XXVI. PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN.
WHILE you were veiled in darkness, you heard repeated by the Voice of the Great Past its most ancient doctrines. None has the right to object, if the Christian Mason sees foreshadowed in Chrishna and Sosiosch, in Mithras and Osiris, the Divine WORD that, as he believes, became Man, and died upon the cross to redeem a fallen race. Nor can he object if others see reproduced, in the WORD of the beloved Disciple, that was in the beginning with God, and that was God, and by Whom everything was made, only the LOGOS of Plato, and the WORD or Uttered THOUGHT or first Emanation of LIGHT, Or the Perfect REASON of the Great, Silent, Supreme, Uncreated Deity, believed in and adored by all.
We do not undervalue the importance of any Truth. We utter no word that can be deemed irreverent by any one of any faith. We do not tell the Moslem that it is only important for him to believe that there is but one God, and wholly unessential whether Mahomet was His prophet. We do not tell the Hebrew that the Messiah whom he expects was born in Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago; and that he is a heretic because he will not so believe. And as little do we tell the sincere Christian that Jesus of Nazareth was but a man like us, or His history but the unreal revival of an older legend. To do either is beyond our jurisdiction. Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time; of no one religion, it finds its great truths in all.
To every Mason, there is a GOD; ONE, Supreme, Infinite in Goodness, Wisdom, Foresight, Justice, and Benevolence; Creator, Disposer, and Preserver of all things. How, or by what intermediates He creates and acts, and in what way He unfolds and manifests Himself, Masonry leaves to creeds and Religions to inquire.
To every Mason, the soul of man is immortal. Whether it emanates from and will return to God, and what its continued mode of existence hereafter, each judges for himself. Masonry was not made to settle that.
To every Mason, WISDOM or INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, and HARMONY, or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the attributes of God. With the subtleties of Philosophy concerning them Masonry does not meddle, nor decide as to the reality of the supposed Existences which are their Personifications: nor whether the Christian Trinity be such a personification, or a Reality of the gravest import and significance.
To every Mason, the Infinite Justice and Benevolence of God give ample assurance that Evil will ultimately be dethroned, and the Good, the True, and the Beautiful reign triumphant and eternal. It teaches, as it feels and knows, that Evil, and Pain, and Sorrow exist as part of a wise and beneficent plan, all the parts of which work together under God's eye to a result which shall be perfection. Whether the existence of evil is rightly explained in this creed or in that, by Typhon the Great Serpent, by Ahriman and his Armies of Wicked Spirits, by the Giants and Titans that war against Heaven, by the two co-existent Principles of Good and Evil, by Satan's temptation and the fall of Man, by Lok and the Serpent Fenris, it is beyond the domain of Masonry to decide, nor does it need to inquire. Nor is it within its Province to determine how the ultimate triumph of Light and Truth and Good, over Darkness and Error and Evil, is to be achieved; nor whether the Redeemer, looked and longed for by all nations, hath appeared in Judea, or is yet to come.
It reverences all the great reformers. It sees in Moses, the Lawgiver of the Jews, in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Jesus of Nazareth, and in the Arabian Iconoclast, Great Teachers of Morality, and Eminent Reformers, if no more: and allows every brother of the Order to assign to each such higher and even Divine Character as his Creed and Truth require.
Thus Masonry disbelieves no truth, and teaches unbelief in no creed, except so far as such creed may lower its lofty estimate of the Deity, degrade Him to the level of the passions of humanity, deny the high destiny of man, impugn the goodness and benevolence of the Supreme God, strike at those great columns of Masonry, Faith, Hope, and Charity, or inculcate immorality, and disregard of the active duties of the Order.
Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can unite; for it does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to settle those great mysteries, that are above the feeble comprehension of our human intellect. It trusts in God, and HOPES; it BELIEVES, like a child, and is humble. It draws no sword to compel others to adopt its belief, or to be happy with its hopes. And it WAITS with patience to understand the mysteries of Nature and Nature's God hereafter.
