Its prevalence, therefore, in the masonic institution, is a pregnant evidence of the close analogy existing between it and all these systems.  How that analogy was first introduced, and how it is to be explained, without detriment to the purity and truthfulness of our own religious character, would involve a long inquiry into the origin of Freemasonry, and the history of its connection with the ancient systems.

These researches might have been extended still farther; enough, however, has been said to establish the following leading principles:—­

1.  That Freemasonry is, strictly speaking, a science of symbolism.

2.  That in this symbolism it bears a striking analogy to the same science, as seen in the mystic rites of the ancient religions.

3.  That as in these ancient religions the universe was symbolized to the candidate, and the sun, as its vivifying principle, made the object of his adoration, or at least of his veneration, so, in Masonry, the lodge is made the representative of the world or the universe, and the sun is presented as its most prominent symbol.

4.  That this identity of symbolism proves an identity of origin, which identity of origin can be shown to be strictly compatible with the true religious sentiment of Masonry.

5.  And fifthly and lastly, that the whole symbolism of Freemasonry has an exclusive reference to what the Kabalists have called the ALGABIL—­the Master Builder—­him whom Freemasons have designated as the Grand Architect of the Universe.

XVII.

Ritualistic Symbolism.

We have hitherto been engaged in the consideration of these simple symbols, which appear to express one single and independent idea.  They have sometimes been called the “alphabet of Freemasonry,” but improperly, I think, since the letters of the alphabet have, in themselves, unlike these masonic symbols, no significance, but are simply the component parts of words, themselves the representatives of ideas.

These masonic symbols rather may be compared to the elementary characters of the Chinese language, each of which denotes an idea; or, still better, to the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, in which one object was represented in full by another which bore some subjective relation to it, as the wind was represented by the wings of a bird, or courage by the head and shoulders of a lion.

It is in the same way that in Masonry the plumb represents rectitude, the level, human equality, and the trowel, concord or harmony.  Each is, in itself, independent, each expresses a single elementary idea.

But we now arrive at a higher division of masonic symbolism, which, passing beyond these tangible symbols, brings us to those which are of a more abstruse nature, and which, as being developed in a ceremonial form, controlled and directed by the ritual of the order, may be designated as the ritualistic symbolism of Freemasonry.