MASONIC LEXICON-Part 1

ANT tJle A~cient 1\fysteries, and the curious inquirer win find some gratification in tracing this connection.

When luan was first created, he had, of course, a perfect knowledge of the true name and nature of the Being who created hhn. But when, by his own folly, he fell "from his high estate/' he lost, with his purity, that knowledge of God which in hi~ orirneval condition fornled the noblest endoWlncnt of his mind And at Iengtrb the whole hUlnan race having increased in wicked.. ness until every thought and act was evil, God determined, by a flood, to purge the earth of this excess of sin. To Noah, how.. ever, he was Dlerciful, and to this patriarch and his posterity was to be intrusted the knowledge of the tlue God. But on the plains of Shinar Dlan again rebelled, and as a punishment of his rebellion, at the lofty tower of Babel, language was confounded, and rnasonry lost, for masonry then, as now, consisted in a know.. ledge of these great truths, that there is one God, and that the soul is iInlDortal. The patriarchs, however, were saved from the general moral desolation, and still preserved true masonry, or the knowledge of these dogmas, in the patriarchal line. The Gentile nations, on the contrary, fell rapidly from one error into another, and, losing sight of the one great I A~I, substituted in his place the names of heroes and distinguished men, whom, by a ready apotheosis, they converted into the thousand deities who occupied the calendar of their religious worship.

The philosophers nnd sages, however, still retained, or discoyered by the dim light of nature, some traces of these great doctrines of masonry, the unity of God, and the immortality of the BOul. But these doctrines they dared not teach路 in public, for history records what would hava been the nt,e of such temerity, when it informs us that Socrates paid th.~ forfeit of his life for his boldness in proclaiming these truths b.. the Athenia.D youth.

They therefore taught in secret what "they were afraid to inculcate in public, and established for this purpose the Ancient ~lysteries, those truly masonic institutions, whieh, by a series of