To this man—­this widow’s son (as Scripture history, as well as masonic tradition informs us)—­was intrusted by King Solomon an important position among the workmen at the sacred edifice, which was constructed on Mount Moriah.  His knowledge and experience as an artificer, and his eminent skill in every kind of “curious and cunning workmanship,” readily placed him at the head of both the Jewish and Tyrian craftsmen, as the chief builder and principal conductor of the works; and it is to him, by means of the large authority which this position gave him, that we attribute the union of two people, so antagonistical in race, so dissimilar in manners, and so opposed in religion, as the Jews and Tyrians, in one common brotherhood, which resulted in the organization of the institution of Freemasonry.  This Hiram, as a Tyrian and an artificer, must have been connected with the Dionysiac fraternity; nor could he have been a very humble or inconspicuous member, if we may judge of his rank in the society, from the amount of talent which he is said to have possessed, and from the elevated position that he held in the affections, and at the court, of the king of Tyre.  He must, therefore, have been well acquainted with all the ceremonial usages of the Dionysiac artificers, and must have enjoyed a long experience of the advantages of the government and discipline which they practised in the erection of the many sacred edifices in which they were engaged.  A portion of these ceremonial usages and of this discipline he would naturally be inclined to introduce among the workmen at Jerusalem.  He therefore united them in a society, similar in many respects to that of the Dionysiac artificers.  He inculcated lessons of charity and brotherly love; he established a ceremony of initiation, to test experimentally the fortitude and worth of the candidate; adopted modes of recognition; and impressed the obligations of duty and principles of morality by means of symbols and allegories.

To the laborers and men of burden, the Ish Sabal, and to the craftsmen, corresponding with the first and second degrees of more modern Masonry, but little secret knowledge was confided.  Like the aspirants in the lesser Mysteries of paganism, their instructions were simply to purify and prepare them for a more solemn ordeal, and for the knowledge of the sublimest truths.  These were to be found only in the Master’s degree, which it was intended should be in imitation of the greater Mysteries; and in it were to be unfolded, explained, and enforced the great doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.  But here there must have at once arisen an apparently insurmountable obstacle to the further continuation of the resemblance of Masonry to the Mysteries of Dionysus.  In the pagan Mysteries, I have already said that these lessons were allegorically taught by means of a legend.  Now, in the Mysteries of Dionysus, the legend was that of the death and subsequent resuscitation of