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460 ORIGIN, ETC., OF FREE-MASONRY.
that these Culdees not only preserved, cherished, and transmit-
ted the Masonic secrets of their forefathers to succeeding times,
but that they were the persons who divested them of many
long and severe probations, of many terrific ceremonies, and
gave them that sublime and simple form which they now
assume. Considered in this view, and in no other can we
trace Masonry through the eternal changes of revolving pe-
riods, there is nothing left on earth which can be brought
into competition with its vast antiquity. Neither will it be
forgotten, that a new light is thrown on Christianity by this
view, which proves it to have been coeval with mankind, and
as old as the world.
We have wandered with that amiable, learned, and excellent
Mason, Brother Oliver, in quest of the SAER or Lux,* often,
we are compelled to say, notwithstanding the shining abilities of
our guide, in mazy darkness, doubt, and uncertainty, from the
plains of Shinar to Egypt and Palestine, from Greece to Rome,
and from Balaam's Lodge to Solomon's Temple, where he has
left us in utter darkness as to all that followed. But let us
once grant the Druids to have been the possessors of our
sacred Institution, and the Culdees the connecting link of that
chain which unites us to those venerable patriarchs, and,
through them, to the remotest periods of antiquity, and the
divine LIGHT, like the ethereal flame of heaven, its visible
image, rolls on from the far-most East to the utmost bounds
of the West, from the earliest era to the present hour, in one
continuous, undiminished, and undying stream of glory.
* Antiquities of Free-Masonry.
THE END.