History Of The Knights Templar.

HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR .

LONDON , SATURDAY , JULY 13 , 1867 .

Preface . Devotion and a blind submission to the presumed dictates of an . unseen , but acknowledged supernatural power , is one of those principles which are deeply rooted in the human heart . Prom that hour which saw Adam driven forth BY ANTHONY ONEAL HAYE .

from Paradise , and man severed for ever , m this life , from a personal companionship with his Creator , there has existed a burning desire on his part to regain the favour of the Most High , and so win the abodes of the Blessed Departed

whether these be Christum Heaven , Mahomedan Paradise , Greek Elysium , or Barbaric Valhalla when death's scythe separates the soul from the body . The knowledge of the existence of a G-od was never lost by man ; for , though broken up

into a thousand legends , by the confusion of tongues at Babel , aud the subsequent dispersion abroad the world of mankind , it can still be traced in the distorted worship of the heathen . East and West , North and South , in the wilds of Africa ,

in the snoivs of Russia , the barbarian had his God , to whom he offered the fruits of Cain , or the laud of Abel , and too often the fratricidal sacrifice of the former . From ancient Rome , ivith its worship of three hundred Jupiters , to modern

Europe , with its sublime and charitable philosophy of Christian sacrifice , man has boived doivn to many shrines , ancl has bent the knee to many gods . Were ive to give him a characteristic designation , it ivould be that of a devotional

creature , cold and unsympathising on every-day matters of fact , blind and credulous on the mysterious and supernatural ; rejecting the theory of Galileo , to revel in and uphold the dreams of Alchemists ; spurning the true and tangible , and

clinging to the false and visionary . Reli gion of some nature is as necessary to the life of man as food or heat . Without it he could not exist . Remove from him the sense of a future state of reward and punishment , ancl he would

sink into a condition similar to that of wild beasts , grovellin g in the sensual and corporeal , ancl , forgetting the hi gher pleasures of the soul , would spurn all emotions of the good , the beautiful , aud the true . All history bears witness that the professors of

a theology which taught the highest truth , aud which conduced to awaken in the minds of the people virtue , and a belief in a supreme , pure , and beneficient power , have lived modest and saintly lives . Pythagoras and his school , and even

the savagely virtuous Diogenes are examples of this . But , where the doctrines . vere founded on immorality and impiety , or pandered to the baser instincts of human nature , the teachers weri lascivious in their lives , demoralising in their

doctrines . Take as examples the votaries of Bacchus and the Anabaptists . Force was often required to establish evil doctrines , and Christianity and Jfahometanism in their origins stand out in bold antagonism . As a writer finely

remarks , Jesus Christ came to earth , attended by a few ignorant fisherman , preaching the sublime doctrines of brotherly love , and a sin-pardoning God , and man crucified him . Mahomet , at the head of an army , enunciated the most unholy and

sensual theory , and millions joined his creed . Betiveen the pure and impure there exists a natural opposition , bitter , irreconcileable , deadly ;

and never does the page of history show blacker , or more sullied ivith crime , than ivhere it relates the conflict of the professors of error and truth . Religious strife , besides being the most degrading , is one of the bitterest and most unending ; and to

be opposed in faith is tantamount to a declaration of war to death . There can be no sympathy , no mutual ground of debate between religious opponents . Neither will listen to the arguments of the other . Thus , ivhen a man adopts a creed he

becomes its slave , and wonders at the ignorance of other men , and the absurdity , in his eyes , of their faith . Not alone is this found in Heathenism , nor in the war of Paganism against Christianity . Prom the time that Christianity was fixed as the

religion of Europe , discords and schisms have occurred in the Church . We read of the bloodshed attending the Arian doctrines , the fearful massacre of the Hugenots on St . Bartholomew ' s Day , the persecutions of the Albigenses ,

Waldenses , Lollards , and Camisards , and , finally , in our own land , the hunting down of Covenanter by Royalist , and the extermination of Papist by Protestant .

Public opinion has modified the ferocity of the clergy now , and argument has in some measure , in our clay , superseded the sword , although intolerance has not ceased to bo a feature in the character of Churchmen . But , perhaps , hacl the