Albert Mackey

“ These great truths constitute the very essence of Christianity, in which it differs from and excels all religious systems that preceded it; they constitute, also, the end, aim, and object of all Freemasonry, but more especially that of the Third Degree, whose peculiar legend, symbolically considered, teaches nothing more nor less than that there is an immortal and better part within us, which, as an emanation from that divine spirit which pervades all nature, can never die. ”

“ That teaching would be vain and idle--nay, more, it would be corrupt and pernicious--which should stop short of the conscious and innate instinct for another existence. And hence the succeeding portions of the legend are intended to convey the sublime symbolism of a resurrection from the grave and a new birth into a future life. ”

“ It was, then, the great object of all the rites and mysteries which constituted the "Spurious Freemasonry" of antiquity to teach the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul. [3] This dogma, shining as an almost solitary beacon-light in the surrounding gloom of pagan darkness, had undoubtedly been received from that ancient people or priesthood [4] what has been called the system of "Pure Freemasonry," and among whom it probably existed only in the form of an abstract proposition or a simple and unembellished tradition. ”

“ To the man deeply imbued with the spirit of his religion there is an almost unconscious desire to accommodate and adapt all the business and the amusements of life, the labors and the employments of his every-day existence, to the indwelling faith of his soul. ”

“ As to those who seek for an astronomical interpretation of the legend, in which the annual changes of the sun are symbolized, while the ingenuity with which they press their argument cannot but be admired, it is evident that, by such an interpretation, they yield all that Masonry has gained of religious development in past ages, and fall back upon that corruption and perversion of Sabaism from which it was the object, even of the Spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, to rescue its disciples. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The influence, too, of the early Sabian worship of the sun and heavenly bodies, in which the solar orb was adored, on its resurrection, each morning, from the apparent death of its evening setting, caused this rising sun to be adopted in the more ancient Mysteries as a symbol of the regeneration of the soul. ”

“ This tendency to Christianization has, in some instances, been so universal, and has prevailed for so long a period, that certain symbols and myths have been, in this way, so deeply and thoroughly imbued with the Christian element as to leave those who have not penetrated into the cause of this peculiarity, in doubt whether they should attribute to the symbol an ancient or a modern and Christian origin. ”

“ Thus some of the earlier continental writers have supposed the myth to have been a symbol of the destruction of the Order of the Templars, looking upon its restoration to its original wealth and dignities as being prophetically symbolized.
In some of the high philosophical degrees it is taught that the whole legend refers to the sufferings and death, with the subsequent resurrection, of Christ. ”

“ Man, setting forth on the voyage of life, with faculties and powers fitting him for the due exercise of the high duties to whose performance he has been called, holds, if he be "a curious and cunning workman," [6] skilled in all moral and intellectual purposes (and it is only of such men that the temple builder can be the symbol) , within the grasp of his attainment the knowledge of all that divine truth imparted to him as the heirloom of his race--that race to whom it has been granted to look, with exalted countenance, on high ”

“ Thus in the Egyptian Mysteries we find a representation of the death and subsequent regeneration of Osiris; in the Phoenician, of Adonis; in the Syrian, of Dionysus; in all of which the scenic apparatus of initiation was intended to indoctrinate the candidate into the dogma of a future life. ”

“ The feeling is an instinctive one, belonging to the noblest aspirations of our human nature; and hence we find Christian masonic writers indulging in it almost to an unwarrantable excess, and by the extent of their sectarian interpretations materially affecting the cosmopolitan character of the institution. ”