Britain ... - Blue-Lite

446 ORIGIN, ANTIQUITY, AND
of all civilized nations. "Christianity," says Brother Oliver,
"or the system of Salvation through the atonement of a cruci-
fied Mediator, was the main pillar of Free-Masonry ever since
the fall." And where was this main pillar to be found ? Why
in the secret Mysteries of the Gentiles. It can there be traced,
to the glory of the Craft, through all ages up to the present
hourj and in no other way can the connecting links of this
venerable Mystery by any possible means be discovered. Even
the introduction of the Phallic rites were not in their nature
obscene and degrading.
" Those Mysteries of faith," says O'Brien, " to which the
initiated alone had access, and which, disguised in the habiliments
of symbols and veils, were neither more nor less than
representative forms of Generation and Production. Such was
the whole substance of this philosophical creed, which was not,
as many have imagined, a ritual of sensuality, but a manual of
devotion, as simple in its exercise as it was pious in its intent,
a Sabean veneration, and a symbolical gratitude."
That a veneration for the symbols of the creative power of
the Deity might have sometimes degenerated into excess and
licentiousness, we do not deny j and that such grossness also
profaned the Hebrew worship we have sufficient testimony :
" Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto
Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at
the door of the tabernacle of the "
congregation." All their
wickedness is in Gilgal," (the circle of sacrifice.) "As troops
of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder
in the way by consent, for they commit lewdness"
accumulation of falsehood
High time is it that the Augean
and slander, which superstition, ignorance, and credulity have
heaped on the ancient Masonic Mysteries, should be swept
away, that their real intent, their doctrines and institutions
may appear in their original and untainted purity.
But Brother Oliver tells us, that Plato saw all Athens
" drunk " at one of the Grecian festivals. He might : and
were a sober Brahmin to enter the gin-palaces of our own
metropolis on a Christmas Eve, he would exclaim that, on the
anniversary of the birth of their Redeemer, all London was