never committed publicly to writing except in the very latest ages, when their abominable practices brought them into disrepute, and accelerated their dissolution." How very sacred the ancients deemed these mysteries, appears from the following passages in Apollonius Rhodius: "To Samothrace, Electra's isle, they steer, FAWKES. The mysteries in every nation were committed to the custody of the priests.45 The Bramins of India were wonderfully tenacious of their secrets, and, deviating from the practice of other nations, concealed them from all the world except those who aspired to the sacerdotal dignity. Their secrecy was so severely maintained, that death was the certain punishment for the slightest breach of faith. The Hindoos were idolaters, yet the general truths of religion ran obscurely through their system of false worship. They represented the Supreme Being under a THREEFOLD SYMBOL. They believed that "God created the world; that he is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and present everywhere." They admit the reality of a future state, though their theory on this point is somewhat vague and fanciful. The threefold symbol evidently shows that these idolaters had some general ideas respecting the doctrine of the Trinity; which appears, indeed, to have run through all the systems of false as well as true worship in every age of the "Warburton says, that the mysteries are laid open, and the tedious forms of initiation fully described by Virgil (ENEIS, lib. 6). 45 And they held the minds of men in the most deplorable thraldom. Amongst the proudest and wisest," says Mills," within the borders of paganism, there did not live a man unenslaved by these delusions. The soothsayer, the interpreter of dreams, the sacrificer, the seller of the remnants and dust of the dead, the miserable pretender to magic; these were the true rulers of mankind, these were the sceptre-bearers, to whom emperors themselves were but as menials; they laughed at authority, set counsel at nought, and sapped the foundations of every state, by sapping the vigour of the national mind.” world. Suidas informs us that the name of Trismegistus was given to Thoth or Hermes46" because he taught the doctrine of the Trinity." Stanhope says:"Some very learned heathens have made approaches to this doctrine, under the names of one or good, mind or cause, and soul, sometimes called the soul of the world, at other times the soul above the world. The same have been again distinguished by infinite GOODNESS, infinite WISDOM, and infinite LOVE; but these distinctions are not made to imply three different principles, but as united in one common principle or universal cause. The first of these was said to be derived from none; the second to be derived from the first; the third from the other two. In the production of the world, the first was the original MOVER; the second was the ARCHITECT; and the third was the GIVER OF LIFE: 46 It is impossible to clear away the mists in which the history of the triple Hermes is involved. The poets identify him with Mercury. Bishop Cumberland makes him the same as Thoth, the son of Mizraim. Bryant, from the Chronicon Paschale, pronounces him to be the patriarch Joseph. Some think his name of Trismegistus, or thrice greatest, was imposed, because, like the Jewish patriarchs, he combined in his own person the threefold offices of king, priest, and prophet; and hence the theory which professes to explain all the phenomena of Nature from the three chemical principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury, is called the Hermetical philosophy. Suidas, however, says that the name of Trismegistus was given him because he taught the doctrine of the Trinity. Faber considers him an imaginary mythological character, and derives his name from Ar-Mon, the deity of the lunari-arkite mountain. Hammer considers him to have been Enoch, and says, "Hermes was the first king of the ancient Egyptians, and is evidently the Hermes Trismegistus of the Greeks, and possibly the same with the triple Ráma of the Indians. The old kings of Egypt are comprehended by or under the name of Pharaohs. The Oriental historians divide them into three dynasties; viz., 1, the Hermesian; 2, the Pharaohs; and 3, the Coptic, or, properly, Egyptian kings. To the first, and particularly to Hermes, the threefold himself, they ascribe the tombs, catacombs, temples, palaces, pyramids, obelisks, sphynxes, and all the royal, funeral, religious, and astronomical monuments which astonish the traveller in Upper Egypt; but, incapable of distinguishing them, or of finding out their true appropriation, they believe all of them to have been constructed for the purpose of hiding treasures, of raising spirits, of telling fortunes and future events; of performing chemical operations, of attracting affection, of repelling evils, or of indicating approaching enemies; and they call them, according to these supposed purposes, treasure-chambers, conjuring buildings, astrological tables, alchemical monuments, magical spells, talismans, and magic alarm-posts. but still all these were affirmed to have but one operation, and all things to be produced by the common consent of the three."47 Every Mason will fully comprehend this reasoning, because it is nearly allied to a most beautiful illustration contained in the first Lecture of Masonry. 