a mystery are the effects of heat and cold upon the 
 wondrous fluid that we call water! What a mystery lies hidden 
 in every flake of snow and in every crystal of ice, and in their 
 final transformation into the invisible vapor that rises from the 
 ocean or the land, and floats above the summits of the mountains ! 
 What a multitude of wonders, indeed, has chemistry unveiled 
 to our eyes ! Think only that if some single law enacted by God 
 were at once repealed, that of attraction or affinity or cohesion, for 
 example, the whole material world, with its solid granite and ada- 
 mant, its veins of gold and silver, its trap and porphyry, its huge 
 beds of coal, our own frames and the very ribs and bones of this 
 apparently indestructible earth, would instantaneously dissolve, 
 with all Suns and Stars and Worlds throughout all the Universe 
 of God, into a thin invisible vapor of infinitely minute particles 
 or atoms, diffused throughout infinite space ; and with them light 
 and heat would disappear ; unless the Deity. Himself be, as the An- 
 cient Persians thought, the Eternal Light and the Immortal Fire. 
 The mysteries of the Great Universe of God ! How can we 
 with our limited mental vision expect to gras;> and comprehend 
 them ! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way. without 
 limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end; and We. HERE, 
 and NOW, in the centre of each ! An infinity of suns, the nearest 
 of which only diminish in size, viewed with the most powerful 
 telescope : each with its retinue of worlds ; infinite numbers of 
 such suns, so remote from us that their light would not reach us, 
 journeying during an infinity of time, while the light that has
 
 53O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 reached us, from some that we seem to see, has been upon its jour- 
 ney for fifty centuries : our world spinning upon its axis, and 
 rushing ever in its circuit round the sun ; and it, the sun, and all 
 our system revolving round some great central point; and that, 
 and suns, stars, and worlds evermore flashing onward with Incred- 
 ible rapidity through illimitable space : and then, in every drop oi 
 water that we drink, in every morsel of much of our food, in the 
 air, in the earth, in the sea, incredible multitudes of living crea- 
 tures, invisible to the naked eye, of a minuteness beyond belief, 
 yet organized, living, feeding, perhaps with consciousness of iden- 
 tity, and memory and instinct. 
 
 Such are some of the mysteries of the great Universe of God. 
 And yet we, whose life and that of the world on which we live 
 form but a point in the centre of infinite Time : we, who nourish 
 animalculae within, and on whom vegetables grow without, would 
 fain learn how God created this Universe, would understand His 
 Powers, His Attributes, His Emanations, His Mode of Existence 
 and of Action; would fain know the plan according to which all 
 events proceed, that plan profound as God Himself ; would know 
 the laws by which He controls His Universe ; would fain see and 
 talk to Him face to face, as man talks to man : and we try not to 
 believe, because we do not understand. 
 
 He commands us to love one another, to love our neighbor as 
 ourself ; and we dispute and wrangle, and hate and slay each 
 other, because we cannot be of one opinion as to the Essence of 
 His Nature, as to His Attributes ; whether He became man born 
 of a woman, and was crucified ; whether the Holy Ghost is of the 
 same substance with the Father, or only of a similar substance ; 
 whether a feeble old man is God's Vicegerent ; whether some are 
 elected from all eternity to be saved, and others to be condemned 
 and punished ; whether punishment of the wicked after death is 
 to be eternal ; whether this doctrine or the other be heresy or 
 truth ; drenching the world with blood, depopulating realms, and 
 turning fertile lands into deserts ; until, for religious war, perse- 
 cution, and bloodshed, the Earth for many a century has rolled 
 round the Sun, a charnel-house, steaming and reeking with 
 human gore, the blood of brother slain by brother for opinion's 
 sake, that has soaked into and polluted all her veins, and made her 
 a horror to her sisters of the Universe. 
 
 And if men were all Masons, and obeyed with all their heart
 
 PRINCE OK MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 53! 
 
 her mild and gentle teachings, that world would be a paradise ; 
 while intolerance and persecution make of it a hell. For this is 
 the Masonic Creed : BELIEVE, in God's Infinite Benevolence, Wis- 
 dom, and Justice : HOPE, for the final triumph of Good over Evil, 
 and for Perfect Harmony as the final result of all the concords 
 and discords of the Universe : and be CHARITABLE as God is, to- 
 ward the unfaith, the errors, the follies, and the faults of men : 
 for all make one great brotherhood. 
 
 INSTRUCTION. 
 
 Sen.' . W .' . Brother Junior Warden, are you a Prince of Mercy? 
 
 Jun.' . W .' . I have seen the Delta and the Holy NAMES upon it, 
 and am an AMETH like yourself, in the TRIPLE COVENANT, of 
 which we bear the mark. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the first Word upon the Delta? 
 
 Ans.'. The Ineffable Name of Deity, the true mystery of which 
 is known to the Ameth alone. 
 
 Qit.'. What do the three sides of the Delta denote to us? 
 
 Ans.'. To us, and to all Masons, the three Great Attributes or 
 Developments of the Essence of the Deity ; WISDOM, or the Re- 
 flective and Designing Power, in w r hich, when there was naught 
 but God. the Plan and Idea of the Universe was shaped and 
 fc-rtnea : FORCE, or the Executing and Creating Power, which in- 
 stantaneously acting, realized the Type and Idea framed by Wis- 
 dom ; and the Universe, and all Stars and Worlds, and Light and 
 Life, and Men and Angels and all living creatures WERE ; and 
 HARMONY, or the Preserving Power, Order, and Beauty, main- 
 taining the Universe in its State, and constituting the law of 
 Harmony, Motion, Proportion, and Progression: WISDOM, which 
 thought the plan; STRENGTH, which created: HARMONY, 'which 
 upholds and preserves: the Masonic Trinity, three Powers and 
 one Essence: the three columns which support the Universe. 
 Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual, of which every Masonic 
 Lodge is a type and symbol : while to the Christian Mason, they 
 represent the Three that bear record in Heaven, the FATHER, the 
 WORD, and the HOLY SPIRIT, which three are ONE. 
 
 Qu.'. What do the three Greek letters upon the Delta, /.'. H .' . 
 2.'. [Iota, Eta, and Sigma} represent? 
 
 Ans.'. Three of the Names of the Supreme Deity among the Syr- 
 ians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews . . . IHUH [m"" 1 ] ; Self-Existence . . .
 
 53^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 AL [,S]: the Nature-God, or Soul of the Universe. . .SHADAI 
 [i^y]Supreme Power. Also three of the Six Chief Attributes 
 of God, among the Kabbalists : WISDOM [!EH], the Intellect, 
 (Noi>z) of the Egyptians, the Word (Aofoz) of the Platonists, 
 and the Wisdom (lo^ca) of the Gnostics: . . MAGNIFICENCE 
 [AL], the Symbol of which was the Lion's Head: . . and VIC- 
 TORY, and GLORY [Tsabaoth], which are the two columns JACHIN 
 and BOAZ, that stand in the Portico of the Temple of Masonry. 
 To the Christian Mason they are the first three letters of the name 
 of the Son of God, Who died upon the cross to redeem mankind. 
 
 Qu.' . What is the first of the THREE COVENANTS, of which we 
 bear the mark? 
 
 Ans.'. That which God made with Noah; when He said, "I 
 will not again curse the earth any more for man's sake, neither 
 will I smite any more everything living as I have done While 
 the Earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, 
 and Winter and Summer, and day and night shall not cease. I 
 will establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you, 
 and with every living creature. All mankind shall no more be 
 cut off by the waters of a flood, nor shall there any more be a 
 flood to destroy the earth. This is the token of My covenant : I 
 do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a cove- 
 nant between Ale and the earth : an everlasting covenant between 
 Me and every living creature on the earth." 
 
 Qu.' . What is the second of the Three Covenants? 
 
 Ans.'. That which God made with Abraham ; when He said, "I 
 am the Absolute Uncreated God. I will make My covenant be- 
 tween Me and thee, and thou shalt be the Father of Many Nations, 
 and Kings shall come from thy loins. I will establish My cove- 
 nant between Me and thee, and thy descendants after thee, to the 
 remotest generations, for an everlasting covenant ; and I will be 
 thy God and their God, and will give thee the land of Canaan for 
 an everlasting possession." 
 
 Qu.' . What is the third Covenant? 
 
 Ans.'. That which God made with all men bv His prophets; 
 when He said: "I will gather all nations and" tongues, and they 
 shall come and see My Glory. I will create new Heavens and a 
 new earth : and the former shall not be remembered, nor come 
 into mind. The Sun shall no more shine by day, nor the Moon 
 by night ; but the Lord shall be an everlasting light and splendor.
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN 533 
 
 His Spirit and His Word shall remain with men forever. The 
 heavens shall vanish away like vapor, and the earth shall wax old 
 like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die ; but my salva- 
 tion shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not end ; and there 
 shall be Light among the Gentiles, and salvation unto the ends of 
 the earth. The redeemed of the Lord shall return, and everlasting 
 joy be on their heads, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away/' 
 
 Qu.' . What is the symbol of the Triple Covenant? 
 
 Ans.'. The Triple Triangle. 
 
 Qu.'. Of what else is it the symbol to us? 
 
 Ans.'. Of the Trinity of Attributes of the Deity; and of the 
 triple essence of Man, the Principle of Life, the Intellectual 
 Power, and the Soul or Immortal Emanation from the Deity. 
 
 Qn.'. What is the first great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries? 
 
 Ans.'. No man hath seen God at any time, tie is One, Eternal, 
 Ail-Powerful, All- Wise, Infinitely Just, Merciful, Benevolent, and 
 Compassionate, Creator and Preserver of all things, the Source of 
 Light and Life, coextensive with Time and Space ; Who thought, 
 and with the Thought created the Universe and all living things, 
 and the souls of men: THAT Is: the PERMANENT; while every- 
 thing beside is a perpetual genesis. 
 
 Qn.'. What is the second great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries? 
 
 Ans. '.The Soul of Man is Immortal ; not the result of organiza- 
 tion, nor an aggregate of modes of action of matter, nor a succes- 
 sion of phenomena and perceptions; but an EXISTENCE, one and 
 identical, a living spirit, a s<~ark of the Great Central Light, that 
 hath entered into and dwells in the body ; to be separated there- 
 from at death, and return to God who gave it : that doth not dis- 
 perse nor vanish at death, like breath or a smoke, nor can be anni- 
 hilated ; but still exists and possesses activity and intelligence, even 
 as it existed in God, before it was enveloped in the body. 
 
 Qu.'. \Vhat is the third great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.'. The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters 
 from crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, 
 but coeval with that Divine Being Who sees and rules both Heaven 
 and earth. Nor did Tarquin less violate that Eternal Law, though 
 in his reign there might have been no written law at Rome against 
 such violence ; for the principle that impels us to right conduct. 
 and warns us against guilt, springs cut of the nature of things. 
 It did not begin to be law when it was first written, nor was it 
 35
 
 534 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 originated; but it is coeval with the Divine Intelligence itself. 
 The consequence ot virtue is not to be made the end thereof ; and 
 laudable performances must have deeper roots, motives, and insti- 
 gations, to give them the stamp of virtues. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the fourth great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.'. The moral truths are as absolute as the metaphysical 
 truths. Even the Deity cannot make it that there should be effects 
 without a cause, or phenomena without substance. As little could 
 He make it to be sinful and evil to respect our pledged word, to love 
 truth, to moderate our passions. The principles of Morality are 
 axioms, like the principles of Geometry. The moral laws are the 
 necessary relations that flow from the nature of things, and they 
 are not created by, but have existed eternally in God. Their con- 
 tinued existence does not depend upon the exercise of His WILL. 
 Truth and Justice are of His ESSENCE. Not because we are feeble 
 and God omnipotent, is it our duty to obey His law. We may be 
 forced, but are not under obligation, to obey the stronger. God is 
 the principle of Morality, but not by His mere will, which, 
 abstracted from all other of His attributes, would be neither just 
 nor unjust. Good is the expression of His will, in so far as that 
 will is itself the expression of eternal, absolute, uncreated justice, 
 which is in God, which His will did not create ; but which it exe- 
 cutes and promulgates, as our will proclaims and promulgates and 
 executes the idea of the good which is in us. He has given us the 
 law of Truth and Justice; but He has not arbitrarily instituted 
 that law. Justice is inherent in His will, because it is contained 
 in His intelligence and wisdom, in His very nature and most 
 intimate essence. 
 
 Qu.' . What is the fifth great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.' . There is an essential distinction between Good and Evil, 
 what is just and what is unjust; and to this distinction is attached, 
 for every intelligent and free creature, the absolute obligation of 
 conforming to what is good and just. Man is an intelligent and free 
 being, free, because he is conscious that it is his duty, and 
 because it is made his duty, to obey the dictates of truth and 
 justice, and therefore he must necessarily have the power of 
 doing so, which involves the power of not doing so: capable of 
 comprehending the distinction between good and evil, justice 
 and injustice, and the obligation which accompanies it, and of 
 naturally adhering to that obligation, independently of any con-
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 535 
 
 tract or positive law ; capable also of resisting the temptations 
 which urge him toward evil and injustice, and of complying with 
 the sacred law of eternal justice. 
 
 That man is not governed by a resistless Fate or inexorable 
 Destiny ; but is free to choose between the evil and the good : 
 that Justice and Right, the Good and Beautiful, are of the essence 
 of the Divinity, like His Infinitude ; and therefore they are laws to 
 man : that we are conscious of our freedom to act, as we are con- 
 scious of our identity, and the continuance and connectedness of 
 our existence ; and have the same evidence of one as of the other ; 
 and if we can put one in doubt, we have no certainty of cither, and 
 everything is unreal : that we can deny our free will and free 
 agency, only upon the ground that they are in the nature of things 
 impossible ; which would be to deny the Omnipotence of God. 
 
 Qu.' . What is the sixth great Truth of Masonry? 
 
 Ans.' . The necessity of practising the moral truths, is obligation. 
 The moral truths, necessary in the eye of reason, are obligatory 
 on the will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its 
 foundation, is absolute. As the necessary truths are not more or 
 less necessary, so the obligation is not more or less obligatory. 
 There are degrees of importance among different obligations ; but 
 none in the obligation itself. We are not nearly obliged, almost 
 obliged. We are wholly so, or not at all. If there be any place 
 of refuge to which we can escape from the obligation, it ceases to 
 exist. If the obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. 
 For if that of to-day may not be that of to-morrow, if what is 
 obligatory on me may not be obligatory on you, the obligation 
 would differ from itself, and be variable and contingent. This 
 fact is the principle of all morality. That every act contrary to 
 right and justice, deserves to be represser! by force, and punished 
 when committed, equally in the absence of any law or contract: 
 that man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit 
 and demerit of actions, as he does that between justice and injus- 
 tice, honesty and dishonesty ; and feels, without being taught, 
 and in the absence of law or contract, that it is wrong for vice to 
 be rewarded or go unpunished, and for virtue to be punished or 
 left unrewarded: and that, the Deity being infinitely just and 
 good, it must follow as a necessary and inflexible law that punish- 
 ment shall be the result of Sin, its inevitable and natural effect 
 and corollarv. and not a mere arbitrarv vengeance.
 
 536 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the seventh great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.'. The immutable law of God requires, that besides respec- 
 ting the absolute rights of others, and being merely just, we should 
 do good, be charitable, and obey the dictates of the generous and 
 noble sentiments of the soul. Charity is a law, because our 
 conscience is not satisfied nor at ease if we have not relieved the 
 suffering, the distressed, and the destitute. It is to give that which 
 he to whom you give has no right to take or demand. To be 
 charitable is obligatory on us. We are the Almoners of God's 
 bounties. But the obligation is not so precise and inflexible as 
 the obligation to be just. Charity knows neither rule nor limit. 
 It goes beyond all obligation. Its beauty consists in its liberty. 
 "He that loveth not, knoweth not God ; FOR GOD is LOVE. If we love 
 one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. 
 God is love ; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and 
 God in him." To be kindly affectioned one to another with broth- 
 erly love ; to relieve the necessities of the needy, and be generous, 
 liberal, and hospitable ; to return to no man evil for evil ; to rejoice 
 at the good fortune of others, and sympathize with them in their 
 sorrows and reverses ; to live peaceably with all men, and repay in- 
 juries with benefits and kindness ; these are the sublime dictates of 
 the Moral Law, taught from the infancy of the world, by Masonry. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the eighth great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.' . That the laws which control c.nd regulate the Universe of 
 God, are those of motion and harmony. We see only the isolated 
 incidents of things, and with our feeble and limited capacity and 
 vision cannot discern their connection, nor the mighty chords 
 that make the apparent discord perfect harmony. Evil is merely 
 apparent, and all is in reality good and perfect. For pain and 
 sorrow, persecution and hardships, affliction and destitution, sick- 
 ness and death are but the means, by which alone the noblest 
 virtues could be developed. Without them, and without sin and 
 error, and wrong and outrage, as there can be no effect without 
 an adequate cause, there could be neither patience under suffering 
 and distress ; nor prudence in difficulty ; nor temperance to avoid 
 excess; nor courage to meet danger; nor truth, when to speak 
 the truth is hazardous ; nor love, when it is met with ingratitude ; 
 nor charity for the needy and destitute ; nor forbearance and for- 
 giveness of injuries; not toleration of erroneous opinions; nor 
 charitable judgment and construction of men's motives and
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN'. 537 
 
 actions ; nor patriotism, nor heroism, nor honor, nor self-denial, 
 nor g-encrosity. These and most other virtues and excellencies 
 would have no existence, and even their nimes be unknown ; 
 and the poor virtues that still existed, would scarce deserve the 
 name ; for life would be one flat, dead, low level, above which none 
 of the lofty elements of human nature would emerge ; and man 
 would lie lapped in contented indolence and idleness, a mere 
 worthless negative, instead of the brave, stiong soldier against 
 the grim legions of Evil and rude Difficulty. 
 
 Qu.' '. What is the ninth great Truth in Masonry? 
 
 Ans.'. The great leading doctrine of this Degree; that the 
 JUSTICE, the WISDOM, and the MERCY of God are alike infinite, 
 alike perfect, and yet do not in the least jar nor conflict one with 
 the other ; but form a Great Perfect Trinity of Attributes, three 
 and yet one : that, the principle of merit and demerit being abso- 
 lute, and every good action deserving to be icwarded, and every 
 bad one to be punished, and God being as just as He is good ; and 
 yet the cases constantly recurring in this world, in which crime 
 and cruelty, oppression, tyranny, and injustice are prosperous, 
 happy, fortunate, and self-contented, and rule and reign, and enjoy 
 all the blessings of God's beneficence, while the virtuous and good 
 are unfortunate, miserable, destitute, pining away in dungeons, 
 perishing with cold, and famishing with hunger, slaver of oppres- 
 sion, and instruments and victims of the miscreants that govern ; 
 so that this worh 1 , if there were no existence beyond it, would be 
 one great theatre of wrong and injustice, proving God wholly dis- 
 regardful of His own necessary law of merit and demerit ; it fol- 
 lows that there must be another life in which these apparent 
 wrongs shall be repaired : That all the powers of man's soul tend 
 to infinity; and his indomitable instinct of immortality, and the 
 universal hope of another life, testified by all creeds, all poetry, all 
 traditions, establish its certainty ; for man is not an orphan ; but 
 hath a Father near at hand : and the day must come when Light 
 and Truth, and the Just and Good shall be victorious, and Dark- 
 ness, Error, Wrong, and Evil be annihilated, and known no more 
 forever: That the Universe is one great Harmony, in which, ac- 
 cording to the faith of all nations, deep-rooted in all hearts in the 
 primitive ages. Light will ultimately prevail over Darkness, and 
 the Good Principle over the Evil : and the myriad souls that have 
 emanated from the Divinity, purified and ennobled by the struggle
 
 538 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 here below, will again return to perfect bliss in the bosom of God, 
 to offend against Whose laws will then be no longer possible. 
 
 Qn.'. What, then, is the one great lesson taught to us, as Ma- 
 sons, in this Degree ? 
 
 Ans.\ That to that state and realm of Light and Truth and 
 Perfection, which is absolutely certain, ail the good men on earth 
 are tending ; and if there is a law from whose operation none are 
 exempt, which inevitably conveys their bodies to darkness and to 
 dust, there is another not less certain nor less powerful, which 
 conducts their spirits to that state of Happiness and Splendor and 
 Perfection, the bosom of their Father and their God. The wheels 
 of Nature are not made to roll backward. Everything presses on 
 to Eternity. From the birth of Time an impetuous current has 
 set in, which bears all the sons of men toward that interminable 
 ocean. Meanwhile, Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is 
 congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of the 
 Earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, 
 permanent, and divine, leaving nothing for the last fire to consume 
 but the gross matter that creates concupiscence ; while everything 
 fit for that good fortune shall be gathered and selected from the 
 ruins of the world, to adorn that Eternal City. 
 
 Let every Mason then obey the voice that calls him thither. 
 Let us seek the things that are above, and be not content with a 
 world that must shortly perish, and which we must speedily quit, 
 while we neglect to prepare for that in which we are invited to 
 dwell forever. While everything within us and around us reminds 
 us of the approach of death, and concurs to teach us that this is 
 not our rest, let us hasten our preparations for another world, and 
 earnestly implore that help and strength from our Father, which 
 alone can put an end to that fatal war which our desires have too 
 long waged with our destiny. \Vhen these move in the same 
 direction, and that which God's will renders unavoidable shall 
 become our choice, all things will be ours ; life will be divested of 
 its vanity, and death disarmed of its terrors. 
 
 On.'. What are the symbols of the purification necessary to 
 make us perfect Masons? 
 
 . J l^.'.Lavation with pure water, or baptism; because to cleanse 
 the body is emblematical of purifying the soul ; and because it 
 conduces to the bodily health, and virtue is the health of the soul, 
 as sin and vice are its malady and sickness : unction, or anoint-
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN'. 539 
 
 ing with oil ; because thereby we are set apart and dedicated to 
 the service and priesthood of the Beautiful, the True, arid the 
 Good : and robes of white, emblems of candor, purity, and truth. 
 
 Qu.' . What is to us the chief symbol of man's ultimate redemp- 
 tion and regeneration ? 
 
 Ans.'. The fraternal supper, of bread which nourishes, and of 
 wine which refreshes and exhilarates, symbolical of the time 
 which is to come, when all mankind shall be one great harmo- 
 nious brotherhood ; and teaching us these great lessons : that as 
 matter changes ever, but no single atom is annihilated, it is not 
 rational to suppose that the far nobler soul does not continue to 
 exist beyond the grave : that many thousands who have died 
 before us might claim to be joint owners with ourselves of the 
 particles that compose our mortal bodies ; for matter ever forms 
 new combinations ; and the bodies of the ancient dead, the patri- 
 archs before and since the flood, the kings and common people o^ 
 all ages, resolved into their constituent elements, are carried upon 
 the wind over all continents, and continually enter into and form 
 part of the habitations of new souls, creating new bonds of sym- 
 pathy and brotherhood between each man that lives and all his 
 race. And thus, in the bread we eat, and in the wine we drink- 
 to-night, may enter into and form part of us the identical particles 
 of matter that once formed parts of the material bodies called 
 Moses, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, or Jesus of Nazareth. In the 
 truest sense, we eat and drink the bodies of the dead ; and cannot 
 say that there is a single atom of our blood cr body, the owner- 
 ship of which some other soul might not dispute with us. It 
 teaches us also the infinite beneficence of God who sends us seed- 
 time and harvest, each in its season, and makes His showers to 
 fall and His sun to shine alike upon the evil and the good: 
 bestowing upon us unsolicited His innumerable blessings, and ask- 
 ing no return. For there are no angels stationed upon the watch- 
 towers of creation to call the world to prayer and sacrifice but He 
 bestows His benefits in silence, like a kind friend who comes at 
 night, and, leaving his gifts at the door, to be found by us in the 
 morning, goes quietly away and asks no thanks, nor ceases his kind 
 offices for our ingratitude. And thus the bread and wine teach 
 us that our Mortal Body is no more \Yi-: than the house in which 
 \ve live, or the garments that we wear; but the Soul is I, tho ONK. 
 identical, unchangeable, immortal emanation from the Deity, to
 
 540 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 return to God and be forever happy, in His good time; as our 
 mortal bodies, dissolving, return to the elements from which they 
 came, their particles coming and going ever in perpetual genesis. 
 To our Jewish Brethren, this supper is symbolical of the Passover : 
 to the Christian Mason, of that eaten by Christ and His Disciples, 
 when, celebrating the Passover, He broke bread and gave it to 
 them, saying, "Take ! eat ! this is My body :" and giving them 
 the cup, He said, "Drink ye all of it ! for this is My blood of the 
 New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins :" 
 thus symbolizing the perfect harmony and union between Him- 
 self and the faithful ; and His death upon the cross for the salva- 
 tion of man. 
 
 The history of Masonry is the history of Philosophy. Masons 
 do not pretend to set themselves up for instructors of the human 
 race : but, though Asia produced and preserved the Mysteries, 
 Masonry has, in Europe and America, given regularity to their 
 doctrines, spirit, and action, and developed the moral advantages 
 which mankind may reap from them. More consistent, and more 
 simple in its mode of procedure, it has put an end to the vast alle- 
 gorical pantheon of ancient mythologies, and itself become a 
 science. 
 
 None can deny that Christ taught a lofty morality. "Love one 
 another : forgive those that despitefully use you and persecute 
 you : be pure of heart, meek, humble, contented : lay not up 
 riches en earth, but in Heaven : submit to the powers lawfully over 
 you : become like these little children, or ye cannot be saved, for 
 of such is the Kingdom of Heaven : forgive the repentant ; and 
 cast no stone at the sinner, if you too ha-\e sinned : do unto others 
 as ye would have others do unto you : ' such, and not abstruse 
 questions of theology, were His simple and sublime teachings. 
 
 The early Christians followed in His footsteps. The first preach- 
 ers of the faith had no thought of domination. Entirely ani- 
 mated by His saying, that he among them should be first, who 
 should serve with the greatest devotion, they were humble, mod- 
 est, and charitable, and they knew how to communicate this spirit 
 of the inner man to the churches under their direction. These 
 churches were at first but spontaneous meetings of all Christians 
 inhabiting the same locality. A pure and severe morality, ming- 
 led with religious enthusiasm, was the characteristic of each, and 
 excited the admiration even of their persecutors. Everything was
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 541 
 
 in common among them ; their property, their joys, and their sor- 
 rows. In the silence of night they met for instruction and to 
 pray together. Their love-feasts, or fraternal repasts, ended these 
 reunions, in which all differences in social position and rank were 
 effaced in the presence of a paternal Divinity. Their sole object 
 was to make men better, by bringing them back to a simple wor- 
 ship, of which universal morality was the basis ; and to end those 
 numerous and cruel sacrifices which everywhere inundated with 
 blood the altars of the gods. Thus did Christianity reform the 
 world, and obey the teachings of its founder. It gave to woman 
 her proper rank and influence ; it regulated domestic life : and by 
 admitting the slaves to the love-feasts, it by degrees raised them t 
 above that oppression under which half of mankind had groaned 
 for ages. 
 
 This, in its purity, as taught by Christ Himself, was the true 
 primitive religion, as communicated by God to the Patriarchs. It 
 was no new religion, but the reproduction of the oldest of all ; 
 and its true and perfect morality is the morality of Masonry, as is 
 the morality of every creed of antiquity. 
 
 In the early days of Christianity, there was an initiation like 
 those of the Pagans. Persons were admitted on special conditions 
 only. To arrive at a complete knowledge of the doctrine, they had 
 to pass three degrees of instruction. The Initiates were conse- 
 quently divided into three classes; the first, Auditors, the second, 
 Catechumens, and the third, the Faithful. The Auditors were a 
 sort of novices, who were prepared by certain ceremonies and cer- 
 tain instruction to receive the dogmas of Christianity. A portion 
 of these dogmas was made known to the Catechumens ; who. after 
 particular purifications, received baptism, or the initiation of the 
 theogenesis (divine generation} ; but in the grand mysteries of that 
 religion, the incarnation, nativity, passion, and resurrection of 
 Christ, none were initiated but the Faithful. These doctrines, 
 and the celebration of the Holy Sacraments, particularly the Eu- 
 charist, were kept with profound secrecy. These Mysteries were 
 divided into two parts ; the first styled the Mass of the Catechu- 
 mens ; the second, the Mass of the Faithful. The celebration of 
 the Mysteries of Mithras was also styled a mass; and the ceremo- 
 nies used were the same. There were found all the sacraments of 
 the Catholic Church, even the breath of confirmation. The Priest 
 of Mithras promised the Initiates deliverance from sin, by means
 
 542 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of confession and baptism, and a future life of happiness or mis- 
 ery. He celebrated the oblation of bread, image of the resurrec- 
 tion. The baptism of newly-born children, extreme unction, con- 
 fession of sins, all belonged to the Mithriac rites. The candidate 
 was purified by a species of baptism, a mark was impressed upon 
 his forehead, he offered bread and water, pronouncing certain mys- 
 terious words. 
 
 During the persecutions in the early ages of Christianity, the 
 Christians took refuge in the vast catacombs which stretched for 
 miles in every direction under the city of Rome, and are supposed 
 to have been of Etruscan origin. There, amid labyrinthine wind- 
 ings, deep caverns, hidden chambers, chapels, and tombs, the per- 
 secuted fugitives found refuge, and there they performed the cere- 
 monies of the Mysteries. 
 
 The Basilideans, a sect of Christians that ?rose soon after the 
 time of the Apostles, practised the Mysteries, with the old Egyp- 
 tian legend. They symbolized Osiris by the Sun, Isis by the Moon, 
 and Typhon by Scorpio ; and wore crystals bearing these emblems, 
 as amulets or talismans to protect them from danger ; upon which 
 were also a brilliant star and the serpent. They were copied from 
 the talismans of Persia and Arabia, and given to every candidate 
 at his initiation. 
 
 Irenaeus tells us that the Simonians, one of the earliest sects of 
 the Gnostics, had a Priesthood of the Mysteries. 
 
 Tertullian tells us that the Valentinians, the most celebrated of 
 all the Gnostic schools, imitated, or rather perverted, the Myste- 
 ries of Eleusis. Irenreus informs us, in several curious chapters, 
 of the Mysteries practised by the Marcosians ; and Origen gives 
 much information as to the Mysteries of the Ophites ; and there is 
 no doubt that all the Gnostic sects had Mysteries and an initiation. 
 They all claimed to possess a secret doctrine, coining to them di- 
 rectly from Jesus Christ, different from that of the Gospels and 
 Epistles, and superior to those communications, which in their 
 eyes, were merely exoteric. This secret doctrine they did not 
 communicate to every one ; and among the extensive sect of the 
 Basilideans hardly one in a thousand knew it, as we learn from 
 Irenams. We know the name of only the highest class of their 
 Initiates. They were styled Elect or Elits [ExUxroi], and 
 Strangers to the World [?i/or li^ /I'frfj.w']. They had at least 
 three Degrees the Material, the Intellectual, and the Spiritual:
 
 FRINGE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 543 
 
 and the lesser and greater Mysteries ; and the number of those 
 who attained the highest Degree was quite small. 
 
 Baptism was one of their most important ceremonies ; and the 
 Basilideans celebrated the loth of January, as the anniversary of 
 the day on which Christ was baptized in Jordan. 
 
 They had the ceremony of laying on of hands, by way of purifi- 
 cation ; and that of the mystic banquet, emblem of that to which 
 they believed the Heavenly Wisdom would one day admit them, in 
 the fullness of things [/7/^/>w//J. 
 
 Their ceremonies were much more like those of the Christians 
 than those of Greece ; but they mingled with them much that was 
 borrowed from the Orient and Egypt : and taught the primitive 
 truths, mixed with a multitude of fantastic errors and fictions, 
 
 The discipline of the secret was the concealment (occultatio} of 
 certain tenets and ceremonies. So says Clemens of Alexandria. 
 
 To avoid persecution, the early Christians were compelled to use 
 great precaution, and to hold meetings of the Faithful [of the 
 Household of Faith] in private places, under concealment by 
 darkness. They assembled in the night, and they guarded against 
 the intrusion of false brethren and profane persons, spies who 
 might cause their arrest. They conversed together figuratively, 
 and by the use of symbols, lest cowans and eavesdroppers might 
 overhear : and there existed among them a favored class, or Order, 
 who were initiated into certain Mysteries which they were bound 
 by solemn promise not to disclose, or even converse about, except 
 with such as had received them under the same sanction. They 
 were called Brethren, the Faithful, Stewards of the Mysteries, Su- 
 perintendents, Devotees of the Secret, and ARCHITECTS. 
 
 In the Hierarchies, attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, 
 the first Bishop of Athens, the tradition of the sacrament is said to 
 have been divided into three Degrees, or grades, purification, initia- 
 tion, and accomplishment or perfection; and it mentions also, as 
 part of the ceremony, the bringing to sight. 
 
 The Apostolic Constitutions, attributed to Clemens, Bishop of 
 Rome, describe the early church, and say : "These regulations 
 must on no account be communicated to all sorts of persons, be- 
 cause of the Mysteries contained in them." They speak of the Dea- 
 con's duty to keep the doors, that none uninitiated should enter at 
 the oblation. Ostiarii, or doorkeepers, kept guard, and gave notice 
 of the time of prayer and church-assemblies ; and also by private
 
 544 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 signal, in times of persecution, gave notice to those within, to enable 
 them to avoid danger. The Mysteries were open to the Fideles or 
 Faithful only ; and no spectators were allowed at the communion. 
 
 Tertullian, who died about A. D. 216, says in his Apology: 
 ''None are admitted to the religious Mysteries without an oath of 
 secrecy. We appeal to your Thracian and Eleusinian Mysteries : 
 and we are especially bound to this caution, because if we prove 
 faithless, we should not only provoke Heaven, but draw upon our 
 heads the utmost rigor of human displeasure. -And should 
 strangers betray us ? They know nothing but by report and hearsay. 
 Far hence, ye Profane ! is the prohibition from all holy Mysteries." 
 
 Clemens, Bishop of Alexandria, born about A. D. 191, says, in 
 his Stromata, that he cannot explain the Mysteries, because he 
 should thereby, according to the old proverb, put a sword into the 
 hands of a child. He frequently compares the Discipline of the 
 Secret with the heathen Mysteries, as to their internal and recon- 
 dite wisdom. 
 
 Whenever the early Christians happened to be in companv with 
 strangers, more properly termed the Profane, they never spoke of 
 their sacraments, but indicated to one another what they meant, 
 by means of symbols and secret watchwords, disguisedly, and as 
 by direct communication of mind with mind, and by enigmas. 
 
 Origen, born A. D. 134 or 135, answering Celsus, who had ob- 
 jected thatthe Christians had a concealed doctrine said : "Inasmuch 
 as the essential and important doctrines and principles of Christian- 
 ity are openly taught, it is foolish to object that there are other 
 things that are recondite ; for this is common to Christian disci- 
 pline with that of those philosophers in whose teaching' some 
 things were exoteric and some esoteric : and it is enough to say 
 that it was so with some of the disciples of Pythagoras." 
 
 The formula which the primitive church pronounced at the 
 moment of celebrating its Mysteries, was this : "Depart, ye 
 Profane ! Let the Catechumens, and those who have not been 
 admitted or initiated, go forth." 
 
 Archelaus, Bishop of Cascara in Mesopotamia, who, in the year 
 2/8, conducted a controversy with the Manicnasans, said : "These 
 Mysteries the church now communicates to him who has passed 
 through the introductory Degree. They are not explained to the 
 Gentiles at all ; nor are they taught openly in the hearing of Cate- 
 chumens ; but much that is spoken is in disguised terms, that
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 545 
 
 the Faithful [/Terror], who possess the knowledge, may be still 
 more informed, and those who are not acquainted with it, may 
 suffer no disadvantage." 
 
 Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, was born in the year 315, and died 
 in 386. In his Catcchcsis he says : "The Lord spake in parables to 
 His hearers in general ; but to His disciples He explained in private 
 the parables and allegories which He spoke in public. The 
 splendor of glory is for those who are early enlightened : obscurity 
 and darkness are the portion of the unbelievers and ignorant. 
 Just so the church discovers its Mysteries to those who have 
 advanced beyond the class of Catechumens : we employ obscure 
 terms with others." 
 
 St. Basil, the Great Bishop of Caesarea born in the year 326, and 
 dying in the year 376, says : "We receive the dogmas transmitted 
 to us by writing, and those which have descended to us from the 
 Apostles, beneath the mystery of oral tradition : for several things 
 have been handed to us without writing, lest the vulgar, too famil- 
 iar with our dogmas, should lose a due respect for them. . . .This 
 is what the uninitiated are not permitted to contemplate ; and how 
 should it ever be proper to write and circulate among the people 
 an account of them ?" 
 
 St. Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, A. D. 379, 
 says : "You have heard as much of the Mystery as we are allowed 
 to speak openly in the ears of all ; the rest will be commu- 
 nicated to you in private ; and that you must retain within 
 yourself Our Mysteries are not to be made known to stran- 
 gers." 
 
 St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, who was born in 340, and 
 died in 393, says in his work De Mystcriis: "All the Mystery 
 should be kept concealed, guarded by faithful silence lest it should 
 
 be inconsiderately divulged to the ears of the Profane It is 
 
 not given to all to contemplate the depths of our Mysteries 
 
 that the/ may not be seen by those who ought not to beheld them : 
 nor received by those who cannot preserve them." And in another 
 work : "He sins against God, who divulges to the unworthy the 
 Mysteries confided to him. The danger is not merely in violating 
 truth, but in telling truth, if he allow himself to give hints of them 
 to those from whom they ought to be concealed Beware of cast- 
 ing pearls before swine !... .Every Mystery ought to be kept secret : 
 and, as it were, to be covered over by silence, lest it should rashly be
 
 546 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 divulged to the ears of the Profane. Take heed that you do not 
 incautiously reveal the Mysteries!" 
 
 St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who was born in 347, and died 
 in 430, says in one of his discourses : "Having dismissed the Cat- 
 echumens, we have retained you only to be our hearers ; because, be- 
 sides those things which belong to all Christians in common, we are 
 now to discourse to you of sublime Mysteries, which none are 
 qualified to hear, but those who, by the Master's favor, are made 
 
 partakers of them To have taught them openlv, would have 
 
 been to betray them/' And he refers to the Ark of the Covenant, 
 and says that it signified a Mystery, or secret of God, shadowed 
 over by the cherubim of glory, and honored by being veiled. 
 
 St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine speak of initiation more than 
 fifty times. St. Ambrose writes to those who are initiated; and 
 initiation was not merely baptism, or admission into the church, 
 but it referred to initiation into the Mysteries. To the baptized 
 and initiated the Mysteries of religion were unveiled ; they were 
 kept secret from the Catechumens ; who were permitted to hear 
 the Scriptures read and the ordinary discourses delivered, in 
 which the Mysteries, reserved for the Faithful, were never treated 
 of. When the services and prayers were ended, the Catechumens 
 and spectators all withdrew. 
 
 Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was born in 354, and 
 died in 417. He says: "I wish to speak openly: but I dare not, 
 on account of those who are not initiated. I shall therefore avail 
 
 myself of disguised terms, discoursing in a shadowy manner 
 
 Where the holy Mysteries are celebrated, we drive away all unin- 
 itiated persons, and then close the doors." He mentions the accla- 
 mations of the initiated ; "which," he says, "I here pass over in 
 silence ; for it is forbidden to disclose such things to the Profane." 
 Palladius, in his life of Chrysostom, records, as a great outrage, 
 that, a tumult having been excited against him by his enemies, 
 they forced their \vay into the penetralia, where the uninitiated 
 beheld what was not proper for them to see ; and Chrysostom 
 mentions the same circumstance in his epistle to Pope Innocent. 
 
 St. Cyril of Alexandria, who was made Bishop in 412, and died 
 in 444, says in his 7th Book against Julian : "These Mysteries 
 are so profound and so exalted, that they can be comprehended by 
 those only who are enlightened. I shall not, therefore, attempt to 
 speak of what is so admirable in them, lest by discovering them to
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 54/ 
 
 the uninitiated, I should offend against the injunction not to give 
 what is holy to the impure, nor cast pearls before such as cannot 
 
 estimate their worth I should say much more, if I were not 
 
 afraid of being heard by those who are uninitiated : because men 
 are apt to deride what they do not understand. And the ignorant, 
 not being aware of the weakness of their minds, condemn what 
 they ought most to venerate." 
 
 Theodoret, Bishop of Cyropolis in Syria, was born in 393, and 
 made Bishop in 420. In one of his three Dialogues, called the 
 Immutable, he introduces Orthodoxus, speaking thus: "Answer 
 me, if you please, in mystical or obscure terms : for perhaps there 
 are some persons present who are not initiated into the Mysteries." 
 And in his preface to Ezekiel, tracing up the secret discipline to the 
 commencement of the Christian era, he says ; "These Mysteries 
 are so august, that we ought to keep them with the greatest 
 caution." 
 
 Minucius Felix, an eminent lawyer of Rome, who lived in 212. 
 and wrote a defence of Christianity, says: "Many of them [the 
 Christians] know each other by tokens and signs (notis ct insigni- 
 bus), and they form a friendship for each other, almost before 
 they become acquainted." 
 
 The Latin Word, tessera, originally meant a square piece of 
 wood or stone, used in making tesselated pavements ; afterward a 
 tablet on which anything was written, and then a cube or die. Its 
 most general use was to designate a piece of metal or wood, square 
 in shape, on which the watchword of an Army was inscribed ; 
 whence tessera came to mean the watchword itself. There was 
 also a tessera hospitalis, which was a piece of w r ood cut into two 
 parts, as a pledge of friendship. Each party kept one of the parts ; 
 and they swore mutual fidelity by Jupiter. To break the tessera 
 was considered a dissolution of the friendship. The early Chris- 
 tians used it as a Mark, the watchword of friendship. With them 
 it was generally in the shape of a fish, and made of bone. On its 
 face was inscribed the word fytt'J', a fish, the initials of which 
 represented the Greek words, Irfitfj^ Xf)cffrb^ 6soo 1 lb~ ^.tur^o; 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. 
 
 St. Augustine (dc Fide et S\mbolis} says: "This is the faith 
 which in a few words is given to thfe Nov ices to be kept by a symbol : 
 these few words are known to all the Faithful ; that by believing 
 they may be submissive to God : by being thus submissive, they
 
 548 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 may live rightly; by living rightly, they may purify their hearts 
 and with a pure heart may understand what they believe." 
 
 Maximus Taurinus says: "The tessera is a symbol and sign 
 by which to distinguish between the Faithful and the Profane." 
 
 There are three Degrees in Blue Masonry ; and in addition to the 
 two words of two syllables each, embodying the binary, three, 
 of three syllables each. The r e were three Grand Masters, the two 
 Kings, and Khir-Om the Artificer. The candidate gains admission 
 by three raps, and three raps call up the Brethren. There are three 
 principal officers of the Lodge, three lights at the Altar, three gates 
 of the Temple, all in the East, West, and South. The three lights 
 represent the Sun, the Moon, and Mercury; Osiris, Isis, and Horus ; 
 the Father, the Mother, and the Child; Wisdom, Strength, and 
 Beauty ; Hakamah, Binah, and Daath ; Gedulah, Geburah, and Tep- 
 areth. The candidate makes three circuits of the Lodge : there were 
 three assassins of Khir-Om, and he was slain by three blows while 
 seeking to escape by the three gates of the Temple. The ejacula- 
 tion at his grave was repeated three times. There are three divis- 
 ions of the Temple, and three, five, and seven Steps. A Master 
 works with Chalk, Charcoal, and a vessel of Clay ; there are three 
 movable and three immovable jewels. The Triangle appears 
 among the Symbols : the two parallel lines enclosing the circle are 
 connected at top, as are the Columns Jachin and Boaz, symboliz- 
 ing the equilibrium which explains the great Mysteries of Nature. 
 
 This continual reproduction of the number three is not acciden- 
 tal, nor without a profound meaning : and we shall find the same 
 repeated in all the Ancient philosophies. 
 
 The Egyptian Gods formed Triads, the third member in each 
 proceeding from the other two. Thus we have the Triad of Thebes, 
 Amun, Maut, and Kharso ; that of Philae, Osiris, Isis, and Horus ; 
 that of Elephantine and the Cataracts, Neph, Sate, and Anouke. 
 
 Osiris, Isis, and Horus were the Father, Mother, and Son ; the 
 latter being Light, the Soul of the World, the Son, the Protogonos 
 or First-Begotten. 
 
 Sometimes this Triad was regarded as SPIRIT, or the active 
 Principle or Generative Power ; MATTER, or the PASSIVE Principle 
 or Productive Capacity ; and the Universe, which proceeds from 
 the two Principles. 
 
 We also find in Egypt this Triad or Trinity ; Ammon-Ra. the 
 Creator : Osiris-Ra, the Giver of Fruitfulness ; Horus- Ra, the
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN'. 549 
 
 Queller of Light ; symbolized by the Summer, Autumn, and Spring 
 Sun. For the Egyptians had but three Seasons, the three gates of 
 the Temple ; and on account of the different effects of the Sun on 
 those three Seasons, the Deity appears in these three forms. 
 
 The Phoenician Trinity was Ulomos, Chusoros, and the Egg out 
 of which the Universe proceeded. 
 
 The Chaldean Triad consisted of Bel, [the Persian Zervana 
 Akherana], Oromasdes, and Ahriman ; the Good and Evil Prin- 
 ciple alike outflowing from the Father, by their equilibrium and 
 alternating preponderance to produce harmony. Each was to rule, 
 iji turn, for equal periods, until finally the Evil Principle should 
 itself become good. 
 
 The Chaldean and Persian oracles of Zoroaster give us the 
 Triad, Fire, Light, and Ether. 
 
 Orpheus celebrates the Triad of Phanes, Ouranos, and Kronos. 
 Corry says the Orphic Trinity consisted of Metis, Phanes, and Eri- 
 capaeus ; Will, Light or Love, and Life. Acusilaus makes it consist 
 of Metis, Eros, and yEther : Will, Love, and Ether. Phereycides 
 of Syros, of Fire, Water, and Air or Spirit. In the two former 
 we readily recognize Osiris and Isis, the Sun and the Nile. 
 
 The first three of the Persian Amshaspands were BAH MAN, the 
 Lord of LIGHT ; Arclibehest, the Lord of FIRE ; and Shariver, the 
 Lord of SPLENDOR. These at once lead us back to the Kabala. 
 
 Plutarch says : "The better and diviner nature consists of three ; 
 the Intelligible (/. c. that which exists within the Intellect only as 
 yet), and Matter; TO No^roz and & l~ty, and that which proceeds 
 from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos : of which Plato calls 
 the Intelligible, the Idea, the Exemplar, the Father : Matter, the 
 Mother, the Nurse, and the receptacle and place of generation : and 
 the issue of these two, the Offspring and Genesis." 
 
 The Pythagorean fragments say: "Therefore, before the Heaven 
 was made, there existed Idea and Matter, and God the Demiourgos 
 [workman or active instrument], of the former. He made the 
 world out of matter, perfect, only-begotten, with a soul and intel- 
 lect, and constituted it a divinity." 
 
 Plato gives us Thought, the Father ; Primitive Matter, the 
 Mother; and Kosmos, the Son, the issue of the two Principles. 
 Kosmos is the ensouled Universe. 
 
 With the later Platonists, the Triad was Potence, Intellect, and 
 Spirit. Philo represents Sanchoniathon's as Fire, Light, and Flame,
 
 55 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the three Sons of Genos; but this is the Alexandrian, not the 
 Phoenician idea. 
 
 Aurelius says the Demiourgos or Creator is triple, and the three 
 Intellects are the three Kings : He who exists ; He who possesses ; 
 He who beholds. The first is that which exists by its essence ; the 
 second exists in the first, and contains or possesses in itself the 
 Universal of things ; all that afterward becomes : the third be- 
 holds this Universal, formed and fashioned intellectually, and so 
 having a separate existence. The Third exists in the Second, and 
 tht: Second in the First. 
 
 The most ancient Trinitarian doctrine on record is that of the 
 Brahmins. The Eternal Supreme Essence, called PARABRAHMA, 
 BRAHM, PARATMA, produced the Universe by self-reflection, and 
 first revealed himself as BRAHMA, the Creating Power, then as 
 VISHNU, the Preserving Power, and lastly as SIVA, the Destroying 
 and Renovating Power ; the three Modes in which the Supreme 
 Essence reveals himself in the material Universe ; but which soon 
 came to be regarded as three distinct Deities. These three Deities 
 they styled the TRIMURTI, or TRIAD. 
 
 The Persians received from the Indians the doctrine of the 
 three principles, and changed it to that of a principle of Life, 
 which was individualized by the Sun, and a principle of Death, 
 which was symbolized by cold and darkness ; parallel of the moral 
 vvorld ; and in which the continual and alternating struggle be- 
 tween light and darkness, life and death, seemed but a phase of 
 the great struggle between the good and evil principles, embodied 
 in the legend of ORMUZD and AHRIMAN. MITHRAS, a Median 
 reformer, was deified after his death, and invested with the attri- 
 butes of the Sun ; the different astronomical phenomena being 
 figuratively detailed as actual incidents of his life ; in the same man- 
 ner as the history of BUDDHA was invented among the Hindus. 
 
 The Trinity of the Hindus became among the Ethiopians and 
 Abyssinians NEPH-AMON,PHTHA,and NEITH the God CREATOR, 
 whose emblem was a ram MATTER, or the primitive mud, sym- 
 bolized by a globe or an egg, and THOUGHT, or the LIGHT which 
 contains the germ of everything; triple manifestation of one and 
 the same God (ATHOM), considered in three aspects, as tliecrcative 
 fro-wcr goodness, and wisdom. Other Deities were speedily in- 
 vented : and among them OSIRIS, represented by the Sun, Isis, h ; s 
 wife, bv the Moon or Earth, TYPHON, his Brother, the Principle
 
 I'klNCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 551 
 
 of Evil and Darkness, who was the son of Osiris and Isis. And 
 the Trinity of OSIRIS, Isis, and HORUS became subsequently the 
 Chief Gods and objects of worship of the Egyptians. 
 
 The ancient Etruscans (a race that emigrated from the Rhaetian 
 Alps into Italy, along whose route evidences of their migration 
 have been discovered, and whose language none have yet succeeded 
 in reading) acknowledged only one Supreme God ; but they had 
 images for His different attributes, and temples to these images. 
 Each town had one National Temple, dedicated to the three great 
 attributes of God, STRENGTH, RICHES, and WISDOM, or Tina, 
 Talna, and Minerva. The National Deity was always a Triad 
 under one roof ; and it was the same in Egypt, where one Supreme 
 God alone was acknowledged, but was worshipped as a Triad, with 
 different names in each different home. Each city in Etruria 
 might have as many gods and gates and temples as it pleased ; but 
 three sacred gates, and one Temple to three Divine Attributes, were 
 obligatory, wherever the laws of Tages (or Tauut or Thoth) were 
 received. The only gate that remains in Italy, of the olden 
 time, undestroyed, is the Porta del Circo at Volterra; and it has 
 upon it the three heads of the three National Divinities, one upon 
 the keystone of its magnificent arch, and one above each side- 
 pillar. 
 
 The Buddhists hold that the God SAKYA of the Hindus, called 
 in Ceylon, GAUTAMA, in India beyond the Ganges, SOMONAKO- 
 DOM, and in China, CHY-KIA, or Fo, constituted a Trinity [TRi- 
 KATNA], of BUDDHA, DHARMA, and SANGA, Intelligence, La^\ 
 and Union or Harmony. 
 
 The Chinese Sabasans represented the Supreme Deity as com- 
 posed of CHANG-TI, the Supreme Sovereign; TIEN, the Heavens: 
 and TAO, the Universal Supreme Reason and Principle of Faith: 
 and that from Chaos, an immense silence, an immeasurable void, 
 without perceptible forms, alone, infinite, immutable, moving in a 
 circle in illimitable space, without change or alteration, when vivi- 
 fied by the Principle of Truth, issued all Beings, under the 
 influence of TAO, Principle of Faith, who produced one. one 
 produced two. two produced three, and three produced all 
 that is. 
 
 The Sclavono-Vendes typified the Trinity by the three heads of 
 the God TRIGLAV; and the Pruczi or Prussians by the Tri-une 
 God, PERKOUN, PIKOLLOS, and POTRIMPOS. the Deities of Light
 
 55^ MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and Thunder, of Hell and the Earth, its fruits and animals : and 
 the Scandinavians by ODIN, FREA, and THOR. 
 
 In the KABALAH, or the Hebrew traditional philosophy, the In- 
 finite Deity, beyond the reach of the Human Intellect, and without 
 Name, Form, or Limitation, was represented as developing Him- 
 self, in order to create, and by self-limitation, in ten emanations or 
 out-flowings, called SEPHIROTH, or rays. The first of these, in 
 the world AZILUTH, that is, within the Deity, was KETHER, or the 
 Crown, by which we understand the Divine Will or Potency. Next 
 came, as a pair, HAKEMAH and BAINAH, ordinarily translated 
 "Wisdom" and "Intelligence," the former termed the FATHER, 
 and the latter the MOTHER. HAKEMAH is the active Power or 
 Energy of Deity, by which He produces within Himself Intellec- 
 tion or Thinking: and BAINAH, the passive Capacity, from which, 
 acted on by the Power, the Intellection flows. This Intellection is 
 called DAATH : and it is the " WORD, "of Plato and the Gnostics ; the 
 unuttered word, within the Deity. Here is the origin of the Trinity 
 of the Father, the Mother or Holy Spirit, and the Son or Word. 
 
 Another Trinity was composed of the fourth Sephirah, GEDU- 
 LAH or KHASED, Benignity or Mercy, also termed FATHER (Aba) ; 
 the ftfth, GEBURAH, Severity or Strict Justice, also termed the 
 MOTHER (Imma} ; and the sixth, the SON or Issue of these, TIPH- 
 ARETH, Beauty or Harmony. "Everything," says the SOHAR, 
 "proceeds according to the Mystery of the Balance" that is, by 
 the equilibrium of Opposites : and thus from the Infinite Mercy 
 and the Infinite Justice, in equilibrium, flows the perfect Har- 
 mony of the Universe. Infinite POWER, which is Lawless, and 
 Infinite WISDOM, in Equilibrium, also produce BEAUTY or HAR- 
 MONY, as Son, Issue, or Result the Word, or utterance of the 
 Thought of God. Power and Justice or Severity are the same: 
 Wisdom and Mercy or Benignity are the same ; in the Infinite 
 Divine Nature. 
 
 According to Philo of Alexandria, the Supreme Being, Primitive 
 Light or Archetype of Light, uniting with WISDOM [<Foc^], the 
 mother of Creation, forms in Himself the types of all things, 
 and acts upon the Universe through the WORD \_Aofo$ . . Logos], 
 who dwells in God, and in whom all His powers and attributes 
 develop themselves ; a doctrine borrowed by him from Plato. 
 
 Simon Magus and his disciples taught that the Supreme Being 
 or Centre of Light produced first of all, three couples of united
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 553 
 
 Existences, of both sexes, [Jy^r^wc. . .Suzupas], which were the 
 origins of all things: REASON and INVENTIVENESS; SPEECH and 
 THOUGHT; CALCULATION and REFLECTION : \_No~j? and Kxcvoca, 
 @(ony and A'vvwa, Ao-j-iff/w^ and Evft')[ir t (T)z. . . Nous and Epi- 
 noia, Phone and Ennoia.Logismos and Enthumesis] ; of which En- 
 noia or WISDOM was the first produced, and Mother of all that 
 exists. 
 
 Other Disciples of Simon, and with them most of the Gnostics, 
 adopting and modifying the doctrine, taught that the Jltyptoita 
 . . Pleroma, or PLENITUDE of Superior Intelligences, having the 
 Supreme Being at their head, was composed of eight Eons [.-/rwv^c 
 . . Aiones] of different sexes ; . . PROFUNDITY and SILENCE ; 
 SPIRIT and TRUTH ; the WORD and LIFE; MAN and the CHURCH : 
 [/A>#oc and -V'/J nvz'jjia and Aty&sia; Aofo^ and Zwr^ 
 Av&fKoxoc and Exxtyma. . . . Buthos and Sige ; Pneuma and 
 Aletheia ; Logos and Zoe ; Anthropos and Ekklesia] . 
 
 Bardesanes,whosedoctrines theSyrian Christians long embraced, 
 taught that the unknown Father, happy in the Plenitude of His 
 Life and Perfections, first produced a Companion for Himself 
 \_S')^>j-j-o^ . . . Suzugos] , whom He placed in the Celestial Paradise 
 and who became, by Him, the Mother of CHRISTOS, Son of the 
 Living God: i. c. (laying aside the allegory), that the Eternal 
 conceived, in the silence of His decrees, the Thought of revealing 
 Himself by a Being who should be His image or His Son : that to 
 the Son succeeded his Sister and Spouse, the Holy Spirit, and they 
 produced four Spirits of the elements, male and female, Maio and 
 Jabseho, Nouro and Rucho ; then Seven Mystic Couples of Spirits, 
 and Heaven and Earth, and all that is ; then seven spirits govern- 
 ing the planets, twelve governing the Constellations of the Zodiac, 
 and thirty-six Starry Intelligences whom he called Deacons : while 
 the Holy Spirit \Sophia Achamoth], being both the Holy Intelli- 
 gence and the Soul of the physical world, went from the Pleroma 
 into that material world and there mourned her degradation, until 
 CHRISTOS, her former spouse, coming to her with his Divine Light 
 and Love, guided her in the way to purification, and she again 
 united herself with him as his primitive Companion. 
 
 Basilides, the Christian Gnostic, taught that there were seven 
 emanations from the Supreme Being: The First-born, Thought, 
 the Word, Reflection, Wisdom, Power, and Righteousness 
 
 m^ Zo<fta,
 
 554 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and Jixaioffuvy Protogonos, Nous, Logos, Phronesis, Sophia, 
 Dunamis, and Dikarosune] ; from whom emanated other Intelli- 
 gences in succession, to the number, in all, of three hundred and 
 sixty-five ; which were God manifested, and composed the Pleni- 
 tude of the Divine Emanations, or the God Abraxas ; of which the 
 Thought [or Intellect, Nouz . . Nous] united itself, by baptism in 
 the river Jordan, with the man Jesus, servant [draxoi/oc. .Diakonos] 
 of the human race ; but did not suffer with Him ; and the disciples 
 of Basilides taught that' the Nous put on the appearance only of 
 humanity, and that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in His stead and 
 ascended into Heaven. 
 
 Basilides held that out of the unrevealed God, who is at the head 
 of the world of emanations, and exalted above all conception or 
 designation \^0 dxarovo/^atrroi, dyfyS^roc], were evolved seven 
 living, self-subsistent, ever-active hyposatized powers : 
 
 FIRST : THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 
 ist. Nous ...... NoZz ..... The Mind. 
 
 2d. LOGOS ..... Aofoz .... The Reason. 
 
 3d. Phronesis. . 0po\sr t ffiz . . The Thinking Power. 
 4th. Sophia. . . . loifca .... Wisdom. 
 
 SECOND: THE ACTIVE OR OPERATIVE POWER. 
 5th. Dunamis. . .duva/juz . . . Might, accomplishing the purposes 
 
 of Wisdom. 
 
 THIRD : THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES. 
 
 6th. Dikaiosune . Jtxaioffuvy Holiness or Moral Perfection. 
 7th. Eirene ..... Ecor^rj . . . Inward Tranquillity. 
 
 These Seven Powers (Auvafj.sc$ . . Dunameis), with the Primal 
 Ground out cf which they were evolved, constituted in his scheme 
 the llfHorq 0'fooa.c. [Prote Ogdoas], or First Octave, the root of all 
 Existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded to evolve 
 out of itself continually many gradations of existence, each 
 lower one being still the impression, the antctype, of the immedi- 
 ate higher one. He supposed there were 365 of these regions or 
 gradations, expressed by the mystical word A^na^a^ [Abraxas]. 
 
 The afitiazaz is thus interpreted, by the usual method of reck- 
 oning Greek letters numerically .... a, i . . /?, 2 . . />, 100 . . a, i . .
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN 555 
 
 6o..a, i.. c, 200=365: which is the whole Emanation -World, as 
 the development of the Supreme Being. 
 
 In the system of Basilides, Light, Life, Soul, and Good were 
 opposed to Darkness, Death, Matter, and Evil, throughout the 
 whole course of the Universe. 
 
 According to the Gnostic view, God was represented as the 
 immanent, incomprehensible and original source of all perfection ; 
 the unfathomable ABYSS (/?u#oc ..buthos), according to Valenti- 
 nus, exalted above all possibility of designation ; of whom, prop- 
 erly speaking, nothing can be predicated; the dxrovo//a<7rof of 
 Basilides, the 5>v of Philo. From this incomprehensible Essence 
 of God, an immediate transition to finite things is inconceivable. 
 Self -limitation is the first beginning of a communication of life on 
 the part of God the first passing of the hidden Deity into mani- 
 festation ; and from this proceeds all further self-developing 
 manifestation of the Divine Essence. From this primal link in the 
 chain of life there. are evolved, in the first place, the manifold 
 powers or attributes inherent in the divine Essence, which, until 
 that first self-comprehension, were all hidden in the Abyss of His 
 Essence. Each of these attributes presents the whole divine Es- 
 sence under one particular aspect; and to each, therefore, in this 
 respect, the title of God may appropriately be applied. These 
 Divine Powers evolving themselves to self-subsistence, become 
 thereupon the germs and principles of all further developments of 
 life. The life contained in them unfolds and individualizes itself 
 more and more, but in such a way that the successive grades of 
 this evolution of life continually sink lower and lower ; the spirits 
 become feebler, the further they are removed from the first link in 
 the series. 
 
 The first manifestation they termed rcpairy xardXr^'t^ kao- 
 roD, [prote katalepsis heautou] or npcorov xaTaty-Tov TOO 
 &ou [proton Katalcpton ton Theon] ; which was hypostatically 
 represented in a vouc or kofoz, [Nous or Logos]. 
 
 In the Alexandrian Gnosis, the Platonic notion of the D/jy 
 [Hule] predominates. This is the dead, the unsubstantial the 
 boundary that limits from without the evolution of life in its 
 gradually advancing progression, whereby the Perfect is ever evolv- 
 ing itself into the less Perfect. This uty again, is represented 
 under various images ; at one time as the darkness that exists 
 alongside of the light ; at another, as the void [xe^wjua,
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Kenoma, Kenon], in opposition to the Fullness, [ 
 .... Pleroma] of the Divine Life ; or as the shadow that accom- 
 panies the light; or as the chaos, or the sluggish, stagnant, dark 
 water. This matter, dead in itself, possesses by its own nature no 
 inherent tendency ; as life of every sort is foreign to it, itself makes 
 no encroachment on the Divine. As, however, the evolutions of 
 the Divine Life (the essences developing themselves out of the 
 progressive emanation) become feebler, the further they are 
 removed from the first link in the series ; and as their connection 
 with the first becomes looser at each successive step, there arises 
 at the last step of the evolution, an imperfect, defective product, 
 which, unable to retain its connection with the chain of Divine 
 Life, sinks from the World of Eons into the material chaos : or, 
 according to the same notion, somewhat differently expressed 
 [according to the Ophites and to Bardesanes], a drop from the 
 fullness of the Divine life bubbles over into the bordering void. 
 Hereupon the dead matter, by commixture with the living prin- 
 ciple, which it wanted, first of all receives animation. But, at the 
 same time, also, the divine, the living, becomes corrupted by min- 
 gling with the chaotic mass. Existence now multiplies itself. 
 There arises a subordinate, defective life ; there is ground for a 
 new world ; a creation starts into being, beyond the confines of 
 the world of emanation. But, on the other hand, since the chaotic 
 principle of matter has acquired vitality, there now arises a more 
 distinct and more active opposition to the God-like a barely neg- 
 ative, blind, ungodly nature-power, which obstinately resists all 
 influence of the Divine; hence, as products of the spirit of the 
 5/5?, (of the 7TVy/u uhxov . . Pneuma Hulikon), are Satan, ma- 
 lignant spirits, wicked men, in none of whom is there any reason- 
 able or moral principle, or any principle of a rational will ; but blind 
 passions alone have the ascendency. In them there is the same con- 
 flict, as the scheme of Platonism supposes, between the soul under 
 the guidance of Divine reason [the vois. .Nous], and the soul 
 blindly resisting reason between the irpovoia [pronoia] and the 
 avayrj [anage], the Divine Principle and the natural. 
 
 The Syrian Gnosis assumed the existence of an active, turbulent 
 kingdom of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroachments on 
 the kingdom of light, brought about a commixture of the light 
 with the darkness, of the God-like with the ungodlike. 
 
 Even among- the Platonists, some thought that along with an
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 557 
 
 organized, inert matter, the substratum of the corporeal world, 
 there existed from the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, 
 an ungodlike soul, as its original motive and active principle. As 
 the inorganic matter was organized into a corporeal world, by the 
 plastic power of the Deity, so, by the same power, law and reason 
 were communicated to that turbulent, irrational soul. Thus the 
 chaos of the vty was transformed into an organized world, and 
 that blind soul into a rational principle, a mundane soul, anima- 
 ting the Universe. As from the latter proceeds all rational, spirit- 
 ual life in humanity, so from the former proceeds all that is irra- 
 tional, all that is under the blind sway of passion and appetite ; 
 and all malignant spirits are its progeny. 
 
 In one respect all the Gnostics agreed : they all held, that there 
 was a world purely emanating out of. the vital development of 
 God, a creation evolved directly out of the Divine Essence, far 
 exalted above any outward creation produced by God's plastic 
 power, and conditioned by pre-existing matter. They agreed 
 in holding that the framer of this low'er world was not the Father 
 of that higher world of emanation; but the Demiurge [J;//fOM/>- 
 7-0-], a being of a kindred nature with the Universe framed and 
 governed by him, and far inferior to that higher system and the 
 Father of it. 
 
 But some, setting out from ideas which had long prevailed 
 among certain Jews of Alexandria, supposed that the Supreme 
 God created and governed the world by His ministering spirits, 
 by the angels. At the head of these angels stood one who had 
 the direction and control of all ; therefore called the Artificer and 
 Governor of the World. This Demiurge they compared with the 
 plastic, animating, mundane spirit of Plato and the Platonists 
 [the dz'jTznot; $soc . . Deuteros Theos; the dz<>z j's^roc . . . 
 Theos Genetos] , who, moreover, according to the Timseus of Plato, 
 strives to represent the IDEA of the Divine Reason, in that which 
 is becoming (as contradistinguished from that which is} and tem- 
 poral. This angel is a representative of the Supreme God. on 
 the lower stage of existence : he does not act independently, but 
 merely according to the ideas inspired in him by the Supreme God : 
 just as the plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates all things 
 after the pattern of the ideas communicated by the Supreme 
 Reason [A r oLc .... Nous the # sffr: ^foov .... ho esti zoon the 
 7rapa8ety//,a . paradeigma. of the Divine Reason hypostatized j.
 
 558 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 But these ideas transcend his limited essence ; he cannot under- 
 stand them ; he is merely their unconscious organ ; and therefore 
 is unable himself to comprehend the whole scope and meaning of 
 the work which he performs. As an organ under the guidance of 
 a higher inspiration, he reveals higher truths than he himself can 
 comprehend. The mass of the Jews, they held, recognized not the 
 angel, by whom, in all the Theophanies of the Old Testament, 
 God revealed Himself; they knew not the Demiurge in his true 
 relation to the hidden Supreme God, who never reveals Himself in 
 the sensible world. They confounded the type and the archetype, 
 the symbol and the idea. They rose no higher than the Demiurge ; 
 they took him to be the Supreme God Himself. But the spiritual 
 men among them, on the contrary, clearly perceived, or at least 
 divined, the ideas veiled under Judaism ; they rose beyond the 
 Demiurge, to a knowledge of the Supreme God ; and are therefore 
 properly His worshippers [$/>a/Turar . .Therapeutai]. 
 
 Other Gnostics, who had not been followers of the Mosaic reli- 
 gion, but who had, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an 
 oriental Gnosis, regarded the Demiurge as a being absolutely 
 hostile to the Supreme God. He and his angels, notwithstanding 
 their finite nature, wish to establish their independence : they 
 will tolerate no foreign rule within their realm. Whatever of a 
 higher nature descends into their kingdom, they seek to hold 
 imprisoned there, lest it should raise itself above their narrow pre- 
 cincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the Demiurgic 
 Angels corresponded, for the most part, with that of the deceitful 
 Star-Spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile him 
 by various arts of deception, and who exercise a tyrannical sway 
 over the things of this world. Accordingly, in the system of 
 these Sabseans, the seven Planet-Spirits, and the twelve Star-Spirits 
 of the zodiac, who sprang from an irregular connection between 
 the cheated Fctahil and the Spirit of Darkness, play an impor- 
 tant part in everything that is bad. The Demiurge is a limited 
 and limiting being, proud, jealous, and revengeful ; and this his 
 character betrays itself in the Old Testament, which, the Gnostics 
 held, came from him. They transferred to the Demiurge him- 
 self, whatever in the idea of God, as presented by the Old Testa- 
 ment, appeared to them defective. Against his will and rule the 
 5/w was continually rebelling, revolting without control against 
 the dominion which he. the fashioner, would exercise over it,
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 559 
 
 casting off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had 
 begun. The same jealous being, limited in his power, ruling with 
 despotic sway, they imagined they saw in nature. He strives to 
 check the germination of the divine seeds of life which the Su- 
 preme God of Holiness and Love, who has no connection what- 
 ever with the sensible world, has scattered among men. That per- 
 fect God was at most known and worshipped in Mysteries by a 
 few spiritual men. 
 
 The Gospel of St. John is in great measure a polemic against 
 the Gnostics, whose different sects, to solve the great problems, 
 the creation of a material world by an immaterial Being, the fall 
 of man, the incarnation, the redemption and restoration of the 
 spirits called men, admitted a long series of intelligences, inter- 
 vening in a series of spiritual operations ; and which they desig- 
 nated by the names. The Beginning, the Word, the Only-Begotten, 
 Life, Light, and Spirit [Ghost]: in Greek, '-/,"#? ^r ^ M- 
 vofsvrjz, Zcoy, 0wc, and Ilusyfta [Arche, Logos, Monogenes, 
 Zoe, Phos, and Pneuma] . St. John, at the beginning of his Gospel, 
 avers that it was Jesus Christ who existed in the Beginning; that 
 He was the WORD of God by which everything was made ; that He 
 was the Only-Begotten, the Life and the Light, and that He diffuses 
 among men the Holy Spirit [or Ghost] , the Divine Life and Light. 
 
 So the Pleroma [/Lty/w/iflfJ, Plenitude or Fullness, was a favor- 
 ite term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnos- 
 tic Eons ; and the Simonians, Dokctes, and other Gnostics held 
 that the Eon Christ Jesus was never really, but only apparently 
 clothed with a human body : but St. John replies that the Word 
 did really become Flesh, and dwelt among us ; and that in Him 
 were the Plerorra and Truth and Grace. 
 
 In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, 
 God was a perfect Being, an Abyss \_ttu&o$ . . Buthos], which no 
 intelligence could sound, because no eye could reach the invisible 
 and ineffable heights on which He dwelt, and no mind could 
 comprehend the duration .of His existence ; He has always been ; 
 He is the Primitive Father and Beginning 1 [the npo-arwr) and 
 H(>oaf>yf] . . Propator and Proarche] : He will HE always, and does 
 not grow old. The development of His Perfections produced 
 the intellectual world. After having passed infinite ages in repose 
 and silence, He manifested Himself by His Thought, source of all 
 His manifestations, and which received from Him the germ of His
 
 ^fx> MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 creations. Being of His Being-, His Thought [/vW><r . . Ennoia] 
 is also termed A'aorc [Charis], Grace or Joy, and --'/'' or Ano^- 
 ruv [Sige or Arreton], Silence or the Ineffable. Its first mani- 
 festation was Nous [Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, 
 commencement of all things, first revelation of the Divinity, the 
 .VuKOT-ewfc [Monogenes], or Only-Begotten: next, Truth [/%- 
 &tta . . Aletheia] , his companion. Their manifestations were the 
 Word [,4 ofoc . . Logos] and Life \7jMT t . . Zoe] ; and theirs, Man 
 and the Church [AvfrpOKOS and Exxbjaca . . Anthropos and 
 Ekklesia] : and from these, other twelve, six of whom were Hope, 
 Faith, Charity, Intelligence, Happiness, and Wisdom; or, in the 
 Hebrew, Kesten, Kina, Amphe, Onananim, Thaedes, and Oubina. 
 The harmony of the Eons, struggling to know and be united to 
 the Primitive God, was disturbed, and to redeem and restore them, 
 the Intelligence [A f o^c] produced Christ and the Holy Spirit His 
 companion ; who restored them to their first estate of happiness 
 and harmony ; and thereupon they formed the Eon Jesus, born 
 of a Virgin, to whom the Christos united himself in baptism, and 
 who, with his Companion Sophia-Achamoth, saved and redeemed 
 the world. 
 
 The Marcosians taught that the Supreme Deity produced by His 
 words the Aufuz [Logos] or Plenitude of Eons: His first utter- 
 ance was a syllable of four letters, each of which became a being; 
 His second of four, His third of ten, and His fourth of twelve : 
 thirty in all, which constituted the IItypa)fjia [Pleroma]. 
 
 The Yalentinians, and others of the Gnostics, distinguished 
 three orders of existences : ist. The divine germs of life, exalted 
 by their nature above matter, and akin to the -oc>.a [Sophia], to 
 the mundane soul and to the Pleroma : the spiritual natures, 
 (f'jffzez 7:^ti>fj.arcxai [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2cl. The natures 
 originating in the life, divided from the former by the mixture of 
 the 5/^, the psvchical natures, <fjaztz </"j%:zat [Phuseis Psuchi- 
 kai] ; with which begins a perfectly new order of existence, an 
 image of that higher mind and system, in a subordinate grade ; 
 and finally, 3d. The Ungodlike or Hylic Nature, which resists all 
 amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy the nature 
 of blind lust and passion. 
 
 The nature of the xvt'Juarc/Mv [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is 
 essential relationship with G<xl (the Ofioo'jatoy rw $za> . . Homo- 
 ousion to Theo) : hence the 'ife of Unity, the undivided, the
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN 561 
 
 absolutely simple (obela kvcxy, //ovoe^; . , Ousia henike, mo- 
 noeides). 
 
 The essence of the $u%exoi [psuchikoi] is disruption into 
 multiplicity, manifoldness ; which, however, is subordinate to a 
 higher unity, by which it allows itself to be guided, first uncon- 
 sciously, then consciously. 
 
 The essence of the uhxot [Hulikoi] (of whom Satan is the 
 head), is the direct opposite to all unity; disruption and disunion 
 in itself, without the least sympathy, without any point of coales- 
 cence whatever for unity ; together with an effort to destroy all 
 unity, to extend its own inherent disunion to everything, and to 
 rend everything asunder. This principle has no power to posit 
 anything ; but only to negative : it is unable to create, to produce, 
 to form, but only to destroy, to decompose. 
 
 By Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, the idea of a Aoynz TO'J 
 ovroc [Logos Tou Ontos], of a WORD, manifesting the hidden 
 Divine Essence, in the Creation, was spun out into the most subtle 
 details the entire creation being, in his view, a continuous utter- 
 ance of the Ineffable. The way in which the germs of divine life 
 [the (j-znitara -^z^jjio-ixa . . spermata pneumatika], which lie 
 shut up in the Eons, continually unfold and individmlize them- 
 selves more and more, is represented as a spontaneous analysis of 
 the several names of the Ineffable, into their several sounds. An 
 echo of the Pleroma falls down into the uAy [Hule], and becomes 
 the forming principle of a new but lower creation. 
 
 One formula of the pneumatical baptism among the Gnostics 
 ran thus: "In the NAME which is hidden from all the Divinities 
 and Powers" [of the Demiurge], "The Name of Truth" [the 
 AfyfHtf* [Aletheia], self-manifestation of the Buthos], which 
 Jesus of Nazareth has put on in the light-zones of Christ, the 
 living Christ, through the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of the 
 angels, the Name by which all things attain to Perfection." The 
 candidate then said : "I am established and redeemed : I am 
 redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all that belongs to 
 it, .by the name of "IIT, who has redeemed the Soul of Jesus by the 
 living Christ." The assembly then said: "Peace (or Salvation) to 
 all on whom this name rests !" 
 
 The boy Dionusos, torn in pieces, according to the Bacchic 
 Mysteries, by the Titans, was considered by the Manicheans as 
 simply representing the Soul, swallowed up by the powers of dark-
 
 562 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ness, the divine life rent into fragments by matter: that part 
 of the luminous essence of the primitive man [the -ptarot; 
 ai>$ t ott)7ro<; [Protos Anthropos] of Mani, the "paioy avfipioxoi; 
 [Praon Anthropos] of the Valentinians, the Adam Kadmon of 
 the Kabalah; and the Kaiomorts of the Zendavesta], swallowed 
 up by the powers of darkness ; the Mundane Soul, mixed with 
 matter the seed of divine life, which had fallen into matter, and 
 had thence to undergo a process of purification and development. 
 
 The FvLoai^ [Gnosis] of Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes 
 consisted in the knowledge of one Supreme Original being, the 
 highest unity, from whom all existence has emanated, and to 
 whom it strives to return. The finite spirits that rule over the 
 several portions of the Earth, seek to counteract this universal 
 tendency to unity; and from their influence, their laws, and 
 arrangements, proceeds all that checks, disturbs, or limits the 
 original communion, which is the basis of nature, as the outward 
 manifestation of that highest Unity. These spirits, moreover, 
 seek to retain under their dominion the souls which, emanating 
 from the highest Unity, and still partaking of its nature, have 
 lapsed into the corporeal world, and have there been imprisoned 
 in bodies, in order, under their dominion, to be kept within 
 the cycle of migration. From these finite spirits, the popular 
 religions of different nations derive their origin. But the souls 
 which, from a reminiscence of their former condition, soar upward 
 to the contemplation of that higher Unity, reach to such perfect 
 freedom and repose, as nothing afterward can disturb or limit, 
 and rise superior to the popular deities and religions. As examples 
 of this sort, they named Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Christ. 
 They made no distinction between the latter and the wise and 
 good men of every nation. They taught that any other soul 
 which could soar to the same height of contemplation, might be 
 regarded as equal with Him. 
 
 The Ophites commenced their system with a Supreme Being, 
 long unknown to the Human race, and still so to the greater 
 number of men; the Buftoz [Buthos], or Profundity, Source- of 
 Light, and of Adam-Kadmon, the Primitive Man, made by the 
 Demiourgos, but perfected by the Supreme God by the communi- 
 cation to him of the Spirit [flveufjia . . Pneuma]. The first 
 emanation was the Thought of the Supreme Deity [the Evvota . . 
 Ennoia], the conception of the Universe in the Thought of God.
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 563 
 
 This Thought, called al-so Silence (lepj Sige), produced the 
 Spirit [IhsLtpa . . Pneuma], Mother of the Living, and Wis- 
 dom of God. Together with this Primitive Existence, Matter 
 existed also (the Waters, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos), eternal 
 like' the Spiritual Principle. Buthos and His Thought, uniting 
 with Wisdom, made her fruitful by the Divine Light, and she pro- 
 duced -a perfect and an imperfect being, Christos, and a Second and 
 inferior wisdom,.S0/>/u'a-^c/iaw0//^who falling into chaos remained 
 entangled there, became enfeebled, and lost all knowledge of the 
 Superior Wisdom that gave her birth. Communicating move- 
 ment to Chaos, she produced laldabaoth, the Demiourgos, Agent 
 of Material Creation, and then ascended toward her first place in 
 the scale of creation. laldabaoth produced an angel that was his 
 image, and this a second, and so on in succession to the sixth after 
 the Demiourgos : the seven being reflections one of the other, yet 
 different and inhabiting seven distinct regions. The names of 
 the six thus produced were IAO, SABAOTH, ADONAI, ELOI, ORAI, 
 and ASTAPHAI. laldabaoth, to become independent of his mother, 
 and to pass for the Supreme Being, made the world, and man, in 
 his own image ; and his mother caused the Spiritual principle to 
 pass from him into man so made ; and henceforward the contest 
 between the Demiourgos and his mother, between light and dark- 
 ness, good and evil, was concentrated in man ; and the image of 
 laldabaoth, reflected upon matter,became the Serpent-Spirit, Satan, 
 the Evil Intelligence. Eve, created by laldabaoth, had by his Sons 
 children that were angels like themselves. The Spiritual light was 
 withdrawn from man bySophia,and the world surrendered to the in- 
 fluence of evil ; until the Spirit, urged by the entreaties of Wisdom, 
 induced the Supreme Being to send Christos to redeem it. Compel- 
 led, despite himself, by his Mother, laldabaoth caused the man Jesus 
 to be born of a Virgin, and the Celestial Saviour, uniting with his 
 Sister, Wisdom, descended through the regions of the seven angels, 
 appeared in each under the form of its chief, concealed his own, 
 and entered with his sister into the man Jesus at the baptism 
 in Jordan. laldabaoth, finding that Jesus was destroying his 
 empire and abolishing his worship, caused the Jews to hate and 
 crucify Him ; before which happened, Christos and Wisdom had 
 ascended to the celestial regions. They restored Jesus to life and 
 gave Him an ethereal body, in which He remained eighteen months 
 on earth, and receiving from Wisdom the perfect knowledge
 
 564 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 . . Gnosis], communicated it to a small number of His 
 apostles, and then arose to the intermediate region inhabited by 
 laldabaoth, where, unknown to him, He sits at his right hand, 
 taking from him the Souls of Light purified by Christos. When 
 nothing of the Spiritual world shall remain subject to laldabaoth, 
 the redemption will be accomplished, and the end of the world, 
 the completion of the return of Light into the Plenitude, will occur. 
 
 Tatian adopted the theory of Emanation, of Eons, of the exist- 
 ence of a God too sublime to allow Himself to be known, but dis- 
 playing Himself by Intelligences emanating from His bosom. The 
 first of these was His spirit [77veu//a . . PneumaJ, God Himself, 
 God thinking, God conceiving the Universe. The second was the 
 Word [/io^oc . . Logos], no longer merely the Thought or Con- 
 ception, but the Creative Utterance, manifestation of the Divinity, 
 but emanating from the Thought or Spirit ; the First-Begotten, 
 author of the visible creation. This was the Trinity, composed of 
 the Father, Spirit, and Word. 
 
 The Elxa'ites adopted the Seven Spirits of'the Gnostics; but 
 named them Heaven, Water, Spirit,, The Holy Angels of Prayer, 
 Oil, Salt, and the Earth. 
 
 The opinion of the Doketes as to the human nature of Jesus 
 Christ, was that most generally received among the Gnostics. 
 They deemed the intelligences of the Superior World too pure and 
 too much the antagonists of matter, to be willing to unite with it : 
 and held that Christ, an Intelligence of the first rank, in appear- 
 ing upon the earth, did not become confounded with matter, but 
 took upon Himself only the appearance of a body, or at the most 
 used it only as an envelope. 
 
 Noe'tus termed the Son the first Utterance of the Father; the 
 Word, not by Himself, as an Intelligence, and unconnected with 
 the flesh, a real Son ; but a Word, and a perfect Only-Begotten : 
 light emanated from the Light ; water flowing from its spring ; a 
 ray emanated from the Sun. 
 
 Paul of Samosata taught that Jesus Christ was the Son of 
 Joseph and Mary ; but that the Word, Wisdom, or Intelligence of 
 God, the A r ouc[Nous] of the Gnostics, had united itself with Him, 
 so that He might be said to be at once the Son of God, and God 
 Himself. 
 
 Arius called the Saviour the first of creatures, non-emanated 
 from God, but really created, by the direct will of God, before time
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 565 
 
 and the ages. According la the Church, Christ was of the same 
 nature as God ; according to some dissenters, of the same nature 
 as man. Arius adopted the theory of a nature analogous to both. 
 When God resolved to create the Human race, He made a Being 
 which He called THE WORD, THE SON, WISDOM [Ao-foz, ^W, 
 2,'o<fia . . Logos, Uios, Sophia], to the end that He might give 
 existence to men. This WORD is the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the 
 Ensoph of the Kabalah, the Nou<; [Nous] of Platonism and Phi- 
 lonism, and the 2o<f>ia or defltfoupfoc [Sophia or Demiourgos] 
 of the Gnostics. He distinguished the Inferior Wisdom, or the 
 daughter, from the Superior Wisdom ; the latter being in God, 
 inherent in His nature, and incapable of communication to any 
 creature : the second, by which the Son was made, communicated 
 itself to Him, and therefore He Himself was entitled to be called 
 the Word and the Son. 
 
 Manes, founder of the Sect of the Manicheans, who had lived 
 and been distinguished among the Persian Magi, profited by the 
 doctrines of Scythianus, a Kabalist or Judaizing Gnostic of the 
 times of the Apostles ; and knowing those of Bardesanes and Har- 
 monius, derived his doctrines from Zoroasterism, Christianity, and 
 Gnosticism. He claimed to be the /7/>ax/-^roc [Parakletos] or 
 Comforter, in the Sense of a Teacher, organ of the Deity, but not 
 in that of the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost : and commenced his 
 Epistola Fundamenti in these words : "Manes, Apostle of Jesus 
 Christ, elect of God the Father; Behold the Words of Salvation, 
 emanating from the living and eternal fountain." The dominant 
 idea of his doctrine was Pantheism, derived by him from its source 
 in the regions of India and on the confines of China : that the 
 cause of all that exists is in God; and at last, God is all in all. 
 All souls are equal God is in all, in men, animals, and plants. 
 There arc two Gods, one of Good and the other of Evil, each inde- 
 pendent, eternal, chief of a distinct Empire ; necessarily, and of 
 their very natures, hostile to one another. The Evil God, Satan, is 
 the Genius of matter alone. The God of Good is infinitely his 
 Superior, the True God ; while the other is but the chief of all 
 that is the Enemy of God, and must in the end succumb to His 
 Power. The Empire of Light alone is eternal and true : and this 
 Empire is a great chain of Emanations, all connected with the 
 Supreme Being which they make manifest; all HIM, under differ- 
 ent forms, chosen for one end, the triumph of the Good. In each 
 57
 
 566 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of His members lie hidden thousands of ineffable treasures. Ex- 
 cellent in His Glory, incomprehensible in His Greatness, the 
 Father has joined to Himself those fortunate and glorious Eons 
 [./.'ojv^c . .Aiones], whose Power and Number it is impossible 
 to determine. This is Spinoza's Infinity of Infinite Attributes of 
 God. Twelve Chief Eons, at the head of all, were the Genii of 
 the twelve Constellations of the Zodiac, and called by Manes, 
 Olamin. Satan, also, Lord of the Empire of Darkness, had an 
 Army of Eons or Demons, emanating from his Essence, and re- 
 flecting more or less his image, but divided and inharmonious 
 among themselves. A war among them brought them to the con- 
 fines of the Realm of Light. Delighted, they sought to conquer 
 it. But the Chief of the Celestial Empire created a Power which 
 he placed on the frontiers of Heaven to protect his Eons, and de- 
 stroy the Empire of Evil. This was the Mother of Life, the Soul 
 of the World, an Emanation from the Supreme Being, too pure to 
 come in immediate contact with matter. It remained in the high- 
 est region ; but produced a Son, the first Man [the Kaiomorts, 
 Adam-Kadmon, UpoTOZ Av$ptoito$ [Protos Anthropos,] and 
 Hivil-Zivah ; of the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnosis, and 
 Sabeism] ; who commenced the contest with the Powers of Evil, 
 but, losing part of his panoply, of his Light, his Son and many 
 souls born of the Light, who were devoured by the darkness, God 
 sent to his assistance the living Spirit, or the Son of the First Man 
 [Te(?<? Av&p(bxou . . . Uios Anthropou], or Jesus Christ. Th? 
 Mother of Life, general Principle of Divine Life, and the first 
 Man, Primitive Being that reveals the Divine Life, are too sub- 
 lime to be connected with the Empire of Darkness. The Son of 
 Man or Soul of the World, enters into the Darkness, becomes its 
 captive, to end by tempering and softening its savage nature. The 
 Divine Spirit, after having brought back the Primitive Man to the 
 Empire of Light, raises above the world that part of the Celestial 
 Soul that remained unaffected by being mingled with the Empire 
 of Darkness. Placed in the region of the Sun and Moon, this 
 pure soul, the Son of Man, the Redeemer or Christ, labors to de- 
 liver and attract to Himself that part of the Light or of the Soul 
 of the First Man diffused through matter; which done, the world 
 will cease to exist. To retain the rays of Light still remaining 
 among his Eons, and ever tending to escape and return, by con- 
 centrating them, the Prince of Darkness, with their consent, made
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 567 
 
 Adam, whose soul was of the Divine Light, contributed by the 
 Eons, and his body of matter, so that he belonged to both Em- 
 pires, that of Light and that of Darkness. To prevent the light 
 from escaping at once, the Demons forbade Adam to eat the fruit 
 of "knowledge of good and evil," by which he would have known 
 the Empire of Light and that of Darkness. He obeyed ; an Angel 
 of Light induced him to transgress, and gave him the means of 
 victory ; but the Demons created Eve, who seduced him into an 
 act of Sensualism, that enfeebled him, and bound him anew in the 
 bonds of matter. This is repeated in the case of every man that 
 lives. 
 
 To deliver the soul, captive in darkness, the Principle of Light, 
 or Genius of the Sun, charged to redeem the Intellectual World, 
 of which he is the type, came to manifest Himself among men. 
 Light appeared in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it 
 not ; according to the w r ords of St. John. The Light could not 
 unite with the darkness. It but put on the appearance of a hu- 
 man body, and took the name of Christ in the Messiah, only to 
 accommodate itself to the language of the Jews. The Light did 
 its work, turning the Jews from the adoration of the Evil Princi- 
 ple, and the Pagans from the worship of Demons. But the Chief 
 of the Empire of Darkness caused Him to be crucified by the Jews. 
 Still He suffered in appearance only, and His death gave to all souls 
 the symbol of their enfranchisement. The person of Jesus hav- 
 ing disappeared, there was seen in His place a cross of Light, over 
 which a celestial voice pronounced these words : "The cross of 
 Light is called The Word, Christ, The Gate, Joy, The Bread, The 
 Sun, The Resurrection, Jesus, The Father, The Spirit, Life, Truth, 
 and Grace." 
 
 With the Priscillianists there were two principles, one the 
 Divinity, the other, Primitive Matter and Darkness ; each eternal. 
 Satan is the son and lord of matter; and the secondary angels and 
 demons, children of matter. Satan created and governs the visible 
 world. But the soul of man emanated from God, and is of the 
 same substance with God. Seduced by the evil spirits, it passes 
 through various bodies, until, purified and reformed, it rises to 
 God and is strengthened by His light. These powers of evil hold 
 mankind in pledge ; and to redeem this pledge, the Saviour, Christ 
 the Redeemer, came and died upon the cross of expiation, thus 
 discharging the written obligation. He. like all souls, was of the
 
 568 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 same substance with God, a manifestation of the Divinity, not 
 forming a second person ; unborn, like the Divinity, and nothing 
 else than the Divinity under another form. 
 
 It is useless to trace these vagaries further ; and we stop at the 
 frontiers of the realm of the three hundred and sixty-five thousand 
 emanations of the Mandaites from the Primitive Light, Fira or 
 Ferho and Yavar; and return contentedly to the simple and sub- 
 lime creed of Masonry. 
 