The greatest mysteries in the Universe are those which are ever going on around us; so trite and common to us that we never note them nor reflect upon them. Wise men tell us of the laws that regulate the motions of the spheres, which, flashing in huge circles and spinning on their axes, are also ever darting with inconceivable rapidity through the infinities of Space; while we atoms sit here, and dream that all was made for us. They tell us learnedly of centripetal and centrifugal forces, gravity and attraction, and all the other sounding terms invented to hide a want of meaning. There are other forces in the Universe than those that are mechanical.
Here are two minute seeds, not much unlike in appearance, and two of larger size. Hand them to the learned Pundit, Chemistry, who tells us how combustion goes on in the lungs, and plants are fed with phosphorus and carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let her decompose them, analyze them, torture them in all the ways she knows. The net result of each is a little sugar, a little fibrin, a little water--carbon, potassium, sodium, and the like--one cares not to know what.
We hide them in the ground: and the slight rains moisten them, and the Sun shines upon them, and little slender shoots spring up and grow;--and what a miracle is the mere growth!--the force, the power, the capacity by which the little feeble shoot, that a small worm can nip off with a single snap of its mandibles, extracts from the earth and air and water the different elements, so learnedly catalogued, with which it increases in stature, and rises imperceptibly toward the sky.
One grows to be a slender, fragile, feeble stalk, soft of texture, like an ordinary weed; another a strong bush, of woody fibre, armed with thorns, and sturdy enough to bid defiance to the winds: the third a tender tree, subject to be blighted by the frost, and looked down upon by all the forest; while another spreads its rugged arms abroad, and cares for neither frost nor ice, nor the snows that for months lie around its roots.
But lo! out of the brown foul earth, and colorless invisible air, and limpid rain-water, the chemistry of the seeds has extracted colors--four different shades of green, that paint the leaves which put forth in the spring upon our plants, our shrubs, and our trees. Later still come the flowers--the vivid colors of the rose, the beautiful brilliance of the carnation, the modest blush of the apple; and the splendid white of the orange. Whence come the colors of the leaves and flowers? By what process of chemistry are they extracted from the carbon, the phosphorus, and the lime? Is it any greater miracle to make something out of nothing?
Pluck the flowers. Inhale the delicious perfumes; each perfect, and all delicious. Whence have they come? By what combination of acids and alkalies could the chemist's laboratory produce them?
And now on two comes the fruit--the ruddy apple and the golden orange. Pluck them--open them! The texture and fabric how totally different! The taste how entirely dissimilar--the perfume of each distinct from its flower and from the other. Whence the taste and this new perfume? The same earth and air and water have been made to furnish a different taste to each fruit, a different perfume not only to each fruit, but to each fruit and its own flower.
Is it any more a problem whence come thought and will and perception and all the phenomena of the mind, than this, whence come the colors, the perfumes, the taste, of the fruit and flower?
And lo! in each fruit new seeds, each gifted with the same wondrous power of reproduction--each with the same wondrous forces wrapped up in it to be again in turn evolved. Forces that had lived three thousand years in the grain of wheat found in the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy; forces of which learning and science and wisdom know no more than they do of the nature and laws of action of God. What can we know of the nature, and how can we understand the powers and mode of operation of the human soul, when the glossy leaves, the pearl-white flower, and the golden fruit of the orange are miracles wholly beyond our comprehension?
We but hide our ignorance in a cloud of words;--and the words too often are mere combinations of sounds without any meaning. What is the centrifugal force? A tendency to go in a particular direction! What external "force," then, produces that tendency?
What force draws the needle round to the north? What force moves the muscle that raises the arm, when the will determines it shall rise? Whence comes the will itself? Is it spontaneous--a first cause, or an effect? These too are miracles; inexplicable as the creation, or the existence and self-existence of God.
Who will explain to us the passion, the peevishness, the anger, the memory, and affections of the small canary-wren? the consciousness of identity and the dreams of the dog? the reasoning powers of the elephant? the wondrous instincts, passions, government, and civil policy, and modes of communication of ideas of the ant and bee?
