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

that the principles of Freemasonry, which, indeed, are entirely
independent of any special organization which it may have as a society,
are coeval with the existence of the world; that when God said, "Let
there
be light," the material light thus produced was an antitype of that
spiritual light that must burst upon the mind of every candidate when
his
intellectual world, theretofore "without form and void," becomes
adorned
and peopled with the living thoughts and divine principles which
constitute the great system of Speculative Masonry, and when the spirit
of
the institution, brooding over the vast deep of his mental chaos,
shall,
from intellectual darkness, bring forth intellectual light.[152]
In the legends of the Master's degree and of the Royal Arch there is a
commingling of the historical myth and the mythical history, so that
profound judgment is often required to discriminate these differing
elements. As, for example, the legend of the third degree is, in some
of
its details, undoubtedly mythical--in others, just as undoubtedly
historical. The difficulty, however, of separating the one from the
other,
and of distinguishing the fact from the fiction, has necessarily
produced
a difference of opinion on the subject among masonic writers.
Hutchinson,
and, after him, Oliver, think the whole legend an allegory or
philosophical myth. I am inclined, with Anderson and the earlier
writers,
to suppose it a mythical history. In the Royal Arch degree, the legend
of
the rebuilding of the temple is clearly historical; but there are so
many
accompanying circumstances, which are uncertified, except by oral
tradition, as to give to the entire narrative the appearance of a
mythical
history. The particular legend of the _three weary sojourners_ is
undoubtedly a myth, and perhaps merely a philosophical one, or the
enunciation of an idea--namely, the reward of successful perseverance,
through all dangers, in the search for divine truth.
"To form symbols and to interpret symbols," says the learned Creuzer,
"were the main occupation of the ancient priesthood." Upon the studious
Mason the same task of interpretation devolves. He who desires properly
to appreciate the profound wisdom of the institution of which he is the
disciple, must not be content, with uninquiring credulity, to accept
all
the traditions that are imparted to him as veritable histories; nor
yet,
with unphilosophic incredulity, to reject them in a mass, as fabulous
inventions. In these extremes there is equal error. "The myth," says
Hermann, "is the representation of an idea." It is for that idea that
the
student must search in the myths of Masonry. Beneath every one of them
there is something richer and more spiritual than the mere