 Such were some of the ancient notions concerning the Deity ; and 
 taken in connection with what has been detailed in the preceding 
 Degrees, this Lecture affords you a true picture of the ancient 
 speculations. From the beginning until now, those who have 
 undertaken to solve the great mystery of the creation of a material 
 universe by an Immaterial Deity, have interposed between the two, 
 and between God and man, divers manifestations of, or emana- 
 tions from, or personified attributes or agents of, the Great Supreme 
 God, who is coexistent with Time and coextensive with Space. 
 
 The universal belief of the Orient was, that the Supreme Being 
 did not Himself create either the earth or man. The fragment 
 which commences the Book of Genesis, consisting of the first 
 chapter and the three first verses of the second, assigns the creation 
 or rather the formation or modelling of the world from matter 
 already existing in confusion, not to IHUI-I, but to the ALIIIM, wc-11 
 known as Subordinate Deities, Forces, or Manifestations, among 
 the Phoenicians. Thesecond fragment imputes it tolHUH-ALHlM,* 
 and St. John assigns the creation to the Aofoq, or WORD; and 
 asserts that CHRIST was that \YoRD, as well as LIGHT and LIFE, 
 other emanations from the Great Primeval Deity, to which other 
 faiths had assigned the work of creation. 
 
 An absolute existence, wholly immaterial, in no way within the 
 reach of our senses ; a cause, but not an effect, that never was not, 
 but existed during an infinity of eternities, before there was any- 
 thing else except Time and Space, is wholly beyond the reach of our 
 conceptions. The mind of man has wearied itself in speculations as 
 to His nature. His essence, His attributes ; and ended in being no 
 wiser than it began. In the impossibility of conceiving of imma- 
 teriality, we feel at sea and lost whenever we go beyond the domain 
 of matter. And yet we know that there are Powers, Forces, Causes, 
 
 *Tke Substance, or Very Self, of which the Alohayim are the manifestations.
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 569 
 
 that are themselves not matter. We give them names, but what 
 they really are, and what their essence, we are wholly ignorant. 
 
 But, fortunately, it does not follow that we may not believe, or 
 even know, that which we cannot explain ta ourselves, or that 
 which is beyond the reach of our comprehension. If we believed 
 only that which our intellect can grasp, measure, comprehend, and 
 have distinct and clear ideas of, we should believe scarce anything. 
 The senses are not the witnesses that bear testimony to us of the 
 loftiest truths. 
 
 Our greatest difficulty is, that language is not adequate to 
 express our ideas; because our words refer to things, and are 
 images of what is substantial and material. If we use the word 
 "emanation," our mind involuntarily recurs to something material, 
 floiving out of some other thing that is material ; and if we reject 
 this idea of materiality, nothing is left of the emanation but an 
 unreality. The word "thing" itself suggests to us that which is 
 material and within the cognizance and jurisdiction of the senses. 
 If we cut away from it the idea of materiality, it presents itself 
 to us as no thing, but an intangible unreality, which the mind 
 vainly endeavors to grasp. Existence and Being are terms that 
 have the same color of materiality ; and when we speak of a Power 
 or Force, the mind immediately images to itself one physical 
 and material thing acting upon another. Eliminate that idea; 
 and the Power or Force, devoid of physical characteristics, 
 seems as unreal as the shadow that dances on a wall, itself a 
 mere absence of light ; as spirit is to us merely that which is not 
 matter. 
 
 Infinite space and infinite time are the two primary ideas. We 
 formulize them thus : add body to body and sphere to sphere, until 
 the imagination wearies ; and still there will remain beyond, a void, 
 empty, unoccupied SPACE, limitless, because it is void. Add event 
 to event in continuous succession, forever and forever, and there 
 will still remain, before and after, a TIME in which there was and 
 will be no event, and also endless because it too is void. 
 
 Thus these two ideas of the boundlessness of space and the end- 
 lessness of time seem to involve the ideas that matter and events 
 are limited and finite. We cannot conceive of an infinity of 
 worlds or of events; but only of an indefinite number of each; 
 for, as we struggle to conceive of their infinity, the thought ever 
 occurs in despite of all our efforts therr> must be space in which
 
 5JO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 there are no worlds ; there must have been time when there were 
 
 no events. 
 
 We cannot conceive how, if this earth moves millions of millions 
 of miles a million times repeated, it is still in the centre of space; 
 nor how, if we lived millions of millions of ages and centuries, we 
 should still be in the centre of eternity with still as much space 
 on one side as on the other ; with still as much time before us as 
 behind ; for that seems to say that the world has not moved nor 
 we lived at all. 
 
 Nor can we comprehend how an infinite series of worlds, added 
 together, is no larger than an infinite series of atoms ; or an infi- 
 nite series of centuries no longer than an infinite series of seconds ; 
 both being alike infinite, and therefore one series containing no 
 more nor fewer units than the other. 
 
 Nor have we the capacity to form in ourselves any idea of that 
 which is immaterial. We use the word, but it conveys to us only 
 the idea of the absence and negation of materiality ; which van- 
 ishing. Space and Time alone, infinite and boundless, seem to us 
 to be left. 
 
 We cannot form any conception of an effect without a cause. 
 We cannot but believe, indeed we know, that, how far soever we 
 may have to run back along the chain of effects and causes, it can- 
 not be infinite; but we must come at last to something which is 
 not an effect, but the first cause : and yet the fact is literally be- 
 yond our comprehension. The mind refuses to grasp the idea of 
 .^//"-existence, of existence without a beginning. As well expect 
 the hair that grows upon our head to understand the nature and 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 It does not need to go so far in search of mysteries ; nor have 
 we any right to disbelieve or doubt the existence of a Great First 
 Cause, itself no effect, because we cannot comprehend it ; because 
 the words we use do not even express it to us adequately. 
 
 We rub a needle for a little while, on a dark, inert mass of iron 
 ore, that had lain idle in the earth for many centuries. Something 
 is thereby communicated to the steel we term it a virtue, a power, 
 or a quality and then we balance it upon a pivot; and, lo! drawn 
 by some invisible, mysterious Power, one pole of the needle turns 
 to the North, and there the same Power keeps the same pole for 
 days and years ; will keep it there, perhaps, as long as the world 
 lasts, carry the needle where you will, and no matter what seas or
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN'. 571 
 
 mountains intervene between it and the North Pole of the world. 
 And this Power, thus acting, and indicating to the mariner his 
 course over the trackless ocean, when the stars shine not for many 
 days, saves vessels from shipwreck, families from distress, and 
 those from sudden death on whose lives the fate of nations and the 
 peace of the world depend. But for it, Napoleon might never" 
 have reached the ports of France on his return from Egypt, nor 
 Nelson lived to fight and win at Trafalgar. Men call this Power 
 Magnetism, and then complacently think that they hive explained 
 it all ; and yet they have but ^'iven a new name to an unknown 
 thing, to hide their ignorance. What is this wonderful Power? 
 It is a real, actual, active Power : that we know and see. But what 
 its essence is, or how it acts, we do not know, any more than we 
 know the essence or the mode of action of the Creative Thought 
 and Word of God. 
 
 And again, what is that which we term galvanism and electri- 
 city, which, evolved by the action of a little acid on two metals, 
 aided by a magnet, circles the earth in a second, sending from land 
 to land the Thoughts that govern the transactions of individuals 
 and nations? The mind has formed no notion of matter, that 
 will include it; and no name that we can give it, helps us to un- 
 derstand its essence and its being. It is a Power, like Thought 
 and the Will. We know no more. 
 
 What is this power of gravitation that makes everything upon 
 the earth tend to the centre? How does it reach out its invisible 
 hands toward the erratic meteor-stones, arrest them in their swift 
 course, and draw them down to the earth's bosom? It is a power, 
 W r e know no more. 
 
 What is that heat which plays so wonderful a part in the world's 
 economy? that caloric, latent everywhere, within us and without 
 us, produced by combustion, by intense pressure, and by swift mo- 
 tion? Is it substance, matter, spirit, or immaterial, a mere Force 
 or State of Matter? 
 
 And what is light? A substance, say the books, matter, that 
 travels to us from the sun and stars, each raj separable into seven, 
 by the prism, of distinct colors, and with distinct peculiar quali- 
 ties and action. And if a substance, what is its essence, and what 
 power is inherent in it, by which it journeys incalculable myriads 
 of miles, and reaches us ten thousand years or more after it leaves 
 the stars ?
 
 5/2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 All power is equally a mystery. Apply intense cold to a drop 
 of water in the centre of a globe of iron, and the globe is shat- 
 tered as the water freezes. Confine a little of the same limpid ele- 
 ment in a cylinder which Enceladus or Typhon could not have 
 riven asunder, and apply to it intense heat, and the vast power 
 that couched latent in the water shivers the cylinder to atoms. A 
 little shoot from a minute seed, a shoot so soft and tender that the 
 least bruise would kill it, forces its way downward into the hard 
 earth, to the depth of many feet, with an energy wholly incom- 
 prehensible. What are these mighty forces, locked up in the small 
 seed and the drop of water? 
 
 Nay, what is LIFE itself, with all its wondrous, mighty ener- 
 gies, that power which maintains the heat within us, and pre- 
 vents our bodies, that decay so soon without it, from resolution 
 into their original elements Life, that constant miracle, the 
 nature and essence whereof have eluded all the philosophers ; and 
 all their learned dissertation, on it are a mere jargon of words? 
 
 No wonder the ancient Persians thought that Light and Life 
 were one, both emanations from the Supreme Deity, the arche- 
 type of light. No wonder that in their ignorance they worship- 
 ped the Sun. God breathed into man the spirit of life, not mat- 
 ter, but an emanation from Himself ; not a creature made by Him, 
 nor a distinct existence, but a Power, like His own Thought : and 
 light, to those great-souled ancients, also seemed no creature, and 
 no gross material substance, but a pure emanation from the Deity, 
 immortal and indestructible like Himself. 
 
 What, indeed, is REALITY? Our dreams are as real, while they 
 last, as the occurrences of the daytime. We see, hear, feel, act, 
 experience pleasure and suffer pain, as vividly and actually in a 
 dream as when awake. The occurrences and transactions of a 
 year are crowded into the limits of a second : and the dream 
 remembered is as real as the past occurrences of life. 
 
 The philosophers tell us that we have no cognizance of substance 
 itself, but only of its attributes: that when we sec that which we 
 call a block of marble, our perceptions give us information only 
 of something extended, solid, colored, heavy, and the like ; but 
 not of the very thing itself, to which these attributes belong. And 
 yet the attributes do not exist without the substance. They are 
 not substances, but adjectives. There is no such thing or exist- 
 ence as hardness, weight or color, by itself, detached from any sub-
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 573 
 
 ject, moving first here, then there, and attaching itself to this and 
 to the other subject. And yet, they say, the attributes are not the 
 subject. 
 
 So Thought, Volition, and Perception are not the soul, but its 
 attributes; and we have no cognizance of the soul itself, but only 
 of them, its manifestations. Nor of God ; but only of His Wis- 
 dom, Power, Magnificence, Truth, and other attributes. 
 
 And yet we know that there is matter, a soul within our body, 
 a God that lives in the Universe. 
 
 Take, then, the attributes of the soul. I am conscious that I 
 exist and am the same identical person that I was twenty years 
 ago. I am conscious that my body is not I, that if my arms 
 were lopped away, this person that I call ME, would still remain, 
 complete, entire, identical as before. But I cannot ascertain, by 
 the most intense and long-continued reflection, what I am, nor 
 where within my body I reside, nor whether I am a point, or an 
 expanded substance. I have no power to examine and inspect. I 
 exist, will, think, perceive. That I know, and nothing more. I 
 think a noble and sublime Thought. What is that Thought? It 
 is not Matter, nor Spirit. It is not a Thing ; but a Power and 
 Force. I make upon a paper certain conventional marks, that rep- 
 resent that Thought. There is no Power or Virtue in the marks I 
 write, but only in the Thought which they tell to others. I die, 
 but the Thought still lives. It is a Power. It acts on men, ex- 
 cites them to enthusiasm, inspires patriotism, governs their con- 
 duct, controls their destinies, disposes of life and death. The 
 words I speak are but a certain succession of particular sounds, 
 that by conventional arrangement communicate to others the Im- 
 material, Intangible, Eternal Thought. The fact that Thought 
 continues to exist an' instant, after it makes its appearance in the 
 soul, proves it immortal : for there is nothing conceivable that can 
 destroy it. The spoken words, being mere sounds, may vanish 
 into thin air, and the written ones, mere marks, be burned, erased, 
 destroyed : but the THOUGHT itself lives still, and must live on 
 forever. 
 
 A Human Thought, then, is aa actual EXISTENCE, and a FORCE 
 and POWER, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well 
 as mind. Is not the existence of a God, who is the immaterial 
 soul of the Universe, and whose THOUGHT, embodied or not 
 embodied in His WORD, is an Infinite Power, of Creation and pro-
 
 574 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 duction, destruction and preservation, quite as comprehensible as 
 the existence of a Soul, of a Thought separated from the Soul, of 
 the Power of that Thought to mould the fate and influence the 
 Destinies of Humanity? 
 
 And yet we know not when that Thought comes, nor what it 
 is. It is not WE. We do not mould it, shape it, fashion it. It is 
 neither our mechanism nor our invention. It appears spontane- 
 ously, flashing, as it were, into the soul, making that soul the 
 involuntary instrument of its utterance to the world. It comes to 
 us, and seems a stranger to us, seeking a home. 
 
 As little can we explain the mighty power of the human WILL. 
 Volition, like Thought, seems spontaneous, an effect without a 
 cause. Circumstances provoke it, and serve as its occasion, but do 
 not produce it. It springs up in the soul, like Thought, as the 
 waters gush upward in a spring. Is it the manifestation of the 
 soul, merely making apparent what passes within the soul, or an 
 emanation from it, going abroad and acting outwardly, itself a 
 real Existence, as it is an admitted Power? We can but own our 
 ignorance. It is certain that it acts on other souls, controls, directs 
 them, shapes their action, legislates for men and nations : and yet 
 it is not material nor visible ; and the laws it writes merely inform 
 one soul of what has passed within another. 
 
 God, therefore, is a mystery, only as everything that surrounds 
 us, and as we ourselves, are mysteries. We know that there is 
 and must be a FIRST CAUSE. His attributes, severed from Him- 
 self, are unrealities. As color and extension, weight and hardness, 
 do not exist apart from matter as separate existences and substan- 
 tives, spiritual or immaterial ; so the Goodjiess, Wisdom, Justice, 
 Mercy, and Benevolence of God are not Independent existences, 
 personify them as men may, but attributes oi the Deity, the adjec- 
 tives of One Great Substantive. But we know that He must be 
 Good, True, \Vise, Just, Benevolent, Merciful : and in all these, 
 and all His other attributes, Perfect and Infinite : because we are 
 conscious that these are laws imposed on us by the very nature of 
 things, necessary, and without which the Universe would be confu- 
 sion and the existence of a God incredible. They are of His 
 essence, and necessary, as His existence is 
 
 He is the Living, Thinking, Intelligent SOUL of the Universe, 
 the PERMANENT, the STATIONARY [/wm. r . . Estos], of Simon 
 Magus, the ONE that always is [ To Ov . To Ox] of Plato, as
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 575 
 
 contradistinguished from the perpetual flux and reflux, or Genesis, 
 of things. 
 
 And, as the Thought of the Soul, emanating from the Soul, be- 
 comes audible and visible in Words, so did THE THOUGHT OF GOD, 
 springing up within Himself, immortal as Himself, when once 
 conceived, immortal before, because in Himself, utter Itself in 
 THE WORD, its manifestation and mode of communication, and 
 thus create the Material, Mental, Spiritual Universe, which, like 
 Him, never began to exist. 
 
 This is the real idea of the Ancient Nations : GOD, the 
 Almighty Father, and Source of All ; His THOUGHT, conceiving 
 the whole Universe, and willing its creation : His WORD, uttering 
 that THOUGHT, and thus becoming the Creator or Demiourgos, in 
 whom was Life and Light, and that Light the Life of the Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Nor did that Word cease at the single act of Creation ; and 
 having set going the great machine, and enacted the laws of its 
 motion and progression, of birth and life, and change and death, 
 cease to exist, or remain thereafter in inert idleness. 
 
 FOR THE THOUGHT OF GOD LIVES AND is IMMORTAL. Embod- 
 ied in the WORD, is not only created, but it preserves. It conducts 
 and controls the Universe, all spheres, all worlds, all actions of 
 mankind, and of every animate and inanimate creature. It speaks 
 in the soul of every man who lives. The Stars, the Earth, the 
 Trees, the Winds, the universal voice of Nature, tempest, and ava- 
 lanche, the Sea's roar and the grave voice of the waterfall, the 
 hoarse thunder and the low whisper of the brook, the song of birds, 
 the voice of love, the speech of men, all are the alphabet in which 
 it communicates itself to men, and informs them of the will and 
 law of God, the Soul of the Universe. And thus most truly did 
 "THE WORD BECOME FLESH AND DWELL AMONG MEN/' 
 
 God, the unknown FATHER [/7r^o Afvfoaroz. . . Pater 
 Agnostos] , known to us only by His Attributes ; the ABSOLUTE I 
 AM:.. The THOUGHT of God [AVvora . . Ennoia], and the WORE 
 [Jo^oc. . . .Logos], Manifestation and expression of the Thought ; 
 .... Behold THE TRUE MASONIC TRINITY ; the UNIVERSAL SOUL, 
 the THOUGHT in the Soul, the WORD, or Thought expressed ; the 
 THREE IN ONE, of a Trinitarian Ecossais. 
 
 Here Masonry pauses, and leaves its Initiates to carry out and 
 develop these great Truths in such manner as to each may seem
 
 5/6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 most accordant with reason, philosophy, truth, and his religious 
 faith. It declines to act as Arbiter between them. It looks calmly 
 on, while each multiplies the intermediates between the Deity and 
 Matter, and the personifications of God's manifestations and attri- 
 butes, to whatever extent his reason, his conviction, or his fancy 
 dictates. 
 
 While the Indian tells us that PARABRAHMA, BRAHM, and PA- 
 RATMA were the first Triune God, revealing Himself as BRAHMA, 
 VISHNU, and SIVA, Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer;. . . . 
 
 The Egyptian, of AMUN-RE, NEiTH,and PU.TK A, Creator, Matter, 
 Thought or Light; the Persian of his Trinity of Three Powers in 
 ORMUZD, Sources of Light, Fire, and Water; the Buddhists of the 
 God SAKYA, a Trinity composed of BUDDHA,, DHARMA, and SAN- 
 GA, Intelligence, Law, and Union or Harmony; the Chinese Sa- 
 beans of their Trinity of Chang-ti, the Supreme Sovereign ; Tien, 
 the Heavens ; and Tao, the Universal Supreme Reason and Prin- 
 ciple of all things ; who produced the Unit ; that, two ; two, 
 three ; and three, all that is ; .... 
 
 While the Sclavono-Vend typifies his Trinity by the three heads 
 of the God Triglav; the Ancient Prussian points to his Triune 
 God, Perkoun,Pikollos, and Po trim pos, Deities of Light and Thun- 
 der, of Hell and of the Earth ; the Ancient Scandinavian to Odin, 
 Frea, and Thor; and the old Etruscans to TINA, TALNA, and 
 MINERVA, Strength, Abundance, and Wisdom; . . . . 
 
 While Plato tells us of the Supreme Good, the Reason or Intel- 
 lect, and the Soul or Spirit; and Philo of the Archetype of Light, 
 Wisdom [Jo^Y], and the Word [Ao-fo^]', the Kabalists, of 
 the Triads of the Sephiroth ; . . . . 
 
 While the disciples of Simon Magus, and the many sects of the 
 Gnostics, confuse us with their Eons, Emanations, Powers, Wis- 
 dom Superior and Inferior, laldabaoth, Adam-Kadmon, even to 
 the three hundred ard sixty-five thousand emanations of the Mal- 
 da'ites ; . . . . 
 
 And while the pious Christian believes that the WORD dwelt in 
 the Mortal Body of Jesus of Nazareth, and suffered upon the 
 Cross ; and that the HOLY GHOST was poured out upon the Apos- 
 tles, and now inspires every truly Christian Soul : . . . . 
 
 While all these faiths assert their claims to the exclusive pos- 
 session of the Truth, Masonry inculcates its old doctrine, and no 
 more : . That God is ONE; that His THOUGHT uttered in His
 
 PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN. 57J 
 
 WORD, created the Universe, and preserves it by those Eternal 
 Laws which are the expression of that Thought : that the Soul 
 of Man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as His Thoughts 
 are ; that he is free to do evil or to choose good, responsible for his 
 acts and punishable for his sins : that all evil and wrong and 
 suffering are but temporary, the discords of one great Harmony, 
 and that in His good time they will lead by infinite modulations 
 to the great, harmonic final chord and cadence of Truth, Love, 
 Peace, and Happiness, that will ring forever and ever under the 
 Arches of Heaven, among all the Stars and Worlds, and in all 
 souls of men and Angels.
 
 XXVII. 
 KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
 THIS is the first of the really Chivalric Degrees of the Ancient 
 and Accepted Scottish Rite. It occupies this place in the Calendar 
 of the Degrees between the 26th and the last of the Philosophical 
 Degrees, in order, by breaking the continuity of these, to relieve 
 what might otherwise become wearisome ; and also to remind you 
 that, while engaged with the speculations and abstractions of phi- 
 losophy and creeds, the Mason is also to continue engaged in the 
 active duties of this great warfare of life. He is not only a Moral- 
 ist and Philosopher, but a Soldier, the Successor of those Knights 
 of the Middle Age, who, while they wore the Cross, also wielded 
 the Sword, and were the Soldiers of Honor, Loyalty, and Duty. 
 
 Times change, and circumstances ; but Virtue and Duty remain 
 the same. The Evils to be warred against but take another shape, 
 and are developed in a different form. 
 
 There is the same need now of truth and loyalty as in the days 
 of Frederic Barbarossa. 
 
 The characters, religious and military, attention to the sick and 
 wounded in the Hospital, and war against the Infidel in the field, 
 are no longer blended ; but the same duties, to be performed in 
 another shape, continue to exist and to environ us all. 
 
 The innocent virgin is no longer at the mercy of the brutal 
 Baron or licentious man-at-arms ; but purity and innocence still 
 need protectors. 
 
 \Yar is no longer the apparently natural State of Society ; and 
 for most men it is an empty obligation to assume, that they will 
 not recede before the enemy ; but the same high duty and obliga- 
 tion still rest upon all men. 
 
 Truth, in act, profession, and opinion, is rarer now than in the 
 days of chivalry. Falsehood has become a current coin, and cir- 
 culates with a certain degree of respectability ; because it has an 
 actual value. It is indeed the great Vice of the Age it, and its 
 twin-sister. Dishonesty. Men, for political preferment, profess 
 578
 
 KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
 whatever principles are expedient and profitable. At the bar, in 
 the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation, men argue against their 
 own convictions, and, with what they term logic, prove to the 
 satisfaction of others that which they do not themselves believe. 
 Insincerity and duplicity are valuable to their possessors, like 
 estates in stocks, that yield a certain revenue : and it is no longer 
 the truth of an opinion or a principle, but the net profit that may 
 be realized from it, which is the measure of its value. 
 
 The Press is the great sower of falsehood. To slander a political 
 antagonist, to misrepresent all that he says, and, if that be impos- 
 sible, to invent for him what he does not say ; to put in circu- 
 lation whatever baseless calumnies against him are necessary to 
 defeat him, these are habits so common as to have ceased to 
 excite notice or comment, much less surprise or disgust. 
 
 There was a time when a Knight would die rather than utter a 
 lie, or break his Knightly word. The Knight Commander of the 
 Temple revives the old Knightly spirit ; and devotes himself to 
 the old Knightly worship of Truth. No profession of an opinion 
 not his own, for expediency's sake or profit, or through fear of the 
 world's disfavor ; no slander of even an enemy ; no coloring or 
 perversion of the sayings or acts of other men ; no insincere 
 speech and argument for any purpose, or under any pretext, must 
 soil his fair escutcheon. Out of the Chapter, as well as in ,it, he 
 must speak the Truth, and all the Truth, no more and no less ; or 
 else speak not at all. 
 
 To purity and innocence everywhere, the Knight Commander 
 owes protection, as of old ; against bold violence, or those, more 
 guilty than murderers, who by art and treachery seek to slay the 
 soul ; and against that want and destitution that drive too many 
 to sell their honor and innocence for food. 
 
 In no age of the world has man had better opportunity than 
 now to display those lofty virtues and that noble heroism that so 
 distinguished the three great military and religious Orders, in 
 their youth, before they became corrupt and vitiated by prosperity 
 and power. 
 
 When a fearful epidemic ravages a city, and death is inhaled 
 with the air men breathe ; w : hen the living scarcely suffice to bury 
 the dead, most men flee in abject terror, to return and live, re- 
 spectable and influential, when the danger has passed away. But 
 the old Knightly spirit of devotion and disinterestedness and con-
 
 580 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tempt of death still lives, and is not extinct in the human heart. 
 Everywhere a few are found to stand firmly and unflinchingly at 
 their posts, to front and defy the danger, not for money, or to be 
 honored for it, or to protect their own household ; but from mere 
 humanity, and to obey the unerring dictates of duty. They nurse 
 the sick, breathing the pestilential atmosphere of the hospital. 
 They explore the abodes of want and misery. With the gentleness 
 of woman, they soften the pains of the dying, and feed the lamp 
 of life in the convalescent. They perform the last sad offices to 
 the dead ; and they seek no other reward than the approval of 
 their own consciences. 
 
 These are the true Knights of the present age : these, and the 
 captain who remains at his post on board his shattered ship until 
 the last boat, loaded to the water's edge with passengers and crew, 
 has parted from her side ; and then goes calmly down with her 
 into the mysterious depths of the ocean : the pilot who stands at 
 the wheel while the swift flames eddy round him and scorch away 
 his life : the fireman who ascends the blazing walls, and plunges 
 amid the flames to save the property or lives of those who have 
 upon him no claim by tie of blood, or friendship, or even of ordi- 
 nary acquaintance : these, and others like these : all men, who, 
 set at the post of duty, stand there manfully ; to die, if need be, 
 but not to desert their post : for these, too, are sworn not to recede 
 before the enemy. 
 
 To the performance of duties and of acts of heroism like these, 
 you have devoted yourself, my Brother, by becoming a Knight 
 Commander of the Temple. Soldier of the Truth and of Loyalty ! 
 Protector of Purity and Innocence ! Defier of Plague and Pesti- 
 lence ! Nurser of the Sick and Burier of the Dead ! Knight, pre- 
 ferring Death to abandonment of the Post of Duty ! Welcome to 
 the bosom of this Order !
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE 
 ADEPT. 
 
 GOD is the author of everything that existeth ; the Eternal, the 
 Supreme, the Living, and Awful Being; from Whom nothing in 
 the Universe is hidden. Make of Him no idols and visible images ; 
 but rather worship Him in the deep solitudes of sequestered 
 forests ; for He is invisible, and fills the Universe as its soul, and 
 liveth not in any Temple ! 
 
 Light and Darkness are the World's Eternal ways. God is the 
 principle of everything that exists, and the Father of all Beings. 
 He is eternal, immovable, and Self-Existent. There are no bounds 
 to His power. At one glance He sees the Past, the Present, and 
 the Future ; and the procession of the builders of the Pyramids, 
 with us and our remotest Descendants, is now passing before Him. 
 He reads our thoughts before they are known to ourselves. He 
 rules the movements of the Universe, and all events and revolu- 
 tions are the creatures of His will. For He is the Infinite Mind 
 and Supreme Intelligence. 
 
 In the beginning Man had the WORD, and that WORD was from 
 God : and out of the living power which, in and by that WORD, 
 was communicated to man, came the LIGHT of his existence. Let 
 no man speak the WORD, for bv it THE FATHER made light and 
 darkness, the world and living creatures ! 
 
 3* 581
 
 582 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Chaldean upon his plains worshipped me, and the sea-loving 
 Phoenician. They builded me temples and towers, and burned 
 sacrifices to me upon a thousand altars. Light was divine to 
 them, and they thought me a God. But I am nothing nothing; 
 and LIGHT is the creature of the unseen GOD that taught the true 
 religion to the Ancient Patriarchs: AWFUL, MYSTEAIOUS, THE 
 ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Man was created pure ; and God gave him TRUTH, as He gave 
 him LIGHT. He has lost the truth and found error. He has 
 wandered far into darkness ; and round him Sin and Shame hover 
 evermore. The Soul that is impure, and sinful, and defiled with 
 earthly stains, cannot again unite with God, until, by long trials 
 and many purifications, it is finally delivered from the old calam- 
 ity ; and Light overcomes Darkness and dethrones it, in the 
 Soul. 
 
 God is the First; indestructible, eternal, UNCREATED, INDI- 
 VISIBLE. Wisdom, Justice, Truth, and Mercy, with Harmony and 
 Love, are of His essence, and Eternity and Infinitude of Extension. 
 He is silent, and consents with MIND, and is known to Souls 
 through MIND alone. In Him were all things originally con- 
 tained, and from Him all things were evolved. For out of His 
 Divine SILENCE and REST, after an infinitude of time, was un- 
 folded the WORD, or the Divine POWER ; and then in turn the 
 Mighty, ever-acting, measureless INTELLECT ; and from the WORD 
 were evolved the myriads of suns and systems that make the 
 Universe ; and fire, and light, and the electric HARMONY, which 
 is the harmony of spheres and numbers : and from the INTELLECT 
 all Souls and intellects of men. 
 
 In the Beginning, the Universe was but ONE SOUL. HE was 
 THE ALL, alone with TIME and SPACE, and Infinite as they. 
 
 HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Worlds:" and lol 
 
 the Universe, and the laws of harmony and motion that rule it, 
 the expression of a thought of God ; and bird and beast, and every 
 living thing but Man : and light and air, and the mysterious 
 currents, and the dominion of mysterious numbers ! 
 
 HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Man, whose Soul 
 
 shall be my image, and he shall rule." And lo ! Man, with senses, 
 instinct, and a reasoning mind ! 
 
 And yet not MAN ! but an animal that breathed, and 
 
 saw, and thought : until an immaterial spark from God's own
 
 KNIGHT OK THE SUN, OK PRINCE ADEPT. 583 
 
 Infinite Being- penetrated the brain, and became the Soul: and 
 lo, MAN THE IMMORTAL! Thus, threefold, fruit of God's thought, 
 is Man; that sees and hears and feels; that thinks and reasons; 
 that loves and is in harmony with the Universe. 
 
 Before the world grew old, the primitive Truth faded out from 
 men's Souls. Then man asked himself, 'What am I? and how 
 and -whence am I? and whither do I go?" And the Soul, looking 
 inward upon itself, strove to learn whether that "I" were mere 
 matter; its thought and reason and its passions and affections 
 mere results of material combination ; or a material Being envelop- 
 ing an immaterial Spirit : . . and further it strove, by self-exami- 
 nation, to learn whether that Spirit were an individual essence, 
 with a separate immortal existence, or an infinitesimal portion of 
 a Great First Principle, inter-penetrating the Universe and the 
 infinitude of space, and undulating like light and heat: . . and 
 so they wandered further amid the mazes of error ; and imagined 
 vain philosophies ; wallowing in the sloughs of materialism and 
 sensualism, of beating their wings vainly in the vacuum of ab- 
 stractions and idealities. 
 
 While yet the first oaks still put forth their leaves, man lost the 
 perfect knowledge cf the One True God, the Ancient Absolute 
 Existence, the Infinite 'Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and 
 floated helplessly out upon the shoreless ocean of conjecture. 
 Then the soul vexed itself with seeking to learn whether the 
 material Universe was a mere chance combination of atoms, or the 
 work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom : . . whether the Deity was a 
 concentrated, and the Universe an extended immateriality; or 
 whether He was a personal existence, an Omnipotent, Eternal, 
 Supreme Essence, regulating matter at will ; or subjecting it to 
 unchangeable laws throughout eternity ; and to Whom, Himself 
 Infinite and Eternal, Space and Time are unknown. With their 
 finite limited vision, they sought to learn the source and explain 
 the existence of Evil, and Pain, and Sorrow ; and so they wan- 
 dered ever deeper into the darkness, and were lost ; and there was 
 for them no longer any God ; but only a great, dumb, soulless 
 Universe, full of mere emblems and symbols. 
 
 You have heretofore, in some of the Degrees through which you 
 have passed, heard much of the ancient worship of the Sun, the 
 Moon, and the other bright luminaries of Heaven, and of the Ele- 
 ments and Powers of Universal Nature. You have been made, to
 
 584 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 some extent, familiar with their personifications as Heroes suffer- 
 ing or triumphant, or as personal Gods or Goddesses, with human 
 characteristics and passions, and with the multitude of legends 
 and fables that do but allegorically represent their risings and 
 settings, their courses, their conjunctions and oppositions, their 
 domiciles and places of exaltation. 
 
 Perhaps you have supposed that we, like many who have writ- 
 ten on these subjects, have intended to represent this worship to 
 you as the most ancient and original worship of the first men that 
 lived. To undeceive you, if such was your conclusion, we have 
 caused the Personifications of the Great Luminary of Heaven, 
 under the names by which he was known to the most ancient 
 nations, to proclaim the old primitive truths that were known to 
 the Fathers of our race, before men came to worship the visible 
 manifestations of the Supreme Power and Magnificence and the 
 Supposed Attributes of the Universal Deity in the Elements and 
 in the glittering armies that Night regularly marshals and arrays 
 upon the blue field of the firmament. 
 
 We ask now your attention to a still further development of 
 these truths, after we shall have added something to what we 
 have already said in regard to the Chief Luminary of Heaven, in 
 explanation of the names and characteristics of the several imagi- 
 nary Deities that represented him among the ancient races of 
 men. 
 
 ATHOM or ATHOM-RE, was the Chief and Oldest Supreme God 
 of Upper Egypt, worshipped at Thebes ; the same as the OM or 
 AUM of the Hindus, whose name was unpronounceable, and who, 
 like the BREHM of the latter People, was "The Being that was, 
 and is, and is to come ; the Great God, the Great Omnipotent, 
 Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, the Greatest in the Universe, 
 the Lord ;" whose emblem was a perfect sphere, showing that He 
 was first, last, midst, and without end; superior to all Nature- 
 Gods, and all personifications of Powers, Elements, and Lumi- 
 naries ; symbolized by Light, the Principle of Life. 
 
 AMUN was the Nature-God, or Spirit of Nature, called by that 
 name or AMUN-RE, and worshipped at Memphis in Lower Egypt, 
 and in Libya, as well as in Upper Egypt. He was the Libyan 
 Jupiter, and represented the intelligent and organizing force that 
 develops itself in Nature, when the intellectual types or forms 
 of bodies are revealed to the senses in the world's order, by their
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 585 
 
 union with matter, whereby the generation of bodies is effected. 
 He was the same with Kneph, from whose mouth issued the 
 Orphic egg out of which came the Universe. 
 
 DIONUSOS was the Nature-God of the Greeks, as AMUN was of 
 the Egyptians. In the popular legend, Dionusos, as well as Hercu- 
 les, was a Theban Hero, born of a mortal mother. Both were sons 
 of Zeus, both persecuted by Here. But in Hercules the God is 
 subordinate to the Hero ; while Dionusos, even in poetry, retains 
 his divine character, and is identical with lacchus, the presiding 
 genius of the Mysteries. Personification of the Sun in Taurus, as 
 his ox-hoofs showed, he delivered earth from the harsh dominion of 
 Winter, conducted the mighty chorus of the Stars, and the celestial 
 revolution of the year, changed with the seasons, and underwent 
 their periodical decay. He was the Sun as invoked by the Eleans, 
 /Ty/^fsvjyc. ushered into the world amidst lightning and thunder, 
 the Mighty Hunter of the Zodiac, Zagreus the Golden or ruddy- 
 faced. The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity ; and 
 that Power whose Oneness is a seeming mystery, but really a truism, 
 was Dionusos, the God of Nature, or of that moisture, which is the 
 life of Nature, who prepares in darkness, in Hades or Iasion,the re- 
 turn of life and vegetation, or is himself the light and change evolv- 
 ing their varieties. In the Egean Islands he was Butes, Dardanus, 
 Himeros or Imbros; in Crete he appears as lasius or even Zeus, 
 whose orgiastic worship, remaining unveiled by the usual forms of 
 mystery, betrayed to profane curiosity the symbols which, if irrev- 
 erently contemplated, were sure to be misunderstood. 
 
 He was the same with the dismembered Zagreus, the son of Per- 
 sephone, an Ancient Subterranean Dionusos, the horned progeny 
 of Zeus in the Constellation of the Serpent, entrusted by his father 
 with the thunderbolt, and encircled with the protecting dance of 
 Curetes. Through the envious artifices of Here, the Titans eluded 
 the vigilance of his guardians and tore him to pieces ; but Pallas 
 restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded 
 Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus. 
 
 Dionusos, as well as Apollo, was leader of the Muses ; the tomb 
 of one accompanied the worship of the other : they were the same, 
 yet different, contrasted, yet only as filling separate parts in the 
 same drama; and the mystic and heroic personifications, the God 
 of Nature and of Art, seem, at some remote period, to have? pro- 
 ceeded from a common source. Their separation was one of form
 
 586 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 rather than of substance : and from the time when Hercules 
 obtained initiation from Triptolemus, or Pythagoras received Or- 
 phic tenets, the two conceptions were tending to re-combine. It 
 was said that Dionusos or Poseidon had preceded Apollo in the 
 Oracular office ; and Dionusos continued to be esteemed in Greek 
 Theology as Healer and Saviour, Author of Life and Immortality. 
 The dispersed Pythagoreans, "Sons of Apollo," immediately be- 
 took themselves to the Orphic Service of Dionusos, and there are 
 indications that there was always something Dionysiac in the 
 worship of Apollo. 
 
 Dionusos is the Sun, that liberator of the elements ; and his 
 spiritual mediation was suggested by the same imagery which 
 made the Zodiac the supposed path of the Spirits in their descent 
 and their return. His second birth, as offspring of the highest, is 
 a type of the spiritual regeneration of man. He, as well as Apollo, 
 was precentor of the Muses and source of inspiration. His rule 
 prescribed no unnatural mortification : its yoke was easy, and its 
 mirthful choruses, combining the gay with the severe, did but com- 
 memorate that golden age when earth enjoyed eternal spring, and 
 when fountains of honey, milk, and wine burst forth out of its 
 bosom at the touch of the thyrsus. He is the "Liberator." Like- 
 Osiris, he frees the soul, and guides it in its migrations beyond the 
 grave, preserving it from the risk of again falling under the sla- 
 very of matter or of some inferior animal form. All soul is part 
 of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos ; and he leads 
 back the vagrant spirit to its home, and accompanies it through 
 the purifying processes, both real and symbolical, of its earthly 
 transit. He died and descended to the Shades : and his suffering 
 was the great secret of the Mysteries, as death is the grand mystery 
 of existence. He is the immortal suitor of Psyche (the Soul), the 
 Divine influence which physically called the world into being, and 
 which, awakening the soul from its Stygian trance, restores it 
 from earth to Heaven. 
 
 Of HERMES, the Mercury of the Greeks, the Thoth of the 
 Egyptians, and the Taaut of the Phoenicians, we have heretofore 
 spoken sufficiently at length. He was the inventor of letters and 
 of Oratory, the winged messenger of the Gods, bearing the Cadu- 
 ceus wreathed with serpents ; and in our Council he is represented 
 by the ORATOR. 
 
 The Hindus called the Sun SURYA ; the Persians, MITHRAS;
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 587 
 
 the Egyptians, OSIRIS; the Assyrians and Chaldccans, BEL; the 
 Scythians and Etruscans and the ancient Pelasgi, ARKALEUS or 
 HERCULES; the Phoenicians, ADONAI or ADON ; and the Scandina- 
 vians, ODIN. 
 
 From the name SURYA, given by the Hindus to the Sun, the 
 Sect who paid him particular adoration were called Souras. Their 
 painters describe his car as drawn by seven green horses. In the 
 Temple of Visweswara, at Benares, there is an ancient piece of 
 sculpture, well executed in stone, representing him sitting in a 
 car drawn by a horse with twelve heads. His charioteer, by whom 
 he is preceded, is ARUN [from IIS, AUR the Crepnsculum?}, or 
 the Daw r n ; and among his many titles are twelve that denote his 
 distinct powers in each of the twelve months. Those powers are 
 called Adityas, each of whom has a particular name. Surya is 
 supposed frequently to have descended upon earth, in a human 
 shape, and to have left a race on earth, equally renowned in Indian 
 story with the Heliades of Greece. He is often styled King of the 
 Stars and Planets, and thus reminds us of the Adon-Tsbauth 
 (Lord of the Starry Hosts) of the Hebrew writings. 
 
 MITHRAS was the Sun-God of the Persians ; and was fabled to 
 have been born in a grotto or cave, at the Winter Solstice. His 
 feasts were celebrated at that period, at the moment when the sun 
 commenced to return Northward, and to increase the length of 
 the days. This was the great Feast of the Magian religion. The 
 Roman Calendar, published in the time of Constantine, at which 
 period his worship began to gain ground in the Occident, fixed his 
 feast-day on the 25th of December. His statues and images were 
 inscribed, Deo-Soli invicto Mithrce to the invincible Sun-God 
 Mithras. Nomcn imnctum Sol Mithra. .Soli Omnipotent: Mithra:. 
 To him, gold, incense, and myrrh were consecrated. "Thee," says 
 Martianus Capella, in his hymn to the Sun, "the dwellers on the 
 Nile adore as Serapis, and Memphis worships as Osiris ; in the 
 sacred rites of Persia thou art Mithras, in Phrygia,Atys,and Libya 
 bows down to thee as Ammon, and Phoenician Byblos as Adonis ; 
 and thus the whole world adores thee under different names." 
 
 OSIRIS was the son of Helios (Phra), the "divine offspring con- 
 generate with the dawn," and at the same time an incarnation of 
 Kneph or Agathodsemon, the Good Spirit, including all his possi- 
 ble manifestations, either physical or moral. He represented in a 
 familiar form tJoe beneficent aspect of all higher emanations and
 
 588 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in him was developed the conception of a Being purely good, so 
 that it became necessary to set up another power as his adversary, 
 called Seth, Babys or Typhon, to account for the injurious influ- 
 ences of Nature. 
 
 With the phenomena of agriculture,supposed to be the invention 
 of Osiris, the Egyptians connected the highest truths of their 
 religion. The soul of man was as the seed hidden in the ground, 
 and the mortal framework, similarly consigned to its dark resting- 
 place, awaited its restoration to life's unfailing source. Osiris was 
 not only benefactor of the living ; he was also Hades, Serapis, and 
 Rhadamanthus, the monarch of the dead. Death, therefore, in 
 Egyptian opinion, was only another name for renovation, since its 
 God is the same power who incessantly renews vitality in Nature. 
 Every corpse duly embalmed was called "Osiris," and in the grave 
 was supposed to be united, or at least brought into approximation, 
 to the Divinity. For when God became incarnate for man's 
 benefit, it was implied that, in analogy with His assumed character, 
 He should submit to all the conditions of visible existence. In 
 death, as in life, Isis and Osiris were patterns and precursors of 
 mankind ; their sepulchres stood within the temples of the Supe- 
 rior Gods ; yet though their remains might be entombed at Mem- 
 phis or Abydus, their divinity was unimpeached, and they either 
 shone as luminaries in the heavens, or in the unseen world 
 presided over the futurity of the disembodied spirits whom death 
 had brought nearer to them. 
 
 The notion of a dying God, so frequent in Oriental legend, and 
 of which we have already said much in former Degrees, was the 
 natural inference from a literal interpretation of nature-worship ; 
 since nature, which in the vicissitudes of the seasons seems to un- 
 dergo a dissolution, was to the earliest religionists the express 
 image of the Deity, and at a remote period one and the same with 
 the "varied God," whose attributes were seen not only in its vital- 
 ity, but in its changes. The unseen Mover of the Universe was 
 rashly identified with its obvious fluctuations. The speculative 
 Deity suggested by the drama of nature, was worshipped with 
 imitative and sympathetic rites. A period of mourning about the 
 Autumnal Equinox, and of joy at the return of Spring, was almost 
 universal. Phrygians and Paphlagonians, Boeotians, and even 
 Athenians, were all more or less attached to such observances ; the 
 Syrian damsels sat weeping for Thammuz or Adoni, mortally
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, Ok J'UJXCE ADEPT. 5&, 
 
 wounded by the tooth of Winter, symbolized by the boar, its very 
 general emblem : and these rites, and those of Atys and Osiris, 
 were evidently suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when the 
 Sun, descending from his altitude, seems deprived of his generat- 
 ing power. 
 
 Osiris is a being analogous to the Syrian ADOXI ; and the fable 
 of his history, which we need not here repeat, is a narrative form 
 of the popular religion of Egypt, of which the Sun is the Hero, 
 and the agricultural calendar the moral. The moist valley of the 
 Nile, owing its fertility to the annual inundation, appeared, in 
 contrast with the surrounding desert, like life in the midst of 
 death. The inundation was in evident dependence on the Sun, 
 and Egypt, environed with arid deserts, like a heart within a burn- 
 ing censer, was the female power, dependent on the influences per- 
 sonified in its God. Typhon his brother, the type of darkness, 
 drought, and sterility, threw his body into the Nile ; and thus 
 Osiris, the "good," the "Saviour," perished, in the 2^th year of 
 his life or reign, and on the I7th day of the month Athor, or the 
 1 3th of November. He is also made to die during the heats of 
 the early Summer, when, from March to July, the earth was 
 parched with intolerable heat, vegetation was scorched, and the 
 languid Nile exhausted. From that death he rises when the Sol- 
 stitial Sun brings the inundation, and Egypt is filled with 
 mirth and acclamation anticipatory of the second harvest. 
 From his Wintry death he rises with the early flowers of 
 Spring, and then the joyful festival of Osiris found was cele- 
 brated. 
 
 So the pride of Jemsheed, one of the Persian Sun-heroes, or the 
 solar year personified, was abruptly cut off by Zohak, the tyrant of 
 the West. He was sawn asunder by a fish-bone, and immediately 
 the brightness of Iran changed to gloom. Ganymede and Adonis, 
 like Osiris, were hurried off in all their strength and beauty ; the 
 premature death of Linus, the burthen of the ancient lament of 
 Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithvnian Hylas, 
 and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The 
 elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy 
 enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to 
 remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful 
 Memnon, also, perished in his prime ; and Enoch, whose early 
 death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of
 
 59O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 days of the solar year ; a brief space when compared with the lon- 
 gevity of his patriarchal kindred. 
 
 The story of Osiris is reflected in those of Orpheus and Dionu- 
 sos Zagreus, and perhaps in the legends of Absyrtus and Pelias, 
 of sEson, Thyestes, Melicertes, Itys, and Pelops. lo is the discon- 
 solate Isis or Niobe : and Rhea mourns her dismembered Lord, 
 Hyperion, and the death of her son Helios, drowned in the Erida- 
 nus ; and if Apollo and Dionusos are immortal, they had died 
 under other names, as Orpheus, Linus, or Hyacinthus. The sep- 
 ulchre of Zeus was shown in Crete. Hippolytus was associated in 
 divine honors with Apollo, and after he had been torn to pieces 
 like Osiris, was restored to life by the Pseonian herbs of Diana, 
 and kept darkling in the secret grove of Egeria. Zeus deserted 
 Olympus to visit the Ethiopians ; Apollo underwent servitude to 
 Admetus ; Theseus, Peirithous, Hercules, and other heroes, de- 
 scended for a time to Hades ; a dying Nature-God was exhibited 
 in the Mysteries, the Attic women fasted, sitting on the ground, 
 during the Thesmophoria, and the Boeotians lamented the descent 
 of Cora-Proserpine to the Shades. 
 
 But the death of the Deity, as understood by the Orientals, was 
 not inconsistent with His immortality. The temporary decline of 
 the Sons of Light is but an episode in their endless continuity ; 
 and as the day and year are more convenient subdivisions of the 
 Infinite, so the fiery deaths of Phaethon or Hercules are but breaks 
 in the same Phoenix process of perpetual regeneration, by which 
 the spirit of Osiris lives forever in the succession of the Memphian 
 Apis. Every year witnesses the revival of Adonis ; and the amber 
 tears shed by the Heliades for the premature death of their 
 brother, are the golden shower full of prolific hope, in which Zeus 
 descends from the brazen vault of Heaven into the bosom of the 
 parched ground. 
 
 BAL, representative or personification of the sun, was one of the 
 Great Gods of Syria, Assyria, and Chaldea, and his name is found 
 upon the monuments of Nimroud, and frequently occurs in the 
 Hebrew writings. He was the Great Nature-God of Babylonia, 
 the Power of heat, life, and generation. His symbol was the Sun, 
 and be was figured seated on a bull. All the accessories of his 
 great temple at Babylon, described by Herodotus, are repeated 
 with singular fidelity, but on a smaller scale, in the Hebrew tab- 
 ernacle and temple. The golden statue alone is wanted to com-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCF ADEPT. . 5QI 
 
 plete the resemblance. The word Bal or Baal, like the word Adon, 
 signifies Lord and Master. He was also the Supreme Deity of the 
 Moabites, Amonites, and Carthaginians, and of the Sabeans in 
 general; the Gauls worshipped the Sun under the name of Belin 
 or Belinus : and Bela is found among the Celtic Deities upon the 
 ancient monuments. 
 
 The Northern ancestors of the Greeks maintained with hardier 
 habits a more manly style of religious symbolism than the effemi- 
 nate enthusiasts of the South, and had embodied in their Perseus, 
 HERCULES and MITHRAS, the consummation of the qualities they 
 esteemed and exercised. 
 
 Almost every nation will be found to have had a mythical being, 
 whose strength or weakness, virtues or defects, more or less nearly 
 describe the Sun's career through the seasons. There was a Celtic, 
 a Teutonic, a Scythian, an Etruscan, a Lydian Hercules, all whose 
 legends became tributary to those of the Greek hero. The name 
 of Hercules was found by Herodotus to have been long familiar 
 in Egypt and the East, and to have originally belonged to a much 
 higher personage than the comparatively modern hero known in 
 Greece as the Son of Alcmena. The temple of the Hercules of 
 Tyre was reported to have been built 2300 years before the time 
 of Herodotus ; and Hercules, whose Greek name has been some- 
 times supposed to be of Phoenician origin, in the sense of Circui- 
 tor, i. e. "rover" and "perambulator" of earth, as well as "Hype- 
 rion" of the sky, was the patron and model of those famous navi- 
 gators who spread his altars from coast to coast through the Medi- 
 terranean, to the extremities of the West, where "ARKALEUS" 
 built the City of Gades, and where a perpetual fire burned in his 
 service. He was the lineal descendant of Perseus, the luminous 
 child of darkness, conceived within a subterranean vault of brass ; 
 and he a representation of the Persian Mithras, rearing his emble- 
 matic lions above the gates of Mycenae, and bringing the sword 
 of Jemshecd to battle against the Gorgons of the West. Mithras 
 is similarly described in the Zend-Avesta as the "mighty hero, the 
 rapid runner, whose piercing eye embraces all, whose arm bears 
 the club for the destruction of the Darood." 
 
 Hercules Ingeniculus, who, bending on one knee, uplifts his club 
 and tramples on the Serpent's head, was, like Prometheus and 
 Tantalus, one of the varying aspects of the struggling and de- 
 clining Sun. The victories of Hercules are but exhibitions of
 
 592 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Solar power which have ever to be repeated. It was in the far 
 North, among the Hyperboreans, that, divested of hh Lion's skin, 
 he lay down to sleep, and for a time lost the horses of his chariot. 
 Henceforth that Northern region of gloom, called the "p^ace of 
 the death and revival of Adonis," that Caucasus whose summit 
 was so lofty, that, like the Indian Meru, it seemed to be both the 
 goal and commencement of the Sun's career, became to Greek im- 
 aginations the final bourne of all things, the abode of Winter and 
 desolation, the pinnacle of the arch connecting the upper and 
 lower world, and consequently the appropriate place for the ban- 
 ishment of Prometheus. The daughters of Israel, weeping for 
 Thammuz, mentioned by Ezekiel, sat looking to the North, and 
 waiting for his return from that region. It was while Cybele with 
 the Sun-God was absent among the Hyperboreans, that Phrygia, 
 abandoned by her, suffered the horrors of famine. Delos and 
 Delphi awaited the return of Apollo from the Hyperboreans, and 
 Hercules brought thence to Olympia the olive. To all Masons, 
 the North has immemorially been the place of darkness ; and of 
 the great lights of the Lodge, none is in the North. 
 
 Mithras, the rock-born hero (U^rnoft^^)^ heralded the Sun's 
 return in Spring, as Prometheus, chained in his cavern, betokened 
 the continuance of Winter. The Persian beacon on the moun- 
 tain-top represented the Rock-born Divinity enshrined in his 
 worthiest temple ; and the funeral conflagration of Hercules was 
 the sun dying in glory behind the Western hills. But though the 
 transitory manifestation suffers or dies, the abiding and eternal 
 power liberates and saves. It was an essential attribute of a Titan, 
 that he should arise again after his fall ; for the revival of Nature 
 is as certain as its decline, and its alternations are subject to the 
 appointment of a power which controls them both. 
 
 "God, "says Maximus Tvrius,"did not spare His own Son [Her- 
 cules], or exempt Him from the calamities incidental to humanity. 
 The Theban progeny of Jove had his share of pain and trial. By 
 vanquishing earthly difficulties he proved his affinity with Heaven. 
 His life was a continuous struggle. He fainted before Typhon in 
 the desert; and in the commencement of the Autumnal season 
 (cum longae redit hora noctis), descended under the guidance of 
 Minerva to Hades. He died ; but first applied for initiation to Eu- 
 molpus, in order to foreshadow that state of religious preparation 
 which should precede the momentous change. Even in Hades he
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OK PRINCE ADEPT. 593 
 
 rescued Theseus and removed the stone of Ascalaphus, reanimated 
 the bloodless spirits, and dragged into the light of day the monster 
 Cerberus, justly reputed invincible because an emblem of Time 
 itself; he burst the chains of the grave (for Busiris is the grave 
 personified), and triumphant at the close as in the dawn of his 
 career, was received after his labors into the repose of the heavenly 
 mansions, living forever with Zeus in the arms of Eternal Youth. 
 
 ODIN is said to have borne twelve names among the old Ger- 
 mans, and to have had 114 names besides. He was the Apollo of 
 the Scandinavians, and is represented in the Voluspa as destined 
 to slay the monstrous snake. Then the Sun will be extinguished, 
 the earth be dissolved in the ocean, the stars lose their brightness, 
 and all Nature be destroyed in order that it may be renewed again. 
 From the bosom of the waters a new world will emerge clad in 
 verdure ; harvests will be seen to ripen where no seed was sown, 
 and evil will disappear. 
 
 The free fancy of the ancients, which wove the web of their 
 myths and legends, was consecrated by faith. It had not, like the 
 modern mind, set apart a petty sanctuary of borrowed beliefs, 
 beyond which all the rest was common and unclean. Imagination, 
 reason, and religion circled round the same symbol : and in all 
 their symbols there was serious meaning, if we could but find it 
 out. They did not devise fictions in the same vapid spirit in 
 which we, cramped by conventionalities, read them. In endeavor- 
 ing to interpret creations of fancy, fancy as well as reason must 
 guide : and much of modern controversy arises out of heavy mis- 
 apprehensions of ancient symbolism. 
 
 To those ancient peoples,this earth was the centre of theUni verse. 
 To them there were no other worlds, peopled with living beings, to 
 divide the care and attention of the Deity. To them the world 
 was a great plain, of unknown, perhaps inconceivable limits, and 
 the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars journeyed above it, to give them 
 light. The worship of the Sun became the basis of all the religions 
 of antiquity. To them light and heat were mysteries ; as indeed 
 they still are to us. As the Sun caused the day, and his absence 
 the night ; as, when he journeyed Northward, Spring and Summer 
 followed him ; and when he again turned to the South, Autumn 
 and inclement Winter, and cold and long dark nights ruled the 
 earth; ... as his influence produced the leaves and flowers, and 
 ripened the harvests, and brought regular inundation, he neces-
 
 ecu MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 sarily became to them the most interesting object of the material 
 Universe. To them he was the innate fire of bodies, the fire of 
 nature. Author of Life, heat, and ignition, he was to them the 
 efficient cause of all generation, for without him there was no 
 movement, no existence, no form. He was to them immense, indi- 
 visible, imperishable, and everywhere present. It was their need 
 of light, and of his creative energy, that was felt by all men ; and 
 nothing was more fearful to them than his absence. His benefi- 
 cent influences caused his identification with the Principle of 
 Good; and the BRAHMA of the Hindus, the MITHRAS of the Per- 
 sians, and ATHOM, AMUN, PHTHA, and OSIRIS, of the Egyptians, 
 the BEL of the Chaldeans, the ADONAI of the Phoenicians, the 
 ADONIS and APOLLO of the Greeks became but personifications of 
 the Sun, the regenerating Principle, image of that fecundity which 
 perpetuates and rejuvenates the world's existence. 
 
 So too the struggle between the Good and Evil Principles was 
 personified, as was that between life and death, destruction and 
 re-creation ; in allegories and fables which poetically represented 
 the apparent course of the Sun ; who, descending toward the 
 Southern Hemisphere, was figuratively said to be conquered and 
 put to death by darkness, or the genius of Evil ; but, returning 
 again toward the Northern Hemisphere, he seemed to be victo- 
 rious, and to arise from the tomb. This death and resurrection 
 were also figurative of the succession of day and night, of death, 
 which is a necessity of life, and of life which is born of death : 
 and everywhere the ancients still saw the combat between 
 the two Principles that ruled the world. Everywhere this 
 contest was embodied in allegories and fictitious histories : into 
 which were ingeniously woven all the astronomical phenomena that 
 accompanied, preceded, or followed the different movements of the 
 Sun, and the changes of Seasons, the approach or withdrawal of 
 inundation. And thus grew into stature and strange proportions 
 the histories of the contests between Typhon and Osiris, Hercules 
 and Juno, the Titans and Jupiter, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the re- 
 bellious Angels and the Deity, the Evil Genii and the Good : and 
 the other like fables, found not only in Asia, but in the North of 
 Europe, and even among the Mexicans and Peruvians of the New 
 World ; carried thither, in all probability, by those Phoenician 
 voyagers who bore thither civilization and the arts. The Scythians 
 lamented the death of Acmon, the Persians that of Zohak con-
 
 KNIGLIT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 95 
 
 quered by Pheridoun, the Hindus that of Soura-Parama slain by 
 Soupra-Muni, as the Scandinavians did that of Balder, torn to 
 pieces by the blind Hother. 
 
 The primitive idea of infinite space existed in the first men, as 
 it exists in us. It and the idea of infinite time are the first two 
 innate ideas. Man cannot conceive how thing can be added to 
 thing, or event follow event, forever. The idea will ever return, 
 that no matter how long bulk is added to bulk, there must be, 
 still beyond, an empty void, without limit; in which is nothing. 
 In the same way the idea of time without beginning or end forces 
 itself on him. Time, without events, is also a void, and nothing. 
 
 In that empty void space the primitive men knew there was no 
 light nor warmth. They felt, what we know scientifically, that 
 there must be a thick darkness there, and an intensity of cold of 
 which we have no conception. Into that void they thought the 
 Sun, the Planets, and the Stars went down when they set under 
 the Western Horizon. Darkness was to them an enemy, a harm, 
 a vague dread and terror. It was the very embodiment of the 
 evil principle; and out of it they said that he was formed. As 
 the Sun bent Southward toward that void, they shuddered with 
 dread : and when, at the Winter Solstice, he again commenced his 
 Northward march, they rejoiced and feasted ; as they did at the 
 Summer Solstice, when most he appeared to smile upon them in 
 his pride of place. These days have been celebrated by all civil- 
 ized nations ever since. The Christian has made them feast-days 
 of the church, and appropriated them to the two Saints John; 
 and Masonry has done the same. 
 
 We, to whom the vast Universe has become but a great machine, 
 not instinct with a great SOUL, but a clockwork of proportions 
 unimaginable, but still infinitely less than infinite ; and part at 
 least of which we with our orreries can imitate ; we, who have 
 measured the distances and dimensions, and learned the specific 
 gravity and determined the orbits of the moon and the planets ; 
 we, who know the distance to the sun, and his size ; have meas- 
 ured the orbits of the flashing comets, and the distances of the 
 fixed stars ; and know the latter to be suns like our sun, each 
 with his retinue of worlds, and all governed by the same unerr- 
 ing, mechanical laws and outwardly imposed forces, centripetal 
 and centrifugal ; we, who with our telescopes have separated the 
 galaxy and the nebul?e into other stars and groups of stars ; dis-
 
 596 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 covered new planets, by first discovering their disturbing forces 
 upon those already known ; and learned that they all, Jupiter, 
 Venus, and the fiery Mars, and Saturn and the others, as well as 
 the bright, mild, and ever-changing Moon, are mere dark, dull, 
 opaque clods like our earth, and not living orbs of brilliant fire 
 and heavenly light ; we, who have counted the mountains and 
 chasms in the moon, with glasses that could distinctly reveal to 
 us the temple of Solomon, if it stood there in its old original 
 glory ; we, who no longer imagine that the stars control our des- 
 tinies, and who can calculate the eclipses of the sun and moon, 
 backward and forward, for ten thousand years ; we, with our 
 vastly increased conceptions of the powers of the Grand Architect 
 of the Universe, but our wholly material and mechanical view of 
 that Universe itself ; we cannot, even in the remotest degree, feel, 
 though we may partially and imperfectly imagine, how those great, 
 primitive, simple-hearted children of Nature felt in regard to the 
 Starry Hosts, there upon the slopes of the Himalayas, on the 
 Chaldean plains, in the Persian and Median deserts, and upon the 
 banks of that great, strange River, the Nile. To them the Uni- 
 verse was alive instinct with forces and powers, mysterious and 
 beyond their comprehension. To them it was no machine, no 
 great system of clockwork ; but a great live creature, an army of 
 creatures, in sympathy with or inimical to man. To them, all was 
 a mystery and a miracle, and the stars flashing overhead spoke to 
 their hearts almost in an audible language. Jupiter, with his 
 kingly splendors, was the Emperor of the starry legions. Venus 
 looked lovingly on the earth and blessed it ; Mars, with his crim- 
 son fires, threatened war and misfortune ; and Saturn, cold and 
 grave, chilled and repelled them. The ever-changing Moon, faith- 
 ful companion of the Sun, was a constant miracle and wonder; 
 the Sun himself the visible emblem of the creative and generative 
 power. To them the earth was a great plain, over which the sun, 
 the moon, and the planets revolved, its servants, framed to give it 
 light. Of the stars, some were beneficent existences that brought 
 with them Spring-time and fruits and flowers, some, faithful 
 sentinels, advising them of coming inundation, of the season of 
 storm and of deadly winds ; some heralds of evil, which, steadily 
 foretelling, they seemed to cause. To them the eclipses were por- 
 tents of evil, and their causes hidden in mystery, and supernatural. 
 The regular returns of the stars, the comings of Arcturus, Orion,
 
 KNKJHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 597 
 
 Sirius, the Pleiades, and Aldebaran, and the journeyings of the 
 Sun, were voluntary and not mechanical to them. What wonder 
 that astronomy became to them the most important of sciences ; 
 that those who learned it became rulers ; and that vast edifices, 
 the Pyramids, the tower or temple of Bel, and other like erections 
 everywhere in the East, were builded for astronomical purposes ? 
 and what wonder that, in their great child-like simplicity, they 
 worshipped Light, the Sun, the Planets, and the Stars, and per- 
 sonified them, and eagerly believed in the histories invented for 
 them ; in that age when the capacity for belief was infinite ; as 
 indeed, if we but reflect, it still is and ever will be? 
 
 If we adhered to the literally historic sense, antiquity would be 
 a mere inexplicable, hideous chaos, and all the Sages deranged : 
 and so it would be with Masonry and those who instituted it. But 
 when these allegories are explained, they cease to be absurd fables, 
 or facts purely local ; and become lessons of wisdom for entire 
 humanity. No one can doubt, who studies them, that they all 
 came from a common source. 
 
 And he greatly errs who imagines that, because the mythological 
 legends and fables of antiquity are referable to and have their 
 foundation in the phenomena of the Heavens, and all the Heathen 
 Gods are but mere names given to the Sun, the Stars, the Planets, 
 the Zodiacal Signs, the Elements, the Powers of Nature, and Uni- 
 versal Nature herself, therefore the first men worshipped the Stars, 
 and whatever things, animate and inanimate, seemed to them to 
 possess and exercise a power or influence, evident or imagined, 
 over human fortunes and human destiny. 
 
 For ever, in all the nations, ascending to the remotest antiquity 
 to which the light of History or the glimmerings of tradition 
 reach, we find, seated above all the gods which represent the 
 luminaries and the elements, and those which personify the innate 
 Powers of universal nature, a still higher Deity, silent, undefined, 
 incomprehensible, the Supreme, one God, from Whom all the rest 
 flow or emanate, or by Him are created. Above the Time-God 
 Horus, the Moon-Goddess or Earth-Goddess Isis, and the Sun-God 
 Osiris, of the Egyptians, was Amuh, the Nature-God ; and above 
 him, again, the Infinite, Incomprehensible Deity, ATHOM. BREHM, 
 the silent, self-contemplative, one original God. was the Source, to 
 the Hindus, of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Above Zeus, or before 
 him, were Kronos and Ouranos. Over the Alohayim was the great 
 S9
 
 508 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Nature-God AL, and still beyond him, Abstract Existence, IHUH 
 He that IS, WAS, and SHALL BE. Above all the Persian Deities 
 was the Unlimited Time, ZERUANE-AKHERENE ; and over Odin 
 and Thor was the Great Scandinavian Deity ALFADIR. 
 
 The worship of Universal Nature as a God was too near akin to 
 the worship of a Universal Soul, to have been the instinctive creed 
 of any savage people or rude race of men. To imagine all nature, 
 with all its apparently independent parts, as forming one con- 
 sistent whole, and as itself a unit, required an amount of experi- 
 ence and a faculty of generalization not possessed by the rude 
 uncivilized mind, and is but a step below the idea of a universal 
 Soul. 
 
 In the beginning man had the WORD ; and that WORD was from 
 God ; and out of the living POWER communicated to man in and 
 by that WORD, came THE LIGHT of His Existence. 
 
 God made man in His own likeness. When, by a long succession 
 of geological changes, He had prepared the earth to be his habita- 
 tion, He created him, and placed him in that part of Asia which all 
 the old nations agreed in calling the cradle of the human race, and 
 whence afterward the stream of human life flowed forth to India, 
 China, Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Phoenicia. HE communicated 
 to him a knowledge of the nature of his Creator, and of the pure, 
 primitive, undefiled religion. The peculiar and distinctive excel- 
 lence and real essence of the primitive man, and his true nature and 
 destiny, consisted in his likeness to God. HE stamped His own 
 image upon man's soul. That image has been, in the breast of 
 every- individual man and of mankind in general, greatly altered, 
 impaired, and defaced ; but its old, half-obliterated characters are 
 still to be found on all the pages of primitive history ; and the 
 impress, not entirely effaced, every reflecting mind may discover 
 in its own interior. 
 
 Of the original revelation to mankind, of the primitive WORD 
 of Divine TRUTH, we find clear indications and scattered traces 
 in the sacred traditions of all the primitive Nations ; traces which, 
 when separately examined, appear like the broken remnants, the 
 mysterious and hieroglyphic characters, of a mighty edifice that 
 has been destroyed ; and its fragments, like those of the old Tem- 
 ples and Palaces of Nimroud, wrought incongruously into edifices 
 many centuries younger. And, although amid the ever-growing 
 degeneracy of mankind, this primeval word of revelation was
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 599 
 
 falsified by the admixture of various errors, and overlaid and 
 obscured by numberless and manifold fictions, inextricably con- 
 fused, and disfigured almost beyond the power of recognition, still 
 a profound inquiry will discover in .heathenism many luminous 
 vestiges of primitive Truth. 
 
 For the old Heathenism had everywhere a foundation in Truth ; 
 and if we could separate that pure intuition into nature and into 
 the simple symbols of nature, that constituted the basis of all 
 Heathenism, from the alloy of error and the additions of fiction, 
 those first hieroglyphic traits of the instinctive science of the first 
 men, would be found to agree with truth and a true knowledge of 
 nature, and to afford an image of a free, pure, comprehensive, and 
 finished philosophy of life. 
 
 The struggle, thenceforward to be eternal, between the Divine 
 will and the natural will in the souls of men, commenced imme- 
 diately after the creation. Cain slew his brother Abel, and went 
 forth to people parts of the earth with an impious race, forgetters 
 and defiers of the true God. The other Descendants of the Com- 
 mon Father of the race intermarried with the daughters of Cain's 
 Descendants : and all nations preserved the remembrance of that 
 division of the human family into the righteous and impious, in 
 their distorted legends of the wars between the Gods, and the 
 Giants and Titans. When, afterward, another similar division 
 occurred, the Descendants of Seth alone preserved the true primi- 
 tive religion and science, and transmitted them to posterity in the 
 ancient symbolical character, on monuments of stone : and many 
 nations preserved in their legendary traditions the memory of the 
 columns of Enoch and Seth. 
 
 Then the world declined from its original happy condition and 
 fortunate estate, into idolatry and barbarism : but all nations 
 retained the memory of that old estate ; and the poets, in those 
 early days the only historians, commemorated the succession of the 
 ages of gold, silver, brass, and iron. 
 
 In the lapse of those ages, the sacred tradition followed various 
 courses among each of the most ancient nations ; and from its 
 original source, as from a common centre, its various streams 
 flowed downward ; some diffusing through favored regions of the 
 world fertility and life ; but others soon losing themselves, and 
 being dried up in the sterile sands of human error. 
 
 After the internal and Divine WORD originally communicated
 
 6OO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 oy God to man, had become obscured; after man's connection 
 with his Creator had been broken, even outward language neces- 
 
 ' o O 
 
 sarily fell into disorder and confusion. The simple and Divine 
 Truth was overlaid with various and sensual fictions, buried under 
 illusive symbols, and at last perverted into horrible phantoms. 
 
 For in the progress of idolatry it needs came to pass, that what 
 was originally revered as the symbol of a higher principle, became 
 gradually confounded or identified with the object itself, and was 
 worshipped ; until this error led to a more degraded form of idol- 
 atry. The early nations received much from the primeval source 
 of sacred tradition ; but that haughty pride which seems an 
 inherent part of human nature led each to represent these 
 fragmentary relics of original truth as a possession peculiar to 
 themselves; thus exaggerating their value, and their own impor- 
 tance, as peculiar favorites of the Deity, who had chosen them as 
 the favored people to whom to commit these truths. To make 
 these fragments, as far as possible, their private property, they 
 reproduced them under peculiar forms, wrapped them up in 
 symbols, concealed them in allegories, and invented fables to 
 account for their own special possession of them. So that, instead 
 of preserving in their primitive simplicity and purity these bless- 
 ings of original revelation, they overlaid them with poetical 
 ornament; and the whole wears a fabulous aspect, until by close 
 and severe examination we discover the truth which the apparent 
 fable contains. 
 
 These being the conflicting elements in the breast of man ; the 
 old inheritance or original dowry of truth, imparted to him by 
 God in the primitive revelation ; and error, or the foundation for 
 error, in his degraded sense and spirit now turned from God to 
 nature, false faiths easily sprung up and grew rank and luxuriant, 
 when the Divine Truth was no longer guarded with jealous care, 
 nor preserved in its pristine purity. This soon happened among 
 most Eastern nations, and especially the Indians, the Chaldeans, 
 the Arabians, the Persians, and the Egyptians ; with whom imagi- 
 nation, and a very deep but still sensual feeling for nature, were 
 very predominant. The Northern firmament, visible to their eyes, 
 possesses by far the largest and most brilliant constellations ; and 
 they were more alive to the impressions made by such objects, than 
 are the men of the present day. 
 
 With the Chinese, a patriarchal, simple, and secluded people,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 6oi 
 
 idolatry long made but little progress. They invented writing within 
 three or four generations after the flood ; and they long preserved 
 the memory of much of the primitive revelation ; less overlaid 
 with fiction than those fragments which other nations have remem- 
 bered. They were among those who stood nearest to the source of 
 sacred tradition ; and many passages in their old writings contain 
 remarkable vestiges of eternal truth, and of the WORD of primi- 
 tive revelation, the heritage of old thought, which attest to us 
 their original eminence. 
 
 But among the other early nations, a wild enthusiasm and a sen- 
 sual idolatry of nature soon superseded the simple worship of the 
 Almighty God, and set aside or disfigured the pure belief in the 
 Eternal Uncreated Spirit. The great powers and elements of 
 nature, and the vital principle of production and procreation 
 through all generations ; then the celestial spirits or heavenly 
 Host, the luminous armies of the Stars, and the great Sun, and 
 mysterious, ever-changing Moon (all of which the whole ancient 
 world regarded not as mere globes of light or bodies of fire, but as 
 animated living substances, potent over man's fate and destinies) ; 
 next the genii and tutelar spirits, and even the souls of the dead, 
 received divine worship. The animals, representing the starry 
 constellations, first reverenced as symbols merely, came to be wor- 
 shipped as gods ; the heavens, earth, and the operations of nature 
 were personified ; and fictitious personages invented to account 
 for the introduction of science and arts, and the fragments of the 
 old religious truths ; and the good and bad principles personified, 
 became also objects of worship ; while, through all, still shone 
 the silver threads of the old primitive revelation. 
 
 Increasing familiarity with early oriental . ecords seems more 
 and more to confirm the probability that they all originally ema- 
 nated from one source. The eastern and southern slopes of the 
 Paropismus, or Hindukusch, appear to have been inhabited by kin- 
 dred Iranian races, similar in habits, language, and religion. The 
 earliest Indian and Persian Deities are for the most part symbols 
 of celestial light, their agency being regarded as an eternal warfare 
 with the powers of \Yinter, storm, and darkness. The religion of 
 both was originally a worship of outward nature, especially the 
 manifestations of fire and light ; the coincidences being too marked 
 to be merely accidental. Deva, God, is derived from the root div, 
 to shine. Indra, like Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda, is the bright firma-
 
 6O2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ment ; Sura or Surya, the Heavenly, a name of the Sun, recurs in 
 the Zend word Huare, the Sun, whence Khur and Khorshid or 
 Corasch. Uschas and Mitra are Medic as well as Zend Deities 
 and the Amschaspands or "immortal Holy Ones" of the Zend- 
 Avesta may be compared with the seven Rishis or Vedic Star-God, 
 of the constellation of the Bear. Zoroastrianism, like Buddhism, 
 was an innovation in regard to an older religion ; and between the 
 Parsee and Brahmin may be found traces of disruption as well as 
 of coincidence. The original Nature-worship, in which were com- 
 bined the conceptions both of a Universal Presence and perpetuity 
 of action, took different directions of development, according to 
 the difference between the Indian and Persian mind. 
 
 The early shepherds of the Punjaub, then called the country of 
 the Seven Rivers, to whose intuitional or inspired wisdom (Veda) 
 we owe what are perhaps the most ancient religious effusions ex- 
 tant in any language, apostrophized as living beings the physical 
 objects of their worship. First in this order of Deities stands Indra, 
 the God of the "blue" or "glittering" firmament, called Devaspiti, 
 Father of the Devas or Elemental Powers, who measured out the 
 circle of the sky, and made fast the foundations of the Earth ; the 
 ideal domain of Yarouna, "the All-encompasser," is almost equally 
 extensive, including air, water, night, the expanse between Heaven 
 and Earth : Agni, vrho lives on the fire of the sacrifice, on the 
 domestic hearth, and in the lightnings of the sky, is the great 
 Mediator between God and Man ; Uschas, or the Dawn, leads 
 forth the Gods in the morning to make their daily repast in the 
 intoxicating Soma of Nature's offertory, of which the Priest could 
 only compound from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came 
 the various Sun-Gods, Adityas or Solar Attributes, Surya the 
 Heavenly, Savitri the Progenitor, Pashan the Nourisher, Bagha 
 the Felicitous, and Mitra the Friend. 
 
 The coming forth of the Eternal Being to the work of creation 
 was represented as a marriage, his first emanation being a univer- 
 sal mother, supposed to have potentially existed with him from 
 Eternity, or, in metaphorical language, to have been "his sister and 
 his spouse." She became eventually promoted to be the Mother 
 of the Indian Trinity, of the Deity under His three Attributes, of 
 Creation, Preservation, and Change or Regeneration. 
 
 The most popular forms or manifestations of Vishnu the Pre- 
 server, were his successive avataras or historic fmpersonations,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 603 
 
 which represented the Deity coming forth out of the incompre- 
 hensible mystery of His nature, and revealing Himself at those 
 critical epochs which either in the physical or moral world seemed 
 to mark a new commencement of prosperity and order. Combating 
 the power of Evil in the various departments of Nature, and in 
 successive periods of time, the Divinity, though varying in form, 
 is ever in reality the same, whether seen in useful agricultural or 
 social inventions, in traditional victories over rival creeds, or in 
 physical changes faintly discovered through tradition, or suggested 
 by cosmogonical theory. As Rama, the Epic hero armed with 
 sword, club, and arrows, the prototype of Hercules and Mithras, he 
 wrestles like the Hebrew Patriarch with the Powers of Darkness ; 
 as Chrishna-Govinda, the Divine Shepherd, he is the Messenger of 
 Peace, overmastering the world by music and love. Under the 
 human form he never ceases to be the Supreme Being. "The 
 foolish" (he says, in Bhagavad Ghita), "unacquainted with 
 my Supreme Nature, despise me in this human form, while men 
 of great minds, enlightened by the Divine principle within them, 
 acknowledge me as incorruptible and before all things, and serve 
 me with undivided hearts." "I am not recognized by all," he says 
 again, "because concealed by the supernatural power which is in 
 me ; yet to me are known all things past, present, and to come ; I 
 existed before Vaivaswata and Menou. I am the Most High God, 
 the Creator of the World, the Eternal Poorooscha (Man-World or 
 Genius of the World). And although in my own nature I am 
 exempt from liabilitv to birth or death, and am Lord of all created 
 things, yet as often as in the world virtue is enfeebled, and vice 
 and injustice prevail, so often do I become manifest and am 
 revealed from age to age. to save the just, to destroy the guilty, 
 and to reassure the faltering steps of virtue. He who acknowleclg- 
 eth me as even so, doth not on quitting this mortal frame enter 
 into another, for he entereth into me : and many who have trusted 
 in me have already entered into me, being purified by the power 
 of wisdom. I help those who walk in my path, even as they serve 
 me." 
 
 Brahma, the creating agent, sacrificed himself, when, by descend- 
 ing into material forms, he became incorporated with his work ; 
 and his mythological history was interwoven with that of the 
 Universe. Thus, although spiritually allied to the Supreme, and 
 Lord of all creatures (Prajapati), he shared the imperfection and
 
 604 MORALS AND DOGMA. . 
 
 corruption of an inferior nature, and, steeped in manifold and 
 perishable forms, might be said, like the Greek Uranus, to be 
 mutilated and fallen. He thus combined two characters, formless 
 form, immortal and mortal, being and non-being, motion and rest. 
 As incarnate Intelligence, or THE WORD, he communicated to 
 man what had been revealed to himself by the Eternal, since he is 
 creation's Soul as well as Body, within which the D-ivine Word is 
 written in those living letters which it is the prerogative of the 
 self-conscious spirit to interpret. 
 
 The fundamental principles of the religion of the Hindus con- 
 sisted in the belief in the existence of One Being only, of the im- 
 mortality of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments. Their precepts of morality inculcate the practice of virtue 
 as necessary for procuring happiness even in this transient life; 
 and their religious doctrines make their felicity in a future state 
 to depend upon it. 
 
 Besides their doctrine of the transmigration of souls, their 
 dogmas may be epitomized under the following heads : ist. The 
 existence of one God, from Whom all things proceed, and to Whom 
 all must return. To Him they constantly apply these expressions 
 The Universal and Eternal Essence ; that which has ever been 
 and will ever continue ; that which vivifies and pervades all things ; 
 He who is everywhere present, and causes the celestial bodies to 
 revolve in the course He has prescribed to them. 2d. A tripartite 
 division of the Good Principle, for the purposes of Creation, Pres- 
 ervation, and Renovation by change and death. 3d. The necessary 
 existence of an Evil Principle, occupied in counteracting the 
 benevolent purposes of the first, in their execution by the Devata 
 or Subordinate Genii, to whom is entrusted the control over the 
 various operations of nature. 
 
 And this was part of their doctrine : "One great and incompre- 
 hensible Being has alone existed from all Eternity. Everything 
 we behold and we ourselves 'ire portions of Him. The soul, mind 
 or intellect, of gods and men, and of all sentient creatures, are 
 detached portions of the Universal Soul, to which at stated periods 
 they are destined to return. But the mind of finite beings is im- 
 pressed by one uninterrupted series of illusions, which they con- 
 sider as real, until again united to the great fountain of truth. 
 Of these illusions, the first and most essential is individuality. By 
 its influence, when detached from its source, the soul becomes
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 605 
 
 ignorant of its own nature, origin, and destiny. It considers itself 
 as a separate existence, and no longer a spark of the Divinity, a 
 link of one immeasurable chain, an infinitely small but indispen- 
 sable portion of one great whole." 
 
 Their love of imagery caused them to personify what they con- 
 ceived to be some of the attributes of God, perhaps in order to 
 present things in a way better adapted to the comprehensions of 
 the vulgar, than the abstruse idea of an indescribable, invisible 
 God ; and hence the invention of a Brahma, a Vishnu, and a Siva 
 or Iswara. These were represented under various forms ; but no 
 emblem or visible sign of Brihm or Brehm, the Omnipotent, is to 
 be found. They considered the great mystery of the existence of 
 the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, as beyond human compre- 
 hension. Every creature endowed with the faculty of thinking, 
 they held, must be conscious of the existence of a God, a first 
 cause ; but the attempt to explain the nature of that Being, or in 
 any way to assimilate it with our own, they considered not only a 
 proof of folly, but of extreme impiety. 
 
 The following extracts from their books will serve to show what 
 were the real tenets of their creed : 
 
 "By one Supreme Ruler is this Universe pervaded ; even every 
 world in the whole circle of nature. . . . There is one Supreme 
 Spirit, which nothing can shake, more swift than the thought of 
 man. That Supreme Spirit moves at pleasure, but in itself is 
 immovable ; it is distant from us, yet near us ; it pervades this 
 whole system of worlds ; yet it is infinitely beyond it. That man 
 who considers all beings as existing even in the Supreme Spirit, 
 and the Supreme Spirit as pervading all beings, henceforth views 
 
 no creature with contempt All spiritual beings are the same 
 
 in kind with the Supreme Spirit. . . .The pure enlightened soul 
 assumes a luminous form, with no gross body, with no perfora- 
 tion, with no veins or tendons, unblemished, untainted by sin ; 
 itself being a ray from the Infinite Spirit, which knows the Past 
 and the Future, which pervades all, which existed with no cause 
 but itself, which created all things as they are. in ages most remote. 
 That all-pervading Spirit which gives light to the visible Sun, 
 even the same in kind am I, though infinitely distant in degree. 
 Let my soul return to the immortal Spirit of God, and then let 
 my body, which ends in ashes, return to dust ! O Spirit, who per- 
 vadest fire, lead us in a straight path to the riches of beatitude.
 
 606 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Thou, O God, possessest all the treasures of knowledge ! Removt 
 each foul taint from our souls ! 
 
 "From what root springs mortal man, when felled by the hand 
 of death? Who can make him spring again to birth? God, who 
 is perfect wisdom, perfect happiness. He is the final refuge of the 
 man who has liberally bestowed his wealth, who has been firm 
 in virtue, who knows and adores that Great One. . . .Let us adore 
 the supremacy of that Divine Sun, the Godhead who illuminates 
 all, w r ho re-creates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must 
 return, whom we invoke to direct our understandings aright, in 
 our progress toward his holy seat. . . .What the Sun and Light 
 are to this visible world, such is truth to the intellectual and visi- 
 ble Universe. . . .Our souls acquire certain knowledge, by medita- 
 ting on the light of Truth, w r hich emanates from the Being of 
 Beings. . . .That Being, without eyes sees, without ears hears all ; 
 he knows whatever can be known, but there is none who knows 
 him ; him the wise call the Great, Supreme, Pervading Spirit. . . . 
 Perfect Truth, Perfect Happiness, without equal, immortal ; 
 absolute unity, whom neither speech can describe, nor mind com- 
 prehend : all-pervading, all-transcending, delighted with his own 
 boundless intelligence, nor limited by space or time ; without feet, 
 running swiftly ; without hands, grasping all worlds ; without 
 eyes, all-surveying; without ears, all-hearing; without an intelli- 
 gent guide, understanding all ; without cause, the first of all causes ; 
 all-ruling, all-powerful, the Creator, Preserver, Transformer of 
 all things : such is the Great One ; this the Vedas declare. 
 
 "May that soul of mine, which mounts aloft in my waking 
 hours as an ethereal spark, and which, even in my slumber, has 
 a like ascent, soaring to a great distance, as an emanation from 
 the Light of Lights, be united by devout meditation with the Spirit 
 supremely blest, and supremely intelligent ! . . . .May that soul of 
 mine, which was itself the primeval oblation placed within all 
 creatures. . . .which is a ray of perfect wisdom, which is the inex- 
 tinguishable light fixed within created bodies, without which no 
 good act is performed. . . .in which as an immortal essence may be 
 comprised whatever has passed, is present, or will be hereafter. . . . 
 be united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest and 
 supremely intelligent ! 
 
 "The Being of Beings is the Only God, eternal and everywhere 
 present, Who comprises everything. There is no God but He. . . .
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 
 
 The Supreme Being is invisible, incomprehensible, immovable, w'tb- 
 out figure or shape. No one has ever seen Him ; time never com- 
 prised Him ; His essence pervades everything ; all was derived 
 from Him. 
 
 "The duty of a good man, even in the moment of his destruc- 
 tion, consists not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefit- 
 ing his destroyer ; as the sandal-tree, in the instant of its over- 
 throw, sheds perfume on the axe which fells it." 
 
 The Vedanta and Nyaya philosophers acknowledge a Supreme 
 Eternal P<eing, and the immortality of the soul : though, like the 
 Greeks, they differ in their ideas of those subjects. They speak 
 of the Supreme Being as an eternal essence that pervades space, 
 and gives life or existence. Of that universal and eternal pervad- 
 ing spirit, the Vedanti suppose four modifications ; but as these 
 do not change its nature, and as it would be erroneous to ascribe 
 to each of them a distinct essence, so it is equally erroneous, they 
 say, to imagine that the various modifications by which the All- 
 pervading Being exists, or displays His power, are individual 
 existences. Creation is not considered as the instant production 
 of things, but only as the manifestation of that which exists eter- 
 nally in the one Universal Being. The Nyaya philosophers believe 
 that spirit and matter are eternal ; but they do not suppose that 
 the world in its present form has existed from eternity, but only 
 the primary matter from which it sprang when operated on by 
 the almighty Word of God, the Intelligent Cause and Supreme 
 Being, Who produced the combinations or aggregations which com- 
 pose the material Universe. Though they believe that soul is an 
 emanation from the Supreme Being, they distinguish it from that 
 Being, in its individual existence. Truth and Intelligence are the 
 eternal attributes of God, not, they say, of the individual soul, 
 which is susceptible both of knowledge and ignorance, of pleasure 
 and pain ; and therefore God and it are distinct. Even when it 
 returns to the Eternal, and attains supreme bliss, it undoubtedly 
 does not cease. Though united to the Supreme Being, it is not 
 absorbed in it, but still retains the abstract nature of definite or 
 visible existence. 
 
 "The dissolution of the world," they say, "consists in the de- 
 struction of the visible forms arid qualities of thing's ; but their 
 material essence remains, and from it new worlds are formed by 
 the creative energy of God ; and thus the Universe is dissolved and 
 renewed in endless succession."
 
 608 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Jainas, a sect at Mysore and elsewhere, say that the ancient 
 religion of India and of the whole world consisted in the belief 
 in one God, a pure Spirit, indivisible, omniscient and all-power- 
 ful; that God, having given to all things their appointed order 
 and course of action, and to man a. sufficient portion of reason, 
 or understanding, to guide him in his conduct, leaves him to 
 the operation of free will, without the entire exercise of which 
 he could not be held answerable for his conduct. 
 
 Menou, the Hindu lawgiver, adored, not the visible, material 
 Sun, but "that divine and incomparably greater light," to use the 
 words of the most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, "which 
 illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all 
 must return, and which alone can irradiate our intellects." He 
 thus commences his Institutes : 
 
 "Be it heard ! 
 
 "This Universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unex- 
 panded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, 
 undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it 
 were wholly immersed in sleep : 
 
 "Then the Sole Self-existing Power, Himself undiscovered, but 
 making this world discernible, with five elements, and other prin- 
 ciples of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding His 
 idea, or dispelling the gloom. 
 
 "He Whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes 
 the eternal organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from Eter- 
 nity, even He, the soul of all beings, Whom no being can compre- 
 hend, shone forth. 
 
 "He, having willed to produce various beings from His own 
 divine Substance, first with a thought created the waters. . . .From 
 that which is [precisely the Hebrew STiiT 1 ], the first cause, not the 
 object of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to 
 our perception, without beginning or end" [the A.-, and .'., or 
 the /..-/..-(?..], "was produced the divine male famed in all 
 worlds under the appellation of Brahma." 
 
 Then recapitulating the different things created by Brahma, he 
 adds: "He," meaning Brahma [the /loyoz, the WORD], "whose 
 powers are incomprehensible, having thus created this Universe, 
 was again absorbed in the Supreme Spirit, changing the time of 
 energy for the time of repose." 
 
 The Antarcya A'ran'ya, one of the Vedas, gives this primi-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 609 
 
 tive idea of the creation : "In the beginning, the Universe was 
 but a Soul : nothing else, active or inactive, existed. Then HE 
 had this thought, I will create worlds; and thus HE created these 
 different worlds ; air, the light, mortal beings, and the waters. 
 
 "HE had this thought : Behold the worlds; I will create guar- 
 dians for the worlds. So HE took of the water and fashioned a 
 being clothed with the human form. He looked upon him, and 
 of that being so contemplated, the mouth opened like an egg, and 
 speech came forth, and from the speech fire. The nostrils opened, 
 and through them went the breath of respiration, and by it the 
 air was propagated. The eyes opened ; from them came a lumi- 
 nous ray, and from it was produced the sun. The ears dilated ; 
 from them came hearing, and from hearing space :" . . . and, after 
 the body of man, with the senses, was formed ; "HE, the Univer- 
 sal Soul, thus reflected : How can this body exist without Me? 
 He examined through what extremity He could penetrate it. He 
 said to Himself : If, without Me, the World is articulated, breath 
 exhales, and sight sees; if hearing hears, the skin feels, and the 
 mind reflects, deglutition swallows, and the generative organ ful- 
 fils its functions, what then am I? And separating the suture of 
 the cranium, He penetrated into man." 
 
 Behold the great fundamental primitive truths ! God, an infinite 
 Eternal Soul or Spirit. Matter, not eternal nor self-existent, but 
 created created by a thought of God. After matter, and worlds, 
 then man, by a like thought : and finally, after endowing him 
 with the senses and a thinking mind, a portion, a spark, of God 
 Himself penetrates the man, and becomes a living spirit within 
 him. 
 