Who has yet made us to understand, with all his learned words, how heat comes to us from the Sun, and light from the remote Stars, setting out upon its journey earthward from some, at the time the Chaldæans commenced to build the Tower of Babel? Or how the image of an external object comes to and fixes itself upon the retina of the eye; and when there, how that mere empty, unsubstantial image becomes transmuted into the wondrous thing that we call SIGHT? Or how the waves of the atmosphere striking upon the tympanum of the ear--those thin, invisible waves--produce the equally wondrous phenomenon of HEARING, and become the roar of the tornado, the crash of the thunder, the mighty voice of the ocean, the chirping of the cricket, the delicate sweet notes and exquisite trills and variations of the wren and mocking-bird, or the magic melody of the instrument of Paganini?
Our senses are mysteries to us, and we are mysteries to ourselves. Philosophy has taught us nothing as to the nature of our sensations, our perceptions, our cognizances, the origin of our thoughts and ideas, but words. By no effort or degree of reflection, never so long continued, can man become conscious of a personal identity in himself, separate and distinct from his body and his brain. We torture ourselves in the effort to gain an idea of ourselves, and weary with the exertion. Who has yet made us understand how, from the contact with a foreign body, the image in the eye, the wave of air impinging on the ear, particular particles entering the nostrils, and coming in contact with the palate, come sensations in the nerves, and from that, perception in the mind, of the animal or the man?
What do we know of Substance? Men even doubt yet whether it exists. Philosophers tell us that our senses make known to us only the attributes of substance, extension, hardness, color, and the like; but not the thing itself that is extended, solid, black or white; as we know the attributes of the Soul, its thoughts and its perceptions, and not the Soul itself which perceives and thinks.
What a wondrous mystery is there in heat and light, existing, we know not how, within certain limits, narrow in comparison with infinity, beyond which on every side stretch out infinite space and the blackness of unimaginable darkness, and the intensity of inconceivable cold! Think only of the mighty Power required to maintain warmth and light in the central point of such an infinity, to whose darkness that of Midnight, to whose cold that of the last Arctic Island is nothing. And yet GOD is everywhere.
And what a mystery are the effects of heat and cold upon the wondrous fluid that we call water! What a mystery lies hidden in every flake of snow and in every crystal of ice, and in their final transformation into the invisible vapor that rises from the ocean or the land, and floats above the summits of the mountains!
What a multitude of wonders, indeed, has chemistry unveiled to our eyes! Think only that if some single law enacted by God were at once repealed, that of attraction or affinity or cohesion, for example, the whole material world, with its solid granite and adamant, its veins of gold and silver, its trap and porphyry, its huge beds of coal, our own frames and the very ribs and bones of this apparently indestructible earth, would instantaneously dissolve, with all Suns and Stars and Worlds throughout all the Universe of God, into a thin invisible vapor of infinitely minute particles or atoms, diffused throughout infinite space; and with them light and heat would disappear; unless the Deity Himself be, as the Ancient Persians thought, the Eternal Light and the Immortal Fire.
The mysteries of the Great Universe of God! How can we with our limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME, without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each! An infinity of suns, the nearest of which only diminish in size, viewed with the most powerful telescope: each with its retinue of worlds; infinite numbers of such suns, so remote from us that their light would not reach us, journeying during an infinity of time, while the light that has reached us, from some that we seem to see, has been upon its journey for fifty centuries: our world spinning upon its axis, and rushing ever in its circuit round the sun; and it, the sun, and all our system revolving round some great central point; and that, and suns, stars, and worlds evermore flashing onward with incredible rapidity through illimitable space: and then, in every drop of water that we drink, in every morsel of much of our food, in the air, in the earth, in the sea, incredible multitudes of living creatures, invisible to the naked eye, of a minuteness beyond belief, yet organized, living, feeding, perhaps with consciousness of identity, and memory and instinct.
