which appointments were confirmed by a Council of Inspectors that convened in Philadelphia on the 15th of June, 1781.

On the 1st of May, 1786, the Grand Constitutions of the Supreme Council of the 33d degree were ratified by the King of Prussia, by which the masonic prerogatives of Inspectors were deposited in a council consisting of nine brethren in each nation.

On the 20th of February, 1788, a Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem was opened in Charleston, by Myers, Spitzer, and A. Forst, Deputy Inspector General for Virginia.

In 1795, Col. John Mitchell was appointed by Spitzer a Deputy Inspector General, in the place of Myers, who had removed, but he was restricted from acting until after Myers' death, which took place in the following year.

On the 31st of May, 1801, the Supreme Council of the 33d degree was opened in Charleston with the grand honours of masonry, by John Mitchell and Frederick Dalcho, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, and in the course of the succeeding two years, the whole number of Inspectors General was completed.

On the 5th day of August, 1813, a similar Supreme Council was, in accordance with the Secret Constitutions, duly and lawfully established and constituted at the city of New York,* by Emanuel De La Motta, as the representative, and under the sanction and authority of the council at Charleston. The masonic jurisdiction of the New York council is distributed over the northern, north-western, and north-eastern parts of the United States. And this, with the council at Charleston, are the only recognised councils which exist, or can exist, according to the Secret Constitutions in the United States.

This was the origin of the Scotch rite in the United States, of which there now exist two Supreme Councils; one at Charleston, S. C., and the other in the city of Boston, both bodies being in active operation.

The seat of this Council has lately been removed to Boston.

SUSPENSION. A masonic punishment by which a party is temporarily deprived of his rights and privileges as a mason. Suspension may be definite or indefinite in the period of its duration. A mason who has been indefinately suspended can be restored only by a vote of the body which suspended him. One who has been suspended for a definite period is restored by the termination of that period, without any special action of the lodge.

SWEDENBORG, RITE OF. We have seen in the article "Illuminati of Avignon," that the religious dogmas of Swedenborg were brought, in the middle of the eighteenth century, (the great season of rite-making,) to the aid of masonry for the purpose of manufacturing a new rite. In 1783, the Marquis de Thomé modified the system which has been adopted in the lodge of Avignon, to suit his peculiar views, and thus instituted what is properly known as the rite of Swedenborg. It consists of six grades, namely: 1, Apprentice; 2, Fellow-Craft; 3, Master Theosophite; 4, Illuminated Theosophite; 5, Blue Brother; 6, Red Brother.

It is still practised in some lodges in the north of Europe.

SWEDISH RITE. The rite practised by the Grand Lodge of Sweden consists of twelve degrees, the fifth of which gives the possessor the rank of civil nobility in the state. The degrees are as follows:

1, Apprentice; 2, Fellow-Craft; 3, Master; 4, Apprentice and Fellow-Craft of St. Andrew; 5, Master of St. Andrew; 6, Brother Stuart; 7, Favourite Brother of Solomon; 8, Favourite Brother of St. John, or White Ribbon; 9, Favourite Brother of St. Andrew, or Violet Ribbon; 10, Member of the Chapter; 11, Dignitary of the Chapter; 12, Reigning Grand Master.

SWORD BEARER. An officer in a council of Knights of the Red Cross, and in an encampment of Knights Templar, whose

station is in the west, on the right of the Standard Bearer, and when the knights are in line, on the right of the second division. His duty is, to receive all orders and signals from the Grand Commander, and see them promptly obeyed. He is, also, to assist in the protection of the banners of his order. His jewel is a triangle and cross swords.

The Grand Sword Bearer is also an officer of a Grand Lodge, whose duty it is to carry the Sword of State in public processions. In some Grand Lodges he receives the title of Grand Pursuivant.

A

SWORD POINTING TO THE NAKED HEART. symbol of that Divine justice which must, sooner or later, overtake all who have sinned; for, though man looketh to the outward appearance, God looketh to the heart alone, which, concealing its inmost passions from the world, is naked and open to his ALL-SEEING EYE.