 The Vedas thus detail the creation of the world : 
 
 "In the beginning there was a single God, existing of Himself ; 
 Who, after having passed an eternity absorbed in the contempla- 
 tion of His own being, desired to manifest His perfections out- 
 wardly of Himself; and created the matter of the world. The 
 four elements being thus produced, but still mingled in confusion, 
 He breathed upon the waters, which swelled up into an immense 
 ball in the shape of an egg, and, developing themselves, became 
 the vault and orb of Heaven which encircles the earth. Having 
 made the earth and the bodies of animal beings, this God, the 
 essence of movement, gave to them, to animate them, a portion 
 of His own being. Thus, the soul of everything that breathes
 
 6lO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 being a fraction of the universal soul, none perishes ; but each 
 soul merely changes its mould and form, by passing successively 
 into different bodies. Of all forms, that which most pleases the 
 Divine Being is Man, as nearest approaching His own perfections. 
 When a man, absolutely disengaging himself from his senses, ab- 
 sorbs himself in self-contemplation, he comes to discern the Di- 
 vinity, and becomes part of Him." 
 
 The Ancient Persians in many respects resembled the Hindus, 
 in their language, their poetry, and their poetic legends. Their 
 conquests brought them in contact with China ; and they subdued 
 Egypt and Judea. Their views of God and religion more resem- 
 bled those of the Hebrews than those of any other nation ; and 
 indeed the latter people borrowed from them some prominent doc- 
 trines, that we are in the habit of regarding as an essential part 
 of the original Hebrew creed. 
 
 Of the King of Heaven and Father of Eternal Light, of the 
 pure World of LIGHT, of the Eternal WORD by which all things 
 were created, of the Seven Mighty Spirits that stand next to the 
 Throne of Light and Omnipotence, and of the glory of those 
 Heavenly Hosts that encompass that Throne, of the Origin of 
 Evil, and the Prince of Darkness, Monarch of the rebellious 
 spirits, enemies of all good, they entertained tenets very similar 
 to those of the Hebrews. Toward Egyptian idolatry they felt the 
 strongest abhorrence, and under Cambyses pursued a regular plan 
 for its utter extirpation. Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, de- 
 stroyed the Temples and erected fire-chapels along the whole 
 course of his march. Their religion was eminently spiritual, and 
 the earthly fire and earthly sacrifice were but the signs and em- 
 blems of another devotion and a higher pow r er. 
 
 Thus the fundamental doctrine of the ancient religion of India 
 and Persia was at first nothing more than a simple veneration of 
 nature, its pure elements and its primary energies, the sacred fire, 
 and above all, Light, the air, not the lower atmospheric air. but 
 the purer and brighter air of Heaven, the breath that animates 
 and pervades the breath of mortal life. This pure and simple ven- 
 eration of nature is perhaps the most ancient, and was by far the 
 most generally prevalent in the primitive and patriarchal world. 
 It was not originally a deification of nature, or a denial of the 
 sovereignty of God. Those pure elements and primitive essences 
 of created nature offered to the first men, still in a close commu-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 6ll 
 
 nication with the Deity, not a likeness of resemblance, nor a mere 
 fanciful image or a poetical figure, but a natural and true symbol 
 of Divine power. Everywhere in the Hebrew writings the pure 
 light or sacred fire is employed as an image of the all-pervading 
 and all-consuming power and omnipresence of the Divinity. His 
 breath was the first source of life; and the faint whisper of the 
 breeze announced to the prophet His immediate presence. 
 
 "All things are the progeny of one fire. The Father perfected 
 all things, and delivered them over to the Second Mind, whom all 
 nations of men call the First. Natural works co-exist with the 
 intellectual light of the Father; for it is the Soul which adorns 
 the great Heaven, and which adorns it after the Father. The 
 Soul, being a bright fire, by the power of the Father, remains im- 
 mortal, and is mistress of life, and fills up the recesses of the 
 world. For the fire which is first beyond, did not shut up his 
 power in matter by works, but by mind, for the framer of the fiery 
 world is the mind of mind, who first sprang from mind, clothing 
 fire with fire. Father-begotten Light ! for He alone, having from 
 the Father's power received the essence of intellect, is enabled to 
 understand the mind of the Father ; and to instill into all sources 
 and principles the capacity of understanding, and of ever contin- 
 uing in ceaseless revolving moiion." Such was the language of 
 Zoroaster, embodying the old Persian ideas. 
 
 And the same ancient sage thus spoke of the Sun and Stars : 
 "The Father made the whole Universe of fire and water and earth, 
 and all-nourishing ether. He fixed a great multitude of moveless 
 stars, that stand still forever, not by compulsion and unwillingly, 
 but without desire to wander, fire acting upon fire. He congre- 
 gated the seven firmaments of the world, and so surrounded the 
 earth with the convexity of the Heavens ; and therein set seven 
 living existences, arranging their apparent disorder in regular 
 orbits, six of them planets, and the Sun, placed in the centre, the 
 seventh ; in that centre from which all lines, diverging which 
 way soever, are equal ; and the swift sun himself, revolving around 
 a principal centre, and ever striving to reach the central and all- 
 pervading light, bearing with him the bright Moon." 
 
 And yet Zoroaster added : "Measure not the journeyings of the 
 Sun, nor attempt to reduce them to rule ; for he is carried by the 
 eternal will of the Father, not for your sake. Do not endeavor 
 to understand the impetuou? Bourse of the Moon; for she runs
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 evermore under the impulse of necessity ; and the progression of 
 the Stars was not generated to serve any purpose of yours." 
 
 Ormuzd says to Zoroaster, in the Boundehesch : "I am he who 
 holds the Star-Spangled Heaven in ethereal space; who makes 
 this sphere, which once was buried in darkness, a flood of light. 
 Through me the Earth became a world firm and lasting the 
 earth on which walks the Lord of the world. I am he who makes 
 the light of Sun, Moon, and Stars pierce the clouds. I make the 
 corn seed, which perishing in the ground sprouts* anew. ... I 
 created man, whose eye is light, whose life is the breath of his nos- 
 trils. I placed within him life's unextinguishable power." 
 
 .Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda himself represented the primal light, 
 distinct from the heavenly bodies, yet necessary to their existence, 
 and the source of their splendor. The Amschaspands (Amescha- 
 spenta, "immortal Holy Ones"), each presided over a special de- 
 partment of nature. Earth and Heaven, fire and water, the Sun 
 and Moon, the rivers, trees, and mountains, even the artificial divi- 
 sions of the day and year were addressed in prayer as tenanted by 
 Divine beings, each separately ruling within his several sphere. 
 Fire, in particular, that "most energetic of immortal powers," the 
 visible representative of the primal light, was invoked as "Son of 
 Ormuzd." The Sun, the Archimagus, that noblest and most pow- 
 erful agent of divine power, who "steps forth as a Conqueror 
 from the top of the terrible Alborj to rule over the world which 
 he enlightens from the throne of Ormuzd," was worshipped among 
 other symbols by the name of MITHRAS, a beneficent and friendly 
 genius, who, in the hymn addressed to him in the Zend-Avesta, 
 bears the names given him by the Greeks, as the "Invincible" and 
 the "Mediator" ; the former, because in his daily strife with dark- 
 ness he is the most active confederate of Ormuzd; the latter, as 
 being the medium through which Heaven's choicest blessings are 
 communicated to men. He is called "the eye of Ormuzd, the 
 effulgent Hero, pursuing his course triumphantly, fertilizer of 
 deserts, most exalted of the Izeds or Yezatas, the never-sleeping, 
 the projector of the land." "When che dragon foe devastates my 
 provinces, ' says Ormuzd, "and afmets them with famine, then is 
 he struck down by the strong arm of Mithras, together with the 
 Devs of Mazanderan. With his lance and his immortal club, the 
 Sleepless Chief hurls down the Devs into the dust, when as Me- 
 diator he interposes to guard the City from evil."
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN OR PRINCE ADEPT. 
 
 Ahriman was by some Parsee sects considered older than 
 Ormuzd, as darkness is older than light ; he is imagined to have 
 been unknown as a Malevolent Being in the early ages of the 
 world, and the fall of man is attributed in the Boundehesch to an 
 apostate worship of him, from which men were converted by a 
 succession of prophets terminating with Zoroaster. 
 
 Mithras is not only light, but intelligence ; that luminary which, 
 though born in obscurity, will not only dispel darkness but con- 
 quer death. The warfare through which this consummation is to 
 be reached, is mainly carried on through the instrumentality of the 
 "Word," that "ever-living emanation of the Deity, by virtue of 
 which the world exists," and of which the revealed formulas inces- 
 santly repeated in the liturgies of the Magi are but the expression. 
 "What shall I do," cried Zoroaster, "O Ormuzd, steeped in bright- 
 ness, in order to battle with Daroodj-Ahriman, father of the Evil 
 Law ; how shall I make men pure and holy ?" Ormuzd answered 
 and said : "Invoke, O Zoroaster, the pure law of the Servants of 
 Ormuzd ; invoke the Amschaspands who shed abundance through- 
 out the seven Keshwars ; invoke the Heaven, Zeruana-Akarana, 
 the birds travailing on high, the swift wind, the Earth ; invoke 
 my Spirit, me who am Ahura-Mazda, the purest, strongest, wisest, 
 best of beings ; me who have the most majestic body, who through 
 purity am Supreme, whose Soul is the Excellent Word ; and ye, all 
 people, invoke me as I have commanded Zoroaster." 
 
 Ahura-Mazda himself is the living WORD ; he is called "First- 
 born of all things, express image of the Eternal, very light of very 
 light, the Creator, who by power of the Word which he never 
 ceases to pronounce, made in 365 days the Heaven and the Earth." 
 The Word is said in the Yashna to have existed before all, and to 
 be itself a Yazata, a personified object of prayer. It was revealed 
 in Serosch, in Homa, and again, under Gushtasp, was manifested 
 in Zoroaster. 
 
 Between life and death, between sunshine and shade, Mithras 
 is the present exemplification of the Primal Unity from which all 
 things arose, and into which, through his mediation, all con- 
 trarieties will ultimately be absorbed. His annual sacrifice is 
 the passover of the Magi, a symbolical atonement or pledge of 
 moral and physical regeneration. He created the world in the 
 beginning ; and as at the close of each successive year he sets free 
 the current of life to invigorate a fresh circle of being, so in the 
 40
 
 />14 MORALS AND DOGM/ 
 
 
 
 end of all things he will bring the weary sum of ages as a heca- 
 tomb before God, releasing by a final sacrifice the Soul of Nature 
 from her perishable frame, to commence a brighter and purer 
 existence. 
 
 lamblichus (De Mys. viii. 4) says : "The Egyptians are far from 
 ascribing all things to physical causes; life and intellect they 
 distinguish from physical being, both in man and in the Universe. 
 They place intellect and reason first as self-existent, and from these 
 they derive the created world. As Parent of generated things 
 they constitute a Demiurge, and acknowledge a vital force both in 
 the Heavens and before the Heavens. They place Pure Intellect 
 above and beyond the Universe, and another (that is, Mind re- 
 vealed in the Material World), consisting of one continuous mind 
 pervading the Universe, and apportioned to all its parts and 
 spheres." The Egyptian idea, then, was that of all transcendental 
 philosophy that of a Deity both immanent and transcendent 
 spirit passing into its manifestations, but not exhausted by so 
 doing. 
 
 The wisdom recorded in the canonical rolls of Hermes quickly 
 attained in this transcendental lore, all that human curiosity can 
 ever discover. Thebes especially is said to have acknowledged a 
 being without beginning or end, called Amun or Amun-Kneph, 
 the all-prevading Spirit or Breath of Nature, or perhaps even some 
 still more lofty object of reverential reflection, whom it was 
 forbidden even to name. Such a being would in theory stand at 
 the head of the three orders of Gods mentioned by Herodotus, 
 these being regarded as arbitrary classifications of similar or equal 
 beings, arranged in successive emanations, according to an esti- 
 mate of their comparative dignity. The Eight Great Gods, or 
 primary class, were probably manifestations of the emanated God 
 in the several parts and powers of the Universe, each potentially 
 comprising the whole Godhead. 
 
 In the ancient Hermetic books, as quoted by lamblichus, oc- 
 curred the following passage in regard to the Supreme Being: 
 
 "Before all the things that actually exist, and before all begin- 
 nings, there is one God, prior even to the first God and King, 
 remaining unmoved in the singleness of his own Unity : for neither 
 is anything conceived by intellect inwoven with him, nor anything 
 else ; but he is established as the exemplar of the God who is 
 good, who is his own father, self -begotten, and has only one
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRIN'CE ADEPT. 615 
 
 Parent. For he is something greater and prior to, and the foun- 
 tain of all things, and the foundation of things conceived by 
 the intellect, which are the first species. And from this ONE, the 
 self-originated God caused himself to shine forth ; for which 
 reason he is his own father, and self-originated. For he is both a 
 beginning and God of Gods, a Monad from the One, prior to 
 substance and the beginning of substance; for from him is sub- 
 stantiality and substance, whence also he is called the beginning 
 of things conceived by the intellect. These then are the most 
 ancient beginnings of all things, which Hermes places before the 
 ethereal and empyrean and celestial Gods." 
 
 "CHANG-TI, or the Supreme Lord or Being," said the old Chi- 
 nese creed, "is the principle of everything that exists, and Father 
 of all living. He is eternal, immovable, and independent : His 
 power knows no bounds : His sight equally comprehends the Past, 
 the Present, and the Future, and penetrates even to the inmost 
 recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his govern- 
 ment : all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his' 
 dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial ; wickedness 
 offends his sight ; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the 
 virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an 
 exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers ; and often casts 
 down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after 
 his own heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, 
 merciful, and full of pity, he forgives the wicked upon 
 their repentance : and public calamities and the irregular- 
 ity of the seasons are but salutary warnings, which his fa- 
 therly goodness gives to men, to induce them to reform and 
 amend." 
 
 Controlled by reason infinitely more than by the imagination, 
 that people, occupying the extreme East of Asia, did not fall into 
 idolatry until after the time of Confucius, and within two centu- 
 ries of the birth of Christ ; when the religion of BUDDHA or Fo 
 was carried thither from India. Their system was long regulated 
 by the pure worship of God, and the foundation of their moral and 
 political existence laid in a sound, upright reason, conformable to 
 true ideas of the Deity. They had no false gods or images, and 
 their third Emperor Hoam-ti erected a Temple, the first probably 
 ever erected, to the Great Architect of the Universe. And though 
 they offered sacrifices to divers tutelary angels, yet they honored
 
 6l6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 them infinitely less than XAM-TI or CHANG-TI, the Sovereign 
 Lord of the World. 
 
 Confucius forbade making images or representations of the 
 Deity. He attached no idea of personality to Him ; but considered 
 Him as a Power or Principle, pervading all Nature. And the 
 Chinese designated the Divinity by the name of THE DIVINE 
 REASON. 
 
 The Japanese believe in a Supreme Invisible Being, not to be 
 represented by images or worshipped in Temples. They styled him 
 AMIDA or OMITH ; and say that he is without beginning or end : 
 that he came on earth, where he remained a thousand years, and 
 became the Redeemer of our fallen race: that he is to judge all 
 men ; and the good are to live forever, while the bad are to be 
 condemned to Hell. 
 
 "The Chang-ti is represented," said Confucius, "under the 
 general emblem of the visible firmament, as well as under the 
 . particular symbols of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, because 
 by their means we enjoy the gifts of the Chang-ti. The Sun is 
 the source of life and light : the Moon illuminates the world by 
 night. By observing the course of these luminaries, mankind are 
 enabled to distinguish times and seasons. The Ancients, with 
 the view of connecting the act with its object, when they estab- 
 lished the practice of sacrificing to the Chang-ti, fixed the day of 
 the Winter Solstice, because the Sun, after having passed through 
 the twelve places assigned apparently by the Chang-ti as its annual 
 residence, began its career anew, to distribute blessings through- 
 out the Earth." 
 
 He said : "The TEEN is the universal principle and prolific 
 source of all things. . . . The Chang-ti is the universal principle 
 of existence." 
 
 The Arabians never possessed a poetical, high-wrought, and 
 scientifically arranged system of Polytheism. Their historical 
 traditions had much analogy with those of the Hebrews, and 
 coincided with them in a variety of points. The tradition of a 
 purer faith and the simple Patriarchal worship of the Deity, 
 appear never to have been totally extinguished among them ; 
 nor did idolatry gain much foothold until near the time of 
 Mahomet ; who, adopting the old primeval faith, taught again the 
 doctrine of one God, adding to it that he was His Prophet. 
 
 To the mass of Hebrews, as well as to other nations, seem to
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 6l/ 
 
 have come fragments only of the primitive revelation : nor do 
 they seem, until after their captivity among the Persians, to have 
 concerned themselves about metaphysical speculations in regard to 
 the Divine Nature and essence ; although it is evident, from the 
 Psalms of David, that a select body among them preserved a 
 knowledge, in regard to the Deity, which was wholly unknown to 
 the mass of the people ; and those chosen few were made the 
 medium of transition for certain truths, to later ages. 
 
 Among the Greeks, the scholars of the Egyptians, all the 
 higher ideas and severer doctrines on the Divinity, his Sovereign 
 Nature and Infinite Might, the Eternal Wisdom and Providence 
 that conducts and directs all things to their proper end, the 
 Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence that created all things, 
 and is raised far above external nature, all these loftier ideas and 
 nobler doctrines were expounded more or less perfectly by Py- 
 thagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and developed in the most 
 beautiful and luminous manner by Plato, and the philosophers 
 that succeeded him. And even in the popular religion of the 
 Greeks are many things capable of a deeper import and more 
 spiritual signification ; though they seem only rare vestiges of 
 ancient truth, vague presentiments, fugitive tones, and moment- 
 ary flashes, revealing a belief in a Supreme Being, Almighty 
 Creator of the Universe, and Common Father of Mankind. 
 
 Much of the primitive Truth was taught to Pythagoras by 
 Zoroaster, who himself received it from the Indians. His 
 disciples rejected the use of Temples, of Altars, and of Statues; 
 and smiled at the folly of those nations who imagined that the 
 Deity sprang from or had any affinity with human nature. The 
 tops of the highest mountains were the places chosen for sacrifices. 
 Hymns and prayers were their principal worship. The Supreme 
 God, who fills the wide circle of Heaven, was the object to Whom 
 they were addressed. Such is the testimony of Herodotus. Light 
 they considered not so much as an object of worship, as rather the 
 most pure and lively emblem of, and first emanation from, the 
 Eternal God ; and thought that man required something' visible 
 or tangible to exalt his mind to that degree of adoration which 
 is due to the Divine Being. 
 
 There was a surprising similarity between the Temples, Priests, 
 doctrines, and worship of the Persian Magi and the British 
 Druids. The latter did not worship idols in the human shape,
 
 6l8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 because they held that the Divinity, being invisible, ought to be 
 adored without being seen. They asserted the Unity of the God- 
 head. Their invocations were made to the One All-preserving 
 Power; and they argued that, as this power was not matter, it 
 must necessarily be the Deity ; and the secret symbol used to 
 express his name was O. I. W. They believed that the earth had 
 sustained one general destruction by water; and would again 
 be destroyed by fire. They admitted the doctrines of the immor- 
 tality of the soul, a future state, and a day of judgment, which 
 would be conducted on the principle of man's responsibility. 
 They even retained some idea of the redemption of mankind 
 through the death of a Mediator. They retained a tradition of 
 the Deluge, perverted and localized. But, around these fragments 
 of primitive truth they wove a web of idolatry, worshipped two 
 Subordinate Deities under the names of Hu and CERIDWEN, male 
 and female (doubtless the same as Osiris and Isis), and held the 
 doctrine of transmigration. 
 
 The early inhabitants of Scandinavia believed in a God who 
 was "the Author of everything that existeth; the Eternal, 
 the Ancient, the Living and Awful Being, the Searcher into 
 concealed things, the Being that never changeth." Idols and 
 visible representations of the Deity were originally forbidden, and 
 He was directed to be worshipped in the lonely solitude of 
 sequestered forests, where He was said to dwell, invisible, and in 
 perfect silence. 
 
 The Druids, like their Eastern ancestors, paid the most sacred 
 regard to the odd numbers, which, traced backward, ended 
 in Unity or Deity, while the even numbers ended in nothing. 3 
 was particularly reverenced. 19(7 + 3 + 3 2 ) : 3 (?X 3 +3X3) : 
 and 21 (7X3) were numbers observed in the erection of their 
 temples, constantly appearing in their dimensions, and the num- 
 ber and distances of the huge stones. 
 
 They were the sole interpreters of religion. They superintend- 
 ed all sacrifices ; for no private person could offer one without 
 their permission. They exercised the power of excommunica- 
 tion ; and without their concurrence war could not be declared nor 
 peace made : and they even had the power of inflicting the pun- 
 ishment of death. They professed to possess a knowledge of 
 magic, and practised augury for the public service. 
 
 They cultivated many of the liberal sciences, and particularly
 
 KNIGHT OP THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 619 
 
 astronomy, the favorite science of the Orient ; in which they 
 attained considerable proficiency. They considered day as the off- 
 spring- of night, and therefore made their computations by nights 
 instead of days ; and we, from them, still use the words fortnight 
 and sen'nigrt. They Knew the division of the heavens into con- 
 stellations ; and finally, they practised the strictest morality, 
 having particularly the most sacred regard for that peculiarly 
 Masonic virtue, Truth. 
 
 In the Icelandic Prose Edda is the following dialogue : 
 "Who is the first or eldest of the Gods? 
 
 "In our language he is called ALFADIR (All-Father, or the 
 Father of All) ; but in the old Asgard he had twelve names. 
 
 "Where is this God? What is his power? and what hath he 
 done to display his glory? 
 
 "He liveth from all ages, he governeth all realms, and swayeth 
 all things both great and small. 
 
 "He hath formed Heaven and earth, and the air, and all things 
 thereunto belonging. 
 
 "He hath made man and given him a soul which shall live and 
 never perish, though the body shall have mouldered away or have 
 been burnt to ashes. And all that are righteous shall dwell with 
 him in the place called Gimii or Vingolf ' ; but the wicked shall 
 go to Hel and thence to Niflhel which is below, in the ninth 
 world." 
 
 Almost every heathen nation, so far as we have any knowledge 
 of the ; r mythology, believed in one Supreme Overruling God, 
 whose name it was not lawful to utter. 
 
 "When we ascend," says Miiller, to the most distant heights of 
 Greek history, the idea of God as the Supreme Being stands before 
 us as a simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God, the Father 
 of Heaven, the Father of men, we find in Greece a Worship of 
 Nature." The original Zvj$ was the Coder Gods, called by the 
 Greeks the Son of Time, meaning that there was no God before 
 Him, but He was Eternal. "Zeus," says the Orphic line, "is the 
 Beginning, Zeus the Middle ; out of Zeus all things have been 
 made." And the Peleides of Dcdona said, "Zeus was, Zeus is, 
 Zeus will be; O great Zeus!'* Zsl>c 7 ]v, Zt<)^ 0r/y, Zi'j^ lavs- 
 rar <L fjLZfdty Zsi>: and he was -Zsyf, x-Jdca-u- psyiff-oz, Zeus, 
 Best and Greatest.
 
 62O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Parsees, retaining the old religion taught by Zaradisht, say 
 in their catechism : "We believe in only one God, and do not 
 believe in any beside Him ; Who created the Heavens, the Earth, 
 the Angels. . . . Our God has neither face nor form, color nor 
 shape, nor fixed place. There is no other like Him, nor can our 
 mind comprehend Him." 
 
 The Tetragrammaton, or some other zvord covered by it, was 
 forbidden to be pronounced. But that its pronunciation might 
 not be lost among the Levites, the High-Priest uttered it in the 
 Tempk once a year, on the loth day of the Month Tisri, the day 
 of the great feast of expiation. During this ceremony, the people 
 were directed to make a great noise, that the Sacred Word might 
 not be heard by any who had not a right to it ; for every other, 
 said the Jews, would be incontinently stricken dead. 
 
 The Great Egyptian Initiates, before the time of the Jews, did 
 the same thing in regard to the word Isis ; which they regarded 
 as sacred and incommunicable. 
 
 Origen says : "There are names which have a natural potency. 
 Such as those which the Sages used among the Egyptians, the 
 Magi in Persia, the Brahmins in India. What is called Magic is 
 not a vain and chimerical act, as the Stoics and Epicureans pre- 
 tend. The names SABAOTH and ADONAI were not made for cre- 
 ated beings ; but they belong to a mysterious theology, which goes 
 back to the Creator. From Him comes the virtue of these names, 
 when they are arranged and pronounced according to the rules." 
 
 The Hindu word AUM represented the three Powers combined 
 in their Deity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; or the Creating, Pre- 
 serving, and Destroying Powers : A, the first ; U or 0-0, the 
 second ; and M, the third. This word could not be pronounced, 
 except by the letters : for its pronunciation as one word was said 
 to make Earth tremble, and even the Angels of Heaven to quake 
 for fear. 
 
 The word AUM, says the Ramayan, represents "The Being of 
 Being?, One Substance in three forms ; without mode, without 
 quality, without passion : Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite, 
 Indivisible, Immutable, Incorporeal, Irresistible." 
 
 An old passage in the Purana says : "All the rites ordained In 
 the Vedas, the sacrifices to the fire, and all other solemn purifica- 
 tions, shall pass away ; but that which shall never pass away is
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 621 
 
 the word A.'. 0-0.'. M: for it is the symbol of the Lord of all 
 things." 
 
 Herodotus says that the Ancient Pelasgi built no temples and 
 worshipped no idols, and had a sacred name of Deity, which it was 
 not permissible to pronounce. 
 
 The Clarian Oracle, which was of unknown antiquity, being 
 asked which of the Deities was named I Ml , answered in these 
 remarkable words : "The Initiated are bound to conceal the mys- 
 terious secrets. Learn, then, that L-W is the Great God Supreme, 
 that ruleth over all." 
 
 The Jews consider the True Name of God to be irrecoverably 
 lost by disuse, and regard its pronunciation as one of the Mys- 
 teries that will be revealed at the coming of their Messiah. And 
 they attribute its loss to the illegality of applying the Masoretic 
 points to so sacred a Name, by which a knowledge of the proper 
 vowels is forgotten. It is even said, in the Gemara of Abodah 
 Zara, that God permitted a celebrated Hebrew Scholar to be 
 burned by a Roman Emperor, because he had been heard to pro- 
 nounce the Sacred Name with points. 
 
 The Jews feared that the Heathen would get possession of the 
 Name : and therefore, in their copies of the Scriptures, they wrote 
 it in the Samaritan character, instead of the Hebrew or Chaldaic, 
 that the adversary might not make an improper use of it : for 
 they believed it capable of working miracles : and held that the 
 wonders in Egypt were performed by Moses, in virtue of this name 
 being engraved on his rod : and that any person who knew the 
 true pronunciation would be able to do as much as he did. 
 
 Josephus says it was unknown until God communicated it to 
 Moses in the wilderness : and that it was lost through the wicked- 
 ness of man. 
 
 The followers of Mahomet have a tradition that there is a secret 
 name of the Deity which possesses wonderful properties : and that 
 the only method of becoming acquainted with it, is by being ini- 
 tiated into the Mysteries of the Ism Abla. 
 
 H.'.O.'.M.'.was the first framer of the new religion among the 
 Persians, and His Name was Ineffable. 
 
 AM UN, among the Egyptians, was a name pronounceable by 
 none save the Priests. 
 
 The old Germans adored Cod with profound reverence, without 
 daring to name Him, or to worship Him in Temples.
 
 622 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Druids expressed the name of Deity by the letters O.'. I.'. 
 W.'. 
 
 Among all the nations of primitive antiquity, the doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul was not a mere probable hypothesis, need- 
 ing laborious researches and diffuse argumentation to produce 
 conviction of its truth. Nor can we hardly give it the name of 
 Faith; for it was a lively certainty, like the feeling of one's own 
 existence and identity, and of what is actually present ; exerting 
 its influence on all sublunary affairs, and the motive of mightier 
 deeds and enterprises than any mere earthly interest could inspire. 
 
 Even the doctrine of transmigration of souls, universal among 
 the Ancient Hindus and Egyptians, rested on a basis of the old 
 primitive religion, and was connected with a sentiment purely 
 religious. It involved this noble element of truth : That since 
 man had gone astray, and wandered far from God, he must needs 
 make many efforts, and undergo a long and painful pilgrimage, 
 before he could rejoin the Source of all Perfection : and the firm 
 conviction and positive certainty, that nothing defective, impure, 
 or denied with earthy stains, could enter the pure region of per- 
 fect spirits, or be eternally united to God ; wherefore the soul had 
 to pass through long trials and many purifications before it could 
 attain that blissful end. And the end and aim of all these systems 
 of philosophy was the final deliverance of the soul from the old 
 calamity, the dreaded fate and frightful lot of being compelled to 
 wander through the dark regions of nature and the various forms 
 of the brute creation, ever changing its terrestrial shape, and its 
 union with God, which they held to be the lofty destiny of the 
 wise and virtuous soul. 
 
 Pythagoras gave to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls 
 that meaning which the wise Egyptians gave to it in their Myster- 
 ies. He never taught the doctrine in that literal sense in which it 
 was understood by the people. Of that literal doctrine not the least 
 vestige is to be found in such of his symbols as remain, nor in his 
 precepts collected by his disciple Lysias. He held that men always 
 remain, in their essence, such as they were created ; and can 
 degrade themselves only by vice, and ennoble themselves only by 
 virtue. 
 
 Hierocles, one of his most zealous and celebrated disciples, 
 expressly says that he who believes that the soul of man, after his 
 death, will enter the body of a beast, for his vices, or become a
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OK PRINCE ADEPT. 62.3 
 
 plant for his stupidity, is deceived ; and is absolutely ignorant of 
 the eternal form of the soul, which can never change ; for, always 
 remaining man, it is said to become God or beast, through virtue 
 or vice, though it can become neither one nor the other by nature, 
 but solely by resemblance of its inclinations to theirs. 
 
 And Timaeus of Locria, another disciple, says that to alarm 
 men and prevent them from committing crimes, they menaced 
 them with strange humiliations and punishments; even declaring 
 that their souls would pass into new bodies, that of a coward into 
 the body of a deer; that of a ravisher into the body of a wolf; 
 that of a murderer into the body of some still more ferocious 
 animal ; and that of an impure sensualist into the body of a 
 hog. 
 
 So, too, the doctrine is explained in the Phaedo. And Lysias says, 
 that after the soul, purified of its crimes, has left the body and 
 returned to Heaven, it is no longer subject to change or death, but 
 enjoys an eternal felicity. According to the Indians, it returned 
 to, and became a part of, the universal soul which animates every- 
 thing. 
 
 The Hindus held that Buddha descended on earth to raise all 
 human beings up to the perfect state. He will ultimately suc- 
 ceed, and all, himself included, be merged in Unity. 
 
 Vishnu is to judge the world at the last day. It is to be 
 consumed by fire : The Sun and Moon are to lose their light ; 
 the Stars to fall ; and a New Heaven and Earth to be created. 
 
 The legend of the fall of the Spirits, obscured and distorted, is 
 preserved in the Hindu Mythology. And their traditions acknow- 
 ledged, and they revered, the succession of the first ancestors of 
 mankind, or the Holy Patriarchs of the primitive world, under 
 the name of the Seven Great RISHIS, or Sages of hoary antiquity ; 
 though they invested their history with a cloud of fictions. 
 
 The Egyptians held that the soul was immortal ; and that Osiris 
 was to judge the world. 
 
 And thus reads the Persian legend : 
 
 "After Ahriman shall have ruled the world until the end of 
 time, SOSIOSCH, the promised Redeemer, will come and annihilate 
 the powor of the DEVS (or Evil Spirits), awaken the dead, and sit 
 in final judgment upon spirits and men. After that the comet 
 Gnrzsher will be thrown down, and a general conflagration take 
 place, which will consume the whole world. The remains of the
 
 624 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 earth will then sink down into Dusakh, and become for three peri- 
 ods a place of punishment for the wicked. Then, by degrees, all 
 will be pardoned, even Ahriman and the Devs, and admitted to the 
 regions of bliss, and thus there will be a new Heaven and a new 
 earth." 
 
 In the doctrines of Lamaism also, we find, obscured, and partly 
 concealed in fiction, fragments of the primitive truth. For, 
 according to that faith, "There is to be a final judgment before 
 ESLIK KHAN : The good are to be admitted to Paradise, the bad 
 to be banished to hell, where, there are eight regions burning hot 
 and eight freezing cold." 
 
 In the Mysteries, wherever they were practised, was taught that 
 truth of the primitive revelation, the existence of One Great Being, 
 Infinite and pervading the Universe, Who was there worshipped 
 without superstition ; and His marvellous nature, essence, and 
 attributes taught to the Initiates ; while the vulgar attributed His 
 works to Secondary Gods, personified, and isolated from Him in 
 fabulous independence. 
 
 These truths were covered from the common people as with a 
 veil ; and the Mysteries were carried into every country, that, with- 
 out disturbing the popular beliefs, truth, the arts, and the sciences 
 might be known to those who were capable of understanding 
 them, and maintaining the true doctrine incorrupt; which the 
 people, prone to superstition and idolatry, have in no age been able 
 to do ; nor, as many strange aberrations and superstitions of the 
 present day prove, any more now than heretofore. For w r e need 
 but point to the doctrines of so many sects that degrade the Cre- 
 ator to the rank, and assign to Him the passions of humanity, to 
 prove that no\v, as always, the old truths must be committed to a 
 few, or they will be overlaid with fiction and error, and irretrieva- 
 bly lost. 
 
 Though Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries, it is 
 so in this qualified sense ; that it presents but an imperfect image 
 of their brilliancy ; the ruins only of their grandeur, and a sys- 
 tem that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of 
 social events and political circumstances. Upon leaving Egypt, 
 the Mysteries were modified bj the habits of the different nations 
 among whom they were introduced. Though originally more 
 moral and political than religions, they soon became the heritage, 
 as it were, of the priests, and essentially religious, though in reality
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 625 
 
 limiting the sacerdotal power, by teaching the intelligent laity the 
 folly and absurdity of the creeds of the populace. They were 
 therefore necessarily changed by the religious systems of the coun- 
 ties into which they were transplanted. In Greece, they were the 
 Mysteries of Ceres ; in Rome, of Dona Dca, the Good Goddess ; in 
 Gaul, the School of Mars ; in Sicily, the Academy of the Sciences ; 
 among the Hebrews, they partook of the rites and ceremonies of a 
 religion which placed all the powers of government, and all the 
 knowledge, in the hands of the Priests and Levites. The pagodas 
 of India, the retreats of the Magi of Persia and Chaldea, and the 
 pyramids of Egypt, were no longer the sources at which men 
 drank in knowledge. Each people, a,t all informed, had its Mys- 
 teries. After a time the Temples of Greece and the School of 
 Pythagoras lost their reputation, and Freemasonry took their 
 place. 
 
 Masonry, when properly expounded, is at once the interpretation 
 of the great book of nature, the recital of physical and astronom- 
 ical phenomena, the purest philosophy, and the place of deposit, 
 where, as in a Treasury, are kept in safety all the great truths of 
 the primitive revelation, that form the basis of all religions. In 
 the modern Degrees three things are to be recognized : The image 
 of primeval times, the tableau of the efficient causes of the Uni- 
 verse, and the book in which are written the morality of all peo- 
 ples, and the code by which they must govern themselves if they 
 would be prosperous. 
 
 The Kabalistic doctrine was long the religion of the Sage 
 and the Savant ; because, like Freemasonry, it incessantly tends 
 toward spiritual perfection, and the fusion of the creeds and Na- 
 tionalities of Mankind. In the eyes of the Kabalist, all men are 
 his brothers; and their relative ignorance is, to him, but a reason 
 for instructing them. There were illustrious Kabalists among the 
 Egyptians and Greeks, whose doctrines the Orthodox Church has 
 accepted ; and among the Arabs were many, whose wisdom was 
 not slighted by the Mediaeval Church. 
 
 The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabalists. The Kabalah 
 embodied a noble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic. 
 It taught the doctrine of the Unity of God, the art of knowing 
 and explaining the essence and operations of the Supreme Being. 
 of spiritual powers and natural forces, and of determining their 
 action by symbolic figures ; by the arrangement of the alphabet,
 
 626 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the combinations of numbers, the inversion of letters in writing 
 and the concealed meanings which theyclaimed to discover therein. 
 The Kabalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics 
 were born of the Kabalists. 
 
 The science of numbers represented not only arithmetical qual- 
 ities, but also all grandeur, all proportion. By it we necessarily 
 arrive at the discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, 
 called at the present day THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Or UNITY, that loftiest term to which all philosophy directs 
 itself; that imperious necessity of the human mind, that pivot 
 round which it is compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas : 
 Unity, this source, this centre of all systematic order, this princi- 
 ple of existence, this central point, unknown in its essence, but 
 manifest in its effects ; Unity, that sublime centre to which the 
 chain of causes necessarily ascends, was the august Idea toward 
 which all the ideas of Pythagoras converged. He refused the title 
 of Sage, which means one who knows: He invented, and applied 
 to himself that of Philosopher, signifying one who is fond of or 
 studies things secret and occult. The astronomy which he myste- 
 riously taught, was astrology: his science of numbers was based 
 on Kabalistical principles. 
 
 The Ancients, and Pythagoras himself, whose real principles 
 have not been always understood, never meant to ascribe to num- 
 bers, that is to say, to abstract signs, any special virtue. But the 
 Sages of Antiquity concurred in recognizing a ONE FIRST CAUSE 
 (material or spiritual) of the existence of the Universe. Thence, 
 UNITY became the symbol of the Supreme Deity. It was made to 
 express, to represent God ; but without attributing to the mere 
 number ONE any divine or supernatural virtue. 
 
 The Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers are partially 
 expressed in the following 
 
 LECTURE OF THE KABALISTS. 
 
 Qu.'. Why did you seek to be received a Knight of the Ka- 
 balah? 
 
 Ans.' . To know, by means of numbers, the admirable harmony 
 which there is between nature and religion. 
 
 Qu.' . How were you announced? 
 
 Ans.' . By twelve raps. 
 
 Qu.' . What do they signify?
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, <>U I'UI.Xc I. \|)Kl'T. 627 
 
 Ans.'. The twelve bases of our temporal and spiritual happiness. 
 
 Qw.'.What is a Kabalist? 
 
 Ans.'. A man who has learned, by tradition, the Sacerdotal Art 
 and the Royal Art. 
 
 Qu.'. What means the device, Omnia in nnmcris sita suntf 
 
 Ans.' . That everything lies veiled in numbers. 
 
 Qu.' . Explain me that. 
 
 Ans.' . I will do so, as far as the number 12. Your sagacity will 
 discern the rest. 
 
 Qu.'. What signifies the unit in the number 10? 
 
 Ans.' . GOD, creating and animating matter, expressed by o, 
 which, alone, is of no value. 
 
 Qu.' . What does the unit mean? 
 
 Ans.' . In the moral order, a Word incarnate in the bosom of a 
 virgin or religion. ... In the physical, a spirit embodied in the 
 virgin earth or nature. 
 
 Qu.' . What do you mean by the number two? 
 
 Ans.' . In the moral order, man and ivoman. ... In the phys- 
 ical, the active and the passive. 
 
 Qu.' . What do you mean by the number 3? 
 
 Ans.' . In the moral order, the three theological virtues. ... In 
 the physical, the three principles of bodies. 
 
 Qu.' . What do you mean by the number 4? 
 
 Ans.'. The four cardinal virtues. . . . The four elementary 
 qualities. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 5 ? 
 
 Ans.'. The quintessence of religion. . . . The quintessence of 
 matter. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 6? 
 
 Ans.'. The theological cube . . . The physical cube. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 7? 
 
 Ans.' . The seven sacraments . . . The seven planets. 
 
 Qu.' . What do you mean by the number 8? 
 
 Ans.' . The small number of Elus . . . The small number of wise 
 men. 
 
 );<.'. What do you mean by the number 9? 
 
 Ans.'. The exaltation of religion . ; . The exaltation of matter. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 10? 
 
 Ans.'. The ten commandments . . . The ten precepts of nature. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number TT ?
 
 628 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Ans.'. The multiplication of religion . . . The multiplication 
 of nature. 
 
 Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 12? 
 
 Ans.'. The twelve Articles of Faith; the twelve Apostles, foun- 
 dation of the Holy City, who preached throughout the whole 
 world, for our happiness and spiritual joy . . . The twelve opera- 
 tions of nature : The twelve signs of the Zodiac, foundation of the 
 Primum Mobile, extending it throughout the Universe for our 
 temporal felicity. 
 
 [The Rabbi (President of the Sanhedrim) adds: From all that 
 you have said, it results that the unit develops itself in 2, is com- 
 pleted in three internally, and so produces 4 externally; whence, 
 through 6, 7, 8, 9, it arrives at 5, half of the spherical number 
 10, to ascend, passing through n, to 12, and to raise itself, by the 
 number 4 times 10, to the number 6 times 12, the final term and 
 summit of our eternal happiness.] 
 
 Qu.' . What is the generative number? 
 
 Ans.'. In the Divinity, it is the unit; in created things, the 
 number 2: Because the Divinity, i, engenders 2, and in created 
 things 2 engenders I. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the most majestic number? 
 
 Ans.' . 3, because it denotes the triple divine essence. 
 
 Qu.' . What is the most mysterious number? 
 
 Ans.' . 4, because it contains all the mysteries of nature. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the most occult number? 
 
 Ans.'. 5, because it is inclosed in the centre of the series. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the most salutary number? 
 
 Ans.' . 6, because it contains the source of our spiritual and cor- 
 poreal happiness. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the most fortunate number? 
 
 Ans.'. 7, because it leads us to the decade, the perfect num- 
 ber. 
 
 Qu.'. Which is the number most to be desired? 
 
 Ans.'. 8, because he who possesses it, is of the number of the 
 Elus and Sages. 
 
 Qu.'. Which is the most sublime number? 
 
 Ans.' . 9, because by it religion and nature are exalted. 
 
 Qu.' '. Which is the most perfect number? 
 
 Ans.' . 10, because it includes unity, which created everything, 
 and zero, symbol of matter and chaos, whence everything emerged.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 629 
 
 In its figures it comprehends the created and uncreated, the com- 
 mencement and the end, power and force, life and annihilation. 
 By the study of this number, we find the relations of all things ; 
 the power of the Creator, the faculties of the creature, the Alpha 
 and Omega of divine knowledge. 
 
 Qu.' ', Which is the most multiplying number? 
 
 Ans.' . n, because with the possession of two units, we arrive 
 at the multiplication of things. 
 
 Qu.'. Which is the most solid 'number? 
 
 Ans.'. 12, because it is the foundation of our spiritual and tem- 
 poral happiness. 
 
 Qu.'. Which is the favorite number of religion and nature? 
 
 Ans.'. 4 times 10, because it enables us, rejecting everything 
 impure, eternally to enjoy the number 6 times 12, term and sum- 
 mit of our felicity. 
 
 Qu.' . What is the meaning of the square? 
 
 Ans.'. It is the symbol of the four elements contained in the 
 triangle, or the emblem of the three chemical principles : these 
 things united form absolute unity in the primal matter. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the meaning of the centre of the circumference? 
 
 Ans.'. It signifies the universal spirit, vivifying centre of nature. 
 
 Qu.' . What do you mean by the quadrature of the circle? 
 
 Ans.'. The investigation of the quadrature of the circle indi- 
 cates the knowledge of the four vulgar elements, which are them- 
 selves composed of elementary spirits or chief principles ; as the 
 circle, though round, is composed of lines, which escape the sight, 
 and are seen only by the mind. 
 
 Qu.'. What is the profoundest meaning of the figure 3? 
 
 Ans.'. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. From the 
 action of these three results the triangle within the square ; and 
 from the seven angles, the decade or perfect number. 
 
 Qu.'. Which is the most confused figure? 
 
 Ans.'. Zero, the emblem of chaos, formless mixture of the ele- 
 ments. 
 
 Qtt.'.What do the four devices of the Degree signify? 
 
 Ans.' . That we are to hear, see, be silent, and enjoy our happi- 
 ness. 
 
 The unit is the symbol of identity, equality, existence, conserva- 
 tion, and general harmony ; the Central Fire, the Point within the 
 Circle.
 
 630 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Two, or the duad, is the symbol of diversity, inequality, division, 
 separation, and vicissitudes. 
 
 The figure I signifies the living man [a body standing upright] ; 
 man being the only living being possessed of this faculty. Adding 
 to it a head, we have the letter P, the sign of Paternity, Creative 
 Power ; and with a further addition, R, signifying man in motion, 
 going, lens, Iturus. 
 
 The Duad is the origin of contrasts. It is the imperfect condi- 
 tion into which, according to the Pythagoreans, a being falls, when 
 he detaches himself from the Monad, or God. Spiritual beings, 
 emanating from God, are enveloped in the duad, and therefore 
 receive only illusory impressions. 
 
 As formerly the number ONE designated harmony, order, or the 
 Good Principle (the ONE and ONLY GOD, expressed in Latin by 
 Solus, whence the words Sol, Soleil, symbol of this God), the 
 number Two expressed the contrary idea. There commenced the 
 fatal knowledge of good and evil. Everything double, false, 
 opposed to the single and sole reality, was expressed by the Binary 
 number. It expressed also that state of contrariety in w r hich nature 
 exists, where everything is double ; night and day, light and dark- 
 ness, cold and heat, wet and dry, health and sickness, error 
 and truth, one and the other sex, etc. Hence the Romans 
 dedicated the second month in the year to Pluto, the God of 
 Hell, and the second day of that month to the manes of the 
 dead. 
 
 The number One, with the Chinese, signified unity, harmony, 
 order, the Good Principle, or God ; Tivo, disorder, duplicity, false- 
 hood. That people, in the earliest ages, based their whole philo- 
 sophical system on the two primary figures or lines, one straight 
 and unbroken, and the other broken or divided into two ; doubling 
 which, by placing one under the other, and trebling by placing 
 three under each other, they made the four symbols and eight 
 Koua; which referred to the natural elements, and the primary 
 principles of all things, and served symbolically or scientifically 
 to express them. Plato terms unity and duality the original ele- 
 ments of nature, and first principles of all existence : and the 
 oldest sacred book of the Chinese says : "The Great First Princi- 
 ple has produced two equations and differences, or primary rules 
 of existence ; but the two primary rules or two oppositions, namely 
 YN and YANG, or repose and motion, have produced four signs or
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 63! 
 
 symbols, and the four symbols have produced the eight KOUA or 
 further combinations." 
 
 The interpretation of the Hermetic fables shows, among every 
 ancient people, in their principal gods, first, I, the Creating 
 Monad, then 3, then 3 times 3, 3 times 9, and 3 times 27. This 
 triple progression has for its foundation the three ages of Nature, 
 the Past, the Present, and the Future ; or the three degrees of uni- 
 versal generation. . . Birth, Life, Death. . . Beginning, middle, end. 
 
 The Monad was male, because its action produces no change in 
 itself, but only out of itself. It represented the creative principle. 
 
 The Duad, for a contrary reason, was female, ever changing by 
 addition, subtraction, or multiplication. It represents matter 
 capable of form. 
 
 The union of the Monad and Duad produces the Triad, signify- 
 ing the world formed by the creative principle out of matter. 
 Pythagoras represented the world by the right-angled triangle, in 
 which the squares of the two shortest sides are equal, added 
 together, to the square of the longest one ; as the world, as formed, 
 is equal to the creative cause, and matter clothed with form. 
 
 The ternary is the first of the unequal numbers. The Triad, 
 mysterious number, which plays so great a part in the traditions 
 of Asia and the philosophy ef Plato, image of the Supreme Being, 
 includes in itself the properties of the first two numbers. It 
 was, to the Philosophers, the most excellent and favorite number : 
 a mysterious type, revered by all antiquity, and consecrated in 
 the Mysteries ; wherefore there are but three essential Degrees 
 among Masons ; who venerate, in the triangle, the most august 
 mystery .that of the Sacred Triad, object of their homage and study. 
 
 In geometry, a line cannot represent a body absolutely perfect. 
 As little do two lines constitute a figure demonstratively perfect. 
 But three lines form, by their junction, the TRIANGLE, or the first 
 figure regularly perfect ; and this is why it has served and still 
 serves to characterize The Eternal ; Who, infinitely perfect in His 
 nature, is, as Universal Creator, the first Being, and consequently 
 the first Perfection. 
 
 The Quadrangle or Square, perfect as it appears, being but the 
 second perfection, can in no wise represent God; Who is the first. 
 It is to be noted that the name of God in Latin and French 
 (Deus, Dieu), has for its initial the Delta or Greek Triangle. 
 Such is the reason, among ancients and moderns, for the conse-
 
 632 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 cration of the Triangle, whose three sides are emblems of the three 
 Kingdoms, or Nature, or God. In the centre is the Hebrew JOD 
 (initial of JTirp), the Animating Spirit of Fire, the generative 
 principle, represented by the letter G., initial of the name of Deity 
 in the languages of the North, and the meaning whereof is 
 Generation. 
 
 The first side of the Triangle, offered to the study of the 
 Apprentice, is the mineral kingdom, symbolized by Tub.'. 
 
 The second side, the subject of the meditations of the Fellow 
 Craft, is the vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schib.'. (an ear of 
 corn). In this reign begins the Generation of bodies; and this is 
 why the letter G., in its radiance, is presented to the eyes of the 
 adept. 
 
 The third side, the study whereof is devoted to the animal 
 kingdom, and completes the instruction of the Master, is symbol- 
 ized by Mach.'. (Son of putrefaction). 
 
 The figure 3 symbolizes the Earth. It is a figure of the ter- 
 restrial bodies. The 2, upper half of 3, symbolizes the vegetable 
 world, the lower half being hidden from our sight. 
 
 Three also referred to harmony, friendship, peace, concord, and 
 temperance ; and was so highly esteemed among the Pythago- 
 reans that they called it perfect harmony. 
 
 Three, four, ten, and twelve were sacred numbers among the 
 Etrurians, as they were among the Jews, Egyptians, .and Hindus. 
 
 The name of Deity, in many Nations, consisted of three letters : 
 among theGreeks, f.'.A. .&.-.; among the Persians, H.'.O.'.M.'. ; 
 among the Hindus, AUM ; among the Scandinavians, I.'.O.'.W.'. 
 On the upright Tablet of the King, discovered at Ximrotid, no 
 less than five of the thirteen names of the Great Gods consist of 
 three letters each, ANU, SAN, YAV, BAR, and BEL. 
 
 The quaternary is the most perfect number, and the root of 
 other numbers, and of all things. The tetrad expresses the first 
 mathematical power. Four represents also the generative power, 
 from which all combinations are derived. The Initiates considered 
 it the emblem of Movement and the Infinite, representing every- 
 thing that is neither corporeal nor sensible. Pythagoras communi- 
 cated it to his disciples as a symbol of the Eternal and Creative 
 Principle, under the name of Quaternary, the Ineffable Name of 
 God, which signifies Source of everything that has received exist- 
 ence ; and which, in Hebrew, is composed of four letters,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 633 
 
 In the Quaternary we find the first solid figure, the universal 
 symbol of immortality, the pyramid. The Gnostics claimed that 
 the whole edifice of their science rested on a square whose angles 
 were . . . ^r 3 ?) Silence: /to^or, Profundity: A'ooc, Intelligence: 
 and Alrftzta, Truth. For if the Triangle, figured by the number 
 3, forms the triangular base of the pyramid, it is unity which 
 forms its point or summit. 
 
 Lysias and Timseus of Locria said that not a single thing could 
 be named, which did not depend on the quaternary as its root. 
 
 There is, according to the Pythagoreans, a connection between 
 the gods and numbers, which constitutes the kind of Divination 
 called Arithmomancy. The soul is a number : it is moved of 
 itself : it contains in itself the quaternary number. 
 
 Matter being represented by the number 9, or 3 times 3, and the 
 Immortal Spirit having for its essential hieroglyphic the quater- 
 nary or the number 4, the Sages said that Man, having gone astray 
 and become entangled in an inextricable labyrinth, in going from 
 four to nine, the only way which he could take to emerge from 
 these deceitful paths, these disastrous detours, and the abyss of evil 
 into which he had plunged, was to retrace his steps, and go from 
 nine to four. 
 
 The ingenious and mystical idea which caused the Triangle to be 
 venerated, was applied to the figure 4 (4). It was said that it 
 expressed a living being, I, bearer of the Triangle A, the emblem 
 of God ; i. e., man bearing with himself a Divine principle. 
 
 Four was a divine number ; it referred to the Deity, and many 
 Ancient Nations gave God a name of four letters ; as the Hebrews 
 "*"'', the Egyptians AMUN, the Persians SURA, the Greeks 6EQ2, 
 and the Latins DEUS. This was the Tetragrammaton of the 
 Hebrews, and the Pythagoreans called it Tetractys, and swore 
 their most solemn oath by it. So too ODIN among the Scandi- 
 navians, ZIIY2 among the Greeks, PHTA among the Egyptians. 
 THOTH among the Phoenicians, and AS-UR and NEBO among the 
 Assyrians. The list might be indefinitely extended. 
 
 The number 5 was considered as mysterious, because it was 
 compounded of the Binary, Symbol of the False and Double, and 
 the Ternary, so interesting in its results. It thus energetically 
 expresses the state of imperfection, of order and disorder, of hap- 
 piness and misfortune, of life and death, which we see upon the 
 earth. To the Mysterious Societies it offered the fearful image of
 
 634 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Bad Principle, bringing trouble into the inferior order, in a 
 word, the Binary acting in the Ternary. 
 
 Under another aspect it was the emblem of marriage ; because 
 it is composed of 2, the first equal number, and of 3, the first une- 
 qual number. Wherefore Juno, the Goddess of Marriage, had for 
 her hieroglyphic the number 5. 
 
 Moreover, it has one of the properties of the number 9, that of 
 reproducing itself, when multiplied by itself : there being always 
 a 5 on the right hand of the product ; a result which led to its use 
 as a symbol of material changes. 
 
 The ancients represented the world by the number 5. A reason 
 for it, given by Diodorus, is, that it represents earth, water, air, 
 fire, and ether or spirit. Thence the origin of TTCVTC (5) and I an 
 the Universe, as the whole. 
 
 The number 5 designated the universal quintessence, and sym- 
 bolized, by its form ?, the vital essence, the animating spirit, 
 which flows [serpentat] through all nature. In fact, this ingeni- 
 ous figure is the union of the two Greek accents ' ' , placed over 
 those vowels which ought to be or ought not to be aspirated. The 
 first sign c bears the name of potent spirit ; and signifies the 
 Superior Spirit, the Spirit of God aspirated (spiratns}, respired by 
 man. The second sign ' is styled mild spirit, and represents the 
 secondary spirit, the spirit purely human. 
 
 The triple triangle, a figure of five lines uniting in five points, 
 was among the Pythagoreans an emblem of Health. 
 
 It is the Pentalpha of Pythagoras, or Pentangle of Solomon: 
 has five lines and five angles ; and is, among Masons, the outline or 
 origin of the five-pointed Star, and an emblem of Fellowship. 
 
 The number 6 was, in the Ancient Mysteries, a striking emblem 
 of nature ; as presenting the six dimensions of all bodies ; the six 
 lines which make up their form, viz., the four lines of direction, 
 toward the North, South, East, and West ; with the two lines of 
 height and depth, responding to the zenith and nadir. The sages 
 applied the senary to the physical man : while the septenary was, 
 for them, the symbol of his immortal spirit. 
 
 The hieroglyphical senary (the double equilateral triangle) is 
 the symbol of Deity. 
 
 Six is also an emblem of health, and the symbol of justice : be- 
 cause it is the first perfect number : that is, the first whose aliquot 
 parts (1/2, 1/3, 1/6, or 3, 2, and i), added together, make itself.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 635 
 
 Ormuzd created six good spirits, and Ahriman six evil ones. 
 These typify the six Summer and the six Winter months. 
 
 No number has ever been so universally in repute as the septen- 
 ary. Its celebrity is due, no doubt, to the planets being seven in 
 number. It belongs also to sacred things. The Pythagoreans 
 regarded it as formed of the numbers 3 and 4; the first whereof 
 was, in their eyes, the image of the three material elements, and 
 the second the principle of everything that is neither corporeal 
 nor sensible. It presented them, from that point of view, the em- 
 blem of everything that is perfect. 
 
 Considered as composed of 6 and unity, it serves to designate 
 the invisible centre or soul of everything ; because no body exists. 
 of which six lines do not constitute the form, nor without a sev- 
 enth interior point, as the centre and reality of the body, whereof 
 the external dimensions give only the appearance. 
 
 The numerous applications of the septenary confirmed the an- 
 cient sages in the use of this symbol. Moreover, they exalted the 
 properties of the number 7, as having, in a subordinate manner, 
 the perfection of the unit : for if the unit is uncreated, if no num- 
 ber produces it, the seven is also not engendered by any number 
 contained in the interval between i and 10. The number 4 occu- 
 pies an arithmetical middle-ground between the unit and 7, inas- 
 much as it is as much over i, as it is under 7, the difference each 
 way being 3. 
 
 The number 7, among the Egyptians, symbolized life ; and this is 
 why the letter Z of the Greeks was the initial of the verb Zato^ I 
 live ; and Zeoz (Jupiter), Father of Life. 
 
 The number 8, or the octary, is composed of the sacred num- 
 bers 3 and 5. Of the heavens, of the seven planets, and of the 
 sphere of the fixed stars, or of the eternal unity and the mysteri- 
 ous number 7, is composed the ogdoade, the number 8, the first 
 cube of equal numbers, regarded as sacred in the arithmetical phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 The Gnostic ogdoade had eight stars, which represented the 
 eight Cabiri of Samothrace, the eight Egyptian and Phoenician 
 principles, the eight gods of Xenocrates, the eight angles of the 
 cubic stone. 
 
 The number eight symbolizes perfection : and its figure, 8 or oo 
 indicates the perpetual and regular course of the Universe. 
 
 It is the first cube (2X2X2), and signifies friendship, pru-
 
 636 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 dence, counsel, and justice. It was a symbol of the primeval law 
 which regarded all men as equal. 
 
 The novary, or triple ternary. If the number three was cele- 
 brated among the ancient sages, that of three times three had no 
 less celebrity; because, according to them, each of the three ele- 
 ments which constitute our bodies is ternary : the water contain- 
 ing earth and fire; the earth containing igneous and aqueous 
 particles ; and the fire being tempered by globules of water and 
 terrestrial corpuscles which serve to feed it. No one of the three 
 elements being entirely separated from the others, all material be- 
 ings composed of these three elements, whereof each is triple, may 
 be designated by the figurative number of three times three, which 
 has become the symbol of all formations of bodies. Hence the 
 name of ninth envelope, given to matter. Every material exten- 
 sion, every circular line, has for representative sign the number 
 nine, among the Pythagoreans; who had observed the property 
 which this number possesses, of reproducing itself incessantly and 
 entire, in every multiplication ; thus offering to the mind a 
 very striking emblem of matter which is incessantly composed 
 before our eyes, after having undergone a thousand decomposi- 
 tions. 
 
 The number nine was consecrated to the Spheres and the Muses. 
 It is the sign of every circumference ; because a circle of 360 de- 
 grees is equal to 9, that is to say, 3 -\- 6 -f- o = 9. Nevertheless, 
 the ancients regarded this number with a sort of terror : they con- 
 sidered it a bad presage ; as the symbol of versatility, of change, 
 and the emblem of the frailty of human affairs. Wherefore they 
 avoided all numbers where nine appears, and chiefly 81, the prod- 
 uct of 9 multiplied by itself, and the addition whereof, 8 + i, 
 again presents the number 9. 
 
 As the figure of the number 6 was the symbol of the terrestrial 
 globe, animated by a divine spirit, the figure of the number 9 sym- 
 bolized the earth, under the influence of the Evil Principle ; and 
 thence the terror it inspired. Nevertheless, according to the Kab- 
 alists, the figure 9 symbolizes the generative egg, or the image of 
 a little globular being, from whose lower side seems to flow its 
 spirit of life. 
 
 The Ennead, signifying an aggregate of 9 things or persons, is 
 the first square of unequal numbers. 
 
 Every one is aware of the singular properties of the number 9,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 637 
 
 which, multiplied by itself or any other number whatever, gives a 
 result whose final sum is always 9, or always divisible by 9. 
 
 Nine, multiplied by each of the ordinary numbers, produces an 
 arithmetical progression, each member whereof, composed of two 
 figures, presents a remarkable fact ; for example : 
 
 i. ..2. ..3. ..4. ..5. ..6. ..7. ..8. ..9. .10 
 9. .18. .27. .36. .45. .54. .63. .72. .81. .90 
 
 The first line of figures gives the regular series, from I to 10. 
 
 The second reproduces this line doubly ; first ascending, from 
 the first figure of 18, and then returning from the second figure 
 of 81. 
 
 It follows, from the curious fact, that the half of the numbers 
 which compose this progression represents, in inverse order, the 
 figures of the second half : 
 
 9... 18.. 27. .36. .45 = 135 = 9.. am* i + 3 + 5 = 45 = 9 
 90. .81 . .72. .63. .54 = 360 = 9. 
 
 99 99 99 99 99 495 = 18 = 9. 
 So 9 2 =8i . . .812=6561 = 18=9. . .9X218. . . i8 2 =324=9. 
 9X3= 2 7- ..272=729 18=9. 9X4=36 . ..362=1296=18=9. 
 
 And so with every multiple of 9 say 45, 54, 63, 72, etc. 
 Thus 9 X 8 = 72. . . 72 2 = 5184 = 18 = 9. 
 And further : 
 
 18 27 36 72 
 
 18 27 36 72 
 
 144 = 9 189 =18=9 216 = 9 144 = 9 
 
 18 =9 54 =9 Io8 = 9 504 = 9 
 
 324 = 9... 18 = 9 729 = 18 = 9 1296 = 18 = 9 5184 = 18 = 9 
 108 
 1 08 
 
 864 -~ 1 8 
 108 = 9 
 
 11664= J 8 = 9.
 
 638 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 r 
 
 And so the cubes: 
 
 27729X729 =18=9 i8 2 =324=9 9 2 =8i 8i 2 =.. 6561 = 18=9 
 729 324 6561 
 
 6561 =18=9 1296189 6561=18=9 
 
 1458 =18=9 648 =18=9 39366 =27=9 
 
 5103 =9 972 =18=9 32805 =18=9 
 
 39366 =27=9 
 
 531441 =18=9 104976=27=9 43,046,721=27=9. 
 
 The number 10, or the Denary, is the measure of everything; 
 and reduces multiplied numbers to unity. Containing all the 
 numerical and harmonic relations, and all the properties of the 
 numbers which precede it, it concludes the Abacus or Table of 
 Pythagoras. To the Mysterious Societies, this number typified 
 the assemblage of all the wonders of the Universe. They wrote it 
 thus # ; that is to say, Unity in the middle of Zero, as the centre 
 of a circle, or symbol of Deity. They saw in this figure every- 
 thing that should lead to reflection : the centre, the ray, and the 
 circumference, represented to them God, Man, and the Universe. 
 
 This number was, among the Sages, a sign of concord, love, and 
 peace. To Masons it is a sign of union and good faith ; because 
 it is expressed by joining two hands, or the Master's grip, when 
 the number of fingers gives 10: and it was represented by the 
 Tetractys of Pythagoras. 
 
 The number 12, like the number 7, is celebrated in the worship 
 of nature. The two most famous divisions of the heavens, that 
 by 7, which is that of the planets, and that by 12, which is that 
 of the Signs of the Zodiac, are found upon the religious monu- 
 ments of all the peoples of the Ancient World, even to the remote 
 extremes of the East. Although Pythagoras does not speak of 
 the number 12, it is none the less a sacred number. It is the 
 image of the Zodiac ; and consequently that of the Sun, which 
 rules over it. 
 
 Such are the ancient ideas in regard to those numbers which so 
 often appear in Masonry ; and rightly understood, as the old Sages 
 understood them, they contain many a pregnant lesson. 
 
 Before we enter upon the final lesson of Masonic Philosophy, 
 we will delay a few moments to repeat to you the Christian inter- 
 pretations of the Blue Degrees.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 630 
 
 In the First Degree, they said, there are three symbols to be 
 applied. 
 
 ist. Man, after the fall, was left naked and defenceless against 
 the just anger of the Deity. Prone to evil, the human race stag- 
 gered blindly onward into the thick darkness of unbelief, bound 
 fast by the strong cable-tow of the natural and sinful will. 
 Moral corruption was followed by physical misery. Want and des- 
 titution invaded the earth. War and Famine and Pestilence filled" 
 up the measure of evil, and over the sharp flints of misfortune 
 and wretchedness man toiled with naked and bleeding feet. This 
 condition of blindness, destitution, miser)', and bondage, from 
 which to save the world the Redeemer came, is symbolized by the 
 condition of the candidate, when he is brought up for the first 
 time to the door of the Lodge. 
 
 2d. Notwithstanding the death of the Redeemer, man can be 
 saved only by faith, repentance, and reformation. To repent, he 
 must feel the sharp sting of conscience and remorse, like a sword 
 piercing his bosom. His confidence in his guide, whom he is told 
 to follow and fear no danger ; his trust in God, which he is caused 
 to profess ; and the point of the sword that is pressed against his 
 naked left breast over the heart, are symbolical of the faith, repent- 
 ance and reformation necessary to bring him to the light of a 
 life in Christ the Crucified. 
 
 3d. Having repented and reformed, and bound himself to the 
 service of God by a firm promise and obligation, the light of 
 Christian hope shines down into the darkness of the heart of the 
 humble penitent, and blazes upon his pathway to Heaven. And 
 this is symbolized by the candidate's being brought to light, after 
 he is obligated, by the Worshipful Master, who in that is a symbol 
 of the Redeemer, and so brings him to light, with the help of 
 the brethren, as He taught the Word with the aid of the Apos- 
 tles. 
 
 In the Second Degree there are two symbols : 
 
 4th. The Christian assumes new duties toward God and his 
 fellows. To\vard God, of love, gratitude, and veneration, and an 
 anxious desire to serve and glorify Him : toward his fellows, of 
 kindness, sympathy, and justice. And this assumption of duty, 
 this entering upon good works, is symbolized by the Fellow-Craft's 
 obligation ; by which, bound as an apprentice to secrecy merely, 
 and set in the Northeast corner of the Lodge, he descends as
 
 640 MORALS AND DOOM A. 
 
 a Fellow-Craft into the body of the brethren, and assumes the 
 active duties of a good Mason. 
 
 5th. The Christian, reconciled to God, sees the world in a new 
 light. This great Universe is no longer a mere machine, wound 
 up and set going six thousand or sixty million years ago, and left 
 to run on afterward forever, by virtue of a law of mechanics cre- 
 ated at the beginning, without further care or consideration on 
 the part of the Deity ; but it has now become to him a great ema- 
 nation from God, the product of His thought, not a mere dead 
 machine, but a thing of life, over which God watches continually, 
 and every movement of which is immediately produced by His 
 present action, the law of harmony being the essence of the Deity, 
 re-enacted every instant. And this is symbolized by the imper- 
 fect instruction given in the Fellow-Craft's Degree, in the sciences, 
 and particularly geometry, connected as the latter is with God 
 Himself in the mind of a Mason, because the same letter, suspend- 
 ed in the East, represents both ; and astronomy, or the knowledge 
 of the laws of motion and harmony that govern the spheres, is but 
 a portion of the wider science of geometry. It is so symbolized, 
 because it is here, in the Second Degree, that the candidate first 
 receives an other than moral instruction. 
 
 There are also two symbols in the Third Degree, which, with 
 the 3 in the first, and 2 in the second, make the 7. 
 
 6th. The candidate, after passing through the first part of the 
 ceremony, imagines himself a Master ; and is surprised to be in- 
 formed that as yet he is not, and that it is uncertain whether he 
 ever will be. He is told of a difficult and dangerous path yet to 
 be travelled, and is advised that upon that journey it depends 
 whether he will become a Master. This is symbolical of that 
 which our Saviour said to Nicodemus, that, notwithstanding his 
 morals might be beyond reproach, he could not enter the Kingdom 
 of Heaven unless he were born again ; symbolically dying, and 
 again entering the world regenerate, like a spotless infant. 
 
 7th. The murder of Hiram, his burial, and his being raised 
 again by the Master, are symbols, both of the death, burial, and 
 resurrection of the Redeemer ; and of the death and burial in 
 sins of the natural man, and his being raised again to a new life, 
 or born again, by the direct action of the Redeemer ; after Moral- 
 ity (symbolized by the Entered Apprentice's grip), and Philosophy 
 (symbolized by the grip of the Fellow-Craft), had failed to raise
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 64! 
 
 him. That of the Lion of the House of Juclah is the strong grip, 
 never to be broken, with which Christ, of the royal line of that 
 House, has clasped to Himself the whole human race, and embra- 
 ces them in His wide arms as closely and affectionately as breth- 
 ren embrace each other on the five points of fellowship. 
 
 As Entered Apprentices and Fellow-Crafts, Masons are taught 
 to imitate the laudable example of those Masons who labored at 
 the building of King Solomon's Temple ; and to plant firmly and 
 deep in their hearts those foundation-stones of principle, truth, 
 justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, and charity, on which to 
 erect that Christian character which all the storms of misfortune 
 and all the powers and temptations of Hell shall not prevail 
 against ; those feelings and noble affections which are the most 
 proper homage that can be paid to the Grand Architect and Great 
 Father of the Universe, and which make the heart a living temple 
 builded to Him : when the unruly passions are made to submit to 
 rule and measurement, and their excesses are struck off with the 
 gavel of self-restraint ; and when every action and every principle 
 is accurately corrected and adjusted by the square of wisdom, the 
 level of humility, and the plumb of justice. 
 
 The two columns, Jachin and Boaz, are the symbols of that 
 profound faith and implicit trust in God and the Redeemer that 
 are the Christian's strength ; and of those good works by which 
 alone that faith can be established and made operative and effectual 
 to salvation. 
 
 The three pillars that support the Lodge are symbols of a 
 Christian's HOPE in a future state of happiness ; FAITH in the 
 promises and the divine character and mission of the Redeemer; 
 and CHARITABLE JUDGMENT of other men. 
 
 The three murderers of Khir-Om symbolize Pontius Pilate, 
 Caiaphas the High-Priest, and Judas Iscariot : and the three blows 
 give'i him are the betrayal by the last, the refusal of Roman pro- 
 tection by Pilate, and the condemnation by the High-Priest. 
 They also symbolize the blow on the ear, the scourging, and the 
 crown of thorns. The twelve fellow-crafts sent in search of the 
 body are the twelve disciples, in doubt whether to believe th?.t the 
 Redeemer would rise from the dead. 
 
 The Master's word, supposed to be lost, symbolizes the Christian 
 faith and religion, supposed to have been crushed and destroyed 
 when the Saviour was crucified, after Iscariot had betrayed Him,
 
 642 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 and Peter deserted Him, and when the other disciples doubted 
 whether He would arise from the dead ; but which rose from His 
 tomb and flowed rapidly over the civilized world ; and so that 
 which was supposed to be lost was found. It symbolizes also the 
 Saviour Himself ; the WORD that was in the beginning that was 
 with God, and that was God ; the Word of life, that was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us, and was supposed to be lost, while He 
 lay in the tomb, for three days, and His disciples "as yet knew not 
 the scripture that He must rise again from the dead," and doubt- 
 ed when they heard of it, and were amazed and frightened and 
 still doubted when He appeared among them. 
 
 The bush of acacia placed at the head of the grave of Khir-Om 
 is an emblem of resurrection and immortality. 
 
 Such are the explanations of our Christian brethren ; entitled, 
 like those of all other Masons, to a respectful consideration. 
 
 CLOSING INSTRUCTION. 
 
 There is no pretence to infallibility in Masonry. It is not for 
 us to dictate to any man what he shall believe. We have hitherto, 
 in the instruction of the several Degrees, confined ourselves to 
 laying before you the great thoughts that have found expression 
 in the different ages of the world, leaving you to decide for your- 
 self as to the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of each, and what propor- 
 tion of truth, if any, each contained. We shall pursue no other 
 course in this closing Philosophical instruction ; in which we 
 propose to deal with the highest questions that have ever exercised 
 the human mind, with the existence and the nature of a God, 
 with the existence and the nature of the human soul, and with the 
 relations of the divine and human spirit with the merely material 
 Universe. There can be no questions more important to an intel- 
 ligent being, none that have for him a more direct and personal 
 interest ; and to this last word of Scottish Masonry we invite your 
 serious and attentive consideration. And, as what we shall now 
 say will be but the completion and rounding-off of what we have 
 already said in several of the preceding Degrees, in regard to the 
 Old Thought and the Ancient Philosophies, we hope that you 
 have noted and not forgotten our previous lessons, without which 
 this would seem imperfect and fragmentary. 
 
 In its idea of rewarding a faithful and intelligent workman by 
 conferring upon him a knowledge of the True Word, Masonry
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 643 
 
 has perpetuated a very great truth, because it involves the 
 proposition that the idea which a man forms of God is always the 
 most important element in his speculative theory of the Universe, 
 and in his particular practical plan of action for the Church, the 
 State, the Community, the Family, and his own individual life. 
 It will ever make a vast difference in the conduct of a people in 
 war or peace, whether they believe the Supreme God to be a cruel 
 Deity, delighting in sacrifice and blood, or a God of Love ; and an 
 individual's speculative theory as to the mode and extent of God's 
 government, and as to the nature and reality of his own free-will 
 and consequent responsibility, will needs have great influence in 
 shaping the course of his life and conversation. 
 
 We see every day the vast influence of the popular idea of God. 
 All the great historical civilizations of the race have grown out 
 of the national ideas which were formed of God; or have been 
 intimately connected with those ideas. The popular Theology, 
 which at first is only an abstract idea in the heads of philosophers, 
 by and by shows itself in the laws, and in the punishments for 
 crime, in the churches, the ceremonies and the sacraments, the 
 festivals and the fasts, the weddings, the baptisms and the 
 funerals, in the hospitals, the colleges, the schools, and all the 
 social charities, in the relations of husband and wife, parent and 
 child, in the daily work and the daily prayer of every man. 
 
 As the world grows in its development, it necessarily outgrows 
 its ancient ideas of God, which were only temporary and pro- 
 visional. A man who has a higher conception of God than those 
 about him, and who denies that their conception is God, is very 
 likely to be called an Atheist by men who are really far less 
 believers in a God than he. Thus the Christians, who said the 
 Heathen idols were no Gods, were accounted Atheists by the 
 People, and accordingly put to death ; and Jesus of Nazareth 
 was crucified as an unbelieving blasphemer, by the Jews. 
 
 There is a mere formal Atheism, which is a denial of God in 
 terms, but not in reality. A man says, There is no God : that is, 
 no God that is self-originated, or that never originated, but always 
 WAS and HAD BEEN, who is the cause of existence, who is the 
 Mind and the Providence of the Universe : and so the order, 
 beauty, and harmony of the world of matter and mind do not 
 indicate any plan or purpose of Deity. But, he says. NATURE. 
 meaning by that the whole sum-total of existence, that is power-
 
 644 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ful ; active, \visc, and good; Nature is self-originated, or always 
 was and had been, the cause of its own existence, the mind of 
 the Universe and the Providence of itself. There is obviously a 
 plan and purpose whereby order, beauty, and harmony are brought 
 about ; but all that is the plan and purpose of nature. 
 
 In such cases, the absolute denial of God is only formal and 
 not real. The qualities of God are admitted, and affirmed to be 
 real; and it is a mere change of name to call the possessor of 
 those qualities, Nature, and not God. The real question is, 
 whether such Qualities exist, as we call God ; and not, by what 
 particular name we shall designate the Qualities. One man may 
 call the sum total of these Qualities, Nature ; another, Heaven ; a 
 third, Universe ; a fourth, Matter ; a fifth, Spirit ; a sixth, God, 
 Theos, Zeus, Alfadir, Allah, or what he pleases. All admit the 
 existence of the Being, Power, or ENS, thus diversely named. The 
 name is of the smallest consequence. 
 
 Real Atheism is the denial of the existence of any God, of the 
 actuality of all possible ideas of God. It denies that there is any 
 Mind, Intelligence, or ENS, that is the Cause and Providence of 
 the Universe, and of any Thing or any Existence, Soul, Spirit, or 
 Being, that intentionally or intelligently produces the Order, 
 Beauty, and Harmony thereof, and the constant and regular 
 modes of operation therein. It must necessarily deny that there 
 is any law, order, or harmony in existence, or any constant mode 
 of operation in the world ; for it is utterly impossible for any 
 human creature to conceive, however much he may pretend to do 
 so, of either of these, except as a consequence of the action of 
 Intelligence ; which is, indeed, that otherwise unknown thing, 
 the existence of which these alone prove ; otherwise than as the 
 cause of these, not a thing at all ; a mere name for the wholly 
 uncognizable cause of these. 
 
 The real atheist must deny the existence of the Qualities of God, 
 deny that there is any mind of or in the Universe, any self-con- 
 scious Providence, any Providence at all. He must deny that 
 there is any Being or Cause of Finite things, that is self-consciously 
 powerful, wise, just, loving, and faithful to itself and its own 
 nature. He must deny that there is any plan in the Universe or 
 any part of it. He must hold, either that matter is eternal, or that 
 it originated itself, which is absurd, or that it was originated by 
 an Intelligence, or at least by a Cause ; and then he admits a God.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 645 
 
 No doubt it is beyond the reach of our faculties to imagine how 
 matter originated, how it began to be, in space where before was 
 nothing, or God only. But it is equally beyond the reach of our 
 faculties to imagine it eternal and tmoriginated. To hold it to be 
 eternal, without thought or will ; that the specific forms of it, 
 the seed, the rock, the tree, the man, the solar system, all came 
 with no forethought planning or producing them, by "chance" or 
 "the fortuitous concourse of atoms" of matter that has no thought 
 or will ; and that they indicate no mind, no plan, no purpose, no 
 providence, is absurd. It is not to deny the existence of what we 
 understand by mind, plan, purpose, Providence ; but to insist 
 that these words shall have some other meaning than that which 
 the human race has ever attached to them : shall mean some 
 unknown thing, for which the human race has no name, because 
 it has of such a thing no possible idea. Either there never was 
 any such thing as a "plan," and the word is nonsense, or the 
 Universe exists in conformity to a plan. The word never meant, 
 and never can mean, any other thing than that which the Uni- 
 verse exhibits. So with the word "purpose;" so with the word 
 "Providence." They mean nothing, or else only what the Uni- 
 verse proves. 
 
 It was soon found that the denial of a Conscious Power, the 
 cause of man and of his life, of a Providence, or a Mind and 
 Intelligence arranging man in reference to the world, and the 
 world in reference to man, would not satisfy the instinctive desires 
 of human nature, or account for the facts of material nature. It 
 did not long answer to r?.y, if it ever ^vas said, that the Universe 
 was drifting in the void inane, and neither it, nor any mind within 
 or without it, knew of its whence, its whither, or its whereabouts ; 
 that man was drifting in the Universe, knowing little of his where- 
 abouts, nothing of his whence or whither; that there was no 
 Mind, no Providence, no Power, that knew any better; nothing 
 that guided and directed man in his drifting, or the Universe in 
 the weltering waste of Time. To say to man and woman, "your 
 heroism, your bravery, your self-denial all comes to nothing : your 
 nobleness will do you no good : you will die, and your nobleness 
 will do mankind no service ; for there is no plan or order in all 
 these things ; everything comes and goes by the fortuitous con- 
 course of atoms;" did not, nor ever will, long satisfy the human 
 mind. 
 42
 
 646 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 True, the theory of Atheism has been uttered. It has been said, 
 "Death is the end : this is a world without a God : you are a body 
 without a soul : there is a Here, but no Hereafter for you ; an 
 Earth, but no Heaven. Die, and return to your dust. Man is 
 bones, blood, bowels, and brain ; mind is matter : there is no soul 
 in the brain, nothing but nerves. We can see all the way to a 
 little star in the nebula of Orion's belt ; so distant that it will take 
 light a thousand millions of years to come from it to the earth, 
 journeying at the rate of twelve millions of miles a minute. 
 There is no Heaven this side of that : you see all the way through : 
 there is not a speck of Heaven ; and do you think there is any 
 beyond it ; and if so, when would you reach it ? There is no 
 Providence. Nature is a fortuitous concourse of atoms ; thought 
 is a fortuitous function of matter, a fortuitous result of a for- 
 tuitous result, a chance-shot from the great wind-gun of the Uni- 
 verse, accidentally loaded, pointed at random, and fired off by 
 chance. Things happen; they are not arranged. There is luck, 
 and there is ill-luck ; but there is no Providence. Die you into 
 dust!" Does all this satisfy the human instinct of immortality, 
 that makes us ever long, with unutterable longing, to join our- 
 selves again to our dear ones who 'have gone away before us, and 
 to mankind, for eternal life? Does it satisfy our mighty hunger- 
 ing and thirst for immortality, our anxious longing to come 
 nearer to, and to know more of, the Eternal Cause of all things ? 
 
 Men never could be content to believe that there was no mind 
 that thought for man, no conscience to enact eternal laws, no heart 
 to love those whom nothing of earth loves or cares for, no will of 
 the Universe to marshal the nations in the way of wisdom, justice, 
 ancl love. History is not, thank God ! we know it is not, the 
 fortuitous concourse of events, or Nature that of atoms. We can- 
 not believe that there is no plan nor purpose in Nature, to guide 
 our going out and coming in : that there is a mighty going, but it 
 goes nowhere ; that all beauty, wisdom, affection, justice, morality 
 in the world, is an accident, and may end to-morrow. 
 
 All over the world there is heroism unrequited, or paid with 
 misery ; vice on thrones, corruption in high places, nobleness in 
 poverty or even in chains, the gentle devotion of woman rewarded 
 by brutal neglect or more brutal abuse and violence ; everywhere 
 want, misery, over-work, and under-wages. Add to these the 
 Atheist's creed, a body without a soul, an earth without a
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 647 
 
 Heaven, a world without a God ; and what a Pandemonium would 
 we make of this world ! 
 
 The intellect of the Atheist would find matter everywhere ; but 
 no Causing and Providing Mind : his moral sense would find no 
 Equitable Will, no Beauty of Moral Excellence, no Conscience 
 enacting justice into the unchanging law of right, no spiritual 
 Order or spiritual Providence, but only material Fate and Chance. 
 His affections would find only finite things to love ; and to them 
 the dead who were loved and who died yesterday, are like the 
 rainbow that yesterday evening lived a moment and then passed 
 'away. His soul, flying through the vast Inane, and feeling the 
 darkness with its wings, seeking the Soul of all, which at once is 
 Reason, Conscience, and the Heart of all that is, would find no 
 God, but a Universe all disorder ; no Infinite, no Reason, no Con- 
 science, no Heart, no Soul of things ; nothing to reverence, to 
 esteem, to love, to worship, to trust in; but only an Ugly Force, 
 alien and foreign to us, that strikes down those we love, and 
 makes us mere worms on the hot sand of the world. No voice 
 would speak from the Earth to comfort him. It is a cruel mother, 
 that great Earth, that devours her young, a Force and nothing 
 more. Out of the sky would smile no kind Providence, in all its 
 thousand starry eyes ; and in storms a malignant violence, with 
 its lightning-sword, would stab into the darkness, seeking for men 
 to murder. 
 
 No man ever was or ever can be content with that. The evi- 
 dence of God has been ploughed into Nature so deeply, and so 
 deeply woven into the texture of the human soul, that Atheism 
 has never become a faith, though it has sometimes assumed the 
 shape of theory. Religion is natural to man. Instinctively he 
 turns to God and reverences and relies on Him. In the Mathe- 
 matics of the Heavens, written in gorgeous diagrams of fire, he 
 sees law, order, beauty, harmony without end : in the ethics of the 
 little nations that inhabit the ant-hills he sees the same; in all 
 Nature, animate and inanimate, he sees the evidences of a Design, 
 a Will, an Intelligence, and a God, of a God beneficent and loving 
 as well as wise, and merciful and indulgent as well as powerful. 
 
 To man, surrounded by the material Universe, and conscious of 
 the influence that his material environnv'.ts exercised upon his 
 fortunes and his present destiny ; to man, ever confronted with 
 the splendors of the starry heavens, the regular march of the
 
 648 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 seasons, the phenomena of sunrise and moonrise, and all the 
 evidences of intelligence and design that everywhere pressed 
 upon and overwhelmed him, all imaginable questions as to the 
 nature and cause of these phenomena constantly recurred, de- 
 manding to be solved, and refusing to be sent away unanswered. 
 And still, after the lapse of ages, press upon the human mind 
 and demand solution, the same great questions perhaps still de- 
 manding it in vain. 
 
 Advancing to the period when man had ceased to look upon the 
 separate parts and individual forces of the Universe as gods, 
 when he had come to look upon it as a whole, this question, among 
 the earliest, occurred to him, and insisted on being answered: 
 "Is this material Universe self-existent, or was it created? Is it 
 eternal, or did it originate ?" 
 
 And then in succession came crowding on the human mind 
 these other questions : 
 
 "Is this material Universe a mere aggregate of fortuitous com- 
 binations of matter, or is it the result and work of intelligence, 
 acting upon a plan ? 
 
 "If there be such an Intelligence, what and where is it? Is the 
 material Universe itself an Intelligent being? Is it like man, a 
 body and a soul ? Does Nature act upon itself, or is there a Cause 
 beyond it that acts upon it ? 
 
 "If there is a personal God, separate from the material Universe, 
 that created all things, Himself uncreated, is He corporeal or in- 
 corporeal, material or spiritual, the soul of the Universe or wholly 
 apart from it ? and if He be Spirit, what then is spirit ? 
 
 "Was that Supreme Deity active or quiescent before the crea- 
 tion ; and if quiescent during a previous eternity, what necessity 
 of His nature moved Him at last to create a world; or was it a 
 mere whim that had no motive ? 
 
 "Was matter co-existent with Him, or absolutely created by 
 him out of nothing? Did He create it, or only mould and shape 
 and fashion a chaos already existing, co-existent with Himself? 
 
 "Did the Deity directly create matter, or was creation the work 
 of inferior deities, emanations from Himself? 
 
 "If He be good and just, whence comes it that, foreknowing 
 everything, He has allowed sorrow and evil to exist ; and how to 
 reconcile with His benevolence and wisdom the prosperity of vice 
 and the misfortunes of virtue in this world ?"
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 649 
 
 And then, as to man himself, recurred these other questions, as 
 they continue to recur to all of us : 
 
 "What is it in us that thinks? Is Thought the mere result of 
 material organization ; or is there in us a soul that thinks, separate 
 from and resident in the body? If the latter, is it eternal and 
 uncreated; and if not, how created? Is it distinct from God, or 
 an emanation from Him? Is it inherently immortal, or only so 
 by destination, because God has willed it? Is it to return to and 
 be merged in Him, or ever to exist, separately from Him, with its 
 present identity ? 
 
 "If God has fore-seen and fore-arranged all that occurs, how has 
 man any real free-will, or the least control over circumstances? 
 How can anything be done against the will of Infinite Omnipo- 
 tence ; and if all is done according to that will, how is there any 
 wrong or evil, in what Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power does 
 not choose to prevent ? 
 
 "What is the foundation of the moral law ? Did God enact it of 
 His own mere pleasure ; and if so, can He not, when He pleases, 
 repeal it? Who shall assure us He will not repeal it, and make 
 right wrong, and virtue vice ? Or is the moral law a necessity of 
 His nature ; and if so, who enacted it ; and does not that assert a 
 power, like the old Necessity, superior to Deity?" 
 
 And, close-following after these, came the great question of 
 HEREAFTER, of another Life, of the soul's Destiny; and the 
 thousand other collateral and subordinate questions, as to matter, 
 spirit, futurity, and God, that have produced all the systems of 
 philosophy, all metaphysics, and all theology, since the world 
 began. 
 
 What the old philosophic mind thought upon these great ques- 
 tions, we have already, to some extent, developed. With the 
 Emanation-doctrine of the Gnostics and the Orient, we hav2 
 endeavored to make you familiar. We have brought you face 
 to face with the Kabalists, the Essenes, and Philo the Jew. We 
 have shown that, and how, much of the old mythology was 
 derived from the daily and yearly recurring phenomena of the 
 heavens. \Ve have exhibited to you the ancient notions by 
 which they endeavored to explain to themselves the existence 
 and prevalence of evil ; and we have in some degree made known 
 to you their metaphysical ideas as to the nature of the Deity. 
 Much more remains to be done than it is within our power to do.
 
 650 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 We stand upon the sounding shore of the great ocean of Time. 
 In front of us stretches out the heaving waste of the illimitable 
 Past ; and its waves, as they roll up to our feet along the spark- 
 ling slope of the yellow sands, bring to us, now and then, from 
 the depths of that boundless ocean, a shell, a few specimens of 
 algae torn rudely from their stems, a rounded pebble ; and that is 
 all ; of all the vast treasures of ancient thought that lie buried 
 there, with the mighty anthem of the boundless ocean thundering 
 over them forever and forever. 
 
 Let us once more, and for the last time, along the shore of that 
 great ocean, gather a few more relics of the Past, and listen to its 
 mighty voices, as they come, in fragmentary music, in broken and 
 interrupted rhythm, whispering to us from the great bosom of the 
 Past. 
 
 Rites, creeds, and legends express, directly or symbolically, some 
 leading idea, according to which the Mysteries of Being are sup- 
 posed to be explained in Deity. The intricacies of mythical 
 genealogies are a practical acknowledgment of the mysterious 
 nature of the Omnipotent Deity; displaying in their beautiful 
 but ineffectual imagery the first efforts of the mind to communi- 
 cate with nature : the flowers which fancy strewed before the 
 youthful steps of Psyche, when she first set out in pursuit of the 
 immortal object of her love. Theories and notions, in all their 
 varieties of truth and falsehood, are a machinery more or less 
 efficacious, directed to the same end. Every religion was, in its 
 origin, an embryo philosophy, or an attempt to interpret the 
 unknown by mind ; and it was only when philosophy, which is 
 essentially progress, outgrew its first acquisitions, that religion 
 became a thing apart, cherishing as unalterable dogmas the 
 notions which philosophy had abandoned. Separated from phi- 
 losophy, it became arrogant and fantastical, professing to have 
 already attained what its more authentic representative was ever 
 pursuing in vain ; and discovering, through its initiations and 
 Mysteries, all that to its contracted view seemed wanting to restore 
 the well-being of mankind, the means of purification and expia- 
 tion, remedies for disease, expedients to cure the disorders of the 
 soul, and to propitiate the gods. 
 
 Why should we attempt to confine the idea of the Supreme 
 Mind within an arbitrary barrier, or exclude from the limits of 
 veracity any conception of the Deity, which, if imperfect and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 651 
 
 inadequate, may be only a little more so than our own? "The 
 name of God," says Hobbes, "is used not to make us conceive Him, 
 for He is inconceivable, but that we may honor Him." "Believe in 
 God, and adore Him," said the Greek Poet, "but investigate Him 
 not ; the inquiry is fruitless, seek not to discover who God is ; for, 
 by the desire to know, you offend Him who chooses to remain 
 unknown." "When we attempt," says Philo, "to investigate the 
 essence of the Absolute Being, we fall into an abyss of perplexity ; 
 and the only benefit to be derived from such researches is the con- 
 viction of their absurdity." 
 
 Yet man, though ignorant of the constitution of the dust on 
 which he treads, has ventured, and still ventures, to speculate on 
 the nature of God, and to define dogmatically in creeds the subject 
 least within the compass of his faculties ; and even to hate and 
 persecute those who will not accept his views as true. 
 