Such are some of the mysteries of the great Universe of God. And yet we, whose life and that of the world on which we live form but a point in the centre of infinite Time: we, who nourish animalcule within, and on whom vegetables grow without, would fain learn "how God created this Universe, would understand His Powers, His Attributes, His Emanations, His Mode of Existence and of Action; would fain know the plan according to which all events proceed, that plan profound as God Himself; would know the laws by which He controls His Universe; would fain see and talk to Him face to face, as man talks to man: and we try not to believe, because we do not understand.
He commands us to love one another, to love our neighbor as ourself; and we dispute and wrangle, and hate and slay each other, because we cannot be of one opinion as to the Essence of His Nature, as to His Attributes; whether He became man born of a woman, and was crucified; whether the Holy Ghost is of the same substance with the Father, or only of a similar substance; whether a feeble old man is God's Vicegerent; whether some are elected from all eternity to be saved, and others to be condemned and punished; whether punishment of the wicked after death is to be eternal; whether this doctrine or the other be heresy or truth;--drenching the world with blood, depopulating realms, and turning fertile lands into deserts; until, for religious war, persecution, and bloodshed, the Earth for many a century has rolled round the Sun, a charnel-house, steaming and reeking with human gore, the blood of brother slain by brother for opinion's sake, that has soaked into and polluted all her veins, and made her a horror to her sisters of the Universe.
And if men were all Masons, and obeyed with all their heart her mild and gentle teachings, that world would be a paradise; while intolerance and persecution make of it a hell. For this is the Masonic Creed: BELIEVE, in God's Infinite Benevolence, Wisdom, and Justice: HOPE, for the final triumph of Good over Evil, and for Perfect Harmony as the final result of all the concords and discords of the Universe: and be CHARITABLE as God is, toward the unfaith, the errors, the follies, and the faults of men: for all make one great brotherhood.
INSTRUCTION.
Sen∴ W∴ Brother Junior Warden, are you a Prince of Mercy?
Jun∴ W∴ I have seen the Delta and the Holy NAMES upon it, and am an AMETH like yourself, in the TRIPLE COVENANT, of which we bear the mark.
Qu∴ What is the first Word upon the Delta?
Ans∴ The Ineffable Name of Deity, the true mystery of which is known to the Ameth alone.
Qu∴ What do the three sides of the Delta denote to us?
Ans∴ To us, and to all Masons, the three Great Attributes or Developments of the Essence of the Deity; WISDOM, or the Reflective and Designing Power, in which, when there was naught but God, the Plan and Idea of the Universe was shaped and formed: FORCE, or the Executing and Creating Power, which instantaneously acting, realized the Type and Idea framed by Wisdom; and the Universe, and all Stars and Worlds, and Light and Life, and Men and Angels and all living creatures WERE; and HARMONY, or the Preserving Power, Order, and Beauty, maintaining the Universe in its State, and constituting the law of Harmony, Motion, Proportion, and Progression:--WISDOM, which thought the plan; STRENGTH, which created: HARMONY, which upholds and preserves:--the Masonic Trinity, three Powers and one Essence: the three columns which support the Universe, Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual, of which every Masonic Lodge is a type and symbol:--while to the Christian Mason, they represent the Three that bear record in Heaven, the FATHER, the WORD, and the HOLY SPIRIT, which three are ONE.
Qu∴ What do the three Greek letters upon the Delta, Ι∴ Η∴ Σ∴ [Iota, Eta, and Sigma] represent?
Ans∴ Three of the Names of the Supreme Deity among the Syrians, Phœnicians. and Hebrews . . . IHUH [YHWH]; Self-Existence . . . AL [אל]: the Nature-God, or Soul of the Universe. . . SHADAI [שדי] Supreme Power. Also three of the Six Chief At-tributes of God, among the Kabbalists:--WISDOM [IEH], the Intellect, (Νοῦς) of the Egyptians, the Word (Λόγος) of the Platonists, and the Wisdom (Σοφία) of the Gnostics: . . MAGNIFICENCE [AL], the Symbol of which was the Lion's Head: . . and VICTORY and GLORY [Tsabaoth], which are the two columns JACHIN and BOAZ, that stand in the Portico of the Temple of Masonry. To the Christian Mason they are the first three letters of the name of the Son of God, Who died upon the cross to redeem mankind.
