Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

374 FRANCIS BACON.
subtle when it be conceived, " and we know now that, though
we have not, as Bacon says, " found an issue into open ground,
yet we have got out of the " entanglement, " and see daylight.
The questions asked, and the problems propounded, are
neither trivial nor absurd, nor matter for pedantic dogmatism
and argumentative controversy. Rather they are questions to
be weighed and considered — and more. If it be true that
"cogitation resides
not in the man who does not think," so,
surely, it resides but as smoke and fumes in the man who does
not examine.
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Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Furies, and the River
Helicon, in sorrow, hid its waters underground, and rose
in other places. "
again
So with the great religious, literary, aud sci-
glorify and
entific society which Francis Bacon did so much to
render permanent. It hid its waters in England during the
time of the civil wars and their attendant miseries. But those
waters rose again with renewed freshness. Can we not trace
them bubbling up in France, Spain, and Italy, but still more in
Germany and Holland, which seem for a while to have been
their largest reservoir ? The Rosicross Brethren never ceased
their beneficent efforts in England, but they worked like the
" old mole," underground, and in silence. Bacon and his wonderful
work are better known and understood in Germany than
in England. "His fame," says Dr. Rawley, "is greater, and
sounds louder in foreign parts abroad, than at home in his own
nation, thereby verifying that divine sentence, A prophet '
is not
without honour, save in his oivn country and in his own house.' "
He concludes the short life of his beloved master with these
words: "Howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his
memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as
long as the world lasteth."