Table Of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Aids to Study 4 2 3 Dedication of a Masonic Hall at Weston-super-Mare 443 Freemasonry in Bermuda 42 S Centenary of the Lodge of Friendship , No . 206 42 ;; Immortality , an Ideal of Freemasonry 416 New Masonic Hallat Livrepool 427 Freemasonry in Constantinople 427

Summer Banquet of fhc Capper Lodge 427 Masonic Tidings 427 Summer Festival of the Royal Masonc Institution for Boys 429 CRAFT MASONRY : — l & MetropoIitan 429

Provincial 4 2 9 Provincial Grand Lodge of Cornwall 429 Provincial Grand Lodge of Middlesex 431 Provincial Grand Lodge of Somerset 432 Provincial Grand Lodge of Suffolk 432 Masonic Meetings for next week 434 Advertisements 421 , 4 > 435 > 43 u mtaxr ? '

Aids To Study.

AIDS TO STUDY .

BY B RO . WM . CARPENTER P . M . & P . Z . 717 . IX . The religious side of Egyptian history is amongst the most melancholy and perplexing

things upon record . We see in the Egyptians a people hig hly civilised and far advanced in science and art , and once holding the pure primitive faith , degenerated into a community of the

grossest idolatry , and practising the most superstitious and degrading reiigious rites . They worshipped almost everything in nature , from the sun in the heavens to the meanest reptile on the

earth : hills , rivers , birds and creeping things , stones and stocks all were worshipped . Every town and nome had its sacred animals , including the lowest forms of animal life , the frog and the

beetle being objects of especial reverence . In fact , not a single deity of Egypt was unrepresented by some beast . Speaking of the time of the nineteenth dynasty , M . Renan remarks

that the entrances of all the tombs and temples of that date seemed positively invaded by a whole pantheon , the most horrible and ridiculous that the human mind ever invented . " And when the

gross excesses of a degenerate supeistition provoked the ridicule of the Greeks and Rom an the same Greek philosopher who makes Momus , express his surprise that so many persons were

allowed to share divine honours—his indignation at the Egyptian crew of apes , ibises , bulls , and other ridiculous creatures , who intruded themselves into heaven—and his wonder how Jove

could allow himself to be caricatured with the horns of a ram—makes Jove reply , that these were mysteries not to be derided b y the uninitiated .

The truth seems to be , as Mr . Philip Smith says , Egypt had , in fact , two religions ; one which Herodotus saw , captivating the eyes of the people with pompous ceremonies , and governing

their lives by minute observances ; the other , of which the priests barely allowed him to catch a glimpse . It is not easy to condense a writer who has condensed some half dozen of those who

preceded him , but J must attempt this with the writer whom I have just named . Of the esoteric doctrine we can learn little or nothing through the Greeks , for it had become inextricably

involved with their own speculations . Modern science , however , has , in the language of the Ancients , " lifted the veil of Isis , " and in the Egyptian papyri we read the secrets of Egyptian

Aids To Study.

theology . Even Herodotus had learnt that , amidst their system of polytheism , the Egyptians of Thebes recognised one supreme God , who had no beginning , and would have no end ; and

Jamblichus quotes from the old Hermetic books , this statement , " Before all the things that actually exist , and before all beginnings , there is one God , prior even to the first god and King , remaining

unmoved in the singleness of his own Unity . " ( Cory ' s " Anc . Frag , " p . 28 , 3 . ) And if , like the prophet on his mission to Egypt , we ask

bij -what name we shall announce this God , the sacred books of Egypt give the very same answer —an answer which the initiated took with them

to the grave , inscribed on a scroll , as their confession of faith : — " mi SUK "— Tain that I am . ( Brugsch Ans . clem . Orient ) . What a new light , as Mr . Smith observes , this discovery throws

on the sublime passage m Exodus in . 14 , where Moses , who may be supposed to have been initated into this formula , is sent to both his people and Pharaoh to proclaim the true God by this

very title , and to declare that the God 01 the highest Egyptian theology was also the God of Abraham , of Isaac , and of Jacob . But if this was the original theology of Egypt ,

whence the outrageous polytheism—the gross superstition , which , with monstrous shapes and sorceries , abased their Maker ? The answer is not difficult , and it shows one origin of

