Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

ALLIANCE
ALL-SEEING 47
Lemikre, a French poe t, has said : " L'allegorie
habits un palais diaphane "-Allegory
lives in a transparent palace. All the legends
of Freemasonry are more or less allegorical,
and whatever truth there may be in some of
them in an historical point of view it is only as
allegories or legendary symbols that they are
of importance . The English lectures have
therefore very pro perly defined Freemasonry
to be " a system of morality veiled in allegory
and illustrated by symbols ."
The allegory was a favorite figure among
the ancients, and to the allegorizing spirit are
we to trace the construction of the entire
Greek and Roman mythology . Not less did
it prevail among the older Aryan nations, and
its abundant use is exhibited in the religions of
Brahma and Zoroaster . The Jewish Rabbis
were greatly addicted to it, and carried its
employment as Maimonides intimates (More
Nevochim, Ii I., xliii .), sometimes to an excess .
Their Midrash or system of commentaries on
the sacred book, is almost altogether allegorical
. Aben Ezra, a learned Rabbi of the twelfth
century, says, " The Scriptures are like bodies,
and allegories are like the garments with which
they are clothed. Some are thin like fine silk,
and others are coarse and thick like sackcloth."
Our Lord, to whom this spirit of the
Jewish teachers in his day was familiar, inculcated
many truths in parables all of which
were allegories . The primitive Fathers of the
Christian Church were thus infected ; and
Origen (Epist. ad Dam .), who was especially
addicted to the habit, tells us that all the
Pagan philosophers should be read in this
apirit : "hoc facere solemus quando philosophos
legimus ." Of modern allegorizing writers,
the most interesting to Masons are Lee,
the author of The Temple of Solomon portrayed
by Scri ure Light, and John Bunyan,
who wrote So 's Temple Spiritualized .
Alliance, Sacred . An organization of
twenty-one brethrenpossessing the ultimate
degree of the Scottish Rite formed id New
York, September 19, 1872, who assemble annually
on that day. One by one, in the due
course of time, this Assembly is to decrease
until the sad duty will devolve on some one to
banquet alone with twenty draped chairs and
covers occupied by the imajpnary presence of
his fellows. It was instituted to commemorate
the breaking of a dead-lock in the close corporation
of the Supreme Council by the admission
of four very prominent members of
the Fraternity.
Allied Masonic Degrees . A body has
been formed in England called the Grand
Council of the Allied Masonic D egrees, in
order to govern various Degrees or Orders havin*
no central authority of their own . The
rmcipal degrees controlled by it are those of
9t. Lawrence the Martyr, )Knight of Constantinople,
Grand Tiler of Fing Solomon, Secret
Monitor, Red Cross of Babylon, and Grand
High Priest, besides a large number, perhaps
about fift , of "side degrees," of which some
are actively worked and some are not .
Allooutlon . The address of the presiding
officer of a Supreme Council of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite is sometimes so
called . It was first used by the Council for
the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States,
and is derived from the usage of the Roman
Church, where certain addresses of the Pope to
the Cardinals are called allocutions, and - this
is to be traced to the customs of Pagan Rome,
where the harangues of the Generals to their
soldiers were called allocutions .
Allowed . In the old manuscript Constitutions,
this word is found in the now unusual
sense of " accepted ." Thus, " Every Mason
of the Craft that is Mason allowed, ye shall do
to him as ye would be done unto yourself ."
(Lansdowne MS ., circa 1600 .) Mason allowed
means Mason accepted, that is, approved. Phillips,
in his New World of Words (1690), defines
the verb allow, " to g~ve or grant ; to approve
of; to permit or suffer ." Latimer, in one
of his sermons, uses it in this sense of a pproving
or accepting, thus : " St. Peter, in forsakmg
his old boat and nets was allowed as much
before God as if he had forsaken all the riches
in the world ." In a similar sense is the word
used in the Office of Public Baptism of Infants,
in the Common Prayer-Book of the
Church of England .
All-Seeing Eye. . An important symbol of
the Supreme Being, borrowed by the Freemasons
from the nations of antiquity . Both
the Hebrews and the Egyptians appear to
have derived its use from that natural mclmation
of figurative minds to select an organ as
the symbol of the function which it is intended
peculiarly to discharge . Thus, the
foot was often adopted as the symbol of swiftness,
the arm of strength, and the hand of
fidelity. On the same principle, the o pen eye
was selected as the symbol of watchfulness,
and the eye of God as the symbol of Divine
watchfulness and care of the universe . The
use of the symbol in this sense is repeatedly to
be found in the Hebrew writers . Thus, the
Psalmist says (Ps . xxxiv. 15) : "The eyes of
the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears
are open unto their cry," which explains a
subsequent passage (Ps . cxxi . 4), in which it is
said : " Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall
neither slumber nor slee p . "
In the Apocryphal Book of the Conversation
of God with Moses on Mount Sinai,
translated by the Rev . W . Cureton from an
Arabic MS . of the fifteenth century, and published
by the Philobiblon Society of London,
the idea of the eternal watchfulness of God is
thus beautifully alle gorized :
" Then Moses said to the Lord 0 Lord dost
thou sleep or not? The Lord said unto Noses,
I never eep : but take a cup and fill it with
water . Then Moses took a cup and filled it
with water, as the Lord commanded him .
Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses the
breath of slumber ; so he slept, and the cup fell
from his hand, and the water which was
therein wasspilled . Then Moses awoke from
his sleep . Then said God to Moses, I declare
by my power, and by my glory, that if I were
to withdraw my providence from the heavens