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

Charity, therefore, takes the same place in the ladder of masonic
virtues
as the sun does in the ladder of planets. In the ladder of metals we
find
gold, and in that of colors yellow, occupying the same elevated
position.
Now, St. Paul explains Charity as signifying, not alms-giving, which is
the modern popular meaning, but love--that love which "suffereth long
and
is kind;" and when, in our lectures on this subject, we speak of it as
the
greatest of virtues, because, when Faith is lost and Hope has ceased,
it
extends "beyond the grave to realms of endless bliss," we there refer
it
to the Divine Love of our Creator. But Portal, in his Essay on Symbolic
Colors, informs us that the sun represents Divine Love, and gold
indicates
the goodness of God.
So that if Charity is equivalent to Divine Love, and Divine Love is
represented by the sun, and lastly, if Charity be the topmost round of
the
masonic ladder, then again we arrive, as the result of our researches,
at
the symbol so often already repeated of the solar orb. The natural sun
or
the spiritual sun--the sun, either as the vivifying principle of
animated
nature, and therefore the special object of adoration, or as the most
prominent instrument of the Creator's benevolence--was ever a leading
idea
in the symbolism of antiquity.
Its prevalence, therefore, in the masonic institution, is a pregnant
evidence of the close analogy existing between it and all these
systems.
How that analogy was first introduced, and how it is to be explained,
without detriment to the purity and truthfulness of our own religious
character, would involve a long inquiry into the origin of Freemasonry,
and the history of its connection with the ancient systems.
These researches might have been extended still farther; enough,
however,
has been said to establish the following leading principles:--
1. That Freemasonry is, strictly speaking, a science of symbolism.
2. That in this symbolism it bears a striking analogy to the same
science,
as seen in the mystic rites of the ancient religions.
3. That as in these ancient religions the universe was symbolized to
the
candidate, and the sun, as its vivifying principle, made the object of
his
adoration, or at least of his veneration, so, in Masonry, the lodge is