47 Boyle, Lect. CHAPTER VI. CONTAINING FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS. View of Masonry from the Universal Deluge to the Offering of Isaac. NOAH remained in the ark while the waters inundated the world, for the space of six months, at the expiration of which time the ark rested on Ararat, a mountain in Armenia. After remaining about three months in that situation, Noah sent out a raven' and a dove, that he might ascertain whether the waters had subsided. The birds very soon returned to the ark, unable, from the prevalence of the waters, to find a place of rest. At the end of seven days he sent forth the dove a second time, which returned to the ark with an olive leaf in her mouth, as a token of peace and reconciliation with God; and the olive branch has consequently been adopted as a symbol of peace by every nation uuder the sun. When seven days were again expired, he sent forth the dove a third time, which returned to him no more; hence Noah concluded that the waters were dissipated from off the face of the earth; and at the end of twelve months and ten days from his entering the ark, he left it on the summit of the mountain, and all the creatures in it were soon dispersed over the earth.2 1 Ravens were birds of evil omen. When they appeared about an army, they were objects of terror, particularly if they came croaking on the left hand. Pliny says that the worst omens were given by them when they made a harsh sort of noise-rattling in their throats as if they were choking. 2"In the time of Josephus, there was a city in Armenia which he calls Aroẞarnotov, or the place of descent: it is called by Ptolemy, Naxuana by Moses, Choronensis Idsheuan; and at the place itself it was called Nach-Idsheuan, which signifies the first place of descent. This city was a lasting monument of the preservation of Noah in the ark, upon the top of that mountain at whose foot it was built, as the first city or town after the Flood."—(Bishop Tomline's Theol., pt. i., c. 1. The first act of Noah, after his escape from the general destruction of all created flesh, was an act of gratitude and devotion to his Great Preserver. He erected an altar and offered a burnt-offering of every clean beast and fowl. Here God covenanted with Noah, that he would no more destroy the world by water, and placed a rainbow in the clouds as a token, which was to remain as a perpetual memento of His most gracious promise.3 The assurances of preservation delivered to Noah were accompanied by an injunction to observe certain precepts, which the Jewish Rabbins say were seven 4-1. Judgment; or punishment for the commission of unnatural crimes. 2. Blessings; particularly the institution of the Sabbath, and praising the name of God. 3. Against the practice of idolatry. 4. Uncovering our own nakedness forbidden. 5. Punishment for shedding the blood of our fellow-creatures. 6. Against theft, fraud, and dissimulation and the seventh forbade eating the flesh of a beast, taken from it before it was dead.5 In process of time the unnatural conduct of Ham elicited his father's curse. He denounced judgments upon his posterity; and particularly on Canaan, which were inflicted with unremitting vengeance. 3 A phenomenon, so remarkable and so frequently recurring amidst excessive rains, serves to impress this assurance firmly on our minds. The appearance of this bow is said to excite very extraordinary sensations upon the Jews, even to this day. Superstitiously imagining the sacred name of God to be visibly displayed in the rainbow, they turn from it in the utmost veneration, lest they should behold the majesty of God, whom no one may see and live: and after an humble confession of their sins, they acknowledge themselves worthy to be cut off by a similar visitation, and celebrate His clemency who spares them, while deformed by a series of accumulated transgressions. 6. * Maimonides informs us that Adam had six precepts given him after the fall; which were-1. Against idolatry. 2. Against blasphemy. 3. Against murder. 4. Against adultery. 5. Against stealing. To appoint judges to enforce these precepts. These, he adds, were enjoined on Noah, with this addition, that he should not cut off any portion of a living animal and eat it. 5 Sheindler in Pentaglot. The curse of a father, in ancient times, was deemed an inexpiable misfortune. Heathen nations were impressed with an idea, that one principal commission of the Furies was, to execute vengeance on wayward children, lying under the parental curse. In after ages, the descendants of Canaan became addicted to the very worst species of idolatry, and even sacrificed their sons and their daughters on the impious altars of false and impure deities. (Deut. xii., 31.) They |