A Plea For Freemasonry.

with its operative tasks , speculations of great religious import . If we seek any chance it is simply this , that when the necessity no longer existed , the operative element was laid aside , and the spec--nlative only was retained , but with a scrupulous

preservation ( as if it Avere for purpose of identification ) of the technical languages , the rules and regulations , the working tools and the discipline of the operative art . The material only on which ¦ they wrought was changed . The disciples and

followers of Erwin of Steinbach , the Master Builder of Strasburg , were engaged , under the influence of a profoundly religious sentiment , in the construction of a material edifice to the Glory of God .

The more modern workers in Freemasonry are under the same religious influence , engaged in the construction of a spiritual temple . Does not this long continuance of a brotherhood employed in the long pursuit , or changing it only from a

material to a spiritual character , but retaining its identity of organization , demand for itself some respect , and , if for nothing else , at least for its antiquity , some share of veneration ?

But this is not all . This society , or brotherhood or fraternity , as it might more appropriatejy be called , is distinguished from all other associations by the possession of certain symbols , myths , and above all else a Golden Legion , all of which are

directed to the purification of the heart , to the elevation of the mind , to the development of the great doctrine of immortality . Did the Masons of Strasburg and Cologne invent these symbols , these myths and this legion ? Certainly not , for

they are found in similar organizations that existed ages previously . The Greeks at Eleusis taught the same dogma of immortal life in the same symbolic mode , and their legend , if it differed from the Masonic in its accidence , was precisely identical in its substance . For Hiram there was

Dionysus , for the acacia , the myrtle , but there Avere the same mourning , the same discovery , the same rejoicing , because Avhat had been lost Avas found , and the same sacred teaching of the name of God and the soul ' s immortality . And so an ancient

orator who had passed through one of these old Greek Lodges , for such without much violence of language they may well be called , declared that those who have endured the initiation into the

mysteries entertain better hopes both of the end of life and of the eternal future . Is not this the very object and design of the legend of the

A Plea For Freemasonry.

Master ' s Degree ? And this same peculiar form of symbolic initiation is to be found among the old Egyptians and in the island of Samothracia , thousands of years before the light of Christianity dawned upon the world to give the seal of its Master and Founder to the divine truth of the

resurrection . This will not , it is true , prove the descent of Freemasonry as now organised from the religious mysteries of antiquity , although this is one of the theories of its origin entertained and defended by

scholars of no mean pretensions . But it Avill prove an identity of design in the moral aud intellectual organisation of all these institutions , and it will give the Masonic student subjects for profound study when he asks the interesting questions :

Whence came these symbols , myths , and legends ? Who invented them ? How and why have they been preserved ? Looking back into the remotest days of recorded history , we find a priesthood in an island of Greece and another on the banks of

the Nile , teaching the existence in a future life by symbols and legends , which convey the lesson in a peculiar mode . And now , after thousands of years have elapsed , we find the same symbolic and legendary method of instruction , for the same purpose , preserved in the depository of Avhat is comparativelv a modern institution . And between

these two extremes of the long past and the present now , we find the intervening period occupied by similar associations , succeeding each other from time to time , and spreading over different countries , but all engaged in the same symbolic ]

instruction , with substantially the same symbols and the same mythical history . Does not all this present a problem in moral and intellectual philosophy , and in the archasology of ethics which is well worthy of an attempted

solution ? How unutterably puerile seem the objections and the objurgations of a few contracted minds , guided only by prejudice , Avhen Ave consider the vast questions of deep interest that are connected with Freemasonry as a part of those

great brotherhoods that have filled the Avorld for so many ages , so far back indeed that some philosophic historians have supposed that theymust have derived their knowledge of the doctrines which they taught in their mystic assemblies from direct

revelation through an ancient priesthood that gives no other evidence of its former existence , but the results Avhich it produced .