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

hill_. At first, the interpretation, like that from which it had been
derived, would be cosmopolitan; it would fit exactly to the general
dogmas
of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.
But on the advent of Christianity, the spirit of the new religion being
infused into the old masonic system, the whole symbolism of the grave
was
affected by it. The same interpretation of a resurrection or
restoration
to life, derived from the ancient "pastos," was, it is true, preserved;
but the facts that Christ himself had come to promulgate to the
multitudes
the same consoling dogma, and that Mount Calvary, "the place of a
skull,"
was the spot where the Redeemer, by his own death and resurrection, had
testified the truth of the doctrine, at once suggested to the old
Christian Masons the idea of Christianizing the ancient symbol.
Let us now examine briefly how that idea has been at length developed.
In the first place, it is necessary to identify the spot where the
"newly-made grave" was discovered with Mount Calvary, the place of the
sepulchre of Christ. This can easily be done by a very few but striking
analogies, which will, I conceive, carry conviction to any thinking
mind.
1. Mount Calvary was a _small hill_.[173]
2. It was situated in a _westward direction_ from the temple, and _near
Mount Moriah_.
3. It was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is thus the
very
spot where a _weary brother_, travelling on that road, would find it
convenient to _sit down to rest and refresh himself_.[174]
4. It was _outside_ the gate of the temple.
5. It has at least _one cleft in the rock_, or cave, which was the
place
which subsequently became the sepulchre of our Lord. But this
coincidence
need scarcely to be insisted on, since the whole neighborhood abounds
in
rocky clefts, which meet at once the conditions of the masonic legend.
But to bring this analogical reasoning before the mind in a more
expressive mode, it may be observed that if a party of persons were to
start forth from the temple at Jerusalem, and travel in a westward
direction towards the port of Joppa, Mount Calvary would be the first
hill
met with; and as it may possibly have been used as a place of
sepulture,
which its name of Golgotha[175] seems to import, we may suppose it to
have
been the very spot alluded to in the Third Degree, as the place where