Qu∴ What is the first of the THREE COVENANTS, of which we bear the mark?
Ans∴ That which God made with Noah; when He said, "I will not again curse the earth any more for man's sake, neither will I smite any more everything living as I have done. While the Earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and Winter and Summer, and day and night shall not cease. I will establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you, and with every living creature. All mankind shall no more be cut off by the waters of a flood, nor shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. This is the token of My covenant: I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth: an everlasting covenant between Me and every living creature on the earth."
Qu∴ What is the second of the Three Covenants?
Ans∴ That which God made with Abraham; when He said, "I am the Absolute Uncreated God. I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and thou shalt be the Father of Many Nations, and Kings shall come from thy loins. I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy descendants after thee, to the remotest generations, for an everlasting covenant; and I will be thy God and their God, and will give thee the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession."
Qu∴ What is the third Covenant?
Ans∴ That which God made with all men by His prophets; when He said: "I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My Glory. I will create new Heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. The Sun shall no more shine by day, nor the Moon by night; but the Lord shall be an everlasting light and splendor. His Spirit and His Word shall remain with men forever. The heavens shall vanish away like vapor, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die; but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not end; and there shall be Light among the Gentiles, and salvation unto the ends of the earth. The redeemed of the Lord shall return, and everlasting joy be on their heads, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away."
Qu∴ What is the symbol of the Triple Covenant?
Ans∴ The Triple Triangle.
Qu∴ Of what else is it the symbol to us?
Ans∴ Of the Trinity of Attributes of the Deity; and of the triple essence of Man, the Principle of Life, the Intellectual Power, and the Soul or Immortal Emanation from the Deity.
Qu∴ What is the first great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?
Ans∴ No man hath seen God at any time. He is One, Eternal, All-Powerful, All-Wise, Infinitely Just, Merciful, Benevolent, and Compassionate, Creator and Preserver of all things, the Source of Light and Life, coextensive with Time and Space; Who thought, and with the Thought created the Universe and all living things, and the souls of men: THAT IS:--the PERMANENT; while everything beside is a perpetual genesis.
Qu∴ What is the second great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?
Ans∴ The Soul of Man is Immortal; not the result of organization, nor an aggregate of modes of action of matter, nor a succession of phenomena and perceptions; but an EXISTENCE, one and identical, a living spirit, a spark of the Great Central Light, that hath entered info and dwells in the body; to be separated therefrom at death, and return to God who gave it: that doth not disperse nor vanish at death, like breath or a smoke, nor can be annihilated; but still exists and possesses activity and intelligence, even as it existed in God, before it was enveloped in the body.
Qu∴ What is the third great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters from crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, but coeval with that Divine Being Who sees and rules both Heaven and earth. Nor did Tarquin less violate that Eternal Law, though in his reign there might have been no written law at Rome against such violence; for the principle that impels us to right conduct, and warns us against guilt, springs out of the nature of things. It did not begin to be law when it was first written, nor was it originated; but it is coeval with the Divine Intelligence itself. The consequence of virtue is not to be made the end thereof; and laudable performances must have deeper roots, motives, and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues.
Qu∴ What is the fourth great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ The moral truths are as absolute as the metaphysical truths. Even the Deity cannot make it that there should be effects without a cause, or phenomena without substance. As little could He make it to be sinful and evil to respect our pledged word, to love truth, to moderate our passions. The principles of Morality are axioms, like the principles of Geometry. The moral laws are the necessary relations that flow from the nature of things, and they are not created by, but have existed eternally in God. Their continued existence does not depend upon the exercise of His WILL. Truth and Justice are of His ESSENCE. Not because we are feeble and God omnipotent, is it our duty to obey His law. We may be forced, but are not under obligation, to obey the stronger. God is the principle of Morality, but not by His mere will, which, abstracted from all other of His attributes, would be neither just nor unjust. Good is the expression of His will, in so far as that will is itself the expression of eternal, absolute, uncreated justice, which is in God, which His will did not create; but which it executes and promulgates, as our will proclaims and promulgates and executes the idea of the good which is in us. He has given us the law of Truth and Justice; but He has not arbitrarily instituted that law. Justice is inherent in His will, because it is contained in His intelligence and wisdom, in His very nature and most intimate essence.
