scended to the shades below after having beheld these rites; for they alone have life in Hades, while all others suffer there every kind of evil." And Isocrates declares that "those who have been initiated in the mysterics, entertain better hopes, both as to the end of life and the whole of futurity."

The ancient historians relate many circumstances in illustration of the sanctity in which the mysteries were held. Livy tell us the following story: Two Acarnanian youths who had not been initiated, accidentally entered the temple of Ceres, during the days of the mysteries. They were soon detected by their absurd questions, and being carried to the managers of the temple, though it was evident that they had come there by mistake, they were put to death for so horrible a crime.*

Plutarch records the fact that Alcibiades was indicted for sacrilege, because he imitiated the mysteries of Eleusis and exhibited them to his companions in the same dress in which the hierophant showed the sacred things, and called himself the hierophant, one of his companions the torch bearer, and the other the herald.†

Lobeck, one of the most learned writers on this subject, has collected several examples of the reluctance with which the ancients approached a mystical subject, and the manner in which they shrunk from divulging any explanation or fable which had been related to them at the mysterics.‡

To divulge them was considered a sacrilegious crime, the prescribed punishment for which was immediate death. I would not, says Horace, dwell beneath the same roof, nor trust myself in the same frail bark, with the man who has betrayed the secrets of the Eleusinian rites.§

Liv. Hist. xxi. 14.

† Plut. Alcibiad. 22.

Lobeck's Aglaophamus, vol. i. app. 131, 151; vol. ii. p. 1287.

& Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum

Vulgârit arcanæ, sub iisdem

Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum
Solvat phaselum.

[Carm. iii. 3, 26.

On the subject of their relation to the rites of Freemasonry, to which they bear in many respects so remarkable a resemblance, that some connection seems necessarily implied, there are two principal theories. The one, is that embraced and taught by Dr. Oliver, namely, that they are but deviations from that common source, both of them and of Freemasonry, the patriarchal mode of worship established by God himself. With this pure system of truth, he supposes the science of Freemasonry to have been coeval and identified. But the truths thus revealed by divinity, came at length to be doubted or rejected through the imperfection of human reason, and though the visible symbols were retained in the mysteries of the Pagan world, their true interpretation was lost.*

That the instruction communicated in the mysteries of Paganism were an impure derivation from the sublime truths of the patriarchal theology, I have no hesitation in believing. But that they were an emanation from Freemasonry, as we now understand the terms, I am not yet prepared to admit, notwithstanding the deep veneration in which I hold the learning of Dr. Oliver. I prefer, therefore, the second theory, which, leaving the origin of the mysteries to be sought in the patriarchal doctrines, where Oliver has placed it, finds the connection between them and Freemasonry commencing at the building of King Solomon's Temple. Over the construction of this building, Hiram, the Architect of Tyre, presided. At Tyre the mysteries of Bacchus had been introduced by the Dionysian Artificers, and into their fraternity Hiram, in all probability, had, as I have already suggested, been admitted.† Freemasonry, whose tenets had always existed in purity among the immediate descendants of the patriarchs, added now to its doctrines the guard of secrecy, which, as Dr. Oliver himself remarks, was necessary to preserve them from perversion or pollution. This, then, it seems to me, is the true connection between the

*Signs and Symbols, p. 217.

+ See Antiquity of Masonry, and Hiram the Builder, in this work.

Hist. of Initiation, p. 2.

mysteries and speculative Freemasonry. They both emanated from one common source, but the former soon losing much of their original purity, were compelled, in order to preserve the little that was left, to have recourse to the invention of ceremonies and modes of recognition, and a secret doctrine, by means of which all but a select and worthy few were excluded. These ceremonies, and especially this symbolic or secret mode of communicating instruction, so admirable in themselves, were afterwards adopted by the Freemasons, who had retained the ancient tenets in their original purity, but they divested them of their heathen allusions, and adapted them to the divine system which they had preserved unimpaired.

