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
were abomination; and to sit with them in the same Lodge as
brethren.
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 Sthe existence of a single uncreated
God, in whose bosom everything grows, is developed and trans-
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 docfirst 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 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-
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. Chrysor 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 for 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-
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 Nous of Plato and Philo, the Wisdom or Demiourgos 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
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
near to God; i.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 frames for Himself the
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 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 protector 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 mat-
ter, 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 without limit, ZERUANE AKHERENE.--No origin could be
assigned to Him; for He was enveloped in His own Glory, and
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 o[ 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
woman had fallen; and for twelve thousand years there was to be
war between Ormuzd and the Good Spirits created by him, and
Ahrirnan 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-
preme 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
earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no animal, there is in
short nothing, which would not be impure in his sight. In ad-
dressing 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 our-
selves; 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."
Aristolte 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 igno-
rant 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
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 ov, 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, 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
spiritual life could reach.
The New Platonists' idea of God, was that of One Simple Origi-
nal Essence, exalted akes 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--such 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 aren; 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
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
contrary, 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, the Good,
in and by itself, the Absolute of Platonism, was substituted for
the personal Deity 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--such 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.
"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
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 a void 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 every-
thing, 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, Asiah,
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
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 ma-
terial envelope, 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 Croix 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
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
sumptuously 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 free-
dom 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 De
Molay, 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
vice, and the hell made of the human heart, by its fiery passions.
If any see in it also a type 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 tor-
tures 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 occurrences, it is their right to do so. Let each apply its
symbols 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 Croix 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 with-
out 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-
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 purposes 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
Degree, 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. Tltoth or Phika 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 Nob 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
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---Iesus Nazarenus Rex ludce-
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 invenitur. And the Jes-
uits are charged with having applied to it this odious axiom,
Justum necare reges impios. The four letters are the initials of
the Hebrew words that represent the four elements--lammim,
the seas or water; Nour, fire; Rouach, the air, and Iebeschah, 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 
Cross. X is the mark of 600, the mysterious cycle of the Incar-
nations.
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 P of Constanius is this inscription, "In hoc
X
|
signo victor eris." An inscription in the Duomo at Milan
reads, "X. et P. Christi. Nomina. Sancta. Tenei."
The Egyptians used as a Sign of their God Canobus, a T or a
-l- indifferently. The Vaishnavas of India have also the same
Sacred Tau, which they also mark with crosses, and with triangles.
The vestments of the ptiests of Horus were covered with these crosses.
So was the dress of the Lama of Thibet. The Sectarian marks of the Jains 
are similar. The distinctive badge of the Sect of Xac Jaonicus is the
swastica. It is the Sign of Fo, identical with the Cross of Christ. 
On the ruins of Mandore, in India, among other mystic emblems, are 
the mystic triangle, and the interlaced triangle. 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 rounded: 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 importance than the motes that dance in the sunshine; or a
Being that amuses Himself with the incredible vanity and folly,
the writings and contortions of the insignificant insects that
compose Humanity, and idly imagine that they resemble the Om-
nipotent. "What are we," the Tempter asks, "but puppets in a
show-box ? O Omnipotent destiny, pull our strings gently ! Dance
us mercifully 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
envelope of the body, and to live on forever after that shall have
decayed? 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 elephant, 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 intellect of the animal in a higher degree or larger quan-
tity ?" 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-
lectural orbs; in what respect they have proven themselves worthy
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
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, than Mahometanism, 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, merci-
less, persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of
others of its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensa-
tions, 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 convic-
tion that it is not an animal, as the wolf, the hyena, and the tiger
are but a 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 com-
mence here and is not life a part of it? How shall death change
the base nature of the base soul ? Why have not those other ani-
mals that only faintly imitate the wanton, savage, human cruelty
and thirst for blood, the same right as man has, to expect a resur-
rection 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 living 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
little 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 hutcheries, 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 this
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
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 shake 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?

