America.

AMERICA .

LONDON , SATURDAY , JUNE 29 , 1867 .

At tlie installation of the officers in the Grand Chapter of tho Distoict of Columbia , held on Thursday , May 23 rd , at Washington , Dr . Albert Mackey , delivered the following address , which we have extracted from the Masonic Review : —

" We have assembled this evening for the performance of a ceremony peculiarly Masonicwhich , to Masons themselves , is unusual , to all others must appear strange and inexplicable . But it is the great peculiarity of the Masonic institution that it is founded on

ceremonies—cei'emonies which , in other societies , are but incidental , but in the Masonic are vital . Elsewhere they are but the clothing which ornaments the body—with us they are the body itself . And this arises from the very nature of Freemasonry , of which the best

definition that has ever been given is , that it is a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols . It is a science of morality—a science whose object is to teach great moral and religious truths , and these lessons of truth are inculcated

and developed by the ancient method of symbolism . It is this symbolic character of the institution which causes it to differ from every other association which the wisdom or ingenuity of man has devised , and gives to it that attractive form which

has always secured the unwavering attachment of its disciples and its own unalterable perpetuity . " There is no science so ancient as that of symbolism , and no mode of instruction has ever been so universal as was the symbolic in former times .

" The first learning iu the world , " says an eminent antiquary , " consisted chiefly of symbols , so that the wisdom of the Chaldeans , the Egyptians , the Jews , the Greeks , the -Komans , and of all the ancient world that has come down to us , has been symbolic in its character .

" In fact , man ' s earliest instruction is by symbols . The objective character of a symbol is best calculated to be grasped by the infant mind , whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually . In the first ages of the

world all propositions were expressed in symbols . The first religions were eminently symbolic , because when language was yet in its infancy visible symbols were the most lively means of acting upon the mind and senses of the multitude . And we must bear this fact of the primary existence and

predominance of symbolism in the earliest times constantly in mind , when we are investigating the nature of the ancient religions with which the history of Freemasonry is so intimately connected . Tho older the reli gion the more the symbolism

abounds . Modern religions may convey their dogmas in abstract propositions ; ancient religions always did so in symbols . And this is a good test of the comparative antiquity of a religious cast . There is more symbolism in . the Egyptian religion

than in the Jewish more in the Jewish than in the Christian more in the Christian than in the Mahommedan . The older the relio-ious faith the greater is its symbolic form . The science of symbolism , of which Freemasonry is at this clay the

only exponent , presents itself to us , then , not only as something venerable for its antiquity , but as sanctioned by the highest authority for we know that the most divine of all teachers instructed the

multitudes to-whom He gave the bread of life , in parables , which , it must be remembered , are only spoken symbols . " Such is the system adopted in Freemasonry for the development and inculcation of the great

religious and philosophical truths of which it was for so many years the sole conservator . ** Thousands of years ago this science of symbolism was adopted by the sagacious priesthood of Egypt to convey the lessons of religious truth

which they conveyed to their disciples . Their science , their history , and their philosophy were thus concealed beneath an impenetrable veil from the profane , and none but those who had passed through the severe ordeal of initiation were put in

possession of the key which enabled them to decipher and read those mystic lessons which we still see engraved upon the obelisks , the tombs , and the sarcophagi which lie scattered at this clayin endless profusion along the banks of the Nile . " From the Egyptians the same method of symbolic instruction was diffused anions * all the nations

of ancient heathendom , and was used m all their religious mysteries as the medium of communicating to the initiated , the esoteric and secret doctrines for whose preservation and promulgation those singular associations were formed .

Moses , too , who , as Holy Writ informs us , was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians , brought with him from that cradle ' of the sciences a perfect knowledge of the science of symbolism , as it was taught by the priests of Isis and Osiris , and applied it to the ceremonies with which he in-