It is an emblem of the Master's degree.

SYMBOL. A sensible image used to express an occult but analogical signification. Almost all the instruction given in masonry is by symbols. Such was also the case in the ancient mysteries. "The first learning in the world," says Stukely, "consisted chiefly in symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolical. It was the mode, says Serranus, on Plato's Symposium, of the ancient philosophers to represent truth by certain symbols and hidden images."

Symbols were first adopted by the Egyptian priests for the purpose of secrecy; they concealing, by their use, those profound speculations which constituted the apporeta of their mysteries, and which they were unwilling to divulge to the unprepared and uninitiated vulgar. From the Egyptians, Pythagoras received a knowledge of this symbolical mode of instruction, and

communicated it to the sect of philosophy which he afterwards instituted.

According to Porphyry, there was this distinction between the hieroglyphic and symbolic method of writing among the Egyptians that the former expressed the meaning by an imitation of the thing represented, as when the picture of smoke ascending upwards denoted fire; and the latter allegorizing the subject by an enigma, as when a hawk was used to signify the sun, or a fly to express the quality of impudence.* The former of these methods was open to all who chose to learn it; the latter was reserved by the priests for the purpose of mystic instruction, and was, as I have already said, communicated only to the initiated.

The symbols, says Warburton,† were of two kinds, tropical and enigmatical. The tropical, which were the more natural, were made by employing the more unusual properties of things. to express subjects. Thus, a cat signified the moon, because the pupil of her eye was observed to be dilated at the full and contracted at the decrease of that satellite. The tropical were constituted by the mystical assemblage of two or more things whose combined properties expressed a particular quality. Thus, a beetle, with a round ball in its claws, denoted the sun, because this insect makes a ball of dung, which he rolls in a circular direction, and with his face looking towards the sun.§

But the priests, in adopting the symbol, as a depository of their secret doctrines, were not contented with the use of it to designate only substances; their mystic instruction was of too elaborate a nature, to be satisfied with so circumscribed an alpha

* τῶν μὲν (γραμμάτων ἱερογλυφιχῶν) χοινολογουμένων χατὰ μίμησιν, τῶν δὲ (συμβολίχων) ἀλλεγορυμένων κατὰ τινὰς αίνιγμους.-De Vit. Pythag. xi. 15.

† Divine Legation, vol. iii. 141.

Such is Plutarch's account of this symbol; but I am not aware that modern zoologists support this theory of lunar influence. N'importe, the Egyptians believed it, and that is all that the argument requires.

Clem. Alexand. Stromata.

bet; they next, therefore, had recourse to sensible objects, as a means of expressing mental and moral qualities; thus, destruction was expressed by the mouse, impurity by the goat, aversion by the wolf, knowledge by the ant; and the reason of the signification, as well as the thing signified, formed a part of their apporeta, or secrets.

This is the highest and most intellectual method of applying symbols, and it is the method adopted in Freemasonry, which, in its use of symbolic instruction, is an exact counterpart of the ancient mysteries.

SYMBOLIC DEGREES. The first three degrees of Freemasonry, the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, are called in the York rite, symbolic degrees, because they abound in symbolic instruction, not to be found in the remaining degrees, which are principally historical in their

character.

SYMBOLIC LODGE. A lodge in which the symbolic degrees are conferred; that is, a lodge of Entered Apprentices, Fellow Crafts, or Master Masons.

T.

TABERNACLE. The tabernacle was the place of worship, representing a temple, which God commanded Moses to construct in the wilderness for the religious service of the Jews, and in which the ark of the covenant and sacred vessels were kept until Solomon removed them into the temple. The tabernacle was so contrived as to be taken to pieces and put together again at pleaThe tabernacle was in shape a parallelogram fronting the East, thirty cubits or forty-five feet in length, and ten cubits

sure.