Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

142 MASONIC BAI’TTSM A HEATHEN RITh.
mals whose names they gave to the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, and transferred them to the heavens, and wor-
~.liippedthem still. McClenachan’s book of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite, page 558, says: “This
rite (Baptism) has come to us by legitimate itransinission
* * * in the simple sense in which it was
used in the land watered by the Nile, before the building
of the Pyramids.” And “The Ceremony of Baptism”
occupies twenty-one pages in this “Book of the
Rite.” If this does not identify Masonic baptism with
the religion of Egyptian brute-worship, language has no
meaning.
Proof Third. Commenting on The Three Lights,
(Ritual, p. 129, Note 276) Mackey says: “The sun
has three names, and the moon three also. And in all
incantations, three was a favorite number.” Incantation
was raising devils by magic. And seeking knowledge
and power from’ devils is worshiping them. If
Dr. Mackey intended to identify Masonry with sun,
moon and demon worship, the above is the language he
would use.
Proof Fourth. Macoy (Note 279) .gives Christ’s
appellations: “Morning Star,” “Rising Sun,” “Day
Star,” etc., to Satan, the God of all Gentile or heathen
worships: under the title of the G. A. 0. T. U., who is
neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, but the “prince,”
and “god of this world.”
Proof Fifth. And Mackey, the lexicographer, and
jurisconsult of Masonry, eicpressly declares it to be magical
or heathen worship, thus: “In the high degrees
of Masonry, as in the ancient institutions, there is a
purification by fire coming down to us insensibly and
unconsciously from the old Magian eultus.” (Note
282.) “Oultus” is the Latin for worship. These
proofs might be extended indefinitely. And if they do
not establish, by Masonic authorities, that Freemasonry
FREEMASONRY SIMPLE HEATHENIsM. 143
is “vulgar, debased heathenism,” then Egyptian bruteworship,
sun and moon-worship, fire-worship and all the
rest, are not heathenism. To call it “philosophy” is to
insult civilization, reason and religion.
The uniform, universal declaration of Masonic writers
that “Masonry is t~&e religion in which all mankind
agree,” and that dictum of Dr. Mackey, that “The mssawn
and object of Masonry i. the worship of the Great
Architect,“ etc., who is neither FATHER, SON nor HOLY
GHOST, settles it: if authority can settle anything; that
Freemasonry is simple heathenism. And “A heathen
man,” by Christ’s word, was to be an outcast from the
church (Matt. 18, 17), and reason, observation and
e~omnuon sense affirm the same.
~ence this twenty-fourth degree employs the names
of the men of God, and the terms of the Bible, to consecrate
priests for the devil! And as there are no human
priests since Christ, “who hath an unchangeable priest.
hood” (Heb. 7, £4), to make a priest of any one religion,
is to make a counterfeit. But this degree makes a
universal priest! A priest of all the religions on earth
And if this degree has done its full work in him, his
heart contains all the priestly depravity from Cain in
Eden to the Mormon at Salt Lake. And history as
well as theory proves it. And when Aaron Burr browbeat
into a duel and shot the friend of Washington;
and Benedict Arnold burnt and pillaged towns and
villages which, as an American officer, he had sworn to
protect with his own life, they both showed what moral
monsters Masonry can make of men. And the sole
reason why the Episcopalian, Baptist and Methodist
clergymen of Chicago who are high Masons, sworn full
of oaths~ are not Burrs and A molds in religion, is, that
they do not understand the system to which they belong,