Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

OF FREE MASONRY. 299
are seated on the ground, in the most profound silence,
sorrowful and afflicted, resting their heads on their arm, to
represent their grief. It is not the death of the Son of
God, who died the victim of our sins, that is the cause of
their affliction; the grand object of it is evident by the first
answer which is made to the question, with which all
lodges are generally opened.
" The master asks the senior warden, what o'clock is it ?
The answer varies according to the different degrees. JLn
this it is as follows: 'It is the first hour of the day, the
time when the veil of the temple was rent asunder, when
darkness and consternation was spread over the earth, when
the light was darkened, when the implements of Masonry
were broken^ when the flaming star disappeared, when the
cubic stone was broken, when the word was lost.*
" The adept, who has attended to the progressive discoveries
he has made in the different degrees, needs no fur*
ther lessons to understand the meaning of this answer.
He thereby learns that the day on which the word JEHOVAH
was lost, is precisely that on which the son of God, dying
on a cross for the salvation of mankind, consummated the
grand mystery of our religion, destroying the reign of
every other, whether Judaic, natural, or sophistical. The
more a Mason is attached to the word, that is, to his pretended
natural religion, the more inveterate will his hatred
be against the author of revealed religion.
" Neither is this word, which he has already found, any
longer the object of his researches; his hatred- has further
views. He must seek for a new word, which shall per*
petuate in his own mind and that of his brethren their blasphemous
hatred for the God of Christianity; and for this
they adopt the inscription of the cross.t
" Every Christian knows the signification of I. N. R. I.,
* See the degree Rose Crucia.
t See Robison's Proofe of a Conspiracy, pp. 121.128.