Albert Mackey

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”