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

is,
in one respect, more perfect than any ordinary language can be: it
possesses the variegated elegance of synonymes without any of the
obscurity which arises from the use of ambiguous terms."--_On the
Prophecies_, ii. p. 63.
[44] "By speculative Masonry we learn to subdue our passions, to act
upon
the square, to keep a tongue of good report, to maintain secrecy, and
practise charity."--_Lect. of Fel. Craft._ But this is a very meagre
definition, unworthy of the place it occupies in the lecture of the
second
degree.
[45] "Animal worship among the Egyptians was the natural and
unavoidable
consequence of the misconception, by the vulgar, of those emblematical
figures invented by the priests to record their own philosophical
conception of absurd ideas. As the pictures and effigies suspended in
early Christian churches, to commemorate a person or an event, became
in
time objects of worship to the vulgar, so, in Egypt, the esoteric or
spiritual meaning of the emblems was lost in the gross materialism of
the
beholder. This esoteric and allegorical meaning was, however, preserved
by
the priests, and communicated in the mysteries alone to the initiated,
while the uninstructed retained only the grosser conception."--GLIDDON,
_Otia Aegyptiaca_, p. 94.
[46] "To perpetuate the esoteric signification of these symbols to the
initiated, there were established the Mysteries, of which institution
we
have still a trace in Freemasonry."--GLIDDON, _Otia Aegyp._ p. 95.
[47] Philo Judaeus says, that "Moses had been initiated by the
Egyptians
into the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphics, as well as into the
ritual of the holy animals." And Hengstenberg, in his learned work on
"Egypt and the Books of Moses," conclusively shows, by numerous
examples,
how direct were the Egyptian references of the Pentateuch; in which
fact,
indeed, he recognizes "one of the most powerful arguments for its
credibility and for its composition by Moses."--HENGSTENBERG, p. 239,
Robbins's trans.
[48] Josephus, _Antiq._ book iii. ch. 7.
[49] The ark, or sacred boat, of the Egyptians frequently occurs on the
walls of the temples. It was carried in great pomp by the priests on
the
occasion of the "procession of the shrines," by means of staves passed
through metal rings in its side. It was thus conducted into the temple,
and deposited on a stand. The representations we have of it bear a
striking resemblance to the Jewish ark, of which it is now admitted to
have been the prototype.