Arkism.

and bad , serious and trifling . Take , for instance , that most common and familiar of appellations , Tour . You call your son or brother " Tom , " but are quite ignorant that herein is a great mys

tery of Arkism ; for the old antique Toir survives in your son or brother , and in his cousins tomb and dome , and their derivatives , the tabor temple and devil symbols . Poor Tom ! little do you know of your ancestry and surviving relatives !

Mariolatry is explained by Arkism , though " half educated preachers will give a common-place and vulgar explanation of it . But they are schoolmasters , not savants . " It is the revival of an always existing and most ancient system of

religious ideas . She is the Venus—Astarte—Isis of the old mythologies . The most famous images of the Virgin Mary , like those in the crypt at Char tres and the Monastery at Einsiedeln , are blach and very old , and the local tradition assigns to

them a heathen or Druidic origin . " Go back and go abroad where you will , what are all the virgins but " ancillary Arkisms ?" More Arkisms everywhere , not only amongst those old legendary Jews and their Old Testament , but amongst these loving Christians also , and in their New Testament!— "These literalists that

thunder from our pulpits are stupid or crazy Grahamites , pretending that the husks are needful for our weak digestion . " Arkism in the Gospels ; little but Arkism in the Acopalypse of St . John ; Arkism amongst the Apostles , as , for instance ,

why was a great zoological sheet let down in vision out of heaven precisely upon Peter ' s head , and on no other apostle ' s , unless it were because by name he typified the Ararat ? Arkism everywhere again . The secret order of

the Jesuits , what are they but the Arkites of the revived worship of the Queen of Heaven , the Mary of the Moon ? The Freemasons in particular , what are they but long-lived and everspreading Arkites ? No phenomenon connected with the existence of man has excited more

curiosity and speculation than the universal spread of not only the spirit , but the language of Freemasonry around the world . Ifc can only be explained by the simplicity of their formularies , and their preservation from remotest antiquity , as

modern representatives of primeval Arkism . " Solomon , the primeval Grand Master , called himself the Quelt or Cabalist . Not only Solomon and the ancients are concerned in this mystery , but even our words kirk and church are derivatives

from Quel , and the most orthodox gentiles have an unconscious connection with the Arkite-Cabala . In fact , we are all more or less involved in this strange Arkism , and iu all directions . One cannot

call " Tom " without being in it ; one cannot pufc a university cap on Tom ' s head without seeing an Arkite symbol . From the Chancellor on the woolpack to Tom at college , even his sister at school , we are all Arkites . At the Zoological Gardens

we are Arkites again , for " we all of us talk of monkeys gibbering , aud idiots muttering gibberish , and turkeys gobbling , and school-girls gabbling , without suspicion thafc these words date from the times when the language of the initiated was a

mysterious unintellig ible cabala to the common people . " So steeped are we in Arkite symbolism , that when we close this volume and go out to get a breath of air , we find symbols which Mr . Lesley never suspected . Yonder is a girl in a high-heeled

boot ; what is that boot but an Arkite symbol reversed ? Behind her head she wears her hair in a huge dome or bump ; that is the top of the mountain . Over her head she carries a little

skifflike bonnet : that is the sign of the ancient sleep * Who would have thought it ?—the girl is Arkite from head to heel ! Nay , more , the very word girl is significant of cabala , for quel = girl . Yes , the whole mystery is in thafc g irl and her name and her

dress . Why this strange and persistent revival of the oldest symbols ? In yonder grocer ' s window we see them again—the obelisk in those sugarloaves . It rains , and we put up our umbrellaan Arkite symbol again of a dome and the waters

descending on the top of Ararat . On returning to our study we find a letter from our solicitor , informing us that a certain deed " will not hold water . " Ah ! here is another Arkite metaphor ! The woolsack represents a skin holding ' water ; .

therefore , whatever is not legally sound is legally said " not to hold water . " Wonderfully fertile is this Arkite symbolism !— .

The world's all Arkite , tho' we did not know it Till J . P . Lesley kindly came to show it ! Seriously considered , while we acknowledge the ingenuity , research , and persistence of our author in tracing the Arkite symbols through long ages and through obscure mythologies , in the light of

comparative philology this theory must be pronounced a word-fetich , and iu the light of interpreted mythology a thing-fetich . Mr . Lesley as imperiously demands homage to this new , or rather repainted and redecorated , idol , as did