polytheism and idolatry . The unity of God was lost in the plurality of His manifestations . Each of these , embodied in a personal form , became a god ; while the allegorical representations of

the Divine qualities gave birth to the monstrous combination of animal and human forms , and to the worshi p of animals themselves . All these were , so to speak , religious masks , grotesque

allegorical embodiments of the original pure dogmas , communicated to the initiated at the mysteries . When once invested with a distinct personality , and with attributes which were

regarded as their own , the gods became secondary agents , taking their part in the organization of the world , and the preservation of its creatures ; and this polytheism was extended to embrace

all nature . Next to the Divine unity , in the original theology of the Egyptians , was the immortality of the soul , and a future state of existence . The

spirit of symbolism ran through the whole religion of Egypt : and never was there a stronger case of the abuses to which that fascinating

principle may sink , than 111 the animal worship of the Egyptians . Many fanciful theories have been devised to account for this strong religious abberration .

Diodorus quotes three reasons , which were commonly given by the Egyptians ( Diod . i . 85 —86 ) . The first is a fable , which tells how the original gods , being few in number , and

beingno match for the iniquities and violence of men , took the shape of animals , in order to escape from them ; and that afterwards , when they became masters of the whole world , they consecrated

and appropriated these animals to themselves , as an act of gratitude , The second story ascribes the custom to

victories obtained by the army , under standards bearing the heads of animals—an obvious inversion of the natural order . The third rea-

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son is plausible enough to have been generally accepted by the ancient writers , as well as bymodern utilitarians , that the animals were consecrated on account of the benefits which mankind

derived from them . But the theory , though it may contain a germ of truth , is manifestly inadequate , for , as Kenrick well asks ( " Ancient Egypt , " i . ch . 21 ) . If the ichneumon and tho

hawk were worshipped , because they destroyed crocodiles and serpents , why the serpent and the crocodile ? Or if the ibis was worshipped because

it devoured snakes and vermin , why was it specially consecrated to Thoth , the God of letters r " Nor were the wants of the Egyptians so opposite in various nomes as to account for their

extirpating , as noxious , in one , the very animals that were consecrated as useful in the next . There remains the one explanation—from the universal tendency of mankind to find in the

peculiar qualities of animals ligures of'the characters of rational beings—a tendency which survives in poetry and heraldy , and which may

be traced in the symbolism of other religions , though no people have carried it to the same length as the Egyptians .

The application of this principle is admirably stated by Mr . Kenrick : — "What those analogies were , which the Egyptians found or fancied between the attributes of the gods , and the

specific qualities of the animals consecrated to them , we can , in general , onl y guess . The lordly bull , as a type at once of power and production , seems a natural symbol of the mi ghty god Osiris , who

—whether he represented originally the Sun , the Earth , or the Nile , was certainly reyered as the great source of life . The god of Mendes , for a similar reason , was fitly represented by a goat .

The bright and piercing eye of the hatvh made it an appropriate emblem of Horus , who was also the sun . The crocodile might naturally be adopted as a symbol of the Nile , which it

inhabits ( see Ezekiel xxix . 3 , and Isaiah xxvii . 1 ) ; or from its voracious habits and hostility to man , it might , on the other hand , symbolise T yphon , the principle of evil . "

Our limited acquaintance with the Egyptian theology , however , compels us to leave many such questions unanswered , as " Why was the ibis appropriated to Osiris ? or the cat to Pasht ,

the universal mother ? or the ram to Kneph ? or the vulture to Isis ? or what made the scarabceus one of the most sacred of all the animal types of Egypt ?

We may trace three stages of this symbolism . First , the placing . of the head of the animal on the human form of the god—the almost universal type of the Egyptian idols . The converse

symbolism represents a king , by a human head on the body of the animal , whose qualities are ascribed to him . Next , the consecration of living animals as types of the deities—a symbolism which

degenerated into actual worship . Lastly , the animal was believed to be the positive incarnation of the god in three cases only—the bull apis , who was worshipped at Memphis , as the

incarnation of Phtha ; the bull Mnevis at Heliopolis , the incarnation of Osiris ; and the goal at Mendes , the incarnation of Khem . The most revered was

Apis , who was kept in great pomp in a splendid building , and it was esteemed the highest honour to be one of his ministering priests . When he