Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
TWENTY-THIRD DEGREE, OR CHIEF OF THE TABER-
NACLE.
lands Men In Pagan worship—Finite Man and the Influsite God—Satan
Both lmitstee and Resists Christ.
In this and the two following degrees, we are taken
back to the Old Testament, where Ramsay, Jesuits, and
Jews were at home; and the stupendous realities and
truth of God redeemed the Rite from contempt and disgust,
even though used as Simon the sorcerer wished
to use the Holy Ghost, for gain. For there is sublimity
in the name and works of God, even when used in blasphoiny
and sacrilege. Nadab and Abihu fall dead by
the fiery eye flash of God, while using God’s instituted
worship, as these Masons use his word for worldly advantage,
and we see here acted over what impressed us
so solemnly in our childhood when we read and saw
pictured in the old “New England Primer”
“Proud Itoraha troop”
“was swallowed up.”
And we can endure the home made earth-quakes and
manufactured thunder of this degree, for the sake of
some glintings of Bible history, which show the fearful
doom which awaits all impudent cozeners with the
word and worship of God. The reader need only glance
at the Ritual and Notes to get the whole drift of the
degree, which, on page 116, lands us in the pagan
worship of the heavenly bodies by the “branch candlestick
which is God’s symbol of a church of Christ.
(Rev. 1, £0.)
But let us glance at the philosophy of this degree.
A priest, which word first meant an aged and yen-
FINITE MAN AND THE INFINITE GOD. 119
usbie man, or father, came to be the man who was a
day’s man or intercessor between the family or tribe
and God. When our race had run down so that “the
earth was filled with violence,” like the South beLor.~
our slavery war, and had become so corrupt that a
Universal Deluge did not cleanse it; then God in8tituted
a pictorial and pantomime worship suited to the
ignorance of grown-up babes, with the strength and
passions of men.
But sin and corruption was not all that kept men
from God. God was infinite and men infinitesimal.
The blind worm beneath the sod knows as much of the
solar system, and the infinity beyond as a finite sinner
knows of the Infinite God. “Touching the Almighty
we cannot find him out,” (Job, 37, 23,) is literal verity.
But Christ was and is “God manifest” to man, or “more
humano.” He “spake,” and the worlds came. He
“spake” to Adam and Eve. Without ceasing to be
God, he became man, our Prophet, Priest, and King:
and we know, and can know of God, only what we are
taught by Christ. And as sin is certain ruin and law
has no mercy in itself, however “holy, and just and
good ;“ Christ, being the same yesterday, to-day and
forever ;“ “Eternity, past, present and to come,” he
could and did become our Wisdam, Righteousness,
Sandi~cat ion and Redemption. Hew itin came we
know not; God if He will may explain that to us in
Eternity. But we very well know there is sin. And
the Bible being true, (and if it is not, Masons insult us
by quoting it,) we know there are devils, and their
chief is Christ’s adversary, rival and antagonist. And
he is as Christ called him the usurping “Prince of this
world”: and the God of its false worships. And God
gave by Moses, a law which any one can see is perfect;
because that supreme love to God and equal love
to man would and will perfect our globe, is just as