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 New
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
famishes and freezes; there, mothers murder their children, that
those spared may live upon the bread purchased with the burial
allowances 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 re-
pudiation.
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
seperate 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
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 destruc-
tion, by which human bodies may be the more expeditiously and
effectually crushed, shattered, torn, and mangled; and yet hypo-
critical Humanity, drunk with blood and drenched with gore, 
shrieks to Heaven at a single murder, perpetrated to gratify a re-
venge 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 peas-
ant on the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The mountain has been so
long inert, that we believe its fires extinguished. Round us hang
the clustering 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 sub-
terranean thunders, 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 pande-
monium: 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
divine honors to Mammon and Baalzebub. Selfishness rules su-
preme: to win wealth becomes the whole business of life. The
villanies of legalized gaming and speculation become epidemic;
treacery is but evidence of shrewdness; office becomes the prey
of successful 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
Humanity toward perfection, and whether, when it advances in
one respect, it does not retrogress in some other, by way of com-
pensation: whether advance in civilization is not increase of self-
ishness: whether freedom does not necessarily lead to license and
anarchy: whether the destitution and debasement of the masses
does not inevitably follow increase of population and commercial
and manufacturing prosperity. It asks itself whether man is not
the sport of blind, merciless Fate: whether all philosophies are
not delusions, 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
anywher; 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
the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room for other
species, 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 clamor
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 well 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,
constantly 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 prevail over Darkness, the Good over the Evil, and even Ahri-
man 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 Omnipo-
tent Supreme, presented the same difficulty, and left the existence
of Evil as unexplained as before. The human mind is always
content, 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 Devil who could
relieve God of the odium of being the Author of Sin.
But not to all is Faith sufficient to overcome this great diffi-
culty. They say, with the Suppliant, "Lord! I believe!"--but like
him they are constrained to add, "Help Thou my unbelief!"--Rea-
son must, for these, co-operate and coincide with Faith, or they
remain still in the darkness of doubt,--most miserable of all con-
ditions of the human mind.
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 immor-
tality, 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
worshipper of Brahma also has implicit Faith in what seems to
us palpably false and absurd. His faith rests neither in Reason,
Analogy, or the Consciousness, but on the testimony of his Spirit-
ual teachers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem also believes,
on the positive testimony of the Prophet; and the Mormon also
can say, "I believe this, because it is impossible." No faith, how-
ever absurd 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 cer-
tain 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,
an Infinite Justice and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same
Being, 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 Chaldaea, 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
symbols, 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 un-
fathomable 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
nebulae of Hercules, Orion, and Andromeda, and find them re-
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 into
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
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
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
organization 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 always 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
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
Tpassivity. 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 we 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
love. Christ completed the Atonement on the Cross by descend-
ing into Hell.
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 field 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,
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 equilibrio, 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 world'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 is devoted to and symbolizes tne 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
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 Reform-
er, 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.
Whatever 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. De-
votedly He loved the children of Israel. To them He came, and
to them alone He preached that Gospel which His disciples after-
ward carried among foreigners. He would fain have freed the
chosen People from their spiritual bondage of ignorance and deg-
radation. As a lover of all mankind, laying down His life for the
emancipation of His Brethren, 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 be-
yond the limits of Palestine. The old religions had failed to give
happiness and peace to the world. The babbling and wrangling
philosophers 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 powerful 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 low-
est depths of degradation.
When, lo, a voice, in the inconsiderable Roman Province of
Judea proclaims a new Gospel--a new "God's Word," to crushed,
suffering, 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 sympa-
thizes 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
Paraihs 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
sypathizes 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 fisher-
men 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-makers, for they shall be called the children of
God! First be reconciled to they 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 despitefully 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 in-
tolerance 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 deem-
ing Him Divine.
Hear Philo, the Greek Jew. "The contemplative soul, un-
equally 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
tenets 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!