 But though a knowledge of the Divine Essence is impossible, 
 the conceptions formed respecting it are interesting, as indications 
 of intellectual development. The history of religion is the history 
 of the human mind ; and the conception formed by it of Deity is 
 always in exact relation to its moral and intellectual attainments. 
 The one is the index and the measure of the other. 
 
 The negative notion of God, which consists in abstracting the 
 inferior and finite, is, according to Philo, the only way in which 
 it is possible for man worthily to apprehend the nature of God. 
 After exhausting the varieties of symbolism, we contrast the Di- 
 vine Greatness with human littleness, and employ expressions 
 apparently affirmative, such as "Infinite," "Almighty," "All- 
 wise," "Omnipotent," "Eternal," and the like ; which in reality 
 amount only to denying, in regard to God, those limits which con- 
 fine the faculties of man ; and thus we remain content with a name 
 which is a mere conventional sign and confession of our ignorance. 
 
 The Hebrew mrP and the Greek To ON expressed abstract ex- 
 istence, without outward manifestation or development. Of the 
 same nature are the definitions, "God is a sphere whose centre is 
 everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere ;" "God is He who 
 sees all, Himself unseen :" and finally, that of Proclus and Hegel 
 "the To p.rj ov that which has no outward and positive exist- 
 ence." Most of the so-called ideas or definitions of the "Abso- 
 lute" are only a collection of negations ; from which, as they affirm 
 nothing, nothing is learned.
 
 652 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 God was first recognized in the heavenly bodies and in the ele- 
 ments. When man's consciousness of his own intellectuality was 
 matured, and he became convinced that the internal faculty of 
 thought was something more subtle than even the most subtle 
 elements, he transferred that new conception to the object of his 
 worship, and deified a mental principle instead of a physical one. 
 He in every case makes God after his own image ; for do what we 
 will, the highest efforts of human thought can conceive nothing 
 higher than the supremacy of intellect ; and so he ever comes back 
 to some familiar type of exalted humanity. He at first deifies na- 
 ture, and afterward himself. 
 
 The eternal aspiration of the religious sentiment in man is to 
 become united with God. In his earliest development, the wish 
 and its fulfillment were simultaneous, through unquestioning be- 
 lief. In proportion as the conception of Deity was exalted, the 
 notion of His terrestrial presence or proximity was abandoned ; 
 and the difficulty of comprehending the Divine Government, to- 
 gether with the glaring superstitious evils arising out of its mis- 
 interpretation, endangered the belief in it altogether. 
 
 Even the lights of Heaven, which, as "bright potentates of the 
 sky," were formerly the vigilant directors of the economy of earth, 
 now shine dim and distant, and Uriel no more descends upon a 
 sunbeam. But the real change has been in the progressive ascent 
 of man's own faculties, and not in the Divine Nature ; as the Stars 
 are no more distant now than when they were supposed to rest on 
 the shoulders of Atlas. And yet a little sense of disappointment 
 and humiliation attended the first awakening of the soul, when 
 reason, looking upward toward the Deity, was impressed with a 
 dizzy sense of having fallen. 
 
 But hope revives in despondency; and every nation that ever 
 advanced beyond the most elementary conceptions, felt the neces- 
 sity of an attempt to fill the chasm, real or imaginary, separating 
 man from God. To do this was the great task of poetry, philoso- 
 phy, and religion. Hence the personifications of God's attributes, 
 developments, and manifestations, as "Powers," "Intelligences," 
 "Angels," "Emanations ;" through which and the oracular fac- 
 ulty in himself, man could place himself in communion with God. 
 
 The various ranks and orders of mythical beings imagined by 
 Persians, Indians, Egyptians, or Etrurians, to preside over the 
 various departments of nature, had each his share in a scheme to
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PR1NTCE ADEPT. 653 
 
 bring man into closer approximation to the Deity ; they eventu- 
 ally gave way only before an analogous though less picturesque 
 symbolism ; and the Deities and Daemons of Greece and Rome 
 were perpetuated with only a change of names, when their offices 
 were transferred to Saints and Martyrs. The attempts by which 
 reason had sometimes endeavored to span the unknown by a bridge 
 of metaphysics, such as the idealistic systems of Zoroaster, Pytha- 
 goras, or Plato, were only a more refined form of the poetical illu- 
 sions which satisfied the vulgar ; and man still looked back with 
 longing to the lost golden age, when his ancestors communed face 
 to face with the Gods ; and hoped that, by propitiating Heaven, he 
 might accelerate the renewal of it in the islands of the Far West, 
 under the sceptre of Kronos, or in a centralization of political 
 power at Jerusalem. His eager hope overcame even the terrors of 
 the grave ; for the Divine power was as infinite as human expecta- 
 tion, and the Egyptian, duly ensepulchred in the Lybian Cata- 
 combs, was supposed to be already on his way to the Fortunate 
 Abodes under the guidance of Hermes, there to obtain a perfect 
 association and reunion with his God. 
 
 Remembering what we have already said elsewhere in regard to 
 the old ideas concerning the Deity, and repeating it as little as 
 possible, let us once more put ourselves in communion with the 
 Ancient poetic and philosophic mind, and endeavor to learn of it 
 what it thought, and how it solved the great problems that have 
 ever tortured the human intellect. 
 
 The division of the First and Supreme Cause into two parts, 
 one Active and the other Passive, the Universe Agent and Patient, 
 or the hermaphroditic God-World, is one of the most ancient and 
 widespread dogmas of philosophy or natural theology. Almost 
 every ancient people gave it a place in their worship, their myste- 
 ries, and their ceremonies. 
 
 Ocellus Lucanus, who seems to have lived shortly after Pytha- 
 goras opened his School in Italy, five or six hundred years before 
 our era, and in the time of Solon, Thales, and the other Sages 
 who had studied in the Schools of Egypt, not only recognizes the 
 eternity of the Universe, and its divine character as an unproducecl 
 and indestructible being, but also .the distinction of Active and 
 Passive causes in what he terms the Grand Whole, or the single 
 hermaphroditic Being that comprehends all existences, as well 
 cause's as effects ; and which is a system regularly ordered, perfect
 
 654 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and complete, of all Natures. He well apprehended the dividing- 
 line that separates existence eternally the same, from that which 
 eternally changes; the nature of celestial from that of terrestrial 
 bodies, that of causes from that of effects, that which is from that 
 which only BECOMES, a distinction that naturally struck every 
 thinking man. 
 
 We shall not quote his language at full length. The heavenly 
 bodies, he thought, are first and most noble ; they move of them- 
 selves, and ever revolve, without change of form or essence. Fire, 
 water, earth, and air change incessantly and continually, not place, 
 but form. Then, as in the Universe there are generation and cause 
 of generation, as generation is w r here there are change and dis- 
 placement of parts, and cause where there is stability of nature, 
 evidently it belongs to what is the cause of generation, to move 
 and to act, and to the recipient, to be made and moved. In his 
 view, everything above the Moon was the habitation of the gods ; 
 all below, that of Nature and discord ; this operates dissolution 
 of things made ; that, production of those that are being made. 
 As the world is unproduced and indestructible, as it had no begin- 
 ning, and will have no end, necessarily the principle that operates 
 generation in another than itself, and that which operates it in 
 itself, have co-existed. 
 
 The former is all above the moon, and especially the sun : the 
 latter is the sublunary world. Of these two parts, one active, the 
 other passive one divine and always the same, the other mortal 
 and ever changing, all that we call the "world" or "universe" is 
 composed. 
 
 These accorded with the principles of the Egyptian philosophy, 
 which held that man and the animals had always existed together 
 with the world ; that they were its effects, eternal like itself. The 
 chief divisions of nature into active and passive causes, its system 
 of generation and destruction, and the concurrence of the two 
 great principles, Heaven and earth, uniting to form all things, will, 
 according to Ocellus, always continue to exist. "Enough," he 
 concludes, "as to the Universe, the generations and destructions 
 effected in it, the mode in which it now exists, the mode in which 
 it will ever exist, by the eternal qualities of the two principles, one 
 always moving, the other always moved ; one always governing, 
 the other always governed." 
 
 Such is a brief summary of the doctrine of this philosopher,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 655 
 
 whose work is one of the most ancient that has survived to us. 
 The subject on which he treated occupied in his time all men's 
 minds: the poets sang of cormogonies and theogonies, and the 
 philosophers wrote treatises on the birth of the world and the 
 elements of its composition. The cosmogony of the Hebrews, 
 attributed to Moses ; that of the Phoenicians, ascribed to Sancho- 
 niathon ; that of the Greeks, composed by Hesiod ; that of the 
 Egyptians, the Atlantes, and the Cretans, preserved by Diodorus 
 Siculus ; the fragments of the theology of Orpheus, divided among 
 different writers ; the books of the Persians, or their Boundehesh ; 
 those of the Hindus ; the traditions of the Chinese and the people 
 of Macassar; the cosmogonic chants which Virgil puts in the 
 mouth of lopas at Carthage ; and those of the old Silenus, the 
 first book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid ; all testify to the an- 
 tiquity and universality of these fictions as to the origin of the 
 world and its causes. 
 
 At the head of the causes of nature, Heaven and earth were 
 placed; and the most apparent parts of each, the sun, the moon, 
 the fixed stars and planets, and, above all, the zodiac, among the 
 active causes of generation ; and among the passive, the several 
 elements. These causes were not only classed in the progressive 
 order of their energy, Heaven and earth heading the respective 
 lists, but distinct sexes were in some sort assigned to them, and 
 characteristics analogous to the mode in which they concur in 
 universal generation. 
 
 The doctrine of Ocellus was the general doctrine everywhere, it 
 naturally occurring to all to make the same distinction. The 
 Egyptians did so, in selecting those animals in which they recog- 
 nized these emblematic qualities, in order to symbolize the double 
 sex of the Universe. Their God KNEPII, out of whose mouth 
 issued the Orphic egg, whence the author of the Clementine 
 Recognitions makes a hermaphroditic figure to emerge, uniting in 
 itself the two principles whereof Heaven and the earth are forms, 
 and which enter into the organization of all beings which the 
 heavens and the earth engender by their concourse, furnishes 
 another emblem of the double power, active and passive, which 
 the ancients saw in the Universe, and which they symbolized by 
 the egg. Orpheus, who studied in Egypt, borrowed from the 
 theologians of that country the mysterious forms under which the 
 science of nature was veiled, and carried into Greece the symbolic
 
 656 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 egg, with its division into two parts or causes figured by the her- 
 maphroditic being that issued from it, and whereof Heaven and 
 earth are composed. 
 
 The Brahmins of India expressed the same cosmogonic idea by a 
 statue, representative of the Universe, uniting in itself both sexes. 
 The male sex offered an image of the sun, centre of the active 
 principle, and the female s~x that of the moon, at the sphere 
 whereof, proceeding downward, the passive portion of nature 
 begins. The Lingam, unto the present day revered in the Indian 
 temples, being but the conjunction of the organs of generation of 
 the two sexes, was an emblem of the same. The Hindus have 
 ever had the greatest veneration for this symbol of ever-reproduc- 
 tive nature. The Greeks consecrated the same symbols of uni- 
 versal fruitfulness in their Mysteries ; and they were exhibited in 
 the sanctuaries of Eleusis. They appear among the sculptured 
 ornaments of all the Indian temples. Tertullian accuses the 
 Valentinians of having adopted the custom of venerating them; 
 a custom, he says, introduced by Melampus from Egypt into 
 Greece. The Egyptians consecrated the Phallus in the Mysteries 
 of Osiris and Isis, as we learn from Plutarch and Diodorus Sicu- 
 lus ; and the latter assures us that these emblems were not conse- 
 crated by the Egyptians alone, but by every people. They certainly 
 were so among the Persians and Assyrians ; and they were regarded 
 everywhere as symbolic of the generative and productive powers 
 of all animated beings. In those early ages, the works of Nature 
 and all her agents were sacred like herself. 
 
 For the union of Nature with herself is a chaste marriage, of 
 which the union of man and woman was a natural image, and 
 their organs were an expressive emblem of the double energy 
 which manifests itself in Heaven and Earth uniting together to 
 produce all beings. "The Heavens," says Plutarch, "seemed to 
 men to fulfill the functions of father, and the Earth of mother. 
 The former impregnated the earth with its fertilizing rains, and 
 the earth, receiving them, became fruitful and brought forth." 
 Heaven, which covers and embraces the earth everywhere, is her 
 potent spouse, uniting himself to her to make her fruitful, without 
 which she would languish in everlasting sterility, buried in the 
 shades of chaos and of night. Their union is their marriage ; 
 their productions or parts are their children. The skies are our 
 Father, and Nature the great Mother of us all.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 657 
 
 This idea was not the dogma of a single sect, but the general 
 opinion of all the Sages. "Nature was divided," says Cicero, 
 "into two parts, one active, and the other that submitted itself to 
 this action, which it received, and which modified it. The former 
 was deemed to be a Force, and the latter the material on which 
 that Force exerted itself." Macrobius repeated almost literally 
 the doctrine of Ocellus. Aristotle termed the earth the fruitful 
 mother, environed on all sides by the air. Above it was Heaven, 
 the dwelling-place of the gods and the divine stars, its substance 
 ether, or a fire incessantly moving in circles, divine and incorrupt- 
 ible, and subject to no change. Below it, nature, and the elements, 
 mutable and acted on, corruptible and mortal. 
 
 Synesius said that generations were effected in the portions of 
 the Universe which we inhabit ; while the cause of generations 
 resided in the portions above us, whence descend to us the germs 
 of the effects produced here below. Proclus and Simplicius 
 deemed Heaven the Active Cause and Father, relatively to the 
 earth. The former says that the World or the Whole is a single 
 Animal ; what is done in it, is done by it ; the same World acts, 
 and acts upon itself. He divides it into "Heaven" and "Genera- 
 tion." In the former, he says, are placed and arranged the conser- 
 vative causes of generation, superintended by the Genii and Gods. 
 The Earth, or Rhea, associated ever with Saturn in production, is 
 mother of the effects of which Heaven is Father; the womb or 
 bosom that receives the fertilizing energy of the God that engen- 
 ders ages. The great work of generation is operated, he says, pri- 
 marily by the action of the Sun, and secondarily by that of the 
 Moon, so that the Sun is the primitive source of this energy, as 
 father and chief of the male gods that form his court. He fol- 
 lows the action of the male and female principles through all the 
 portions and divisions of nature, attributing to the former the 
 origin of stability and identity, to the latter, that of diversity 
 and mobility. Heaven is to the earth, he says, as the male to the 
 female. It is the movements of the heavens that, by their revolu- 
 tions, furnish the seminal incitements and forces, whose emana- 
 tions received by the earth, make it fruitful, and cause it to pro- 
 duce animals and plants of every kind. 
 
 Philo says that Moses recognized this doctrine of two causes, 
 active and passive ; but made the former to reside in the Mind or 
 Intelligence external to matter.
 
 658 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The ancient astrologers divided the twelve signs of the Zodiac 
 into six male and six female, and assigned them to six male and 
 six female Great Gods. Heaven and Earth, or Ouranos and Ghe, 
 were among most ancient nations, the first and most ancient Divin- 
 ities. We find them in the Phoenician history of Sanchoniathon, 
 and in the Grecian Genealogy of the Gods given by Hesiod. Every- 
 where they marry, and by their union produce the later Gods. "In 
 the beginning," says Apollodorus, "Ouranos or the Heavens was 
 Lord of all the Universe : he took to wife Ghe or the earth, and had 
 by her many children." They were the first Gods of the Cretans, 
 and under other names, of the Armenians, as we learn from Bero- 
 sus, and of Panchaia, an island South of Arabia, as we learn from 
 Euhemerus. Orpheus made the Divinity, or the "Great Whole," 
 male and female, because, he said, it could produce nothing, unless 
 it united in itself the productive force of both sexes. He called 
 Heaven PANGENETOR, the Father of all things, most ancient of 
 Beings, beginning and end of all, containing in Himself the incor- 
 ruptible and unwearying force of Necessity. 
 
 The same idea obtained in the rude North of Europe. The 
 Scythians made the earth to be the wife of Jupiter; and the 
 Germans adored her under the name of HERTA. The Celts wor- 
 shipped the Heavens and the Earth, and said that without the 
 former th.= latter would be sterile, and that their marriage produced 
 all things. The Scandinavians acknowledged BOR or the Hea- 
 vens, and gave FURTUR, his son. the Earth as his wife. Olaus 
 Rudbeck adds, that their ancestors were persuaded that Heaven 
 intermarried with the Earth, and thus uniting his forces with 
 hers, produced animals and plants. This marriage of Heaven and 
 Earth produced the AZES, Genii famous in the theology of the 
 North. In the theology of the Phrygians and Lydians, the ASH 
 were born of the marriage of the Supreme God with the Earth, 
 and Firmicus informs us that the Phrygians attributed to the 
 Earth supremacy over the other elements, and considered her the 
 Great Mother of all things. 
 
 Virgil sings the impregnation of the joyous earth, by the Ether, 
 its spouse, that descends upon its bosom, fertilizing it with rains. 
 Columella sings the loves of Nature and her marriage with Heaven 
 annually consummated at the sweet Spring-time. He describes 
 the Spirit of Life, the soul that animates the world, fired with the 
 passion of Love, uniting with Nature and itself, itself a part of
 
 KNIGHT OF' THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 659 
 
 Nature, and filling its own bosom with new production*.. This 
 union of the Universe with itself, this mutual action of two sexes, 
 he terms "the great Secrets of Nature," "the Mysteries of the 
 Union of Heaven with Earth, imaged in the Sacred Mysteries of 
 Atys and Bacchus." 
 
 Varro tells us that the great Divinities adored at Samothrace 
 were the Heavens and the Earth, considered as First Causes or 
 Primal Gods, and as male and female agents, one bearing to the 
 other the relations that the Soul and Principle of Movement bear 
 to the body or the matter that receives them. These were the gods 
 revered in the Mysteries of that Island, as they were in the orgies 
 of Phoenicia. 
 
 Everywhere the sacred body of Nature was covered with the 
 veil of allegory, which concealed it from the profane, and allowed 
 it to be seen only by the sage who thought it worthy to be the 
 object of his study and investigation. She showed herself to those 
 only who loved her in spirit and in truth, and she abandoned the 
 indifferent and careless to error and to ignorance. "The Sages 
 of Greece," says Pausanias, "never wrote otherwise than in an 
 enigmatical manner, never naturally and directly." "Nature," 
 says Sallust the Philosopher, "should be sung only in a language 
 that imitates the secrecy of her processes and operations. She is 
 herself an enigma. We see only bodies in movement ; the forces 
 and springs that move them are hidden from us." The poets 
 inspired by the Divinity, the wisest philosophers, all the theolo- 
 gians, the chiefs of the initiations and Mysteries, even the gods 
 uttering their oracles, have borrowed the figurative language of 
 allegory. "The Egyptians," says Proclus, "preferred that mode 
 of teaching, and spoke of the great secrets of Nature, only in 
 mythological enigmas." The Gymnosophists of India and 
 the Druids of Gaul lent to science the same enigmatic lan- 
 guage, and in the same style wrote the Hierophants of Phoe- 
 nicia. 
 
 The division of things into the active and the passive cause 
 leads to that of the two Principles of Light and Darkness, con- 
 nected with and corresponding with it. For Light comes from the 
 ethereal substance that composes the active cause, and darkness 
 from earth or the gross matter which composes the passive cause. 
 In Hesiod, the Earth, by its union with Tartarus, engenders Ty- 
 phon, Chief of the Powers or Genii of Darkness. But it unites itself
 
 66O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 with the Ether or Ouranos, when it engenders the Gods of- Olym- 
 pus, or the Stars, children of Starry Ouranos. 
 
 Light was the first Divinity worshipped by men. To it they owed 
 the brilliant spectacle of Nature. It seems an emanation from the 
 Creator of all things, making known to our senses the Universe 
 which darkness hides from our eyes, and, as it were, giving it 
 existence. Darkness, as it were, reduces all nature again to noth- 
 ingness, and almost entirely annihilates man. 
 
 Naturally, therefore, two substances of opposite natures were 
 imagined, to each of which the world was in turn subjected, one 
 contributing to its felicity and the other to its misfortune. Light 
 multiplied its enjoyments ; Darkness despoiled it of them ; the 
 former was its friend, the latter its enemy. To one all good was 
 attributed ; to the other all evil ; and thus the words "Light" and 
 "Good" became synonymous, and the words "Darkness" and 
 "Evil." It seeming that Good and Evil could not flow from one 
 and the same source, any more than could Light and Darkness, 
 men naturally imagined two Causes or Principles, of different 
 . natures and opposite in their effects, one of which shed Light and 
 Good, and the other Darkness and Evil, on the Universe. 
 
 This distinction of the two Principles was admitted in all the 
 Theologies, and formed one of the principal bases of all religions. 
 It entered as a primary element into the sacred fables, the cosmog- 
 onies and the Mysteries of antiquity. "We are not to suppose," 
 says Plutarch, "that the Principles of the Universe are inanimate 
 bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus thought ; nor that a matter 
 devoid of qualities is organized and arranged by a single Reason 
 or Providence, Sovereign over all things, as the Stoics held ; for it 
 is not possible that a single Being, good or evil, is the cause of all, 
 inasmuch as God can in nowise be the cause of any evil. The 
 harmony of the L'niverse is a combination of contraries, like the 
 strings of a lyre, or that of a bow, which alternately is stretched 
 and relaxed." "The good," says Euripides, "is never separated 
 from the Evil. The two must mingle, that all may go well." And 
 this opinion as to the two principles, continues Plutarch, "is that 
 of all antiquity. From the Theologians and Legislators it passed 
 to the Poets and Philosophers. Its author is unknown ; but the 
 opinion itself is established by the traditions of the whole human 
 race, and consecrated in the mysteries and sacrifices both of the 
 Greeks and Barbarians, wherein was recognized the dogma of
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 66l 
 
 opposing principles in nature, which, by their contrariety, produce 
 the mixture of good and evil. We must admit two contrary causes, 
 two opposing powers, which lead, one to the right and the other 
 to the left, and thus control our life, as they do the sublunary 
 world, which is therefore subject to so many changes and irregu- 
 larities of every kind. For if there can be no effect without a 
 cause, and if the Good cannot be the cause of the Evil, it is abso- 
 lutely necessary that there should be a cause for the Evil, as there 
 is one for the Good." This doctrine, he adds, has been generally 
 received among most nations, and especially by those who have 
 had the greatest reputation for wisdom. All have admitted two 
 gods, with different occupations, one making the good and the 
 other the evil found in nature. The former has been styled "God," 
 the latter "Demon." The Persians, or Zoroaster, named the former 
 Ormuzd and the latter Ahriman ; of whom they said one was of 
 the nature of Light, the other of that of Darkness. The Egyp- 
 tians called the former Osiris, and the latter Typhon, his eternal 
 enemy. 
 
 The Hebrews, at least after their return from the Persian cap- 
 tivity, had their good Deity, and the Devil, a bad and malicious 
 Spirit, ever opposing God, and Chief of the Angels of Darkness, 
 as God was of those of Light. The word "Satan" means, in He- 
 brew, simply, "The Adversary." 
 
 The Chaldeans, Plutarch says, had their good and evil stars. 
 The Greeks had their Jupiter and Pluto, and their Giants and 
 Titans, to whom were assigned the attributes of the Serpent with 
 which Pluto or Serapis was encircled, and the shape whereof was 
 assumed by Typhon, Ahriman, and the Satan of the Hebrews 
 Every people had something equivalent to this. 
 
 The People of Pegu believe in two Principles, one author of 
 Good and the other of Evil, and strive to propitiate the latter, 
 while they think it needless to worship the former, as he is inca- 
 pable of doing evil. The people of Java, of the Moluccas, of the 
 Gold Coast, the Hottentots, the people of Teneriffe and Madagas- 
 car, and the Savage Tribes of America, all worship and strive to 
 avert the anger and propitiate the good-will of the Evil Spirit. 
 
 But among the Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and 
 Assyrians, the doctrine of the two Principles formed a complete 
 and regularly arranged theological system. -It was the basis of the 
 religion of the Magi and of Egypt. The author of an ancient 
 
 43
 
 662 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 work, attributed to Origen, says that Pythagoras learned from 
 Zarastha, a Magus at Babylon (the same, perhaps, as Zerdusht or 
 Zoroaster), that there are two principles of all things, whereof one 
 is the father and the other the nwther; the former, Light, and 
 the latter, Darkness. Pythagoras thought that the Dependencies 
 on Light were warmth, dryness, lightness, swiftness ; and those on 
 Darkness, cold, wet, weight, and slowness ; and that the world 
 derived its existence from these two principles, as from the male 
 and the female. According to Porphyry, he conceived two oppos- 
 ing powers, one good, which he termed Unity, the Light, Right, 
 the Equal, the Stable, the Straight ; the other evil, which he 
 termed Binary, Darkness, the Left, the Unequal, the Unstable, the 
 Crooked. These ideas he received from the Orientals, for he 
 dwelt twelve years at Babylon, studying with the Magi. Varro 
 says he recognized two Principles of all things, the Finite and 
 the Infinite, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Day and Night. 
 White he thought was of the nature of the Good Principle, and 
 Black of that of the Evil ; that Light and Darkness, Heat and 
 Cold, the Dry and the Wet, mingled in equal proportions ; that 
 Summer was the triumph of heat, and Winter of cold ; that their 
 equal combination produced Spring and Autumn, the former pro- 
 ducing verdure and favorable to health, and the latter, deteriorat- 
 ing everything, giving birth to maladies. He applied the same 
 idea to the rising and setting of the sun ; and, like the Magi, held 
 that God or Ormuzd in the body resembled light, and in the soul, 
 truth. 
 
 Aristotle, like Plato, admitted a principle of Evil, resident in 
 matter and in its eternal imperfection. 
 
 The Persians said that Ormuzd, born of the pure Light, and 
 Ahriman, born of darkness, were ever at war. Ormuzd produced 
 six Gods, Beneficence, Truth, Good Order, Wisdom, Riches, and 
 Virtuous Joy. These were so many emanations from the Good 
 Principle, so many blessings bestowed by it on men. Ahriman, in 
 his turn, produced six Devs, opponents of the six emanations 
 from Ormuzd. Then Ormuzd made himself three times as great 
 as before, ascended as far above the sun as the sun is above the 
 earth, and adorned the heavens with stars, of which he made 
 Sirius the sentinel or advance-guard : that he then created twenty- 
 four other Deities, and placed them in an egg, where Ahrima/ 
 also placed twenty-four others, created by him, who broke the egg.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR I'RIXCE ADEPT. 663 
 
 and so intermingled Good and Evil. Theopompus adds that, ac- 
 cording to the Magi, for two terms of three thousand years, each 
 of the two Principles is to be by turns victor and the other van- 
 quished ; then for three thousand more for each they are to con- 
 tend with each other, each destroying reciprocally the works of the 
 other; after which Ahriman is to perish, and men, wearing trans- 
 parent bodies, to enjoy unutterable happiness. 
 
 The twelve great Deities of the Persians, the six Amshaspands 
 and six Devs, marshalled, the formef under the banner of Light, 
 and the latter under that of Darkness, are the twelve Zodiacal 
 Signs or Months ; the six supreme signs, or those of Light, or of 
 Spring and Summer, commencing with Aries, and the six inferior, 
 of Darkness, or of Autumn and Winter, commencing with Libra. 
 Limited Time, as contradistinguished from Time without limits, 
 or Eternity, is Time created and measured by the celestial revolu- 
 tions. It is comprehended in a period divided into twelve parts, 
 each subdivided into a thousand parts, which the Persians termed 
 years. Thus the circle annually traversed by the Sun was divided 
 into 12,000 parts, or each sign into 3,000: and thus, each year, the 
 Principle of Light and Good triumphed for 3,000 years, that of 
 Evil and Darkness for 3,000, and they mutually destroyed each 
 other's labors for 6,000, or 3,000 for each : so that the Zodiac was 
 equally divided between them. And accordingly Ocellus Lucanus, 
 the Disciple of Pythagoras, held that the principal cause of all 
 sublunary effects resided in the Zodiac, and that from it flowed 
 the good or bad influences of the planets that revolved therein. 
 
 The twenty-four good and twenty-four evil Deities, enclosed in 
 the Egg, are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient sphere, 
 equally divided between the realms of Light and Darkness, on the 
 concavity of the celestial sphere which was apportioned among 
 them ; and which, enclosing the world and planets, was the mys- 
 tic and sacred egg of the Magi, the Indians, and the Egyptians. 
 the egg that issued from the mouth of the God Kneph, that fig- 
 ured as the Orphic Egg in the Mysteries of Greece, that issued 
 from the God Chumong of the Goresians. and from the Egyptian 
 Osiris and the God Phanes of the Modern Orphics, Principle of 
 Light, the egg crushed by the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, and 
 from which the world emerged ; that placed by the Greeks at the 
 feet of Bacchus the bull-horned God, and from which Aristophanes 
 makes Love emerge, who with Night organizes Chaos.
 
 664 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Thus the Balance, the Scorpion, the Serpent of Ophiucus, and 
 the Dragon of the Hesperides became malevolent Signs and Evil 
 Genii ; and entire nature was divided between the two principles, 
 and between the agents or partial causes subordinate to them. 
 Hence Michael and his Archangels, and Satan and his fallen com- 
 peers. Hence the wars of Jupiter and the Giants, in which the 
 Gods of Olympus fought on the side of the Light-God, against 
 the dark progeny of earth and Chaos ; a war which Proclus re- 
 garded as symbolizing the resistance opposed by dark and chaotic 
 matter to the active and beneficent force which gives it organiza- 
 tion ; an idea which in part appears in the old theory of two Prin- 
 ciples, one innate in the active and luminous substance of Heaven, 
 and the other in the inert and dark substance of matter that resists 
 the order and the good that Heaven communicates to it. 
 
 Osiris conquers Typhon, and Ormuzd, Ahriman, when, at the 
 Vernal Equinox, the creative action of Heaven and its demiourgic 
 energy is most strongly manifested. Then the principle of Light 
 and Good overcomes that of Darkness and Evil, and the world 
 rejoices, redeemed from cold and wintry darkness by the beneficent 
 Sign into which the Sun then enters triumphant and rejoicing, 
 after his resurrection. 
 
 From the doctrine of the two Principles, Active and Passive, 
 grew that of the Universe, animated by a Principle of Eternal 
 Life, and by a Universal Soul, from which every isolated and tem- 
 porary being received at its birth an emanation, which, at the 
 death of such being, returned to its source. The life of matter 
 as much belonged to nature as did matter itself; and as life is 
 manifested by movement, the sources of life must needs seem to be 
 placed in those luminous and eternal bodies, and above all in the 
 Heaven in which they revolve, and which whirls them along with 
 itself in that rapid course that is swifter than all other movement. 
 And fire and heat have so great an analogy with life, that cold, 
 like absence of movement, seemed the distinctive characteristic of 
 death. Accordingly, the vital fire that blazes in the Sun and pro- 
 duces the heat that vivifies everything, was regarded as the princi- 
 ple of organization and life of all sublunary beings. 
 
 According to this doctrine, the Universe is not to be regarded, 
 in its creative and eternal action, merely as an immense machine, 
 moved by powerful springs and forced into a continual movement, 
 which, emanating from the circumference, extends to the centre,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 665 
 
 *cts and re-acts in every possible direction, and re-produces in 
 succession all the varied forms which matter receives. So to re- 
 gard it would be to recognize a cold and purely mechanical action, 
 the energy of which could never produce life. 
 
 On the contrary, it was thought, the Universe should be deemed 
 an immense Being.always living,always moved and always moving 
 in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to 
 no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them 
 together, and makes of the world of things a complete and perfect 
 whole. The order and harmony which reign therein seem to be- 
 long to and be a part of it, and the design of the various plans 
 of construction of organized beings would seem to be graven in its 
 Supreme Intelligence, source of all the other Intelligences which 
 it communicates together with life to man. Nothing existing out 
 of it, it must be regarded as the principle and term of all things. 
 
 Chaeremon had no reason for saying that the Ancient Egyptians, 
 inventors of the sacred fables, and adorers of the Sun and the 
 other luminaries, saw in the Universe only a machine, without 
 life and without intelligence, either in its whole or in its parts ; 
 and that their cosmogony was a pure Epicureanism, which re- 
 quired only matter and movement to organize its world and govern 
 it. Such an opinion would necessarily exclude all religious wor- 
 ship. Wherever we suppose a worship, there we must suppose 
 intelligent Deities who receive it, and are sensible to the homage 
 of their adorers ; and no other people were so religious as the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 On the contrary, with them the immense, immutable, and Eter- 
 nsl Being, termed "God"' or "the Universe," had eminently, and 
 in all their plenitude, that life and intelligence which sublunary 
 beings, each an infinitely small and temporary portion of itself, 
 possess in i far inferior degree and infinitely less quantity. It 
 was to them, in some sort, like the Ocean, whence the springs, 
 brooks, and rivers have risen by evaporation, and to the bosom 
 whereof they return by a longer or shorter course, and after a 
 longer or shorter separator* from the immense mass of its waters. 
 The machine of the Univer:e was, in their view, like that of man, 
 moved by a Principle of Life *vhich kept it in eternal activity, 
 and circulated in all its parts. The Universe was a living and 
 animated being, like man and the other animals ; or rather they 
 were so only because the Universe was essentially so, and for a few 
 moments communicated to each an infinitely minute portion of
 
 666 MORALS AMD DOGMA. 
 
 its eternal life, breathed by it into the inert and gross matter of 
 sublunary bodies. That withdrawn, man or the animal died ; and 
 the Universe alone, living and circulating around the wrecks of 
 their bodies, by its eternal movement, organized and animated 
 new bodies, returning to them the eternal fire and subtle sub- 
 stance which vivifies itself, and which, incorporated in its immense 
 mass, was its universal soul. 
 
 These were the ancient ideas as to this Great GOD, Father of all 
 the gods, or of the World ; of this BEING, Principle of all things. 
 and of which nothing other than itself is Principle, the Universal 
 cause that was termed God. Soul of the Universe, eternal like it, 
 immense like it, supremely active and potent in its varied opera- 
 tions, penetrating all parts of this vast body, impressing a regular 
 and symmetrical movement on the spheres, making the elements 
 instinct with activity and order, mingling with everything, organ- 
 izing everything, vivifying and preserving everything, this was 
 the UNIVERSE-GOD which the ancients adored as Supreme Cause 
 and God of Gods. 
 
 Anchises, in the yneid, taught ^Eneas this doctrine of Pythag- 
 oras, learned by him from his Masters, the Egyptians, in regard 
 to the Soul and Intelligence of the Universe, from which our souls 
 and intelligences, as well as our life and that of the animals, ema- 
 nate. Heaven, Earth, the Sea, the Moon and the Stars, he said, 
 are moved by a principle of internal life which perpetuates their 
 existence ; a great intelligent soul, that penetrates every part of 
 the vast body of the Universe, and, mingling with everything, agi- 
 tates it by an eternal movement. It is the source of life in all 
 living things. The force which animates all, emanates from the 
 eternal fire that burns in Heaven. In the Georgics, Virgil repeats 
 the same doctrine ; and that, at the death of every animal, the life 
 that animated it, part of the universal life, returns to its Principle 
 and to the source of life that circulates in the sphere of the Stars. 
 
 Servius makes God the active Cause that organizes the elements 
 into bodies, the vivifying breath or spirit, that, spreading through 
 matter or the elements, produces and engenders all things. The 
 elements compose the substance of our bodies : God composes the 
 souls that vivify these bodies. From it come the instincts of ani- 
 mals, from it their life, he says : and when they die, that life re- 
 turns to and re-enters into the Universal Soul, and their bodies 
 into Universal Matter.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 667 
 
 Timaeus of Locria and Plato his Commentator wrote of the 
 Soul of the World, developing the doctrine of Pythagoras, who 
 thought, says Cicero, that God is the Universal Soul, resident 
 everywhere in nature, and of which our Souls are but emanations. 
 "God is one," says Pythagoras, as cited by Justin Martyr: "He 
 is not, as some think, without the world, but within it, and entire 
 in its entirety. He sees all that becomes, forms all immortal beings, 
 is the author of their powers and performances, the origin of all 
 things, the Light of Heaven, the Father, the Intelligence, the Soul 
 of all beings, the Mover of all spheres." 
 
 God, in the view of Pythagoras, was ONE, a single substance, 
 whose continuous parts extend through all the Universe, without 
 separation, difference, or inequality, like the soul in the human 
 body. He denied the doctrine of the spiritualists, who had severed 
 the Divinity from the Universe, making Him exist apart from the 
 Universe, which thus became no more than a material work, on 
 which acted the Abstract Cause, a God, isolated from it. The 
 Ancient Theology did not so separate God from the Universe. 
 This Eusebius attests, in saying that but a small number of wise 
 men, like Moses, had sought for God or the Cause of all, outside 
 of that ALL ; while the Philosophers of Egypt and Phoenicia, real 
 authors of all the old Cosmogonies, had placed the Supreme Cause 
 in the Universe itself, and in its parts, so that, in their view, the 
 world and all its parts are in God. 
 
 The World or Universe was thus compared to man : the Princi- 
 ple of Life that moves it, to that which moves man ; the Soul of 
 the World to that of man. Therefore Pythagoras called man 
 a microcosm, or little world, as possessing in miniature all the 
 qualities found on a great scale in the Universe ; by his reason and 
 intelligence partaking of the Divine Nature : and by his faculty 
 of changing aliments into other substances, of growing, and re- 
 producing himself, partaking of elementary Nature. Thus he 
 made the Universe a great intelligent P>eing, like man an 
 immense Deity, having in itself, what man has in himself, move- 
 ment, life, and intelligence, and besides, a perpetuity of existence, 
 which man has not; and, as having in'itsclf perpetuity of move- 
 ment and life, therefore the Supreme Cause of all. 
 
 Everywhere extended, this Universal Soul does not. in the view 
 of Pythagoras, act everywhere equally nor in the same manner. 
 The highest portion of the Universe, being as it were its head,
 
 668 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 seemed to him its principal seat, and there was the guiding power 
 of the rest of the world. In the seven concentric spheres is resi- 
 dent an eternal order, fruit of the intelligence, the Universal Soul 
 that moves, by a constant and regular progression, the immortal 
 bodies that form the harmonious system of the heavens. 
 
 Manilius says : "I sing the invisible and potent Soul of Nature ; 
 that Divine Substance which, everywhere inherent in Heaven, 
 Earth, and the Waters of the Ocean, forms the bond that holds 
 together and makes one all the parts of the vast body of the Uni- 
 verse. It, balancing all Forces, and harmoniously arranging the 
 varied relations of the many members of the world, maintains in 
 it the life and regular movement that agitate it, as a result of the 
 action of the living breath or single spirit that dwells in all its 
 parts, circulates in all the channels of universal nature, flashes 
 with rapidity to all its points, and gives to animated bodies the 
 configurations appropriate to the organization of each .... This 
 eternal Law, this Divine Force, that maintains the harmony of 
 the world, makes use of the Celestial Signs to organize and guide 
 the animated creatures that breathe upon the earth ; and gives to 
 each of them the character and habits most appropriate. By the 
 action of this Force Heaven rules the condition of the Earth and 
 of its fields cultivated by the husbandman : it gives us or takes 
 from us vegetation and harvests : it makes the great ocean over- 
 pass its limits at the flow, and retire within them again at the 
 ebbing, of the tide." 
 
 Thus it is no longer by means of a poetic fiction only that the 
 heavens and the earth become animated and personified, and are 
 deemed living existences, from which other existences proceed. 
 For now they live, with their own life, a life eternal like their 
 bodies, each gifted with a life and perhaps a soul, like those of 
 man, a portion of the universal life and universal soul ; and the 
 other bodies that they form, and which they contain in their 
 bosoms, live only through them and with their life, as the embryo 
 lives in the bosom of its mother, in consequence and by means of 
 the life communicated to it, and which the mother ever maintains 
 by the active power of her own life. Such is the universal life of 
 the world, reproduced in all the beings which its superior portion 
 creates in its inferior portion, that is as it were the matrix of the 
 world, or of the beings that the heavens engender in its bosom. 
 
 "The soul of the world," says Macrobius, "is nature itself" [as
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 669 
 
 the soul of man is man himself], "always acting through the 
 celestial spheres which it moves, and which but follow the irre- 
 sistible impulse it impresses on them. The heavens, the sun, 
 great seat of generative power, the signs, the stars, and the planets 
 act only with the activity of the soul of the Universe. From that 
 soul, through them, come all the variations and changes of sub- 
 lunary nature, of which the heavens and celestial bodies are but 
 the secondary causes. The zodiac, with its signs, is an existence, 
 immortal and divine, organized by the universal soul, and produc- 
 ing, or gathering in itself, all the varied emanations of the different 
 powers that make up the nature of the Divinity." 
 
 This doctrine, that gave to the heavens and the spheres living 
 souls, each a portion of the universal soul, was of extreme anti- 
 quity. It was held by the old Sabseans. It was taught by Timaeus, 
 Plato, Speusippus, lamblichus, Macrobius, Marcus Aurelius, and 
 Pythagoras. When once men had assigned a soul to the Universe, 
 containing in itself the plenitude of the animal life of particular 
 beings, and even of the stars, they soon supposed that soul to be 
 essentially intelligent, and the source of intelligence of all intelli- 
 gent beings. Then the Universe became to them not only animated 
 but intelligent, and of that intelligence the different parts of nature 
 partook. Each soul was the vehicle, and, as it were, the envelope 
 of the intelligence that attached itself to it, and could repose 
 tnvhere else. Without a soul there could be no intelligence ; and 
 n* there was a universal soul, source of all souls, the universal soul 
 was gifted with a universal intelligence, source of all particular 
 intelligences. So the soul of the world contained in itself the 
 intelligence of the world. All the agents of nature into which 
 the universal soul entered, received also a portion of its intelligence, 
 and the Universe, in its totality and in its parts, was filled with 
 intelligences, that might be regarded as so many emanations from 
 the sovereign and universal intelligence. Wherever the divine 
 soul acted as a cause, there also was intelligence ; and thus Heaven, 
 the stars, the elements, and all parts of the Universe, became the 
 seats of so many divine intelligences. Every minutest portion of 
 the great soul became a partial intelligence, and the more it was 
 disengaged from gross matter, the more active and intelligent it 
 was. And all the old adorers of nature, the theologians, astrolo- 
 gers, and poets, and the most distinguished philosophers, supposed 
 that the stars were so many animated and intelligent beings, or
 
 6/O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 eternal bodies, active causes of effects here below, whom a princi- 
 ple of life animated, and whom an intelligence directed, which 
 was but an emanation from, and a portion of, the universal life and 
 intelligence of the world. 
 
 The Universe itself was regarded as a supremely intelligent be- 
 ing. Such was the doctrine of Tirr.aeus of Locria. The soul of man 
 was part of the intelligent soul of the Universe, and therefore it- 
 self intelligent. His opinion was that of many other philosophers. 
 Cleanthes, a disciple of ZENO, regarded the Universe as God, or as 
 the unproduced and universal cause of all effects produced. He 
 ascribed a soul and intelligence to universal nature, and to this 
 intelligent soul, in his view, divinity belonged. From it the intel- 
 ligence of man was an emanation, and shared its divinity. Chry- 
 sippus, the most subtle of the Stoics, placed in the universal 
 reason that forms the soul and intelligence of nature, that divine 
 force or essence of the Divinity which he assigned to the world 
 moved by the universal soul that pervades its every part. 
 
 An interlocutor in Cicero's work, De Natura Deorum, formally 
 argues that the Universe is necessarily intelligent and wise, be- 
 cause man, an infinitely small portion of it, is so. Cicero makes the 
 same argument in his oration for Milo. The physicists came to 
 the same conclusion as the philosophers. They supposed that 
 movement essentially belonged to the soul, and the direction of 
 regular and ordered movements to the intelligence. And, as both 
 movement and order exist in the Universe, therefore, they held, 
 there must be in it a soul and an intelligence that rule it, and are 
 not to be distinguished from itself ; because the idea of the Uni- 
 verse is but the aggregate of all the particular ideas of all things 
 that exist. 
 
 The argument was, that the Heavens, and the Stars which 
 make part of them, are animated, because they possess a portion of 
 the Universal Soul : they are intelligent beings, because that Uni- 
 versal Soul, part whereof they possess, is supremely intelligent; 
 and they share Divinity with Universal Nature, because Divinity 
 resides in the Universal Soul and Intelligence which move and 
 rule the world, and of each of which they hold a share. By this 
 process of logic, the interlocutor in Cicero assigned Divinity to 
 the Stars, as anknated beings gifted with sensibility and intelli- 
 gence, and composed of the noblest and purest portions of the 
 ethereal substance, unmixed with matter of an alien nature, and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 67! 
 
 essentially containing light and heat. Hence he concluded them 
 to be so many gods, of an intelligence superior to that of other 
 existences, corresponding to the lofty height in which they moved 
 with such perfect regularity and admirable harmony, with a move- 
 ment spontaneous and free. Hence he made them "Gods," active, 
 eternal, and intelligent "Causes" ; and peopled the realm of Heaven 
 with a host of Eternal Intelligences, celestial Genii or Angels, 
 sharing the universal Divinity, and associated with it in the 
 administration of the Universe, and the dominion exercised over 
 sublunary nature and man. 
 
 We make the motive-force of the planets to be a mechanical 
 law, which we explain by the combination of two forces, the cen- 
 tripetal and centrifugal, whose origin we cannot demonstrate, but 
 whose force we can calculate. The ancients regarded them as 
 moved by an intelligent force that had its origin in the first and 
 universal Intelligence. Is it so certain, after all, that we are any 
 nearer the truth than they were ; or that we know what our "cen- 
 tripetal and centrifugal forces" mean; for what is a force? With 
 us, the entire Deity acts upon and moves each planet, as He does 
 the sap that circulates in the little blade of grass, and in the par- 
 ticles of blood in the tiny veins of the invisible rotifer. With the 
 Ancients, the Deity of each Star was but a portion of the Uni- 
 versal God, the Soul of Nature. Each Star and Planet, with them, 
 was moved of itself, and directed by its own special intelligence. 
 And this opinion of Achilles Tatius, Diodorus, Chrysippus, Aris- 
 totle, Plato, Heraclides of Pontus, Theophrastus, Simplicius, Ma- 
 crobius, and Proclus, that in each Star there is an immortal Soul 
 and Intelligence, part of the Universal Soul and Intelligence of 
 the Whole, this opinion of Orpheus, Plotinus, and the Stoics, was 
 in reality, that of many Christian philosophers. For Origen held 
 the same opinion ; and Augustin held that every visible thing in 
 the world was superintended by an Angelic Power : and Cosma, 
 the Monk believed that every Star was under the guidance of an 
 Angel ; and the author of the Octateuch, written in the time of 
 the Emperor Justin, says that they are moved by the impulse 
 communicated to them by Angels stationed above the firmament. 
 Whether the stars were animated, beings, was a question that 
 Christian antiquity did not decide. Many of the Christian doc- 
 tors believed they were. Saint Augustin hesitates. Saint Jerome 
 doubts, if Solomon did not assign souls to the Stars. Saint
 
 672 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 Ambrose does not doubt they hare souls ; and Pamphilus says that 
 many of the Church believe they are reasonable beings, while 
 many think otherwise, but that neither one nor the other opinion 
 is heretical. 
 
 Thus the Ancient Thought, earnest and sincere, wrought out 
 the idea of a Soul inherent in the Universe and in its several 
 parts. The next step was to separate that Soul from the Uni- 
 verse, and give to it an external and independent existence and 
 personality ; still omnipresent, in every inch of space and in every 
 particle of matter, and yet not a part of Nature, but its Cause and 
 its Creator. This is the middle ground between the two doctrines, 
 of Pantheism (or that all is God, and God is in all and is all), on 
 the one side, and Atheism (or that all is nature, and there is no 
 other God), on the other; which doctrines, after all, when reduced 
 to their simplest terms, seem to be the same. 
 
 We complacently congratulate ourselves on our recognition of a 
 personal God, as being the conception most suited to human sym- 
 pathies, and exempt from the mystifications of Pantheism. But 
 the Divinity remains still a mystery, notwithstanding all the de- 
 vices which symbolism, either from the organic or inorganic crea- 
 tion, can supply ; and personification is itself a symbol, liable to 
 misapprehension as much as, if not more so than, any other, since 
 it is apt to degenerate into a mere reflection of our own infirmi- 
 ties ; and hence any affirmative idea or conception that we can, in 
 our own minds, picture of the Deity, must needs be infinitely in- 
 adequate. 
 
 The spirit of the Vedas (or sacred Indian Books, of great an- 
 tiquity), as understood by their earliest as well as most recent 
 expositors, is decidedly a pantheistic monotheism one God, and 
 He all in all ; the many divinities, numerous as the prayers ad- 
 dressed to them, being resolvable into the titles and attributes of 
 a few, and ultimately into THE ONE. The machinery of personifi- 
 cation was understood to have been unconsciously assumed as a 
 mere expedient to supply the deficiencies of language ; and the 
 Mimansa justly considered itself as only interpreting the true 
 meaning of the Mantras, when it proclaimed that, in the begin- 
 ning, "Nothing was but Mind, the Creative Thought of Him 
 which existed alone from the beginning, and breathed without 
 affiation." The idea suggested in the Mantras is dogmatically 
 asserted and developed in the Upanischadas. The Vedanta phi-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 673 
 
 losophy, assuming the mystery of the "ONE IN MANY" as the fun- 
 damental article of faith, maintained not only the Divine Unity, 
 but the identity of matter and spirit. The unity which it advo- 
 cates is that of mind. Mind is the Universal Element, the One 
 God, the Great Soul, Mahaatma. He is the material as well as 
 efficient cause, and the world 5s a texture of which he is both the 
 web and the weaver. He is the Macrocosmos, the universal 
 organism called Pooroosha, of which Fire, Air, and Sun are only 
 the chief members. His head is light, his eyes the sun and moon, 
 his breath the wind, his voice the opened Vedas. All proceeds 
 from Brahm, like the web from the spider and the grass from the 
 earth. 
 
 Yet it is only the impossibility of expressing in language the 
 origination of matter from spirit, which gives to Hindu philoso- 
 phy the appearance of materialism. Formless Himself, the Deity 
 is present in all forms. His glory is displayed in the Universe as 
 the image of the sun in water, which is, yet is not, the luminary 
 itself. All maternal agency and appearance, the subjective world, 
 are to a great extent phantasms, the notional representations of 
 ignorance. They occupy, however, a middle ground between 
 reality and non-reality ; they are unreal, because nothing exists 
 but Brahm ; yet in some degree real, inasmuch as they constitute 
 an outward manifestation of him. They are a self-induced hypos- 
 tasis of the Deity, under which He presents to Himself the whole 
 of animate and inanimate Nature, the actuality of the moment, 
 the diversified appearances which successively invest the one Pan- 
 theistic Spirit. 
 
 The great aim of reason is to generalize ; to discover unity in 
 multiplicity, order in apparent confusion ; to separate from the 
 accidental and the transitory, the stable and universal. In the 
 contemplation of Nature, and the vague, but almost intuitive per- 
 ception of a general uniformity of plan among endless varieties of 
 operation and form, arise those solemn and reverential feelings, 
 which, if accompanied by intellectual activity, may eventually 
 ripen into philosophy. 
 
 Consciousness of self and of personal identity is co-existent with 
 our existence. We cannot conceive of mental existence withouc 
 it. It is not the work of reflection nor of logic, nor the result of 
 observation, experiment, and experience. It is a gift from God, 
 like instinct; and that consciousness of a thinking soul which is
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 really tlie person that we are, and other than our body, is the best 
 and most solid proof of the soul's existence. We have the same 
 consciousness of a Power on which we are dependent ; which we 
 can define and form an idea or picture of, as little as we can of the 
 soul, and yet which we feel, and therefore know, exists. True and 
 correct ideas of that Power, of the Absolute Existence from which 
 all proceeds, we cannot trace ; if by true and correct we mean ad- 
 equate ideas ; for of such we are not, with our limited faculties, 
 capable. And ideas of His nature, so far correct as we are capa- 
 ble of entertaining, can only be attained either by direct inspira- 
 tion or by the investigations of philosophy. 
 
 The idea of the universal preceded the recognition of any sys- 
 tem for its explanation. It was felt rather than understood ; and 
 it was long before the grand conception on which all philosophy 
 rests received through deliberate investigation that analytical de- 
 velopment which might properly entitle it to the name. The sen- 
 timent, when first observed by the self-conscious mind, was, say. 
 Plato, "a Divine gift, communicated to mankind by some Prome 
 theus, or by those ancients who lived nearer to the gods than oui 
 degenerate selves." The mind deduced from its first experiences 
 the notion of a general Cause or Antecedent, to which it shortly 
 gave a name and personified it. This was the statement of a the- 
 orem, obscure in proportion to its generality. It explained all 
 things but itself. It was a true cause, but an incomprehensible 
 one. Ages had to pass before the nature of the theorem could be 
 rightly appreciated, and before men, acknowledging the First 
 Cause to be an object of faith rather than science, were contented 
 to confine their researches to those nearer relations of existence 
 and succession, which are really within the reach of their faculties. 
 At first, and for a long time, the intellect deserted the real for a 
 hastily-formed ideal world, and the imagination usurped the place 
 of reason, in attempting to put a construction on the most gen- 
 eral and inadequate of conceptions, by transmuting its symbols 
 into realities, and by substantializing it under a thousand arbitrary 
 forms. 
 
 In poetry, the idea of Divine unity became, as in Nature, ob- 
 scured by a multifarious symbolism ; and the notionalities of 
 transcendental philosophy reposed on views of nature scarcely 
 more profound than those of the earliest symbolists. Yet the idea 
 of unity was rather obscured than extinguished ; and Xenophanes
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 675 
 
 appeared as an enemy of Homer, only because he more emphatic- 
 ally insisted on the monotheistic element, which, in poetry, has 
 been comparatively overlooked. The first philosophy reasserted 
 the unity which poetry had lost ; but being unequal to investigate 
 its nature, it again resigned it to the world of approximate sensa- 
 tions, and became bewildered in materialism, considering the con- 
 ceptional whole or First Element as some refinement of matter, 
 unchangeable in its essence, though subject to mutations of qual- 
 ity and form in an eternal succession of seeming decay and regen- 
 eration ; comparing it to water, air, or fire, as each endeavored to 
 refine on the doctrine of his predecessor, or was influenced by a 
 different class of theological traditions. 
 
 In the philosophical systems, the Divine Activity, divided by the 
 poets and by popular belief among a race of personifications, in 
 whom the idea of descent replaced that of cause, or of pantheistic 
 evolution, was restored, without subdivision or reservation, to 
 nature as a whole ; at first as a mechanical force or life; afterward 
 as an all-pervading sonl or inherent thought; and lastly as an 
 external directing Intelligence. 
 
 The Ionian revival of pantheism was materialistic. The Moving 
 Force was inseparable from a material element, a subtle yet 
 visible ingredient. Under the form of air or fire, the principle of 
 life was associated with the most obvious material machinery of 
 nature. Everything, it was said, is alive and full of gods. The 
 wonders of the volcano, the magnet, the ebb and flow of the tide, 
 were vital indications, the breathing or moving of the Great 
 World-Animal. The imperceptible ether of Anaximenes had no 
 positive quality beyond the atmospheric air with which it was 
 easily confused : and even the "Infinite" of Anaximander, though 
 free of the conditions of quality or quantity, was only an ideal 
 chaos, relieved of its coarseness by negations. It was the illimit- 
 able storehouse or Pleroma, out of which is evolved the endless 
 circle of phenomenal change. A moving Force was recognized in, 
 but not clearly distinguished from, the material. Space, Time, 
 Figure, and Number, and other common forms or properties, which 
 exist only as attributes, were treated as substances, or at least as 
 making a substantial connection between the objects to which 
 they belong: and all the conditions of material existence were 
 supposed to have been evolved out of the Pythagorean Monad. 
 
 The Eleatic philosophers treated conceptions not only as
 
 676 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 entities, but as the only entities, alone possessing the stability and 
 certainty and reality vainly sought among phenomena. The only 
 reality was Thought. "All real existence," they said, "is mental 
 existence; non-existence, being inconceivable, is therefore impossi- 
 ble ; existence fills up the whole range of thought, and is insepa- 
 rable from its exercise; thought and its object are one." 
 
 Xenophanes used ambiguous language, applicable to the mate- 
 rial as well as to the mental, and exclusively appropriate to neither. 
 In other words, he availed himself of material imagery to illustrate 
 an indefinite meaning. In announcing the universal being, he 
 appealed to the heavens as the visible manifestation, calling it 
 spherical, a term borrowed from the material world. He said that 
 God was neither moved nor unmoved, limited nor unlimited. He 
 did not even attempt to express clearly what cannot be conceived 
 clearly ; admitting, says Simplicius, that such speculations were 
 above physics. Parmenides employed similar expedients, com- 
 paring his metaphysical Deity to a sphere, or to heat, an aggregate 
 or a continuity, and so involuntarily withdrawing its nominal 
 attributes. 
 
 The Atomic school, dividing the All into Matter and Force, 
 deemed matter unchangeable in its ultimate constitution, though 
 infinitely variable in its resultant forms. They made all variety 
 proceed from the varied combinations of atoms ; but they required 
 no mover nor director of the atoms external to themselves ; no uni- 
 versal Reason ; but a Mechanical Eternal Necessity, like that of 
 the Poets. Still it is doubtful whether there ever was a time 
 when reason could be said to be entirely asleep, a stranger to its 
 own existence, notwithstanding this apparent materialism. The 
 earliest contemplation of the external world, which brings it into 
 an imagined association with ourselves, assigns, either to its whole 
 or its parts, the sensation and volition which belong to our own 
 souls. 
 
 Anaxagoras admitted the existence of ultimate elementary 
 particles, as Empedocles did, from the combinations whereof all 
 material phenomena resulted. But he asserted the Moving Force 
 to be Mind ; and yet, though he clearly saw the impossibility of 
 advancing by illustration or definition beyond a reasonable faith, 
 or a simple negation of materiality, yet he could not wholly desist 
 from the endeavor to illustrate the nature of this non-matter or 
 mind, by symbols drawn from those physical considerations which
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 6/7 
 
 decided him in placing it in a separate category. \Yhether as hu- 
 man reason, or as the regulating Principle in nature, he held it dif- 
 ferent from all other things in character and effect, and that there- 
 fore it must necessarily differ in its essential 'constitution. It was 
 neither Matter, nor a Force conjoined with matter, or homoge- 
 neous with it, but independent and generically distinct, especially 
 in this, that, being the source of all motion, separation, and cogni- 
 tion, it is something entirely unique, pure, and unmixed ; and so, 
 being unhindered by any interfering influence limiting its inde- 
 pendence of individual action, it has Supreme Empire over all 
 things, over the vortex of worlds as well as over all that live in 
 them. It is most penetrating and powerful, mixing with other 
 things, though no other thing mixes with it; exercises universal 
 control and cognition, and includes the Necessity of the Poets, as 
 well as the independent power of thought which we exercise 
 within ourselves. In short, it is the self-conscious power of 
 thought extended to the Universe, and exalted into the Supreme 
 External Mind which sees, knows, and directs all things. 
 
 Thus Pantheism and Materialism were both avoided ; and mat- 
 ter, though as infinitely varied as the senses represent it, was held 
 in a bond of unity transferred to a ruling power apart from it. 
 That Power could not be Prime Mover, if it were itself moved ; 
 nor All-Governing, if not apart from the things it governs. If 
 the arranging Principle were inherent in matter, it would have 
 been impossible to account for the existence of a chaos : if some- 
 thing external, then the old Ionian doctrine of a "beginning" 
 became more easily conceivable, as being the epoch at which the 
 Arranging Intelligence commenced its operations. 
 
 But this grand idea of an all-governing independent mind in- 
 volved difficulties which proved insuperable ; because it gave to 
 matter, in the form of chaos, an independent and eternal self-ex- 
 istence, and so introduced a dualism of mind and matter. In the 
 Mind or Intelligence, Anaxagoras included not only life and mo- 
 tion, but the moral principles of the noble and good ; and proba- 
 bly used the term on account of the popular misapplication of the 
 word "God," and as being less liable to misconstruction, and 
 more specifically 'marking his idea. His "Intelligence" principle 
 remained practically liable to many of the same defects as the 
 "Necessity" of the poets. It was the presentiment of a great 
 idea, which it was for the time impossible to explain or follow out. 
 
 44
 
 678 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It was not yet intelligible, nor was even the road opened through 
 which it might be approached. 
 
 Mind cannot advance in metaphysics beyond self-deification. 
 In attempting to go further, it only enacts the apotheosis of its 
 o\vn subtle conceptions, and so sinks below the simpler ground 
 already taken. The realities which Plato could not recognize in 
 phenomena, he discovered within his own mind, and as unhesitat- 
 ingly as the old Theosophists installed its creations among the 
 gods. He, like most philosophers after Anaxagoras, made the 
 Supreme Being to be Intelligence ; but in other respects left His 
 nature undefined, or rather indefinite through the variety of defi- 
 nitions, a conception vaguely floating between Theism and Pan- 
 theism. Though deprecating the demoralizing tendencies of 
 poetry, he was too wise to attempt to replace them by other rep- 
 resentations of a positive kind. He justly says, that spiritual 
 things can be made intelligible only through figures ; and the 
 forms of allegorical expression which, in a rude age, had been 
 adopted unconsciously, were designedly chosen by the philosopher 
 as the most appropriate vehicles for theological ideas. 
 
 As the devices of symbolism were gradually stripped away, in 
 order, if possible, to reach the fundamental conception, the reli- 
 gious feeling habitually connected with it seemed to evaporate 
 under the process. And yet the advocates of Monotheism, Xeno- 
 phanes and Heraclitus, declaimed only against the making of 
 gods in human form. They did not attempt to strip nature of its 
 divinity, but rather to recall religious contemplation from an ex- 
 ploded symbolism to a purer one. They continued the veneration 
 which, in the background of poetry, has been maintained for Sun 
 and Stars, the Fire or Ether. Socrates prostrated himself before 
 the rising luminary ; and the eternal spheres, which seem to have 
 shared the religious homage of Xenophanes, retained a secondary 
 and qualified Divinity in the Schools of the Peripatetics and 
 Stoics. 
 
 The unseen being or beings revealed only to the Intellect be- 
 came the theme of philosophy ; and their more ancient symbols, 
 if not openly discredited, were passed over with evasive generality, 
 as beings respecting whose problematical existence we must be 
 "content with what has been reported by those ancients, who, as- 
 suming to be their descendants, must therefore be supposed to 
 have been well acquainted with their own ancestors and family
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRIXCE ADEPT. 679 
 
 connections." And the Theism of Anaxagoras was still more de- 
 cidedly subversive, not only of Mythology, but of the whole reli- 
 gion of outward nature ; it being an appeal trom the world with- 
 out, to the consciousness of spiritual dignity within man. 
 
 In the doctrines of Aristotle, the world moves on uninterrupt- 
 edly, always changing, yet ever the same, like Time, the Eternal 
 Now, knowing neither repose nor death. There is a principle 
 which makes good the failure of identity, by multiplying resem- 
 blances; the destruction of the individual by an eternal renewal 
 of the form in which matter is manifested. This regular eternal 
 movement implies an Eternal Mover ; not an inert Eternity, such 
 as the Platonic Eidos, but one always acting, His essence being to 
 act, for otherwise he might never have acted, and the existence of 
 the world would be an accident ; for what should have, in that 
 case, decided Him to act, after long inactivity? Nor can He be 
 partly >n act and partly potential, that is, quiescent and undeter- 
 mined to act or not to act, for even in that case motion would not 
 be eternal, but contingent and precarious. He is therefore wholly 
 in act, a pure, untiring activity, and for the same reasons wholly 
 immaterial. Thus Aristotle avoided the idea that God was inact- 
 ive and self-contemplative for an eternity, and then for some un- 
 known reason, or by some unknown motive, commenced to act 
 outwardly and produce ; but he incurred the opposite hazard, of 
 making the result of His action, matter and the Universe, be co- 
 existent with Himself ; or, in other words, of denying that there 
 was any time when His outward action commenced. 
 
 The First Cause, he said, unmoved, moves all. Act was first, and 
 the Universe has existed forever; one persistent cause directing 
 its continuity. The unity of the First Mover follows from His 
 immateriality. If He \vere not Himself unmoved, the series of 
 motions and causes of motion would be infinite. Unmoved, there- 
 fore, and unchangeable Himself, all movement, even that in space, 
 is caused by Him : He is necessary : He cannot be otherwise than 
 as He is ; and it is only through the necessity of His being that 
 we can account for those necessary eternal relations which make a 
 science of Being possible. Thus Aristotle leaned to a seemingly 
 personal God ; not a Being of parts and passions, like the God of 
 the Hebrews, or that of the mass even of educated men in our own 
 day, but a Substantial Head of all the categories of being, an 
 Individuality of Intelligence, the dogma of Anaxagoras revived
 
 680 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 out of a more elaborate and profound analysis of Nature ; some- 
 thing like that living unambiguous Principle which the old poets. 
 in advance of the materialistic cosmogonists from Night and 
 Chaos, had discovered in Ouranos or Zeus. Soon, however, the 
 vision of personality is withdrawn, and we reach that culminating 
 point of thought where the real blends with the ideal ; where 
 moral action and objective thought (that is, thought exercised as 
 to anything outside of itself), as well as the material body, are 
 excluded ; and where the divine action in the world retains its 
 veil of impenetrable mystery, and to the utmost ingenuity of 
 research presents but a contradiction. At this extreme, the 
 series of efficient causes resolves itself into the Final Cause. 
 That which moves, itself iwmoved, can only be the immobility of 
 Thought or Form. God is both formal, efficient, and final cause ; 
 the One Form comprising all forms, the one good including all 
 good, the goal of the longing of the University, moving the world 
 as the object of love or rational desire moves the individual. lie 
 is the internal or self-realized Final Cause, having no end beyond 
 Himself. He is no moral agent ; for if He were. He would be but 
 an instrument for producing something still higher and greater. 
 One sort of act only, activity of mind or thought, can be assigned 
 to Him who is at once all act yet all repose. What we call our 
 highest pleasure, which distinguishes wakefulness and sensation, 
 and which gives a reflected charm to hope and memory, is with 
 Him perpetual. His existence is unbroken enjoyment of that which 
 is most excellent but only temporary with us. The divine quality 
 of active and yet tranquil self-contemplation characterizing intelli- 
 gence, is pre-eminently possessed by the divine mind ; His thought, 
 which is His existence, being, unlike ours, unconditional and whol- 
 ly act. If He can receive any gratification or enjoyment from that 
 which exists beyond Himself, He can also be displeased and pained 
 with it, and then He would be an imperfect being. To suppose 
 pleasure experienced by Him from anything outward, supposes an 
 insufficient prior enjoyment and happiness, and a sort of depen- 
 dency. Man's Good is beyond himself; not so God's. The eternal 
 act which produces the world's life is the eternal desire of good. 
 The object of the Absolute Thought is the Absolute Good. Nature 
 is all movement, and Thought all repose. In contemplating that 
 absolute good, the Finality can contemplate only itself ;and thus i 
 all material interference being excluded, the distinction of subject
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 68l 
 
 and object vanishes in complete identification, and the Divine 
 Thought is "the thinking of thought." The energy of mind is life, 
 and God is that energy in its purity and perfection. He is therefore 
 life itself, eternal and perfect ; and this sums up all that is meant 
 by the term "God." And yet, after all this transcendentalism, 
 the very essence of thought consists in its mobility and power 
 of transference from object to object; and we can conceive of no 
 thought, without an object beyond itself, about which to think, 
 or of any activity in mere self-contemplation, without outward 
 act, movement, or manifestation. 
 
 Plato endeavors to show how the Divine Principle of Good 
 becomes realized in Nature : Aristotle's system is a vast analogical 
 induction to prove how all Nature tends toward a final good. 
 Plato considered Soul as a principle of movement, and made his 
 Deity realize, that is, turn into realities, his ideas as a free, intel- 
 ligent Force. Aristotle, for whom Soul is the motionless centre 
 from which motion radiates, and to which it converges, conceives 
 a correspondingly unmoved God. The Deity of Plato creates, 
 superintends, and rejoices in the universal joy of, His creatures. 
 That of Aristotle is the perfection of man's intellectual activity 
 extended to the Universe. When he makes the Deity to be an eter- 
 nal act of self-contemplation, the world is not excluded from His 
 cognizance, for He contemplates it within Himself. Apart from 
 and beyond the world, He yet mysteriously intermingles with it. 
 He is universal as well as individual ; His agency is necessary and 
 general, yet also makes the real and the good of the particular. 
 
 When Plato had given to the unformed world the animal life 
 of the lonians, and added to that the Anaxagorean Intelligence, 
 overruling the wild principle of Necessity ; and when to Intelli- 
 gence was added Beneficence ; and the dread Wardours, Force and 
 Strength, were made subordinate to Mildness and Goodness, it 
 seemed as if a further advance were impossible, and that the Deity 
 could not be more than The Wise and The Good. 
 
 But the contemplation of the Good implies that of its opposite, 
 Evil. When God is held to be "The Good," it is not because 
 Evil is unknown, but because it is designedly excluded from His 
 attributes. But if Evil be a separate and independent existence, 
 how would it fare with His prerogative of Unity and Supremacy? 
 To meet this dilemma, it remained only to fall back on something 
 more or less akin to the vagueness of antiquity ; to make a virtual
 
 682 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 confession of ignorance, to deny the ultimate reality of evil, like 
 Plato and Aristotle, or, with Speusippus, the eternity of its anti- 
 thetical existence, to surmise that it is only one of those notions 
 which are indeed provisionally indispensable in a condition of 
 finite knowledge, but of which so many have been already discredi- 
 ted by the advance of philosophy ; to revert, in short, to the original 
 conception of "The Absolute," or of a single Being, in whom all 
 mysteries are explained, and before whom the disturbing principle 
 is reduced to a mere turbid spot on the ocean of Eternity, which 
 to the eye of faith may be said no longer to exist. 
 
 But the absolute is nearly allied to the non-existent. Matter 
 and evil obtruded themselves too constantly and convincingly to 
 be confuted or cancelled by subtleties of Logic. It is in vain to 
 attempt to merge the world in God, while the world of experience 
 exhibits contrariety, imperfection, and mutability, instead of the 
 immutability of its source. Philosophy was but another name 
 for uncertainty ; and after the mind had successively deified Nature 
 and its own conceptions, without any practical result but toilsome 
 occupation ; when the reality it sought, without or within, seemed 
 ever to elude its grasp, the intellect, baffled in its higher flights, 
 sought advantage and repose in aiming at truth of a lower but 
 more applicable kind. 
 
 The Deity of Plato is a Being proportioned to human sympa- 
 thies ; the Father of the World, as well as its Creator ; the author 
 of good only, not of evil. "Envy," he says, "is far removed 
 from celestial beings, and man, if willing, and braced for the effort, 
 is permitted to aspire to a communion with the solemn troops and 
 sweet societies of Heaven. God is the Idea or Essence of Goodness, 
 the Good itself [ro afa&ov]; in goodness, He created the 
 World, and gave to it the greatest perfection of which it was 
 susceptible ; making it, as far as possible, an image of Himself. 
 The sublime type of all excellence is an object not only of ven- 
 eration but love." The Sages of old had already intimated in 
 enigmas that God is the Author of Good ; that like the Sun in 
 Heaven, or ^sculapius on earth, He is "Healer," "Saviour," and 
 "Redeemer," the destroyer and averter of Evil, ever healing the mis- 
 chiefs inflicted by Here, the wanton or irrational power of nature. 
 Plato only asserts with more distinctness the dogma of antiquity 
 when lie recognizes LOVE as the highest and most beneficent of 
 gods, who gives to nature the invigorating energy restored by the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRIXCF. ADEPT. 683 
 
 art of medicine to the body ; since Love is emphatically the phy- 
 sician of the Universe, the ^sculapius to whom Socrates wished 
 to sacrifice in the hour of his death. 
 
 A figurative idea, adopted from familiar imagery, gave that en- 
 dearing aspect to the divine connection with the Universe which 
 had commanded the earliest assent of the sentiments, until, rising 
 in refinement with the progress of mental cultivation, it ultimately 
 established itself as firmly in the deliberate approbation of the 
 understanding, as it had ever responded to the sympathies. Even 
 the rude Scythians, Bithynians, and Scandinavians, called God 
 their "Father" ; all nations traced their ancestry more or less 
 directly to Heaven. The Hyperborean Olen, one of the oldest 
 symbols of the religious antiquity of Greece, made Love the First- 
 born of Nature. Who will venture to pronounce at what time 
 God was first worthily and truly honored, or when man first 
 began to feel aright the mute eloquence of nature ? In the obscure 
 physics of the mystical Theologers who preceded Greek philoso- 
 phy, Love was the Great First Cause and Parent of the Universe. 
 "Zeus," says Proclus, "when entering upon the work of creation, 
 changed Himself into the form of Love : and He brought forward 
 Aphrodite, the principle of Unity and Universal Harmony, to 
 display her light to all. In the depths of His mysterious being, 
 He contains the principle of love within Himself ; in Him creative 
 wisdom and blessed love are united." 
 
 "From the first 
 
 Of Days on these his love divine be fixed, 
 His admiration ; till in time complete 
 What he admired and loved, his vital smile 
 Unfolded into being." 
 
 The speculators of the venerable East, who had conceived the 
 idea of an Eternal Being superior to all affection and change, in 
 his own sufficiency enjoying a plenitude of serene and independ- 
 ent bliss, were led to inquire into the apparently inconsistent 
 fact of the creation of the world. Why, they asked, did He, who 
 required nothing external to Himself to complete His already- 
 existing Perfection, come forth out of His unrevealed and perfect 
 existence, and become incorporated in the vicissitudes of nature? 
 The solution of the difficulty was Love. The Great Being beheld 
 the beauty of His own conception, which dwelt with Him alone 
 from the beginning, Maia, or Nature's loveliness, at once the germ
 
 684 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of passion and the source of worlds. Love became the universal 
 parent, when the Deity, before remote and inscrutable, became 
 ideally separated into the loving and the beloved. 
 
 And here again recurs the ancient difficulty ; that, at whatever 
 early period this creation occurred, an eternity had previously 
 elapsed, during vhich God, dwelling alone in His unimpeached 
 unity, had no object for His love ; and that the very word im- 
 plies to us an existing object toward which the love is directed ; so 
 that we cannot conceive of love in the absence of any object to be 
 loved ; and therefore we again return to this point, that if love is 
 of God's essence, and He is unchangeable, the same necessity of 
 His nature, supposed to have caused creation, must ever have 
 made His existence without an object to love impossible : and so 
 that the Universe must have been co-existent with Himself. 
 
 The questions how and why evil exists in the Universe : how its 
 existence is to be reconciled with the admitted wisdom and good- 
 ness and omnipotence of God ; and how far man is a free agent, or 
 controlled by an inexorable necessity or destiny, have two sides. 
 On one, they are questions as to the qualities and attributes of 
 God ; for we must infer His moral nature from His mode of gov- 
 erning the Universe, and they ever enter into any consideration of 
 His intellectual nature : and on the other, they directly concern 
 the moral responsibility, and therefore the destiny, of man. All- 
 important, therefore, in both points of view, they have been much 
 discussed in all ages of the world, and have no doubt urged men, 
 more than all other questions have, to endeavor to fathom the 
 profound mysteries of the Nature and the mode of Existence and 
 action of an incomprehensible God. 
 
 And, with these, still another question also presents itself: 
 whether the Deity governs the Universe by fixed and unalterable 
 laws, or by special Providences and interferences, so that He may 
 be induced to change His course and the results of human or 
 material action, by prayer and supplication. 
 
 God alone is all-powerful : but the human soul has in all ages 
 asserted its claim to be considered as part of the Divine. "The 
 purity of the spirit," says Van Helmont, "is shown through energy 
 and efficaciousness of will. God, by the agency of an infinite will, 
 created the Universe, and the same sort of power in an inferior 
 degree, limited more or less by external hindrances, exists in all 
 spiritual beings." The higher we ascend in antiquity, the more
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 685 
 
 does prayer take the form of incantation ; and that form it still in 
 a great degree retains, since the. rites of public worship are gen- 
 erally considered not merely as an expression of trust or reverence, 
 as real spiritual acts, the effect of which is looked for only within 
 the mind of the worshipper, but as acts from which some direct 
 outward result is anticipated, the attainment of some desired 
 object, of health or wealth, of supernatural gifts for body or 
 soul, of exemption from danger, or vengeance upon enemies. 
 Prayer was able to change the purposes of Heaven, and to make 
 the Devs tremble under the abyss. It exercised a compulsory 
 influence over the gods. It promoted the magnetic sympathy of 
 spirit with spirit ; and the Hindu and Persian liturgies, addressed 
 not only to the Deity Himself, but to His diversified manifesta- 
 tions, were considered wholesome and necessary iterations of the 
 living or creative Word which at first effectuated the divine will, 
 and which from instant to instant supports the universal frame 
 by its eternal repetition. 
 
 In the narrative of the Fall, we have the Hebrew mode of ex- 
 plaining the great moral mystery, the origin of evil and the appa- 
 rent estrangement from Heaven ; and a similar idea, variously 
 modified, obtained in all the ancient creeds. Everywhere, man 
 had at the beginning been innocent and happy, and had lapsed, 
 by temptation and his own weakness, from his first estate. Thus 
 was accounted for the presumed connection of increase of knowl- 
 edge with increase of misery, and, in particular, the great penalty 
 of death was reconciled with Divine justice. Subordinate to these 
 greater points were the questions, Why is the earth covered with 
 thorns and weeds ? whence the origin of clothing, of sexual shame 
 and passion? whence the infliction of labor, and how to justify 
 the degraded condition of woman in the East, or account for the 
 loathing so generally felt toward the Serpent Tribe ? 
 
 The hypothesis of a fall, required under some of its modifica- 
 tions in all systems, to account for the apparent imperfection in 
 the work of a Perfect Being, was, in Eastern philosophy, the un- 
 avoidable accompaniment and condition of limited or individual 
 existence ; since the Soul, considered as a fragment of the Uni- 
 versal Mind, might be said to have lapsed from its pre-eminence 
 when parted from its source, and ceasing to form part of integral 
 perfection. The theory of its reunion was correspondent to the 
 assumed cause of its degradation. To reach its prior condition,
 
 686 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 its individuality must cease ; it must be emancipated by re-absorp- 
 tion into the Infinite, the consummation of all things in God, to 
 be promoted by human effort in spiritual meditation or self-morti- 
 fication, and completed in the magical transformation of death. 
 
 And as man had fallen, so it was held that the Angels of Evil 
 had, from their first estate, to which, like men, they were, in God's 
 good time, to be restored, and the reign of evil was then to cease 
 forever. To this great result all the Ancient Theologies point; 
 and thus they all endeavored to reconcile the existence of Sin 
 and Evil with the perfect and undeniable wisdom and beneficence 
 of God. 
 
 With man's exercise of thought are inseparably connected free- 
 dom and responsibility. Man assumes his proper rank as a moral 
 agent, when with a sense of the limitations of his nature arise the 
 consciousness of freedom, and of the obligations accompanying its 
 exercise, the sense of duty and of the capacity to perform it. To 
 suppose that man ever imagined himself not to be a free agent 
 until he had argued himself into that belief, would be to suppose 
 that he was in that below the brutes ; for he, like them, is con- 
 scious of his freedom to act. Experience alone teaches him that 
 this freedom of action is limited and controlled ; and when what 
 is outward to him restrains and limits this freedom of action, he 
 instinctively rebels against it as a wrong. The rule of duty and 
 the materials of experience are derived from an acquaintance with 
 
 the conditions of the external world, in which the faculties are 
 
 
 
 exerted ; and thus the problem of man involves those of Nature 
 and God. Our freedom, we learn by experience, is determined by 
 an agency external to us ; our happiness is intimately dependent 
 on the relations of the outward World, and on the moral character 
 of its Ruler. 
 
 Then at once arises this problem : The God of Nature must be 
 One, and His character cannot be suspected to be other than good. 
 Whence, then, came the evil, the consciousness of which must in- 
 variably have preceded or accompanied man's moral development? 
 On this subject human opinion has ebbed and flowed between 
 two contradictory extremes, one of which seems inconsistent with 
 God's Omnipotence, and the other with His beneficence. If God. 
 it was said, is perfectly wise and good, evil must arise from some 
 independent and hostile principle: if, on the other hand, all agen- 
 cies are subordinate to One, it is difficult, if evil does indeed exist,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 687 
 
 if there is any such thing as Evil, to avoid the impiety of making 
 God the Author of it. 
 
 The recognition of a moral and physical dualism in nature was 
 adverse to the doctrine of Divine Unity. Many of the Ancients 
 thought it absurd to imagine one Supreme Being, like Homer's 
 Jove, distributing good and evil out of two urns. They therefore 
 substituted, as we have seen, the doctrine of two distinct and 
 eternal principles ; some making the cause of evil to be the in- 
 herent imperfection of matter and the flesh, without explaining 
 how God was not the cause of that ; while others personified the 
 required agency, and fancifully invented an Evil Principle, the 
 question of whose origin indeed involved all the difficulty of the 
 original problem, but whose existence, if once taken for granted, 
 was sufficient as a popular solution of the mystery; the difficulty 
 being supposed no longer to exist when pushed a step further off, 
 as the difficulty of conceiving the world upheld by an elephant 
 was supposed to be got rid of when it was said that the elephant 
 was supported by a tortoise. 
 
 The simpler, and probably the older, notion, treated the one only 
 God as the Author of all things. "I form the light," says Jeho- 
 vah, "and create darkness ; I cause prosperity and create evil ; I, 
 the Lord, do all these things." "All mankind," says Maximus 
 Tyrius, "are agreed that there exists one only Universal King 
 and Father, and that the many gods are His Children." There is 
 nothing improbable in the supposition that the primitive idea was 
 that there was but one God. A vague sense of Nature's Unity, 
 blended with a dim perception of an all-pervading Spiritual Es- 
 sence, has been remarked among the earliest manifestations of the 
 Human Mind. Everywhere it was the dim remembrance, uncer- 
 tain and indefinite, of the original truth taught by God to the 
 first men. 
 
 The Deity of the Old Testatment is everywhere represented as 
 the direct author of Evil, commissioning evil and lying spirits to 
 men, hardening the heart of Pharaoh, and visiting the iniquity of 
 the individual sinner on the whole people. The rude conception 
 of sternness predominating over mercy in the Deity, can alone 
 account for the human sacrifices, purposed, if not executed, by 
 Abraham and Jephthah. It has not been uncommon, in any age 
 or country of the world, for men to recognize the existence of one 
 God, without forming any becoming e.>timate of His dignity. The
 
 688 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 causes of both good and ill are referred to a mysterious centre, to 
 which each assigns such attributes as correspond with his own 
 intellect and advance in civilization. Hence the assignment to 
 the Deity of the feelings of envy and jealousy. Hence the provo- 
 cation given by the healing skill of ^Esculapius and the humane 
 theft of fire by Prometheus. The very spirit of Nature, personi- 
 fied in Orpheus, Tantalus, or Phineus was supposed to have been 
 killed, confined, or blinded, for having too freely divulged the 
 Divine Mysteries to mankind. This Divine Envy still exists in a 
 modified form, and varies according to circumstances. In Hesiod 
 it appears in the lowest type of human malignity. In the God of 
 Moses, it is jealousy of the infringement of the autocratic power, 
 the check to political treason ; and even the penalties denounced 
 for worshipping other gods often seem dictated rather by a jealous 
 regard for His own greatness in Deity, than by the immorality 
 and degraded nature of the worship itself. In Heredotus and 
 other writers it assumes a more philosophical shape, as a strict 
 adherence to a moral equilibrium in the government of the world, 
 in the punishment of pride, arrogance, and insolent pretension. 
 
 God acts providentially in Nature by regular and universal laws, 
 by constant modes of operation ; and so takes care of material 
 things without violating their constitution, acting always accord- 
 ing to the nature of the things which He has made. It is a fact 
 of observation that, in the material and unconscious world, He 
 works by its materiality and unconsciousness, not against them ; 
 in the animal world, by its animality and partial consciousness, 
 not against them. So in the providential government of the 
 world, He acts by regular and universal laws, and constant modes 
 of operation ; and so takes care of human things without violating 
 their constitution, acting always according to the human nature 
 of man, not against it, working in the human world by means of 
 man's consciousness and partial freedom, not against them. 
 
 God -acts by general laws for general purposes. The attraction 
 of gravitation is a good thing, for it keeps the world together ; 
 and if the tower of Siloam, thereby falling to the ground, slays 
 eighteen men of Jerusalem, that number is too small to think of, 
 considering the myriad millions who are upheld by the same law. 
 It could not well be repealed for their sake, and to hold up that 
 tower ; nor could it remain in force, and the tower stand. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive of a Perfect Will without confounding
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 689 
 
 it with something like mechanism ; since language has no name 
 for that combination of the Inexorable with the Moral, which the 
 old poets personified separately in Ananke or Eimarmene and 
 Zeus. How combine understandingly the Perfect Freedom of the 
 Supreme and All-Sovereign Will of God with the inflexible neces- 
 sity, as part of His Essence, that He should and must continue to 
 be, in all His great attributes, of justice and mercy for example, 
 what He is now and always has been, and with the impossibility 
 of His changing His nature and becoming unjust, merciless, cruel, 
 fickle, or of His repealing the great moral laws which make crime 
 wrong and the practice of virtue right? 
 
 For all that we familiarly know of Free-Will is that capricious 
 exercise of it which we experience in ourselves and other men ; 
 and therefore the notion of Supreme Will, still guided by Infalli- 
 ble Law, even if that law be self-imposed, is always in danger of 
 being either stripped of the essential quality of Freedom, or 
 degraded under the ill-name of Necessity to something of even 
 less moral and intellectual dignity than the fluctuating course 
 of human operations. 
 
 It is not until we elevate the idea of law above that of partiality 
 or tyranny, that we discover that the self-imposed limitations of 
 the Supreme Cause, constituting an array of certain alternatives, 
 regulating moral choice, are the very sources and safeguards of 
 human freedom ; and the doubt recurs, whether we do not set a 
 law above God Himself; or whether laws self-imposed may not be 
 self-repealed : and if not, what power prevents it. 
 
 The Zeus of Homer, like that of Hesiod,is an array of antitheses, 
 combining strength with weakness, wisdom with folly, universal 
 parentage with narrow family limitation, omnipotent control over 
 events with submission to a superior destiny; DESTIXV, a name 
 by means of which the theological problem was cast back into the 
 original obscurity out of which the powers of the human mind 
 have proved themselves as incapable of rescuing it, as the efforts 
 of a fly caught in a spider's web to do more than increase its 
 entanglement. 
 
 The oldest notion of Deity was rather indefinite than repulsive. 
 The positive degradation was of later growth. The God of nature 
 reflects the changeful character of the seasons, varying from dark 
 to bright. Alternately angry and serene, and lavishing abundance 
 which she again withdraws, nature seems inexplicably capricious,
 
 690 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and though capable of responding to the highest requirements of 
 the moral sentiment through a general comprehension of her mys- 
 teries, more liable by a partial or hasty view to become darkened 
 into a Siva, a Saturn, or a Mexitli, a patron of fierce orgies or 
 blood-stained altars. All the older poetical personifications ex- 
 hibit traces of this ambiguity. They are neither wholly immoral 
 nor purely beneficent. 
 
 No people have ever deliberately made their Deity a malevolent 
 or guilty Being. The simple piety which ascribed the origin of 
 all things to God, took all in good part, trusting and hoping all 
 things. The Supreme Ruler was at first looked up to with un- 
 questioning reverence. No startling discords or contradictions 
 had yet raised a doubt as to His beneficence, or made men dissatis- 
 fied with His government. Fear might cause anxiety, but could 
 not banish hope, still less inspire aversion. It was only later, 
 when abstract notions began to assume the semblance of realities, 
 and when new or more distinct ideas suggested new words for 
 their expression, that it became necessary to fix a definite barrier 
 between Evil and Good. 
 
 To account for moral evil, it became necessary to devise some 
 new expedient suited both to the piety and self-complacency of 
 the inventor, such as the perversity of woman, or an agent distinct 
 from God, a Typhon or Ahriman, obtained either by dividing the 
 Gods into two classes, or by dethroning the Ancient Divinity, 
 and changing him into a Dev or Daemon. Through a similar 
 want, the Orientals devised the inherent corruption of the fleshy 
 and material ; the Hebrew transferred to Satan everything illegal 
 and immoral ; and the Greek reflection, occasionally adopting the 
 older and truer view, retorted upon man the obloquy cast on these 
 creatures of his imagination, and showed how he has to thank 
 himself alone for his calamities, while his good things are the 
 voluntary gifts, not the plunder of Heaven. Homer had already 
 made Zeus exclaim, in the Assembly of Olymnus, "Grievous it is 
 to hear these mortals accuse the Gods; they pretend that evils 
 come from us ; but they themselves occasion them gratuitously 
 by their own wanton folly." "It is the fault of man," said Solon, 
 in reference to the social evils of his day, "not of God, that de- 
 struction comes ;" and Euripides, after a formal discussion of the 
 origin of evil, comes to the conclusion that men act wrongly, not 
 from want of natural good sense and feeling, but because know-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OK I'KINCI-: ADEPT. 69! 
 
 ing what is good, they yet for various reasons neglect to prac- 
 tise it. 
 
 And at last reaching the highest truth, Pindar, Hesiod, JEschy- 
 lus, vEsop, and Horace said, "All virtue is a struggle ; life is not a 
 scene of repose, but of energetic action. Suffering is but another 
 name for the teaching of experience, appointed by Zeus himself, 
 the giver of all understanding, to be the parent of instruction, the 
 schoolmaster of life. He indeed put an end to the golden age ; 
 he gave venom to serpents and predacity to wolves ; he shook the 
 honey from the leaf, and stopped the flow of wine in the rivulets ; 
 he concealed the element of fire, and made the means of life scanty 
 and precarious. But in all this his object was beneficent ; it was 
 not to destroy life, but to improve it. It was a blessing to man, 
 not a curse, to be sentenced to earn his bread by the sweat of his 
 brow ; for nothing great or excellent is attainable without exer- 
 tion ; safe and easy virtues are prized neither by gods nor men ; 
 and the parsimoniousness of nature is justified by its powerful 
 effect in rousing the dormant faculties, and forcing on mankind 
 the invention of useful arts by means of meditation and thought." 
 
 Ancient religious reformers pronounced the worship of "idols" 
 to be the root of all evil ; and there have been many iconoclasts in 
 different ages of the world. The maxim still holds good ; for the 
 worship of idols, that is, of fanciful conceits, if not the source of 
 all evil, is still the cause of much ; and it prevails as extensively 
 now as it ever did. Men are ever engaged in worshipping the 
 picturesque fancies of their own imaginations. 
 
 Human wisdom must always be limited and incorrect ; and 
 even right opinion is only a something intermediate between 
 ignorance and knowledge. The normal condition of man is that 
 of progress. Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning, yet 
 never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth. A Mason should, 
 like the wise Socrates, assume the modest title of a "lover of 
 wisdom" ; for he must ever long after something more excellent 
 than he possesses, something still beyond his reach, which he 
 desires to make eternally his own. 
 