A third theory has been advanced by the Abbe Robin, in which he connects Freemasonry indirectly with the mysteries, through the intervention of the Crusaders. In the work already cited, he attempts to deduce from the ancient initiations, the orders of Chivalry, whose branches, he says, produced the institution of Freemasonry. But this theory is utterly untenable and inconsistent with the facts of history, since Freemasonry preceded, instead of following, the institution of Chivalry, as I have elsewhere shown, and could not, therefore, have been indebted to this system for its primal organization.

These mysteries, so important from their connection with Freemasonry, deserve a still further examination of their origin and design.

Faber, who sought an Arkite origin for every thing, says that "the initiations into the mysteries scientifically represented the mythic descent into Hades and the return from thence to the light of day, by which was meant the entrance into the ark and the subsequent liberation from its dark enclosure. They all equally related to the allegorical disappearance, or death, or descent of the great father, at their commencement; and to his invention, or revival, or return from Hades, at their conclusion."*

*Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. ii., b. iv., ch. v., p 384.

"They were," says Warburton, "a school of morality and religion, in which the vanity of polytheism and the unity of the First Cause were revealed to the initiated." This opinion of the learned Bishop of Gloucester is not gratuitous; it is supported by the concurrent testimony of the ancient writers. "All the mysteries," says Plutarch, "refer to a future life and to the state of the soul after death." In another place, addressing his wife, he says, "we have been instructed in the religious rites of Dionysus, that the soul is immortal, and that there is a future state of existence."§ Cicero tells us, that in the mysteries of Ceres at Eleusis, the initiated were taught to live happily and to die in the hope of a blessed futurity.|| And, finally, Plato informs us, that the hymns of Musaus, which were sung in the mysteries, celebrated the rewards and pleasures of the virtuous. in another life, and the punishments which awaited the wicked.T

These sentiments, so different from the debased polytheism which prevailed among the unitiated, are the most certain evidence that the mysteries arose from a purer source than that which gave birth to the religion of the vulgar. That purer source was the common original of them and of Freemasonry. I conclude with a notice of their ultimate fate. They continued to flourish until long after the Christian era. But they, at length, degenerated. In the fourth century, Christianity had begun to triumph. The Pagans, desirous of making converts, threw open the hitherto inaccessible portals of their mysterious rites. The strict scrutiny of the candidate's past life, and the demand for proofs of irreproachable conduct, were no longer deemed indispensable. The vile and the vicious were indiscriminately, and even with avidity, admitted to participate in privileges which were once granted only to the noble and the virtuous. The sun of Paganism was setting, and its rites had become con

temptible and corrupt. Their character was entirely changed, and the initiations were indiscriminately sold by peddling priests, who wandered through the country, to every applicant who was willing to pay a trifling fee for that which had once been refused to the entreaties of a monarch. At length these abominations attracted the attention of the emperors, and Constantine and Gratian forbade their celebration at night, excepting, however, from these edicts, the initiations at Eleusis. But finally Theodosius, by a general edict of proscription, ordered the whole of the Pagan mysteries to be abolished, in the four hundred and thirty-eighth year of the Christian era, and eighteen hundred years after their first establishment in Greece.*

MYSTES. The Mystes was one who had been initiated only into the lesser mysteries, and who was therefore permitted to proceed no farther than the vestibule or porch of the Temple. When admitted into the greater mysteries, and allowed to enter the adytum, or sanctuary, he was called an epopt. A female initiate was called a mystis.

MYSTIC TIE. That sacred and inviolable bond which unites men of the most discordant opinions into one band of brothers, which gives but one language to men of all nations, and one altar to men of all religions, is properly, from the mysterious influence it exerts, denominated the mystic tie, and Freemasons, because they alone are under its influence, or enjoy its benefits, are called "Brethren of the mystic tie."

*It was not, however, says Clavel, until the era of the restoration, that the mysteries entirely ceased. During the Middle Ages, the mysteries of Diana, under the name of the Courses of Diana, and those of Pan, under the name of Sabbats, were practised in the country.