Qu∴ What is the fifth great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ There is an essential distinction between Good and Evil, what is just and what is unjust; and to this distinction is attached, for every intelligent and free creature, the absolute obligation of conforming to what is good and just. Man is an intelligent and free being,--free, because he is conscious that it is his duty, and because it is made his duty, to obey the dictates of truth and justice, and therefore he must necessarily have the power of doing so, which involves the power of not doing so;-capable of comprehending the distinction between good and evil, justice and injustice, and the obligation which accompanies it, and of naturally adhering to that obligation, independently of any contract or positive law; capable also of resisting the temptations which urge him toward evil and injustice, and of complying with the sacred law of eternal justice.
That man is not governed by a resistless Fate or inexorable Destiny; but is free to choose between the evil and the good: that Justice and Right, the Good and Beautiful, are of the essence of the Divinity, like His Infinitude; and therefore they are laws to man: that we are conscious of our freedom to act, as we are conscious of our identity, and the continuance and connectedness of our existence; and have the same evidence of one as of the other; and if we can put one in doubt, we have no certainty of either, and everything is unreal: that we can deny our free will and free agency, only upon the ground that they are in the nature of things impossible; which would be to deny the Omnipotence of God.
Qu∴ What is the sixth great Truth of Masonry?
Ans∴ The necessity of practising the moral truths, is obligation. The moral truths; necessary in the eye of reason, are obligatory on the will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is absolute. As the necessary truths are not more or less necessary, so the obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of importance among different obligations; but none in the obligation itself. We are not nearly obliged, almost obliged. We are wholly so, or not at all. If there be any place of refuge to which we can escape from the obligation, it ceases to exist. If the obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For if that of to-day may not be that of to-morrow, if what is obligatory on me may not be obligatory on you, the obligation would differ from itself, and be variable and contingent. This fact is the principle of all morality. That every act contrary to right and justice, deserves to be repressed by force, and punished when committed, equally in the absence of any law or contract: that man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and demerit of actions, as he does that between justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty; and feels, without being taught, and in the absence of law or contract, that it is wrong for vice to be rewarded or go unpunished, and for virtue to be punished or left unrewarded: and that, the Deity being infinitely just and good, it must follow as a necessary and inflexible law that punishment shall be the result of Sin, its inevitable and natural effect and corollary, and not a mere arbitrary vengeance.
Qu∴ What is the seventh great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ The immutable law of God requires, that besides respecting the absolute rights of others, and being merely just, we should do good, be charitable, and obey the dictates of the generous and noble sentiments of the soul. Charity is a law, because our conscience is not satisfied nor at ease if we have not relieved the suffering, the distressed, and the destitute. It is to give that which he to whom you give has no right to take or demand. To be charitable is obligatory on us. We are the Almoners of God's bounties. But the obligation is not so precise and inflexible as the obligation to be just. Charity knows neither rule nor limit. It goes beyond all obligation. Its beauty consists in its liberty. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; FOR GOD IS LOVE. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." To be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; to relieve the necessities of the needy, and be generous, liberal, and hospitable; to return to no man evil for evil; to rejoice at the good fortune of others, and sympathize with them in their sorrows and reverses; to live peaceably with all men, and repay injuries with benefits and kindness; these are the sublime dictates of the Moral Law, taught from the infancy of the world, by Masonry.
