THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

known to the folk of that faith in London--called "Bishop" Anderson by
his friends. He married the widow of an army officer, who bore him a
son and a daughter. Although a learned man--compiler of a book of
_Royal Genealogies_, which seems to have been his hobby--he was
somewhat imprudent in business, having lost most of his property in
1720. Whether he was a Mason before coming to London is unknown, but he
took a great part in the work of the Grand Lodge, entering it,
apparently, in 1721. Toward the close of his life he suffered many
misfortunes, but of what description we are not told. He died in 1739.
Perhaps his learning was exaggerated by his Masonic eulogists, but he
was a noble man and manifestly a useful one (Gould's _History of
Masonry_, vol. iii).
[123] Having emphasized this point so repeatedly, the writer feels it
just to himself to state his own position, lest he be thought a kind of
materialist, or at least an enemy of mysticism. Not so. Instead, he has
long been an humble student of the great mystics; they are his best
friends--as witness his two little books, _The Eternal Christ_, and
_What Have the Saints to Teach Us?_ But mysticism is one thing, and
mystification is another, and the former may be stated in this way:
First, by mysticism--only another word for spirituality--is meant our
sense of an Unseen World, of our citizenship in it, of God and the
soul, and of all the forms of life and beauty as symbols of things
higher than themselves. That is to say, if a man has any religion at
all that is not mere theory or form, he is a mystic; the difference
between him and Plato or St. Francis being only a matter of genius and
spiritual culture--between a boy whistling a tune and Beethoven writing
music.
Second, since mysticism is native to the soul of man and the common
experience of all who rise above the animal, it is not an exclusive
possession of any set of adepts to be held as a secret. Any man who
bows in prayer, or lifts his thought heavenward, is an initiate into
the eternal mysticism which is the strength and solace of human life.
Third, the old time Masons were religious men, and as such sharers in
this great human experience of divine things, and did not need to go to
Hidden Teachers to learn mysticism. They lived and worked in the light
of it. It shone in their symbols, as it does in all symbols that have
any meaning or beauty. It is, indeed, the soul of symbolism, every
emblem being an effort to express a reality too great for words.
So, then, Masonry is mystical as music is mystical--like poetry, and
love, and faith, and prayer, and all else that makes it worth our time
to live; but its mysticism is sweet, sane, and natural, far from
fantastic, and in nowise eerie, unreal, or unbalanced. Of course these
words fail to describe it, as all words must, and it is therefore that
Masonry uses parables, pictures, and symbols.
[124] _Seventeenth Century Descriptions of Solomon's Temple_, by Prof.
S.P. Johnston (_A. Q. C._, xii, 135).
[125] _Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England_, vol. ii.
[126] Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, article "Temple."