The Ancient Mysteries And Modern Freemasonry; Their Analogies Considered.

Accepted Masons , since it cannot be denied that there Avas an uninterrupted chain of succession between these organizations . The theory of Mr . King cannot , therefore , be summarily rejected . It may not be altogether true , but it has so many of the elements of truth about it that it claims

our serious consideration . But , after all , Ave may find a sufficient explanation of the analogy Avhich undoubtedly exists between the rites of the ancient mysteries and those of the modern Freemasons in the natural tendency of the human mind to

develop its ideas in the same way , when these ideas are suggested by the same circumstances . The fact that both institutions have taught the same lessons by the same method of instructions may have arisen , not from a succession of

organizations , each one link of a long chain leading directly to another , but rather from a natural and usual coincidence of human thought . Although in ancient times , and under the benighted rule of pagan idolatry , the doctrine of a future life Avas not the

popular belief , and men Avere supposed to have been created " veluti pecora , " like the beasts of the field , to live , to grovel on the earth , to die ancl to rot beneath it ; yet there Avere always some Avho aspired to a higher thought—philosophers and men of culture Avholike Socratesancl Platoand

, , , Pythagoras , nourished Avith earnest longing , the hope of immortality . Now , it Avas by such men that the mysteries Avere originally organized , and it Avas for instruction in such a doctrine that they Avere instituted . But , opposed as such instruction

was to the general current of popular thought , it became necessarily and defensively of an esoteric character . Hence the secret character of the mysteries ; hence , too , the symbolic form of the instruction . Symbolism is , in fact , a secret

al phabet or cipher ; every symbol is a letter , and the combination of many symbols constitutes words , the meaning of which is known only to the initiates . Freemasonry also teaches the doctrine of a future lifeThere Avas no necessit

. y , as m the case of the pagan mysteries , to conceal this doctrine from the populace , yet there is a proneness in the human mind , Avhich has always existed , to clothe the most sacred subjects with the garb of

mystery . It Avas in this spirit that Jesus spoke to the JeAvish multitudes in parables Avhich the disciples Avere to comprehend , but not the people ; so " that seeing , they might not see , and hearing , they might not understand . " The Mysteries and Freemasonry were both secret societies—not necessarily , because the one Avas the successor of the

other , but because both Avere human institutions and both partook of the same human tendency to conceal Avhat was sacred from the unhallowed eyes and ears of the profane . This is the first analogy between the tAvo institutions — their secret

character , their esoteric form of instruction . But Avhen once the esoteric character of the instruction Avas determined on , or involuntarily adopted by the force of those tendencies to which I have referred , it was but natural that the esoteric instruction should be communicated by

symbolismbe-, cause in all ages symbols have been the cipher by which secret associations of every character have restricted the knowledge which they imparted tu their initiates only . 'Here , then , AVO find another analogy—althoughperhapsan incidental

, , one—between the Ancient Mysteries ancl Modem Freemasonry . Again : iu the Ancient Mysteries the essential doctrine of a resurrection from

death to eternal life Avas ahvays taught in a dramatic form . There Avas a drama in Avhich the aspirant represented , or there was visibly pictured to him the death by violence , and then the apotheosis , or the resurrection to life and immortality of some hero in Avhose honour the peculiar

Mystery Avas founded . Hence , in all the Mysteries there were the thanatos—death , or slaying of the hero ; the aphanism , or the concealment of the body by the slayers , and the euresis , or the finding of the body by the initiates . This Avas represented in

the form of a drama , Avhich , from the character of the plot began Avith mourning and ended Avith joy . The traditional " eureka , " sometimes attributed to Pythagoras Avhen he discovered the forty-seventh problem and sometimes to Archimedes Avhen he

accidentally learned the principle of specific gravity , Avas nightly repeated by the initiates , when , at the termination of the drama of the Mysteries , they found the hidden body of their Master .