 Thus the philosophic sentiment came to be associated with the 
 poetical and the religious, under the comprehensive name of Love. 
 Before the birth of Philosophy, Love had received but scanty and 
 inadequate homage. This mightiest and most ancient of gods. 
 coeval with the existence of religion and of the world, had been
 
 692 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 indeed unconsciously felt, but had neither been worthily honored 
 nor directly celebrated in hymn or psean. In the old days of 
 ignorance it could scarcely have been recognized. In order that 
 it might exercise its proper influence over religion and philoso- 
 phy, it was necessary that the God of Nature should cease to be 
 a God of terrors,a personification of mere Power or arbitrary Will, 
 a pure and stern Intelligence, an inflictor of evil, and an unrelent- 
 ing Judge. The philosophy of Plato, in which this charge became 
 forever established, was emphatically a mediation of Love. With 
 him, the inspiration of Love first kindled the light of arts and 
 imparted them to mankind ; and not only the arts of mere exist- 
 ence, but the heavenly art of wisdom, which supports the Universe. 
 It inspires high and generous deeds and noble self-devotion. 
 Without it, neither State nor individual could do anything beauti- 
 ful or great. Love is our best pilot, confederate, supporter, and 
 saviour; the ornament and governor of all things human and 
 divine ; and he with divine harmony forever soothes the minds of 
 men and gods. 
 
 Man is capable of a higher Love, which, marrying mind with 
 mind and with the Universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his 
 faculties, and lifts him beyond himself. This higher love is 
 neither mortal nor immortal, but a power intermediate between 
 the human and the Divine, filling up the mighty interval, arid 
 binding the Universe together. He is chief of those celestial emis- 
 saries who carry to the gods the prayers of men, and .bring down to 
 men the gifts of the gods. "He is forever poor, and far from being 
 beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and withered ; he 
 3ies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandalled ; sleeping 
 without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered streets, and 
 possessing so far his mother's nature as being ever the companion 
 of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever schem- 
 ing to obtain things good and beautiful ; he is fearless, vehement, 
 and strong ; always devising some new contrivance : strictly 
 cautious and full of inventive resource ; a philosopher through 
 his whole existence, a powerful enchanter, and a subtle sophist." 
 
 The ideal consummation of Platonic science is the arrival at the 
 contemplation of that of which earth exhibits no express image or 
 adequate similitude, the Supreme Prototype of all beauty, pure and 
 uncontaminatecl with human intermixture of flesh or color, the 
 Divine Original itself. To one so qualified is given the preroga-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 693 
 
 tive of bringing forth not mere images and shadows of virtue, but 
 virtue itself, as havfng been conversant not with shadows, but 
 with the truth ; and having so brought forth and nurtured a 
 progeny of virtue, he becomes the friend of God, and, so far as 
 such a privilege can belong to any human being, immortal. 
 
 Socrates believed, like Heraclitus, in a Universal Reason perva- 
 ding all things and all minds, and consequently revealing itself in 
 ideas. He therefore sought truth in general opinion, and per- 
 ceived in the communication of mind with mind one of the 
 greatest prerogatives of wisdom and the most powerful means of 
 advancement. He believed true wisdom to be an attainable idea, 
 and that the moral convictions of the mind, those eternal instincts 
 of temperance, conscientiousness, and justice, implanted in it by 
 the gods, could not deceive, if rightly interpreted. 
 
 This metaphysical direction given to philosophy ended in 
 visionary extravagance. Having assumed truth to be discover- 
 able in thought, it proceeded to treat thoughts as truths. It thus 
 became an idolatry of notions, which it considered either as 
 phantoms exhaled from objects, or as portions of the divine pre- 
 existent thought ; thus creating a mythology of its own, and 
 escaping from one thraldom only to enslave itself afresh. Theories 
 and notions indiscriminately formed and defended are the false 
 gods or "idols" of philosophy. For the word idolon means image, 
 and a false ;/n;zc/-picture of God is as much an idol as a false 
 wooden image of Him. Fearlessly launching into the problem of 
 universal being, the first philosophy attempted to supply a com- 
 pendious and decisive solution of every doubt. To do this, it was 
 obliged to make the most sweeping assumptions ; and as poetry 
 had already filled the vast void between the human and the divine, 
 by personifying its Deity as man, so philosophy bowed down before 
 the supposed reflection of the divine image in the mind of the 
 inquirer, who, in worshipping his own notions, had unconsciously 
 deified himself. Nature thus was enslaved to common notions, and 
 notions very often to words. 
 
 By the clashing of incompatible opinions, philosophy was grad- 
 ually reduced to the ignominious confession of utter incapacity, 
 and found its check or intellectual fall in skepticism. Xenophanes 
 and Heraclitus mournfully acknowledged the unsatisfactory result 
 of all the struggles of philosophy, in the admission of a univer- 
 sality of doubt; and the memorable effort of Socrates to rallv 
 
 45
 
 694 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the discomfited champions of truth, ended in a similar confes- 
 sion. 
 
 The worship of abstractions continued the error which person- 
 ified Evil or deified Fortune ; and when mystical philosophy 
 resigned its place to mystical religion, it changed not its nature, 
 but only its name. The great task remained unperformed, of 
 reducing the outward world and its principles to the dominion of 
 the intellect, and of reconciling the conception of the supreme 
 unalterable power asserted by reason, with the requisitions of hu- 
 man sympathies. 
 
 A general idea of purpose and regularity in nature had been 
 suggested by common appearances to the earliest reflection. The 
 ancients perceived a natural order, a divine legislation, from which 
 human institutions were supposed to be derived, laws emblazoned 
 in Heaven, and thence revealed to earth. But the divine law was 
 little more than an analogical inference from human law, taken in 
 the vulgar sense of arbitrary will or partial covenant. It was sur- 
 mised rather than discovered, and remained unmoral because un- 
 intelligible. It mattered little, under the circumstances, whether 
 the Universe were said to be governed by chance or by reason, 
 since the latter, if misunderstood, was virtually one with the 
 former. "Better far," said Epicurus, "acquiesce in the fables of 
 tradition, than acknowledge the oppressive necessity of the physi- 
 cists" ; and Menander speaks of God, Chance, and Intelligence as 
 undistinguishable. Law unacknowledged goes under the name 
 of Chance: perceived, but not understood, it becomes Necessity. 
 The wisdom of the Stoic was a dogged submission to the arbitrary 
 behests of one ; that of the Epicurean an advantage snatched by 
 more or less dexterous management from the equal tyranny of the 
 other. 
 
 Ignorance sees nothing necessary, and is self abandoned to a 
 power tyrannical because defined by no rule, and paradoxical be- 
 cause permitting evil, while itself assumed to be unlimited, all- 
 powerful, and perfectly good. A little knowledge, presuming the 
 identification of the Supreme Cause with the inevitable certainty 
 of perfect reason, but omitting the analysis or interpretation of it, 
 leaves the mind chain-bound in the ascetic fatalism of the Stoic. 
 Free-will, coupled with the universal rule of Chance : or Fatalism 
 and Necessity, coupled with Omniscience and fixed and unaltra- 
 ble Law, these ?re -V alternatives, between which the hu^sr
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 695 
 
 mind has eternally vacillated. The Supernaturalists, contemplat- 
 ing a Being acting through impulse, though with superhuman 
 wisdom, and considering the best courtier to be the most favored 
 subject, combines contradictory expedients, inconsistently mixing 
 the assertion of free action with the enervating service of petition ; 
 while he admits, in the words of a learned archbishop, that "if 
 the production of the things we ask for depend on antecedent, 
 natural, and necessary causes, our desires will be answered no less 
 by the omission than the offering of prayers, which, therefore, are 
 a vain thing." 
 
 The last stage is that in which the religion of action is made 
 legitimate through comprehension of its proper objects and con- 
 ditions. Man becomes morally free only when both notions, that 
 of Chance and that of incomprehensible Necessity, are displaced 
 by that of Law. Law, as applied to the Universe, means that uni- 
 versal, providential pre-arrangement, whose conditions can be dis- 
 cerned and discretionally acted on by human intelligence. The 
 sense of freedom arises when the individual independence develops 
 itself according to its own laws, without external collision or hin- 
 drance ; that of constraint, where it is thwarted or confined by 
 other Natures, or where, by combination of external forces, the 
 individual force is compelled into a new direction. Moral choice 
 would not exist safely, or even at all, unless it were bounded by 
 conditions determining its preferences. Duty supposes a rule both 
 intelligible and certain, since an uncertain rule would be unintel- 
 ligible, and if unintelligible, there could be no responsibility. No 
 law that is unknown can be obligatory ; and that Roman Emperor 
 was justly execrated, who pretended to promulgate his penal laws, 
 by putting them up at such a height that nOne could read them. 
 
 Man commands results, only by selecting among the contingent 
 the pre-ordained results most suited to his purposes. In regard to 
 absolute or divine morality, meaning the final cause or purpose of 
 those comprehensive laws which often seem harsh to the individ- 
 ual, because inflexibly just and impartial to the universal, specula- 
 tion must take refuge in faith ; the immediate and obvious purpose 
 often bearing- so small a proportion to a wider and unknown one, 
 as to be relatively absorbed or lost. The rain that, unseasonable 
 to me, ruins my hopes of an abundant crop, does so because it 
 could not otherwise have blessed nnd prospered the crops of another 
 kitv4 of a whole neighboring district of country. The obvious
 
 696 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 purpose of a sudden storm of snow, or an unexpected change of 
 wind, exposed to which I lose my life, bears small proportion to 
 the great results which are to flow from that storm or wind over 
 a whole continent. So always, of the good and ill which at first 
 seemed irreconcilable and capriciously distributed, the one holds 
 its ground, the other diminishes by being explained. In a world 
 of a multitude of individuals, a world of action and exertion, a 
 world affording, by the conflict of interests and the clashing of 
 passions, any scope for the exercise of the manly and generous 
 virtues, 'even Omnipotence cannot make it, that the comfort and 
 convenience of one man alone shall always be consulted. 
 
 Thus the educated mind soon begins to appreciate the moral 
 superiority of a system of law over one of capricious interference ; 
 and as the jumble of means and ends is brought into more intel- 
 ligible perspective, partial or seeming good is cheerfully resigned 
 for the disinterested and universal. Self-restraint is found not to 
 imply self-sacrifice. The true meaning of what appeared to be 
 Necessity is found to be, not arbitrary Power, but Strength and 
 Force enlisted in the service of Intelligence. God having made 
 us men, and placed us in a world of change and eternal renova- 
 tion, with ample capacity and abundant means for rational enjoy- 
 ment, we learn that it is folly to repine because we are not angels, 
 inhabiting a world in which change and the clashing of interests 
 and the conflicts of passion are unknown. 
 
 The mystery of the world remains, but is sufficiently cleared 
 up to inspire confidence. We are constrained to admit that if 
 every man would but do the best in his power to do, and that 
 which he knows he ought to do, we should need no better world 
 than this. Alan, surrounded by necessity, is free, not in a dogged 
 determination of isolated will, because, though inevitably comply- 
 ing with nature's laws, he is able, proportionately to his knowl- 
 edge, to modify, in regard to himself, the conditions of their action, 
 and so to preserve an average uniformity between their forces and 
 his own. 
 
 Such are some of the conflicting opinions of antiquity ; and we 
 have to some extent presented to you a picture of the Ancient 
 Thought. Faithful, as far as it goes, it exhibits to us Man's In- 
 tellect ever struggling to pass beyond the narrow bounds of the 
 circle in which its limited powers and its short vision confine it; 
 and ever we find it travelling round the circle, like one lost in a
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 097 
 
 wood, to meet the same unavoidable and insoluble difficulties. 
 Science with her many instruments, Astronomy, particularly, with 
 her telescope, Physics with the microscope, and Chemistry with its 
 analyses and combinations, have greatly enlarged our ideas of the 
 Deity, by discovering to us the vast extent of the Universe in both 
 directions, its star-systems and its invisible swarms of minutest 
 animal life ; by acquainting us with the new and wonderful Force 
 or Substance we call Electricity, apparently a link between Mat- 
 ter and Spirit: and still the Deity only becomes more incompre- 
 hensible to us than ever, and we find that in our speculations we 
 but reproduce over and over again the Ancient Thought. 
 
 Where, then, amid all these conflicting opinions, is the True 
 Word of a Mason ? 
 
 My Brother, most of the questions which have thus tortured 
 men's minds, it is not within the reach and grasp of the Human 
 Intellect to understand ; but without understanding, as we have 
 explained to you heretofore, we may and must believe. 
 
 The True Word of a Mason is to be found in the concealed and 
 profound meaning of the Ineffable Name of Deity, communicated 
 by God to Moses ; and which meaning was long lost by the very 
 precautions taken to conceal it. The true pronunciation of that 
 name was in truth a secret, in which, however, was involved the 
 far more profound secret of its meaning. In that meaning is 
 included all the truth that can be known by us, in regard to the 
 nature of God. 
 
 Long known as AL, AL SCHADAI, ALOHAYIM, and ADONAI : as 
 the Chief or Commander of the Heavenly Armies ; as the .iggre- 
 gate of the Forces [ALOHAYIM] of Nature; as the Mighty, the 
 Victorious, the Rival of Bal and Osiris; as the Soul of Nature, 
 Nature itself, a God that was but Man personified, a God with hu- 
 man passions, the God of the Heathen with but a mere change of 
 name, He assumes, in His communications to Moses, the name 
 JTirP [Inuii], and says to Him, JTTIK "itftf rvntf [Aura ASHR 
 AHIH], I AM WHAT I AM. Let us examine the esoteric or inner 
 meaning of this Ineffable Name. 
 
 nTI [HIH] is the imperfect tense of the verb TO BE, of which 
 nTV [IHIH] is the present ; TIN [AHI k y being the personal pro- 
 noun "I" affixed] the first person, by apocope; andT* [IHI] the 
 third. The verb has the following forms: . . . Preterite. 3d per- 
 son, masculine singular, HM[ HIH], did exist, was: 3d person com.
 
 698 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 plural, 1M [HIU] . . Present, 3d pers. masc. sing. JTJT [mm], 
 onceX'ij-p [IHUA], by apocope TiM, \T[AHI, mi] . . Infinitive, ~M, 
 V~ [HIH, HIU] . . Imperative, 2d pers. masc. sing. rN- [HIH], fem. 
 ",;-, [HUI] . . .Participle, masc. sing, nin [HUH], ENS EXISTING 
 . . EXISTENCE. 
 
 This verb is never used, as the mere logical copula or connecting 
 word, is, was, etc., is used with the Greeks, Latins, and ourselves. 
 It always implies existence, actuality. The present form also in- 
 cludes the future sense, . . shall or may be or exist. And mn and 
 N'H [HUH and HUA] Chaldaic forms of the imperfect tense of the 
 verb, are the same as the Hebrew mn and HM [HUH and HIH], and 
 mean z^os, existed, became. 
 
 NowNinandfrOnfHuA and Hi A] are the Personal Pronoun 
 [Masculine and Feminine], HE, SHE. Thus in Gen. iv. 20 we have 
 the phrase, rPn 81H [HuA HIH], HE WAS : and in Lev. xxi. 9, riS 
 KTI rP2S [ATH ABIH HIA], HER Father. This feminine pronoun, 
 however, is often written Sin [HUA], and JOn [HiA] occurs only 
 eleven times in the Pentateuch. Sometimes the feminine form 
 means IT ; but that pronoun is generally in the masculine form. 
 
 When either \ 1, !"!, or N [Yod, Vav, He, or Aleph] terminates a 
 word, and has no vowel either immediately preceding or following 
 it, it is often rejected; as in* 1 !! [Gi], for fc^3 [GiA], a valley. 
 
 So KTI-NirifHuA-HiA], He-She, could properly be written Tl-'n 
 [Hu-Hi] ; or by transposition of the letters, common with the 
 Talmudists,m-iT l [lH-UH], which is the Tetragrammaton or Inef- 
 fable Name. 
 
 In Gen. I. 27, it is said. "So the ALHIM created man in His 
 image : in the image of ALHIM created He him : MALE and FE- 
 MALE created He them." 
 
 Sometimes the word was thus expressed ; triangularly : 
 
 n 
 
 PI 1 
 
 n n 
 n i n 
 
 And we learn that this designation of the Ineffable Name was, 
 among the Hebrews, a symbol of Creation. The mysterious union 
 of God with His creatures was in the lettei n, which they consid- 
 ered to be the Agent of Almighty Power ; and to enable the pos- 
 sessor of the Name to work miracles. 
 
 The Personal Pronoun Kin [Hu^]. HE, is often used by itself, to
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 699 
 
 express the Deity. Lee says that in such cases, IIIUH, IH, or 
 ALHIM, or some other name of God, is understood; but there is 
 no necessity for that. It means in such cases the Male, Genera- 
 tive, or Creative Principle or Power. 
 
 It was a common practice with the Talmudists to conceal secret 
 meanings and sounds of words by transposing the letters. 
 
 The reversal of the letters of words was, indeed, anciently com- 
 mon everywhere. Thus from Neitha, the name of an Egyptian 
 Goddess, the Greeks, writing backward, formed Athene, the name 
 of Minerva. In Arabic we have Nahid, a name of the planet 
 Venus, which, reversed, gives Dilian, Greek, in Persian, Nihad, 
 Nature; which Sir William Jones writes also Nahid. Strabo 
 informs us that the Armenian name of Venus was Anaitis. 
 
 Tien, Heaven, in Chinese, reversed, is Ncit, or Neith, worshipped 
 at Sais in Egypt. Reverse Neitha, drop the i, and add an e, and 
 we have, as before said, Atfane. Mitra was the name of Venus 
 among the ancient Persians. Herodotus, who tells us this, also 
 informs us that her name, among the Scythians, was Artim pasa. 
 Artim is Mitra, reversed. So, by reversing it, the Greeks formed 
 Artemis, Diana. 
 
 One of the meanings of Rama, in Sanscrit, is Kama, the Deity 
 of Love. Reverse this, and we have Amar, and by changing a into 
 o, Amor, the Latin word for Love. Probably, as the verb is Amare, 
 the oldest reading was Amar and not Amor. So Dipaka, in San- 
 scrit, one of the meanings whereof is love, is often written Dipuc. 
 Reverse this, and we have, adding o, the Latin word Cupido. 
 
 In Arabic, the radical letters rhm, pronounced rahm, signify the 
 trunk, compassion, mercy; this reversed, we have mhr, in Persic, 
 love and the Sun. In Hebrew we have Lab, the heart; and in 
 Chaldee, Bat, the heart; the radical letters of both being b and /. 
 
 The Persic word for head is Sar. Reversed, this becomes Ras 
 in Arabic and Hebrew, Raish in Chaldee, Rash in Samaritan, and 
 Ryas in Ethiopic ; all meaning head, chief, etc. In Arabic we 
 have Kid, in the sense of rule, regulation, article of agreement, 
 obligation ; which, reversed, becomes, adding e, the Greek dike 
 justice. In Coptic \ve have Chlom, a crown. Reversed, we have 
 in Hebrew, Moloch or Malcc, a King, or he who wears a crown. 
 
 In the Kou-onen, or oldest Chinese writing, by Hieroglyphics, 6, 
 Ge [Hi or Khi, with the initial letter modified], was the Sun: in 
 Persic, Gaw; and in Turkish Giun. Yue [3], was the Moon ;
 
 700 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in Sanscrit Uh, and in Turkish Ai. It will be remembered that, 
 in Egypt and elsewhere, the Sun was originally feminine, and the 
 Moon masculine. In Egypt, loh was the Moon : and in the feasts 
 of Bacchus they cried incessantly, Euo'i Sabvi! Euoi Bakhe! lo 
 Bakhe! lo Bakhe! 
 
 Bunsen gives the following personal pronouns for he and she: 
 
 He She 
 
 Christian Aramtic Hu Hi 
 
 Jewish Aramaic Hu Hi 
 
 Hebrew Hu' Hi' 
 
 Arabic Huwa. . . . Hiya 
 
 Thus the Ineffable Name not only embodies the Great Philo- 
 sophical Idea, that the Deity is the ENS, the To ON, the Absolute 
 Existence, that of which the Essence is To Exist, the only Sub- 
 stance of Spinoza, the BEING, that never could not have existed, 
 as contradistinguished from that which only becomes, not Nature 
 or the Soul of Nature, but that which created Nature ; but also 
 the idea of the Male and Female Principles, in its highest and 
 most profound sense; to wit, that God originally comprehended 
 in Himself all that is : that matter was not co-existent with Him, 
 or independent of Him; that He did not merely fashion and 
 shape a pre-existing chaos into a Universe ; but that His Thought 
 manifested itself outwardly in that Universe, which so became, and 
 before was not, except as comprehended in Him : that the Gene- 
 rative Power or Spirit, and productive Matter, ever among the 
 ancients deemed the Female, originally were in God ; and that He 
 Was and Is all that Was, that Is, and that Shall be : in Whom all 
 else lives, moves, and has its being. 
 
 This was the great Mystery of the Ineffable Name ; and this 
 true arrangement of its letters, and of course its true pronun- 
 ciation and its meaning, soon became lost to all except the 
 select few to whom it was confided ; it being concealed from the 
 common people, because the Deity thus metaphysically named 
 was not that personal and capricious, and as it were tangible God 
 in whom they believed, and who alone was within the reach of 
 their rude capacities. 
 
 Diodorus says that the name given by Moses to God was IAQ. 
 Theodorus says that the Samaritans termed God I ABE, but the 
 Jews f.W. Philo Byblius gives the form IETQ\ and Clemens
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. /OI 
 
 of Alexandria IAOT. Macrobius says that it was an admitted 
 axiom among the Heathen, that the triliteral I. Mi was the sacred 
 name of the Supreme God. And the Clarian oracle said : "Learn 
 thou that /.-//<? is the great God Supreme, that ruleth over all." 
 The letter / signified Unity. A and are the first and last letters 
 of the Greek Alphabet. 
 
 Hence the frequent expression : "I am the First, and I am the 
 Last ; and besides Me there is no other God. I am A. and /<?., the 
 First and the Last. I am A. and /^., the Beginning and the End- 
 ing, which Is, and Was, and Is to come : the Omnipotent." For 
 in this we see shadowed forth the same great truth ; that God is 
 all in all the Cause and the Effect the beginning, or Impulse, or 
 Generative Power: and the Ending, or Result, or that which is 
 produced : that He is in reality all that is, all that ever was, and all 
 that ever will be ; in this sense, that nothing besides Himself has 
 existed eternally, and co-eternally with Him, independent of Him, 
 and self-existent, or self-originated. 
 
 And thus the meaning of the expression, ALOHAYIM, a plural 
 noun, used, in the account of the Creation with which Genesis 
 commences, with a singular verb, and of the name or title IHUH- 
 ALHIM, used for the first time in the 4th verse of the 2d chapter 
 of the same book, becomes clear. The ALHIM is the aggregate 
 unity of the manifested Creative Forces or Powers of Deity, His 
 Emanations ; and IHUH-ALHIM is the ABSOLUTE Existence, or 
 Essence of these Powers and Forces, of which they are Active 
 Manifestations and Emanations. 
 
 This was the profound truth hidden in the ancient allegory and 
 covered from the general view with a double veil. This was the 
 esoteric meaning of the generation and production of the Indian, 
 Chaldean, and Phoenician cosmognies ; and the Active and Pass- 
 ive Powers, of the Male and Female Principles ; of Heaven and 
 its Luminaries generating, and the Earth producing; all hiding 
 from vulgar view, as above its comprehension, the doctrine that 
 matter is not eternal, but that God was the only original Existence, 
 the ABSOLUTE, from \Yhom everything has proceeded, and to 
 Whom all returns : and that all moral law springs not from the 
 relation of things, but from His Wisdom and Essential Justice, as 
 the Omnipotent Legislator. And this TRUE WORD is with entire 
 accuracy said to have been lost; because its meaning was lost, 
 even among the Hebrews, although we still find the name (its real
 
 702 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 meaning unsuspected), in the Hu of the Druids and the Fo-Hi 
 of the Chinese. 
 
 When we conceive of the Absolute Truth, Beauty, or Good, we 
 cannot stop short at the abstraction of either. We are forced to 
 refer each to some living 1 and substantial Being, in which they 
 have their foundations, some being that is the first and last prin- 
 ciple of each. 
 
 Moral Truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, 
 cannot remain a mere abstraction. Abstractions are unrealities. 
 In ourselves, moral truth is merely conceived of. There must be 
 somewhere a Being that not only conceives of, but constitutes it. 
 U has this characteristic ; that it is not only, to the eyes of our 
 intelligence, an universal and necessary truth, but one obligatory 
 on our will. It is A LAW. We do not establish that law ourselves. 
 It is imposed on us despite ourselves : its principle must be zvithout 
 us. It supposes a legislator. He cannot be the being to whom 
 the law applies ; but must be one that possesses in the highest 
 degree all the characteristics of moral truth. The moral law, uni- 
 versal and necessary, necessarily has as its author a necessary 
 being; composed of justice and charity, its author must be a 
 being possessing the plenitude of both. 
 
 As all beautiful and all true things refer themselves, these to 
 a Unity which is absolute TRUTH, and those to a Unity which is 
 absolute BEAUTY, so all the moral .principles centre in a single 
 principle, which is THE GOOD. Thus we arrive at the conception 
 of THE GOOD in itself, the ABSOLUTE Good, superior to all par- 
 ticular duties, and determinate in those duties. This Absolute 
 Good must necessarily be an attribute of the Absolute BEING. 
 There cannot be several Absolute Beings ; the one in whom are 
 realized Absolute Truth and Absolute Beauty being different from 
 the one in whom is realized Absolute Good. The Absolute neces- 
 sarily implies absolute Unity. The True, the Beautiful, and the 
 Good are not three distinct essences : but they are one and the 
 same essence, considered in its fundamental attributes : the differ- 
 ent phases which, in our eyes, the Absolute and Infinite Perfection 
 assumes. Manifested in the World of the Finite and Relative, 
 these three attributes separate from each other, and are distin- 
 guished by our minds, which can comprehend nothing except by 
 division. But in the Being from W'"hom they emanate, they are 
 indivisibly united ; and this Being, at once triple and one, Who
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. /OJ 
 
 sums up in Himself perfect Beauty, perfect Truth, and the per- 
 fect Good, is GOD. 
 
 God is necessarily the principle of Moral Truth, and of per- 
 sonal morality. Man is a moral person, that is to say, one 
 endowed with reason and liberty. He is capable of Virtue : and 
 Virtue has with him two principal forms, respect for others and 
 love of others, justice and charity. 
 
 The creature can possess no real and essential attribute which 
 the Creator does not possess. The effect can draw its reality and 
 existence only from its cause. The cause contains in itself, at 
 least, what is essential in the effect. The characteristic of the 
 effect is inferiority, short-coming, imperfection. Dependent and 
 derivate, it bears in itself the marks and conditions of depend- 
 ence ; and its imperfection proves the perfection of the cause ; or 
 else there would be in the effect something immanent, without 
 a cause. 
 
 God is not a logical Being, whose Nature may be explained by 
 deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting 
 out with a primary attribute, the attributes of God are deduced 
 one from the other, after the manner of the Geometricians and 
 Scholastics, we have nothing but abstractions. We must emerge 
 from this empty dialectic, to arrive at a true and living God. 
 The first notion which we have of God, that of an Infinite Being, 
 is not given us a priori, independently of all experience. It is our 
 consciousness of ourself, as at once a Being and a limited Being, 
 that immediately raises us to the conception of a Being, the prin- 
 ciple of our being, and Himself without limits. If the existence 
 that we possess forces us to recur to a cause possessing the same 
 existence in an infinite degree, all the substantial attributes of 
 existence that we possess equally require each an infinite cause. 
 God, then, is no longer the Infinite, Abstract, Indeterminate 
 Being, of which reason and the heart cannot lay hold, but a real 
 Being, determinate like ourselves, a moral person like ourself: 
 and the study of our own souls will conduct us, without resort to 
 hypothesis, to a conception of God, both sublime and having a 
 connection with ourselves. 
 
 If man be free, God must be so. It would be strange if, while 
 the creature has that marvellous power of disposing of himself, of 
 choosing and willing freely, the Being that has made him should 
 be subject to a necessary development, the cause of which, though
 
 704 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 in Himself, is a sort of abstract, mechanical, or metaphysical 
 power, inferior to the personal, voluntary cause which we are, and 
 of which we have the clearest consciousness. God is free because 
 we are : but he is not free as we are. He is at once everything that 
 we are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes 
 as we, but extended to infinity. He possesses, then, an infinite 
 liberty, united to an infinite intelligence ; and as His intelligence 
 is infallible, exempt from the uncertainty of deliberation, and per- 
 ceiving at a glance where the Good is, so His liberty accomplishes 
 it spontaneously and without effort. 
 
 As we assign to God that liberty which is the basis of our exist- 
 ence, so also we transfer to His character, from our own, justice 
 and charity. In man they are virtues : in God, His attributes. 
 What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in Him His 
 very nature. The idea of the right, and the respect paid to the 
 right, are signs of the dignity of our existence. If respect of rights 
 is the very essence of justice, the Perfect Being must know and 
 respect the rights of the lowest of His creatures ; for He assigned 
 them those rights. In God resides a sovereign justice, that renders 
 to every one what is due him, not according to deceitful appear- 
 ances, but according to the truth of things. And if man, a limited 
 being, has the power to go out of himself, to forget his own person, 
 to love another like himself, and devote himself to his happiness, 
 dignity, and perfection, the Perfect Being must have, in an infinite 
 degree, that disinterested tenderness, that Charity, the Supreme 
 Virtue of the human person. There is in God an infinite tender- 
 ness for His creatures, manifested in His giving us existence, 
 which He might have withheld ; and every day it appears in in- 
 numerable marks of His Divine Providence. 
 
 Plato well understood that love of God, and expresses it in these 
 great words : "Let us speak of the cause which led the Supreme 
 Arranger of the Universe to produce and regulate that Universe. 
 He was good ; and he who is good has no kind of ill-will. Exempt 
 from that, He willed that created things should be, as far as pos- 
 sible, like Himself." And Christianity in its turn said, "God Jias 
 so loved men that He has given them His only Son." 
 
 It is not correct to affirm, as is often done, that Christianity has 
 in some sort discovered this noble sentiment. We must not lower 
 human nature, to raise Christianity. Antiquity knew, described, 
 and practised charity ; the first feature of which, so touching, and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 705 
 
 thank God ! so common, is goodness, as its loftiest one is heroism. 
 Charity is devotion to another ; and it is ridiculously senseless to 
 pretend that there ever was an age of the world, when the human 
 soul was deprived of that part of its heritage, the power of devo- 
 tion. But it is certain that Christianity has diffused and popu- 
 larized this virtue, and that, before Christ, these words were never 
 spoken: "LovE ONE ANOTHER; FOR THAT is THE WHOLE LAW." 
 Chanty presupposes Justice. He who truly loves his brother 
 respects the rights of his brother; but he does more, he forgets 
 his own. Egoism sells or takes. Love delights in giving. In God, 
 love is what it is in us ; but in an infinite degree. God is inex- 
 haustible in His charity, as He is inexhaustible in His essence. 
 That Infinite Omnipotence and Infinite Charity, which, by an 
 admirable good-will, draws from the bosom of its immense love 
 the favors which it incessantly bestows on the world and on 
 humanity, teaches us that the more we give, the more we possess. 
 
 God being all just and all good, He can will nothing but what 
 is good and just. Being Omnipotent, whatever He wills He can 
 do, and consequently does. The world is the work of God : it is 
 therefore perfectly made. 
 
 Yet there is disorder in the world, that seems to impugn the 
 justice and goodness of God. 
 
 A principle indissolubly connected with the very idea of good, 
 tells us that every moral agent deserves reward when he does well, 
 and punishment when he does ill. This principle is universal and 
 necessary. It is absolute. If it does not apply in this world, it is 
 false, or the world is badly ordered. 
 
 But good actions are not always followed by happiness, nor evil 
 ones by misery. Though often this fact is more apparent than 
 real ; though virtue, a war against the passions, full of dignity but 
 full of sorrow and pain, has the latter as its condition, yet the 
 pains that follow vice are greater ; and virtue conduces most to 
 health, strength, and long life ; though the peaceful conscience 
 that accompanies virtue creates internal happiness ; though public 
 opinion generally decides correctly on men's characters, and re- 
 wards virtue with esteem and consideration, and vice with con- 
 tempt and infamy; and though, after all. justice reigns in the 
 world, and the surest road to happiness is still 'hat of virtue, yet 
 there are exceptions. Virtue is not always rewarded, nor vice 
 punished, in this life.
 
 706 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The data of this problem are these: 1st. The principle of merit 
 and demerit within us is absolute : every good action ought to be 
 rewarded, every bad one punished : 2d. God is as just as He is all- 
 powerful : 3d. There are in this world particular cases, contradict- 
 ing the necessary and universal law of merit and demerit. What 
 is the result? 
 
 To reject the two principles, that God is just, and the law of 
 merit and demerit absolute, is to raze to the foundations the whole 
 edifice of human faith. 
 
 To maintain them, is to admit that the present life is to be 
 terminated or continued elsewhere. The moral person who acts 
 well or ill, and awaits reward or punishment, is connected with a 
 body, lives with it, makes use of it, depends upon it in a measure, 
 but is not it. The body is composed of parts. It diminishes or 
 increases, it is divisible even to infinity. But this something 
 which has a consciousness of itself, and says "I, ME" ; that feels 
 itself free and responsible, feels too that it is incapable of division, 
 that it is a being one and simple; that the ME cannot be halved, 
 that if a limb is cut off and thrown away, no part of the ME goes 
 with it : that it remains identical with itself under the variety of 
 phenomena which successively manifest it. This identity, indi- 
 visibility, and absolute unity of the person, are its spirituality, 
 the very essence of the person. It is not in the least an hypothesis 
 to affirm that the soul differs essentially from the body. By the 
 soul we mean the person, not separated from the consciousness of 
 the attributes which constitute it, thought and unll. The Exist- 
 ence without consciousness is an abstract being, and not a person. 
 It is the person, that is identical, one, simple. Its attributes, de- 
 veloping it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is indissoluble and 
 may be immortal. If absolute justice requires this immortality, 
 it does not require what is impossible. The spirituality of the 
 soul is the condition and necessary foundation of immortality : 
 the law of merit and demerit the direct demonstration of it. The 
 first is the metaphysical, the second the moral proof. Add to 
 these the tendency of all the powers of the soul toward the Infi- 
 nite, and the principle of final causes, and the proof of the immor- 
 tality of the soul is complete. 
 
 God, therefore, in the Masonic creed, is INFINITE TRUTH, IN- 
 FINITE BEAUTY, INFINITE GOODNESS. He is the Holv of Holies. 
 as Author of the Moral Law, as the PRINCIPLE of Liberty, c*
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 707 
 
 Justice, and of Charity, Dispenser of Reward and Punishment. 
 Such a God is not an abstract God ; but an intelligent and free 
 person, Who has made us in His image, from Whom we receive 
 the law that presides over our destiny, and Whose judgment we 
 await. It is His love that inspires us in our acts of charity : it is 
 His justice that governs our justice, and that of society and the 
 laws. We continually remind ourselves that He is infinite ; be- 
 cause otherwise we should degrade His nature : but He would be 
 for us as if He were not, if His infinite nature had not forms inhe- 
 rent in ourselves, the forms of our own reason and soul. 
 
 When we love Truth, Justice, and Nobility of Soul, we should 
 know that it is God we love underneath these special forms, and 
 should unite them all into one great act of total piety. We should 
 feel that we go in and out continually in the midst of the vast 
 forces of the Universe, which are only the Forces of God ; that in 
 our studies, when we attain a truth, we confront the thought of 
 God ; when we learn the right, we learn the will of God laid down 
 as a rule of conduct for the Universe ; and when we feel disin- 
 terested love, we should know that we partake the feeling of the 
 Infinite God. Then, when we reverence the mighty cosmic force, 
 it will not be a blind Fate in an Atheistic or Pantheistic world, 
 but the Infinite God, that we shall confront and feel and know. 
 Then we shall be mindful of the mind of God, conscious of God's 
 conscience, sensible of His sentiments, and our own existence will 
 be in the infinite being of God. 
 
 The world is a whole, which has its harmony ; for a God who 
 is One, could make none but a complete and harmonious work. 
 The harmony of the Universe responds to the unity of God, as the 
 indefinite quantity is the defective sign of the infinitude of God. 
 To say that the Universe is God, is to admit the world only, and 
 deny God. Give it what name you please, it is atheism at bottom. 
 On the other hand, to suppose that the Universe is void of God, 
 and that He is wholly apart from it, is an insupportable and al- 
 most impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not to separate. I 
 distinguish, but do not separate myself from my qualities and 
 effects. So God is not the Universe, although He is everywhere 
 present in spirit and in truth. 
 
 To us, as to Plato, absolute truth is in God. It is God Himself 
 under one of His phases. In God, as their original, are the immu- 
 table principles of reality and cognizance. In Him things receive
 
 708 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 at once their existence and their intelligibility. It is by partici- 
 pating' in the Divine reason that our own reason possesses some- 
 thing of the Absolute. Every judgment of reason envelopes a 
 necessary truth, and every necessary truth supposes the necessary 
 Existence. 
 
 Thus, from every direction, from metaphysics, aesthetics, and 
 morality above all, we rise to the same Principle, the common 
 centre, and ultimate foundation of all truth, all beauty, all good. 
 The True, the Beautiful, the Good, are but diverse revelations of 
 one and the same Being. Thus \ve reach the threshold of religion ; 
 and are in communion with the great philosophies which all pro- 
 claim a God ; and at the same time with the religions which cover 
 the earth, and all repose on the sacred foundation of natural reli- 
 gion ; of that religion which reveals to us the natural light given 
 to all men, without the aid of a particular revelation. So long as 
 philosophy does not arrive at religion, it is below all worships, 
 even the most imperfect ; for they at least give man a Father, a 
 Witness, a Consoler, a Judge. By religion, philosophy connects 
 itself with humanity, which, from one end of the world to the 
 other, aspires to God, believes in God, hopes in God. Philosophy 
 contains in itself the common basis of all religious beliefs ; it, as 
 it were, borrows from them their principle, and returns it to them 
 surrounded- with light, elevated above uncertainty, secure against 
 all attack. 
 
 From the necessity of His Nature, the Infinite Being must 
 create and preserve the Finite, and to the Finite must, in its 
 forms, give and communicate of His o\vn kind. We cannot con- 
 ceive of any finite thing existing without God, the Infinite basis 
 and ground thereof ; nor of God existing without something. God 
 is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating 
 cause ; a world, the necessary logical condition of God, His neces- 
 sitated consequence. It is according to His Infinite Perfection to 
 create, and then to preserve and bless whatever He creates. That 
 is the conclusion of modern metaphysical science. The stream 
 of philosophy runs down from Aristotle to Hegel, and breaks off 
 with this conclusion : and then again recurs the ancient difficulty. 
 If it be of His nature to create, if we cannot conceive of His 
 ex j s t; r or ninuc. without creating, without hai'ing created, then what 
 He creator! ws co-extent wuii Himself. If He could exist an 
 instant without creating, He could as well do so for a myriad of
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 709 
 
 eternities. And so again comes round to us the old doctrine of a 
 God, the Soul of the Universe, and co-existent with it. For what 
 He created had a beginning; and however long since that creation 
 occurred, an eternity had before elapsed. The difference between 
 a beginning and no beginning is infinite. 
 
 But of some things we can be certain. We are conscious of our- 
 selves of ourselves if not as substances, at least as Powers to be, 
 to do, to suffer. We are conscious of ourselves not as self-origin- 
 ated at all or as self-sustained alone ; but only as dependent, first 
 for existence, ever since for support. 
 
 Among the primary ideas of consciousness, that are inseparable 
 from it, the atoms of self-consciousness, we find the idea of God. 
 Carefully examined by the "scrutinizing intellect, it is the idea of 
 God as infinite, perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, holy ; abso- 
 lute being with no limitation. This made us, made all, sustains 
 us, sustains all ; made our body, not by a single act, but by a 
 series of acts extending over a vast succession of years, for man's 
 body is the resultant of all created things, made our spirit, our 
 mind, conscience, affections, soul, will, appointed for each its 
 natural mode of action, set each at its several aim. Thus self-con- 
 sciousness leads us to consciousness of God, and at last to con- 
 sciousness of an infinite God. That is the highest evidence of our 
 own existence, and it is the highest evidence of His. 
 
 If there is a God at all, He must be omnipresent in space. 
 Beyond the last Stars He must be, as He is here. There can be 
 no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no little cell of life that the 
 microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss, but He is 
 there. 
 
 He must also be omnipresent in time. There was no second of 
 time before the Stars began to burn, but God was in that second. 
 In the most distant nebulous spot in Orion's belt, and in every one 
 of the millions that people a square inch of limestone, God is 
 alike present. He is in the smallest imaginable or even unimagin- 
 able portion of time, and in every second of its most vast and 
 unimaginable volume; His Here conterminous with the All of 
 Space, His Now coeval with the All of Time. 
 
 Through all this Space, in all this Time, His Being extends, 
 spreads undivided, operates unspent ; God in all His infinity, per- 
 fectly powerful, \vise, just, loving, and holy. His being is an 
 infinite activity, a creating, and so a giving of Himself to the 
 46
 
 710 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 World. The World's being is a becoming, a being created and 
 continued. It is so now, and was so, incalculable and unimagin- 
 able millions of ages ago. 
 
 All this is philosophy, the unavoidable conclusion of the human 
 mind. It is not Ihe opinion of Coleridge and Kant, but their 
 science; not what they guess, but what they know. 
 
 In virtue of this in-dwelling of God in matter, we say that the 
 world is a revelation of Him, its existence a show of His. He is 
 in His .work. The manifold action of the Universe is only His 
 mode of operation, and all material things are in communion with 
 Him. All grow and move and live in Him, and by means of Him, 
 and only so. Let Him withdraw from the space occupied by any- 
 thing, and it ceases to be. Let Him withdraw any quality of His 
 nature from anything, and it ceases to be. All must partake of 
 Him, Heiiwelling in each, and yet transcending all. 
 
 The failure of fanciful religion to become philosophy, does not 
 preclude philosophy from coinciding with true religion. Philos- 
 ophy, or rather its object, the divine order of the Universe, is the- 
 intellectual guide which the religious sentiment needs ; while 
 exploring the real relations of the finite, it obtains a constantly 
 improving and self-correcting measure of the perfect law of the 
 Gospel of Love and Liberty, and a means of carrying into effect 
 the spiritualism of revealed religion. It establishes law, by ascer- 
 taining its terms ; it guides the spirit to see its way to the ameli- 
 oration of life and the increase of happiness. While religion was 
 stationary, science could not walk alone ; when both are admitted 
 to be progressive, their interests and aims become identified. 
 Aristotle began to show how religion may be founded on an intel- 
 lectual basis ; but the basis he laid was too narrow. Bacon, by 
 giving to philosophy a definite aim and method, gave it at the 
 same time a safer and self-enlarging basis. Our position is that 
 of intellectual beings surrounded by limitations ; and the latter 
 being constant, have to intelligence the practical value of laws, in 
 whose investigation and application consists that seemingly endless 
 career of intellectual and moral progress which the sentiment of 
 religion inspires and ennobles. The title of Saint has commonly 
 been claimed for those whose boast it has been to despise philos- 
 ophy ; yet faith will stumble and sentiment mislead, unless knowl- 
 edge be present, in amount and quality sufficient to purify the one 
 and to give beneficial direction to the other.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 711 
 
 Science consists of those matured inferences from experi- 
 ence which all other experience confirms. It is no fixed system 
 superior to revision, but that progressive mediation between 
 ignorance and wisdom in part conceived by Plato, whose immedi- 
 ate object is happiness, and its impulse the highest kind of love. 
 Science realizes and unites all that was truly valuable in both the 
 old schemes of mediation ; the heroic, or system of action and 
 effort ; and the mystical theory of spiritual, contemplative com- 
 munion. "Listen to me," says Galen, "as to the voice of the 
 Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe that the study of nature is a 
 mystery no less important than theirs, nor less adapted to display 
 the wisdom and power of the Great Creator. Their lessons and 
 demonstrations were obscure, but ours are clear and unmistak- 
 able." 
 
 To science we owe it that no man is any longer entitled to con- 
 sider himself the central point around which the whole Universe 
 of life and motion revolves the immensely important individual 
 for whose convenience and even luxurious ease and indulgence the 
 whole Universe was made. On one side it has shown us an infi- 
 nite Universe of stars and suns and worlds at incalculable dis- 
 tances from each other, in whose majestic and awful presence we 
 sink and even our world sinks into insignificance ; while, on the 
 other side, the microscope has placed us in communication with 
 new worlds of organized living beings, gifted with senses, nerves, 
 appetites, and instincts, in every tear and in every drop of putrid 
 water. 
 
 Thus science teaches us that we are but an infinitesimal portion 
 of a great whole, that stretches out on every side of us, and above 
 and below us, infinite in its complications, and which infinite wis- 
 dom alone can comprehend. Infinite wisdom has arranged the 
 infinite succession of beings, involving the necessity of birth, 
 decay, and death, and made the loftiest virtues possible by provid- 
 ing those conflicts, reverses, trials, and hardships, without which 
 even their names could never have been invented. 
 
 Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of 
 utility and duty. Modern science is social and communicative. 
 It is moral as well as intellectual ; powerful, yet pacific and dis- 
 interested ; binding man to man as well as to the Universe : filling 
 up the details of obligation, and cherishing impulses of virtue, 
 and, by affording clear proof of the consistency and identity of all
 
 712 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 interests, substituting co-operation for rivalry, liberality for 
 jealousy, and tending far more powerfully than any other means 
 to realize the spirit of religion, by healing those inveterate dis- 
 orders which, traced to their real origin, will be found rooted in 
 an ignorant assumption as to the penurious severity of Provi- 
 dence, and the consequent greed of selfish men to confine what 
 seemed as if extorted from it to themselves, or to steal from each 
 other rather than quietly to enjoy their own. 
 
 We shall probably never reach those higher forms containing 
 the true differences of things, involving the full discovery and 
 correct expression of their very self or essence. We shall ever 
 fall short of the most general and most simple nature, the ultimate 
 or most comprehensive law. Our widest axioms explain many 
 phenomena, but so too in a degree did the principles or elements 
 of the old philosophers, and the cycles and epicycles of ancient 
 astronomy. We cannot in any case of causation assign the whole 
 of the conditions, nor, though we may reproduce them in practice, 
 can we mentally distinguish them all, without knowing the essen- 
 ces of the things including them ; and we therefore must not 
 unconsciously ascribe that absolute certainty to axioms, which the 
 ancient religionists did to creeds, nor allow the mind, which ever 
 strives to insulate itself and its acquisitions, to forget the nature 
 of the process by which it substituted scientific for common 
 notions, and so with one as with the other lay the basis of 
 self-deception by a pedantic and superstitious employment of 
 them. 
 
 Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and dis- 
 covery, must accompany all the stages of man's onward progress. 
 His intellectual life is a perpetual beginning, a preparation for a 
 birth. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which 
 those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a 
 divine prerogative of the reason. Knowledge is always imperfect, 
 or complete only in a prospectively boundless career, in which 
 discovery multiplies doubt, and doubt leads on to new discovery. 
 The boast of science is not so much its manifested results, as its 
 admitted impei fcction and capacity of unlimited progress. The 
 true religions philosophy of an imperfect being is not a system 
 of creed, but, as Socrates thought, an infinite search or approxi- 
 mation. Finality is but another name for bewilderment or defeat. 
 Science gratifies the religious feeling without arresting it, and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 713 
 
 opens out the unfathomable mystery of the One Supreme into 
 more explicit and manageable Forms, which express not indeed 
 His Essence, which is wholly beyond our reach and higher than 
 our faculties can climb, but His Will, and so feeds an endless 
 enthusiasm by accumulating forever new objects of pursuit. We 
 have long experienced that knowledge is profitable, we are begin- 
 ning to find out that it is moral, and we shall at last discover it 
 to be religious. 
 
 God and truth are inseparable ; a knowledge of God is posses- 
 sion of the saving oracles of truth. In proportion as the thought 
 and purpose of the individual are trained to conformity with the 
 rule of right prescribed by Supreme Intelligence, so far is his 
 happiness promoted, and the purpose of his existence fulfilled. 
 In this way a new life arises in him ; he is no longer isolated, but is 
 a part of the eternal harmonies around him. His erring will is 
 directed by the influence of a higher will, informing and mould- 
 ing it in the path of his true happiness. 
 
 Man's power of apprehending outward truth is a qualified privi- 
 lege ; the mental like the physical inspiration passing through a 
 diluted medium ; and yet, even when truth, imparted, as it were, by 
 intuition, has been specious, or at least imperfect, the intoxication 
 of sudden discovery has ever claimed it as full, infallible, and di- 
 vine. And while human weakness needed ever to recur to the pure 
 and perfect source, the revelations once popularly accepted and 
 valued assumed an independent substantiality, perpetuating not 
 themselves only, but the whole mass of derivitive forms accident- 
 ally connected with them, and legalized in their names. The mists 
 of error thickened under the shadows of prescription, until the free 
 light again broke in upon the night of ages, redeeming the genu- 
 ine treasure from the superstition which obstinately doted on its 
 accessories. 
 
 Even to the Barbarian, Nature reveals a mighty power and a 
 wondrous wisdom, and continually points to God. It is no won- 
 der that men worshipped the several things of the world. The 
 world of matter is a revelation of fear to the savage in Northern 
 climes ; he trembles at his deity throned in ice and snow. The 
 lightning, the storm, the earthquake startle the rude man, and he 
 sees the divine in the extraordinary. 
 
 The grand objects of Nature perpetually constrain men to think 
 of their Author. The Alps are the great altar of Europe ; the noc-
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 turnal sky has been to mankind the dome of a temple, starred all 
 over with admonitions to reverence, trust, and love. The Scrip- 
 tures for the human race are writ in earth and Heaven. No organ 
 or miserere touches the heart like the sonorous swell of the sea 
 or the ocean-wave's immeasurable laugh. Every year the old world 
 puts on new bridal beauty, and celebrates its Whit-Sunday, when 
 in the sweet Spring each bush and tree dons reverently its new 
 glories. Autumn is a long All-Saints' day; and the harvest is 
 Hallowmass to Mankind. Before the human race marched down 
 from the slopes of the Himalayas to take possession of Asia, 
 Chaldea, and Egypt, men marked each annual crisis, the solstices 
 and the equinoxes, and celebrated religious festivals therein ; and 
 even then, and ever since, the material was and has been the ele- 
 ment of communion between man and God. 
 
 Nature is full of religious lessons to a thoughtful man. He dis- 
 solves the matter of the Universe, leaving only its forces ; he dis- 
 solves away the phenomena of human history, leaving only 
 immortal spirit ; he studies the law, the mode of action of these 
 forces and this spirit, \vhich make up the material and the human 
 world, and cannot fail to be filled with reverence, \vith trust, with 
 boundless love of the Infinite God, who devised these laws of mat- 
 ter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvellous Universe 
 of things and men. Science has its New Testament ; and the 
 beatitudes of Philosophy are profoundly touching. An undevout 
 astronomer is mad. Familiarity with the grass and the trees 
 teaches us deeper lessons of love and trust than we can glean from 
 the writings of Fenelon and Augustine. The great Bible of God 
 is ever open before mankind. The eternal flowers of Heaven seem 
 to shed sweet influence on the perishable blossoms of the earth. 
 The great sermon of Jesus was preached on a mountain, which 
 preached to Him as He did to the people, and His figures of 
 speech were first natural figures of fact. 
 
 If to-morrow I am to perish utterly, then I shall only take 
 counsel for to-day, and ask for qualities which last no longer. 
 My fathers will be to me only as the ground out of which my 
 bread-corn is grown ; dead, they are but the rotten mould of 
 earth, their memory of small concern to me. Posterity ! I shall 
 care nothing for the future generations of mankind. I am one 
 atom in the trunk of a tree, and care nothing for the roots below, 
 or the branch above. I shall sow such seed only as will bear har
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 715 
 
 vest to-day. Passion may enact my statutes to-day, and ambition 
 repeal them to-morrow. I will know no other legislators. Moral- 
 ity will vanish, and expediency take its place. Heroism will be 
 gone ; and instead of it there will be the savage ferocity of the 
 he-wolf, the brute cunning of the she-fox, the rapacity of the 
 vulture, and the headlong daring of the wild bull ; but no longer 
 the cool, calm courage that, for truth's sake, and for love's sake, 
 looks death firmly in the face, and then wheels into line ready to 
 be slain. Affection, friendship, philanthrophy, will be but the 
 wild fancies of the monomaniac, fit subjects for smiles or laugh- 
 ter or for pity. 
 
 But knowing that we shall live forever, and that the Infinite God 
 loves all of us, we can look on all the evils of the world, and see 
 that it is only the hour before sunrise, and that the light is com- 
 ing ; and so we also, even we, may light a little taper, to illumi- 
 nate the darkness while it lasts, and help until the day-spring 
 come. Eternal morning follows the night : a rainbow scarfs the 
 shoulders of every cloud that weeps its rain away to be flowers on 
 land and pearls at sea : Life rises out of the grave, the soul cannot 
 be held by fettering flesh. No dawn is hopeless ; and disaster is 
 only the threshold of delight. 
 
 Beautifully, above the great w r ide chaos of human errors, shines 
 the calm, clear light of natural human religion, revealing to us 
 God as the Infinite Parent of all, perfectly powerful, wise, just, 
 loving, and perfectly holy too. Beautiful around stretches off ev- 
 ery way the Universe, the Great Bible of God. Material nature is 
 its Old Testament, millions of years old, thick with eternal truths 
 under our feet, glittering with everlasting glories over our heads ; 
 and Human Nature is the New Testament from the Infinite God, 
 every day revealing a new page as Time turns over the leaves. Im- 
 mortality stands waiting to give a recompense for every virtue not 
 rewarded, for every tear not wiped away, for every sorrow unde- 
 served, for every prayer, for every pure intention and emotion of 
 the heart. And over the whole, over Nature, Material and Human, 
 over this Mortal Life and over the eternal Past and Future, the 
 infinite Loving-kindness of God the Father comes enfolding all 
 and blessing everything that ever was, that is, that ever shall be. 
 
 Everything is a thought of the Infinite God. Nature is His 
 prose, and man His Poetry. There is no Chance, no Fate : but 
 God's Great Providence, enfolding the whole Universe in its bo-
 
 ~l6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 som, and feeding it with everlasting life. In times past there has 
 been evil which we cannot understand ; now there are evils which 
 we cannot solve, nor make square with God's perfect goodness by 
 any theory our feeble intellect enables us to frame. There are suf- 
 ferings, follies, and sins for all mankind, for every nation, for every 
 man and every woman. They were all foreseen by the infinite 
 wisdom of God, all provided for by His infinite power and justice. 
 and all are consistent with His infinite love. To believe otherwise 
 would be to believe that He made the world, to amuse His idle 
 hours with the follies and agonies of mankind, as Domitian was 
 wont to do with the wrigglings and contortions of insect agonies. 
 Then indeed we might despairingly unite in that horrible utter- 
 ance of Heine : "Alas, God's Satire weighs heavily on me ! The 
 Great Author of the Universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, is 
 bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, 
 earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only 
 pitiful attempts at jesting, in comparison with His, and how mis- 
 erably I am beneath Him, in humor, in colossal mockery." 
 
 No, no ! God is not thus amused with and prodigal of human 
 suffering. The world is neither a Here without a Hereafter, a 
 body without a soul, a chaos with no God ; nor a body blasted by 
 a soul, a Here with a worse Hereafter, a world with a God that 
 hates more than half the creatures He has made. There is no 
 Savage, Revengeful, and Evil God : but there is an Infinite God, 
 seen everywhere as Perfect Cause, everywhere as Perfect Provi- 
 dence, transcending all, yet in-dwelling everywhere, with perfect 
 power, wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, providing for the future 
 welfare of each and all, foreseeing and forecaring for every bubble 
 that breaks on the great stream of human life and human history. 
 
 The end of man and the object of existence in this world, being 
 not only happiness, but happiness in virtue and through virtue, 
 virtue in this world is the condition of happiness in another lift 1 , 
 and the condition of virtue in this world is suffering, more or less 
 frequent, briefer or longer continued, more or less intense. Take 
 away suffering, and there is no longer any resignation or human- 
 ity, no more self-sacrifice, no more devotedness, no more heroic 
 virtues, no more sublime morality. We are subjected to suffering, 
 both because we are sensible, and because we ought to be virtuous. 
 If there were no physical evil, there would be no possible virtue, 
 and the world would be badly adapted to the destiny of man.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 717 
 
 The apparent disorders of the physical world, and the evils that 
 result from them, are not disorders and evils that occur despite 
 the power and goodness of God. God not only allows, but wills 
 them. It is His will that there shall be in the physical world 
 causes enough of pain for man, to afford him occasions for resig- 
 nation and courage. 
 
 Whatever is favorable to virtue, whatever gives the moral liberty 
 more energy, whatever can serve the greater moral development 
 of the human race, is good. Suffering is not the worst condition 
 of man on earth. The worst condition is the moral brutalization 
 which the absence of physical evil would engender. 
 
 External or internal physical evil connects itself with the object 
 of existence, which is to accomplish the moral law here below, 
 whatever the consequences, with the firm hope that virtue unfor- 
 tunate will not fail to be rewarded in another life. The moral law 
 has its sanction and its reason in itself. It owes nothing to that 
 law of merit and demerit that accompanies it, but is not its basis. 
 But, though the principle of merit and demerit ought not to be 
 the determining principle of virtuous action, it powerfully concurs 
 with the moral law, because it offers virtue a legitimate ground of 
 consolation and hope. 
 
 Morality is the recognition of duty, as duty, and its accomplish- 
 ment, whatever the consequences. 
 
 Religion is the recognition of duty in its necessary harmony 
 with goodness ; a harmony that must have its realization in 
 another life, through the justice and omnipotence of God. 
 
 Religion is as true as morality ; for once morality is admitted, 
 its consequences must be admitted. 
 
 The whole moral existence is included in these two words, har- 
 monious with each other : DUTY and HOPE. 
 
 Masonry teaches that God is infinitely good. What motive, 
 what reason, and, morally speaking, what possibility can there be 
 to Infinite Power and Infinite W'isdom, to be anything but good ? 
 Our very sorrows, proclaiming the loss of objects inexpressibly 
 clear to us, demonstrate His Goodness. The Being that made us in- 
 telligent cannot Himself be without intelligence ; and He Who has 
 made us so to love and to sorrow for what we love, must number 
 love for the creatures He has made, among His infinite attributes. 
 Amid all our sorrows, we take refuge in the assurance that He 
 loves us; that He does not capriciously, or through indifference,
 
 7I& MOkALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and still less in mere anger, grieve and afflict us ; that He chastens 
 us, in order that by His chastisements, which are by His universal 
 law only the consequences of our acts, we may be profited ; and 
 that He could not show so much love for His creatures, by leaving 
 them unchastened, untried, undisciplined. We have faith in the 
 Infinite ; faith in God's Infinite Love ; and it is that faith that 
 must save us. 
 
 No dispensations of God's Providence, no suffering or bereave- 
 ment is a messenger of wrath : none of its circumstances are indi- 
 cations of God's Anger. He is incapable of Anger ; higher above 
 any such feelings than the distant stars are above the earth. Bad 
 men do not die because God hates them. They die because it is 
 best for them that they should do so ; and, bad as they are, it is 
 better for them to be in the hands of the infinitely good God, than 
 anywhere else. 
 
 Darkness and gloom lie upon the paths of men. They stumble 
 at difficulties, are ensnared by temptations, and perplexed by 
 trouble. They are anxious, and troubled, and fearful. Pain and 
 affliction and sorrow often gather around the steps of their earthly 
 pilgrimage. All this is \vritten indelibly upon the tablets of the 
 human heart. It is not to be erased ; but Masonry sees and reads 
 it in a new light. It does not expect these ills and trials and suf- 
 ferings to be removed from life ; but that the great truth will at 
 some time be believed by all men, that they are the means, se- 
 lected by infinite wisdom, to purify the heart, and to invigorate 
 the soul whose inheritance is immortality, and the world its school. 
 
 Masonry propagates no creed except its own most simple and 
 Sublime One ; that universal religion, taught by Nature and by 
 Reason. Its Lodges are neither Jewish, Moslem, nor Christian 
 Temples. It reiterates the precepts of morality of all religions. 
 It venerates the character and commends the teachings of the 
 great and good of all ages and of all countries. It extracts the 
 good and not the evil, the truth, and not the error, from all creeds ; 
 and acknowledges that there is much which is good and true in all. 
 
 Above all the other great teachers of morality and virtue, it 
 reveres the character of the Great Master Who, submissive to the 
 will of His and our Father, died upon the Cross. All must admit, 
 that if the world were filled with beings like Him, the great ills of 
 society would be at once relieved. For all coercion, injury, self- 
 ishness, and revenge, and all the wrongs and the greatest suffer-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 719 
 
 ings of life, would disappear at once. These human years would 
 be happy ; and the eternal ages would roll on in brightness and 
 beauty ; and the still, sad music of Humanity, that sounds through 
 the world, now in the accents of grief, and now in pensive melan- 
 choly, would change to anthems, sounding to the March of Time, 
 and bursting out from the heart of the world. 
 
 If every man were a perfect imitator of that Great, Wise, Good 
 Teacher, clothed with all His faith and all His virtues, how the 
 circle of Life's ills and trials would be narrowed ! The sensual 
 passions would assail the heart in vain. Want would no longer 
 successfully tempt men to act wrongly, nor curiosity to do rashly. 
 Ambition, spreading before men its Kingdoms and its Thrones, 
 and offices and honors, would cause none to swerve from their 
 great allegiance. Injury and insult would be shamed by forgive- 
 ness. "Father," men would say, "forgive them ; for they know 
 not what they do." None would seek to be enriched at another's 
 loss or expense. Every man would feel that the whole human 
 race were his brothers. All sorrow and pain and anguish would 
 be soothed by a perfect faith and an entire trust in the Infinite 
 Goodness of God. The world around us would be new, and the 
 Heavens above us ; for here, and there, and everywhere, through 
 all the ample glories and splendors of the Universe, all men would 
 recognize and feel the presence and the beneficent care of a loving 
 Father. 
 
 However the Mason may believe as to creeds, and churches, and 
 miracles, and missions from Heaven, he must admit that the Life 
 and character of Him who taught in Galilee, and fragments of 
 Whose teachings have come down to us, are worthy of all imita- 
 tion. That Life is an undenied and undeniable Gospel. Its 
 teachings cannot be passed by and discarded. All must admit 
 that it would be happiness to follow and perfection to imitate 
 Him. None ever felt for Him a sincere emotion of contempt, nor 
 in anger accused Him of sophistry, nor saw immorality lurking in 
 His doctrines ; however they may judge of those who succeeded 
 Him, and claimed to be His apostles. Divine or human, inspired 
 or only a reforming Essene, it must be agreed that His teachings 
 are far nobler, far purer, far less alloyed with error and imperfec- 
 tion, far less of the earth earthly, than those of Socrates, Plato, 
 Seneca, or Mahomet, or any other of the great moralists and 
 Reformers of the world.
 
 72 Q MORALS AND DOGMA'. 
 
 If our aims went as completely as His beyond personal care and 
 selfish gratification ; if our thoughts and words and actions were 
 as entirely employed upon the great work of benefiting our kind 
 the true work which we have been placed here to do as His were ; 
 if our nature were as gentle and as tender as His ; and if society, 
 country, kindred, friendship, and home were as dear to us as they 
 were to Him, we should be at once relieved of more than half the 
 difficulties and the diseased and painful affections of our lives. 
 Simple obedience to rectitude, instead of self-interest ; simple self- 
 culture and self-improvment, instead of constant cultivation of 
 the good opinion of others; single-hearted aims and purposes, 
 instead of improper objects, sought and approached by devious and 
 crooked ways, would free our meditations of many disturbing and 
 irritating questions. 
 
 Not to renounce the nobler and better affections of our natures, 
 nor happiness, nor our just dues of love and honor from men ; not 
 to vilify ourselves, nor to renounce our self-respect, nor a just 
 and reasonable sense of our merits and deserts, nor our own 
 righteousness of virtue, does Masonry require, nor would our 
 imitation of Him require ; but to renounce our vices, our faults, 
 our passions, our self-flattering delusions ; to forego all outward 
 advantages, which are to be gained only through a sacrifice of our 
 inward integrity, or by anxious and petty contrivances and appli- 
 ances ; to choose and keep the better part ; to secure that, and let 
 the worst take care of itself; to keep a good conscience, and let 
 opinion come and go as it will ; to retain a lofty self-respect, and 
 let low self-indulgence go; to keep inward happiness, and let 
 outward advantages hold a subordinate place ; to renounce our 
 selfishness, and that eternal anxiety as to what we are to have, and 
 what men think of us ; and be content with the plenitude of God's 
 great mercies, and so to be happy. For it is the inordinate 
 devotion to self, and consideration of self, that is ever a stumbling- 
 block in the way ; that spreads questions, snares, and difficulties 
 around us, darkens the way of Providence, and makes the world 
 a far less happy one to us than it might be. 
 
 As He taught, so Masonry teaches, affection to our kindred, 
 tenderness to our friends, gentleness and forbearance toward our 
 inferiors, pity for the suffering, forgiveness of our enemies ; and to 
 wear an affectionate nature and gentle disposition as the garment 
 of our life, investing pain, and toil, and a^ony.and even death, with
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 721 
 
 a serene and holy beauty. It does not teach us to wrap ourselves 
 in the garments of reserve and pride, to care nothing for the world 
 because it cares nothing for us, to withdraw our thoughts from 
 society because it does us not justice, and see how patiently we 
 can live within the confines of our own bosoms, or in quiet com- 
 munion, through books, with the mighty dead. No man ever 
 found peace or light in that way. Every relation, of hate, scorn, or 
 neglect, to mankind, is full of vexation and torment. There is 
 nothing to do with men but to love them, to admire their virtues, 
 pity and bear with their faults, and forgive their injuries. To 
 hate your adversary will not help you ; to kill him will help you 
 still less : nothing within the compass of the Universe will help 
 you, but to pity, forgive, and love him. 
 
 If we possessed His gentle and affectionate disposition, His love 
 and compassion for all that err and all that offend, how many 
 difficulties, both within and without us, would they relieve ! How 
 many depressed minds should we console ! How many troubles in 
 society should we compose! How many enmities soften! How 
 many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied 
 by a single word, spoken in simple and confiding truth! How 
 many a rough path would be made smooth, and how many a 
 crooked path be made straight ! Very many places, now solitary, 
 would be made glad ; very many dark places be filled with 
 light. 
 
 Morality has its axioms, like the other sciences ; and these 
 axioms are, in all languages, justly termed moral truths. Moral 
 truths, considered in themselves, are equally as certain as mathe- 
 matical truths. Given the idea of a deposit., the idea of keeping 
 it faithfully is attached to it as necessarily, as to the idea of a 
 triangle is attached the idea that its three angles arc equal to two 
 right angles. You may violate a deposit ; but in doing so, do not 
 imagine that you change the nature of things, or make what is in 
 itself a deposit become your own property. The two ideas exclude 
 each other. You have but a false semblance of property : and all 
 the efforts of the passions, all the sophisms of interest, will not 
 overturn essential differences. Therefore it is that a moral truth 
 is so imperious ; because, like all truth, it is what it is, and shapes 
 itself to please no caprice. Always the same, and always present, 
 little as we may like it, it inexorably condemns, with a voice 
 >lways heard, but not always regarded, the insensate and guilty
 
 722 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 will which thinks to prevent its existing, by denying, or rather 
 by pretending to deny, its. existence. 
 
 The moral truths are distinguished from other truths by this 
 singular characteristic : so soon as we perceive them, they appear 
 to us as the rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is 
 made in order to be returned to its legitimate possessor, it must be 
 returned. To the necessity of believing the truth, the necessity of 
 practising it is added. 
 
 The necessity of practising the moral truths is obligation. The 
 moral truths, necessary to the eye of reason, are obligatory on the 
 will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth w 7 hich is its 
 basis, is absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less neces- 
 sary, so obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees 
 of importance among different obligations ; but there are no de- 
 grees in the obligation itself. One is not nearly obliged, almost 
 obliged ; but wholly so, or not at all. If there be any place of 
 refuge against the obligation, it ceases to exist. 
 
 If the obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For 
 if what is obligation to-day may not be so to-morrow, if what is 
 obligatory for me may not be so for you, the obligation differing 
 from itself, it would be relative and contingent. This fact of ab- 
 solute, immutable, universal obligation is certain and manifest. 
 The good is the foundation of obligation. If it be not, obligation 
 has no foundation ; and that is impossible. If one act ought to 
 be done, and another ought not, it must be because evidently there 
 is an essential difference between the two acts. If one be not good 
 and the other bad, the obligation imposed on us is arbitrary. 
 
 To make the Good a consequence, of anything whatever, is to 
 annihilate it. It is the first, or it is nothing. When we ask an 
 honest man why, despite his urgent necessities, he has respected 
 the sanctity of a deposit, he answers, because it was his duty. 
 Asked why it was his duty, he answers, because it was right, was 
 just, was good. Beyond that there is no answer to be made, but 
 there is also no question to be asked. No one permits a duty to be 
 imposed on him without giving himself a reason for it : but when 
 it is admitted that the duty is commanded by justice, the mind is 
 satisfied ; for it has arrived at a principle beyond which there is 
 nothing to seek, justice being its own principle. The primary 
 truths include their own reason: and justice, the essential dis- 
 tinction between good and evil, is the first truth of morality.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 723 
 
 Justice is not a consequence; because we cannot ascend to any 
 principle above it. Moral truth forces itself on man, and does not 
 emanate from him. It no more becomes subjective, by appearing 
 to us obligatory, than truth does by appearing to us necessary. It 
 is in the very nature of the true and the good that we must seek 
 for the reason of necessity and obligation. Obligation is founded on 
 the necessary distinction between the good and the evil ; and it is 
 itself the foundation of liberty. If man has his duties to perform, 
 he must have the faculty of accomplishing them, of resisting de- 
 sire, passion, and interest, in order to obey the law. He must be 
 free; therefore he is so, or human nature is in contradiction with 
 itself. The certainty of the obligation involves the corresponding 
 certainty of free ten//. 
 
 It is the unl I that is free : though sometimes that will may be 
 ineffectual. The power to do must not be confounded with the 
 power to will. The former may be limited: the latter is sovereign. 
 The external effects may be prevented : the resolution itself cannot. 
 Of this sovereign power of the will we are conscious. We feel in 
 ourselves, before it becomes determinate, the force which can 
 determine itself in one way or another. At the same time when I 
 will this or that, I am equally conscious that I can will the con- 
 trary. I am conscious that I am the master of my resolution : 
 that I may check it, continue it, retake it. When the act has 
 ceased, the consciousness of the poivcr which produced it has not. 
 That consciousness and the power remain, superior to all the 
 manifestations of the power. Wherefore free-will is the essential 
 and ever-subsisting attribute of the will itself. 
 
 At the same time that we judge that a free agent has done a 
 good or a bad act, we form another judgment, as necessary as the 
 first; that if he has done well, he deser js compensation; if ill. 
 punishment. That judgment may be expressed in a manner more 
 or less vivid, according as it is mingled with sentiments more or 
 less ardent. Sometimes it will be a merely kind feeling toward a 
 virtuous agent, and moderately hostile to a guilty one ; sometimes 
 enthusiasm or indignation. The judgment of merit and demerit 
 is intimately connected with the judgment of good and evil. 
 Merit is the natural right which we have to be rewarded : demerit 
 the natural right which others have to punish us. P>ut whether 
 the reward is received, or the punishment undergone, or not, the 
 merit or demerit equally subsists. Punishment and reward are
 
 724 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the satisfaction of merit and demerit, but do not constitute t-hem. 
 Take away the former, and the latter continue. Take away the 
 latter, and there are no longer real rewards or punishments. When 
 a base man encompasses our merited honors, he has obtained but 
 the mere appearance of a reward; a mere material advantage. 
 The reward is essentially moral ; and its value is independent of its 
 form. One of those simple crowns of oak with which the early 
 Romans rewarded heroism, was of more real value than all the 
 wealth of the world, when it was the sign of the gratitude and 
 admiration of a people. Reward accorded to merit is a debt ; 
 without merit it is an alms or a theft. 
 
 The Good is good in itself, and to be accomplished, whatever 
 the consequences. The results of the Good cannot but be fortu- 
 nate. Happiness, separated from the Good, is but a fact to which 
 no moral idea is attached. As an effect of the Good, it enters into 
 the moral order, completes and crowns it. 
 
 Virtue without happiness, and crime without misery, is a con- 
 tradiction and disorder. If virtue suppose sacrifice (that is, suffer- 
 ing), eternal justice requires that sacrifice generously accepted and 
 courageously borne, shall have for its reward the same happiness 
 that was sacrificed : and it also requires that crime shall be pun- 
 ished with unhappiness, for the guilty happiness which it attempted 
 to procure. 
 
 This law that attaches pleasure and sorrow to the good and the 
 evil, is, in general, accomplished even here below. For order rules 
 in the world ; because the world lasts. Is that order sometimes 
 disturbed ? Are happiness and sorrow not always distributed in 
 legitimate proportion to crime and virtue? The absolute judg- 
 ment of the Good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the abso- 
 lute judgment of merit and demerit, continue to subsist, inviolable 
 and imprescriptible ; and we cannot help but believe that He Who 
 has implanted in us the sentiment ?nd idea of order, cannot therein 
 Himself be wanting; and that He will, sooner or later, re-establish 
 the holy harmony of virtue and happiness, by means belonging to 
 Himself. 
 
 The Judgment of the Good, the decision that such a thing is 
 good, and that such another is not, this is the primitive fact, 
 and reposes on itself. By its intiirate resemblances to the iudg- 
 ment of the true and the beautiful, it shows us the secret affinities 
 of morality, metaphysics, and aesthetics. The good, so especially
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 725 
 
 united to the true, is distinguished from it, only because it is truth 
 put in practice. The good is obligatory. These are two indivisi- 
 ble but not identical ideas. The idea of obligation reposes on the 
 idea of the Good. In this intimate alliance, the former borrows 
 from the latter its universal and absolute character. 
 
 The obligatory good is the moral law. That is the foundation 
 of all morality. By it we separate ourselves from the morality of 
 interest and the morality of sentiment. We admit the existence 
 of those facts, and their influence ; but we do not assign them the 
 same rank. 
 
 To the moral law, in the reason of man, corresponds liberty in 
 action. Liberty is deduced from obligation, and is a fact irresist- 
 ibly evident. Man, as free, and subject to obligation, is a moral 
 person ; and that involves the idea of rights. To these ideas is 
 added that of merit and demerit ; which supposes the distinction 
 between good and evil, obligation and liberty ; and creates the idea 
 of reward and punishment. 
 
 The sentiments play no unimportant part in morality. All the 
 moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to 
 them. From the secret sources of enthusiasm the human will 
 draws the mysterious virtue that makes heroes. Truth enlightens 
 and illumines. Sentiment warms and inclines to action. Interest 
 also bears its part ; and the hope of happiness is the work of God, 
 and one of the motive powers of human action. 
 
 Such is the admirable economy of the moral constitution of 
 man. His Supreme Object, the Good : his law, Virtue, which often 
 imposes upon him suffering, thus making him to excel all other 
 created beings known to us. But this law is harsh, and in con- 
 tradiction with the instinctive desire for happiness. Wherefore 
 the Beneficent Author of his being has placed in his soul, by the 
 side of the severe law of duty, the sweet, delightful force of senti- 
 ment. Generally he attaches happiness to virtue ; and for the 
 exceptions, for such there are, he has placeu Hope at the end of 
 the journey to be travelled. 
 
 Thus there is a side on which morality touches religion. It is 
 a sublime necessity of Humanity to see in God the Legislator su- 
 premely wise, the Witness always present, the infallible Judge of 
 virtue. The human mind, ever climbing up to God, would deem 
 the foundations of morality too unstable, if it did not place in 
 God the first principle of the moral law. Wishing to give to the 
 47
 
 726 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 moral law a religions character, we run the risk of taking from 
 it its moral character. We may refer it so entirely to God as to 
 make His will an arbitrary decree. But the will of God, whence 
 \ve deduce morality, in order to give it authority, itself has no moral 
 authority, except as it is just. The Good comes from the will of 
 God alone ; but from His will, in so far as it is the expression of 
 His wisdom and justice. The Eternal Justice of God is the sole 
 foundation of Justice, such as Humanity perceives and practises it. 
 The Good, duty, merit and demerit, are referred to God, as every- 
 thing is referred to Him; but they have none the less a proper 
 evidence and authority. Religion is the crown of Morality, not 
 its base. The base of Morality is in itself. 
 
 The Moral Code of Masonry is still more extensive than that 
 developed by philosophy. To the requisitions of the law of Nature 
 and the law of God, it adds the imperative obligation- of a contract. 
 Upon entering the Order, the Initiate binds to himself every 
 Mason in the world. Once enrolled among the children of Light, 
 every Mason on earth becomes his brother, and owes him the 
 duties, the kindnesses, and the sympathies of a brother. On every 
 one he may call for assistance in need, protection against danger, 
 sympathy in sorrow, attention in sickness, and decent burial after 
 death. There is not a Mason in the world who is not bound to go 
 to his relief, when he is in danger, if there be a greater probability 
 of saving his life than of losing his own. No Mason can wrong 
 him to the value of anything, knowingly, himself, nor suffer it to 
 be done by others, if it be in his power to prevent it. No Mason 
 can speak evil of him, to his face or behind his back. Every 
 Mason must keep his lawful secrets, and aid him in his business, 
 defend his character when unjustly assailed, and protect, counsel, 
 and assist his widow and his orphans. What so many thousands 
 owe to him, he owes to each of them. He has solemnly bound 
 himself to be ever ready to discharge this sacred debt. If he fails 
 to do it he is dishonest and forsworn ; and it is an unparalleled 
 meanness in him to obtain good offices by false pretences, to receive 
 kindness and service, rendered him under the confident expectation 
 that he will in his turn render the same, and then to disappoint, 
 without ample reason, that just expectation. 
 
 Masonry holds him also, by his solemn promise, to a purer life, 
 a nobler generosity, a more perfect charity of opinion and action; 
 to be tolerant, catholic in his love for his race, ardent in his zeal
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. ,727 
 
 for the interest of mankind, the advancement and progress of 
 humanity. 
 
 Such are, we think, the Philosophy and the Morality, such the 
 TRUE WORD of a Master Mason. 
 
 The world, the ancients believed, was governed by Seven Sec- 
 ondary Causes ; and these were the universal forces, known to the 
 Hebrews by the plural name ELOIIIM. These forces, analogous 
 and contrary one to the other, produce equilibrium by their con- 
 trasts, and regulate the movements of the spheres. The Hebrews 
 called them the Seven great Archangels, and gave them names, 
 each of which, being a combination of another word with AL, the 
 first Phoenician Nature-God, considered as the Principle of Light, 
 represented them as His manifestations. Other peoples assigned 
 to these Spirits the government of the Seven Planets then known, 
 and gave them the names of their great divinities. 
 
 So, in the Kabala, the last Seven Sephiroth constituted ATIK 
 YOMIN, the Ancient of Days; and these, as well as the Seven 
 planets, correspond with the Seven colors separated by the prism, 
 and the Seven notes of the musical octave. 
 
 Seven is the sacred number in all theogonies and all symbols, 
 because it is composed of 3 and 4. It represents the magical 
 power in its full force. It is the Spirit assisted by all the Element- 
 ary Powers, the Soul served by Nature, the Holy Empire spoken 
 of in the clavicules of Solomon, symbolized by a warrior, crowned, 
 bearing a triangle on his cuirass, and standing on a cube, to which 
 are harnessed two Sphinxes, one \vhite and the other black, pull- 
 ing contrary ways, and turning the head to look backward. 
 
 The vices are Seven, like the virtues ; and the latter were 
 anciently symbolized by the Seven Celestial bodies then known as 
 planets. FAITH, as the converse of arrogant Confidence, was rep- 
 resented by the Sun; HOPE, enemy of Avarice, by the Moon; 
 CHARITY, opposed to Luxury, by Venus; FORCE, stronger than 
 Rage, by Mars; PRUDENCE, the opposite of Indolence, by Mer- 
 cury; TEMPERANCE, the antipodes of Gluttony, by Saturn; and 
 JUSTICE, the opposite of Envy, by Jupiter. 
 
 The Kabalistic book of the Apocalypse is represented as closed 
 with Seven Seals. In it we find the Seven genii of the Ancient 
 Mythologies ; and the doctrine concealed under its emblems is the 
 pure Kabala, already lost by the Pharisees at the advent of the 
 Saviour. The pictures that follow in this wondrous epic are so
 
 728 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 many pantacles, of which the numbers 3, 4, 7, and 12 are the 
 
 keys. 
 
 The Cherub, or symbolic bull, which Moses places at the gate of 
 the Edenic world, holding a blazing sword, is a Sphinx, with the 
 body of a bull and a human head ; the old Assyrian Sphinx 
 whereof the combat and victory of Mithras were the hieroglyphic 
 analysis. This armed Sphinx represents the law of the Mystery, 
 which keeps watch at the door of initiation, to repulse the Pro- 
 fane. It also represents the grand Magical Mystery, all the ele- 
 ments whereof the number 7 expresses, still without giving its 
 last word. This "unspeakable word" of the Sages of the school 
 of Alexandria, this word, which the Hebrew Kabalists \vrote ~*n' 
 [!HUH], and translated by NJTHfrOtf, [ARARITA,] so expressing the 
 threefoldness of the Secondary Principle, the dualism of the mid- 
 dle ones, and the Unity as well of the first Principle as of the end ; 
 and also the junction of the number 3 with the number 4 in a word 
 composed of four letters, but formed of seven by one triplicate and 
 two repeated, this word is pronounced Ararita. 
 
 The vowels in the Greek language are also Seven in number, 
 and were used to designate the Seven planets. 
 
 Tsadok or Sydyc was the Supreme God in Phoenicia. His Seven 
 Sons were probably the Seven Cabiri ; and he was the Heptaktis, 
 the God of Seven Rays. 
 
 Kronos, the Greek Saturn, Philo makes Sanchoniathon say, had 
 six sons, and by Astarte Seven daughters, the Titanides. The Per- 
 sians adored Ahura Masda or Ormuzd and the Six Amshaspands, 
 the first three of whom were Lords of the Empires of Light, Fire, 
 and Splendor; the Babylonians, Bal and the Gods; the Chinese, 
 Shangti, and the Six Chief Spirits ; and the Greeks, Kronos, and 
 the Six great Male Gods, his progeny, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, 
 Arcs, Hephaistos, and Hermes ; while the female deities were also 
 Seven : Rhea, wife of Kronos, Here, Athene, Artemis, Aphrodite, 
 Hestia, and Demetei. In the Orphic Theogony, Gaia produced 
 the fourteen Titans, Seven male and Seven female, Kronos being 
 the most potent of the males ; and as the number Seven appears 
 in these, nine by threes, or the triple triangle, is found in the three 
 Mnerae or Fates, the three Centimanes, and the three Cyclopes, 
 offspring of Ouranos and Gaia, or Heaven and Earth. 
 
 The metals, like the colors, were deemed to be Seven in num- 
 ber, and a metal and color were assigned to each planet. Of
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 
 
 the metals, gold was assigned to the Sun and silver to the 
 Moon. 
 
 The palace of Deioces in Ecbatana had Seven circular walls of 
 different colors, the two innermost having their battlements cov- 
 ered respectively with silvering and gilding. 
 
 And the Seven Spheres of Borsippa were represented by the 
 Seven Stories, each of a different color, of the tower or truncated 
 pyramid of Bel at Babylon. 
 
 Pharaoh saw in his dream, which Joseph interpreted, Seven ears 
 of wheat on one stalk, full and good, and after them Seven ears, 
 withered, thin, and blasted with the East wind ; and the Seven 
 thin ears devoured the Seven good ears ; and Joseph interpreted 
 these to mean Seven years of plenty succeeded by Seven years of 
 famine. 
 
 Connected with this Ebn Hesham relates that a flood of rain 
 laid bare to view a sepulchre in Yemen, in which lay a w r oman 
 having on her neck Seven collars of pearls, and on her hands and 
 feet bracelets and ankle-rings and armlets, Seven on each, with an 
 inscription on a tablet showing that, after attempting in vain to 
 purchase grain of Joseph, she, Tajah, daughter of Dzu Shefar, and 
 her people, died of famine. 
 
 Hear again the words of an adept, who had profoundly studied 
 the mysteries of science, and wrote, as the Ancient Oracles spoke, 
 in enigmas ; but who knew that the theory of mechanical forces 
 and of the materiality of the most potent agents of Divinity, 
 explains nothing, and ought to satisfy no one ! 
 
 Through the veil of all the hieratic and mystic allegories of the 
 ancient dogmas, under the seal of all the sacred writings, in the 
 ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the worn stones of the ancient 
 temples, and on the blackened face of the sphinx of Assyria or 
 Egypt, in the monstrous or marvellous pictures which the sacred 
 pages of the Vedas translate for the believers of India, in the 
 strange emblems of our old books of alchemy, in the ceremonies 
 of reception practised by all the mysterious Societies, we find the 
 traces of a doctrine, everywhere the same, and everywhere care- 
 fully concealed. The occult philosophy seems to have been the 
 nurse or the godmother of all religions, the secret lever of all the 
 intellectual forces, the key of all divine obscurities, and the abso- 
 lute Queen of Society, in the ages when it was exclusively reserved 
 for the education of the Priests and Kings.
 
 73O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 It had reigned in Persia with the Magi, who perished one day, 
 as the masters of the world had perished, for having abused their 
 power. It had endowed India with the most marvellous tradi- 
 tions, and an incredible luxury of poetry, grace, and terror in its 
 emblems : it had civilized Greece by the sounds of the lyre of 
 Orpheus : it hid the principles of all the sciences, and of the 
 whole progression of the human spirit, in the audacious calcula- 
 tions of Pythagoras : fable teemed with its miracles ; and history, 
 when it undertook to judge of this unknown power, confounded 
 itself with fable : it shook or enfeebled empires by its oracles ; 
 made tyrants turn pale on their thrones, and ruled over all minds 
 by means of curiosity or fear. To this science, said the crowd, 
 nothing is impossible ; it commands the elements, knows the lan- 
 guage of the planets, and controls the movements of the stars ; 
 the moon, at its voice, falls, reeking with blood, from Heaven ; the 
 dead rise upright on their graves, and shape into fatal words the 
 wind that breathes through their skulls. Controller of Love or 
 Hate, this science can at pleasure confer on human hearts Para- 
 dise or Hell : it disposes at will of all forms, and distributes beauty 
 or deformity as it pleases : it changes in turn, with the rod of 
 Circe, men into brutes and animals into men : it even disposes of 
 Life or of Death, and can bestow on its adepts riches by the trans- 
 mutation of metals, and immortality by its quintessence and elixir, 
 compounded of gold and light. 
 
 This is what magic had been, from Zoroaster to Manes, from 
 Orpheus to Apollonius Thyaneus; when positive Christianity, 
 triumphing over the splendid dreams and gigantic aspirations of 
 the school of Alexandria, publicly crushed this philosophy with 
 its anathemas, and compelled it to become more occult and more 
 mysterious than ever. 
 
 At the bottom of magic, nevertheless, was science, as at the 
 bottom of Christianity there was love ; and in the Evangelic Sym- 
 bols we see- the incarnate WORD adored in its infancy by three 
 magi whom a star guides (the ternary and the sign of the micro- 
 cosm), and receiving from them gold, frankincense, and myrrh; 
 another mysterious ternary, under the emblem whereof are alle- 
 gorically contained the highest secrets of the Kabala. 
 
 Christianity should not have hated magic ; but human igno- 
 rance always fears the unknown. Science was obliged to conceal 
 itself, to avoid the impassioned aggressions of a blind love. It
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR KMXCK ADEPT. 7.V 
 
 enveloped itself in new hieroglyphs, concealed its efforts, disguised 
 its hopes. Then was created the jargon of alchemy, a continual 
 deception for the vulgar herd, greedy of gold, and a living lan- 
 guage for the true disciples of Hermes alone. 
 
 Resorting to Masonry, the alchemists there invented Degrees, 
 and partly unveiled their doctrine to their Initiates ; not by the 
 language of their receptions, but by oral instruction afterward ; 
 for their rituals, to one who has not the key, are but incompre- 
 hensible and absurd jargon. 
 
 Among the sacred books of the Christians arc two works which 
 the infallible church does not pretend to understand, and never 
 attempts to explain, the prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse ; 
 two cabalistic clavicules, reserved, no doubt, in Heaven, for the 
 exposition of the Magian kings ; closed with Seven seals for all 
 faithful believers ; and perfectly clear to the unbeliever initiated 
 in the occult sciences. 
 
 For Christians, and in their opinion, the scientific and magical 
 clavicules of Solomon are lost. Nevertheless, it is certain that, in 
 the domain of intelligence governed by the WORD, nothing that is 
 written is lost. Only those things which men cease to under- 
 stand no longer exist for them, at least as WORD ; then they enter 
 into the domain of enigmas and mystery. 
 
 The mysterious founder of the Christian Church was saluted 
 in His cradle by the three Magi, that is to say by the hieratic am- 
 bassadors from the three parts of the known world, and from the 
 three analogical worlds of the occult philosophy. 
 
 In the school of Alexandria, Magic and Christianity almost take 
 each other by the hand under the auspices of Ammonius Saccos 
 and Plato. The dogma of Hermes is found almost entire in the 
 writings attributed to Dionysius the Arcopagite. Synesius traces 
 the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was subsequently to be 
 commented on by Cardan, and composes hymns which might serve 
 for the liturgy of the Church of Swedenborg, if a church of illu- 
 minati could have a liturgy-. 
 
 To this epoch of ardent abstractions and impassioned logoma- 
 chies belongs the philosophical reign of Julian, an illuminatus 
 and Initiate of the first order, who believed in the unity of God 
 and the universal Dogma of the Trinity, and regretted the loss of 
 nothing of the old world but its magnificent symbols and too 
 graceful images. He was no Pagan, bur a Gnostic, infected with
 
 732 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the allegories of Grecian polytheism, and whose misfortune it 
 was to find the name of. Jesus Christ less sonorous than that of 
 Orpheus. 
 
 We may be sure that so soon as Religion and Philosophy become 
 distinct departments, the mental activity of the age is in advance 
 of its Faith ; and that, though habit may sustain the latter for a 
 time, its vitality is gone. 
 
 The dunces who led primitive Christianity astray, by substitut- 
 ing faith for science, reverie for experience, the fantastic for the 
 reality ; and the inquisitors who for so many ages waged against 
 Magism a war of extermination, have succeeded in shrouding in 
 darkness the ancient discoveries of the human mind ; so that we 
 now grope in the dark to find again the key of the phenomena of 
 nature. But all natural phenomena depend on a single and 
 immutable law, represented by the p; ;oophal stone and its sym- 
 bolic form, which is that of a cube. This law, expressed in the 
 Kabala by the number 4, furnished the Hebrews with all the 
 mysteries of their divine Tetragram. 
 
