By this transaction, Abraham was made acquainted with the mystery of human redemption;50 he saw the day of Christ and was glad.51 And this is a complete answer to those who assert that Masonry contains no Christianity; for this prominent illustration of Masonry, the offering of Isaac, was the most significant type of the blessings to be conveyed to man by the influence of Christianity, that was ever revealed to a human being. Indeed, Christianity is the perfection of our institution; for, if the great duties of Christianity be, as its Divine Author has assured us, the performance of our duty to God, our neighbour, and ourself,52 it has directly the same tendency as Masonry, which inculcates, as an object of primary importance, the performance of precisely the same duties. Christianity recommends love to God,5 the sacred Trinity in Unity; so does Masonry. Christianity inculcates brotherly love, relief,55 and truth;56 Masonry inculcates the same thing. Christianity and Masonry unite in enforcing the necessity of faith, hope, and charity; and both say, "the greatest of these is charity."57 The four cardinal virtues, temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice, are amongst the number of both their objects of general illustration; and both equally enforce the necessity of a holy life, through faith in a mediator, from the most awful subjects of contemplation which can impress a human being, viz., death, resurrection, and an eternal existence in a future state of happiness or misery, to be determined by the deeds done in this probationary state.

54

50 This was the proper type and representation of the death of Christ. Isaac was born of Sarah, contrary to the common course of Nature, and Jesus Christ was so born of a pure virgin. Three days elapsed from the command to sacrifice Isaac (from which time Abraham looked on him as dead) and the offering, when he was, as it were, restored to life; and precisely the same time elapsed between the actual death and resurrection of Christ. Isaac carried the wood to the top of Moriah for his own sacrifice; and Christ bare the cross on which he was to be suspended to the summit of Calvary, an adjoining mountain. Isaac submitted without a murmur to be bound and laid on the altar for sacrifice; and Christ voluntarily offered up his life upon the cross as an eternal sacrifice and propitiation for the sins of the world. 51 John viii., 56.

53 1st Epist. St. John. 55 Acts iv., 34, 37.

52 Mark xii., 33. 54 1 John iv., 21. 56 2 Cor. xiii., 8.

57 1 Cor. xiii., 13.

Who, then, shall say that Masonry contains no Christianity? Or rather, who shall assert that its illustrations are not principally Christian? For, if the virtues and doctrines I have enumerated be Christian virtues and doctrines, they are also masonic; nay, they contain, with their parallels, the whole system of Speculative Masonry; and I do not know, were Masonry minutely analyzed, that it contains a single illustration which does not enforce a Christian doctrine, or recommend a Christian virtue. If Masonry contain no Christianity, why are our Lodges dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist ?58 and

58 The old Lectures of Masonry ask, "What is the chief reason why our Lodges are dedicated to St. John?-In the time of the Palestine wars, the masonic knights, having united with those of St. John of Jerusalem to fight against the infidels, they placed themselves under the protection of that saint; and proving victorious in battle, they agreed, after returning thanks to God, that the Lodges of Masons should for ever be dedicated to God and holy St. John." I regret to add that the reformers of our Lectures have banished the two great parallels with the holy Lodge at Jerusalem from the system of Freemasonry; and with them all the accompanying references to Christianity; an innovation which ought not to have received any public sanction. Our American brethren are more just to the memory of the two parallels; and I quote with pleasure a paragraph from the Prize Essay of Comp. Blanchard Powers, published in the American Masonic Register for January, 1842. "Shall we call your attention once more to the notice of our Patron Saints? What an example of devotedness to the cause of religion did those two sainted Masons exhibit! The elder John was so aloof to the pageantry of the world, that his raiment was of camel's hair, and his meat locusts and wild honey; but his voice was heard in the wilderness of Judea-Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The younger John was not less indefatigable in promoting the true cause of religion; and his life was absorbed and swallowed up in the love of his Divine Master. Their virtues are worthy of imitation, and their examples were noble and praiseworthy. Their names will descend to the latest generations, as the first most eminent Christian patrons of ancient Craft Masonry." Alas! they have been banished by authority from English Free-masonry; whose Lectures omit all reference to "Him that was taken up to the pinnacle of the Holy Temple." They omit the interpretation of the five steps, representing the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Saviour; the reference of the eleven steps to the number of the apostles after Judas had been excluded; and other Christian allusions in the Craft Lectures have been carefully expunged. And the references in the R. A. to the promise of a Redeemer at the Fall-the prophecy of Shilo, &c., have all been designedly withdrawn. Why is this? I am afraid no satisfactory reply can be afforded. I take this opportunity of declaring, most explicitly, that if I had not been fully convinced that Free-masonry is a system of Christian ethics :-that it contributes its aid to point the way to the Grand Lodge above, through the cross

why are our solemn attestations ratified by an appeal to the truth of God declared in the Gospels?

But it is said that no institutions can assimilate whose origins are not coeval; and as Masonry was introduced on this globe at its first creation, and Christianity four thousand years afterwards, it follows that Masonry and Christianity cannot be assimilated as sister institutions.

