nd have been redeemed
from the death of sin and the sepulchre of pollution and unrighteousness.

"Thus the _Master Mason_ represents a man, under the Christian doctrine,
saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation."

It is in this way that Masonry has, by a sort of inevitable process (when
we look to the religious sentiment of the interpreters), been
Christianized by some of the most illustrious and learned writers on
masonic science--by such able men as Hutchinson and Oliver in England, and
by Harris, by Scott, by Salem Towne, and by several others in this
country.

I do not object to the system when the interpretation is not strained, but
is plausible, consistent, and productive of the same results as in the
instance of Mount Calvary: all that I contend for is, that such
interpretations are modern, and that they do not belong to, although they
may often be deduced from, the ancient system.

But the true ancient interpretation of the legend,--the universal masonic
one,--for all countries and all ages, undoubtedly was, that the fate of
the temple builder is but figurative of the pilgrimage of man on earth,
through trials and temptations, through sin and sorrow, until his eventual
fall beneath the blow of death and his final and glorious resurrection to
another and an eternal life.

XXVIII.

The Sprig of Acacia.

Intimately connected with the legend of the third degree is the mythical
history of the Sprig of Acacia, which we are now to consider.

There is no symbol more interesting to the masonic student than the Sprig
of Acacia, not only on account of its own peculiar import, but also
because it introduces us to an extensive and delightful field of research;
that, namely, which embraces the symbolism of sacred plants. In all the
ancient systems of religion, and Mysteries of initiation, there was always
some one plant consecrated, in the minds of the worshippers and
participants, by a peculiar symbolism, and therefore held in extraordinary
veneration as a sacred emblem. Thus the ivy was used in the Mysteries of
Dionysus, the myrtle in those of Ceres, the erica in the Osirian, and the
lettuce in the Adonisian. But to this subject I shall have occasion to
refer more fully in a subsequent part of the present investigation.

Before entering upon an examination of the symbolism of the _Acacia_, it
will be, perhaps, as well to identify the true plant which occupies so
important a p