 Everything is contained in that word of four letters. It is the 
 Azot of the Alchemists, the Thot of the Bohemians, the Taro of 
 the Kabalists. It supplies to the Adept the last word of the human 
 Sciences, and the Key of the Divine Power : but he alone under- 
 stands how to avail himself of it who comprehends the necessity 
 of never revealing it. If CEdipus, in place of slaying the Sphynx, 
 had conquered it, and driven it into Thebes harnessed to his 
 chariot, he would have been King, without incest, calamities, or 
 exile. If Psyche, by submission and caresses, had persuaded Love 
 to reveal himself, she would never have lost him. Love is one of 
 the mythological images of the grand secret and the grand agent, 
 because it expresses at once an action and a passion, a void and a 
 plenitude, an arrow and a wound. The Initiates ought to under- 
 stand this, and, lest the profane should overhear, Masonry never 
 says too much. 
 
 When Science had been overcome in Alexandria by the fanati- 
 cism of the murderers of Llypatia, it became Christian, or, rather, 
 it concealed it?elf under Christian disguises, with Ammonius, 
 Synosius, and the author of the books of Dionysius the Areop- 
 agite. Then it was necessary to win the pardon of miracles by the 
 appearances of superstition, and of science by a language unin- 
 telligible. Hieroglyphic writing was revived, and pantacles and
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 733 
 
 characters were invented, that summed up a whole doctrine in a 
 sign, a whole series of tendencies and revelations in a word. What 
 was the object of the aspirants to knowledge? They sought for 
 the secret of the great work, or the Philosophal Stone, or the 
 perpetual motion, or the squaring of the circle, or the universal 
 medicine ; formulas which often saved them from persecution and 
 general ill-will, by exposing them to the charge of folly ; and each 
 of which expressed one of the forces of the grand magical secret. 
 This lasted until the time of the Roman de la Rose, which also 
 expresses the mysterious and magical meaning of the poem of 
 Dante, borrowed from the High Kabalah, that immense and con- 
 cealed source of the universal philosophy. 
 
 It is not strange that man knows but little of the powers of the 
 human will, and imperfectly appreciates them ; since he knows 
 nothing as to the nature of the will and its mode of operation. 
 That his own will can move his arm, or compel another to obey 
 him ; that his thoughts, symbolically expressed by the signs of 
 writing, can influence and lead other men, are mysteries as incom- 
 prehensible to him, as that the will of Deity could effect the crea-. 
 tion of a Universe. 
 
 The powers of the will are as yet chiefly indefinite and un- 
 known. Whether a multitude of well-established phenomena are 
 to be ascribed to the power of the will alone, or to magnetism or 
 some other natural agent, is a point as yet unsettled ; but it is 
 agreed by all that a concentrated effort of the will is in every case 
 necessary to success. 
 
 That the phenomena are real is not to be doubted, unless credit 
 is no longer to be given to human testimony ; and if they are real, 
 there is no reason for doubting the exercise heretofore, by many 
 adepts, of the powers that were then termed magical. Nothing is 
 better vouched for than the extraordinary performances of the 
 Brahmins. No religion is supported by stronger testimony ; nor 
 has any one ever even attempted to explain what may well be 
 termed their miracles. 
 
 How far, in this life, the mind and. soul can act without and in- 
 dependently of the body, no one as yet knows. That the will can 
 act at all without bodily contact, and the phenomena of dreams, 
 are mysteries that confound the wisest and most learned, whose 
 explanations are but a Habel of words. 
 
 Man as vet knows little of the forces of nature. Surrounded,
 
 734 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 controlled, and governed by them, while he vainly thinks himself 
 independent, not only of his race, but the universal nature and her 
 infinite manifold forces, he is the slave of these forces, unless he 
 becomes their master. He can neither ignore their existence 
 nor be simply their neighbor. 
 
 There is in nature one most potent force, by means whereof a 
 single man, who could possess himself of it, and should know 
 how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the face of the 
 world. 
 
 This force was know T n to the ancients. It is a universal agent, 
 whose Supreme law is equilibrium ; and whereby, if science can 
 but learn how to control it, it will be possible to change the 
 order of the Seasons, to produce in night the phenomena of 
 day, to send a thought in an instant round the world, to heal 
 or slay at a distance, to give our words universal success, and make 
 them reverberate everywhere. 
 
 This agent, partially revealed by the blind guesses of the dis- 
 ciples of Mesmer, is precisely what the Adepts of the middle 
 ages called the elementary matter of the great work. The Gnostics 
 held that it composed the igneous body of the Holy Spirit ; and 
 it was adored in the secret rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, under 
 the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the hermaphroditic goat of 
 Mendes. 
 
 There is a Life-Principle of the world, a universal agent, wherein 
 are two natures and a double current, of love and wrath. This 
 ambient fluid penetrates everything. It is a ray detached from 
 the glory of the Sun, and fixed by the weight of the atmosphere 
 and the central attraction. It is the body of the Holy Spirit, the 
 universal Agent, the Serpent devouring his own tail. With this 
 electro-magnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, the an- 
 cients and the alchemists were familiar. Of this agent, that phase 
 of modern ignorance termed physical science talks incoherently, 
 knowing naught of it save its effects ; and theology might apply 
 to it all its pretended definitions of spirit. Quiescent, it is 
 appreciable by no human sense ; disturbed or in movement, none 
 can explain its mode of action ; and to term it a "fluid," and 
 speak of its "currents," is but to veil a profound ignorance under 
 a cloud of words. 
 
 Force attracts force, life attracts life, health attracts health. It is 
 a law of nature.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 735 
 
 If two children live together, and still more if they sleep to- 
 gether, and one is feeble and the other strong, the strong will 
 absorb the feeble, and the latter will perish. 
 
 In schools, some pupils absorb the intellect of the others, and 
 in every circle of men some one individual is soon found, who 
 possesses himself of the wills of the others. 
 
 Enthralments by currents is very common ; and one is carried 
 
 away by the crowd, in morals as in physics. The human will has 
 
 an almost absolute power in determining one's acts ; and every ex- 
 
 1 ternal demonstration of a will has an influence on external things. 
 
 Tissot ascribed most maladies to disorders of the will, or the per- 
 verse influences of the wills of others. We become subject to the 
 wills of others by the analogies of our inclinations, and still more 
 by those of our defects. To caress the weaknesses of an individ- 
 ual, is to possess ourself of him, and make of him an instru- 
 ment in the order of the same errors or depravations. But when 
 two natures, analogical in defects, are subordinated one to the 
 other, there is effected a kind of substitution of the stronger 
 instead of the weaker, and a genuine imprisonment of one mind 
 by the other. Often the weaker struggles, and would fain revolt ; 
 and then falls lower than ever in servitude. 
 
 We each have some dominant defect, by which the enemy can 
 grasp us. In some it is vanity, in others indolence, in most ego- 
 tism. Let a cunning and evil spirit possess himself of this, and 
 you are lost. Then you become, not foolish, nor an idiot, but 
 positively a lunatic, the slave of an impulse from without. You 
 have an instinctive horror for everything that could restore you to 
 reason, and will not even listen to representations that contravene 
 your insanity. 
 
 Miracles are the natural effects of exceptional causes. 
 
 The immediate action of the human will on bodies, or at least 
 this action exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle 
 in the physical order. 
 
 The influence exercised on wills or intellects, suddenly or within 
 a given ti:nc, and capable of taking captive the thoughts, chang- 
 ing the firmest resolutions, paralyzing the most violent passions, 
 constitutes a miracle in the moral order. 
 
 The common error in relation to miracles is, to regard them as 
 effects without causes ; as contradictions of nature ; as sudden 
 fictions of the Divine imagination ; and men do not reflect that a
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 single miracle of this sort would break the universal harmony 
 ana re-plunge the Universe into Chaos. 
 
 There are miracles impossible to God Himself : absurd miracles 
 are so. if God could be absurd for a single instant, neither He 
 nor the Universe would exist an instant afterward. To expect of 
 the Divine Free-Will an effect whose cause is unacknowledged or 
 does not exist, is what is termed tempting God. It is to precipi- 
 tate one's self into the void. 
 
 God acts by His works : in Heaven, by angels ; on earth, by men. 
 
 In the heaven of human conceptions, it is humanity that creates 
 God; and men think that God has made them in His image, be- 
 cause they make Him in theirs. 
 
 The domain of man is all corporeal nature, visible on earth ; and 
 if he does not rule the planets or the stars, he can at least calcu- 
 late their movement, measure their distances, and identify his will 
 with their influence : he can modify the atmosphere, act to a cer- 
 tain point on the seasons, cure .and afflict with sickness other men, 
 preserve life and cause death. 
 
 The absolute in reason and will is the greatest power which it is 
 given to men to attain ; and it is by means of this power that what 
 the multitude admires under the name of miracles, are effected. 
 
 POWER is the wise use of the will, which makes Fatality itself 
 serve to accomplish the purposes of Sages. 
 
 Omnipotence is the most absolute Liberty ; and absolute Liberty 
 cannot exist without a perfect equilibrium; and the columns 
 JACK IN and BOAZ are also the unlimited POWER and SPLENDOR 
 OF PERFECTION of the Deity, the seventh and eighth SEPHIROTIT 
 of the Kabalah, from whose equilibrium result the eternal perma- 
 nence and Stability of His plans and works, and of that perfect 
 Success and undivided, unlimited Dominion, which are the ninth 
 and tenth SEPHIROTH, and of which the Temple of Solomon, in 
 its stately symmetry, erected without the sound of any tool of metal 
 being heard, is to us a symbol. "For Thine," says the Most Per- 
 fect of Prayers, "is the DOMINION, the POWER, and the GLORY, 
 during all the ages ! Amen !" 
 
 The ABSOLUTE is the very necessity of BEING, the immutable 
 law of Reason and of Truth. It is THAT WHICH IS. But THAT 
 WHICH IS is in some sort before HE WHO IS. God Himself is 
 not without a reason of existence. He does not exist accidentally. 
 He could not not have been. His Existence, then, is necessitated
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 737 
 
 is necessary. He can exist only in virtue of a Supreme and inevi- 
 table REASON. That REASON, then, is THE ABSOLUTE; for it is 
 in IT we must believe, if we would that our faith should have a 
 reasonable and solid basis. It has been said in our times, that 
 God is a Hypothesis ; but Absolute Reason is not one : it is essen- 
 tial to Existence. 
 
 Saint Thomas said, "A thing is not just because God tvills it, 
 BUT GOD WILLS IT BECAUSE IT is JUST. " If he had deduced all 
 the consequences of this fine thought, he would have discovered 
 the true Philosopher's Stone ; the magical elixir, to convert all the 
 trials of the world into golden mercies. Precisely as it is a neces- 
 sity for God to BE, so it is a necessity for Him to be just, loving, 
 and merciful. He cannot be unjust, cruel, merciless. He cannot 
 repeal the law of right and wrong, of merit and demerit ; for the 
 moral laws are as absolute as the physical laws. There are impossi- 
 ble things. As it is impossible to make two and two be five and not 
 four ; as it is impossible to make a thing be and not be at the same 
 time ; so it is impossible for the Deity to make crime a merit, and 
 love and gratitude crimes. So, too, if was impossible to make 
 Man perfect, with his bodily senses and appetites, as it was to 
 make his nerves susceptible of pleasure and not also of pain. 
 
 Therefore, according to the idea of Saint Thomas, the moral 
 laws are the enactments of the Divine WILL, only because they 
 are the decisions of the Absolute WISDOM and REASON, and 
 the Revelations of the Divine NATURE. In this alone consists 
 the right of Deity to enact them ; and thus only do we attain the 
 certainty in Faith that the Universe is one Harmony. 
 
 To believe in the Reason of God, and in the God of Reason, is 
 to make Atheism impossible. It is the Idolaters who have made 
 the Atheists. 
 
 Analog}' gives the Sage all the forces of Nature. It is the key 
 of the Grand Arcanum, the root of the Tree of Life, the science 
 of Good and Evil. 
 
 The Absolute, is REASON. Reason IS, by means of Itself. It IS 
 BECAUSE IT IS, and net because we suppose it. IT IS, where 
 nothing c.vists; but nothing could possibly exist without IT. 
 Reason is Necessity, Law, the Rule of all Liberty, and the direction 
 of every Initiative. If God IS, HE IS by Reason. The concep- 
 tion of an Absolute Deity, outside of, or independent of, Reason, 
 is the IDOL of Black Magic, the PHANTOM of the Daemon.
 
 738 M-ORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Supreme Intelligence is necessarily rational. God, in phi- 
 losophy, can be no mop? than a Hypothesis; but a Hypothesis 
 imposed by good sense on Human Reason. To personify the 
 Absolute Reason, is to determine the Divine Ideal. 
 
 NECESSITY, LIBERTY, and REASON! Behold the great and 
 Supreme Triangle of the Kabalists ! 
 
 FATALITY, WILL, and POWER! Such is the magical ternary 
 which, in human things, corresponds with the Divine Triangle. 
 
 FATALITY is the inevitable linking together, in succession, of 
 effects and causes, in a given order. 
 
 WILL is the faculty that directs the forces of the Intellect, 
 so as to reconcile the liberty of persons with the necessity of 
 things. 
 
 ' The argument from these premises must be made by yourself. 
 Each one of us does that. "Seek," say the Holy Writings, "and 
 ye shall find." Yet discussion is not forbidden ; and without 
 doubt the subject will be fully treated of in your hearing here- 
 after. Affirmation, negation, discussion, it is by these the truth 
 is attained. 
 
 To explore the great Mysteries of the Universe and seek to solve 
 its manifold enigmas, is the chief use of Thought, and constitutes 
 the principal distinction between Alan and the animals. Accord- 
 ingly, in all ages the Intellect has labored to understand and 
 explain to itself the Nature of the Supreme Deity. 
 
 That one Reason and one Will created and governed the Uni- 
 verse was too evident not to be at once admitted by the philosophers 
 of all ages. It was the ancient religions that sought to multiply 
 gods. The Nature of the One Deity, and the mode in which the 
 Universe had its beginning, are questions that have always been 
 the racks on which the human intellect has been tortured : and it 
 is chiefly with these that the Kabalists have dealt. 
 
 It is true that, in one sense, we can have no actual knowledge 
 of the Absolute Itself, the very Deity. Our means of obtaining 
 what is commonly termed actual knowledge, are our senses only. 
 If to sec and feel be knowledge, we have none of our own Soul, 
 of electricity, of magnetism. We see and feel and taste an acid 
 or an alkali, and know something of the qualities of each ; but it 
 i-s only when we use them in combination with other substances, 
 and learn their effects, that we really begin to know their nature. 
 It is the combination and experiments of Chemistry that give
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 739 
 
 us a knowledge of the nature and powers of most animal and 
 vegetable substances As these are cognizable by inspection by 
 our senses, we may partially know them by that alone: but the 
 Soul, either of ourself or of another, being beyond that cognizance, 
 can dhly be known by the acts and words which arc its effects. 
 Magnetism and electricity, when at rest, are equally beyond the 
 jurisdiction of the senses; and when they are in action, we see, 
 feel, hear, taste, and smell only their effects. We do not know 
 what they arc, but only what they do. We can know the attributes 
 of Deity only through His manifestations. To ask anything more, 
 is to ask, not knowledge, but something else, for which we have no 
 name. God is a Power ; and we know nothing of any Power itself, 
 but only its effects, results, and action, and what Reason teaches us 
 by analogy. 
 
 In these later days, in laboring to escape from all material ideas 
 in regard to Deity, we have so refined away our notions of GOD, as 
 to have no idea of Him at all. In struggling to regard Him as a 
 pure immaterial Spirit, we have made the word Spirit synonymous 
 with nothing, and can only say that He is a Somei^'hat, with certain 
 attributes, such as Power, Wisdom, and Intelligence. To compare 
 Him to LIGHT, would now be deemed not only unphilosophical, but 
 the equivalent of Atheism ; and .we find it necessary to excuse and 
 pity the ancients for their inadequate and gross ideas of Deity, 
 expressed in considering Him as the Light-Principle, the invisible 
 essence or substance from which visible Light flows. 
 
 Yet our own holy writings continually speak of Him as Light ; 
 and therefore the Tsabeans and the Kabala may well be pardoned 
 for doing the same ; especially since they did not regard Him as 
 the risible Light known to us, but as the Primordial Ether-Ocean 
 from which light flows. 
 
 Before the creation, did the Deity dwell alone in the Darkness, or 
 in the Light? Did the Light co-exist with Him, or was it created, 
 after an eternity of darkness? and if it co-existed, was it an 
 effluence from Him, filling all space as He also filled it, He and 
 the Light at the same time filling the same place and every 
 place ? 
 
 MILTON says, expressing the Hebraic doctrine : 
 
 "Hail, Holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born, 
 Or of th' Eternal, co-eternal beam ! 
 May I express thee unblamed, since God is JJght.
 
 74 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 And never but in unapproached Light 
 Dwelt from Eternity; dwelt then in Thee, 
 Bright effluence of bright Essence uncreate." 
 
 "The LIGHT/' says the Book Omschim, or Introduction to the 
 Kabala, "Supremest of all things, and most Lofty, and Limitless, 
 and styled INFINITE, can be attained unto by no cogitation or 
 speculation ; and its VERY SELF is evidently withdrawn and 
 removed beyond all intellection. It WAS, before all things what- 
 ever, produced, created, formed, and made by Emanation ; and in 
 it was neither Time, Head, or Beginning; since it always existed, 
 and remains forever, without commencement or end." 
 
 "Before the Emanations flowed forth, and created things were 
 created, the Supreme Light was infinitely extended, and filled the 
 whole WHERE ; so that with reference to Light no vacuum 
 could be affirmed, nor any unoccupied space ; but the ALL was 
 filled with that Light of the Infinite, thus extended, whereto in 
 every regard was no end, inasmuch as nothing was, except that 
 extended Light, which, with a certain single and simple equality, 
 was everywhere like unto itself." 
 
 AINSOPH is called Light, says the Introduction to the Sohar, 
 because it is impossible to express it by any other word. 
 
 To conceive of God as an actuality, and not as a mere non- 
 substance or name, which involved non-existence, the Kabala, like 
 the Egyptians, imagined Him to be "a most occult Light," AUR ; 
 not our material and visible Light, but the Substance out of which 
 Light flows, the fire, as relative to its heat and flame. Of this 
 Light or Ether, the Sun was to the Tsabeans the only manifesta- 
 tion or out-shining, and as such it was worshipped, and not as the 
 type of dominion and power. God was the Phos Noeton, the Light 
 cognizable only by the Intellect, the Light-Principle, the Light- 
 Ether, from which souls emanate, and to which they return. 
 
 Light, Fire, and Flame, with the Phoenicians, were the sons of 
 Kronos. They are the Trinity in the Chaldaean Oracles, the AOR of 
 the Deity, manifested in flame, that issues out of the invisible 
 Fire. 
 
 In the first three Persian Amshaspands, Lords of LIGHT, FIRE, 
 and SPLENDOR, we recognize the AOR, ZOHAR, and ZAYO, Light, 
 Splendor, and Brightness, of the Kabalah. The first of these is 
 termed AOR MUPALA, Wonderful or Hidden Light, unrevealed. 
 undisplayed which is KETHER, the first Emanation or Scphirah.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 741 
 
 the Will of Deity : the second is NESTAR, Concealed which is 
 HAKEMAH, the second Sephirah, or the Intellectual Potence of the 
 Deity: and the third is METANOTSATS, coruscating which r 
 BINAII, the third Sephirah, or the intellectual producing capa- 
 city. In other words, they are THE VERY SUBSTANCE of light, 
 in the Deity : Fire, which is that light, limited and furnished 
 with attributes, so that it can be revealed, but yet remains unre- 
 vealed, and its splendor or out-shining, or the light that goes out 
 from the fire. 
 
 Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly 
 back, as you see, to the Kabalah. In that ancient and little un- 
 derstood medley of absurdity and philosophy, the Initiate will find 
 the source of many doctrines ; and may in time come to under- 
 stand the Hermetic philosophers, the Alchemists, all the Anti- 
 papal Thinkers of the Middle Ages, and Emanuel Sweden- 
 borg. 
 
 The Hansavati Rich, a celebrated Sanscrit Stanza, says : "He is 
 Hansa (the Sun), dwelling in light; Vasu, the atmosphere dwell- 
 ing in the firmament; the invoker of the gods (Agni), dwelling 
 on the altar (i. e., the altar-fire) ; the guest (of the worshipper), 
 dwelling in the house (the domestic fire) ; the dweller amongst 
 men (as consciousness) ; the dweller in the most excellent orb, 
 (the Sun) ; the dweller in truth ; the dweller in the sky (the air) : 
 born in the waters, in the rays of light, in the verity (of manifests 
 tion), in the Eastern mountains; the Truth (itself)." 
 
 "In the beginning," says a Sanscrit hymn, "arose the .Source 
 of golden light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He 
 established the earth and the sky. Who is the God to Whom we 
 shall offer our sacrifice?" 
 
 "He who gives life, He who gives strength ; Whose blessing 
 all the bright gods desire; Whose shadow is immortality; ITliosc 
 shadow is death; Who is the God, etc?" 
 
 "He through Whom the sk\ is bright and the earth for us: 
 He through Whom the Heaven was established, nay, the highest 
 Heaven ; He who measured out the light in the air ; Who is the 
 God, etc.?" 
 
 "He to Whom the Heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, 
 look up trembling inwardly ; He over Whom the rising sun shines 
 forth : Who is the God, etc. ?" 
 
 "Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He Who is the only life of 
 the bright gods ; Who is the God, etc. ?" 
 
 The WORD of God, said the Indian philosophy, is the universal 
 and invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, tftat emits its blaze 
 in the Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars. Philo calls it the 
 "Universal Light," which loses a portion of its purity and splendor 
 in descending from the intellectual to the sensible world, mani- 
 festing itself outwardly from the Deity ; and the Kabalah repre- 
 sents that only so much of the Infinite Light flowed into the cir- 
 cular void prepared for creation within the Infinite Light and 
 Wisdom, as could pass by a canal like a line or thread. The Se- 
 phiroth, emanating from the Deity, were the rays of His splendor. 
 
 The Chaldaean Oracles said : "The intellect of the Generator, 
 stirred to action, out-spoke, forming within itself, by intellection, 
 universals of every possible form and fashion, which issued out, 
 flowing forth from the One Source . . . For Deity, impersonated as 
 Dominion, before fabricating the manifold Universe, posited an 
 intellected and unchangeable universal, the impression of the form 
 whereof goes forth through the Universe ; and that VJniverse, 
 formed and fashioned accordingly, becomes visibly beautified in 
 infinitely varying types and forms.the Source and fountain whereof 
 is one. . . . Intellectual conceptions and forms from the Generative 
 source, succeeding each other, considered in relation to ever- 
 progressing Time, and intimately partaking of THE PRIMAL ETHER 
 or FIRE ; but yet all these Universals and Primal Types and Ideas 
 flowed forth from, and are part of, the first Source of the Gene- 
 rative Power, perfect in itself." 
 
 The Chaldeans termed the Supreme Deity ARAOR, Father of 
 Light. From Him was supposed to flow the light above the 
 world, which illuminates the heavenly regions. This Light or 
 Fire was considered as the Symbol of the Divine Essence, extend- 
 ing itself to inferior spiritual natures. Hence the Chaldean ora- 
 cles say : "The Father took from Himself,'and did not confine His 
 proper fire within His intellectual potency :" . . "All things are 
 begotten from one Fire." 
 
 The Tsabeans held that all inferior spiritual beings were emana- 
 tions from the Supreme Deity ; and therefore Proclus says : "The 
 progression of the gods is one and continuous, proceeding down- 
 ward irom the intelligible and latent unities, and terminating in 
 the last partition of the Divine cause."
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN. OK I'UIXCK ADEPT. 743 
 
 It is impossible to speak clearly of the Divinity. Whoever at- 
 tempts to express His attributes by the help of abstractions, con- 
 fines himself to negatives, and at once loses sight of his ideas, in 
 wandering through a wilderness of words. To heap Superlatives 
 on Superlatives, and call Him best, wisest, greatest, is but to exag- 
 gerate qualities which are found in man. That there exists one 
 only God, and that He is a Perfect and Beneficent Being, Reason 
 legitimately teaches us; but of the Divine Nature, of the Sub- 
 stance of the Deity, of the manner of His Existence, or. of the 
 mode of creation of His Universe, the human mind is inadequate 
 to form any just conception. We can affix no clear ideas to Om- 
 nipotence, Omniscience, Infinity or Eternity ; and we have no 
 more right to attribute intelligence to Him, than any other men- 
 tal quality of ourselves, extended indefinitely ; or than we have to 
 attribute our senses to Him, and our bodily organs, as the Hebrew 
 writings do. 
 
 We satisfy ourselves with negativing in the Deity everything 
 that constitutes existence, so far as we are capable of conceiving 
 of existence. Thus He becomes to us logically nothing, Non-Ens. 
 The Ancients saw no difference between that and Atheism, and 
 sought to conceive of Him as something real. It is a necessity of 
 Human Nature. The theological idea, or rather non-idea, of the 
 Deity, is not shared or appreciated by the unlearned. To them, 
 God will always be The Father Who is in Heaven, a Monarch on 
 His Throne, a Being with human feelings and human sympathies, 
 angry at their misdeeds, lenient if they repent, accessible to their 
 supplications. It is the Humanity, far more than the Divinity, of 
 Christ, that makes the mass of Christians worship Him, far more 
 than they do the Father. 
 
 "The Light of the Substance of The Infinite." is the Kabalis- 
 tic expression. Christ was. according to Saint John, "the Light 
 that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" : and ''that 
 Light was the life of men." "The Light shone in the darkness, 
 and the darkness comprehended it not." 
 
 The ancient ideas in respect to Light were perhaps quite as cor- 
 rect as our own. It does not appear that they ascribed to Light 
 any of the qualities of matter. But modern Science defines it to 
 be a flood* of particles of matter, flowing or shot out from the Sun 
 and Stars, and moving through space to come to us. On the the- 
 ories of mechanism and force, what force of attraction here or
 
 744 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 rep-ulsion at the Sun or at the most distant Star could draw or 
 drive these impalpable, weightless, infinitely minute particles, ap- 
 preciable by the Sense of Sight alone, so far through space ? What 
 has become of the immense aggregate of particles that have 
 reached the earth since the creation? Have they increased its 
 bulk? Why cannot chemistry detect and analyze them? If mat- 
 ter, why can they travel only in right lines ? 
 
 No characteristic of matter belongs to Light, or Heat, or flame, 
 or to Galvanism, Electricity, and Magnetism. The electric spark- 
 is light, and so is that produced by the flint, when it cuts off par- 
 ticles of steel. Iron, melted or heated, radiates light; and insects, 
 infusoria, and decayed wood emit it. Heat is produced by friction 
 and by pressure; to explain which, Science tells us of latent Ca- 
 loric, thus representing it to us as existing without its only known 
 distinctive quality. What quality of matter enables lightning, 
 blazing from the Heavens, to rend the oak? What quality of 
 matter enables it to make the circuit of the earth in a score of 
 seconds ? 
 
 Profoundly ignorant of the nature of these mighty agents of 
 Divine Power, we conceal our ignorance by words that have no 
 meaning; and we might well be asked why Light may not be an 
 effluence from the Deity, as has been agreed by all the religions of 
 all the Ages of the World. 
 
 All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah and 
 return to it : everything scientific and grand in the religious 
 dreams of all the illuminati, Jacob Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint- 
 Martin, and others, is borrowed from the Kabalah ; all the Ma- 
 sonic associations owe to it their Secrets and their Symbols. 
 
 The Kabalah alone consecrates the alliance of the L^niversal 
 Reason and the Divine Word ; it establishes, by the counterpoises 
 of two forces apparently opposite, the eternal balance of being", it 
 alone reconciles Reason with Faith, Power with Liberty, Science 
 with Mystery ; it has the keys of the Present, the Past, and the 
 Future. 
 
 The Bible, with all the allegories it contains, expresses, in an 
 incomplete and veiled manner only, the religious science of the 
 Hebrews. The doctrine of Moses and the Prophets, identical at 
 bottom with that of the ancient Egyptians, also had its outward 
 meaning and its veils. The Hebrew books were written only to 
 recall to memory the traditions: and thev were written in Sym-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, Ok 1'KlNUi AD KPT. 745 
 
 bols unintelligible to the Profane. The Pentateuch and the pro- 
 phetic poems were merely elementary books of doctrine, morals, 
 or liturgy ; and the true secret and traditional philosophy was 
 only written afterward, under veils still less transparent. Thus 
 was a second Bible born, unknown to, or rather uncomprehended 
 by, the Christians ; a collection, they say, of monstrous absurdi- 
 ties; a monument, the adept says, wherein is everything that the 
 genius of philosophy and that of religion have ever formed or 
 imagined of the sublime ; a treasure surrounded by thorns ; a 
 diamond concealed in a rough dark stone. 
 
 One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sanctuary 
 of the Kabalah, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at 
 the same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and 
 signs, the consecration of the most fundamental realities by the 
 primitive characters ; the Trinity of Words, Letters, and Num- 
 bers ; a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite 
 as the Word ; theorems more complete and luminous than those 
 of Pythagoras ; a theology summed up by counting on one's fin- 
 gers ; an Infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's 
 hand ; ten ciphers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square, 
 and a circle, these are all the elements of the Kabalah. These 
 are the elementary principles of the written Word, reflection of 
 that spoken Word that created the world ! 
 
 This is the doctrine of the Kabalah, with which you will no 
 doubt seek to make yourself acquainted, as to the Creation. 
 
 The Absolute Deity, with the Kabalists, has no name. The 
 terms applied to Him are tilths TlS, AOR PASOT, the Most Simple 
 [or Pure] Light, "called C]1D pS, AYEN SOPH, or INFINITE, before 
 any Emanation. For then there was no space or vacant place, 
 but all was infinite Light." 
 
 Before the Deity created any Ideal, any limited and intelligible 
 Nature, or any form whatever, He was alone, and without form or 
 similitude, and there could be no cognition or comprehension of 
 Him in any wise. He was without Idea or Figure, and it is for- 
 bidden to form any Idea or Figure of Him, neither by the letter 
 He [n], nor by the letter Yod [], though these are contained 
 in the Holy Name ; nor by any other letter or point in the 
 world. 
 
 But after He created this Idea [this limited and existing-in- 
 intellection Nature, which the ten Numerations, SEPHIROTH or
 
 746 . MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Rays are], of the Medium, the First Man ADAM KADMON, He 
 descended therein, that, by means of this Idea, He might be called 
 by the name TETRAGRAMMATON ; that created things might have 
 cognition of Him, in His own likeness. 
 
 When the Infinite God willed to emit what were to flow forth. 
 He contracted Himself in the centre of His light, in such manner 
 that that most intense light should recede to a .certain circumfer- 
 ence, and on all sides upon itself. And this is the first contrac- 
 tion, and termed EXES, Tsemsum. 
 
 jlDlp Cltf, ADAM KADMON, the Primal or First Man, is the first 
 Aziluthic emanant from the Infinite Light, immitted into the 
 evacuated Space, and from which, afterward, all the other degrees 
 and systems had their beginnings. It is called the Adam prior to 
 all the first. In it are imparted ten spherical numerations ; and 
 thereafter issued forth the rectilinear figure of a man in his 
 sephirothic decade, as it were the diameter of the said circles ; as 
 it were the axis of these spheres, reaching from their highest point 
 to their lowest ; and from it depend all the systems. 
 
 But now, as the Infinite Light would be too excellent and great 
 to be borne and endured, except through the medium of thiJ 
 Adam Kadmon, its most Secret Nature preventing this, its illu- 
 minating light had again to emanate in streams out of itself, by 
 certain apertures, as it were, like windows, and which are termed 
 the ears, eyes, nostrils, and mouth. 
 
 The light proceeding from this Adam Kadmon is indeed but 
 one ; but in proportion to its remoteness from the place of out- 
 flowing, and to the grades of its descent, it is more dense. 
 
 From the word^'S, ATSIL, to emanate or flow forth, comes the 
 word m^i'S, ATSILOTII or Aziluth, Emanation, or the System of 
 Emanants. When the primal space was evacuated, the surround- 
 ing Light of the Infinite, and the Light immitted into the void, 
 did not touch each other; but the Light of the Infinite flowed into 
 that void through a line or certain slender canal : and that Light 
 is the Emanative and emitting Principle, or the out-flow and 
 origin of Emanation : but the Light within the void is the ema- 
 nant subordinate ; and the two cohere only by means of the afore- 
 said line. 
 
 Aziluth means specifically and principally the first system of 
 the four Olamoth [mD^JJ], worlds or systems ; which is thence 
 called the Aziluthic World.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 747 
 
 The ten Sephiroth of the general Aziluthic system are ten 
 Xekudoth or Points. 
 
 Cp pS, AINSOPH, AENSOPH, or AYENSOPH, is the title of the 
 Cause of Causes, its meaning being "endless," because there is no 
 limit to Its loftiness, and nothing can comprehend it. Sometimes, 
 also, the name is applied to KETIIER, or the CROWN, the first 
 emanation, because that is the Throne of the Infinite, that is, its 
 first and highest Seat, than which none is higher, and because 
 Ainsoph resides and is concealed therein: hence it rejoices in the 
 same name. 
 
 Before that anything was, says the Emcch Haintnclcch, He, of 
 His mere will, proposed to Himself to make worlds . . . but at that 
 time there was no vacant space for worlds ; but all space was filled 
 with the light of His Substance, which He had with fixed limits 
 placed in the centre of Himself, and of the parts whereof, and 
 wherein, He was thereafter to effect a folding together. 
 
 What then did the Lord of the Will, that most perfectly free 
 Agent, do? By His own estimation, He measured off within His 
 own Substance the width and length of a circular space to be 
 made vacant, and wherein might be posited the worlds aforesaid ; 
 and of that Light which was included within the circle so meas- 
 ured, He compressed and folded over a certain portion . . . and 
 that Light He lifted higher up, and so a place was left unoccupied 
 by the Primal Light. 
 
 But yet was not this space left altogether empty of that Light ; 
 for the vestiges of the Primal Light still remained in the place 
 where Itself had been ; and they did not recede therefrom. 
 
 Before the Emanations out-flowed, and created things were 
 created, the Supreme Light was infinitely extended, and filled the 
 whole Where: nothing ivas, except that extended light, called AOR 
 H' AINSOPII, the Light of the non-finite. 
 
 When it came into the mind of the Extended to will to make 
 worlds, and by forth-flowing to utter Emanations, and to omit as 
 Light the perfection of His active powers, and of His aspects and 
 attributes, which was the impelling cause of the creation of worlds ; 
 then that Light, in some measure compressed, receded in every 
 direction from a particular central point, and on all sides of it 
 drew back, and so a certain vacuum was left, called void space, 
 its circumference even-where equidistant from that point which 
 was exactly in the centre of the space ... a certain void place and
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 space left in Mid-Infinite : a certain Where was thereby constituted 
 wherein Emanations might BE, and the Created, the Fashioned 
 and the Fabricated. 
 
 This world of the garmenting, this circular vacant space, with 
 the vestiges of the withdrawn light of the Infinite yet remaining, 
 is the inmost garment, nearest to His substance ; and to it belongs 
 the name AOR PENAI-AL, Light of the Countenance of God. 
 
 An interspace surrounds this great circle, established between 
 the light of the very substance, surrounding the circle on its out- 
 side, and the substance contained within the circle. This is called 
 SPLENDOR EXCELSUS, in contradistinction to Simple Splendor. 
 
 This light "of the vestige of the garment," is said to be, rela- 
 tively to that of the vestige of the substance, like a point in the 
 centre of a circle. This light, a point in the centre of the Great 
 Light, is called Auir, Ether, or Space. 
 
 This Ether is somewhat more gross than the Light not so 
 Subtle though not perceptible by the Senses is termed the Pri- 
 mal Ether extends everywhere ; Philosophers call it the Soul of 
 the World. 
 
 The Light so forth-shown from the Deity, cannot be said to be 
 severed or diverse from Him. "It is flashed forth from Him, and 
 yet all continues to be perfect unity . . . The Sephiroth, sometimes 
 called the Persons of the Deity, are His rays, by which He is 
 enabled most perfectly to manifest Himself. 
 
 The Introduction to the Book SOHAR says : 
 
 The first compression was effected, in order that the Primal 
 Light might be upraised, aiid a space become vacant. The second 
 compression occurred when the vestiges of the removed Light 
 remaining were compressed into points ; and that compression 
 was effected by means of the emotion of joy ; the Deity rejoicing, 
 it had already been said, on account of His Holy People, there- 
 after to come into being; and that joy being vehement, and a 
 commotion and exhilaration in the Deity being caused by it, so 
 that He flowed forth in His delight ; and of this commotion an 
 abstract power of judgment being generated, which is a collection 
 of the letters generated by the points of the vestiges of Light left 
 within the circle. For He writes the finite expressions, or limited 
 manifestations of Himself upon the Book, in single letters. 
 
 Like as when water or fire, it had been said, is blown upon by 
 the wind, it is wont to be greatly moved, and with flashes like
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINVE ADEPT. 749 
 
 lightning to smite the eyes, and gleam and coruscate hither and 
 thither, even so The Infinite was moved within Himself, and 
 shone and coruscated in that circle, from the centre outward and 
 again to the centre : and that commotion we term exhilaration ; 
 and from that exhilaration, variously divided within Himself, was 
 generated the potency of determining the fashioning of the letters. 
 
 Of that exhilaration, it had also been said, was generated the 
 determination of forms, by which determination the Infinite 
 determined them within Himself, as if by saying: "Let this 
 Sphere be the appointed place, wherein let all worlds be cre- 
 ated !" 
 
 He, by radiating and coruscating, effected the points, so that 
 their sparkling should smite the eyes like lightning. Then He 
 combined diversely the single points, until letters were fashioned 
 thereof, in the similitude and image of those wherewith THE 
 BLESSED had set forth the decrees of His Wisdom. 
 
 It is not possible to attain to an understanding of the creation 
 of man, except by the mystery of letters ; and in these worlds of 
 The Infinite is nothing, except the letters of the Alphabet and 
 their combinations. All the worlds are Letters and Names; but 
 He Who is the Author of all, has no name. 
 
 This world of the covering [or garment vestimenti], [that is, 
 the circular vacant space, with the vestiges of the removed Light 
 of The Infinite still remaining after the first contraction and com- 
 pression], is the inmost covering, nearest to His substance ; and to 
 this covering belongs the general name AUR PENIAL, Light of the 
 Countenance of God: by which we are to understand the Light of 
 The Substance. 
 
 And after this covering was effected, He contracted it, so as to 
 lift up the lower moiety ; . . . and this is the third contraction ; 
 and in this manner He made vacant a space for the worlds, which 
 had not the capacity to use the great Light of the covering, the 
 end whereof was lucid and excellent as its beginning. And so 
 [by drawing up the lower half and half the letters], are made the 
 Male and Female, that is, the anterior and posterior adhering 
 mutually to one another. 
 
 The vacant space effected by this retraction is called AUIR KAD- 
 MON, the PRIMAL SPACE : for it was the first of all Spaces ; nor 
 was it allowable to call it covering, which is AUR PENI-BAL, the 
 Light of the Countenance of God.
 
 75O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The vestiges of the Light of the Garment still remained there. 
 And this world of the garment has a name that includes all things, 
 which is the name IHUH. Before the world of the vacant space 
 was created, HE was, and His Name, and they alone : that is, AIN- 
 SOPH and His garmenting. 
 
 The EMECH HAMMELECH says again: 
 
 The lower half of the garment [by the third retraction], was 
 left empty of the light of the garment. But the vestiges of that 
 light remained in the place so vacated . . . and this garment is 
 called SHEKINAH, God in-dwelling; that is, the place where iV 
 Yod He, of the anterior [or male], and m Vav He, of the poste- 
 rior [or female], combinations of letters dwelt. 
 
 This vacant space was square, and is called the Primal Space; 
 and in Kabalah it is called Auira Kadmah, or Rasimu Allah, The 
 Primal Space, or The Sublime Vestige. It is the vestige of the 
 Light of the Garment, with which is intermingled somewhat of 
 the vestige of the Very Substance. It is called Primal Ether, but 
 not void Space. . . The Light of the Vestige still remains in the 
 place it occupied, and adheres there, like somewhat spiritual, of 
 extreme tenuity. 
 
 In this Ether are two Lights ; that is, the Light of the SUB- 
 STANCE, which was taken away, and that of the Garment. There 
 is a vast difference between the two ; for that of the Vestige of the 
 Garment is, relatively to that of the Vestige of the Substance, like 
 a point in the centre of a circle. And as the only appropriate 
 name for the Light of the Vestige of Ainsoph is AUR, Light, 
 therefore the Light of the Vestige of the Garment could not be 
 called by that name; and so we term it a point, that is, Yod [' or 
 *], which is that point in the centre of Light . . . and this Light, 
 a point in the centre of the Great Light, is called Anir, Ether, or 
 Space. 
 
 This Ether is somewhat more gross than The Light .... not ?o 
 subtle, though not perceptible by the senses ... is termed the Pri- 
 mal Ether . . . extends everywhere; whence the Philosophers call 
 it The Soul of the World. . . Light is visible, though not percep- 
 tible. This Ether is neither perceptible nor visible. 
 
 The Introduction to the Book Sohar continues, in the Section 
 of the Letter Yod, etc. : 
 
 Worlds could not be framed in this Primal Ether, on account 
 of its extreme itr'ty 'aid the excess of Light ; and also because
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 751 
 
 in it remained the vital Spirit of the Vestige of the Light Ain- 
 soph, and that of the Vestige of the Light of the Garment; 
 whereby such manifestation was prevented. 
 
 Wherefore HE directed the letter Yod, since it was not so bril- 
 liant as the Primal Ether, to descend, and take to itself the light 
 remaining in the Primal Ether, and return above, with that Ves- 
 tige which so impeded the manifestation ; which Yod did. 
 
 It descended below five times, to remove the vital Spirit of the 
 Vestige of the Light Ainsoph ; and the Vestige of the Light and 
 vital Spirit of the Garment from the Sphere of Splendor, so as to 
 make of it ADAM, called KADMON. And by its return, manifes- 
 tation is effected in the space below, and a Vestige of the Sublime 
 Brilliance yet remains there, existing as a Spherical Shape, and 
 termed in the Sohar simply Tchiru, that is, Splendor ; and it is 
 styled The First Matter. ... it being, as it were, vapor, and, as it 
 were, smoke. And as smoke is formless, not comprehended under 
 any fixed definite form, so this Sphere is a formless somewhat, 
 since it seems to be somewhat that is spherical, and yet is not 
 limited. 
 
 The letter Yod, while adhering to the Shekinah, had ad-hering 
 to himself the Light of the Shekinah, though his light was not 
 so great as that of the Shekinah. But when he descended, he left 
 that light of his own below, and the Splendor consisted of it. 
 After which there was left in Yod only a vestige of that light, 
 inasmuch as he could not re-ascend to the Shekinah and adhere to 
 it. Wherefore The Holy and Blessed directed the letter He [n, 
 the female letter], to communicate to Yod of her Light; and sent 
 him forth, to descend and share with that light in the Splendor 
 aforesaid. . . and when he re-descended into the Sphere of Splen- 
 dor, he diffused abroad in it the Light communicated to him by 
 the letter He. 
 
 And when he again ascended he left behind him the productive 
 light of the letter He, and thereof was constituted another Sphere, 
 within the Sphere of Splendor; which lesser Sphere is termed in 
 the Sohar KETIIER AILAII, CORONA SUM MA, The Supreme Crouni, 
 and also ATIKA DE ATIKIM, Antiqnus Antiqnuin, The Ancient 
 of Ancients, and even AILIT H' AILIT, Causa Cansaruin, the Cause 
 of Causes. But the Crown is very far smaller than the Sphere of 
 Splendor, so that within the latter an immense unoccupied place 
 and space is still left.
 
 752 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The BETH ALOHIM says: 
 
 Before the Infinite God, the Supreme and First Good, formed 
 objectively within Himself a particular conception, definite, lim- 
 ited, and the object of intellection, and gave form and shape to an 
 intellectual conception and image, HE was alone, companionless, 
 without form or similitude, utterly without Ideal or Figure. . . It 
 is forbidden to make of Him any figure whatever, by any image 
 in the world, neither by the letter He nor by the letter Yod, nor 
 by any other letter or point in the world. 
 
 But after He had formed this Idea, the particular conception, 
 limited and intelligible, which the Ten Numerations are, of the 
 medium of transmission, Adam Kadmon, the Primal or Supreme 
 Man, He by that medium descended, and may, through that Idea, 
 be called by the name IHUH, and so created things have cognizance 
 of Him, by means of His proper likeness. 
 
 Woe unto him who makes God to be like unto any mode or at- 
 tribute whatever, even were it to one of His own ; and still more if 
 he make Him like unto the Sons of Men, whose elements are 
 earthly, and so are consumed and perish ! 
 
 There can be no conception had of Him, except in so far as He 
 manifests Himself, in exercising dominion by and through some 
 attribute . . . Abstracted from this, there can be no attribute, con- 
 ception, or ideal of Him. He is comparable only to the Sea, fill- 
 ing some great reservoir, its bed in the earth, for example ; 
 wherein it fashions for itself a certain concavity, so that thereby 
 we may begin to compute the dimensions of the Sea itself. 
 
 For example, the Spring and Source of the Ocean is a somewhat, 
 which is one. If from this Source or Spring there issues forth a 
 certain fountain, proportioned to the space occupied by the Sea in 
 that hemispherical reservoir, such as is the letter Yod, there the 
 Source of Spring is the first somewhat, and the fountain that flows 
 forth from it is the second. Then let there be made a great reser- 
 voir, as by excavation, and let this be called the Ocean,and we have 
 the third thing, a vessel [Fas]. Now let this great reservoir be 
 divided into seven beds of rivers, that is, into seven oblong reser- 
 voirs, so that from this ocean the waters may flow forth in seven 
 rivers ; and the Source, Fountain, and Ocean thus make ten in 
 all. 
 
 The Cause of Causes made ten Numerations, and called the 
 Source of Spring KETHER, Corona, the Crown, in which the idea
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 733 
 
 of circularity is involved, for there is no end to the out-flow of 
 Light ; and therefore He called this, like Himself, endless; for this 
 also, like Him, has no similitude or configuration, nor hath it any 
 vessel or receptacle wherein it may be contained, or by means 
 whereof any possible cognizance can be had of it. 
 
 After thus forming the Crown, He constituted a certain smaller 
 receptacle, the letter Yod, and rilled it from that source ; and this 
 is called "The Fountain gushing with Wisdom," and, manifested 
 in this, He called Himself WISE, and the vessel He called HAKE- 
 MAH, Wisdom, Sapicntia. 
 
 Then He also constituted a great reservoir, which He called the 
 Ocean ; and to it He gave the name of BINAII, Understanding, 
 Intclligcntia. In this He characterized Himself as Intelligent or 
 Conceiver. HE is indeed the Absolutely Wise and Intelligent, but 
 Hakemah is not Absolute Wisdom of itself, but is zvise by means 
 of Binah, who fills Himself from it, and if this supply were taken 
 from it, would be dry and unintelligent. 
 
 And thereupon seven precious vessels become,to which are given 
 the following names : GEDULAH, Magnificence or Benignity [or 
 KIIASED, Mercy] ; GEBURAH, Austerity, Rigor or Severity: 
 TEPIIARETH, Beauty; NETSAKH, Victory; HOD, Glory; YESOD, 
 Foundation or Basis; and MALAKOTH, Rule, Reign, Royalty, 
 Dominion or Pozver. And in GEDULAH He took the character of 
 Great and Benignant; in GEBURAH, of Severe; in TEPHARETH, of 
 Beautiful; in NETSAKH, of Overcoming; in HOD, of OUR GLORI- 
 OUS AUTHOR ; in YESOD, of Just, by Yesod all vessels and worlds 
 being upheld ; and in MALAKOTH He applied to Himself the title 
 of King. 
 
 These numerations or Sephiroth are held in the Kabala to have 
 been originally contained in each other ; that is, Kether contained 
 the nine others, Hakemah contained Binah, and Binah contained 
 the last seven. 
 
 For all things, says the commentary of Rabbi Jizch-ak Lorja, 
 in a certain most abtruse manner, consist or reside and are con- 
 tained in Binah, and it projects them, and sends them downward, 
 species by species, intd the several worlds of Emanation, Creation, 
 Formation.and Fabrication ; all whereof are derived from what are 
 above them, and are termed their out-flowings ; for, from the 
 potency which was their state there, they descend into actual- 
 itv.
 
 754 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The INTRODUCTION says : 
 
 It is said in many places in the Sohar, that all things that 
 emanate or are created have their root above. Hence also the Ten 
 Sephiroth have their root above, in the world of the garment, with 
 the very Substance of HIM. And AINSOPH had full conscious- 
 ness and appreciation, prior to their actual existence, of all the 
 Grades and Impersonations contained unmanifested within Him- 
 self, with regard to the essence of each, and its domination then in 
 potency . . . When He came to the Sephirah of the Impersonation 
 Malakoth, which He then contained hidden within Himself. He 
 concluded within Himself that therein worlds should be framed ; 
 since the scale of the first nine Sephiroth was so constituted, that 
 it was neither fit nor necessary for worlds to be framed from them; 
 for all the attributes of these nine Superior Sephiroth could be 
 assigned to Himself, even if He should never operate outwardly ; 
 but Malakoth, which is Empire or Dominion, could not be at- 
 tributed to Him, unless He ruled over other Existences ; whence 
 from the point Malakoth He produced all the worlds into actu- 
 ality. 
 
 These circles are ten in number. Originated by points, they 
 expanded in circular shape. Ten Circles, under the mystery of 
 the ten Sephiroth, and between them ten Spaces ; whence it ap- 
 pears that the sphere of Splendor is in the centre of the space 
 Malakoth of the First Occult Adam. 
 
 The First Adam, in the ten circles above the Splendor, is called 
 the First occult Adam; and in each of these spaces are formed 
 many thousand worlds. The first Adam is involved in the Primal 
 Ether, and is the analogue of the world Binah. 
 
 Again the Introduction repeats the first and second descent of 
 Yod into the vacated space, to make the light there less great and 
 subtile ; the constitution of the Tehirn, Splendor, from the light 
 left behind there by him ; the communication of Light to him by 
 the female letter He ; the emission by him of that Light, within the 
 sphere of Splendor, and the formation thereof, within the sphere, 
 "of a certain sphere called the Supreme Crown," Corona Suinma, 
 KETHER, "wherein were contained, in potence, all the remaining 
 Numerations, so that they were not distinguishable from it. Pre- 
 cisely as in man exist the four elements, in potence specifically 
 undistinguishable, so in this Corona were in potence all the ten 
 Numerations, specifically undistinguishable." This Crown, it is
 
 tCNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 755 
 
 Added, was called, after the restoration, The Cause of Causes, and 
 the Ancient of the Ancients. 
 
 The point, Kether, adds the Introduction, was the aggregate of 
 all the Ten . . . when it first emanated, it consisted of all the Ten , 
 and the Light which extended from the Emanative Principle 
 simultaneously flowed into it; and beheld the two Universal* 
 [that -is, the Unities out of which manifoldness flows; as, for ex- 
 ample, the idea, within the Deity, of Humanity as a Unit, out of 
 which the individuals were to flow], the Vessel or Receptacle con- 
 taining this immitted Light, and the Light Itself within it. And 
 this Light is the Substance of the point Kether; for the WILL of 
 God is the Soul of all tilings that are. 
 
 The Ainsophic Light, it had said, was infinite in every direc- 
 tion, and without end or limit. To prevent it from flowing into 
 and re-filling the quasi-vacant space, occupied by an infinitely less 
 Splendor, a partition between the greater and lesser Splendor 
 was necessary ; and this partition, the boundary of the sphere ot 
 Splendor, and a like one bounding the sphere Kether, were called 
 yessels or Receptacles, containing, including, and enclosing within 
 themselves the light of the sphere. Imagine a sea of pellucid 
 water, and in the centre of it a spherical mass of denser and 
 darker water. The outer surface of this sphere, or its limits every- 
 way, is the vessel containing it. The Kabalah regards the vessels 
 "as by their nature somewhat opaque, and not so splendid as the 
 light they enclose." 
 
 The contained Light is the Soul of the vessels, and is active in 
 them, like the Human Soul in the human body. The Light of 
 the Emanative Principle [Ainsoph] inheres in the vessels, as their 
 Life, internal Light, and Soul. . . Kether emanated, with its Very 
 Substance, at the same time as Substance and Vessel, in like man- 
 ner as the flame is annexed to the live coal, and as the Soul per- 
 vades, and is within, the body. All the Numerations were poten- 
 tially contained in it. 
 
 And this potentiality is thus explained : When a woman con- 
 ceives, a Soul is immediately sent into the embryo which is to 
 become the infant, in which Soul are then, potentially, all the 
 members and veins of the body, which afterward, from that po- 
 tency of the Soul, become in the human body of the child to bf 
 born. 
 
 Then the wisdom of God commanded that these Numerations
 
 756 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 potentially in Kether, should be produced from potentiality into 
 actuality, in order that worlds might consist; and HE directed 
 Yod again to descend, and to enter into and shine within Kether, 
 and then to re-ascend : which was so done. From which illumina~ 
 tion and re-ascension, all the other numerations, potentially in 
 Kether, were manifested and disclosed; but they continued still 
 compacted together, remaining within Kether in a circle. 
 
 When God willed to produce the other emanations or numera- 
 tions from Kether, it is added, HE sent Yod down again, to the 
 upper part of Kether, one-half of him to remain without and one- 
 half to penetrate within the sphere of Kether. Then HE sent the 
 letter Vav into the Splendor, to pour out its light on Yod : and 
 thus, 
 
 Yod received light from Vav, and thereby so directed his coun- 
 tenance that it should illuminate and confer exceeding great 
 energy on Hakemah, which yet remained in Kether ; so giving it 
 the faculty to proceed forth therefrom ; and that it might collect 
 and contain within itself, and there reveal, all the other eight 
 numerations, until that time in Kether. 
 
 The sphere of Kether opened, and thereout issued Hakemah, to 
 remain below Kether, containing in itself all the other numerations. 
 
 By a similar process, Binah, illuminated within Hakemah by a 
 second Yod, "issued forth out of Hakemah, having within itself 
 the Seven lower Numerations." 
 
 And since the vessel of Binah was excellent, and coruscated 
 with rays of the color of sapphire, and was so nearly of the same 
 color as the vessel of Hakemah that there was scarcely any differ- 
 ence between them, hence it would not quietly remain below 
 Hakemah, but rose, and placed itself on his left side. 
 
 And because the light from above profusely flowed into and 
 accumulated in the vessel of Hakemah, to so great an extent that 
 it overflowed, and escaped, coruscating, outside of that vessel, and, 
 flowing off to the left, communicated potency and increase to the 
 vessel of Binah .... For Binah is female .... 
 
 Binah, therefore, by means of this energy that flowed into it 
 from the left side of Hakemah, by virtue of the second Yod, came 
 to possess such virtue and potency, as to project beyond itself the 
 Seven remaining vessels contained within itself, and so emitted 
 them all, continuously, one after the other ... all connected and 
 linked one with the other, like the links of a chain.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUM, OR I'RINCK ADKl'T. 757 
 
 Three points first emanated, one under the other ; Kether, 
 Hakemah, and Binah ; and, so far, there was no copulation. But 
 afterward the positions of Hakemah and Binah changed, so that 
 they were side by side, Kether remaining ahove them ; and then 
 conjunction of the Male and Female, ABA and IMMA, Father and 
 Mother, as points. 
 
 HE, from Whom all emanated, created Adam Kadmon, consist- 
 ing of all the worlds, so that in him should he somewhat from 
 those above, and somewhat from those below. Hence in Him was 
 NEPHESCH [PSYCHE, anima infima, the lowest spiritual part of 
 man, Soul} , from the world ASIAII, which is one letter He of the 
 Tetragrammaton; RUACH [SpiRiTUS,a;n";/;a media,the next higher 
 spiritual part, or Spirit], from the world YEZIRAH, which is the 
 Vav of the Tetragrammaton; NESCHAMAH [the highest spiritual 
 part, mens or anima superior}, from the world BRIAII, which is 
 the other letter He; and NESCHAMAH LENESCHAMAH, from the 
 world ATSILUTH, which is the YOD of the Tetragrammaton. 
 
 And these letters [the Sephiroth] were changed from the spher- 
 ical form into the form of a person, the symbol of which person is 
 the BALANCE, it being Male and Female . . . Hakemah on one 
 side, Binah on the other, and Kether over them : and so Gedulah 
 on one side, Geburah on the other, and Tephareth under them. 
 
 The Book Omschim says : Some hold that the ten Sephiroth 
 succeeded one another in ten degrees, one above the other, in 
 regular gradation, one connected with the other in a direct line, 
 from the highest to the lowest. Others hold that they issued forth 
 in three lines, parallel with each other, one on the right hand, one 
 on the left, and one in the middle ; so that, beginning with the 
 highest and going down to the lowest, Hakemah, Khased [or Ged- 
 ulah], and Netsach are one over the other, in a perpendicular line. 
 on the right hand ; Binah, Geburah, and Hod on the left ; and 
 Kether, Tephareth, Yesod, and Malakoth in the middle : and many 
 hold that all the ten subsist in circles, one within the other, and 
 all homocentric. 
 
 It is also to be noted, that the Sephirothic tables contain still 
 another numeration, sometimes called also a Scphirah, which is 
 called Daath, cognition. It is in the middle, below Hakemah and 
 Binah, and is the result of the conjunction of these two. 
 
 To Adam Kadmon, the Idea of the Universe, the Kabalah as- 
 signs a human form. In this, Kether is the cranium. Hakemah and 
 
 49
 
 75& MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Binah the two lobes of the brain, Gedulah and Geburah the two 
 arms, Tephareth the trunk, Netsach and Hod the thighs, Yesod 
 the male organ, and Malkuth the female organ, of generation. 
 
 Yod is Hakemah, and He Binah ; Vav is Tephareth, and the 
 last He, Malkuth. 
 
 The whole, say the Books Mysterii or of Occultation, is thus 
 summed up : The intention of God The Blessed was to form 
 Impersonations, in order to diminish the Light. Wherefore HE 
 constituted, in Macroprosopos, Adam Kadmon, or Arik Anpin/ 
 three Heads. The first is called, "The Head whereof is no cogni- 
 tion"; the second, "The Head of that which is non-existent"; 
 and the third, "The Very Head of Macroprosopos" ; and these 
 three are Corona, Sapicntia, and Informatio, Kether, Hakemah, 
 and Binah, existent in the Corona of the World of Emanation, or 
 in Macroprosopos ; and these three are called in the Sohar ATIKA 
 KADISCHA, Sene.v Sanctissimus, The Most Holy Ancient. But the 
 Seven inferior Royalties of the first Adam are called "The Ancient 
 of Days" ; and this Ancient of Days is the internal part, or Soul, 
 of Macroprosopos. 
 
 The human mind has never struggled harder to understand and 
 explain to itself the process of creation, and of Divine manifesta- 
 tion, and at the same time to conceal its thoughts from all but the 
 initiated, than in the Kabalah. Hence, much of it seems at first 
 like jargon. Macroprosopos or Adam Kadmon is, we have said, 
 the idea or intellectual aggregate of the whole Universe, included 
 and contained unevolved in the manifested Deity, Himself yet 
 contained unmanifested in the Absolute. The Head, Kether, 
 "whereof is no cognition," is the Will of the Deity, or the Deity 
 as Will. Hakemah, the head "of that which is non-existent," is 
 the Generative Power of begetting or producing Thought ; yet 
 172 the Deity, not in action, and therefore non-existent. Binah. 
 "the very or actual head" of Macroprosopos, is the productive 
 intellectual capacity, which, impregnated by Hakemah, is to 
 produce the Thought. This Thought is Daath ; or rather, the result 
 is Intellection. Thinking; the Unity, of which Thoughts are the 
 manifold outflowings. 
 
 This may be illustrated by a comparison. Pain, in the human 
 being, is a feeling or sensation. It must be produced. To produce 
 it. there must be, not only the capacity to produce it, in the nerves, 
 but also the potver of generating it by means of that capacity.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 759 
 
 This generative Power, the Passive Capacity which produces, and 
 the pain produced, are like Hakemah, Binah, and Daath. 
 
 The four Worlds or Universals, Aziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and 
 Asiah, of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Fabrication, are 
 another enigma of the Kabalah. The first three are wholly within 
 the Deity. The first is the Universe, as it exists potentially in the 
 Deity, determined and imagined, but as yet wholly formless and 
 undeveloped, except so far as it is contained in His Emanations. 
 The second is the Universe in idea, distinct within the Deity, but 
 not invested with forms ; a simple unity. The third is the same 
 Universe in potence in the Deity, unmanifestecl, but invested with 
 forms, the idea developed into manifoldness and individuality, 
 and succession of species and individuals ; and the fourth is the 
 potentiality become the Actuality, the Universe fabricated, and 
 existing as it exists for us. 
 
 The Sephiroth, says the Porta Ccclorum, by the virtue of their 
 Infinite Emanator, who uses them as a workman uses his tools, 
 and who operates with and through them, are the cause'of exist- 
 ence of everything created, formed, and fashioned, employing in 
 their production certain media. But these same Sephiroth, Persons 
 and Lights, are not creatures per sc, but ideas, and Rays of THE 
 INFINITE, which, by different gradations, so descended from the 
 Supreme Source as still not to be severed from It ; but It, through 
 them, is extended to the production and government of all Enti- 
 ties, and is the Single and Perfect Universal Cause of All, though 
 becoming determinate for this or the other operation, through this 
 or that Sephiroth or MODE. 
 
 God produced all things by His Intellect and Will and free 
 Determination. He willed to produce them by the mediation of 
 
 His Sephiroth, and Persons by which He is enabled most 
 
 perfectly to manifest Himself; and that the more perfectly, by 
 producing the causes themselves, and the Causes of Causes, and 
 not merely the viler effects. 
 
 God produced, in the first Originate, all the remaining causates. 
 For, as He Himself is most simply Qne, and from One Simple 
 Being One only can immediately proceed, hence it results that 
 from the First Supreme Infinite Unity flowed forth at the same 
 time All and One. One, that is, in so far as flowing from the Most 
 Simple Unity, and being like unto It ; but also All, in so far as. 
 departing from that perfect Singleness which can be measured by
 
 /6O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 no other Singleness, it became, to a certain extent, manifold, 
 though still Absolute and Perfect. 
 
 Emanation, says the same, is the Resulting displayed from the 
 Unresulting, the Finite from the Infinite, the Manifold and Com- 
 posite from the Perfect Single and Simple, Potentiality from that 
 which is Infinite Power and Act, the mobile from that which is 
 perennially permanent ; and therefore in a more imperfect and 
 diminished mode than His Infinite Perfection is. As the First 
 Cause is all things, in an unresulting and Infinite mode, so the 
 Entities that flow from Him are the First Causes, in a resulting 
 and finite mode. 
 
 THE NECESSARY ENTITY, subsisting of Itself, as It cannot be 
 dissevered into the manifold, yet becomes, as it were, multiplied 
 in the Causates, in respect of their Nature, or of the Subsistences, 
 Vessels, and openings assigned to them ; whereby the Single and 
 Infinite Essence, being inclosed or comprehended in these limits, 
 bounds, or externalnesses, takes on Itself Definiteness of dimen- 
 sion, and becomes Itself manifold, by the manifoldness of these 
 envelopes. 
 
 As man [the unit of Humanity] is a microcosm, so Adam Kad- 
 mon is a macrocosm, containing all the Causates of the First 
 
 Cause as the Material Man is the end and completion of 
 
 all creation, so in the Divine Man is the beginning thereof. As 
 the inferior Adam receives all things from all, so the superior 
 Adam supplies all things to all. As the former is the principle of 
 reflected light, so the latter is of Direct Light. The former is the 
 terminus of the Light, descending ; the latter its terminus, ascend- 
 ing. As the Inferior man ascends from the lowest matter even to 
 the First Cause, so the Superior Adam descends from the Sim- 
 ple and Infinite Act, even to the lowest and most attenuated 
 Potence. 
 
 The Ternary is the bringing back of duality to unity. 
 
 The Ternary is the Principle of Number, because, bringing back 
 the binary to unity, it restores to it the same quantity whereby it 
 had departed from unity. Jt is the first odd number, containing 
 in itself the first even number and the unit, which are the 
 Father and Mother of all Numbers; and it has in itself the begin- 
 ning, middle, and end. 
 
 Xow. Adam Kadmon emanated from the Absolute Unity, and so 
 is himself a unit; but he also descends and flows downward into
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 761 
 
 his own Nature, and so is duality. Again, he returns to the Unity, 
 which he hath in himself, and to The Highest, and so is the 
 Ternary and Quaternary. 
 
 And this is why the Essential Name has four letters, three 
 different ones, and one of them once repeated ; since the first He 
 is the wife of the Yod, and the second He is the wife of the 
 Vav. 
 
 Those media which manifest the First Cause, in Himself pro- 
 foundly hidden, are the Sephiroth, which emanate immediately 
 from that First Cause, and by Its Nature have produced and do 
 control all the rest. 
 
 These Sephiroth were put forth from the One First and Simple, 
 manifesting His Infinite Goodness. They are the mirrors of His 
 Truth, and the analogues of His Supremest Essence, the Ideas of 
 His Wisdom, and the representations of His Will ; the receptacles 
 of His Potency, and the instruments with which He operates ; the 
 Treasury of His Felicity, the dispensers of His Benignity, the 
 Judges of His Kingdom, and reveal His Law ; and finally, the 
 Denominations, Attributes, and Names of Him Who is above all 
 
 and the Cause of all the ten categories, wherein all things 
 
 are contained ; the universal genera, which in themselves include 
 all things, and utter them outwardly. .. .the Second Causes, 
 whereby the First Cause effects, preserves, and governs all things ; 
 the rays of the Divinity, whereby all things are illumined and 
 manifested ; the Forms and Ideas and Species, out whereof all 
 things issue forth ; the Souls and Potencies, whereby essence, life, 
 and movement are given to all things ; the Standard of times, 
 whereby all things are measured; the incorporeal .Spaces which, 
 in themselves, hold and inclose the Universe ; the Supernal Monads 
 to which all manifolds are referred, and through them to The One 
 and Simple ; and finally the Formal Perfections, flowing forth 
 from and still connected with the One Eminent Limitless Perfec- 
 tion, are the Causes of all dependent Perfections, and so illumin- 
 ate the elementary Intelligences, not adjoined to matter, and the 
 intellectual Souls, and the Celestial, Elemental and Element- 
 produced bodies. 
 
 The IDRA SUTA says : 
 
 HE, the Most Holy Hidden Eldest, separates Himself, and is 
 ever more and more separated from all that are ; nor yet does HE 
 in very deed separate Himself : because all things cohere with
 
 762 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Him and HE with All. HE is All that is, the Most Holy Eldest 
 of All, the Occult by all possible occupations. 
 
 \Yhen HE takes shape, HE produces nine Lights, which shine 
 forth from Him, from His butforming. And those Lights out- 
 shine from Him and emit flames, and go forth and spread out on 
 every side ; as from one elevated Lamp the Rays are poured forth 
 in every direction, and these Rays thus diverging, are found to be, 
 when one approaching has cognizance of them, but a single Lamp. 
 
 The Space in which to create is fixed by THE MOST HOLY 
 ANCIENT, and illuminated by His inflowing, which is the Light 
 of Wisdom, and the Beginning from which manifestation flows. 
 
 And HE is conformed in three Heads, which are but one Head ; 
 and these three are extended into Microprosopos, and from them 
 shines out all that is. 
 
 Then this Wisdom instituted investiture with form, whereby 
 the unmanifested and informous became manifested, putting on 
 form ; and produced a certain outflow. 
 
 When this Wisdom is thus expanded by flowing forth, then it 
 is called "Father of Fathers," the whole Universe of Things being 
 contained and comprehended in it. This Wisdom is the principle 
 of all things, and in it beginning and end are found. 
 
 The Book of the Abstruse, says the Siphra de Zeniutha, is that 
 which describes the equilibrium of the Balance. Before the 
 Balance was, face did not look toward face. 
 
 And the Commentary en it says: The Scales of the Balance are 
 designated as Male and Female. In the Spiritual world Evil and 
 Good are /';/ equilibria, and it will be restored, when of the Evil 
 Good becomes, until all is Good. Also this other world is called 
 the World of the Balance. For, as in the Balance are two scales, 
 one on either side and the beam and needle between them, so too 
 in this world of restoration, the Numerations are arranged as dis- 
 tinct persons. For Hakemah is on the right hand, on the side 
 of Gedulah. and Binah on the left, on the side of Geburah ; and 
 Kether is the beam of the Balance above them in the middle. So 
 Gedulah or Khased is on one hand, and Geburah on the other, 
 and under these Tephareth ; and Netsach is on one side, and Hod 
 on the other, and under these Yesod. 
 
 The Supreme Crown, which is the Ancient Most Holy, the most 
 Hidden of the Hidden, is fashioned, within the occult Wisdom, 
 of both sexes, Male and Female.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 763 
 
 Hakemah, and Binah, the Mother, whom it impregnates, are 
 quantitatively equal. Wisdom and the Mother of Intellection go 
 forth at once and dwell together ; for when the Intellectual Power 
 emanates, the productive Source of intellection is included in Him. 
 
 Before Adam Kadmon was fashioned into Male and Female, 
 and the state of equilibrium introduced, the Father and Mother 
 did not look each other in the face ; for the Father denotes most 
 perfect Love, and the Mother most perfect Rigor ; and she averted 
 her face. 
 
 There is no left [female], says the Idra Rabba, in the Ancient 
 and Hidden One; but His totality is Right [male]. The totality 
 of things is HUA, HE, and HE is hidden on every side. 
 
 Macroprosopos [Adam Kadmon] is not so near unto us as to 
 speak to us in the first person ; but is designated in the third per- 
 son, HUA, HE. 
 
 Of the letters it says : 
 . Yod is male, He is female, Vav is both. 
 
 In Yod f 1 ] are three Yods, the upper and lower apex, and Vav 
 in the middle. By the upper apex is denoted the Supreme Kether ; 
 by Vav in the middle, Hakemah ; and by the lower apex, Binah. 
 
 The IDRA SUTA says : 
 
 The Universe was out-formed in the form of Male and Female. 
 Wisdom, pregnant with all that is, when it flowed and shone forth, 
 shone altogether under the form of male and female. Hakemah 
 is the Father, and Binah is the Mother ; and so the two are in 
 equilibrium as male and female, and for this reason, all things 
 whatsoever are constituted in the form of male and female ; and 
 if it zvcrc not so they -would not c.vist. 
 
 This Principle, Hakemah, is the Generator of all things ; and 
 He and Binah conjoin, and she shines within Him. When they 
 thus conjoin, she conceives, and the out-flow is Truth. 
 
 Yod impregnates the letter He and begets a son ; and she, thus 
 pregnant, brings forth. The Principle called Father [the Male or 
 Generative Principle] is comprehended in Yod, which itself flows 
 downward from the energy of the Absolute Holy One. 
 
 Yod is the beginning and the end of all tilings that are. The 
 stream that flows forth is the Universe cf things, which always 
 becomes, having no cessation. And this becoming world is created 
 by Yod : for Yod includes two letters. All things are included in 
 Yod ; wherefore it is called the Father of all.
 
 764 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 All Categories whatever go forth from Hakemah ; and in it are 
 contained all things, unmanifested ; and the aggregate of all 
 things, or the Unity in which the many are, and out of which all- 
 flow, is the Sacred Name IHUH. 
 
 In the view of the Kabalists, all individuals are contained in 
 species, and all species in genera, and all particulars in a Univer- 
 sal, which is an idea, abstracted from all consideration of indi- 
 viduals ; not an aggregate of individuals-; but, as it were, an Ens, 
 Entity or Being, ideal or intellectual, but none the less real ; prior 
 to any individual, containing them all, and out of which they are 
 all in succession evolved. 
 
 If this discontents you, reflect that, supposing the theory cor- 
 rect, that all was originally in the Deity, and that the Universe 
 has proceeded forth from Him, and not been created by Him out 
 of nothing, the idea of the Universe, existing in the Deity before 
 its out-flow, must have been as real as the Deity Himself. The 
 whole Human race, or Humanity, for example, then existed in the 
 Deity, not distinguished into individuals, but as a Unit, out of 
 which the Manifold was to flow. 
 
 Everything actual must also first have been possible, before hav- 
 ing actual existence ; and this possibility or potentiality was to the 
 Kabalists a real Ens. Before the evolvement of the Universe, it 
 had to exist potentially, the whole of it, with all its individuals, 
 included in a single Unity. This was the Idea or Plan of the 
 Universe; and this had to be formed. It had to emanate from the 
 Infinite Deity, and be of Himself, though not His Very Self. 
 
 Geburah, Severity, the Sephirah opposite to and conjoined sex- 
 ually with Geclulah, to produce Tephareth, Harmony and Beauty, 
 is also called in the Kabalah "Judgment!' in which term are in- 
 cluded the ideas of limitation and conditioning, which often seems, 
 indeed, to be its principal sense ; while Benignity is as often styled 
 Infinite. Thus it is obscurely taught that in everything that is. 
 not only the Finite but also the Infinite is present ; and that the 
 rigor of the stern law of limitation, by which everything below 
 or beside the Infinite Absolute is limited, bounded, and condi- 
 tioned, is tempered and modified by the grace, which so relaxes it 
 that the Infinite, Unlimited. Unconditioned, is also everywhere 
 present : and that it is thus the Spiritual and Material Natures 
 are in equilibria. Good everywhere counterbalancing Evil, Light 
 everywhere in equilibrium with Darkness ; from which again re-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 765 
 
 suits the Universal Harmony of things. J n the vacant <spacc 
 effected for creation, there at last remained a faint vestige or trace 
 of Ainsophic Light, of the Light of the Substance of the Infinite. 
 Man is thus both human and divine : and the apparent antagon- 
 isms in his Nature are a real equilibrium, if he ivills it shall b& 
 so; from which results the Harmony, not only of Life and Ac- 
 tion, but of Virtue and Perfection. 
 
 To understand the Kabalistic idea of the Sephiroth, it must be 
 borne in mind that they were assigned, not only to the world of 
 Emanation, Aziluth, but also to each of the other worlds, Briah, 
 Jezirah, and Asiah. They were not only attributes of the Unmani- 
 fested Deity, not only Himself in limitation, but His actual mani- 
 festations, or His qualities made apparent as modes ; and they 
 were also qualities of the Universal Nature Spiritual, Mental, and 
 Material, produced and made existent by the outflow of Himself. 
 
 In the view of the Kabalah, God and the Universe were One ; 
 and in the One General, as the type or source, were included and 
 involved, and from it have been evolved and issued forth, the 
 manifold and all particulars. Where, indeed, does individuality 
 begin ? Is it the Hidden Source and Spring alone that is the indi- 
 vidual, the Unit, or is it the flowing fountain that fills the ocean, 
 or the ocean itself, or its waves, or the drops, or the vaporous par- 
 ticles, that are the individuals ? The Sea and the River these are 
 each One ; but the drops of each are many. The tree is one ? but 
 its leaves are a multitude : they drop with the frosts, and fall upon 
 his roots : but the tree still continues to grow, and new leaves 
 come again in the Spring. Is the Human Race not the Tree, and 
 are not individual men the leaves? How else explain the force 
 of will and sympathy, and the dependence of one man at every 
 instant of his life on others, except by the oneness .of the race? 
 The links that bind all created things together are the links of a 
 single Unity, and the whole Universe is One, developing itself into 
 the manifold. 
 
 Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah assigns sexual 
 characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such 
 an assertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon 
 it. On the contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah is based 
 on the fundamental proposition, that the Very Deity is Infinite, 
 everywhere extended, without limitation or determination, and 
 therefore without anv conformation whatever. In order to com-
 
 766 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 mence the process of creation, it was necessary for Him, first of 
 all, to effect a vacant space within Himself. To this end the 
 Deity, whose Nature is approximately expressed by describing 
 Him as Light filling all space, formless, limitless, contracts Him- 
 self on all sides from a point within Himself, and thus effects a 
 quasi-vacant space, in which only a vestige of His Light remains ; 
 and into this circular or spherical space He immits His Emana- 
 tions, portions of His Light or Nature ; and to some of these, 
 sexual characteristics are symbolically assigned. 
 
 The Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape 
 of IV ill, of determination to act. This Will of the Deity, or the 
 Deity as will, is Kcther, or the Crowm, the first Sephirah. In it 
 are included all other Emanations. This is a philosophical neces- 
 sity. The Infinite does not first will, and then, as a sequence to, 
 or consequence of, that determination, subsequently perform. To 
 will and to act must be, with Him, not only simultaneous, but in 
 reality the same. Nor does He, by His Omniscience, learn that a 
 particular action will be wise, and then, in consequence of being 
 so convinced, first determine to do the act, and then do it. His 
 Wisdom and His Will, also, act simultaneously ; and, with Him, 
 to decide that it was wise to create, was to create. Thus His will 
 contains in itself all the Sephiroth. This will, determining Him 
 to the exercise of intellection, to thought, to frame the Idea of the 
 Universe, caused the Power in Him to excite the intellectual 
 Faculty to exercise, and tc r a.y that Power. Its SELF, which had 
 flowed forth from Ainsoph as Will, now flows forth as the Genera- 
 tive Power to beget intellectual action in the Intellectual Faculty, 
 or Intelligence, Binah. The Act itself, the Thought, the Intel- 
 lection, producing the Idea, is Daath; and as the text of the 
 Siphra de Z'cnintha says, The Power and Faculty, the Generative 
 and Productive, the Active and Passive, the Will and Capacity, 
 which unite to produce that Act of reflection or Thought or In- 
 tellection, are always in conjunction. As is elsewhere said in the 
 Kabalah, both of them are contained and essentially involved in 
 the result. And the Will, as Wisdom or Intellectual Power, and 
 the Capacity or Faculty, are really the Father and Mother of all 
 that is ; for to the creation of anything, it was absolutely necessary 
 that The Infinite should form for Himself and in Himself, an 
 idea of what HE willed to produce or create: and, as there is no 
 Time with Him, to will was to create, to plan was to will and to
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRIXCE ADEPT. 767 
 
 create; and in the Idea, the Universe in potence, the universal 
 succession of things was included. Thenceforward all was merely 
 evolution and development. 
 
 Netsach and Hod, the Seventh and Eighth Sephiroth,are usually 
 called in the Kabalah, Victory and Glory. Netsach is the perfect 
 Success, which, with the Deity, to Whom the Future is present, 
 attends, and to His creatures is to result, from the plan of Equi- 
 librium everywhere adopted by Him. It is the reconciliation of 
 Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Free-will and Necessity, 
 God's omnipotence and Man's liberty ; and the harmonious issue 
 and result of all, without which the Universe would be a failure. 
 It is the inherent Perfection of the Deity, manifested in His Idea 
 of the Universe, and in all the departments or worlds, spiritual, 
 mental, or material, of that Universe; but it is that Perfection 
 regarded as the successful result, which it both causes or produces 
 and is; the perfection of the plan being its success. It is the 
 prevailing of Wisdom over Accident ; and it, in turn, both pro- 
 duces and is the Glory and Laudation of the Great Infinite Con- 
 triver, whose plan is thus Successful and Victorious. 
 
 From these two, which are one, from the excellence and per- 
 fection of the Divine Nature and Wisdom, considered as Success 
 and Glory, as the opposites of Failure and Mortification, results 
 what the Kabalah, styling it Yesod, Foundation or Basis, charac- 
 terizes as the Generative member of the Symbolical human figure 
 by which the ten Sephiroth are represented, and from this flows 
 Malakoth, Empire, Dominion, or Rule. Yesod is the Stability and 
 Permanence, which would, in ordinary language, be said to result 
 from the perfection of the Idea or Intellectual Universal, out 
 of which all particulars are evolved ; from the success of thai 
 scheme, and the consequent Glory or Self-Satisfaction of the Deity ; 
 but which Stability and Permanence that Perfection, Success, and 
 Glory really Is ; since the Deity, infinitely Wise, and to Whom 
 the Past, Present, and Future were and always will be one Now, 
 and all space one HERE, had not to await the operation and evolu- 
 tion of His plan, as men do the result of an experiment, in order 
 to see if it would succeed, and so to determine whether it should 
 stand, and be stable and permanent, or fall and be temporary. Its 
 Perfection was \tsSucccss; HisGlory, its permanence and stability: 
 and the Attributes of Permanence and Stability belong, like the
 
 768 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 others, to the ^Universe, material, mental, spiritual, and real, be- 
 cause and as they belong to the Infinite Himself. 
 
 This Stability and Permanence causes continuance and gener- 
 ates succession. It is Perpetuity, and continuity without solution ; 
 and by this continuous succession, whereby out of Death comes 
 new Life, out of dissolution and resolution comes reconstruc- 
 tion, Necessity and Fatality result as a consequence : that is to 
 say, the absolute control and dominion (Malakoth) of The Infinite 
 Deity over all that He produces, and over chance and accident ; 
 and the absolute non-existence in the Universe, in Time and in 
 Space, of any other powers or influences than those which, pro- 
 ceeding from Him, are and cannot not be perfectly submissive 
 to His will. This results, humanly speaking; but in reality, the 
 Perfection of the plan, which is its success, His glory, and its 
 stability, is also His Absolute Autocracy, and the utter absence 
 of Chance, Accident, or Antagonism. And, as the Infinite Wisdom 
 or Absolute Reason rules in the Divine Nature itself, so also it does 
 in its Emanations, and in the worlds or systems of Spirit, Soul, and 
 Matter; in each of which there is as little Chance or Accident 
 or Unreasoning Fate, as in the Divine Nature unmanifested. 
 
 This is the Kabalistic theory as to each of the four worlds ; 
 ist, of the Divine Nature, or Divinity itself, quantitatively limited 
 and determined, but not manifested into Entities, which is the 
 world of Emanation; 2d, of the first Entities, that is, of Spirits 
 and Angels, which is the world of Creation; 3d, of the first forms, 
 souls, or psychical natures, which is the world of Formation or 
 Fashioning; and, 4th, of Matter and Bodies, which is the world of 
 Fabrication, or, as it were, of manufacture. In each of these the 
 Deity is present, as, in, and through the Ten Sepjiiroth. First of 
 these, in each, is Kether, the Crown, ring, or circlet, the HEAD. 
 Next, in that Head, as the two Hemispheres of the Brain, are 
 Hakemah and Binah, and their result and progeny, Daath. These 
 three are found also in the Spiritual world, and are universals in 
 the psychical and material world, producing the lower Sephiroth. 
 Then follow, in perfect Equilibrium, Law and Equity, Justice 
 and Mercy, the Divine Infinite Nature and the Human Finite 
 Nature, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Benignity and Sever- 
 ity, the Male and the Female again, as Hakemah and Binah are, 
 mutually tempering each other, and by their intimate union pro- 
 ducing the other Sephiroth.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 769 
 
 The whole Universe, and all the succes-sion of entities and events 
 were present to The Infinite, before any act of creation ; and His 
 Benignity and Leniency, tempering and qualifying the law of 
 rigorous Justice and inflexible Retribution, enabled Him to create: 
 because, but for it, and if He could not but have administered the 
 strict and stern law of justice, that would have compelled Him to 
 destroy, immediately after its inception, the Universe He purposed 
 to create, and so would have prevented its creation. This Leniency, 
 therefore, was, as it were, the very essence and quintessence of the 
 Permanence and Stability of the plan of Creation, and part of the 
 Very Nature of the Deity. The Kabalah, therefore, designates it 
 as Light and Whiteness, by which the Very Substance of Deity is 
 symbolized. With this agree Paul's ideas as to Law and Grace; 
 for Paul had studied the Kabalah at the feet of Gamaliel the 
 Rabbi. 
 
 With this Benignity, the Autocracy of the dominion and control 
 of the Deity is imbued and interpenetrated. The former, poured, 
 as it were, into the latter, is an integral and essential part of it, 
 and causes it to give birth to the succession and continuance of the 
 Universe. For Malakoth, in the Kabalah, is female, and the matrix 
 or womb out of which all creation is born. 
 
 86^" The Sephiroth may be arranged as on page 770. 
 
 The Kabalah is the primitive tradition, and its entirety rests on 
 the single dogma of Magism, "the visible is for us the propor- 
 tional measure of the invisible." The Ancients, observing that 
 equilibrium is in physics the universal law, and that it results from 
 the apparent opposition of two forces, concluded from the physical 
 to the metaphysical equilibrium, and thought that in God, that 
 is to say. in the first living and active cause, two properties neces- 
 sary to each other, should be recognized ; stability and movement, 
 necessity and liberty, order dictated by reason and the self-rule 
 of Supreme Will, Justice, and Love, and consequently Severity 
 and Grace, Mercy or Benignity. 
 
 The idea of equilibrium among all the impersonations ; of the 
 male on one side, and the female on the other, with the Supreme 
 Will, which is also the Absolute Reason, above each two, holding 
 the balance, is, according to the Kabalah, the foundation of all 
 religions and all sciences, the primary and immutable idea of things. 
 The Sephiroth are a triple triangle and a circle, the idea of the 
 Ternary explained by the balance and multiplied by itself in the
 
 770 
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 : Kether : Crown. 
 Will. 
 
 Binah : /. 
 Passive capacity 
 of being- impregnpted 
 and producing- intellec- 
 tion. 
 
 Geburah : .'. 
 Severity jr rig-id Justice 
 
 Glory 
 
 Hod : /.Tin ' 
 
 : Hakemah: 
 Active Potency 
 of begetting- in- 
 tellection. 
 
 : Daath : Intellection. 
 
 [nity 
 
 : Gedulah : Benig- 
 or or or 
 
 Khased: Mercy. 
 
 Tephareth : Beauty : 
 the Universal Har- 
 mony. 
 
 : Netsach : Vic- 
 tory: or Success. 
 
 /. DID 1 * : Yesud : Foundation : 
 i. e., Stability and 
 Permanency of things. 
 
 .'. JTO^D : Malakoth : Dominion : 
 Supremacy and absolute control of the Divine Will in all things.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 771 
 
 domain of the Ideal; then the realization of this Idea in 
 forms. 
 
 Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and 
 the idea of Unity are already two. 
 
 The human unity is made complete by the right and left. The 
 primitive man was of both sexes. 
 
 The Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as 
 fundamental bases of its existence Necessity and Liberty. 
 
 The laws of the Supreme Reason necessitate and regulate liberty 
 in God, Who is necessarily reasonable and wise. 
 
 Knowledge supposes the binary. An object known is indispen- 
 sable to the being that knows. 
 
 The binary is the generator of Society and the law. It is also 
 the number of the gnosis, a word adopted in lieu of Science, and 
 expressing only the idea of cognizance by intuition. It is Unity, 
 multiplying itself by itself to create ; and therefore it is that the 
 Sacred Symbols make Eve issue from the very chest of Adam. 
 
 Adam is the human Tetragram, which is summed up in the 
 mysterious Yod of the Kabalah, image of the Kabalistic Phallus. 
 Add to this Yod [*] , the ternary name of Eve, and you form the 
 name of Jehova, the Divine Tetragram, the transcendent Kaba- 
 listic and magical word : 
 
 mrp 
 
 Thus it is that Unity, complete in the fecundity of the Ternary, 
 forms, with it, the Quaternary, which is the key of all numbers, 
 movements, and forms. 
 
 The Square, turning upon itself, produces the circle equal to 
 itself, and the circular movement of four equal angles turning 
 around one point, is the quadrature of the circle. 
 
 The Binary serves as a measure for Unity ; and the relation of 
 equality between the Above and the Below, forms with them the 
 Ternary. 
 
 To us, Creation is Mechanism : to the Ancients it was Genera- 
 tion. The world-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies ; and 
 modern science has discovered that all animal production is ovip- 
 arous. From this idea of generation came the reverence every- 
 where paid the image of generative power, which formed the 
 Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical Cross of the 
 Masons. 
 
 Alcph is the man: Beth is the woman. One is the Principle;
 
 77 2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 l-:co is the Word. A.', is the Active; B.'. is the Passive. Unity is 
 l!oax, and the Binary is Jachin. 
 
 The two columns, Boaz and Jachin, explain in the Kabalah 
 all the mysteries of natural, political, and religious antago- 
 nism. 
 
 Woman is man's creation ; and universal creation is the female 
 of the First Principle. When the Principle of Existence made 
 Himself Creator, He produced by emanation an ideal Yod ; and 
 to make room for it in the plenitude of the uncreated Light, He 
 had to hollow out a pit of shadow, equal to the dimension deter- 
 mined by His creative desire; and attributed by Him to the ideal 
 Yod of radiating Light. 
 
 The nature of the Active Principle is to diffuse : of the Passive 
 Principle, to collect and make fruitful. 
 
 Creation is the habitation of the Creator- Word. To create, the 
 Generative Power and Productive Capacity must unite, the Binary 
 become Unity again by the conjunction. The WORD is the First- 
 BEGOTTEN, not the first created Son of God. 
 
 SANCTA SANCTIS, we repeat again ; the Holy things to the Holy, 
 and to him who is so, the mysteries of the Kabalah will be holy. 
 Seek and ye shall find, say the Scriptures : knock and it shall be 
 opened' unto you. If you desire to find and to gain admission to 
 the Sanctuary, we have said enough to show you the way. If you 
 do not. it is useless for us to say more, as it has been useless to say 
 so much. 
 
 The Hermetic philosophers also drew their doctrines from the 
 Kabalah ; and more particularly from the Treatise Beth Alohim 
 or Damns Dei, known as the Pncnmatica Kabalistica, of Rabbi 
 Abraham Cohen Irira, and the Treatise De Revolutionibus Ani- 
 iiianini of Rabbi Jitz-chak Lorja. 
 
 This philosophy was concealed by the Alchemists under their 
 Symbols, and in the jargon of a rude Chemistry, a jargon incom- 
 prehensible and absurd except to the Initiates ; but the key to 
 which is within your reach ; and the philosophy, it may be, worth 
 studying. The labors of the human intellect are always interest- 
 ing and instructive. 
 
 To be always rich, always young, and never to die : such has 
 been in all times the dream of the Alchemists. 
 
 To change into gold, lead, mercury, and all the other metals : to 
 pn^ess the universal medicine and elixir of life : such is the prob-
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 773 
 
 lem to be resolved, in order to accomplish this desire and realize 
 this dream. 
 
 Like all the Mysteries of Magism, the Secrets of "the Great 
 Work" have a threefold signification : they are religious, philo- 
 sophical, and natural. 
 
 The philosophal gold, in religion, is the Absolute and Supreme 
 Reason : in philosophy, it is the Truth ; in visible nature, the 
 Sun ; in the subterranean and mineral world, the most perfect and 
 pure gold. 
 
 It is for this that the pursuit of the Great Work is called the 
 Search for the Absolute ; and the work itself, the work of the Sun. 
 All the masters of the Science admit that it is impossible to at- 
 tain the material results, unless there are found in the two higher 
 Degrees all the analogies of the universal medicine and of the phi- 
 losophal stone. 
 
 Then, they say, the work is simple, easy, and inexpensive; 
 otherwise, it consumes fruitlessly the fortune and lives of the 
 seekers. 
 
 The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and 
 Absolute Justice ; for the mind, mathematical and practical 
 Truth ; for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and 
 gold. 
 
 The prima materia of the Great Work, in the Superior World, 
 is enthusiasm and activity ; in the intermediate world, intelligence 
 and industry ; in the lower world, labor : and, in Science, it is the 
 Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, which by turns volatilized and fixed, 
 compose the AZOTII of the Sages. 
 
 The Sulphur corresponds with the elementary form of the Fire ; 
 Mercury with the Air and Water ; and Salt with the Earth. 
 
