secret records of them. The hearts of Masons are bound together by their secret doctrine: this makes them a Fraternity: let it remain a hidden well of sweet waters in the desert of life. The doctrines of Freemasonry are so nicely blended as to satisfy the wants, and command the respect, of millions of initiated men of good report in the communities where they reside. Her copious symbology is full of meaning: how came all these united in one teaching? For centuries we know they have been substantially unchanged. Verbal ritualistic changes being, we are told, made at certain times, merely to protect the language from becoming obsolete and unintelligible to the Craftsmen, and to foil impostors, and showing few or no serious divergencies in the numerous independent jurisdictions where our art is practised.

If Freemasonry began late, some record or tradition of its author would have come to us: the examination of its dogmas and symbols would show the influence of the age when it started; or, if it were quite ancient, some marks would occur of the successive eras of varied civilization and general belief through which it had traversed to reach our times. There are few traces of modern thought, but much of ancient ideas, in our Craft. It breathes a spirit of religious toleration and fraternity still remarkable above all existing institutions; distinctly religious, yet widely tolerant of different forms of faith. None who believe in God find its portals closed against their faith.

How early did our Institution begin?

The Bible lays upon our altar, and our tradition says that King Solomon was our founder. The seal of Solomon is among our symbols.

Architecture was imported into Jerusalem by Solomon.

His leading architects were from Phoenicia, and probably many of the Craftsmen. The names of several of the masonic tools used in building the Temple are not Hebrew, for instance, "the Plumb-line." The marks which the Masons placed on the stones which they built into the wall, are not Hebrew letters. These marks are seen on the old foundation stones still; and one

of our learned brethren, Maj. Ben. Perley Poore, in an address delivered at Washington, states that he has seen them. Our Rt. reverend Brother, Past Grand Master Randall, in one of his addresses, also stated a similar fact. The same marks found on these stones are found cut by Latin Masons on the stones of Rome; are found on the stones of the Gothic Churches built by the Freemasons of the middle ages; are found on those of the Knights Templars Chapels and Preceptories. Many of them are used by stone masons to-day, and several of them are found among our own symbols. What a line of derivation! I said it was an imported art to Jerusalem. At Isphahan, in Persia, Sir Gore Ousely copied what he thought was an ancient inscription in early Persian: it proved to be a lot of Masons' marks. It is not unusual to find usages and symbols adhering to a Craft through centuries, until even the meaning of the symbols is lost to those who continue to regard and perpetuate them. Thus, in Virgil, you find that the flying Trojans bore their gods on the sterns of their ships: so also did the Romans, as says Petronius in his description of the ship of Lycas; and at this day, when the creed of the Roman mythology has been superseded for fifteen hundred years, every ship of commerce still bears on her stern carved symbols, cornucopias, and penates, exactly such as were then in use. The shipwright still carves them: it does not concern us whether owners or sailors retain some ill-defined faith in their power as amulets.

These Masons' marks, therefore, in a similar light, serve to trace the migrations of the art from one country to another from an early period in the history of the ancient world, and their importance in an antiquarian sense, even apart from their deep significance to us as Craftsmen, can hardly be estimated.

These Masons' marks are undergoing the examination of the learned still, and, as philology opens the lost languages of the ancient civilization of the East, the origin of the marks will be better settled. Many of them are thought to be letters of some now extinct alphabets; and we must await the slow progress of

many cognate studies before science can increase our light. The chain of descent is important in connection with other things. A distinction is sought by many to be based on the phrase, "Speculative Masonry," as used in our Royal Art, tending to show that Speculative Masonry was peculiarly a modern invention, and separable from the Ancient Craft Masonry. The point, like all others, is one for argument and evidence, rather than a mere assumption, that our traditions are false. Suppose that we admit that there is a distinction between the mere arts of dressing stone according to lovely artistic designs, laying wall, and drawing geometrical plans of architecture, considered in a material sense, and the creed of speculative opinion held by the initiates in this art, are we, therefore, bound to assume that they did not hold these opinions? If we show that much of the symbology now illustrative of those opinions, and that many of the usages now prevalent in the Craft, also, were used by them in ancient time, a strong line of demonstration is established, that, in the absence of actual proof of their modern introduction, would appear conclusive.

