ythologic
fable of his destroying with his arrows the many-headed hydra of the
Lernaean marshes was but an allegory to denote the dissipation of paludal
malaria by the purifying rays of the orb of day. Among the Egyptians, too,
the chief deity, Osiris, was but another name for the sun, while his
arch-enemy and destroyer, Typhon, was the typification of night, or
darkness. And lastly, among the Hindus, the three manifestations of their
supreme deity, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, were symbols of the rising,
meridian, and setting sun.

This early and very general prevalence of the sentiment of sun-worship is
worthy of especial attention on account of the influence that it exercised
over the spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, of which I am soon to speak,
and which is still felt, although modified and Christianized in our modern
system. Many, indeed nearly all, of the masonic symbols of the present day
can only be thoroughly comprehended and properly appreciated by this
reference to sun-worship.

This divine truth, then, of the existence of one Supreme God, the Grand
Architect of the Universe, symbolized in Freemasonry as the TRUE WORD, was
lost to the Sabians and to the polytheists who arose after the dispersion
at Babel, and with it also disappeared the doctrine of a future life; and
hence, in one portion of the masonic ritual, in allusion to this historic
fact, we speak of "the lofty tower of Babel, where language was confounded
and Masonry lost."

There were, however, some of the builders on the plain of Shinar who
preserved these great religious and masonic doctrines of the unity of God
and the immortality of the soul in their pristine purity. These were the
patriarchs, in whose venerable line they continued to be taught. Hence,
years after the dispersion of the nations at Babel, the world presented
two great religious sects, passing onward down the stream of time, side by
side, yet as diverse from each other as light from darkness, and truth
from falsehood.

One of these lines of religious thought and sentiment was the idolatrous
and pagan world. With it all masonic doctrine, at least in its purity, was
extinct, although there mingled with it, and at times to some extent
influenced it, an offshoot from the other line, to which attention will be
soon directed.

The second of these lines consisted, as has already been said, of the
patriarchs and priests, who preserved in all their purity the two great
masonic doctrine