But, although the modern lectures inform us that Brotherly Love and Relief are two of “the principal tenets of a Mason’s profession,” yet, from the same authority, we learn that Truth is a third and not less important one; and Truth, too, not in its old Anglo-Saxon meaning of fidelity to engagements,[232] but in that more strictly philosophical one in which it is opposed to intellectual and religious error or falsehood.

But I have shown that the Primitive Freemasonry of the ancients was instituted for the purpose of preserving that truth which had been originally communicated to the patriarchs, in all its integrity, and that the Spurious Masonry, or the Mysteries, originated in the earnest need of the sages, and philosophers, and priests, to find again the same truth which had been lost by the surrounding multitudes.  I have shown, also, that this same truth continued to be the object of the Temple Masonry, which was formed by a union of the Primitive, or Pure, and the Spurious systems.  Lastly, I have endeavored to demonstrate that this truth related to the nature of God and the human soul.

The search, then, after this truth, I suppose to constitute the end and design of Speculative Masonry.  From the very commencement of his career, the aspirant is by significant symbols and expressive instructions directed to the acquisition of this divine truth; and the whole lesson, if not completed in its full extent, is at least well developed in the myths and legends of the Master’s degree. God and the soul—­the unity of the one and the immortality of the other—­are the great truths, the search for which is to constitute the constant occupation of every Mason, and which, when found, are to become the chief corner-stone, or the stone of foundation, of the spiritual temple—­“the house not made with hands”—­which he is engaged in erecting.

Now, this idea of a search after truth forms so prominent a part of the whole science of Freemasonry, that I conceive no better or more comprehensive answer could be given to the question, What is Freemasonry? than to say that it is a science which is engaged in the search after divine truth.

But Freemasonry is eminently a system of symbolism, and all its instructions are conveyed in symbols.  It is, therefore, to be supposed that so prominent and so prevailing an idea as this,—­one that constitutes, as I have said, the whole design of the institution, and which may appropriately be adopted as the very definition of its science,—­could not with any consistency be left without its particular symbol.

The WORD, therefore, I conceive to be the symbol of Divine Truth; and all its modifications—­the loss, the substitution, and the recovery—­are but component parts of the mythical symbol which represents a search after truth.

How, then, is this symbolism preserved?  How is the whole history of this Word to be interpreted, so as to bear, in all its accidents of time, and place, and circumstance, a patent reference to the substantive idea that has been symbolized?