MORALS AND DOGMA by Albert Pike



 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 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! 