hich is the root of the word _symbol_, both have the synonymous
meaning "to compare." A parable is only a spoken symbol. The definition of
a parable given by Adam Clarke is equally applicable to a symbol, viz.: "A
comparison or similitude, in which one thing is compared with another,
especially spiritual things with natural, by which means these spiritual
things are better understood, and make a deeper impression on the
attentive mind."

[43] North British Review, August, 1851. Faber passes a similar encomium.
"Hence the language of symbolism, being so purely a language of ideas, is,
in one respect, more perfect than any ordinary language can be: it
possesses the variegated elegance of synonymes without any of the
obscurity which arises from the use of ambiguous terms."--_On the
Prophecies_, ii. p. 63.

[44] "By speculative Masonry we learn to subdue our passions, to act upon
the square, to keep a tongue of good report, to maintain secrecy, and
practise charity."--_Lect. of Fel. Craft._ But this is a very meagre
definition, unworthy of the place it occupies in the lecture of the second
degree.

[45] "Animal worship among the Egyptians was the natural and unavoidable
consequence of the misconception, by the vulgar, of those emblematical
figures invented by the priests to record their own philosophical
conception of absurd ideas. As the pictures and effigies suspended in
early Christian churches, to commemorate a person or an event, became in
time objects of worship to the vulgar, so, in Egypt, the esoteric or
spiritual meaning of the emblems was lost in the gross materialism of the
beholder. This esoteric and allegorical meaning was, however, preserved by
the priests, and communicated in the mysteries alone to the initiated,
while the uninstructed retained only the grosser conception."--GLIDDON,
_Otia Aegyptiaca_, p. 94.

[46] "To perpetuate the esoteric signification of these symbols to the
initiated, there were established the Mysteries, of which institution we
have still a trace in Freemasonry."--GLIDDON, _Otia Aegyp._ p. 95.

[47] Philo Judaeus says, that "Moses had been initiated by the Egyptians
into the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphics, as well as into the
ritual of the holy animals." And Hengstenberg, in his learned work on
"Egypt and the Books of Moses," conclusively shows, by numerous examples,
how direct were the Egyptian references of the Pentateuch; in which fact,
indeed, he recognizes "one of th