 The Great Work is, above all things, the creation of man by 
 himself; that is to say, the full and entire conquest which he 
 effects of his faculties and his future. It is, above all, the perfect 
 emancipation of his will, which assures him the universal empire 
 of Azoth, and the domain of magnetism, that is, complete power 
 over the universal Magical agent. 
 
 This Magical agent, which the Ancient Hermetic philosophers 
 disguised under the name of "Prima Materia," determines the 
 forms of the modifiable Substance ; and the Alchemists said that 
 by means of it they could attain the transmutation of metals and 
 the universal medicine. 
 50
 
 774 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 There are two Hermetic operations, one spiritual, the other ma- 
 terial, dependent the one on the other. 
 
 The whole Hermetic Science is contained in the dogma of 
 Hermes, engraven originally, it is said, on a tablet of emerald. Its 
 sentences that relate to operating the Great Work are as follows : 
 
 "Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from 
 the gross, gently, with much industry. 
 
 "It ascends from earth to Heaven, and again descends to earth, 
 and receives the force of things above and below. 
 
 "Thou shalt by this means possess the glory of the whole world, 
 and therefor all obscurity shall flee away from thee. 
 
 "This is the potent force of all force, for it will overcome every- 
 thing subtile, and penetrate everything solid. 
 
 "So the world was created." 
 
 All the Masters in Alchemy who have written of the Great 
 Work, have employed symbolic and figurative expressions ; being 
 constrained to do so, as well to repel the profane from a work that 
 would be dangerous for them, as to be well understood by Adepts 
 in revealing to them the whole world of analogies governed by the 
 single and sovereign dogma of Hermes. 
 
 So, in their language, gold and silver are the King and Queen, 
 or the Sun and Moon ; Sulphur, the flying Eagle ; Mercury, the 
 Man-woman, winged, bearded, mounted on a cube, and crow-ned 
 with flames ; Matter or Salt, the winged Dragon ; the Metals in 
 ebullition, Lions of different colors ; and, finally, the entire work 
 has for its symbols the Pelican and the Phoenix. 
 
 The Hermetic Art is, therefore, at the same time a religion, a 
 philosophy, and a natural science. As a religion, it is that of the 
 Ancient Magi and the Initiates of all ages ; as a philosophy, we 
 may find its principles in the school of Alexandria and the theories 
 of Pythagoras ; as a science, we must inquire for its processes of 
 Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and Raymond Lulle. 
 
 The Science is a real one only for those who admit and under- 
 stand the philosophy and the religion ; and its process will suc- 
 ceed only for the Adept who has attained the sovereignty of will, 
 and so become the King of the elementary world : for the grand 
 agent of the operation of the Sun, is that force described in the 
 Symbol of Hermes, of the table of emerald ; it is the universal 
 magical power; the spiritual, fiery, motive power; it is the Od 
 according to the Hebrews, and the Astral light, according to others.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT 775 
 
 Therein is the secret fire, living and philosophical, of which all 
 the Hermetic philosophers speak with the most mysterious re- 
 serve : the Universal Seed, the secret whereof they kept, and which 
 they represented only under the figure of the Caduceus of Hermes. 
 
 This is the grand Hermetic arcanum. What the Adepts call 
 dead matter are bodies as found in nature ; living matters are 
 substances assimilated and magnetized by the science and will of 
 the operator. 
 
 So that the Great Work is more than a chemical operation ; it 
 is a real creation of the human word initiated into the power of 
 the Word of God. 
 
 The creation of gold in the Great Work is effected by trans- 
 mutation and multiplication. 
 
 Raymond Lulle says, that to make gold, one must have gold and 
 mercury ; and to make silver, silver and mercury. And he adds : 
 "I mean by mercury, that mineral spirit so fine and pure that it 
 giids even the seed of gold, and silvers that of silver." He meant 
 by this, either electricity, or Od, the astral light. 
 
 The Salt and Sulphur serve in the work only to prepare the 
 mercury, and it is to the mercury especially that we must assimi- 
 late, and, as it were, incorporate with it, the magnetic agent. 
 Paracelsus, Lulle, and Flamel alone seem to havte perfectly kno\vn 
 this mystery. 
 
 The Great Work of Hermes is, therefore, an operation essen- 
 tially magical, and the highest of all, for it supposes the Absolute 
 in Science and in Will. There is light in gold, gold in light, and 
 light in all things. 
 
 The disciples of Hermes, before promising their adepts the elixir 
 of long life or the powder of projection, advised them to seek for 
 the Philosophal Stone. 
 
 The Ancients adored the Sun, under the form of a black Stone, 
 called Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus. The faithful are promised, in 
 the Apocalypse, a white Stone. 
 
 This Stone, say the Masters in Alchemy, is the true Salt of the 
 philosophers, which enters as one-third into the composition of 
 Azoth. But Azoth is, as we know, the name of the grand Hermetic 
 Agent, and the true philosophical Agent : wherefore they repre- 
 sent their Salt under the form of a cubical Stone. 
 
 The Philosophal Stone is the foundation of the Absolute phi- 
 losophy, the Supreme and unalterable Reason. Before thinking of
 
 776 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Metallic work, we must be firmly fixed on the Absolute prin- 
 ciples of Wisdom ; we must be in possession of this Reason, which 
 is the touchstone of Truth. A man who is the slave of prejudices 
 will never become the King of Nature and the Master of trans- 
 mutations. The Philosophal Stone, therefore, is necessary above 
 all things. How shall it be found ? Hermes tells us, in his "Table 
 of Emerald," we must separate the subtile from the fixed, with 
 great care and extreme attention. So we ought to separate our 
 certainties from our beliefs, and make perfectly distinct the re- 
 spective domains of science and faith ; and to comprehend that 
 we do not know the things we believe, nor believe anything that 
 we come to know ; and that thus the essence of the things of Faith 
 are the unknown and indefinite, while it is precisely the contrary 
 with the things of Science. Whence we shall conclude, that 
 Science rests on reason and experience, and Faith has for its bases 
 sentiment and reason. 
 
 The Sun and Moon of the Alchemists concur in perfecting and 
 giving stability to the Philosophal Stone. They correspond to the 
 two columns of the Temple, Jachin and Boaz. The Sun is the 
 hieroglyphical sign of Truth, because it is the source of Light ; 
 and the rough Stone is the symbol of Stability. Hence the 
 Mediaeval Alchemists indicated the Philosophal Stone as the first 
 means of making the philosophical gold, that is to say, of trans- 
 forming all the vital powers figured by the six metals into Sun, 
 that is, into Truth and Light ; which is the first and indispensable 
 operation of the Great Work, which leads to the secondary adapta- 
 tion, and enables the creators of the spiritual and living gold, the 
 possessors of the true philosophical Salt, Mercury, and Sulphur, to 
 discover, by the analogies of Nature, the natural and palpable gold. 
 
 To find the Philosophal Stone, is to have discovered the Abso- 
 lute, as all the Masters say. But the Absolute is that which admits 
 of no errors, is the Fixed from the Volatile, is the Law of the 
 Imagination, is the very necessity of Being, is the immutable Law 
 of Reason and Truth. The Absolute is that which IS. 
 
 To find the Absolute in the Infinite, in the Indefinite, and in 
 the Finite, this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of the 
 Sages. \\'.lch Hermes called the Work of the Sun. 
 
 To find the immovable bases of true religious Faith, of Philo- 
 vphical Truth, and of Metallic transmutation, this is the secret 
 of Hermes in its entirety, the Philosophal Stone.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OH I'RFN'CE ADEPT. 777 
 
 This stone is one and manifold ; it is decomposed by Analysis, 
 and re-compounded by Synthesis. In Analysis, it is a powder, 
 the powder of projection of the Alchemists ; before Analysis, and 
 in Synthesis, it is a stone. 
 
 The Philosophal Stone, say the Masters, must not be exposed 
 to the atmosphere, nor to the gaze of the Profane ; but it must 
 be kept concealed and carefully preserved in the most secret place 
 of the laboratory, and the possessor must always carry on his 
 person the key of the place where it is kept. 
 
 He who possesses the Grand Arcanum is a genuine King, and 
 more than a king, for he is inaccessible to all fear and all 
 empty hopes. In all maladies of soul and body, a single particle 
 from the precious stone, a single grain of the divine powder, is 
 more than sufficient to cure him. "Let him hear, who hath ears 
 to hear !" the Master said. 
 
 The Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury are but the accessorial elements 
 and passive instruments of the Great Work. All depends, as we 
 have said, on the internal Magnet of Paracelsus. The entire 
 work consists in projection: and the projection is perfectly accom- 
 plished by the effective and realizable understanding of a single 
 word. 
 
 There is but a single important operation in the work ; this 
 consists in Sublimation, which is nothing else, according to Geber 
 than the elevation of dry matter, by means of fire, with adhesion 
 to its proper vessel. 
 
 He who desires to attain to the understanding of the Grand 
 Word and the possession of the Great Secret, ought carefully to 
 read the Hermetic philosophers, and will undoubtedly attain initia- 
 tion, as others have done ; but he must take, for the key of their 
 allegories, the single dogma of Hermes, contained in his table of 
 Emerald, and follow, to class his acquisitions of knowledge and 
 direct the operation, the order indicated in the Kabalistic alpha- 
 bet of the Tarot. 
 
 Raymond Lulle has said that, to make gold, we must first have 
 gold. Nothing is made out of nothing; we do not absolutely cre- 
 ate wealth ; we increase and multiply it. Let aspirants to science 
 well understand, then, that neither the. juggler's tricks nor miracles 
 are to be asked of the adept. The Hermetic science, like all the 
 real sciences, is mathematically demonstrable. Its results, even 
 material, are as rigorous as that of a correct equation.
 
 ~7 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 The Hermetic Gold is not only a true dogma, a light without 
 Shadow, a Truth without alloy of falsehood ; it is also a material 
 gold, real, pure, the most precious that can be found in the mines 
 of the earth. 
 
 But the living gold, the living sulphur, or the true fire of the 
 philosophers, is to be sought for in the house of Mercury. This fire 
 is fed by the air : to express its attractive and expansive power, no 
 better comparison can be used than that of the lightning, which 
 is at first only a dry and earthly exhalation, united to the moist 
 vapor, but which, by self-exhalation, takes a fiery nature, acts on 
 the humidity inherent in it, which it attracts to itself and trans- 
 mutes in its nature ; after which it precipitates itself rapidly 
 toward the earth, whither it is attracted by a fixed nature like unto 
 its own. 
 
 These words, in form enigmatic, but clear at bottom, distinctly 
 express what the philosophers mean by their Mercury fecundated 
 by Sulphur, and which becomes the Master and regenerator of the 
 Salt. It is the AZOTII, the universal magnetic force, the grand 
 magical agent, the Astral light, the light of life, fecundated by the 
 mental force, the intellectual energy, which they compare to sul- 
 phur, on account of its affinities with the Divine fire. 
 
 As to the Salt, it is Absolute Matter. Whatever is matter con- 
 tains salt; and all salt [nitre] may be converted into pure gold by 
 the combined action of Sulphur and Mercury, which sometimes 
 act so rapidly, that the transmutation may be effected in an instant, 
 in an hour, without fatigue to the operator, and almost without 
 expense. At other times, and according to the more refractory 
 temper of the atmospheric media, the operation requires several 
 days, several months, and sometimes even several years. 
 
 Two primary laws exist in nature, two essential laws, which 
 produce, by counterbalancing each other, the universal equilibrium 
 of things. These are fixedness and movement, analogous, in phi- 
 losophy, to Truth and Fiction, and, in Absolute Conception, to 
 Necessity and Liberty, which are the very essence of Deity. The 
 Hermetic philosophers gave the name fixed to everything ponder- 
 able, to everything that tends by its nature to central repose and 
 immobility ; they term volatile everything that more naturally and 
 more readily obeys the law of movement ; and they form their stone 
 by analysis, that is to say, by the volatilization of the Fixed, and 
 then bv synthesis, that is, by fixing the volatile, which they effect
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 7/9 
 
 by applying to the fixed, which they call their salt, the sulphurated 
 Mercury, or the light of life, directed and made omnipotent by a 
 Sovereign Will. Thus they master entire Nature, and their stone 
 is found wherever there is salt, which is the reason for saying that 
 no substance is foreign to the Great Work, and that even the most 
 despicable and apparently vile matters may be changed into gold, 
 which is true in this sense, that they all contain the original salt- 
 principle, represented in our emblems by the cubical stone. 
 
 To know how to extract from all matter the pure salt concealed 
 in it, is to have the Secret of the Stone. Wherefore this is a Sa- 
 line stone, which the Od or universal astral light decomposes or 
 re-compounds : it is single and manifold ; for it may be dissolved 
 like ordinary salt, and incorporated with other substances. 
 Obtained by analysis, we might term it the Universal Sublimate: 
 found by way of synthesis, it is the true panacea of the ancients, 
 for it cures all maladies of soul and body, and has been styled, 
 par-excellence, the medicine of all nature. When one, by absolute 
 initiation, comes to control the forces of the universal agent, he 
 always has this stone at his disposal, for its extraction is then a 
 simple and easy operation, very distinct from the metallic projec- 
 tion or realization. This stone, when in a state of sublimation, 
 must not be exposed to contact with the atmospheric air, which 
 might partially dissolve it and deprive it of its virtue ; nor could 
 its emanations be inhaled without danger. The Sage prefers to 
 preserve it in its natural envelopes, assured as he is of extracting 
 it by a single effort of his will, and a single application of the 
 Universal Agent to the envelopes, which the Kabalists call cortices, 
 the shells, bark, or integuments. 
 
 Hieroglyphically to express this law of prudence, they gave 
 their Mercury, personified in Egypt as Hermanubis, a dog's head : 
 and to their Sulphur, represented by the Baphomet of the Temple, 
 that goat's head which brought into such disrepute the occult 
 Mediaeval associations. 
 
 Let us listen for a few moments to the Alchemists themselves, 
 and endeavor to learn the hidden meaning of their mysterious 
 words. 
 
 The RITUAL of the Degree of Scottish Elder MASTER, and 
 Knight of Saint Andrew, being the fourth Degree of Ramsay, it is 
 said upon the title-page, or of the Reformed or Rectified Rite of 
 Dresden, has these passages :
 
 7O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 "O how great and glorious is the presence of the Almighty God 
 which gloriously shines from between the Cherubim ! 
 
 "How adorable and astonishing are the rays of that glorious 
 Light, that sends forth its bright and brilliant beams from the 
 Holy Ark of Alliance and Covenant ! 
 
 "Let us with the deepest veneration and devotion adore the 
 great Source of Life, that Glorious Spirit Who is the Most 
 Merciful and Beneficent Ruler of the Universe and of all the 
 creatures it contains ! 
 
 'The secret knowledge of the Grand Scottish Master relates to 
 the combination and transmutation of different substances ; where- 
 of that you may obtain a clear idea and proper understanding, 
 you are to know that all matter and all material substances are 
 composed of combinations of three several substances, extracted 
 from the four elements, which three substances in combination 
 are, .^Q^., Salt, /\> Sulphur, and A , Spirit. The 
 
 first v of these ~t~ produces Solidi- *(~\ f ,,,\ ty, the second 
 Softness, and the third the Spiritual, vaporous particles. These 
 three compound substances work potently together; and therein 
 consists the true process for the transmutation of metals. 
 
 "To these three substances allude the three golden basins, in 
 the first of which was engraved the letter M.'., in the second, 
 the letter G.'., and in the third nothing. The first, M.'., is the 
 initial letter of the Hebrew word Malakh, which signifies Salt; and 
 the second, G.'., of the Hebrew word Geparaith, which signifies 
 Sulphur; and as there is no word in Hebrew to express the 
 vaporous and intangible Spirit, there is no letter in the third 
 basin. 
 
 "With these three principal substances you may effect the trans- 
 mutation of metals, which must be done by means of the five 
 points or rules of the Scottish Mastership. 
 
 "The first Master's point shows us the Brazen Sea, wherein 
 must always be rain-water; and out of this rain-water the 
 Scottish Masters extract the first substance, which is Salt ; which 
 salt must afterward undergo a ser en-fold manipulation and 
 purification, before it will be properly prepared. This seven- 
 fold purification is symbolized by the Seven Steps of Solomon's 
 Temple, which symbol is furnished us by the first point or rule of 
 the Scottish Masters. 
 
 "After preparing the first substance, you are to extract the
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 781 
 
 second, Sulphur, out of the purest gold, to which must then be 
 added the purified or celestial Salt. They are to be mixed as the 
 Art directs, and then placed in a vessel in the form of a SHIP, in 
 which it is to remain, as the Ark of Noah was afloat, one hundred 
 and fifty days, being brought to the first damp, warm degree of 
 fire, that it may putrefy and produce the mineral fermentation. 
 This is the second point or rule of the Scottish Masters." 
 
 If you reflect, my Brother, that it was impossible for any one to 
 imagine that either common salt or nitre could be extracted from 
 rain-water, or sulphur from pure gold, you will no doubt suspect 
 that some secret meaning was concealed in these words. 
 
 The Kabalah considers the immaterial part of man as threefold, 
 consisting of NEPHESCH, RUACH, and NESCHAMAH, Psyche, Spir- 
 it its, and Mens, or Soul, Spirit, and Intellect. There are Seven 
 Holy Palaces, Seven Heavens and Seven Thrones ; and Souls are 
 purified by ascending through Seven Spheres. A Ship, in Hebrew, 
 is Ani; and the same word means /, Me, or Myself. 
 
 The RITUAL continues : 
 
 "Multiplying the substance thus obtained, is the third operation, 
 which is done by adding to them the animate, volatile Spirit; 
 which is clone by means of the water of the Celestial Salt, as well 
 as by the Salt, which must daily be added to it very carefully, and 
 strictly observing to put neither too much nor too little ; inasmuch 
 as, if you add too much, you will destroy that growing and multi- 
 plying substance ; and if too little, it will be self-consumed and 
 destroyed, and shrink away, not having sufficient substantiality 
 for its preservation. This third point or rule of the Scottish 
 Masters gives us the emblem of the building of the Tower of 
 Babel, used by our Scottish Masters, because by irregularity an>l 
 want of due proportion and harmony that work was stopped ; and 
 the workmen could proceed no further. 
 
 "Next comes the fourth operation, represented by the Cubical 
 Stone, whose faces and angles are all equal. As soon as the work 
 is brought to the necessary point of multiplication, it is to be sub- 
 mitted to the third Degree of Fire, wherein it will receive the duo 
 proportion of the strength and substance of the metallic particles 
 of the Cubical Stone; and this is the fourth point or rule of the 
 Scottish Masters. 
 
 "Finally, we come to the fifth and last operation, indicated to 
 us by the Flaming Star. After the work has become a duly-propor-
 
 782 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 tioned substance, it is to be subjected to the fourth and strongest 
 Degree of fire, wherein it must remain three times twenty-seven 
 hours ; until it is thoroughly glowing, by which means it becomes 
 a bright and shining tincture, wherewith the lighter metals may 
 be changed, by the use of one part to a thousand of the metal. 
 Wherefore this Flaming Star shows us the fifth and last point of 
 the Scottish Masters. 
 
 "You should pass practically through the five points or rules 
 of the Master, and by the use of one part to a thousand, trans- 
 mute and ennoble metals. You may then in reality say that your 
 age is a thousand years." 
 
 In the oration of the Degree, the following hints are given as to 
 its true meaning : 
 
 "The three divisions of the Temple, the Outer Court, Sanctuary, 
 and Holy of Holies, signify the three Principles of our Holy Order, 
 which direct to the knowledge of morality, and teach those most 
 practical virtues that ought to be practised by mankind. Therefore 
 the Seven Steps which lead up to the Outer Court of the Temple, 
 are the emblem of the Seven-fold Light which we need to possess, 
 before we can arrive at the height of knowledge, in which consist 
 the ultimate limits of our order. 
 
 "In the Brazen Sea we are symbolically to purify ourselves 
 from all pollutions, all faults and wrongful actions, as well those 
 committed through error of judgment and mistaken opinion, as 
 those intentionally done ; inasmuch as they equally prevent us 
 from arriving at the knowledge of True Wisdom. We must thor- 
 oughly cleanse and purify our hearts to their inmost recesses, before 
 we can of right contemplate that Flaming Star, which is the 
 emblem of the Divine and Glorious Shekinah, or presence of God ; 
 before we may dare approach the Throne of Supreme Wisdom." 
 
 In the Degree of The True Mason \Le J"rai Mafon], styled in 
 the title-page of its Ritual the 23d Degree of Masonry, or the 
 12th of the 5th class, the Tracing-board displays a luminous Tri- 
 angle, with a great Yod in the centre. 
 
 "The Triangle," says the Ritual, "represents one God in three 
 Persons ; and the great Yod is the initial letter of the last word. 
 
 "The Dark Circle represents the Chaos, which in the beginning 
 God created. 
 
 "The Cross within the Circle, the Light by means whereof He 
 developed the Chaos.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 783 
 
 "The Square, the four Elements into which ifc was resolved. 
 
 "The Triangle, again, the three Principles [Salt, Sulphur, and 
 Mercury], which the intermingling of the elements produced. 
 
 "God creates; Nature produces; Art multiplies. God created 
 Chaos ; Nature produced, it ; God, Nature, and Art, have per- 
 fected it. 
 
 "The Altar of Perfumes indicates the Fire that is to be applied 
 to Nature. The two toivers are the two furnaces, moist and dry, 
 in which it is to be worked. The bowl is the mould of oak that 
 is to inclose the philosophal egg. 
 
 "The two figures surmounted by a Cross are the two vases, 
 Nature and Art, in which is to be consummated the double mar- 
 riage of the white woman with the red Servitor, from which mar- 
 riage will spring a most Potent King. 
 
 "Chaos means universal matter, formless, but susceptible of all 
 forms. Form is the Light inclosed in the seeds of all species ; and 
 its home is in the Universal Spirit. 
 
 "To work on universal matter, use the internal and external 
 fire : the four elements result, the Principia Principiornm and 
 Inincdiata; Fire, Air, Water, Earth. There are four qualities of 
 these elements the warm and dry, the cold and moist. Two ap- 
 pertain to each element : The dry and cold, to the Earth ; the cold 
 and moist, to Water ; the moist and warm, to the Air ; and the 
 warm and dry, to Fire : whereby the Fire connects with the Earth : 
 all the elements, as Hermes said, moving in circles. 
 
 "From the mixture of the four Elements and of their four 
 qualities, result the three Principles, Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt. 
 These are the philosophical, not the vulgar. 
 
 "The philosophical Mercury is a Water and SPIRIT, which dis- 
 solves and sublimates the Sun; the philosophical Sulphur, a fire 
 and a Son., which mollifies and colors it; the philosophical Salt, 
 an J'.artli and a HODY, which coagulates and fixes it; and the 
 whole is done in the bosom of the Air. 
 
 "From these three Principles result the four Elements dupli- 
 cated, or the Grand Elements, Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, and Glass; 
 two of which are volatile. the Water [Mercury] and the Air 
 | Sulphur), which is oil: for all substances liquid in their nature 
 avoid fire, which takes from the one [water] and burns the other 
 (oil] ; but the other two are dry and solid, to wit, the Salt, wherein 
 Fire is contained, and the pure Earth, which is the Glafs; on
 
 784 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 both of which the Fire has no other action than to melt and 
 refine them, unless one makes use of the liquid alkali; for, just as 
 each element consists of two qualities, so these great duplicated 
 Elements partake, each of two of the simple elements, or, more 
 properly speaking, of all the four, according to the greater or less 
 degree of each, the Mercury partaking more of the Water, to 
 which it is assigned ; the Oil or Sulphur, more of the Air ; the 
 Salt, of the Fire ; and the Glass, of the Earth ; which is found, 
 pure and clear, in the centre of all the elementary composites, 
 and is the last to disengage itself from the others. 
 
 "The four Elements and three Principles reside in all the Com- 
 pounds, Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral ; but more potently in 
 some than in others. 
 
 "The Fire gives them Movement ; the Air, Sensation ; the 
 Water, Nutriment ; and the Earth, Subsistence. 
 
 "The four duplicated Elements engender THE STONE, if one is 
 careful enough to supply them with the proper quantity of fire, 
 and to combine them according to their natural weight. Ten 
 parts of Air make one of Water ; ten of Water, one of Earth ; and 
 ten of Earth, one of Fire ; the whole by the Active Symbol of the 
 one, and the Passive Symbol of the other, whereby the conversion 
 of the Elements is effected." 
 
 The Allusion of the Ritual, here, is obviously to the four Worlds 
 of the Kabalah. The ten Sephiroth of the world Briah proceed 
 from Malakoth, the last of the ten Emanations of the world Azi- 
 luth ; the ten Sephiroth of the world Yezirah, from Malakoth of 
 Briah ; and the ten of the world Asiah, from Malakoth of Yezirah. 
 The Pass-word of the Degree is given as Metralon, which is a cor- 
 ruption of METATRON, the Cherub, who and Sandalphon are in 
 the Kabalah the Chief of the Angels. The Active and Passive 
 Symbols are the Male and Female. 
 
 The Ritual continues : 
 
 "It is thereby evident that, in the Great Work, we must employ 
 ten parts of philosophical Mercury to one of Sun or Moon. 
 
 "This is attained by Solution and Coagulation. These words 
 mean that we must dissolve the body and coagulate the spirit ; 
 which operations are effected by the moist and dry bath. 
 
 "Of colors, black is the Earth ; zvhitc, the Water; blue, the Air : 
 and red , the Fire ; wherein also are involved very great secrets 
 and mysteries.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 785 
 
 "The apparatus employed in The Croat Work' consists of the 
 Moist bath, the Dry bath, the Vases of Xature and Art, the bowl 
 of oak, Intum sapicntia, the Seal of Hermes, the tube, the phys- 
 ical lamp, and the iron rod. 
 
 "The work is perfected in seventeen philosophical months, ac- 
 cording to the mixture of ingredients. The benefits reaped from 
 it are of two kinds one affecting the soul, and the other the body. 
 Tlic former consist in knowing God, Nature, and oitrsclf ; and 
 those to the body are wealth and health. 
 
 "The Initiate traverses Heaven and Earth. Heaven is the 
 World manifest to the Intelligence, subdivided into Paradise and 
 Hell ; Earth is the World manifest to the Senses, also subdivided 
 into the Celestial and that of the Elements. 
 
 "There are Sciences specially connected with each of these. 
 The one is ordinary and common; the other, mystic and secret. 
 The World cognizable by the Intellect has the Hermetic Theology 
 and the Kabalah ; the Celestial Astrology ; and that of the Ele- 
 ments, Chemistry, which by its decompositions and separations, 
 effected by fire, reveals all the most hidden secrets of Nature, in 
 the three kinds of Compound Substances. This last science is 
 styled 'Hermetic,' or 'The operating of the Great Work.' ' 
 
 The Ritual of the Degree of Kabalistic and Hermetic Rose ^> 
 has these passages : 
 
 "The true Philosophy, known and practised by Solomon, is the 
 basis on which Masonry is founded. 
 
 "Our Ancient Masons have concealed from us the most im- 
 portant point of this Divine Art, under hieroglyphical characters, 
 which are but enigmas and parables, to all the Senseless, the 
 Wicked, and the Ambitious. 
 
 "He will be supremely fortunate, who shall, by arduous labor, 
 discover this sacred place of deposite, wherein all naked the sub- 
 lime Truth is hidden ; for he may be assured that he has found 
 the True Light, the True Felicity, the True Heavenly Good. Then 
 may it truly be said that he is one of the True Elect ; for it is the 
 only real and most Sublime Science of all those to which a mortal 
 can aspire: his days will be prolonged, and his soul freed of all 
 vices and corruption; into which" (it is added, to mislead, as if 
 from fear too much would be disclosed), "the human race is often 
 led by indigence"
 
 786 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 As the symbolism of the Hall and the language of the ritual 
 mutually explain each other, it should be noted here, that in this 
 Degree the columns of the hall, 12 in number, are white variegated 
 with black and red. The hangings are black, and over that crimson. 
 ' Over the throne is a great Eagle, in gold, -on a black ground. 
 In the centre of the Canopy the Blazing Star in gold, with the 
 letter Yod in its centre. On the right and left of the throne are 
 the Sun in gold and the Moon in silver. The throne is ascended 
 to by three Steps. The hall and ante-room are each lighted by 
 ten lights, and a single one at the entrance. The colors, black, 
 white, and crimson appear in the clothing; and the Key and 
 Balance are among the symbols. 
 
 The duty of the Second Grand Prior, says the Ritual, is "to 
 see if the Chapter is hermetically sealed ; whether the materials 
 are ready, and the elements ; whether the Black gives place to the 
 White, and the White to the Red." 
 
 "Be laborious," it says, "like the Star, and procure the light of 
 the Sages, and hide yourself from the Stupid Profane and the 
 Ambitious, and be like the Owl, which sees only by night, and 
 hides itself from treacherous curiosity." 
 
 "The Sun, on entering each of his houses, should be received 
 there by the four elements, which you must be careful to invite 
 to accompany you, that they may aid you in your undertaking ; 
 for without them the House would be melancholy : wherefore you 
 will give him to feast upon the four elements. 
 
 "When he shall have visited his twelve houses, and seen you 
 attentive there to receive him, you will become one of his chiefest 
 favorites, and he will allow you to share all his gifts. Matter 
 will then no longer have power over you ; you will, so to say, 
 be no longer a dweller on the earth ; but after certain periods 
 you will give back to it a body which is its own, to take in its 
 stead one altogether Spiritual. Matter is then deemed to be dead 
 to the world. 
 
 "Therefore it must be re-vivified, and made to be born again 
 from its ashes, which you will effect by virtue of the vegetation of 
 the Tree of Life, represented to us by the branch of acacia. 
 Whoever shall learn to comprehend and execute this great work, 
 will know great things, say the Sages of the work ; but when- 
 ever you depart from the centre of the Square and the Compass 
 you will no longer be able to work with success.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 787 
 
 "Another Jewel is necessary for yon, and in certain undertak- 
 ings cannot be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kaba- 
 listic pantacle . . . This carries with it the power of commanding 
 the spi.'its of the elements. It is necessary for you to know how 
 to use it, and that you will learn by perseverance if you are* a 
 lover of the science of our predecessors the Sages. 
 
 "A great Black Eagle, the King of Birds. He alone it is that 
 can fire the Sun, material in its nature, that has no form, and yet 
 by its form develops color. The black is a complete harbinger 
 of the work : it changes color and assumes a natural form, out 
 whereof will emerge a brilliant Sun. 
 
 "The birth of the Sun is always announced by its Star, repre- 
 sented by the Blazing Star, which you will know by its fiery 
 color ; and it is followed in its course by the silvery lustre of the 
 Moon. 
 
 "A rough Ashlar is the shapeless stone which is to be prepared 
 in order to commence the philosophical work ; and to be developed, 
 in order to change its form from triangular to cubic, after the 
 separation from it of its Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, by the aid of 
 the Square, Level, Plumb, and Balance, and all the other Masonic 
 implements u'hich u'c use symbolically. 
 
 "Here we put them to philosophical use, to constitute a well- 
 proportioned edifice, through which you are to make pass the 
 crude material, analogous to a candidate commencing his initia- 
 tion into our Mysteries. When we build we must observe all the 
 rules and proportions ; for otherwise the Spirit of Life cannot 
 lodge therein. So you will build the great tower, in which is to 
 burn the fire of the Sages, or, in other words, the fire of Heaven ; 
 as also the Sea of the Sages, in which the Sun and Moon are to 
 bathe. That is the basin of Purification, in which will be the 
 water of Cekstial Grace, water that doth not soil the hands, but 
 purifies all leprous bodies. 
 
 "Let us labor to instruct our Brother, to the end that by his 
 toils he may succeed in discovering the principle of life contained 
 in the profundity of matter, and known by the name of Alka- 
 hest. 
 
 "The most potent of the names of Deity is ADONAI. Its power 
 is to put the Universe in movement : and the Knights who shall 
 be fortunate enough to possess it, with weight and measure, shall 
 have at their disposition all the potences that inhabit it, the El/"
 
 788 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ments, and the cognizance of all the virtues and sciences that man 
 is capable of knowing. By its power they would succeed in dis- 
 covering the primary metai of the Sun, which holds within itself 
 the Principle of the germ, and wherewith we can put in alliance 
 the six other metals, each of which contains the principles and 
 primitive seed of the grand philosophical work. 
 
 "The six other nietals are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mer- 
 cury, and Luna ; vulgarly known as Lead, Tin, Iron, Copper, 
 Quicksilver, and Silver. Gold is not included ; because it is not in 
 its nature a metal. It is all Spirit and incorruptible ; wherefore it 
 is the emblem of the Sun, which presides over the Light. 
 
 "The vivifying Spirit, called Alkahest, has in itself the genera- 
 tive virtue of producing the triangular Cubical Stone, and contains 
 in itself all the virtues to render men happy in this w r orld and in 
 that to come. To arrive at the composition of that Alkahest, we 
 begin by laboring at the science of the union of the four Elements 
 which are to be educed from the three Kingdoms of Nature, Min- 
 eral, Vegetable, and Animal ; the rule, measure, weight, and equi- 
 poise whereof have each their key. We then employ in one work 
 the animals, vegetables, and minerals, each in his season, which 
 make the space of the Houses of the Sun, where they have all the 
 virtues required. 
 
 "Something from each of the three Kingdoms of Nature is 
 assigned to each Celestial House, to the end that everything may 
 be done in accordance with sound philosophical rules ; and that 
 everything may be thoroughly purified in its proper time and place 
 in order to be presented at the wedding-table of the Spouse and 
 the six virgins who hold the mystic shovel, without a common fire, 
 but with an elementary fire, that comes primarily by attraction, 
 and by digestion in the philosophical bed lighted by the four 
 elements. 
 
 "At the banquet of the Spouses, the viands, being thoroughly 
 purified, are served in Salt, Sulphur, Spirit, and Oil ; a sufficient 
 quantity thereof is taken every month, and therewith is com- 
 pounded, by means of the Balance of Solomon, the Alkahest, tc 
 serve the Spouses, when they are laid on the nuptial bed. there to 
 engender their embryo, producing for the human race immense 
 treasures, that will last as long as the world endures. 
 
 "Few are capable of engaging in this great work. Only the 
 true Free-Masons may of right aspire to it ; and even of them,
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, 
 
 PRINCE ADEPT. 
 
 7*9 
 
 very few are worthy to attain it, because most of them are ignorant 
 of the Clavicules and their contents, and of the 1'antacle of Solo- 
 mon, which teaches how to labor at the great work. 
 
 "The weight raised by Solomon with his balance was I, 2, 3, 4, 
 5 ; which contains 25 times unity, 2 multiplied by 2 ; 3 multiplied 
 by 3; 4 multiplied by 4; 5 multiplied by 5, and once 9; these 
 numbers thus involving the squares of 5 and 2, the cube of 2, the 
 square of the square of 2, and the square of 3." 
 
 Thus far the Ritual, in the numbers mentioned by it, is an allu- 
 sion to the 47th problem of Euclid, a symbol of Blue Masonry, 
 entirely out of place there, and its meaning unknown. The base 
 of the right-angled triangle being 3, and the perpendicular 4, the 
 hypothenuse is 5., by the rule that the sum of the squares of the two 
 former equals the square of the latter, 3 X 3 being 9 ; and 4X4, 
 16; and 9 -|- 16 being 25, the square of 5. The triangle contains 
 in its sides the numbers i, 2, and 3. The Perpendicular is the 
 Male ; the Base, the Female ; the Hypothenuse, the product of 
 the two. 
 
 To fix the volatile, in the Hermetic language, means to mate- 
 rialize the spirit ; to volatilize the fixed is to spiritualize matter. 
 To separate the subtile from the gross, in the first operation,
 
 790 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 which is wholly internal, is to free our soul from all prejudice 
 and all vice. This is effected by the use of the philosophical 
 SALT, that is to say, of WISDOM ; of MERCURY, that is to say, of 
 personal aptitude and labor; and of SULPHUR, which represents 
 the vital energy, and the ardor of the will. Thus we succeed in 
 changing into spiritual gold such things even as are of least value, 
 and even the foul things of the earth. 
 
 It is in this sense we are to understand the parables of the Her- 
 metic philosophers and the prophets of Alchemy ; but in their 
 works, as in the Great Work, we must skillfully separate the sub- 
 tile from the gross, the mystic from the positive, allegory from 
 theory. If you would read them with pleasure and understand- 
 ingly, you must first understand them allegorically in their entirety 
 and then descend from allegories to realities by way of the corre- 
 spondences or analogies indicated in the single dogma : 
 
 "What is above is like what is below ; and what is below is like 
 what is above." 
 
 The treatise "Minerva Mnndi," attributed to Hermes Tris- 
 megistus, contains, under the most poetical and profound allego- 
 ries, the dogma of the self-creation of beings, or of the law of 
 creation that results from the accord of two forces, these which 
 the Alchemists called the Fixed and the Volatile, and which are, 
 .in the Absolute, Necessity and Liberty. 
 
 When the Masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time 
 and expense to accomplish the works of Science, when they affirm, 
 above all, that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak 
 of the Great and Single furnace, which all can use, which is 
 within the reach of all the world, and which men possess with- 
 out knowing it, they allude to the philosophical and moral Alchemy. 
 In fact, a strong and determined will can, in a little while, attain 
 complete independence; and we all possess that chemical instru- 
 ment, the great and single athanor or furnace, which serve^ to sep- 
 arate the subtile from the gross, and the fixed from the volatile. 
 This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the math- 
 ematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem 
 of the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of 
 human intelligence. 
 
 The end and perfection of the Great Work is expressed, in 
 alchemy, by a triangle surmounted by a cross : and the letter Tau, 
 n, the last of the Sacred alphabet, has the same meaning.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 79! 
 
 The "elementary fire," that comes primarily by attraction, is 
 evidently Electricity or the Electric Force, primarily developed 
 as magnetism, and in which is perhaps the secret of life or the 
 vital force. 
 
 Paracelsus, the great Reformer in medicine, discovered magnet- 
 ism long before Mesmer, and pushed to its last consequences this 
 luminous discovery, or rather this initiation into the magic of the 
 ancients, who understood the grand magical agent better than we 
 do, and did not regard the Astral Light, Azoth, the universal mag- 
 netism of the Sages, as an animal and particular fluid, emanating 
 only from certain special beings. 
 
 The four Elements, the four symbolic animals, and the re-dupli- 
 cated Principles correspond with each other, and are thus arranged 
 by the Hermetic Masons : 
 
 AZOTH. 
 
 The Eagle. 
 AIR. 
 
 M H 
 
 The Air and Earth represent the Male Principle ; and the Fire 
 and \Yater belong to the Female Principle. 
 
 To these four forms correspond the four following philosophical 
 ideas. 
 
 Spirit: Matter: Movement: Repose. 
 
 Alchemy reduces these four things to three : 
 
 The Absolute : the Fixed : the Volatile. 
 
 Reason : Necessity : Liberty : are the synonyms of these 
 three words. 
 
 As all the great Mysteries of God and the Universe are thus 
 hidden in the Ternary, it everywhere appears in Masonry and in 
 the Hermetic Philosophy under its mask of Alchemy. It even
 
 792 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 appears where Masons do not suspect it ; to teach the doctrine of 
 the equilibrium of Contraries, and the resultant Harmony. 
 
 The double triangle of Solomon is explained by Saint John in 
 a remarkable manner : There are, he says, three witnesses in 
 Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit ; and three 
 witnesses on earth, the breath, water, and blood. He thus agrees 
 with the Masters of the Hermetic Philosophy, who give to their 
 Sulphur the name of Ether, to their Mercury the name of philo- 
 sophical water, to their Salt that of blood of the dragon, or men- 
 struum of the earth. The blood, or Salt, corresponds by opposi- 
 tion with the Father ; the Azothic, or Mercurial water, with the 
 Word, or Logos ; and the breath, with the Holy Spirit. But the 
 things of High Symbolism can be well understood only by the 
 true children of Science. 
 
 Alchemy has its Symbolic Triad of Salt, Sulphur, and Mer- 
 cury, man consisting, according to the Hermetic philosophers, 
 of Body, Soul, and Spirit. The Dove, the Raven, and the Phoenix 
 are striking Symbols of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, and 
 the Beauty resulting from the equilibrium of the two. 
 
 If you would understand the true secrets of Alchemy, you 
 must study the works of the Masters with patience and assiduity. 
 Every word is often an enigma ; and to him who reads in haste, 
 the whole will seem absurd. Even when they seem to teach that 
 the Great Work is the purification of the Soul, and so to deal only 
 with morals, they most conceal their meaning, and deceive all but 
 the Initiates. 
 
 Yod [c or "*] is termed in the Kabalah the opife.v, zvorkman of 
 the Deity. It is, says the Porta C&lorum, single and primal, like 
 one, wnich is the first among numbers; and like a point, the first 
 before all bodies. Moved lengthwise, it produces a line, which is 
 Vau, and this moved sidewise produces a superficies, which is Da- 
 leth. Thus Yau [l] becomes Daleth [l]; for movement tends 
 from right to left ; and all communication is from above to below. 
 The plenitude of Yod, that is, the name of this letter, spelled, is 
 TV, Y-O-D. Vau [which represents 6] and Daleth [4] are 10 ; 
 like Yod, their principle. 
 
 Yod, says the Siphra de Zeniutha, is the Symbol of Wisdom 
 and of the Father. 
 
 The Principle called Father, says the Idra Siita, is compre- 
 hended in Yod, which flows downward from the Holy influence
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRIXCE ADEPT. 793 
 
 wherefore Yod is the most occult of all the letters ; for he is the 
 beginning and end of all things. The Supernal Wisdom is Yod; 
 and all things are included in Yod, who is therefore called Father 
 of Fathers, or the Generator of the Universal. The Principle of all 
 things is called the House of all things : wherefore Yfxl is the begin- 
 ning and end of all things; as it is written: "Thou hast made all 
 things in Wisdom." For The All is termed Wisdom ; and in it The 
 All is contained ; and the summary of all things is the Holy Xame. 
 Yod, says the Siplirc de Zcniittha, signifying the Father, ap- 
 proaches the letter He, which is the Mother; and by the combina- 
 tion of these two is denoted that luminous influence wherewith 
 Binah is imbued by the Supernal Wisdom. 
 
 In the name in" 1 , says the same, are included the Father, Mother, 
 and Microprosopos, their issue. He, impregnated by Vau, pro- 
 duced Microprosopos, or Seir Anpin. 
 
 Wisdom, Hakemah, is the Principle of all things : it is the 
 Father of Fathers, and in it are the beginning and end of all 
 things. Microprosopos, the second Universal, is the issue of 
 Wisdom, the Father, and Binah, the Mother, and is composed of 
 the six Numerations, Geburah, Gedulah, and Tephareth, Netsach, 
 Hod, and Yesod ; is represented under the form of a man, and said 
 to have at first occupied the place afterward filled by the world 
 Briah [of Creation], but afterward to have been raised to the 
 Aziluthic sphere, and received Wisdom, Intelligence, and Cogni- 
 tion [Daath] from the Supernal Wisdom and Intellectuality. 
 
 Yau, in the tri-literal word, denotes these six members of Mi- 
 croprosopos. For this latter is formed after the fashion of Ma- 
 croprosopos, but without Kether, the will, which remains in the 
 first prototype or Universal ; though invested with a portion of 
 the Divine Intellectual Power and Capacity. The first Universal 
 does not use the first person, and is called in the third person, N'~, 
 HUA, HE : but the second Universal speaks in the first person, 
 using- the word ^S, AXI, I. 
 
 The IDRA RAP.PA. or Synodus Magna, one of the books of the 
 Sohar, says : 
 
 The Eldest of the Fldest [the Absolute Deity] is in Microproso- 
 pos. All things arc one: all was. all is, all will be: there neither 
 will be, nor is. nor has been, mutation. 
 
 But He conformed Himself, by the formings, into a form that 
 contains all forms, in a form which comprehends all genera.
 
 794 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 This form is in the likeness of His form ; and is not that form 
 but its analogue : wherefore the human form is the form of all 
 above and below, which are included in it : and because it em- 
 braces all above and below. The Most Holy so took form, and so 
 Microprosopos was configured. All things are equally one, in each 
 of the two Universals ; but in the second His ways are divided, 
 and judgment is on our side, and on the side that looks toward 
 us, also, they differ. 
 
 These Secrets are made known only to the reapers in the Holy 
 Field. 
 
 The Most Holy Ancient is not called ATHAH, Thou, but HUA, 
 He : but in Microprosopos, where is the beginning of things, He 
 has the name ATHAH, and also AB, Father. From Him is the 
 beginning, and He is called Thou, and is the Father of Fathers. 
 He issues from the Non-Ens ; and therefore is beyond cogni- 
 tion. 
 
 Wisdom is the Principle of the Universe, and from it thirty-two 
 ways diverge : and in them the law is contained, in twenty-two 
 letters and ten words. Wisdom is the Father of Fathers, and in 
 this Wisdom is found the Beginning and the End : wherefore there 
 is a wisdom in each Universal, one above, the other below. 
 
 The Commentary of Rabbi Chajun Vital, on the Siphra de 
 Zenintha, says : At the beginning of emanation, Microprosopos 
 issued from the Father, and was intermingled with the Mother, 
 under the mysteries of the letter H [He], resolved in VI, that is, 
 Daleth and Vau ; by which Yau is denoted Microprosopos : because 
 Vau is six, and he is constituted of the six parts that follow Hake- 
 mah and Binah. Arid, according to this conception, the Father 
 is called Father of Fathers, because from Him these Fathers pro- 
 ceed, Benignity, Severity, and Beauty. Microprosopos was then 
 like the letter Van in the letter He, because He had no head ; 
 but when He was now born, three brains were constituted for 
 Him, by the flow of Divine Light from above. 
 
 And as the world of restitution [after the vessels of the Sephi- 
 roth below Binah had been broken, that from the fragments evil 
 might be created] is instituted after the fashion of the Balance, 
 so also is it formed throughout in the human form. But Mala- 
 koth, Regnum, is a complete and separate person, behind Micro- 
 prosopos, and in conjunction with him, and the two are called 
 man.
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 
 
 The first world [of Inanity] could not continue and did not 
 subsist, because it had no human conformation nor the system of 
 the Balance, the Sephiroth being points, one below the other. 
 The first Adam [Microprosopos, as distinguished from Macropro- 
 sopos, the first Occult Adam] was the beginning, wherein the ten 
 Numerations proceeded forth from potence into act. 
 
 Microprosopos is the second garment or interposed medium, 
 with respect to the Elder Most Holy, who is the name Tctragram- 
 maton ; and he is called Alohim ; because the former is Absolute 
 Commiseration ; while in Macroprosopos his lights have the nature 
 of Severities, with respect to the elder Universal ; though they are 
 Commiseration, with respect to the lights of Malakoth and the 
 three lower worlds. 
 
 All the conformations of Macroprosopos come from the first 
 Adam ; who, to interpose a second covering, caused a single spark- 
 to issue from the sphere of Severity, of whose five letters is gener- 
 ated the name Alohim. With this issued from the brain a most 
 subtle air, which takes its place on the right hand, while the spark 
 of fire is on the left. Thus the white and red do not intermix, that 
 is, the Air and Fire, which are Mercy and Judgment. 
 
 Microprosopos is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, 
 his Severities being the Evil. 
 
 REGNUM, to which is given the name of Word of The Lord, 
 superinvests Heaven, as the six members of the Degree Tephareth 
 are called, and these become and are constituted by that superior 
 vestiture. For every conformation and constitution is effected 
 by means of veiling, because occultation here is the same as mani- 
 festation, the excess of light being veiled, so that, diminished in 
 intensity and degree, it may be received by those below. Those 
 six members conceived of as contained in Btnah, are said to be in 
 the World of Creation ; as in Tephareth, in that of Formation : and 
 as in Malakoth, in that of Fabrication. 
 
 Before the institution of equilibrium, face was not toward face : 
 Microprosopos and his wife issuing forth back to back, and yet 
 cohering. So above ; before the prior Adam was conformed into 
 male and female, and the state of equilibrium established, the 
 Father and Mother were not face to face. For the Father denotes 
 the most perfect Love; and the Mother the most perfect Rigor. 
 And the seven supernal sons who proceeded from her. from Binah, 
 who brought forth seven, were all most perfect rigors, having no
 
 796 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 connection with a root in the Most Holy Ancient; that is, they 
 were all dead, destroyed, shattered ; but they were placed in equi- 
 librium, in the equipoise of the Occult Wisdom, when it was con- 
 formed into male and female, Rigor and Love, and they were then 
 restored, and there was given them a root above. 
 
 The Father is Love and Mercy, and with a pure and subtle Aur 
 or Benignity impregnates the Mother, who is Rigor and Severity 
 of Judgments ; and the product is the brain of Microprosopos. 
 
 It was determined, says the Introduction to the Book Sohar, by 
 the Deity, to create Good and Evil in the world, according to what 
 is said in Isaiah, "ivho makes the Light and creates the Evil" But 
 the Evil was at first occult, and could not be generated and brought 
 forth, except by the sinning of the First Adam. Wherefore He 
 determined that the numerations first emanated, from Benignity 
 downward, should be destroyed and shattered by the excessive 
 influx of His Light; His intention being to create of them the 
 worlds of Evils. But the first three were to remain and subsist, 
 that among the fragments should be neither Will, Intellectual 
 Tower, nor the Capacity of Intellection of the Divinity. The last 
 reven numerations were points, like the first three, each subsisting 
 independently, unsustained by companionship ; which was the 
 cause of their dying and being shattered. 
 
 ' There was then no Love between them, but only a two-fold 
 Fear ; Wisdom, for example, fearing lest it should ascend again to 
 its Source in Kether ; and also lest it should descend into Binah. 
 Hence there was no union between any two, except Hakemah and 
 Binah, and this imperfect, with averted faces. This is the mean- 
 ing of the saying, that the world was created by Judgment, which 
 is fear. And so that world could not subsist, and the Seven Kings 
 were dethroned, until the attribute of Compassion was adjoined 
 to it, and then restoration took place. Thence came Love and 
 I'nion, and six of the parts were united into one person ; for Love 
 is the attribute of Compassion or Mercy. 
 
 Binah produced the Seven Kings, not successively, but all to- 
 gether. The Seventh is Regnum, called a stone, the corner-stone, 
 because on it are builded the palaces of the three lower worlds. 
 
 The first six were shattered into fragments ; but Regnum was 
 crushed into a formless mass, lest the malignant demons created 
 from the fragments of the others should receive bodies from it, 
 since from it came bodies and vitality [Nephesch].
 
 KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT. 797 
 
 From the fragments of the vessels came all Kvils ; judgments, 
 turbid waters, impurities, the Serpent, and Adam Belial [Baal]. 
 But their internal light re-ascended to Binah, and then flowed 
 down again into the. worlds Briah and Yezirah, there to form 
 vestiges of the Seven Numerations. The Sparks of the great In- 
 fluence of the shattered vases descending into the four spiritual 
 elements, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, and thence into the inan- 
 imate, vegetable, living, and speaking kingdoms, became Souls. 
 
 Selecting the suitable from the unsuitable lights, and separat- 
 ing the good from the evil, the Deity first restored the universal- 
 ity of the Seven Kings of the World Aziluth, and afterward the 
 three other Worlds. 
 
 And though in them were both good and evil, still this evil 
 did not develop itself in act, since the Severities remained, though 
 mitigated ; some portion of them being necessary to prevent the 
 fragments of the integuments from ascending. These were also 
 left, because connection of two is necessary to generation. And 
 this necessity for the existence of Severity is the mystery of the 
 pleasure and warmth of the generative appetite ; and thence Love 
 between husband and wife. 
 
 If the Deity, says the Introduction, had not created worlds and 
 then destroyed them, there could have been no evil in the world, 
 but all things must have been good. There would have been 
 neither reward nor punishment in the world. There would have 
 been no merit in righteousness, for the Good is known by the evil, 
 nor would there have been fruitfulness or multiplication in the 
 world. If all carnal concupiscence were enchained for three days 
 in the mouth of the great abyss, the egg of one of the days would 
 be wanting to the sick man. In time to come it will be called 
 Laban [i;*? cuhite\, because it will be whitened of its impurity, 
 and will return to the realm Israel, and they will pray the Lord 
 to give them the appetite of carnal concupiscence, for the beget- 
 ting of children. 
 
 The intention of God was, when He created the world, that His 
 creatures should recognize His existence. Therefore He created 
 evils, to afflict them withal when they should sin, and Light and 
 Blessing to reward the just. And therefore man necessarily has 
 free-will and election, since Good and'Evil are in the World. 
 
 And these kings died, says the Commentary, because the con- 
 dition of equilibrium did not yet exist, nor was Adam Kadmon
 
 798 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 formed male and female. They were not in contact with what 
 was alive : nor had any root in Adam Kadmon ; nor was Wisdom 
 which outflowed from Him, their root, nor did they connect with 
 it. For all these were pure mercies and most simple Love ; but 
 those were rigorous judgments. Whence face looked not toward 
 face; nor the Father toward the Mother, because from her pro- 
 ceeded judgments. Nor Macroprosopos toward Microprosopos. 
 And Regnum, the last numeration, was empty and inane. It has 
 nothing of itself; and, as it were, was nothing, receiving nothing 
 from them. Its need was, to receive Love from the Male ; for it 
 is mere rigor and judgment ; and the Love and Rigor must tem- 
 per each other, to produce creation, and its multitudes above and 
 below. For it was made to be inhabited ; and when rigorous 
 judgments rule in it, it is inane because its processes cannot be 
 carried on. 
 
 Wherefore the Balance must needs be instituted, that there might 
 be a root above, so that judgments might be restored and tempered, 
 and live and not again die. And Seven Conformations descend ; 
 and all things become in equilibrium, and the needle of the Balance 
 is the root above. 
 
 In the world Yezirah, says the Pneumatica Kabalistica,* de- 
 notes Kether; H* 1 , Hakemah and Binah; and liT, Gedulah, Geburah, 
 and Tephareth ; and thus Yau is Beauty and Harmony. The 
 Man is Hakemah ; the Eagle, Binah ; the Lion, Gedulah ; and the 
 Ox, Geburah. And the mysterious circle is thus formed by the 
 Sohar and all the Kabalists : Michael and the face of the Lion 
 are on the South, and the right hand, with the letter \ Yod, and 
 Water ; Gabriel and the face of the Ox, on the Xorth. and left 
 hand, with the first n of the Tetragrammaton and Fire ; Uriel and 
 the face of the Eagle, on the East and forward, with 1 and Air; 
 and Raphael and the face of the Man, on the West, and backward 
 with the last H and Earth. In the same order, the four letters rep- 
 resent the four worlds. 
 
 Rabbi Schimeon Ben Jochai says that the four animals of the 
 Mysterious Chariot, whose wheels are Xetsach and Hod. are Gedu- 
 lah. whose face is the Lion's : Geburah. with that of the Ox ; 
 Tephareth, with that of the Eagle ; and Malakoth. with that of the 
 Man. 
 
 The Seven lower Sephiroth, says the sLsch Mesarcph, will rep- 
 resent Seven Metals: Gedulah and Geburah, Silver and Gold:
 
 KNIGHT OF Till-: SUN, OR I'KIXCE ADEPT. 79$ 
 
 Tephareth, Iron; Xctsach and Hod, Tin and Copper; Yesod, 
 Lead; and Malakoth will be the metallic Woman and Morn of the 
 Sages, the field wherein are to be sowed the Seeds of the Secret 
 Minerals, to wit, the Water of Gold ; but in these such mysteries 
 are concealed as no tongue can utter. 
 
 The word DEX, Amas, is composed of che initials of the three 
 Hebrew words that signify Air, Water, and Fire ; by which, say 
 the Kabalists, are denoted Benignity, Judicial Rigor, and Mercy 
 or Compassion mediating between them. 
 
 Malakoth, says the Apparatus, is called Haikal, Temple or 
 Palace, because it is the Palace of the Degree Tephareth, which 
 is concealed and contained in it, and Haikal denotes the place in 
 which all things are contained. 
 
 For the better understanding of the Kabalah, remember that 
 Kether, or the Crown, is treated of as a person, composed of the 
 ten Numerations, and as such termed Arik Anpin, or Macro- 
 prosopos : 
 
 That Hakemah is a person, and termed Abba, or Father: 
 
 That Binah is a person, and termed Mother, Imma: 
 
 That Tephareth, including all the Numerations from Khased 
 or Gedulah to Yesod, is a person, called Seir Anpin, or Micro- 
 prosopos. These Numerations are six in number, and are repre- 
 sented by the interlaced triangle, or the Seal of Solomon. 
 
 And Malakoth is a person, and called the wife of Micropro- 
 sopos. Vau represents the Beauty or Harmony, consisting of the 
 six parts which constitute Seir Anpin. 
 
 The wife, Malakoth, is said to be behind the husband, Seir, and 
 to have no other cognition of him. And this is thus explained : 
 That every cognizable object is to be known in two ways : a priori, 
 which is when it is known by means of its cause, or of itself ; or, 
 a posteriori when it is known by its effects. The most nearly per- 
 fect mode of cognition is, when the intellect knows the thing itself, 
 in itself, and through itself. But if it knows the thing by its simili- 
 tude or idea, or species separate from it, or by its effects and 
 operations, the cognition is much feebler and more imperfect. 
 And it is thus only that Regnum, the wife of Seir, knows her 
 husband, until face is turned to face, when they unite, and she 
 has the more nearly perfect knowledge. For then the Deity, as 
 limited and manifested in Seir and the Universe are one. 
 
 Yau is Teyhareth, considered as the Unitv in which ar<
 
 MORALS ANT> DOf.MA. 
 
 the six members, of which itself is one. Tephareth, Beauty, is 
 the column which supports the world, symbolized by the column 
 of the junior Warden in the Blue Lodges. The world was first 
 created by Judgment : and as it could not so subsist, Mercy was 
 conjoined with Judgment, and the Divine Mercies sustain the 
 Universe. 
 
 God, says the Idra Sitta, formed all things in the form of male 
 and female, since otherwise the continuance of things was im- 
 possible. The All-embracing Wisdom, issuing and shining from 
 the Most Holy Ancient, shines not otherwise than as male and 
 female. Wisdom as the Father, Intelligence the Mother, are in 
 equilibrium as male and female, and they are conjoined, and 
 one shines in the other. Then they generate, and are expanded in 
 the Truth. Then the two are the Perfection of all things, when 
 they are coupled ; and when the Son is in them, the summary of 
 all things is in one. 
 
 These things are intrusted only to the Holy Superiors, who have 
 entered and gone out and known the ways of the Most Holy 
 God, so as not to err in them, to the right hand or to the left. 
 For these things are hidden ; and the lofty Holinesses shine in 
 them, as light flows from the splendor of a lamp. 
 
 These things are committed only to those who have entered 
 and not withdrawn ; for he who has not done so had better never 
 have been born. 
 
 All things are comprehended in the letters Vau and He; and 
 all are one system ; and these are the letters, fi 3 T 2 H, Tabunah, 
 Intelligence.
 
 XXIX. 
 
 GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. 
 ANDREW. 
 
 A MIRACULOUS tradition, something like that connected with 
 the labarum of Constantine, hallows the Ancient Cross of St. 
 Andrew. Hungus, who in the ninth century reigned over the 
 Picts in Scotland, is said to have seen in a vision, on the night 
 before a battle, the Apostle Saint Andrew, who promised him the 
 victory; and for an assured token thereof, he told him that there 
 should appear over the Pictish host, in the air, such a fashioned 
 cross as he had suffered upon. Hungus, awakened, looking up at 
 the sky, saw the promised cross, as did all of both armies ; and 
 Hungus and the Picts, after rendering thanks to the Apostle for 
 their victory, and making their offerings with humble devotion, 
 vowed that from thenceforth, as well they as their posterity, in 
 time of war, would wear a cross of St. Andrew for their badge 
 and cognizance. 
 
 John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, says that this cross appeared to 
 Achaius, King of the Scots, and Hungus, King of the Picts, the 
 night before the battle was fought betwixt them and Athelstane, 
 King of England, as they were on their knees at prayer. 
 
 Every cross of Knighthood is a symbol of the nine qualities of 
 a Knight of St. Andrew of Scotland ; for every order of chivalry 
 required of its votaries the same virtues and the same excellencies. 
 
 Humility, Patience, and Self-denial are the three essential qual- 
 ities of a Knight of St. Andrew of Scotland. The Cross, sancti- 
 fied by the blood of the holy ones who have died upon it; the 
 801
 
 802 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Cross, which Jesus of Nazareth bore, fainting, along the streets of 
 Jerusalem and up to Calvary, upon which He cried, "Not My 
 will, O Father ! but Thine be done," is an unmistakable and elo- 
 quent symbol of these three virtues. He suffered upon it, because 
 He consorted with and taught the poor and lowly, and found His 
 disciples among the fishermen of Galilee and the despised publi- 
 cans. His life was one of Humility, Patience, and Self-denial. 
 
 The Hospitallers and Templars took upon themselves vows of 
 obedience, poverty, and chastity. The Lamb, which became the 
 device of the Seal of the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiery of the 
 Temple of Solomon, conveyed the same lessons of humility and 
 self-denial as the original device of two Knights riding a single 
 horse. The Grand Commander warned every candidate not to be 
 induced to enter the Order by a vain hope of enjoying earthly 
 pomp and splendor. He told him that he would have to endure 
 many things, sorely against his inclinations ; and that he would 
 be compelled to give up his own will, and submit entirely to that 
 of his superiors. ^ 
 
 The religious Houses of the Hospitallers, despoiled by Henry 
 the Eighth's worthy daughter, Elizabeth, because they would not 
 take the oath to maintain her supremacy, had been Alms-houses, 
 and Dispensaries, and Foundling-asyla, relieving the State of 
 many orphan and outcast children, and ministering to their neces- 
 sities. God's ravens in the wilderness, bread and flesh in the morn- 
 ing, bread and flesh in the evening. They had been Inns to the 
 wayfaring man, who heard from afar the sound of the Vesper-bell, 
 inviting him to repose and devotion at once, and who might sing 
 his matins with the Morning Star, and go on his way rejoicing. 
 And the Knights were no less distinguished by bravery in battle, 
 than by tenderness and zeal in their ministrations to the sick and 
 dyii:^. 
 
 The Knights of St. Andrew vowed to defend all orphans, maid- 
 ens, and \vidows of good family, and wherever they heard of mur- 
 derers, robbers, or masterful thieves who oppressed the people, to 
 bring them to the laws, to the best of their power. 
 
 "If fortune fail you," so ran the vows of Rouge-Croix, "in 
 clivers lands or countries wherever you go or ride that you find 
 any gentleman of name and arms, which hath lost goods, in wor- 
 ship and Knighthood, in the King's service, or in any other place 
 fif worship, and is fallen into poverty, YOU shall aid, and support,
 
 GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW. 803 
 
 and succor him, in that you may; and he ask of you your goods 
 to his sustenance, you shall give him part of such goods as God 
 hath sent you to your power, and as you may bear." 
 
 Thus CHARITY and GENEROSITY are even more essential quali- 
 ties of a true and gentle Knight, and have been so in all ages ; and 
 so also hath CLEMENCY. It is a mark of a noble nature to spare 
 the conquered. Valor is then best tempered, when it can turn 
 out a stern fortitude into the mild strains of pity, which never 
 shines more brightly than when she is clad in steel. A martial 
 man, compassionate, shall conquer both in peace and war ; and by 
 a twofold way, get victory with honor. The most famed men in 
 the world have had in them bofh courage and compassion. An 
 enemy reconciled hath a greater value than the long train of cap- 
 tives of a Roman triumph. 
 
 VIRTUE, TRUTH, and HONOR are the three MOST essential qual- 
 ities of a Knight of St. Andrew. "Ye shall love God above all 
 things, and be steadfast in the Faith," it was said to the Knights, 
 in their charge, ''and ye shall be true unto your Sovereign Lord, 
 and true to your word and promise. Also, ye shall sit in no place 
 where that any judgment should be given wrongfully against any 
 body, to your knowledge." 
 
 The law hath not power to strike the virtuous, nor can fortune 
 subvert the wise. Virtue and Wisdom, only, perfect and defend 
 man. Virtue's garment is a sanctuary so sacred, that even Princes 
 dare not strike the man that is thus robed. It is the livery of the 
 King of Heaven. It protects us when we are unarmed ; and is 
 an armor that we cannot lose, unless we be false to ourselves. It 
 is the tenure by which we hold of Heaven, without which we are 
 but outlaws, that cannot claim protection. Nor is there wisdom 
 without virtue, but only a cunning way of procuring our own 
 undoing. 
 
 Peace is nigh 
 
 Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. 
 Amid the howl of more than winter storms, 
 The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours, 
 Already on the wing. 
 
 Sir Launcelot thought no chivalry equal to that of Virtue. 
 This word means not continence only, but cliieflv manliness, and 
 so includes what in the old English was called soit/i'rancc, that 
 patient endurance which is like the emerald, ever green and llou-
 
 804 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 ering; and also that other virtue, droicture, uprightness, a virtue 
 so strong and so puissant, that by means of it all earthly things 
 almost attain to be unchangeable. Even our swords are formed 
 to remind us of the Cross, ?nd you and any other of us may live 
 to show how much men bear and do not die; for this world is a 
 place of sorrow and tears, of great evils and a constant calamity, 
 and if we would win true honor in it, we must permit no virtue 
 of a Knight to become unfamiliar to us, as men's friends, coldly 
 entreated and not greatly valued, become mere ordinary acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 We must not view with impatience or anger those who injure 
 us ; for it is very inconsistent with philosophy, and particularly 
 with the Divine Wisdom that should govern every Prince Adept, 
 to betray any great concern about the evils which the world, 
 which the vulgar, whether in robes or tatters, can inflict upon the 
 brave. The favor of God and the love of our Brethren rest upon 
 a basis which the strength of malice cannot overthrow ; and with 
 these and a generous temper and noble equanimity, we have every- 
 thing. To be consistent with our professions as Masons, to retain 
 the dignity of our nature, the consciousness of our own honor, 
 the spirit of the high chivalry that is our boast, we must disdain 
 the evils that are only material and bodily, and therefore can be 
 no bigger than a blow or a cozenage, than a wound or a dream. 
 
 Look to the ancient days, Sir E , for excellent examples 
 
 of VIRTUE, TRUTH, and HONOR, and imitate with a noble emula- 
 tion the Ancient Knights, the first Hospitallers and Templars, 
 and Bayard, and Sydney, and Saint Louis ; in the words of 
 Pliny to his friend Maximus, Revere the ancient glory, and that 
 old age which in man is venerable, in cities sacred. Honor anti- 
 quity and great deeds, and detract nothing from the dignity and 
 liberty of any one. If those who now pretend to be the great and 
 mighty, the learned and wise of the world, shall agree in condem- 
 ning the memory of the heroic Knights of former ages, and in 
 charging with folly us who think that they should be held in 
 eternal remembrance, and that we should defend them from an 
 evil hearing, do you remember that if these who now claim to 
 rule and teach the world should condemn or scorn your poor tri- 
 bute of fidelity, still it is for you to bear therewith modestly, and 
 yet not to be ashamed, since a day will come when these who now 
 scorn those who were of infinitely higher and finer natures thai 1
 
 GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW. 805 
 
 they are, will be pronounced to have lived poor and pitiful lives, 
 and the world will make haste to forget them. 
 
 But neither must you believe that, even in this very different 
 age, of commerce and trade, of the vast riches of many, and the 
 poverty of thousands, of thriving towns and tenement houses 
 swarming with paupers, of churches with rented pews, and 
 theatres, opera-houses, custom-houses, and banks, of steam and 
 telegraph, of shops and commercial palaces, of manufactories and 
 trades-unions, the Gold-room and the Stock Exchange, of news- 
 papers, elections, Congresses, and Legislatures, of the frightful 
 struggle for wealth and the constant wrangle for place and power, 
 of the worship paid to the children of mammon, and covetousness 
 of official station, there are no men of the antique stamp for you 
 to revere, no heroic and knightly souls, that preserve their noble- 
 ness and equanimity in the chaos of conflicting passions, of ambi- 
 tion and baseness that welters around them. 
 
 It is quite true that Government tends always to become a con- 
 spiracy against liberty ; or, where votes give place, to fall habitu- 
 ally into such hands that little which is noble or chivalric is found 
 among those who rule and lead the people. It is true that men, 
 in this present age, become distinguished for other things, and 
 may have name and fame, and flatterers and lacqueys, and the ob- 
 lation of flattery, who would, .in a knightly age, have been despised 
 for the want in them of all true gentility and courage ; and that 
 such men are as likely as any to be voted for by the multitude, who 
 rarely love or discern or receive truth ; who run after fortune, 
 hating what is oppressed, and ready to worship the prosperous ; 
 who love accusation and hate apologies ; and who are always glad 
 to hear and ready to believe evil of those who care not for their 
 favor and seek not their applause. 
 
 But no country can ever be wholly without men of the old he- 
 roic strain and stamp, whose word no man will dare to doubt, 
 whose virtue shines resplendent in all calamities and reverses and 
 amid all temptations, and whose honor scintillates and glitters as 
 purely and perfectly as the diamond men who are not wholly the 
 slaves of the material occupations and pleasures of life, wholly 
 engrossed in trade, in the breeding of cattle, in the framing and 
 enforcing of revenue regulations, in the chicanery of the law, the 
 objects of political envy, in the base trade of the lower literature, 
 or in the heartless, hollow vanities of an eternal dissipation. Every
 
 806 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 generation, in every country, will bequeath to those who succeed 
 it splendid examples and great images of the dead, to be admired 
 and imitated ; there were such among the Romans, under the 
 basest Emperors ; such in England when the Long Parliament 
 ruled, such in France during its Saturnalia of irreligion and mur- 
 der, and some such have made the annals of America illustrious. 
 
 When things tend to that state and condition in which, in any 
 country under the sun, the management of its affairs and the cus- 
 toms of its people shall require men to entertain a disbelief in the 
 virtue and honor of those who make and those who are charged 
 to execute the laws ; when there shall be everywhere a spirit of 
 suspicion and scorn of all who hold or seek office, or have amassed 
 wealth ; when falsehood shall no longer dishonor a man, and oaths 
 give no assurance of true testimony, and one man hardly expect 
 another to keep faith with him, or to utter his real sentiments, or 
 to be true to any party or to any cause when another approaches 
 him \vith a bribe ; when no one shall expect what he says to be 
 printed without additions, perversions, and misrepresentations ; 
 when public misfortunes shall be turned to private profit, the press 
 pander to licentiousness, the pulpit ring with political harangues, 
 long prayers to God, eloquently delivered to admiring auditors, 
 be written out for publication, like poems and political speeches ; 
 when the uprightness of judges shall, be doubted, and the honesty 
 of legislators be a standing jest; then men may come to doubt 
 whether the old days were not better than the new, the Monastery 
 than the Opera Bouffe, the little chapel than the drinking-saloon, 
 the Convents than the buildings as large as they, without their 
 antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness, true 
 Acherusian Temples, where the passer-by hears from within the 
 never-ceasing din and clang and clashing of machinery, and where, 
 when the bell rings, it is to call wretches to their work and not 
 to their prayers ; where, says an animated writer, they keep up a 
 perennial laudation of the Devil, before furnaces which are never 
 suffered to cool. 
 
 It has been well said, that whatever withdraws us from the 
 power of our senses, whatever makes the Past, the Distant, or the 
 Future, predominate over the Present, advances us in the dignity 
 of thinking beings. The modern rivals of the German Spa, with 
 their flaunting pretences and cheap finery, their follies and frivoli- 
 ties, their chronicles of dances and inelegant feasts, and their bul-
 
 CRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW. 807 
 
 letins of women's names and dresses, are poor substitutes for the 
 Monastery and Church which our ancestors would have built in 
 the deep sequestered valleys, shut up between rugged mountains 
 and forests of sombre pine ; and a man of meditative temper, 
 learned, and of poetic feeling, would be glad if he could exchange 
 the showy hotel, amid the roar and tumult of the city, or the pre- 
 tentious tavern of the country-town, for one old humble Monas- 
 tery by the wayside, where he could refresh himself and his horse 
 without having to fear either pride, impertinence, or knavery, or 
 to pay for pomp, glitter, and gaudy ornamentation ; then where 
 he could make his orisons in a church which resounded with divine 
 harmony, and there were no pews for wealth to isolate itself 
 within ; where he could behold the poor happy and edified and 
 strengthened with the thoughts of Heaven ; where he could then 
 converse with learned and holy and gentle men, and before he 
 took his departure could exalt and calm his spirits by hearing 
 the evening song. 
 
 Even Free-Masonry has so multiplied its members that its obli- 
 gations are less regarded than the simple promises which men 
 make to one another upon the streets and in the markets. It 
 clamors for public notice and courts notoriety by scores of injudi- 
 cious journals ; it wrangles in these, or, incorporated by law, carries 
 its controversies into the Courts. Its elections are, in some Orients, 
 conducted with all the heat and eagerness, the office-seeking and 
 management of political struggles for place. And an empty pomp, 
 with semi-military dress and drill, of peaceful citizens, glittering 
 with painted banners, plumes, and jewels, gaudy and ostentatious, 
 commends to the public favor and female admiration an Order 
 that challenges comparison with the noble Knights, the heroic 
 soldiery encased in steel and mail, stern despisers of clanger and 
 death, who made themselves immortal memories, and won Jerusa- 
 lem from the infidels and fought at Acre and Ascalon. and were 
 the bulwark of Christendom against the Saracenic legions that 
 swarmed after the green banner of the Prophet Mohammed. 
 
 If you. Sir E would be respectable as a Knight, and not 
 
 a mere tinselled pretender and Knight of straw, you must prac- 
 tise, and be diligent and ardent in the practice of, the virtues you 
 have professed in this Degree. How can a Mason vow to be toler- 
 ant, and straightway denounce another for hig political opinions? 
 How vow to be zealous and constant in the service of the Order,
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and be as useless to it as if he were dead and buried ? What does 
 the symbolism of the Compass and Square profit him, if his sen- 
 sual appetite-s and baser passions are not governed by, but domi- 
 neer over his moral sense and reason, the animal over the divine, 
 the earthly over the spiritual, both points of the compass remain- 
 ing below the Square? What a hideous mockery to call one 
 "Brother," whom he maligns to the Profane, lends money unto 
 at usury, defrauds in trade, or plunders at law by chicanery? 
 
 VIRTUE, TRUTH, HONOR! possessing these and never proving 
 false to your vows, you will be worthy to call yourself a Knight, 
 to whom Sir John Chandos might, if living, give his hand, and 
 whom St. Louis and Falkland, Tancred and Baldassar Castiglione 
 would recognize as worthy of their friendship. 
 
 Chivalry, a noble Spaniard said, is a religious Order, and there 
 are Knights m the fraternity of Saints in Heaven. Therefore do 
 you here, and for all time to come, lay aside all uncharitable and 
 repining feeling; be proof henceforward against the suggestions 
 of undisciplined passion and inhuman zeal ; learn to hate the vices 
 and not the vicious ; be content with the discharge of the duties 
 which your Masonic and Knightly professions require ; be gov- 
 erned by the old principles of honor and chivalry, and reverence 
 with constancy that Truth which is as sacred and immutable as 
 God Himself. And above all, remember always, that jealousy is 
 not our life, nor disputation our end, nor disunion our health, nor 
 revenge our happiness; but loving-kindness is all these, greater 
 than Hope, greater than Faith, which can remove mountains, 
 properly the only thing which God requires of us, and in the pos- 
 session of which lies the fulfillment of all our duties. 
 
 [By III.'. Bro.'. Rev.'. W. W. Lord, 32.] 
 
 We are constrained to confess it to be true, that men, in this 
 Age of Iron, worship gods of wood and iron and brass, the work 
 of their own hands. The Steam-Engine is the pre-eminent god 
 of the nineteenth century, whose idolaters are everywhere, and 
 those, who wield its tremendous power securely account them- 
 selves gods, everywhere in the civilized world. 
 
 Others confess it everywhere, and we must confess here, how re- 
 luctantly soever, that the age which we represent is narrowed and 
 not enlarged by its discoveries, and has lost a larger world than it
 
 , GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. A \DREW. &X) 
 
 has gained. If we cannot go as far as the satirist who says that 
 our self-adored century 
 
 its broad clown's back turns broadly on the glory of the stars, 
 
 we can go with him when he adds, 
 
 We are gods by our own reckoning, and may as well shut up our temples 
 And wield on amidst the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars : 
 For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring, 
 With, at every step, " Run faster, O the wondrous, wondrous agef 
 Little heeding if our souls are wrought as nobly as our iron, 
 Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage. 
 
 Deceived by their increased but still very imperfect knowledge 
 and limited mastery of the brute forces of nature, men imagine 
 that they have discovered the secrets of Divine Wisdom, and do 
 not hesitate, in their own thoughts, to put human prudence in the 
 place of the Divine. Destruction was denounced by the Prophets 
 against Tyre and Sidon, Babylon, and Damascus, and Jerusalem, 
 as a consequence of the sins of their people ; but if fire now con- 
 sumes or earthquake shatters or the tornado crushes a great city, 
 those are scoffed at as fanatics and sneered at for indulging in 
 cant, or rebuked for Pharisaic uncharitableness, who venture to 
 believe and say that there are divine retribution and God's judg- 
 ment in the ruin wrought by His mighty agencies. 
 
 Science, wandering in error, struggles to remove God's Provi- 
 dence to a distance from us and the material Universe, and to sub- 
 stitute for its supervision and care and constant overseeing, what 
 it calls Forces Forces of Nature Forces of Matter. It will not 
 see that the Forces of Nature are the varied actions of God. Hence 
 it becomes antagonistic to all Religion, and to all the old Faith 
 that has from the beginning illuminated human souls and consti- 
 tuted their consciousness of their own dignity, their divine origin, 
 and their immortality ; that Faith which is the Light by which 
 the human soul is enabled, as it were, to see itself. 
 
 It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the 
 Truth that is in all religions, even the religious creed of Masonry, 
 that is in danger. For all religions have owed all of life that they 
 have had, and their very being, to the foundation on which they 
 were reared; the proposition, deemed undeniable and an axiom, that 
 the Providence of God rules directly in all the affairs and changes 
 of material things. The Science of the age has its hands upon
 
 8lO MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the pillars of the Temple, and rocks it to its foundation. As yet 
 its destructive efforts have but torn from the ancient structure the 
 worm-eaten fret-work of superstition, and shaken down some inco- 
 herent additions owl-inhabited turrets of ignorance, and massive 
 props that supported nothing. The structure itself will be over- 
 thrown, when, in the vivid language of a living writer, "Human 
 reason leaps into the throne of God and waves her torch over the 
 ruins of the Universe." 
 
 Science deals only with phenomena, and is but charlatanism 
 when it babbles about the powers or causes that produce these, or 
 what the things are, in essence, of which it gives us merely the 
 names. It no more knows what Light or Sound or Perfume is, 
 than the Aryan cattle-herders did, when they counted the Dawn 
 and Fire, Flame and Light and Heat as gods. And that Atheistic 
 Science is not even half-science, which ascribes the Universe and 
 its powers and forces to a system of natural laws or to an inherent 
 energy of Nature, or to causes unknown, existing and operating 
 independently of a Divine and Supra-natural power. 
 
 That theory would be greatly fortified, if science were always 
 capable of protecting life and property, and, with anything like 
 the certainty of which it boasts, securing human interests even 
 against the destructive agencies that man himself develops in his 
 endeavors to subserve them. Fire, the fourth enement, as the old 
 philosophers deemed it, is his most useful and abject servant. Why 
 cannot man prevent his ever breaking that ancient indenture, old 
 as Prometheus, old as Adam ? Why c~-i he not be certain that at 
 any moment his terrible subject may not break forth and tower 
 up into his master, tyrant, destroyer? It is because it also is a 
 power of nature ; which, in ultimate trial of forces, is always supe- 
 rior to man. It is also because, in a different sense from that in 
 which it is the servant of man, it is the servant of Him Who 
 makes His ministers a flame of fire, and Who is over nature, as 
 nature is over man. 
 
 There are powers of nature which man does not even attempt 
 to check or control. Naples does nothing against Vesuvius. Val- 
 paraiso only trembles with the trembling earth before the coming 
 earthquake. The sixty thousand people who went down alive into 
 the grave when Lisbon buried her population under both earth and 
 sea had no knowledge of the causes, and no possible control over 
 the power, that effected their destruction.
 
 GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW. 8ll 
 
 But here the servant, and, in a sense, the creature of man, the 
 drudge of kitchen and factory, the humble slave of the lamp, en- 
 gaged in his most servile employment, appearing as a little point 
 of flame, or perhaps a feeble spark, suddenly snaps his brittle 
 chain, breaks from his prison, and leaps with destructive fury, as 
 if from the very bosom of Hell, upon the doomed dwellings of fifty 
 thousand human beings, each of whom, but a moment before, 
 conceived himself his master. And those daring fire-brigades, 
 with their water-artillery, his conquerors, it seemed', upon so many 
 midnight fields, stand paralyzed in the presence of their conqueror. 
 
 In other matters relative to human safety and interests we have 
 observed how confident science becomes upon the strength of some 
 slight success in the war of man with nature, and how much 
 inclined to put itself in the place of Providence, which, by the 
 very force of the term, is the only absolute science. Near the be- 
 ginning of this century, for instance, medical and sanitary science 
 had made, in the course of a few years, great and wonderful prog- 
 ress. The great plague which wasted Europe in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, and reappeared in the seventeenth, had 
 been identified with a disease which yields to enlightened treat- 
 ment, and its ancient virulence was attributed to ignorance of 
 hygiene, and the filthy habits of a former age. Another fatal and 
 disfiguring scourge had to a great extent been checked by the dis- 
 covery of vaccination. From Sangrado to Sydenham, from Para- 
 celsus to Jenner, the healing art had indeed taken a long stride. 
 The Faculty might be excused had it then said, "Man is mortal, 
 disease will be often fatal ; but there shall be no more unresisted 
 and unnecessary slaughter by infectious disease, no more general 
 carnage, no more carnivals of terror and high festivals of death." 
 
 The conceited boast would hardly have died upon the lip, when, 
 from the mysterious depths of remotest India a spectre stalked 
 forth, or rather a monster crept, more fearful than human eye had 
 ever yet beheld. And not with surer instinct does the tiger of the 
 jungles, where this terrible pestilence was born, catch the scent of 
 blood upon the air, than did this invisible Destroyer, this fearful 
 agent of Almighty Power, this tremendous Consequence of some 
 Sufficient Cause, scent the tainted atmosphere of Europe and turn 
 Westward his devastating march. The millions of dead left in his 
 path through Asia proved nothing. They were unarmed, igno- 
 rant, defenceless, unaided by science, undefended by art. The
 
 8l2 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 cholera was to them inscrutable and irresistible as Azrael, the 
 Angel of Death. 
 
 But it came to Europe and swept the halls of science as it had 
 swept the Indian village and the Persian khan. It leaped as noise- 
 lessly and descended as destructively upon the population of many 
 a high-towered, wide-paved, purified, and disinfected city of the 
 West as upon the Pariahs of Tan j ore and the filthy streets of 
 Stamboul. In Vienna, Paris, London, the scenes of the great 
 plague were re-enacted. 
 
 The sick man started in his bed, 
 
 The watcher leaped upon the floor, 
 At the cry, Bring out your dead, 
 
 The cart is at the door ! 
 
 Was this the judgment of Almighty God? He would be bold 
 who should say that it was ; he would be bolder who should say it 
 was not. To Paris, at least, that European Babylon, how often 
 have the further words of the prophet to the daughter of the Chal- 
 dseans, the lady of kingdoms, been fulfilled? "Thy wisdom and 
 thy knowledge have perverted thee, and thou hast said in thy 
 heart I am and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come 
 upon thee ; thou shalt not know whence it riseth ; and mischief 
 shall fall upon thee ; thou shalt not be able to put it off ; desolation 
 shall come upon thee suddenly." 
 
 And as to London it looked like judgment, if it be true that 
 the Asiatic cholera had its origin in English avarice and cruelty, 
 as they suppose who trace it to the tax which Warren Hastings, 
 when Governor-General of India, imposed on salt, thus cutting 
 off its use from millions of the vegetable-eating races of the East : 
 just as that disease whose spectral shadow lies always upon Amer- 
 ica's threshold, originated in the avarice and cruelty of the slave- 
 trade, translating the African coast fever to the congenial climate 
 of the We"st Indies and Southern America the yellow fever of the 
 former, and the i-omito negro of the latter. 
 
 But we should be slow to make inferences from our petty hu- 
 man logic to the ethics of the Almighty. Whatever the cruelty 
 of the slave-trade, or the severity of slavery on the continents or 
 islands of America, we should still, in regard to its supposed con- 
 sequences, be wiser, perhaps, to say with that great and simple 
 Casuist Who gave the world the Christian religion : "Suppose ye 
 that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because
 
 GfcANt) SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW. 813 
 
 they suffered such things? or those eighteen upon whom the 
 tower of Siloani fell and slew them, think ye that they were sin- 
 ners above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem ?" 
 
 Retribution bars retaliation, even in words. A city shattered, 
 burned, destroyed, desolate, a land wasted, humiliated, made a 
 desert and a wilderness, or wearing the thorny crown of humilia- 
 tion and subjugation, is invested with the sacred prerogatives and 
 immunities of the dead. The base human revenge of exultation 
 at its fall and ruin should shrink back abashed in the presence of 
 the infinite Divine chastisement. "Forgiveness is wiser than re- 
 venge," our Freemasonry teaches us, "and it is better to love than 
 to hate." Let him who sees in great calamities the hand of God, 
 be silent, and fear His judgments. 
 
 Men are great or small in stature as it pleases God. But their 
 nature is great or small as it pleases themselves. Men are not 
 born, some with great souls and some with little souls. One by 
 taking thought cannot add to his stature, but he can enlarge his 
 soul. By an act of the will he can make himself a moral giant, 
 or dwarf himself to a pigmy. 
 
 There are two natures in man, the higher and the lower, the 
 great and the mean, the noble and the ignoble ; and he can and 
 must, by his own voluntary act, identify himself with the one or 
 with the other. Freemasonry is continual effort to exalt the no- 
 bler nature over the ignoble, the spiritual over the material, the 
 divine in man over the human. In this great effort and purpose 
 the chivalric Degrees concur and co-operate with those that teach 
 the magnificent lessons of morality and philosophy. Magnanim- 
 ity, mercy, clemency, a forgiving temper, are virtues indispensable 
 to the character of a perfect Knight. When the low and evil 
 principle in our nature says, "Do not give ; reserve your beneficence 
 for impoverished friends, or at least unobjectionable strangers. 
 Do not bestow it on successful enemies, friends only in virtue, 
 of our misfortunes," the diviner principle whose voice spake by the 
 despised Galilean says, "Do good to them that hate you, for if ye 
 love them (only) who love you, what reward have you? Do not 
 publicans and sinners the same"- that is. the tax-gatherers and 
 wicked oppressors, armed Romans and renegade Jews, whom ye 
 count your enemies ?
 
 XXX. 
 KNIGHT KADOSH. 
 
 WE often profit more by our enemies than by our friends. "We 
 support ourselves only on that which resists," and owe our success 
 to opposition. The best friends of Masonry in America were the 
 Anti-Masons of 1826, and at the same time they were its worst 
 enemies. Men are but the automata of Providence, and it uses 
 the demagogue, the fanatic, and the knave, a common trinity in 
 Republics, as its tools and instruments to effect that of which they 
 do not dream, and which they imagine themselves commissioned 
 to prevent. 
 
 The Anti-Masons, traitors and perjurers some, and some mere 
 political knaves, purified Masonry by persecution, and so proved 
 to be its benefactors ; for that which is persecuted, grows. To 
 them its present popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, 
 the invasion of its Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by 
 the multitude ; its pomp and pageantry and overdone display. 
 
 An hundred years ago it had become known that the BHp were 
 the Templars under a veil, and therefore the Degree was proscribed, 
 and, ceasing to be worked, became a mere brief and formal cere- 
 mony, under another name. Now, from the tomb in which after 
 his murders he rotted, Clement the Fifth howls against the suc- 
 cessors of his victims, in the Allocution of Pio Nono against the 
 Free-Masons. The ghosts of the dead Templars haunt the Vati- 
 814
 
 KNIGHT KADOSH. 815 
 
 can and disturb the slumbers of the paralyzed Papacy, which, 
 dreading the dead, shrieks out its excommunications and impotent 
 anathemas against the living. It is a declaration of war, and was 
 needed to arouse apathy and inertness to action. 
 
 An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal 
 hostility against an Order that has existed for centuries in despite 
 of its anathemas, and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome. 
 
 It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, 
 the audacious conjectures from the simple facts. 
 
 "A power that ruled without antagonism and without concur- 
 rence, and consequently without control, proved fatal to the Sacer- 
 dotal Royalties ; while the Republics, on the other hand, had per- 
 ished by the conflict of liberties and franchises, which, in the 
 absence of all duty hierarchically sanctioned and enforced, had 
 soon become mere tyrannies, rivals one of the other. To find a 
 stable medium between these two abysses, the idea of the Chris- 
 tian Hierophants was to create a society devoted to abnegation by 
 solemn vows, protected by severe regulations ; which should be re- 
 cruited by initiation, and which, sole depositary of the great reli- 
 gious and social secrets, should make Kings and Pontiffs, without 
 exposing it to the corruptions of Power. In that was the secret 
 of that kingdom of Jesus Christ, which, without being of this 
 world, would govern all its grandeurs. 
 
 "This idea presided at the foundation of the great religious 
 orders, so often at war with the secular authorities, ecclesiastical 
 or civil. Its realization was also the dream of the dissident sects 
 of Gnostics or Illuminati who pretended to connect their faith 
 with the primitive tradition of the Christianity of Saint John. It 
 at length became a menace for the Church and Society, when a 
 rich and dissolute Order, initiated in the mysterious doctrines of 
 the Kabalah, seemed disposed to turn against legitimate authority 
 the conservative principle of Hierarchy, and threatened the entire 
 world with an immense revolution. 
 
 ''The Templars, whose history is so imperfectly known, were 
 those terrible conspirators. In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in 
 the East, among whom were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues 
 de Payens, consecrated themselves to religion, and took an oath 
 between the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a See 
 always secretly or openly hostile to that of Rome from the time 
 of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars was to -protect
 
 8l6 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places : their secret 
 object was the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model 
 prophesied by Ezekiel. 
 
 "This re-building-, formally predicted by the Judaiizing Mystics 
 of the earlier ages, had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs 
 of the Orient. The Temple of Solomon, re-built and consecrated 
 to the Catholic worship would become, in effect, the Metropolis of 
 the Universe ; the East would prevail over the West, and the Pa- 
 triarchs of Constantinople would possess themselves of the Papal 
 powe". 
 
 "T?ie Templars, or Poor Fellou^Soldiery of the Holy House of 
 the Temple intended to be re-built, took as their models, in the 
 Bible, the Warrior-Masons of Zorobabel, who worked, holding the 
 sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. Therefore it was 
 that the Sword and the Trowel were the insignia of the Templars, 
 who subsequently, as will be seen, concealed themselves under the 
 name of Brethren Masons. [This name, Frcres Masons in the 
 French, adopted by way of secret reference to the Builders of the 
 Second Temple, was corrupted in English into Free-~\la.sons, as 
 Pythagore de Crotone was into Peter Gower of Groton in England. 
 K hair urn or Khur-um, (a name mis-rendered into Hiram) from 
 , an artificer in brass and other metals, became the Chief Builder 
 of the Haikal Kadosh, the Holy House, of the Temple, the '/sooc 
 AO[JLOZ\ and the words Bonai and Banaim yet appear in the Ma- 
 sonic Degrees, meaning Builder and Builders.] 
 
