Mysticism.

MYSTICISM .

BY MASONIC STUDENT . ( Concluded from page 373 ) . IF I have well explained the teaching set forth above , we shall be able to understand by what meansside by side with the orthodox churchthere

, , was developed , uninterruptedly , a school half religious and half philosophical ; which , fertile doubtless in heresy , but often accepted or tolerated by the Catholic clergy , kept up a certain spirit of mysticism or of supernaturalism , necessary for brooding or nervous imaginations , as to certain natures more disposed than others to spiritualistic ideas . The converted Jews were the first who httowards the end of the eleventh centuryto infuse into Catholicism

soug , , certain hypotheses founded on the interpretation of the bible , and going up to the doctrines of the Essenes and the Gnostics . Near this epoch it is that the word "Cabala" frequently abounds in theolog ical discussions . There is mixed up with it naturally something of the p latonic formuhe of the Alexandrian School , of which a good deal had already been reproduced in the doctrines of the fathers of the church .

The prolonged contact of Christianity with the East during the Crusades brought back , in addition , a great number of analogous ideas , which for the matter of that found easily a basis for themselves in the traditions and local superstitions of the European nations . The Templars were , among the Crusaders , those who endeavoured to realize the most extended alliance between oriental ideas and those of Roman

Christianity . In the desire to establish a link between their order and the ignorant populations they were charged to govern , they laid the foundation of a sort of new dogma , which seemed to share in all the religions practised by the Levantines , without abandoning entirely the catholic synthesis , but making it bend to the necessities of their position . Here were the foundations of Freemasonry * which belonged to analagous institutionsestablished bthe

, , y Mussulmans and divers sects , and which still have survived all persecution , especially in Persia , and in Lebanon and The Hauran . The most strange p henomenon and the most exaggerated of these oriental associations was the celebrated order of the "Assassins . " The nation of the Druses and of the Ansayrii are to-day those which retain the last vestiges of it .

The Templars were soon accused of having set up one of the most terrible heresies which Christianity had yet had to face . Persecuted and at last destroyed by the united efforts of the Papacy and various monarchies , 'they had for them the intelligent classes and a great number of distinguished intellects , all of whom constituted then , as against the abuses of feudalism , what we should call to-day " The opposition . " From these ashes cast to the winda mystical and philosophical institution

, had its birth , which greatly influenced that first moral and reli gious revolution which was called among the people of the north " Reform , " and of the south " Philosophy . " Reform was yet to take possession both of the safety as well as the religion of Christianity ; philosophy , on the contrary , became little by little its opponent , and acting specially among the nations which had remained established , there were soon two severed divisions of the unbelievers and the believers