Qu∴ What is the eighth great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ That the laws which control and regulate the Universe of God, are those of motion and harmony. We see only the isolated incidents of things, and with our feeble and limited capacity and vision cannot discern their connection, nor the mighty chords that make the apparent discord perfect harmony. Evil is merely apparent, and all is in reality good and perfect. For pain and sorrow, persecution and hardships, affliction and destitution, sickness and death are but the means, by which alone the noblest virtues could be developed. Without them, and without sin and error, and wrong and outrage, as there can be no effect without an adequate cause, there could be neither patience under suffering and distress; nor prudence in difficulty; nor temperance to avoid excess; nor courage to meet danger; nor truth, when to speak the truth is hazardous; nor love, when it is met with ingratitude; nor charity for the needy and destitute; nor forbearance and forgiveness of injuries; nor toleration of erroneous opinions; nor charitable judgment and construction of men's motives and actions; nor patriotism, nor heroism, nor honor, nor self-denial, nor generosity. These and most other virtues and excellencies would have no existence, and even their names be unknown; and the poor virtues that still existed, would scarce deserve the name; for life would be one fiat, dead, low level, above which none of the lofty elements of human nature would emerge; and man would lie lapped in contented indolence and idleness, a mere worthless negative, instead of the brave, strong soldier against the grim legions of Evil and rude Difficulty.
Qu∴ What is the ninth great Truth in Masonry?
Ans∴ The great leading doctrine of this Degree;--that the JUSTICE, the WISDOM, and the MERCY of God are alike infinite, alike perfect, and yet do not in the least jar nor conflict one with the other; but form a Great Perfect Trinity of Attributes, three and yet one: that, the principle of merit and demerit being absolute, and every good action deserving to be rewarded, and every bad one to be punished, and God being as just as He is good; and yet the cases constantly recurring in this world, in which crime and cruelty, oppression, tyranny, and injustice are prosperous, happy, fortunate, and self-contented, and rule and reign, and enjoy all the blessings of God's beneficence, while the virtuous and good are unfortunate, miserable, destitute, pining away in dungeons, perishing with cold, and famishing with hunger, slaves of oppression, and instruments and victims of the miscreants that govern; so that this world, if there were no existence beyond it, would be one great theatre of wrong and injustice, proving God wholly disregardful of His own necessary law of merit and demerit;--it follows that there must be another life in which these apparent wrongs shall be repaired: That all the powers of man's soul tend to infinity; and his indomitable instinct of immortality, and the universal hope of another life, testified by all creeds, all poetry, all traditions, establish its certainty; for man is not an orphan; but hath a Father near at hand: and the day must come when Light and Truth, and the Just and Good shall be victorious, and Darkness, Error, Wrong, and Evil be annihilated, and known no more forever: That the Universe is one great Harmony, in which, according to the faith of all nations, deep-rooted in all hearts in the primitive ages, Light will ultimately prevail over Darkness, and the Good Principle over the Evil: and the myriad souls that have emanated from the Divinity, purified and ennobled by the struggle here below, will again return to perfect bliss in the bosom of God, to offend against Whose laws will then be no longer possible.
Qu∴ What, then, is the one great lesson taught to us, as Masons, in this Degree?
Ans∴ That to that state and realm of Light and Truth and Perfection, which is absolutely certain, all the good men on earth are tending; and if there is a law from whose operation none are exempt, which inevitably conveys their bodies to darkness and to dust, there is another not less certain nor less powerful, which conducts their spirits to that state of Happiness and Splendor and Perfection, the bosom of their Father and their God. The wheels of Nature are not made to roll backward. Everything presses on to Eternity. From the birth of Time an impetuous current has set in, which bears all the sons of men toward that interminable ocean. Meanwhile, Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of the Earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine, leaving nothing for the last fire to consume but the gross matter that creates concupiscence; while everything fit for that good fortune shall be gathered and selected from the ruins of the world, to adorn that Eternal City.
Ge [Hi or Khi, with the initial letter modified], was the Sun: in Persic, Gwar and in Turkish Giun. Yue 
, was the Moon; in Sanscrit Uh, and in Turkish Ai. It will be remembered that, in Egypt and elsewhere, the Sun was originally feminine, and the Moon masculine. In Egypt, Ioh was the moon: and in the feasts of Bacchus they cried incessantly, Euoï Sabvi! Euoï Bakhè! Io Bakhe! Io Bakhe!