 "The trowel of the Templars is quadruple, and the triangular 
 plates of it are arranged in the form of a cross, making the Kaba- 
 listic pantacle known by the name of the Cross of the East. The 
 Knight of the East, and the Knight of the East and 'West, have 
 in their titles secret allusions to the Templars of whom they were 
 at first the successors. 
 
 "The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his 
 Order, was not exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of 
 Constantinople. There existed at that period in the East a Sect 
 of Johannite Christians, who claimed to be the only true Initiates 
 into the real mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They pre- 
 tended to know the real history of YESUS the ANOINTED, and, 
 adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the tales of the Tal- 
 mud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels are but 
 allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that the
 
 KNIGHT KADOSH. 817 
 
 world might be filled with the books that could be written upon 
 the words and deeds of Jesus Christ ; words which, they thought, 
 would be only a ridiculous exaggeration, if he were not speaking 
 of an allegory and a legend, that might be varied and prolonged 
 to infinity. 
 
 'The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their 
 Secret Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the 
 title of Christos, Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have 
 succeeded one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted suc- 
 cession of pontifical powers. He who, at the period of the found- 
 ation of the Order of the Temple, claimed these imaginary pre- 
 rogatives, was named THEOCLET ; he knew HUGUES DE PAYENS, 
 he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his pretended 
 church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood 
 and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his successor. 
 
 "Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very ori- 
 gin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and 
 the crowns of Kings, and the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism 
 was vested in its chiefs. For Saint John himself was the Father 
 of the Gnostics, and the current translation of his polemic against 
 the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied that Christ 
 was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or misunder- 
 standing at least, of the whole Spirit of that Evangel. 
 
 "The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in pro- 
 found mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect ortho- 
 doxy. The Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order : the Subal- 
 terns followed them without distrust. 
 
 "To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need 
 to fight, to establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic 
 dogma, were the object and means proposed to the initiated P>reth- 
 ren. The Papacy and the rival monarchies, they said to them, 
 are sold and bought in these days, become corrupt, and to-morrow, 
 perhaps, will destroy each other. All that will become the heri- 
 tage of the Temple : the World will soon come to us for its Sov- 
 ereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the 
 Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World. 
 
 "The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations, 
 had two doctrines, one concealed 'and reserved for the Masters, 
 which was Tohannism ; the other public, which was the Roman 
 Catholic. Thus they deceived the adversaries whom they sought
 
 8l8 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 to supplant. Hence Free-Masonry, vulgarly imagined to have be- 
 gun with the Dionysian Architects or the German Stone- workers, 
 adopted Saint John the Evangelist as one of its patrons, associat- 
 ing with him, in order not to arouse the suspicions of Rome, Saint 
 John the Baptist, and thus covertly proclaiming itself the child 
 of the Kabalah and Essenism together." 
 
 [For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the 
 earlier Gnostics, degenerating afterward into those heretical forms 
 which Gnosticism developed, so that even Manes had his followers 
 among them. Many adopted his doctrines of the two Principles, 
 the recollection of which is perpetuated by the handle of the dag- 
 ger and the tesselated pavement or floor of the Lodge, stupidly 
 called "fhc Indented Tessel," and represented by great hanging 
 tassels, when it really means a tcsserated floor (from the Latin 
 tessera) of white and black lozenges, with a necessarily denticu- 
 lated or indented border or edging. And wherever, in the higher 
 Degrees, the two colors white and black, are in juxtaposition, the 
 two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes are alluded to. With oth- 
 ers the doctrine became a mystic Pantheism, descended from that 
 of the Brahmins, and even pushed to an idolatry of Nature and 
 hatred of every revealed dogma. > 
 
 [To all this the absurd reading of the established Church, tak- 
 ing literally the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a 
 collection of Oriental books of different ages, directly and inevi- 
 tably led. The same result long after followed the folly of regard- 
 ing the Hebrew books as if they had been written by the unimagi- 
 native, hard, practical intellect of the England of James the First 
 and the bigoted stolidity of Scottish Presbyterianism.] 
 
 "The better to succeed and win partisans, the Templars sympa- 
 thized with regrets for dethroned creeds and encouraged the hopes 
 of new worships, promising to all liberty of conscience and a new 
 orthodoxy that should be the synthesis of all the persecuted creeds." 
 
 [ It is absurd to suppose that men of intellect adored a monstrous 
 idol called Baphomet, or recognized Mahomet as an inspired 
 prophet. Their symbolism, invented ages before, to conceal what 
 it was dangerous to avow, was of course misunderstood by those 
 who were not adepts, and to their enemies seemed to be pantheis- 
 tic. The calf of gold, made by Aaron for the Israelites, was but one of 
 the oxen under the laver of bronze, and the Karobim on the Pro- 
 pitiatory, misunderstood. The symbols of the wise always become
 
 KNIGHT KADOSH. 819 
 
 the idols of the ignorant multitude. What the Chiefs of the 
 Order really believed and taught, is indicated to the Adepts by the 
 hints contained in the high Degrees of Free-Masonry, and by the 
 symbols which only the Adepts understand. 
 
 [The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the 
 Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, 
 but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not 
 intended that he shall understand them ; but it is intended that 
 he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explication is 
 reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry. The whole body 
 of the Royal and Sacerdotal Art was hidden so carefully, centuries 
 since, in the High Degrees, as that it is even yet impossible to 
 solve many of the enigmas which they contain. It is well enough 
 for the mass of those called Masons, to imagine that all is con- 
 tained in the Blue Degrees ; and whoso attempts to undeceive 
 them will labor in vain, and without any true reward violate his 
 obligations as an Adept. Masonry is the veritable Sphinx, buried 
 to the head in the sands heaped round it by the ages.] 
 
 "The seeds of decay were sown in the Order of the Temple at 
 its origin. Hypocrisy is a mortal disease. It had conceived a 
 great work which it was incapable of executing, because it knew 
 neither humility nor personal abnegation, because Rome was then 
 invincible, and because the later Chiefs of the Order did not com- 
 prehend its mission. Moreover, the Templars were in general 
 uneducated, and capable only of wielding the sword, with no qual- 
 ifications for governing, and at need enchaining, that queen of the 
 world called Opinion." [The doctrines of the Chiefs would, if ex- 
 pounded to the masses, have seemed to them the babblings of 
 folly. The symbols of the wise are the idols of the vulgar, or else 
 as meaningless as the hieroglyphics of Egypt to the nomadic 
 Arabs. There must always be a common-place interpretation for 
 the mass of Initiates, of the symbols that are eloquent to the 
 Adepts.] 
 
 "Hugues de Payens himself had not that keen and far-sighted 
 intellect nor that grandeur of purpose which afterward distin- 
 guished the military founder of another soldiery that became 
 formidable to kings. The Templars were unintelligent and there- 
 fore unsuccessful Jesuits. 
 
 "Their watchword was, to become wealthy, in order to buy the 
 world. They became so, am* 'n 1312 they possessed in Europe
 
 82O MORALS ANt> 0OGMA. 
 
 alone more than nine thousand seignories. Riches were the shoal 
 on which they were wrecked. They became insolent, and un- 
 wisely showed their contempt for the religious and social institu- 
 tions which they aimed to overthrow. Their ambition was fatal 
 to them. Their projects were divined and prevented. [Rome, 
 more intolerant of heresy than of vice and crime, came to fear the 
 Order, and fear is always cruel. It has always deemed philosoph- 
 ical truth the most dangerous of heresies, and has never been at a 
 loss for a false accusation, by means of which to crush free 
 thought.] Pope Clement V. and King Philip le Bel gave the sig- 
 nal to Europe, and the Templars, taken as it were in an immense 
 net, were arrested, disarmed, and cast into prison. Never was a 
 Coup d' Etat accomplished with a more formidable concert of 
 action. The whole world was struck with stupor, and eagerly 
 waited for the strange revelations of a process that was to echo 
 through so many ages. 
 
 "It was impossible to unfold to the people the conspiracy of the 
 Templars against the Thrones and the Tiara. It was impossible 
 to expose to them the doctrines of the Chiefs of the Order. [This 
 would have been to initiate the multitude into the secrets of the 
 Masters, and to have uplifted the veil of Isis. Recourse was there- 
 fore had to the charge of magic, and denouncers and false wit- 
 nesses were easily found. When the temporal and spiritual tyr- 
 annies unite to crush a victim they never want for serviceable in- 
 struments.] The Templars were gravely accused of spitting upon 
 Christ and denying God at their receptions, of gross obscenities, 
 conversations with female devils, and the worship of a monstrous 
 idol. 
 
 "The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de 
 Molai and his fellows perished in the flames. But before his exe- 
 cution, the Chief of the doomed Order organized and instituted 
 what afterward came to be called the Occult, Hermetic, or Scot- 
 tish Masonry. In the gloom of his prison, the Grand Master cre- 
 ated four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for the East, at Edinburg 
 for the \Yest, at Stockholm for the North, and at Paris for the 
 South." [The initials of his name. JV. B.'. M.'. found in the same 
 order in the first three Degrees, are but one of the many internal 
 and cogent proofs that such was the origin of modern Free-Ma- 
 sonry. The legend of Osiris was revived and adopted, to symbolize 
 the destruction of the Order, and the resurrection of Khurum,
 
 KNlGllt KADOStt. 82! 
 
 slain in the body of the Temple, of KIIURUM ABAI, the Master, 
 as the martyr of fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, 
 prophesied the restoration to life of the buried association.) 
 
 "The Pope and the King soon after perished in a strange and 
 sudden manner. Squin de Florian, the chief deno.uncer of the 
 Order, died assassinated. In breaking the sword of the Templars, 
 they made of it a poniard ; and their proscribed trowels thence- 
 forward built only tombs." 
 
 [The Order disappeared at once. Its estates and wealth were 
 confiscated, and it seemed to have ceased to exist. Nevertheless it 
 lived, under other names and governed by unknown Chiefs, reveal- 
 ing itself only to those who, in passing through a series of De- 
 grees, had proven themselves worthy to be entrusted with the 
 dangerous Secret. The modern Orders that style themselves 
 Templars have assumed a name to which they have not the shadow 
 of a title.] 
 
 "The Successors of the Ancient Adepts Rose-Croix, abandoning 
 by degrees the austere and hierarchical Science of their Ancestors 
 in initiation, became a Mystic Sect, united with many of the Tem- 
 plars, the dogmas of the two intermingling, and believed them- 
 selves to be the sole depositaries of the secrets of the Gospel of St. 
 John, seeing in its recitals an allegorical series of rites proper to 
 complete the initiation. 
 
 "The Initiates, in fact, thought in the eighteenth century that 
 their time had arrived, some to found a new Hierarchy, others to 
 overturn all authority, and to press down all the summits of the 
 Social Order under the level of Equality." 
 
 The mystical meanings of the Rose as a Symbol are to be 
 looked for in the Kabalistic Commentaries on the Canticles. 
 
 The Rose was for the Initiates the living and blooming symbol 
 of the revelation of the harmonies of being. It was the emblem 
 of beauty, life, love, and pleasure. Flamel, or the Book of the 
 Jew Abraham, made it the hieroglyphical sign of the accomplish- 
 ment of the great Work. Such is the key of the Roman de la 
 Rose. The Conquest of the Rose was the problem propounded to 
 Science by Initiation, while Religion was laboring to prepare and 
 establish the universal triumph, exclusive and definitive, of the 
 Cross. 
 
 To unite the Rose to the Cross, was the problem proposed by 
 the High Initiation ; and in fact the Occult philosophy being the
 
 822 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Universal Synthesis, ought to explain all the phenomena of Being. 
 Religion, considered solely as a physiological fact, is the revelation 
 and satisfaction of a necessity of souls. Its existence is a scien- 
 tific fact ; to deny it, would be to deny humanity itself. 
 
 The Rose-Croix Adepts respected the dominant, hierarchical, 
 and revealed religion. Consequently they could no more be the 
 enemies of the Papacy than of legitimate Monarchy ; and if they 
 conspired against the Popes and Kings, it was because they con- 
 sidered them personally as apostates from duty and supreme 
 favorers of anarchy. 
 
 What, in fact, is a despot, spiritual or temporal, but a crowned 
 anarchist ? 
 
 One of the magnificent pantacles that express the esoteric and 
 unutterable part of Science, is a Rose of Light, in the centre of 
 which a human form extends its arms in the form of a cross. 
 
 Commentaries and studies have been multiplied upon the Divine 
 Comedy, the work of DANTE, and yet no one, so far as we know, 
 has pointed out its especial character. The work of the great 
 Ghibellin is a declaration of war against the Papacy, by bold reve- 
 lation of the. Mysteries. The Epic of Dante is Johannite and 
 Gnostic, an audacious application, like that of the Apocalypse, of 
 the figures and numbers of the Kabalah to the Christian dogmas, 
 and a secret negation of every thing absolute in these dogmas. 
 His journey through the supernatural worlds is accomplished like 
 the initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. He 
 escapes from that gulf of Hell over the gate of which the sentence 
 of despair was written, by reversing the positions of his head and 
 feet, that is to say, by accepting the direct opposite of the Catholic 
 dogma; and then he leascends to the light, by using the Devil 
 himself as a monstrous ladder. Faust ascends to Heaven, by step- 
 ping on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell is im- 
 passable for those only who know not how T to turn back from it. 
 We free ourselves from its bondage by audacity. 
 
 His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His Heaven is composed 
 of a series of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Panta- 
 cle of Ezekiel. In the centre of this cross blooms a rose, and we 
 see the symbol of the Adepts of the Rose-Croix for the first time 
 publicly expounded and almost categorically explained. 
 
 For the first time, because Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 
 1260, five years before the birth of Alighieri, had not completed
 
 KNIGHT KADOSH. 823 
 
 t 
 
 his Roman de la Rose, which was continued by Chopinel, a half 
 century afterward. One is astonished to discover that the Roman 
 de la Rose and the Divina Commedia are two opposite forms of 
 one and the same work, initiation into independence of spirit, a 
 satire on all contemporary institutions, and the allegorical formula 
 of the great Secrets of the Society of the Roses-Croix. 
 
 The important manifestations of Occultism coincide with the 
 period of the fall of the Templars ; since Jean de Mcung or Chop- 
 inel, contemporary of the old age of Dante, flourished during the 
 best years of his life at the Court of Philippe le Bel. The Roman 
 de la Rose is the Epic of old France. It is a profound book, under 
 the form of levity, a revelation as learned as that of Apuleius, of 
 the Mysteries of Occultism. The Rose of Flamel, that of Jean 
 de Meung, and that of Dante, grew on the same stem. 
 
 Swedenborg's system was nothing else than the Kabalah, minus 
 the principle of the Hierarchy. It is the Temple, without the 
 keystone and the foundation. 
 
 Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore 
 wrote to the Free-Masons of London that the time had come to 
 begin the work of re-building the Temple of the Eternal. He had 
 introduced into Masonry a new Rite called the Egyptian, and en- 
 deavored to resuscitate the mysterious worship of Isis. The three 
 letters L.'. P.'.D.'.on his seal, were the initials of the words "Lilia 
 pedibus dcstrnc;" tread under foot the Lilies [of France], and a 
 Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century ha 
 upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the words 
 "ialein dabit nltio mcsscm," such harvest revenge will give. 
 
 A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the 
 fanatic of Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary move- 
 ment in France, and a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to 
 swear the destruction of the successors of Philippe le Bel on the 
 tomb of Jacques de Molai. The registers of the Order of Tem- 
 plars attest that the Regent, the Due d' Orleans, was Grand Master 
 of that formidable Secret Society, and that his successors were 
 the Due de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Conde, and the Due de 
 Cosse-Brissac. 
 
 The Templars compromitted the King ; they saved him from 
 the rage of the People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the 
 catastrophe prepared for centuries ; it was a scaffold that the ven- 
 geance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the
 
 824 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the 
 Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. 
 was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the 
 Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope. 
 Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs, but 
 their avengers dishonored their memory. Royalty was regenerated 
 on the scaffold of Louis XVI., the Church triumphed in the cap- 
 tivity of Pius VI., carried a prisoner to Valence, and dying of 
 fatigue and sorrow, but the successors of the Ancient Knights of 
 the Temple perished, overwhelmed in their fatal victory.
 
 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 CONSISTORY.
 
 XXXI. 
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR 
 COMMANDER. 
 
 [Inspector Inquisitor.] 
 
 To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, 
 and to decide impartially ; these are the chief duties of a Judge. 
 After the lessons you have received, I need not further enlarge 
 upon them. You will be ever eloquently reminded of them by 
 the furniture upon our Altar, and the decorations of the Tri- 
 bunal. 
 
 The Holy Bible will remind you of your obligation; and that 
 as you judge here below, so you will be yourself judged hereafter. 
 by One who has not to submit, like an earthly judge, to the sad 
 necessity of inferring the motives, intentions, and purposes of 
 men [of which all crime essentially consists] from the uncertain 
 and often unsafe testimony of their acts and words ; as men in 
 thick darkness grope their way, with hands outstretched before 
 them : but before Whom every thought, feeling, impulse, and in- 
 tention of every soul that now is, or ever was, or ever will be on 
 earth, is, and ever will be through the whole infinite duration of 
 eternity, present and visible. 
 
 825
 
 26 M6&ALS ANt> DO6MA. 
 
 The Square and Compass, the Plumb and Level, are well known 
 to you as a Mason. Upon you as a Judge, they peculiarly incul- 
 cate uprightness, impartiality, careful consideration of facts and 
 circumstances, accuracy in judgment, and uniformity in decision. 
 As a Judge, too, you are to bring up square work and square work 
 only. Like a temple erected by the plumb, you are to lean neither 
 to one side nor the other. Like a building well squared and levelled, 
 you are to be firm and steadfast in your convictions of right and 
 justice. Like the circle swept with the compasses, you are to be 
 true. In the scales of justice you are to weigh the facts and the 
 law alone, nor place in either scale personal friendship or personal 
 dislike, neither fear nor favor : and when reformation is no longer 
 to be hoped for, you are to smite relentlessly with the sword o: 
 justice. 
 
 The peculiar and principal symbol of this Degree is the Tetractys 
 of Pythagoras, suspended in the East, where ordinarily the 
 sacred word or letter glitters, like it. representing the Deity. Its 
 nine external points form the -triangle, the chief symbol in Ma- 
 sonry, with many of the meanings of which you are familiar. 
 
 To us, its three sides represent the three principal attributes of 
 the Deity, which created, and now, as ever, support, uphold, and 
 guide the Universe in its eternal movement ; the three supports of 
 the Masonic Temple, itself an emblem of the Universe : Wisdom, 
 or the Infinite Divine Intelligence; Strength, or Power, the Infi- 
 nite Divine Will ; and Beauty, or the Infinite Divine Harmony, 
 the Eternal Law, by virtue of which the infinite myriads of suns 
 and worlds flash ever onward in their ceaseless revolutions, with- 
 out clash or conflict, in the Infinite of space, and change and 
 movement are the law of all created existences. 
 
 To us, as Masonic Judges, the triangle figures forth the Pyra- 
 mids, which, planted firmly as the everlasting hills, and accurately 
 adjusted to the four cardinal points, defiant of all assaults of men 
 and time, teach us to stand firm and unshaken as they, when our 
 feet are planted upon the solid truth. 
 
 It includes a multitude of geometrical figures, all having a deep 
 significance to Masons. The triple triangle is peculiarly sacred, 
 having ever been among all nations a symbol of the Deity. Pro- 
 longing all the external lines of the Hexagon, which also it in- 
 cludes, we have six smaller triangles, whose bases cut each other 
 in the central point of the Tetractys, itself always the symbol of
 
 OR A N D I N S PECTOK I X Q U I S I TO R CO M M A X DER. 82; 
 
 the generative power of the Universe, the Sun, Brahma, Osiris, 
 Apollo, Bel, and the Deity Himself. Thus, too, we form twelve 
 still smaller triangles, three times three of which compose the Te- 
 tractys itself. 
 
 I refrain from enumerating all the figures that you may trace 
 within it : but one may not be passed unnoticed. The Hexagon 
 itself faintly images to us a cube, not visible at the first glance, 
 and therefore the fit emblem of that faith in things invisible, most 
 essential to salvation. The first perfect solid, and reminding you 
 of the cubical stone that sweated blood, and of that deposited by 
 Enoch, it teaches justice, accuracy, and consistency. 
 
 The infinite divisibility of the triangle teaches the infinity of 
 the Universe, of time, of space, and of the Deity, as do the lines 
 that, diverging from the common centre, ever increase their dis- 
 tance from each other as they arc infinitely prolonged. As they 
 may be infinite in number, so are the attributes of Deity infinite ; 
 and as they emanate from one centre and are projected into space, 
 so the whole Universe has emanated from God. 
 
 Remember also, my Brother, that you have other duties to per- 
 form than those of a judge. You are to inquire into and scruti- 
 nize carefully the work of the subordinate Bodies in Masonry. 
 You are to see that recipients of the higher Degrees are not unne- 
 cessarily multiplied ; that improper persons are carefully excluded 
 from membership, and that in their life and conversation Masons 
 bear testimony to the excellence of our doctrines and the incalcu- 
 lable value of the institution itself. You are to inquire also into 
 your own heart and conduct, and keep careful watch over yourself, 
 that you go not astray. If you harbor ill-will and jealousy, if you 
 are hospitable to intolerance and bigotry, and churlish to gentle- 
 ness and kind affections, opening wide your heart to one and clos- 
 ing its portals to the other, it is time for you to set in order your 
 own temple, or else you wear in vain the name and insignia of a 
 Mason, while yet uninvested with the Masonic nature. 
 
 Everywhere in the world there is a natural la\v, that is, a con- 
 stant mode of action, which seems to belong to the nature of 
 things, to the constitution of the Universe. This fact is universal, 
 In different departments we call this mode of action by different 
 names, as the law of Matter, the law of Mind, the law of Morals, 
 pnd the like. \Ye mean by this, a certain mode of action which 
 .belongs to the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in
 
 828 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 which commonly they are found to act, and in which it is their 
 ideal to act always. The ideal laws of matter we know only from 
 the fact that they are always obeyed. To us the actual obedience 
 is the only evidence of the ideal rule ; for in respect to the con- 
 duct of the material world, the ideal and the actual are the same. 
 
 The laws of matter we learn only by observation and experi- 
 ence. Before experience of the fact, no man could foretell that a 
 body, falling toward the earth, would descend sixteen feet the first 
 second, twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen times 
 the fourth. No mode of action in our consciousness anticipates 
 this rule of action in the outer world. The same is true of all the 
 laws of matter. The ideal law is known because it is a fact. The 
 law is imperative. It must be obeyed without hesitation. Laws 
 of crystallization, laws of proportion in chemical combination, 
 neither in these nor in any other law of Nature is there any mar- 
 gin left for oscillation of disobedience. Only the primal will of 
 God works in the material world, and no secondary finite will. 
 
 There are no exceptions to the great general law of Attraction, 
 which binds atom to atom in the body of a rotifier visible only by 
 aid of a microscope, orb to orb, system to system ; gives unity to 
 the world of things, and rounds these worlds of systems to a Uni- 
 verse. At first there seem to be exceptions to this law, as in growth 
 and decomposition, in the repulsions of electricity ; but at length 
 all these are found to be special cases of the one great law of at- 
 traction acting in various modes. 
 
 The variety of effect of this law at first surprises the senses ; 
 but in the end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated mind. 
 Looked at in reference to this globe, an earthquake is no more 
 than a chink that opens in a garden-walk of a dry day in Summer. 
 A sponge is porous, having small spaces between the solid parts : 
 the solar system is only more porous, having larger room between 
 the several orbs : the Universe yet more so, with spaces between 
 the systems, as small, compared with infinite space, as those be- 
 tween the atoms that compose the bulk of the smallest invisible 
 animalcule, of which millions swim in a drop of salt-water. The 
 same attraction holds together the animalcule, the sponge, the 
 system, and the Universe. Every particle of matter in that Uni- 
 verse is related to each and all the other particles ; and attraction 
 is their common bond. 
 
 In the spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, there
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR CCWMANDER. 829 
 
 is also a law, an ideal mode of action for the spiritual forces of 
 man. The law of Justice is as universal an one as the law of At- 
 traction ; though we are very far from being able to reconcile all 
 the phenomena of Nature with it. The lark has the same right, 
 in our view, to live, to sing, to dart at pleasure through the ambi- 
 ent atmosphere, as the hawk has to ply his strong wings in the 
 Summer sunshine : and yet the hawk pounces on and devours the 
 harmless lark, as it devours the worm, and as the worm devours 
 the animalcule ; and, so far as we know, there is nowhere, in any 
 future state of animal existence, any compensation for this appa- 
 rent injustice. Among the bees, one rules, while the others obey- 
 some work, while others are idle. With the small ants, the sol- 
 diers feed on the proceeds of the workmen's labor. The lion lies 
 in wait for and devours the antelope that has apparently as good 
 a right to life as he. Among men, some govern and others serve, 
 capital commands and labor obeys, and one race, superior in intel- 
 lect, avails itself of the strong muscles of another that is inferior ; 
 and yet, for all this, no one impeaches the justice of God. 
 
 No doubt all these varied phenomena are consistent with one 
 great law of justice ; and the only difficulty is that we do not, and 
 no doubt we cannot, understand that law. It is very easy for some 
 dreaming and visionary theorist to say that it is most evidently 
 unjust for the lion to devour the deer, and for the eagle to tear 
 and eat the wren; but the trouble is, that we know of no other 
 way, according to the frame, the constitution, and the organs 
 which God has given them, in which the lion and the eagle could 
 manage to live at all. Our little measure of justice is not God's 
 measure. His justice does not require us to relieve the hard- 
 working millions of all labor, to emancipate the serf or slave, un- 
 fitted to be free, from all control. 
 
 No doubt, underneath all the little bubbles, which are the lives, 
 the wishes, the wills, and the plans of the two thousand millions or 
 more of human beings on this earth (for bubbles they are, judg- 
 ing by the space and time they occupy in this great and age-out- 
 lasting sea of human-kind), no doubt, underneath them all re- 
 sides one and the same eternal force, which they shape into this 
 or the other special form ; and over all the same paternal Provi- 
 dence presides, keeping eternal watch over the little and the great, 
 and producing variety of effect from Unity of Force. 
 
 It is entirely true to say that justice is the constitution or funda-
 
 830 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 mental law of the moral Universe, the law of right, a rule of con- 
 duct for man (as it is for every other living creature), in all his 
 moral relations. No doubt all human affairs (like all other affairs), 
 must be subject to that as the law paramount; and what is right 
 agrees therewith and stands, while what is wrong conflicts with it 
 and falls. The difficulty is that we ever erect our notions of what 
 is right and just into the law of justice, and insist that God shall 
 adopt that as His law ; instead of striving to learn by observation 
 and reflection what His law is, and then believing that law to be 
 consistent with His infinite justice, whether it corresponds with 
 our limited notion of justice, or does not so correspond. We are 
 too wise in our own conceit, and ever strive to enact our own little 
 notions into the Universal Laws of God. 
 
 It might be difficult for man to prove, even to his own satisfac- 
 tion, how it is right or just for him to subjugate the horse and ox 
 to his service, giving them in return only their daily food, which 
 God has spread out for them on all the green meadows and savan- 
 nas of the world : or how it is just that we should slay and eat 
 the harmless deer that only crops the green herbage, the buds, and 
 the young leaves, and drinks the free-running water that God 
 made common to all; or the gentle dove, the innocent kid, the 
 many other living things that so confidently trust to our protec- 
 tion; quite as difficult, perhaps, as to prove it just for one man's 
 intellect or even his wealth to make another's strong arms his 
 servants, for daily wages or for a bare subsistence. 
 
 To find out this universal law of justice is one thing to under- 
 take to measure off something with our own little tape-line, and 
 call that God's law of justice, is another. The great general plan 
 and system, and the great general laws enacted by God, continu- 
 ally produce what to our limited notions is wrong and injustice, 
 which hitherto men have been able to explain to their own satis- 
 faction only by the hypothesis of another existence in which all 
 inequalities and injustices in this life will be remedied and com- 
 pensated for. To our ideas of justice, it is very unjust that the 
 child is made miserable for life by deformity or organic disease, in 
 consequence of the vices of its father; and yet that is part of the 
 universal law. The ancients said that the child was punished for 
 the sins of its father. We say that this its deformity or disease is 
 the consequence of its father's vices ; but so far as concerns the 
 question of justice or injustice, that is merely the change of a word.
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER. 83! 
 
 It is very easy to lay down a broad, general principle, embody- 
 ing our own idea of what is absolute justice, and to insist that 
 everything shall conform to that : to say, "all human affairs must 
 be subject to that as the law paramount ; what is right agrees 
 therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private 
 cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be 
 subordinate to this universal gravitation toward the eternal right." 
 The difficulty is that this Universe of necessities God-created, of 
 sequences of cause and effect, and of life evolved from death, this 
 interminable succession and aggregate of cruelties, will not con- 
 form to any such absolute principle or arbitrary theory, no matter 
 in what sounding words and glittering phrases it may be em- 
 bodied. 
 
 Impracticable rules in morals are always injurious; for as all 
 men fall short of compliance with them, they turn real virtues 
 into imaginary offences against a forged law. Justice as between 
 man and man and as between man and the animals below him, is 
 that which, under and according to the God-created relations ex- 
 isting between them, and the whole aggregate of circumstances 
 surrounding them, is fit and right and proper to be done, with a 
 view to the general as well as to the individual interest. It is not 
 a theoretical principle by which the very relations that God has 
 created and imposed on us are to be tried, and approved or con- 
 demned. 
 
 God has made this great system of the Universe, and enacted 
 general laws for its government. Those laws environ everything 
 that lives with a mighty network of necessity. He chose to cre- 
 ate the tiger with such organs that he cannot crop the grass, but 
 must eat other flesh or starve. He has made man carnivorous also ; 
 and some of the smallest birds are as much so as the tiger. In 
 every step we take, in every breadth we draw, is involved the de- 
 struction of a multitude of animate existences, each, no matter 
 how minute, as much a living creature as ourself. He has made 
 necessary among mankind a division of labor, intellectual and 
 moral. He has made necessary the varied relations ot society and 
 dependence, of obedience and control. 
 
 What is thus made necessary cannot be unjust ; for if it be, then 
 God the great Lawgiver is Himself unjust. The evil to be 
 avoided is, the legalization of injustice and wrong under the false 
 plea of necessity. Out of all the relations of life grow duties,
 
 MOfeALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 as naturally grow and as undeniably, as the leaves grow upon the 
 trees. If we have the right, created by God's law of necessity, to 
 slay the lamb that we may eat and live, we have no right to tor- 
 ture it in doing so, because that is in no wise necessary. We have 
 the right to live, if we fairly can, by the legitimate exercise of our 
 intellect, and hire or buy the labor of the strong arms of others, 
 to till our grounds, to dig in our mines, to toil in our manufacto- 
 ries ; but we have no right to overwork or underpay them. 
 
 It is not only true that we may learn the moral law of justice, 
 the law of right, by experience and observation ; but that God has 
 given us a moral faculty, our conscience, which is able to perceive 
 this law directly and immediately, by intuitive perception of it ; 
 and it is true that man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher 
 than what he has ever yet come up to, an ideal of nature that 
 shames his actual of history : because man has ever been prone to 
 make necessity, his own necessity, the necessities of society, a plea 
 for injustice. But this notion must not be pushed too far for if 
 we substitute this ideality for actuality, then it is equally true that 
 we have within us an ideal rule of right and wrong, to which God 
 Himself in His government of the world has never come, and 
 against which He (we say it reverentially) every day offends. We 
 detest the tiger and the wolf for the rapacity and love of blood 
 which are their nature ; we revolt against the law by which the 
 crooked limbs and diseased organism of the child are the fruits of 
 the father's vices ; we even think that a God Omnipotent and Om- 
 niscient ought to have permitted no pain, no poverty, no servi- 
 tude ; our ideal of justice is more lofty than the actualities of God. 
 It is well, as all else is well. He has given us that moral sense for 
 wise and beneficent purposes. We accept it as a significant proof 
 of the inherent loftiness of human nature, that it can entertain 
 an ideal so exalted ; and should strive to attain it, as far as we can 
 do so consistently with the relations which He has created, and 
 the circumstances which surround us and hold us captive. 
 
 If we faithfully use this faculty of conscience; if, applying it to 
 the existing relations and circumstances, we develop it and all its 
 kindred powers, and so deduce the duties that out of these rela- 
 tions and those circumstances, and limited and qualified by them, 
 arise and become obligatory upon us, then we learn justice, the 
 law of right, the divine rule of conduct for human life. But if 
 we undertake to define and settle "the mode of action that belongs
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER. 833 
 
 to the infinitely perfect nature of God," and so set up any ideal 
 rule, beyond all human reach, we soon come to judge and condemn 
 His work and the relations which it has pleased Him in His infi- 
 nite wisdom to create. 
 
 A sense of justice belongs to human nature, and is a part of it. 
 Men find a deep, permanent, and instinctive delight in justice, not 
 only in the outward effects, but in the inward cause, and by their 
 nature love this law of right, this reasonable rule of conduct, this 
 justice, with a deep and abiding love. Justice is the object of the 
 conscience, and fits it as light fits the eye and truth the mind. 
 
 Justice keeps just relations between men. It holds the balance 
 between nation and nation, between a man and his family, tribe, 
 nation, and race, so that his absolute rights and theirs do not in- 
 terfere, nor their ultimate interests ever clash, nor the eternal 
 interests of the one prove antagonistic to those of all or of any 
 other one. This we must believe, if we believe that God is just. 
 We must do justice to all, and demand it of all ; it is a universal 
 human debt, a universal human claim. But we may err greatly 
 in defining what that justice is. The temporary interests, and 
 what to human view are the rights, of men, do often interfere and 
 clash. The life-interests of the individual often conflict with the 
 permanent interests and welfare of society; and what may seem 
 to be the natural rights of one class or race, with those of another. 
 
 It is not true to say that "one man, however little, must not be 
 sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men." 
 That is not only a fallacy, but a most dangerous one. Often one 
 man and many men must be sacrificed, in the ordinary sense of the 
 term, to the interest of the many. It is a comfortable fallacy to 
 the selfish ; for if they cannot, by the law of justice, be sacrificed 
 for the common good, then their country has no right to demand 
 f them self -sacrifice ; and he is a fool who lays down his life, or 
 sacrifices his estate, or even his luxuries, to insure the safety or 
 prosperity of his country. According to that doctrine, Curtius 
 was a fool, and Leonidas an idiot ; and to die for one's country is 
 no longer beautiful and glorious, but a mere absurdity. Then it 
 is no longer to be asked that the common soldier shall receive in 
 his bosom the sword or bayonet-thrust which otherwise would let 
 out the life of the great commander on whose fate hang the liber- 
 ties of his country, and the welfare of millions yet unborn. 
 
 On the contrary, it is certain that necessity rules in all the affairs
 
 834 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 of men, and that the interest and even the life of one man must 
 often be sacrificed to the interest and welfare of his country. Some 
 must ever lead the forlorn hope : the missionary must go among 
 savages, bearing his life in his hand ; the physician must expose 
 himself to pestilence for the sake of others ; the sailor, in the frail 
 boat upon the wide ocean, escaped from the foundering or burning 
 ship, must step calmly into the hungry waters, if the lives of the 
 passengers can be s'aved only by the sacrifice of his own ; the pilot 
 must stand firm at the wheel, and let the flames scorch away his 
 own life to insure the common safety of those whom the doomed 
 vessel bears. 
 
 The mass of men are always looking for what is just. All the 
 vast machinery which makes up a State, a world of States, is, on 
 the part of the people, an attempt to organize, not that ideal jus- 
 tice which finds fault with God's, ordinances, but that practical 
 justice which may be attained in the actual organization of the 
 world. The minute and wide-extending civil machinery which 
 makes up the law and the courts, with all their officers and imple- 
 ments, on the part of mankind, is chiefly an effort to reduce to 
 practice the theory of right. Constitutions are made to establish 
 justice ; the decisions of courts are reported to help us judge more 
 wisely in time to come. The nation aims to get together the most 
 nearly just men in the State, that they may incorporate into 
 statutes their aggregate sense of what is right. The people wish 
 law to be embodied justice, administered without passion. Even 
 in the wildest ages there has been a wild popular justice, but 
 always mixed with passion and administered in hate ; for justice 
 takes a rude form with rude men, and becomes less mixed with 
 hate and passion in more civilized communities. Every progres- 
 sive State revises its statutes and revolutionizes its constitution 
 from time to time, seeking to come closer to the utmost possible 
 practical justice and right; and sometimes, following theorists and 
 dreamers in their adoration for the ideal, by erecting into law 
 positive principles of theoretical right, works practical injustice, 
 and then lias to retrace its steps. 
 
 In literature men always look for practical justice, and desire 
 that virtue should have its own reward, and vice its appropriate 
 punishment. They are ever on the side of justice and humanity ; 
 and the majority of them have an ideal justice, better than the 
 things about them, juster than the law : for the law is ever imper-
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER. 835 
 
 feet, not attaining even to the utmost practicable degree of perfec- 
 tion ; and no man is as just as his own idea of possible and prac- 
 ticable justice. His passions and his necessities ever cause him to 
 sink below his own ideal. The ideal justice which men ever look 
 up to and strive to rise toward, is true ; but it will not be realized 
 in this world. Yet we must approach as near to it as practicable, 
 as we should do toward that ideal democracy that "now floats be- 
 fore the eyes of earnest and religious men, fairer than the Repub- 
 lic of Plato, or More's Utopia, or the Golden Age of fabled mem- 
 ory," only taking care that we do not, in striving to reach and 
 ascend to the impossible ideal, neglect to seize upon and hold fast 
 to the possible actual. To aim at the best, but be content with 
 the best possible, is the only true wisdom. To insist on the abso- 
 lute right, and throw out of 'the calculation the important and all- 
 controlling element of necessity, is the folly of a mere dreamer. 
 
 In a world inhabited by men with bodies, and necessarily with" 
 bodily wants and animal passions, the time will never come when 
 there will be no want, no oppression, no servitude, no fear of man, 
 no fear of God, but only Love. That can never be while there are 
 inferior intellect, indulgence in low vice, improvidence, indolence, 
 awful visitations of pestilence and war and famine, earthquake and 
 volcano, that must of necessity cause men to want, and serve, and 
 suffer, and fear. 
 
 But still the ploughshare of justice is ever drawn through and 
 through the field of the world, uprooting the savage plants. Ever 
 we see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. The in- 
 justice of England lost her America, the fairest jewel of her 
 crown. The injustice of Napoleon bore him to the ground more 
 than the snows of Russia did, and exiled him to a barren rock, 
 there to pine away and die, his life a warning to bid mankind be 
 just. 
 
 We intuitively understand what justice is, better than we can 
 depict it. What it is in a given case depends so much on circum- 
 stances, that definitions of it are wholly deceitful. Often it would 
 be unjust to society to do what would, in the absence of that con- 
 sideration, be pronounced just to the individual. General prop- 
 ositions of man's right to this or that are ever fallacious : and not 
 infrequently it would be most unjust to the individual himself to 
 do for him what the theorist, as a general proposition, would say 
 was right and his due. 
 54
 
 836 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 \Ve should ever do unto others what, under the same circum- 
 stances, we ought to wish, and should have the right to wish they 
 should do unto us. There are many cases, cases constantly occur- 
 ring, where one man must take care of himself, in preference to 
 another, as where two struggle for the possession of a plank that 
 will save one, but cannot uphold both ; or where, assailed, he can 
 save his own life only by slaying his adversary. So one must pre- 
 fer the safety of his country to the lives of her enemies ; and 
 sometimes, to insure it, to those of her own innocent citizens. 
 The retreating general may cut away a bridge behind him, to 
 delay pursuit and save the main body of his army, though he 
 thereby surrenders a detachment, a battalion, or even a corps of 
 fas own force to certain destruction. 
 
 These are not departures from justice; though, like other in- 
 stances where the injury or death of the individual is the safety 
 of the many, where the interest of one individual, class, or race 
 is postponed to that of the public, or of the superior race, they 
 may infringe some dreamer's ideal rule of justice. But every de- 
 parture from real, practical justice is no doubt attended with loss 
 to the unjust man, though the loss is not reported to the public. 
 Injustice, public or private, like every other sin and wrong, is in- 
 evitably followed by its consequences. The selfish, the grasping, 
 the inhuman, the fraudulently unjust, the ungenerous employer, 
 and the cruel master, are detested by tfie great popular heart ; 
 while the kind master, the liberal employer, the generous, the hu- 
 mane, and the just have the good opinion of all men, and even 
 envy is a tribute to their virtues. Men honor all who stand up 
 for truth and right, and never shrink. The world builds monu- 
 ments to its patriots. Four great statesmen, organizers of the 
 right, embalmed in stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France 
 as they pass to their hall of legislation, silent orators to tell how 
 nations love the just. How we revere the marble lineaments of 
 those just judges, Jay and Marshall, that look so calmly toward 
 the living Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States ! 
 What a monument Washington has built in the heart of America 
 and all the world, not because he dreamed of an impracticable 
 ideal justice, but by his constant effort to be practically just! 
 
 But necessity alone, and the greatest good of the greatest num- 
 ber, can legitimately interfere with the dominion of absolute and 
 ideal justice. Government should not foster the strong at the ex-
 
 GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER. 837 
 
 pense of the weak, nor protect the capitalist and tax the laborer. 
 The powerful should not seek a monopoly of development and 
 enjoyment ; not prudence only and the expedient for to-day should 
 be appealed to by statesmen, but conscience and the right : justice 
 should not be forgotten in looking at interest, nor political moral- 
 ity neglected for political economy : we should not have national 
 housekeeping instead of national organization on the basis of 
 right. 
 
 We may well differ as to the abstract right of many things ; for 
 every such question has many sides, and few men look at all of 
 them, many only at one. But we all readily recognize cruelty, 
 unfairness, inhumanity, partiality, over-reaching, hard-dealing, by 
 their ugly and familiar lineaments, and in order to know and to 
 hate and despise them, we do not need to sit as a Court of Errors 
 and Appeals to revise and reverse God's Providences. 
 
 There are certainly great evils of civilization at this day, and 
 many questions of humanity long adjourned and put off. The 
 hideous aspect of pauperism, the debasement and vice in our cities, 
 tell us by their eloquent silence or in inarticulate mutterings, that 
 the rich and the powerful and the intellectual do not do their duty 
 by the poor, the feeble, and the ignorant ; and every wretched 
 woman who lives, Heaven scarce knows how, by making shirts at 
 sixpence each, attests the injustice and inhumanity of man. There 
 are cruelties to slaves, and worse cruelties to animals, each dis- 
 graceful to their perpetrators, and equally unwarranted by the 
 lawful relation of control and dependence which it has pleased 
 God to create. 
 
 A sentence is written against all that is unjust, written by God 
 in the nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because 
 it is in the nature of the Infinite God. Fidelity to your faculties, 
 trust in their convictions, that is justice to yourself; a life in obe- 
 dience thereto, that is justice toward men. No wrong is really 
 successful. The gain of injustice is a loss, its pleasure suffering. 
 Iniquity often seems to prosper, but its success is its defeat and 
 shame. After a long while, the day of reckoning ever comes, to 
 nation as to individual. The knave deceives himself. The miser, 
 starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death 
 shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and 
 miserable. Whoso escapes a duty avoids a gain. Outward judg- 
 ment often fails, inward justice never. Let a man try to love the
 
 838 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 wrong and to do the wrong, it is eating stones and not bread, the 
 s \vift feet of justice are upon him. following with woollen tread, 
 and her iron hands are round his neck. No man can escape from 
 this, any more than from himself. Justice is the angel of God 
 that flies from East to West; and where she stoops her broad 
 wings, it is to bring the counsel of God, and feed mankind with 
 angels' bread. 
 
 We cannot understand the moral Universe. The arc is a long 
 one, and our eyes reach but a little way; we cannot calculate the 
 curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight ; but we 
 can divine it by conscience, and we surely know that it bends to- 
 ward justice. Justice will not fail, though wickedness appears 
 strong, and has on its side the armies and thrones of power, the 
 riches and the glory of the world, and though poor men crouch 
 down in despair. Justice will not fail and perish out from the 
 world of men, nor will what is really wrong and contrary to God's 
 real law of justice continually endure. The Power, the Wisdom, 
 and the Justice of God are on the side of every just thought, and 
 it cannot fail, any more than God Himself can perish. 
 
 In human affairs, the justice of God must work by human 
 means. Men are the instruments of God's principles ; our moral- 
 ity is the instrument of His justice, which, incomprehensible to 
 us, seems to our short vision often to work injustice, but will at 
 some time still the oppressor's brutal laugh. Justice is the rule 
 of conduct written in the nature of mankind. We may, in our 
 daily life, in house or field or shop, in the office or in the court, 
 help to prepare the way for the commonwealth of justice which is 
 slowly, but, we would fain hope, surely approaching. All the jus- 
 tice we mature will bless us here and hereafter, and at our death 
 we shall leave it added to the common store of human-kind. And 
 every Mason who, content to do that which is possible and practi- 
 cable, does and enforces justice, may help deepen the channel of 
 human morality in which God's justice runs ; and so the wrecks 
 of evil that now check and obstruct the stream may the sooner be 
 swept out and borne away by the resistless tide of Omnipotent 
 Right. Let us, my Brother, in this, as in all else, endeavor always 
 to perform the duties of a good Mason and a good man.
 
 XXXII. 
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL 
 SECRET. 
 
 [Master of Royal Secret.] 
 
 THE Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under 
 the shadows of the Ancient Mysteries : it was imperfectly revealed 
 or rather disfigured by the Gnostics : it is guessed at under the 
 obscurities that cover the pretended crimes of the Templars ; and 
 it is found enveloped in enigmas that seem impenetrable, in the 
 ^ites of the Highest Masonry. 
 
 Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confu- 
 cius and Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this Science that were 
 engraven on the tables of stone by Hanoch and Trismegistus. 
 Moses purified and re-veiled them, for that is the meaning of the 
 word reveal. He covered them with a new veil, when he made of 
 the Holy Kabalah the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel, 
 
 839
 
 840 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 and the inviolable Secret of its priests. The Mysteries of Thebes 
 and Eleusis preserved among the nations some symbols of it, al- 
 ready altered, and the mysterious key whereof was lost among the 
 instruments of an ever-growing superstition. Jerusalem, the mur- 
 deress of her prophets, and so often prostituted to the false gods 
 of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in its turn lost the 
 Holy Word, when a Prophet announced to the Magi by the con- 
 secrated Star of Initiation, came to rend asunder the worn veil of 
 the old Temple, in order to give the Church a new tissue of legends 
 and symbols, that still and ever conceals from the Profane, and 
 ever preserves to the Elect the same truths. 
 
 It was the remembrance of this scientific and religious Abso- 
 lute, of this doctrine that is summed up in a word, of this Word, 
 in fine, alternately lost and found again, that was transmitted to 
 the Elect of all the Ancient Initiations : it was this same remem- 
 brance, preserved, or perhaps profaned in the celebrated Order of 
 the Templars, that became for all the secret associations, of the 
 Rose-Croix, of the Illuminati, and of the Hermetic Freemasons, 
 the reason of their strange rites, of their signs more or less conven- 
 tional, and, above all, of their mutual devotednest; and of their 
 power. 
 
 The Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the Chris- 
 tians, and the official Sanctuary was closed against the high initi- 
 ation. Thus the Hierarchy of Knowledge was compromitted by 
 the violences of usurping ignorance, and the disorders of the 
 Sanctuary are reproduced in the State ; for always, willingly or 
 unwillingly, the King is sustained by the Priest, and it is from the 
 eternal Sanctuary of the Divine instruction that the Powers of 
 the Earth, to insure themselves durability, must receive their con- 
 secration and their force. 
 
 The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated 
 also by Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the 
 Chiefs of the Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the 
 higher Degrees of Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the 
 Kabalah in active realization, or the Magic of Works. It has three 
 analogous Degrees, religious, philosophical, and physical realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Its religious realization is the durable foundation of the true 
 Empire and the true Priesthood that rule in the realm of human 
 intellect : its philosophical realization is the establishment of an 
 absolute Doctrine, known in all times as the "HoLY Doctrine."
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 84! 
 
 and of which PLUTARCH, in the Treatise "de Iside et Osiride," 
 speaks at large but mysteriously; and of a Hierarchical instruc- 
 tion to secure the uninterrupted succession of Adepts among the 
 Initiates : its physical realization is the discovery and application, 
 in the Microcosm, or Little World, of the creative law that inces- 
 santly peoples the great Universe. 
 
 Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that space in 
 proportional progression, and the entire Infinite will multiply its 
 circles filled with universes, which will pass in proportional seg- 
 ments between the ideal and elongating branches of your Com- 
 pass. Now suppose that from any point whatever of the Infinite 
 above you a hand holds another Compass or a Square., the lines of 
 the Celestial triangle will necessarily meet those of the Compass 
 of Science, to form the Mysterious Star of Solomon. 
 
 All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last gleams of the 
 twilight of knowledge, or its last shadows. Faith begins where 
 Reason sinks exhausted. Beyond the human Reason is the Divine 
 Reason, to our feebleness the great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd, 
 which confounds us and which we believe. For the Master, the 
 Compass of Faith is above the Square of Reason ; but both res f 
 upon the Holy Scriptures and combine to form the Blazing Star 
 of Truth. 
 
 All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is not, for 
 all who look upon it, of one form and one color. Our brain is a 
 book printed within and without, and the two writings are, with 
 all men, more or less confused. 
 
 The primary tradition of the single revelation has been pre- 
 served under the name of the "Kabalah," by the Priesthood of 
 Israel. The Kabalistic doctrine, which was also the dogma of the 
 Magi and of Hermes, is contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, the 
 Sohar, and the Talmud. According to that doctrine, the Absolute 
 is the Being, in which The Word Is, the Word that is the utter- 
 ance and expression of being and life. 
 
 Magic is that which it is ; it is by itself, like the mathematics : 
 for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws. 
 
 Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi : and the Christian 
 religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put 
 an end to the prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi 
 who came from the East, guided by. a Star, to adore the Saviour 
 of the world in His cradle.
 
 42 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;" because 
 initiation into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty ; and because 
 the grand art of the Magi is styled by all the Adepts "The Royal 
 Art," or the Holy Realm or Empire, Sanctum Regnum. 
 
 The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the im- 
 age whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the 
 sign of the Quintessence ; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum ; to 
 the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Penta- 
 gram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New 
 Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause 
 all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee. 
 
 Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philoso- 
 phy can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible 
 and the Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these 
 two terms that at first blush seem so opposed to each other ; faith 
 and reason, science and creed, authority and liberty. 
 
 It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophi- 
 cal and religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and account- 
 ing for the infallibility of the mathematics themselves. 
 
 Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence 
 and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the 
 human understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incon- 
 testable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, 
 and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may 
 give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters 
 of all inferior things and of all errant spirits : that is to say, will 
 make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World. 
 
 Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the intel- 
 lectual world a life which has its regulated movements and its 
 progressive phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays : 
 nothing of w r hat is concealed is lost ; but also, nothing of what is 
 discovered is absolutely new. God has been pleased to give to 
 Science, which is the reflection of His Glory, the Seal of His 
 Eternity. 
 
 It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious 
 symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints 
 of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The 
 Priests of Egypt knew, better than we do, the laws of movement 
 and of life. They knew how to temper or intensify action by re- 
 action ; and readily foresaw the realization of these effects, the
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 843 
 
 causes of which they had determined. The Columns of Seth, 
 Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have symbolized in the Magian 
 traditions this universal law of the Equilibrium ; and the Science 
 of the Equilibrium or balancing of Forces had led the Initiates 
 to that of the universal gravitation around the centres of Life, 
 Heat, and Light. 
 
 Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt 
 that the Earth revolved around the Sun ; but they did not attempt 
 to make this generally known, because to do so it would have been 
 necessary to reveal one of the great Secrets of the Temple, that 
 double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antip- 
 athy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Crea- 
 tion, and the perpetual cause of life. This truth was ridiculed by 
 the Christian Lactantius, as it was long after sought to be proven 
 a falsehood by persecution, by Papal Rome. 
 
 So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests, without reply- 
 ing to them or even smiling at their errors, wrote, in those Hiero- 
 glyphics that created all dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the 
 Truth. 
 
 When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge ad- 
 vises the Magi of it, and they hasten to adore the Infant who cre- 
 ates the Future. It is by means of the Intelligence of the Hie- 
 rarchy and the practice of obedience, that one obtains Initiation. 
 If the Rulers have the Divine Right to govern, the true Initiate 
 will cheerfully obey. 
 
 The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abra- 
 ham. They reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph, together with 
 the knowledge of the True God. Moses carried Orthodoxy out of 
 Egypt, and in the Secret Traditions of the Kabalah we find a 
 Theology entire, perfect, unique, like that which in Christianity is 
 most grand and best explained by the Fathers and the Doctors, 
 the whole with a consistency and a harmoniousness which it is not 
 as yet given to the world to comprehend. The Sohar, which is 
 the Key of the Holy Books, opens also all the depths and lights, 
 all the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies and of the Sciences 
 originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is true that the Secret 
 of this Key must be known, to enable one to make use of it. and 
 that for even the most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this 
 Secret, the Sohar is absolutely incompreheHsibk and almost 
 illegible.
 
 844 MORALS AND DOGMA, 
 
 The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the 
 Secret of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the 
 Omnipotence of God. 
 
 "Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil," had the 
 Serpent of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the 
 Tree of Death. 
 
 For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil and die 
 at the foot of this tree, that it may again become the Tree of Life. 
 
 The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and 
 found by the Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON 
 of the universal equilibrium ! 
 
 Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of 
 Contraries. 
 
 Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on one 
 foot ; sometimes on one, sometimes on the other. 
 
 Civilizations have risen and perished, either by the anarchical 
 insanity of Despotism, or by the despotic anarchy of Revolt. 
 
 To organize Anarchy, is the problem which the revolutionists 
 have and will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus 
 that will always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, 
 they are and always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a des- 
 potism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, 
 consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from 
 the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregu- 
 lar dictatorship of Folly. 
 
 Sometimes superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the miserable 
 calculations of the materialist instinct have led astray the nations, 
 and God at last urges the world on toward believing Reason and 
 reasonable Beliefs. 
 
 We have had prophets enough without philosophy, and philoso- 
 phers without religion ; the blind believers and the skeptics resem- 
 ble each other, and are as far the one as the other from the eternal 
 salvation. 
 
 In the chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of Reason 
 and Faith, the great men and Seers have been but infirm and 
 morbid artists, seeking the beau-ideal at the risk and peril of their 
 reason and life. 
 
 Living only in the hope to be crowned, they are the first to do 
 what i'ythagoras in so touching a manner prohibits in his admira- 
 ble Symbols ; they rend crowns, and tread them under foot.
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 
 
 Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity. 
 
 Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity. 
 
 Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power. 
 
 Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the scintil- 
 lations and rays of the Intellect. 
 
 Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections : Beauty is harmonious 
 proportion in Forms. 
 
 The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the magnificences 
 of Nature are an algebra of graces and splendors. 
 
 Everything just is beautiful ; everything beautiful ought to be 
 just. 
 
 There is, in fact, no Nothing, no void Emptiness, in the 
 Universe. From the upper or outer surface of our atmosphere 
 to that of the Sun, and to those of the Planets and remote Stars, 
 in different directions, Science has for hundreds of centuries imag- 
 ined that there was simple, void, empty Space. Comparing finite 
 knowledge with the Infinite, the Philosophers know little more 
 than the apes ! In all that "void" space are the Infinite Forces 
 of God, acting in an infinite variety of directions, back and forth, 
 and never for an instant inactive. In all of it, active through 
 the whole of its Infinity, is the Light that is the Visible Manifest- 
 ation of God. The earth and every other planet and sphere that 
 is not a Centre of Light, carries its cone of shadow with it as it 
 flies and flashes round in its orbit; but the darkness has no home 
 in the Universe. To illuminate the sphere on one side, is to 
 project a cone of darkness on the other ; and Error also is 
 the Shadow of the Truth with which God illuminates the 
 Soul. 
 
 In all that "Void," also, is the Mysterious and ever Active Elec- 
 tricity, and Heat, and the Omnipresent Ether. At the will of 
 God the Invisible becomes Visible. Two invisible gases, com- 
 bined by the action of a Force of God, and compressed, become 
 and remain the water that fills the great basin? o f the seas, flows 
 in the rivers and rivulets, leaps forth from the rocks or springs, 
 drops upon the earth in rains, or whitens it with snows, and bridges 
 the Danubes with ice, or gathers in vast reservoirs in the earth's 
 bosom. God manifested fills all "the extension ihat we foolishly 
 call Empty Space and the Void.
 
 846 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 And everywhere in the Universe, what we call Life and Move- 
 ment results from a continual conflict of Forces or Impulses. 
 Whenever that active antagonism ceases, the immobility and 
 inertia, which are Death, result. 
 
 If, says the Kabalah, the Justice of God, which is Severity or 
 the Female, alone reigned, creation of imperfect beings such as 
 man would from the beginning have been impossible, because Sin 
 being congenital with Humanity, the Infinite Justice, measuring 
 the Sin by the Infinity of the God offended against, must have 
 annihilated Humanity at the instant of its creation; and not 
 only Humanity but the Angels, since these also, like all created 
 by God and less than perfect, are sinful. Nothing imperfect 
 would have been possible. If, on the other hand, the Mercy or 
 Benignity of God, the Male, were in no wise counteracted, Sin 
 would go unpunished, and the Universe fall into a chaos of cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 Let God but repeal a single principle or law of chemical attrac- 
 tion or sympathy, and the antagonistic forces equilibrated in mat- 
 ter, released from constraint, would instantaneously expand all 
 that we term matter into impalpable and invisible gases, such as 
 water or steam is, when, confined in a cylinder and subjected to 
 an immense degree of that mysterious force of the Deity which we 
 call "heat," it is by its expansion released. 
 
 Incessantly the great currents and rivers of air flow and rush 
 and roll from the equator to the frozen polar regions, and 
 back from these to the torrid equatorial realms. Necessarily 
 incident to these great, immense, equilibrated and beneficent 
 movements, caused by the antagonism of equatorial heat and 
 polar cold, are the typhoons, tornadoes, and cyclones that result 
 from conflicts between the rushing currents. These and the 
 benign trade-winds result from the same great law. God is 
 omnipotent : but effects without causes are impossible, and these 
 effects cannot but sometimes be evil. The fire would not warm, 
 if it could not also burn, the human flesh. The most virulent 
 poisons are the most sovereign remedies, when given in due pro- 
 portion. The Evil is the shadow of the Good, and inseparable 
 from it. 
 
 The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the 
 Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. 
 The arch rests not on a single column, but springs from one on
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 847 
 
 either side. So is it also with the Divine Justice and Mercy, and 
 with the Human Reason and Human Faith. 
 
 That purely scholastic Theology, issue of the Categories of 
 Aristotle and of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the 
 syllogism which argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response 
 to every thing by subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kaba- 
 lastic dogma and wandered off into the drear vacuity of darkness. 
 It was less a philosophy or a wisdom than a philosophical autom- 
 aton, replying by means of springs, and uncoiling its theses like 
 a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb but the monot- 
 onous cry of a machine, the inanimate speech of an Android. It 
 was the fatal precision of mechanism, instead of a free appli- 
 cation of rational necessities. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS crushed with 
 a single blow all this scaffolding of words built one upon the other, 
 by proclaiming the eternal Empire of Reason, in that magnificent 
 sentence, "A thing is not just because GOD wills it; but GOD 
 wills it because it is fust." The proximate consequence of this 
 proposition, arguing from the greater to the less, was this : "A thing 
 is not true because ARISTOTLE has said it; but ARISTOTLE could 
 not reasonably say it unless it was true. Seek then, first of all, the 
 TRUTH and JUSTICE, and the Science of ARISTOTLE will be given 
 you in addition." 
 
 It is the fine dream of the greatest of the Poets, that Hell, 
 become useless, is to be closed at length, by the aggrandizement of 
 Heaven ; that the problem of Evil is to receive its final solution, 
 and Good alone, necessary and triumphant, is to reign in Eternity. 
 So the Persian dogma taught that AHRIMAN and his subordinate 
 ministers of Evil were at last, by means of a Redeemer and Medi- 
 ator, to be reconciled with Deity, and all Evil to end. But unfor- 
 tunately, the philosopher forgets all the laws of equilibrium, and 
 seeks to absorb the Light in a splendor without shadow, and 
 movement in an absolute repose that would be the cessation of 
 life. So long as there shall be a visible light, there will be a shadow 
 proportional to this Light, and whatever is illuminated will cast 
 its cone of shadow. Repose will never be happiness, if it is not 
 balanced by an analogous and contrary movement. This is the 
 immutable law of Nature, the Eternal Will of the JUSTICE which 
 is GOD. 
 
 The same reason necessitates Evil and Sorrow in Humanity, 
 which renders indispensable the bitterness of the waters of the
 
 848 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 seas. Here also, Harmony can result only from the analogy of 
 contraries, and what is above exists by reason of what is below. It 
 is the depth that determines the height ; and if the valleys are filled 
 up, 'the mountains disappear: so, if the shadows are effaced, the 
 Light is annulled, which is only visible by the graduated con- 
 trast of gloom and splendor, and universal obscurity will be pro- 
 duced by an immense dazzling. Even the colors in the Light only 
 exist by the presence of the shadow : it is the threefold alliance 
 of the day and night, the luminous image of the dogma, the 
 Light made Shadow, as the Saviour is the Logos made man : 
 and all this reposes on the same law, the primary law of crea- 
 tion, the single and absolute law of Nature, that of the distinc- 
 tion and harmonious ponderation of the contrary forces in the 
 universal equipoise. 
 
 The two great columns of the Temple that symbolizes the 
 L T niverse are Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God, which 
 nothing can disobey, and Liberty, or the free-will of His creatures. 
 Apparently and to our human reason antagonistic, the same Rea- 
 son is not incapable of comprehending how they can be in equi- 
 poise. The Infinite Power and Wisdom could so plan the Universe 
 and the Infinite Succession of things as to leave man free to act, 
 and, foreseeing what each would at every instant think and do, 
 to make of the free-will and free-action of each an instrument to 
 aid in effecting its general purpose. For even a man, foreseeing 
 that another will do a certain act, and in nowise controlling or 
 even influencing him may use that action as an instrument to effect 
 his own purposes. 
 
 The Infinite Wisdom of God foresees what each will do, and 
 uses it as an instrument, by the exertion of His Infinite Power, 
 which yet does not control the Human action so as to annihilate 
 its freedom. The result is Harmony, the third column that up- 
 holds the Lodge. The same Harmony results from the equipoise 
 of Necessity and Liberty. The will of God is not for an instant 
 defeated nor thwarted, and this is the Divine Victory ; and yet 
 He does not tempt nor constrain men to do Evil, and thus His 
 Infinite Glory is unimpaired. The result is Stability, Cohesion, and 
 Permanence in the Universe, and undivided Dominion and Auto- 
 cracy in the Deity. And these, Victory, Glory, Stability, and Do- 
 minion, are the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah. 
 
 I AM, God said to Moses, that which Is, Was and Shall forever
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 849 
 
 Be. But the Very God, in His unman ifested Essence, conceived 
 of as not yet having created and as Alone, has no Name. Such 
 was the doctrine of all the ancient Sages, and it is so expressly 
 declared in the Kabalah. mn 11 is the Name of the Deity mani- 
 fested in a single act, that of Creation, and containing within 
 Himself, in idea and actuality, the whole Universe, to be inves- 
 ted with form and be materially developed during the eternal 
 succession of ages. As God never WAS NOT, so He never THOUGHT 
 not, and the Universe has no more had a beginning than the 
 Divine Thought of which it is the utterance, no more than the 
 Deity Himself. The duration of the Universe is but a point half- 
 way upon the infinite line of eternity ; and God was not inert and 
 uncreative during the eternity that stretches behind that point. 
 The Archetype of the Universe did never not exist in the Divine 
 Mind. The Word was in the BEGINNING with God, and WAS 
 God. And the Ineffable NAME is that, not of the Very Essence 
 but of the Absolute, manifested as Being or Existence. For 
 Existence or Being, said the Philosophers, is limitation ; and the 
 Very Deity is not limited nor defined, but is all that may possibly 
 be, besides all that is, was, and shall be. 
 
 Reversing the letters of the Ineffable Name, and dividing it, it 
 becomes bi-sexual, as the word iT 1 , Yitd-He or JAH is, and dis- 
 closes the meaning of much of the obscure language of the 
 Kabalah, and is The Highest of which the Columns Jachin and 
 Boaz are the symbol. "In the image of Deity," we are told, 
 "God created the Man; Male and Female created He them:" 
 and the writer, symbolizing the Divine by the Human, then tells 
 us that the woman, at first contained in the man, was taken 
 from his side. So Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, was born, a wo- 
 man and in armor, of the brain of Jove ; Isis was the sister be- 
 fore she was the wife of Osiris, and within BRAIIM, the Source 
 of all, the Very God, without sex or name, was developed MAYA, 
 the Mother of all that is. The WORD is the First and Only-be- 
 gotten of the Father; and the awe with which the Highest 
 Mysteries were regarded has imposed silence in respect to the 
 Nature of the Holy Spirit. The Word is Light, and the Life of 
 Humanity. 
 
 It is for the Adepts to understand the meaning of the Sym- 
 bols.
 
 850 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 Return now, with us, to the Degrees of the Blue Masonry, and 
 for your last lesson, receive the explanation of one of their 
 Symbols. , 
 
 You see upon the altar of those Degrees the SQUARE and the 
 COMPASS, and you remember how they lay upon the altar in each 
 Degree. 
 
 The SQUARE is an instrument adapted for plane surfaces only, 
 and therefore appropriate to Geometry, or measurement of the 
 Earth, which appears to be, and was by the Ancients supposed to 
 be, a plane. The COMPASS is an instrument that has relation to 
 spheres and spherical surfaces, and is adapted to spherical trigo- 
 nometry, or that branch of mathematics which deals with the 
 Heavens and the orbits of the planetary bodies. 
 
 The SQUARE, therefore, is a natural and appropriate Symbol of 
 this Earth and the things that belong to it, are of it, or concern 
 it. The Compass is an equally natural and appropriate Symbol 
 of the Heavens, and of all celestial things and celestial natures. 
 
 You see at the beginning of this reading, an old Hermetic Sym- 
 bol, copied from the "MATERIA PRIM A" of Valentinus, printed 
 at Franckfurt, in 1613, with a treatise entitled "AzoTH." Upon 
 it you see a Triangle upon a Square, both of these contained in a 
 circle ; and above this, standing upon a dragon, a human body, 
 with two arms only, but two heads, one male and the other female. 
 By the side of the male head is the Sun, and by that of the female 
 head, the Moon, the crescent within the circle of the full moon. 
 And the hand on the male side holds a Compass, and that on the 
 f em-ale side, a Square. 
 
 The Heavens and the Earth were personified as Deities, even 
 among the Aryan Ancestors of the European nations of the Hin- 
 dus, Zends, Bactrians, and Persians ; and the Rig Veda Sanhita 
 contains hymns addressed to them as gods. They were deified 
 also among the Phoenicians ; and among the Greeks OURAXOS and 
 GEA, Heaven and Earth, were sung as the most ancient of the 
 Deities, by Hesiod. 
 
 It is the great, fertile, beautiful MOTHER, Earth, that produces, 
 with limitless profusion of beneficence, everything that ministers 
 to the needs, to the comfort, and to the luxury of man. From 
 her teeming and inexhaustible bosom come the fruits, the grain, 
 the flowers, in their season. From it comes all that feeds the ani- 
 mals which serve man as laborers and for food. She, in the fair
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 851 
 
 Springtime, is green with abundant grass, and the trees spring 
 from her soil, and from her teeming vitality take their wealth of 
 green leaves. In her womb are found the useful and valuable 
 minerals ; hers are the seas that swarm with life ; hers the rivers 
 that furnish food and irrigation, and the mountains that send 
 down the streams which swell into these rivers ; hers the forests 
 that feed the sacred fires for the sacrifices, and blaze upon the do- 
 mestic hearths. The EARTH, therefore, the great PRODUCER, was 
 always represented as a female, as the MOTHER, Great, Bounte- 
 ous, Beneficent Mother Earth. 
 
 On the other hand, it is the light and heat of the Sun in the 
 Heavens, and the rains that seem to come from them, that in the 
 Springtime make fruitful this bountifully-producing Earth, that 
 restore life and warmth to her veins, chilled by Winter, set running 
 free her streams, and beget, as it were, that greenness and that 
 abundance of which she is so prolific. As the procreative and 
 generative agents, the Heavens and the Sun have always been re- 
 garded as male; as the generators that fructify the Earth and 
 cause it to produce. 
 
 The Hermaphroditic figure is the Symbol of the double nature 
 anciently assigned to the Deity, as Generator and Producer, as 
 BRAHM and MAYA among the Aryans, Osiris and Isis among the 
 Egyptians. As the Sun was male, so the Moon was female ; and 
 Isis was both the sister and the wife of Osiris. The Compass, 
 therefore, is the Hermetic Symbol of the Creative Deity, and the 
 Square of the productive Earth or Universe. 
 
 From the Heavens come the spiritual and immortal portion of 
 man ; from the Earth his material and mortal portion. The He- 
 brew Genesis says that YEHOIM.H formed man of the dust of the 
 Earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Through 
 the seven planetary spheres, represented by the Mystic Ladder of 
 the Mithriac Initiations, and it by that which Jacob saw in his 
 dream (not with three, but with seven steps), the Souls, emanating 
 from the Deity, descended, to be united to their human bodies : 
 and through those seven spheres they must re-ascend, to return to 
 thei-r origin and home in the bosom of the Deity. 
 
 The COMPASS, therefore, as the Symbol of the Heavens, repre- 
 sents the spiritual, intellectual, and moral portion of this double 
 nature of Humanity ; and the SQUARE, as the Symboi of the 
 Earth, its material, sensual, and baser portion. 
 55
 
 852 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 "Truth and Intelligence," said one of the Ancient Indian Sects 
 of Philosophers, "are the Eternal attributes of God, not of the in- 
 dividual Soul, which is susceptible both of knowledge and igno- 
 rance, of pleasure and pain ; therefore God and the individual 
 Soul are distinct :" and this expression of the ancient Nyaya 
 Philosophers, in regard to Truth, has been handed down to us 
 through the long succession of ages, in the lessons of Freema- 
 sonry, wherein we read, that "Truth is a Divine Attribute, and 
 the foundation of every virtue." 
 
 "While embodied in matter," they said, "the Soul is in a state 
 of imprisonment, and is under the influence of evil passions ; but 
 having, by intense study, arrived at the knowledge of the elements 
 and principles of Nature, it attains unto the place of THE ETER- 
 NAL; in which state of happiness, its individuality does not 
 cease." 
 
 The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of 
 Life of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general 
 held, perishes with it ; but the Soul is divine, an emanation of 
 the Spirit of God, but not a portion of that Spirit. For they 
 compared it to the heat and light sent forth from the Sun, or to 
 a ray of that light, which neither lessens nor divides its own 
 essence. 
 
 However created, or invested with separate existence, the Soul, 
 which is but the creature of the Deity, cannot know the mode of 
 its creation, nor comprehend its own individuality. It cannot 
 even comprehend how the being which it and the body consti- 
 tute, can feel pain, or see, or hear. It has pleased the Universal 
 Creator to set bounds to the scope of our human and finite rea- 
 son, beyond which it cannot reach ; and if we are capable of com- 
 prehending the mode and manner of the creation or generation 
 of the Universe of things, He has been pleased to conceal it from 
 us by an impenetrable veil, while the words used to express the 
 act have no other definite meaning than that He caused that Uni- 
 verse to commence to exist. 
 
 It is enough for us to know, what Masonry teaches, that we are 
 not all mortal ; that the Soul or Spirit, the intellectual and rea- 
 soning portion of ourself, is our Very Self, is not subject to decay 
 and dissolution, but is simple and immaterial, survives the death 
 of the body, and is capable of immortality ; that it is also capable 
 of improvement and advancement, of increase of knowledge of
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 853 
 
 the things that are divine, of becoming wiser and better, and 
 more and more worthy of immortality; and that to become so, 
 and to help to improve and benefit others and all our race, is the 
 noblest ambition and highest glory that we can entertain and 
 attain unto, in this momentary and imperfect life. 
 
 In every human being the Divine and the Human are inter- 
 mingled. In every one there are the Reason and the Moral sense, 
 the passions that prompt to evil, and the sensual appetites. "If 
 ye live after the flesh, ye shall die," said Paul, writing to the 
 Christians at Rome, "but if ye through the spirit do mortify the 
 deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the 
 Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "The flesh lusteth 
 against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh," he said, writing 
 to the Christians of Galatia, "and these are contrary the one to 
 the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." "That 
 which I do, I do not willingly do," he wrote to the Romans, 
 "for what I wish to do, that I do not do, but that which I hate I 
 do. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. To 
 will, is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, 
 I find not. For, I do not do the good that I desire to do ; and the 
 evil that I do not wish to do, that I do do. I find then a law, 
 that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me ; for I de- 
 light in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another 
 law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and 
 bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my mem- 
 bers. . . So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, 
 but with the flesh the law of sin." 
 
 Life is a battle, and to fight that battle heroically and well is the 
 great purpose of every man's existence, who is worthy and fit to 
 live at all. To stem the strong currents of adversity, to advance 
 in despite of all obstacles, to snatch victory from the jealous grasp 
 of fortune, to become a chief and a leader among men, to rise to 
 rank and power by eloquence, courage, perseverance, study, en- 
 ergy, activity, discouraged by no reverses, impatient of no delays, 
 deterred by no hazards; to win wealth, to subjugate men by our 
 intellect, the very elements by our audacity, to succeed, to pros- 
 per, to thrive : thus it is, according to the general understanding, 
 that one fights well the battle of life. Even to succeed in business 
 by that boldness which halts for no risks, that audacity which 
 stakes all upon hazardous chances ; by the shrewdness of the
 
 854 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 close dealer, the boldness of the unscrupulous operator, even by 
 the knaveries of the stock-board and the gold-room ; to crawl up 
 into place by disreputable means or the votes of brutal ignorance, 
 these also are deemed to be among the great successes of life. 
 
 But that which is the greatest battle, and in which the truest 
 honor and most real success are to be won, is that which our in- 
 tellect and reason and moral sense, our spiritual natures, fight 
 against our sensual appetites and evil passions, our earthly and 
 material or animal nature. Therein only are the true glories of 
 heroism to be won, there only the successes that entitle us to tri- 
 umphs. 
 
 In every human life that battle is fought ; and those who win 
 elsewhere, often suffer ignominious defeat and disastrous rout, and 
 discomfiture and shameful downfall in this encounter. 
 
 You have heard more than one definition of Freemasonry. The 
 truest and the most significant you have yet to hear. It is taught 
 to the entered Apprentice, the Fellow-Craft, and the Master, and 
 it is taught in every Degree through which you have advanced to 
 this. It is a definition of what Freemasonry is, of what its pur- 
 poses and its very essence and spirit are ; and it has for every one 
 of us the force and sanctity of a divine law, and imposes on every 
 one of us a solemn obligation. 
 
 // is symbolized and taught, to the Apprentice as well as to you, 
 by the COMPASS and the SQUARE; upon which, as well as upon the 
 Book of your Religion and the Book of the law of the Scottish 
 Freemasonry, you have taken so many obligations. As a Knight, 
 you have been taught it by the Swords, the symbols of HONOR and 
 DUTY, on which you have taken your vows : it was taught you by 
 the BALANCE, the symbol of all Equilibrium, and by the CROSS, 
 the symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice ; but all that these 
 teach and contain is taught and contained, for Entered Appren- 
 tice, Knight, and Prince alike, by the Compass and the Square. 
 
 For the Apprentice, the points of the Compass are beneath the 
 Square. For the Fellow-Craft, one is above and one beneath. For 
 the Master, both are dominant, and have rule, control, and em- 
 pire over the symbol of the earthly and the material. 
 
 FREEMASONRY is the subjugation of the Human that is in man 
 by the Divine; the Conquest of the Appetites and Passions by the 
 Moral Sense and the Reason; a continual effort, struggle, and 
 warfare of the Spiritual against the Material and Sensual. That
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 855 
 
 victory, when it has been achieved and secured, and the conqueror 
 may rest upon his shield and wear the well-earned laurels, is the 
 true HOLY EMPIRE. 
 
 To achieve it, the Mason must first attain a solid conviction, 
 founded upon reason, that he hath within him a spiritual nature, 
 a soul that is not to die when the body is dissolved, but is to con- 
 tinue to exist and to advance toward perfection through all the 
 ages of eternity, and to see more and more clearly, as it draws 
 nearer unto God, the Light of the Divine Presence. This the 
 Philosophy of the Ancient and Accepted Rite teaches him ; and 
 it encourages him to persevere by helping him to believe that his 
 free will is entirely consistent with God's Omnipotence and Om- 
 niscience ; that He is not only infinite in power, and of infinite 
 wisdom, but of infinite mercy, and an infinitely tender pity and 
 love for the frail and imperfect creatures that He has made. 
 
 Every Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from 
 the first to the thirty-second, teaches by its ceremonial as well as 
 by its instruction, that the noblest purpose of life and the high- 
 est duty of a man are to strive incessantly and vigorously to win 
 the mastery of everything, of that which in him is spiritual and 
 divine, over that which is material and sensual ; so that in him 
 also, as in the Universe which God governs, Harmony and Beauty 
 may be the result of a just equilibrium. 
 
 You have been taught this in those Degrees, conferred in the 
 Lodge of Perfection, which inculcate particularly the practical 
 morality of Freemasonry. To be true, under whatever tempta- 
 tion to be false ; to be honest in all your dealings, even if great 
 losses should be the consequence ; to be charitable, when selfish- 
 ness would prompt you to close your hand, and deprivation of 
 luxury or comfort must follow the charitable act; to judge justly 
 and impartially, even in your own case, when baser impulses 
 prompt you to do an injustice in order that you may be benefited 
 or justified ; to be tolerant, when passion prompts to intolerance 
 and persecution ; to do that which is right, when the wrong seems 
 to promise larger profit ; and to wrong no man of anything that 
 is his, however easy it may seem so to enrich yourself ; in all 
 these things and others which you promised in those Degrees, your 
 spiritual nature is taught and encouraged to assert its rightful do- 
 minion over your appetites and passions. 
 
 The philosophical Degrees have taught you the value of knowl-
 
 856 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 edge, the excellence of truth, the superiority of intellectual labor, 
 the dignity and value of your soul, the worth of great and noble 
 thoughts ; and thus endeavored to assist you to rise above the level 
 of the animal appetites and passions, the pursuits of greed and 
 the miserable struggles of ambition, and to find purer pleasure and 
 nobler prizes and rewards in the acquisition of knowledge, the 
 enlargement of the intellect, the interpretation of the sa-cred writ- 
 ing of God upon the great pages of the Book of Nature. 
 
 And the Chivalric Degrees have led you on the same path, by 
 showing you the excellence of generosity, clemency, forgiveness 
 of injuries, magnanimity, contempt of danger, and the paramount 
 obligations of Duty and Honor. They have taught you to over- 
 come the fear of death, to devote yourself to the great cause of 
 civil and religious Liberty, to be the Soldier of all that is just, 
 right, and true ; in the midst of pestilence to deserve your title of 
 Knight Commander of the Temple, and neither there nor else- 
 where to desert your post and flee dastard-like from the foe. In 
 all this, you assert the superiority and right to dominion of that 
 in you which is spiritual and divine. No base fear of danger or 
 death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful greeds or base considerations 
 can tempt a true Scottish Knight to dishonor, and so make his 
 intellect, his reason, his soul, the bond-slave of his appetites, of his 
 passions, of that which is material and animal, selfish and brutish 
 in his nature. 
 
 It is not possible to create a true and genuine Brotherhood upon 
 any theory of the baseness of human nature : nor by a commu- 
 nity of belief in abstract propositions as to the nature of the 
 Deity, the number of His persons, or other theorems of religious 
 faith : nor by the establishment of a system of association simply 
 for mutual relief, and by which, in consideration of certain pay- 
 ments regularly made, each becomes entitled to a certain stipend 
 in case of sickness, to attention then, and to the ceremonies of 
 burial after death. 
 
 There can be no genuine Brotherhood without mutual regard, 
 good opinion and esteem, mutual charity, and mutual allowance 
 for faults and failings. It is those only who learn habitually to 
 think better of each other, to look habitually for the good that is 
 in each other, and expect, allow for, and overlook, the evil, who 
 can be Brethren one of the other, in any true sense of the word. 
 Those who gloat over the failings of one another, who think each
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 857 
 
 other to be naturally base and low, of a nature in which the Evil 
 predominates and excellence is not to be looked for, cannot be 
 even friends, and much less Brethren. 
 
 No one can have a right to think meanly of his race, unless he 
 also thinks meanly of himself. If, from a single fault or error, he 
 judges of the character of another, and takes the single act as 
 evidence of the whole nature of the man and of the whole course 
 of his life, he ought to consent to be judged by the same rule, and 
 to admit it to be right that others should thus uncharitably con- 
 demn himself. But such judgments will become impossible when 
 he incessantly reminds himself that in every man who lives there 
 is an immortal Soul endeavoring to do that which is right and 
 just ; a Ray, however small, and almost inappreciable, from the 
 Great Source of Light and Intelligence, which ever struggles 
 upward amid all the impediments of sense and the obstructions 
 of the passions ; and that in every man this ray continually wages 
 war against his evil passions and his unruly appetites, or, if it has 
 succumbed, is never wholly extinguished and annihilated. For 
 he will then see that it is not victory, but the struggle that de- 
 serves honor ; since in this as in all else no man can always com- 
 mand success. Amid a cloud of errors, of failures, and short- 
 comings, he will look for the struggling Soul, for that which is 
 good in every one amid the evil, and, believing that each is tfetter 
 than from his acts and omissions he seems to be, and that God 
 cares for him still, and pities him and loves him, he will feel that 
 even the erring sinner is still his brother, still entitled to his sym- 
 pathy, and bound to him by the indissoluble ties of fellowship. 
 
 If there be nothing of the divine in man, what is he, after all, 
 but a more intelligent animal? He hath no fault nor vice which 
 some beast hath not ; and therefore in his vices he is but a beast 
 of a higher order ; and he hath hardly any moral excellence, per- 
 haps none, which some animal hath not in as great a degree, 
 even the more excellent of these, such as generosity, fidelity, and 
 magnanimity. 
 
 Bardesan, the Syrian Christian, in his Book of the Laws of 
 Countries, says, of men, that "in the things belonging to their 
 bodies, they maintain their nature like animals, and in the things 
 which belong to their minds, they do that which they wish, as 
 being free and with power, and as the likeness of God"; and 
 Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, in his Oration to Antoninus Caesar.
 
 858 MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 says, "Let Him, the ever-living God, be always present in thy 
 mind ; for thy mind itself is His likeness, for it, too, is invisible 
 and impalpable, and without form. . . As He exists forever, so 
 thou also, when thou shalt have put off this which is visible and 
 corruptible, shalt stand before Him forever, living and endowed 
 with knowledge." 
 
 As a matter far above our comprehension, and in the He- 
 brew Genesis the words that are used to express the origin of 
 things are of uncertain meaning, and with equal propriety may 
 be translated by the word "generated," "produced," "made," or 
 "created," we need not dispute nor debate whether the Soul or 
 Spirit of man be a ray that has emanated or flowed forth from the 
 Supreme Intelligence, or whether the Infinite Power hath called 
 each into existence from nothing, by a mere exertion of Its will, 
 and endowed it with immortality, and with intelligence like unto 
 the Divine Intelligence : for, in either case it may be said that in 
 man the Divine is united to the Human. Of this union the equi- 
 lateral Triangle inscribed within the Square is a Symbol. 
 
 We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of Glaucus, 
 recovered from the sea wherein it had lain many years which 
 viewing, it was not easy, if possible, to discern what was its origi- 
 nal nature, its limbs having been partly broken and partly worn 
 and by defacement changed, by the action of the waves, and shells, 
 weeds, and pebbles adhering to it, so that it more resembled some 
 strange monster than that which it was when it left its Divine 
 Source. Even so, he said, we see the Soul, deformed by innumer- 
 able things that have done it harm, have mutilated and defaced it. 
 But the Mason who hath the ROYAL SECRET can also with him 
 argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its tendency toward as- 
 sociation with what is divine and immortal, its larger aspirations, 
 its struggles, though they may have ended in defeat, with the im- 
 pediments and enthralments of the senses and the passions, that 
 when it shall have been rescued from the material environments 
 that now prove too strong for it, and be freed from the deforming 
 and disfiguring accretions that here adhere to it, it will again be 
 seen in its true nature, and by degrees ascend by the mystic ladder 
 of the Spheres, to its first home and place of origin. 
 
 The ROYAL SECRET, of which you are Prince, if you are a true 
 Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable, and Philosophy is, 
 for you, radiant with a divine beauty, is that which the Sohw
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 859 
 
 terms The Mystery of the BALANCE. It is the Secret of the UNI- 
 VERSAL EQUILIBRIUM : 
 
 Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Di- 
 vine WISDOM and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which result 
 the Stability of the Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine 
 Law, and the Principles of Truth, Justice, and Right which are 
 a part of k ; and the Supreme Obligation of the Divine Law upon 
 all men, as superior to all other law, and forming a part of all 
 the laws of men and nations. 
 
 Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine JUS- 
 TICE and the Infinite Divine MERCY, the result of which is the 
 Infinite Divine EQUITY, and the Moral Harmony or Beauty of 
 the Universe. By it the endurance of created and imperfect na- 
 tures in the presence of a Perfect Deity is made possible ; and for 
 Him, also, as for us, to love is better than to hate, and Forgive- 
 ness is wiser than Revenge or Punishment. 
 
 Of that Equilibrium between NECESSITY and LIBERTY, be- 
 tween the action of the DIVINE Omnipotence and the Free-will 
 of man, by which vices and base actions, and ungenerous thoughts 
 and words are crimes and wrongs, justly punished by the law of 
 cause and consequence, though nothing in the Universe can hap- 
 pen or be done contrary to the will of God ; and without which 
 co-existence of Liberty and Necessity, of Free-will in the creature 
 and Omnipotence in the Creator, there could be no religion, nor 
 any law of right and wrong, or merit and demerit, nor any justice 
 in human punishments or penal laws. 
 
 Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and Light and 
 Darkness in the world, which assures us that all is the work of the 
 Infinite Wisdom and of an Infinite Love ; and that there is no 
 rebellious demon of Evil, or Principle of Darkness co-existent and 
 in eternal controversy with God, or the Principle of Light and 
 of Good : by attaining to the knowledge of which equilibrium we 
 can, through Faith, see that the existence of Evil, Sin, Suffering, 
 and Sorrow in the world, is consistent with the Infinite Goodness 
 as well as with the Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty. 
 
 Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each a 
 Force of nature, are contraries, in the souls of men and in the 
 Universe of spheres and worlds ; and from the action and opposi- 
 tion of each against the other, result Harmony, and that move- 
 ment which is the Life of the Universe and the Soul alike.
 
 86O MORALS AND DOGMA. 
 
 They are not antagonists of each other. The force that repels a 
 Planet from the Sun is no more an evil force, than that which at- 
 tracts the Planet toward the central Luminary; for each is cre- 
 ated and exerted by the Deity, and the result is the harmonious 
 movement of the obedient Planets in their elliptic orbits, and the 
 mathematical accuracy and unvarying regularity of their move- 
 ments. 
 
 Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Ac- 
 tion which constitutes Free Government, by settling on immuta- 
 ble foundations Liberty with Obedience to Law, Equality with 
 Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity with Subordination to the 
 Wisest and the Best : and of that Equilibrium between the Active 
 Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the 
 People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of 
 the Past, expressed in constitutions of government, written or un- 
 written, and in the laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified 
 by time, as precedents and authority ; which is represented by the 
 arch resting on the two columns, Jachin and Boaz, that stand at 
 the portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of which 
 Masonry sets the celestial Globe, symbol of the spiritual part of 
 our composite nature, and on the other the terrestrial Globe, sym- 
 bol of the material part. 
 
 And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves, and 
 which Masonry incessantly labors to accomplish in its Initiates, 
 and demands of its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their 
 titles), between the Spiritual and Divine and the Material and 
 Human in man ; between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense 
 on one side, and the Appetites and Passions on the other, from 
 which result the Harmony and Beauty of a well-regulated life. 
 
 Which possible Equilibrium proves to us that our Appetites and 
 Senses also are Forces given unto us by God, for purposes of 
 good, and not the fruits of the malignancy of a Devil, to be de- 
 tested, mortified, and, if possible, rendered inert and dead : that 
 they are given us to be the means by which we shall be strength- 
 ened and incited to great and good deeds, and are to be wisely 
 used, and not abused ; to be controlled and kept within due bounds 
 by the Reason and the Moral Sense ; to be made useful instru- 
 ments and servants, and not permitted to become the managers 
 and masters, using our intellect and reason as base instruments 
 for their gratification.
 
 SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET. 86l 
 
 And this Equilibrium teaches us, above all, to reverence our- 
 selves as immortal souls, and to have respect and charity for oth- 
 ers, who are even such as we are, partakers with us of the Divine 
 Nature, lighted by a ray of the Divine Intelligence, struggling, 
 like us, toward the light ; capable, like us, of progress upward to- 
 ward perfection, and deserving to be loved and pitied, but never 
 to be hated nor despised ; to be aided and encouraged in this life- 
 struggle, and not to be abandoned nor left to wander in the dark- 
 ness alone, still less to be trampled upon in our own efforts to 
 ascend. 
 
 From the mutual action and re-action of each of these pairs of 
 opposites and contraries results that which with them forms the 
 Triangle, to all the Ancient Sages the expressive symbol of the 
 Deity ; as from Osiris and Isis, Har-oeri, the Master of Light and 
 Life, and the Creative Word. At the angles of one stand, sym- 
 bolically, the three columns that support the Lodge, itself a sym- 
 bol of the Universe, Wisdom, Power, and Harmony or Beauty. 
 One of these symbols, found on the Tracing-Board of the Appren- 
 tice's Degree, teaches this last lesson of Freemasonry. It is the 
 right-angled Triangle, representing man, as a union of the spirit- 
 ual and material, of the divine and human. The base, measured 
 by the number 3, the number of the Triangle, represents the 
 Deity and the Divine ; the perpendicular, measured by the number 
 4, the number of the Square, represents the Earth, the Material, 
 and the Human ; and the hypothenuse, measured by 5, represents 
 that nature which is produced by the union of the Divine and 
 Human, the Soul and the Body ; the squares, 9 and 16, of the base 
 and perpendicular, added together, producing 25, the square root 
 whereof is 5, the measure of the hypothenuse. 
 
 And as in each Triangle of Perfection, one is three and three are 
 one, so man is one, though of a double nature ; and he attains 
 the purposes of his being only when the two natures that are in 
 him are in just equilibrium ; and his life is a success only when it 
 too is a harmony, and beautiful, like the great Harmonies of God 
 and the UYiiverse. 
 
 Such, my Brother, is the TRUE W T ORD of a Master Mason : such 
 the true ROYAL SECRET, which makes possible, and shall at length 
 make real, the HOLY EMPIRE of true Masonic Brotherhood. 
 
 GLORIA DEI EST CELARE VERBUM. AMEN.
 
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