To say nothing of the major, the minor of this argument is untrue. Masonry, to the inhabitants of this globe, was, indeed, coeval with its creation; but the same may be said of Christianity, if the Scriptures are to be believed; for they ascribe the salvation of mankind, both under the patriarchal and the Mosaic dispensations, to faith in Jesus Christ. It was through faith in the promised Messiah that Enoch was translated. By the exercise of the same faith, Noah was saved amidst the general destruction of the world. By the same faith, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and all others celebrated for their piety in the Old Testament, were approved, and obtained a good report, though they received not the promises, which rested in Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.59 Hence it may be deduced, that the only true and permanent religion, from the creation of this globe, is what we now term Christianity; and if Masonry be founded on that universal system of religion which is calculated to make men good and virtuous, it must be assimilated with Christianity, as the only existing religion which encourages the kindly affections of the human heart.

It is true that Masonry isn ot confined exclusively to

of Christ, I should never have been found among the number of its advocates. Fortunately, the general orders of the Grand Lodge enablo every brother to retain those old landmarks at his pleasure; and it is to be hoped that, in this Christian country, few Masters of Lodges will be induced to abandon them. In the year 1819 the Duke of Sussex, in an address to the brethren in Grand Lodge, immediately after the revised Lectures had been promulgated, said:"That it was his opinion, that so long as the Master of any Lodge observed exactly the landmarks of the Craft, he was at liberty to give the Lectures in the language best suited to the character of the Lodge over which he presided. And that, any Master of a Lodge, on visiting another Lodge, and approving of the Lectures delivered therein, is at liberty to promulgate the same from the Chair in his own Lodge, provided he has previously perfected himself in the instructions of the Master in the aforesaid Lodge." (Quarterly Com., Dec., 1819.)

69 Vide Heb. xi.

Christianity, but embraces all that is great and good in every religion under the sun, because it confines its excitements to the practice of morality, whatever the system of faith may be; because it is an institution of charity or brotherly love, and is not, consequently, a system of faith, but of practice; but it does not embrace, or lend the most indirect sanction to any religious institution which diverges, in the smallest degree, from the systematic worship of one God, the Creator and Governor of the world. But Masonry is more peculiarly adapted to the genius of the Christian than any other religion, because in Christianity nothing is erroneous; and, if Masonry be actually the beautiful system we believe and acknowledge it to be, it can only be assimilated with a pure religion. The professors of other religions may, indeed, urge the same plea, but, as truth must have some irrefutable standard of reference, our claims are founded on the most ancient and most singularly protected books in the world; books which carry an internal evidence of their authenticity, which no force of argument has been able to remove. In a word, the existence of Masonry in these times, purified from the defilements which it contracted by an incorporation with false systems of worship, in every age, and amongst every people for many successive centuries, sufficiently evinces that its origin was pure; and that, though debased by idolatry, amidst the moral darkness which obscured the world during the long reign of superstition, when the true religion laid prostrate the usurpations of idolatrous worship, Masonry hailed the great work of reformation, and appeared amongst mankind pure and bright as in the days of Enoch, Abraham, Moses, or Solomon.

The conclusion, then, is this: Masonry on our globe was coeval with true religion, which we now call Christianity; was originally considered a beautiful handmaid to religion, and from this belief was incorporated by the descendants of Noah into every new system formed by the varying fancies of vicious and designing men; hence its universality as a speculative or an operative pursuit; its essence continued visible amidst the fluctuations of all religious systems, and was more or less expanded as they approximated to, or diverged from, the only true plan of divine worship.

PERIOD IV.

CHAPTER VII.

On Symbolical Instruction.

THE great end and design of Masonry is to make men virtuous and happy by the inculcation of moral precepts, enforced by the most engaging considerations that can be presented to the mind. The medium of instruction used by our ancient brethren, and still preserved pure and unimpaired, was by visible symbols, in which precepts of morality were curiously enfolded and veiled from common observation. Thus in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, a child, an old man, a hawk, a fish, and a riverhorse, properly arranged, were intended to express this precept: "Let all mankind from youth to old age, know that the gods hate impudence."

"In this hieroglyphic system, the hero-gods not only

The discoveries which have been made in Egypt since the first edition of this work was printed have rendered the above interpretation questionable. Spineto says, "Our knowledge of hieroglyphics amounted literally to nothing, when the French government sent an expedition into Egypt, most liberally provided with a select body of antiquaries and architects, surveyors, naturalists, and draughtsmen, to discover, copy, and carry away all that was fitted to explain the scientific and literary knowledge of that country. On their return, they published a splendid account of their labours, in which all the perfection and elegance which can possibly belong to printing and engraving have been exhibited; and nothing can exceed the fidelity and exactness with which the several MSS. and inscriptions have been represented." From this period the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics has assumed the form of a system; and Champollion has furnished a regular series of hieroglyphical characters, which are capable of being used phonetically, or as the letters of an alphabet, and apply to most of the cases of hieroglyphics which occur on the monuments of that country. (See the Theocratic Philosophy, p 123.)