After the labors of modern scholars, it will hardly be denied that many of our symbols can be traced backward through Gothic Cathedrals and Templar edifices, as well as through Rosecrusian writers, to the era where modern civilization takes its departure from the ancient; and, through other channels, these same symbols can be followed into cognate connection with the speculative metaphysics of the era of the Jewish Captivity.

This is no idle whim: there are identities and similarities which blend into a chain of considerable and growing plausibility, sufficiently so to make the continued investigation a matter of much interest with many scholars. It is difficult to trace anything through the dark ages which followed the decay of the Roman

*The curious may instructively compare those given by King and Jennings with the Hermetic alphabets in the translation of the Nabethian MSS., on that subject, into Arabic, by Bin Washish, a thousand years ago, and rendered into English and published by Hammer: a copy of which can be found in the library of that learned Mason, Col. William B. Greene.

Empire, until the Crusades brought Greek literature, and the Spanish Moors brought Arab science, into Europe. Through these channels a rich flood of learning poured, which, like all that came from the holy East, was grasped at with avidity. Oriental, Jewish, and Arab doctors, deeply instructed in the mystic metaphysics of the Hebrew Kabbala, came as teachers of medicine, alchemy, astrology, and the cognate sciences. Leaders of the church, like Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, no less than laymen like Villeneuve and Cordova, drank at their fountains. Under the new instruction they sought the philosopher's stone, the influence of the stars on human fortune, and the elixir of life; and from the Kabbala they drew the power of numbers, and the occult meanings, included in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. These men had societies, with initiations, where knowledge, held as a sacred trust, was, little by little, revealed to those proved worthy to receive it. Vigils and purifications were demanded of the candidate. The firmness of his nerves, the strength of his faith, were first ascertained; an ascetic virtue was needed to fit him to receive light. These were the Rosecrucian societies. Their tenets were equally compatible with a liberal orthodoxy in Christian, Hebrew, and Arab faith.

Their aspiration was for a perfection of knowledge and purity, in order to obtain a fulness of light.

Regarding their secret initations, we know from Cornelius Agrippa's letters that in 1508-9 he was in a secret society devoted to these studies. We know, also, that the formulas of initiation, purification, and light, are set out in the Idra Rabba which, as a part of the Zohar, had been introduced by the Rabbi Moise ben Nachman into Spain before his death, A.D. 1300, and continued to be the delight of the learned. (See Frank Kab. 93.) The rules and principles, restricting these initiations in Kabbalistic learning, are given with great particularity in the Zohar. Two persons could not be received at the same time, nor instructed at once; and, in the metaphysics of the "Mercaba," one could not receive the whole instruction at once,

but little by little. Progress was by degrees; and the upper grades were only reached at extreme age, through merit, and by very few. This Kabbalistic Rosecrucianism is, at least, as early as Avicennes' time in Europe. From the rigorous way its secrecy was guarded, the public, though knowing much of the savants, seem to have known far less of their secret organization than they now know of Masonry. This is not strange. The dangers that beset secret organizations and liberal opinions in a despotic age need not be stated here. The Inquisition prowled on the scent for heresy. Reuchlin and Cornelius Agrippa, expounding the mirific word, risked like perils for metaphysical, with those Galileo encountered for scientific discovery. Some protection men of letters could obtain from liberal, curious, and learned churchmen; but for a secret lay society, with humane aspirations, the feudal power had no velvet on its cruel paw. Even the church could not avert the swift extermination, by the feudal despots, of all such dabbers when discovered. The fate those poor soldiers of the Cross, the Knights Templars, met from Philip the Fair, shows how unutterably more savage than the church was the despotic prince, who saw in every secret society a conspiracy against his state, and in every generous thought a war against the divine right of thrones. What was said had to be so cautiously guarded, separated, and concealed in its connection and purpose, that, although it might be clear to the initiates, it should be utterly unintelligible to profane curiosity. We catch among the guarded writers of this age, many veiled allusions, which indicate the existence of these societies, their symbols, and fragments of doctrines; perhaps, as much as the regard of the initiates for their lives and liberty, or of their obligation, would admit of, certainly more than I shall group together in this lecture.

H. C. Agrippa, in his work "on the Vanity of Science," published in A.D. 1527, says, ch. 90, of alchemy: "I could say, moreover, very many things of this art, yet not very much against me, had I not sworn (as they are wont to do which receive orders) to keep silence. . . . I mean, that is to say, that I have almost