Behold This Light!

incomprehensible harbinger of day , that symbol of resurrection after the night of death . Is it surprising that tin * priests of this great chosen people should select this most wonderful , sublime and beneficent sun to symbolise the infinite attributes of Him who set it in the Heavens ?

There are others who have come to believe that the story told by the Egyptian priest to Solon , of a great Island called Atlantis , an antediluvian world , was no myth or fable , but the true description of a land that once had an existence , and whose history was the record of earth ' s most

splendid civilization . This priest said to Solon : " There was an island situated in front of the straits which you call the Colnmns of Heracles . The island was larger than Libya and Asia pnt together , and was tho way to othor islands , and from the islands you might pass throngh tho

whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean ; for this sea which is within the straits of Heracles ( the Mediterranean ) is only a harbour , having a narrow

entrance , but that other is a real sea , and the surrounding land may most truly be called a continent . Now , in the island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire , which had ruled over the whole island and several others .

as well as over parts of the continent ; ancl besides these they subjected the parts of Libya within the Columns of Heracles as far as Egypt , and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia * * * But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods , and in a single day aud

night of rain , all your war-like men , in a body , sank into the earth , and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea . This , " said the priest , " was nine thousand years ago . " Oh , Egypt ,

mighty land of mystery ! thy sphinx-like face peers out of the shadowy confines of the night of time , with half proclaimed yet unintelligible revelation of the wondrous story of the eternal past !

In the fifteenth century of the Christian era , Columbus astonished the whole known world by the discovery of the American continent . Yet , twenty-one hundred years before that time , the Egyptian priesthood proclaimed the existence of this continent as a fact with which their order

had been familiar for thousands of years ; and the record of this story , written by Plato , a descendant of Solou , four hundred years before the birth of Christ , was treated as a fable until the successful voyage of the adventurous Genoese proved that the further continent was in its place exactl y as the priest had said .

Deep sea sounding reveals the fact that there exists in the Atlantic Ocean a great submerged continent , or at leasfc a vast elevation of the sea bottom rising nine thousand feefc above the surrounding depths . This is situated directly in front of fche mouth of the Mediterranean , and extends nearly

from one continent to the other . Of this mighty elevation the volcanic-crowned Azores are the only portions now remaining above the surface of the ocean , and probably were the highest mountain peaks of the lost Atlantis . Exploration and science have now found the further

continent and a great submerged island , but the mighty race whose home it had been for countless ages , who from its sea-girt shores dominated over nearly all the inhabited portions of both hemispheres , who had reared a civilization grander than earth had ever known , in a clay disappeared ,

swallowed up m that terrible cataclysm which is related and described in the histories , the traditions and the myths of nearly every nation and tribe in both the old and the new world . Here was " the deluge , " the destruction of that godly race of men who had finally given themselves over to wickedness .

The Egyptian priest describes the Afclantean race as a godly race . " They possessed , " said he , " true , and in every way great spirits , practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life and in their intercourse with one another . They despise everything but virtue , nofc caring

for their present state of life . " That is , believing in the immortality of the soul , and in another and better existence . "They were sober , and saw clearly that all goods are increased by virtuous friendship with one another . " Afterward , " The human nature got the upper hand , then , they

being unable to bear their fortune , became unseemly , and to him who had an eye to see , they began to appear base , and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts . " Most probably they had , as a people , lost the great truths of their

religion and had become idolatrous . Then they were destroyed . The records of their great civilization , the annals of their remote antiquity , the provisions of their wise code of laws and government , and the divine secret of their reli-

Behold This Light!

gion and science , received , perhaps , first-hnuded iYom tho Creator , all wore swallowed up and for ever hiddc - in tho fathomless recesses of the overwhelming waters . This great civilized , dominant race had a religion—it was the religion of the unity of God , they were called tho

children of God , most probably because they worshipped one God , who was their Father or Creator . They believed in another existence beyond the grave . This divine religion was transmitted through the survivors of the general destruction , ami had undoubtedly been taught by its

devoted priest In iod to thoso nations who sprang from , were ruled over , or had established commercial intercourse with Atlantis . Hence we lintl the story of the flood , the worship of God the Father , and tlio belief in man's immortality among the various races and nations of both hemispheres .

Jew and Gentile , Aztec and Indian , some dimly , others clearly , some under the guise of an usurping idolatry and interpolated fable , others in the purity of recorded and transmitted priestcraft and history , all alike , retained , even to the present clay , the germs of these great truths .

The God so worshipped by this parent people was symbolized , as already stated , by tho sun . Says an eminent Masonic author : "There is a natural tendency in fcho human mind to confound all symbols with the person or thing which they were at first only intended to illustrate . In tho course of time wo therefore find that most nations

forgot the worship of the true God and began to adore tho sun itself , which they thus deified and personified . " It is probable that loug before the destruction of Atlantis , the worship of God had , with the people , degenerated into sun worship , ancl fche people who had at first claimed to

have come from God , now said , " Wo aro from the sun , " or , " We are from the East . " Almost all known nations of antiquity inherited or accepted this sun worship , and worshipping the sun as God , most naturally fche moon and stars in time became lesser deities . The signs of fche

zodiac , named after living creatures , and each typical of a certain phase of the sun ' s course through the heavens , also became " of the family of gods , " or separate symbols of the one God ; and the divine truths of the one God , man ' s immortality , and life after death , were preserved by the

priesthood in allegories ancl fables in which were related the wonderful adventures of these typical deities . These fables soon came to be believed by the profane and vulgar crowd , and the real secrets underlying fchem were only known to those who possessed the allegorical key . Tho

same learned Masonic writer before quoted says : " This key was religiously kept secret by the priests ancl philosophers , and was only imparted to those who were initiated into the mysteries . By these means the priests ruled the people with a despotic power . The fables of the mythology

disclosed to fchem grand scientific truths , and to them only . The very stories themselves served to perpetuate those truths for the benefit of the initiated , and also formed an easy vehicle for their transmission . These fables served a three-fold purpose . First : They kept the secrets of science

from all bnfc those who understood the key to fchem . Second : Being themselves easy to remember , they served to keep alive the recollection of scientific facts , which otherwise might be lost . Third : Being the means of

keeping the people in ignorance , by their use the priests were enabled to rule them through their •superior knowledge of the secrets of nature , which gave them the power of working apparent miracles . "

That this sun worship , or worship of God through fche symbol of the sun , was professed by all those ancient nations which probably sprang from the great , primitive

one , can no longer be questioned . Egypt , India , Greece , Persia , all were inheritors or imitators of these great mysteries . All these erected their temples and worshipped the sun .

On the farther side of fche Atlantic , also , there exists afc the present day , the vast remains of pyramids and temples , very like those of Egypt , and even surpassing them in

grandeur and magnificence . On the walls of these temples have been found representations of the sun , moon and stars , and other signs of our Order such as appear so frequently on the walls of the ruined temples of antiquity .

It is probable , also , that certain of tho nations founded by or springing from the survivors of the engulfed Atlantis , retained the religion of the one God in its simplicity ancl

purity , unmixed with any of the idolatrous or mystical symbolisms which gradually usurped the worship and adoration of the common people . It is most notable that the descendant - of Noah , ami