_seventh_ day. Of clean beasts, Noah was directed to take by _sevens_
into the ark; and of fowls by _sevens_; because in _seven_ days the rain
was to commence. On the _seven_teenth day of the month, the rain began;
on the _seven_teenth day of the _seventh_ month, that ark rested on
Ararat. When the dove returned, Noah waited _seven_ days before he sent
her forth again; and again _seven_, after she returned with the
olive-leaf. Enoch was the _seventh_ patriarch, Adam included, and Lamech
lived 777 years.
There were _seven_ lamps in the great candlestick of the Tabernacle and
Temple, representing the _seven_ planets. _Seven_ times Moses sprinkled
the anointing oil upon the altar. The days of consecration of Aaron and
his sons were _seven_ in number. A woman was unclean _seven_ days after
child-birth; one infected with leprosy was shut up _seven_ days; _seven_
times the leper was sprinkled with the blood of a slain bird; and
_seven_ days afterwards he must remain abroad out of his tent. _Seven_
times, in purifying the leper, the priest was to sprinkle the
consecrated oil; and _seven_ times to sprinkle with the blood of the
sacrificed bird the house to be purified. _Seven_ times the blood of the
slain bullock was sprinkled on the mercy-seat; and _seven_ times on the
altar. The _seventh_ year was a Sabbath of rest; and at the end of
_seven_ times _seven_ years came the great year of jubilee. _Seven_ days
the people ate unleavened bread, in the month of Abib. _Seven_ weeks
were counted from the time of first putting the sickle to the wheat. The
Feast of the Tabernacles lasted _seven_ days.
Israel was in the hand of Midian _seven_ years before Gideon delivered
them. The bullock sacrificed by him was _seven_ years old. Samson told
Delilah to bind him with _seven_ green withes; and she wove the _seven_
locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them off. Balaam told Barak to
build for him _seven_ altars. Jacob served _seven_ years for Leah and
_seven_ for Rachel. Job had _seven_ sons and _three_ daughters, making
the perfect number _ten_. He had also _seven_ thousand sheep and _three_
thousand camels. His friends sat down with him _seven_ days and _seven_
nights. His friends were ordered to sacrifice _seven_ bullocks and
_seven_ rams; and again, at the end, he had _seven_ sons and _three_
daughters, and twice _seven_ thousand sheep, and lived an hundred and
forty, or twice _seven_ times _ten_ years. Pharaoh saw in his dream
_seven_ fat and _seven_ lean kine, _seven_ good ears and _seven_ blasted
ears of wheat; and there were _seven_ years of plenty, and _seven_ of
famine. Jericho fell, when _seven_ priests, with _seven_ trumpets, made
the circuit of the city on _seven_ successive days; once each day for
six days, and _seven_ times on the seventh. "The _seven_ eyes of the
Lord," says Zechariah, "run to and fro through the whole earth." Solomon
was _seven_ years in building the Temple. _Seven_ angels, in the
Apocalypse, pour out _seven_ plagues, from _seven_ vials of wrath. The
scarlet-colored beast, on which the woman sits in the wilderness, has
_seven_ heads and _ten_ horns. So also has the beast that rises up out
of the sea. _Seven_ thunders uttered their voices. _Seven_ angels
sounded _seven_ trumpets. _Seven_ lamps, of fire, the _seven_ spirits of
God, burned before the throne; and the Lamb that was slain had _seven_
horns and _seven_ eyes.
EIGHT is the first cube, that of _two_. NINE is the square of _three_,
and represented by the triple triangle.
TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially _seven_ and
_three_; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras represented
it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings. This symbol is
sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes of commas or yōds, and
in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name of Deity. It is thus
arranged:
,
, ,
, , ,
, , , ,
The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are _ten_ in number, and
the same number is that of the Commandments.
TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a cube. It
is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apostles; of the oxen
under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the breast-plate of the high
priest.
III.
THE MASTER.
To understand literally the symbols and allegories of Oriental books as
to ante-historical matters, is willfully to close our eyes against the
Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and commonplace, is the
blundering of mediocrity.
_All_ religious expression is symbolism; since we can _describe_ only
what we _see_, and the true objects of religion are THE SEEN. The
earliest instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other
religious forms differed and still differ according to external
circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and
mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as it is applied to
mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All _words_ have, primarily,
a _material_ sense, however they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a
spiritual _non_-sense. "To retract," for example, is to _draw back_, and
when applied to a _statement_, is symbolic, as much so as a picture of
an arm drawn back, to express the same thing, would be. The very word
"_spirit_" means "_breath,_" from the Latin verb _, breathe_.
To present a visible symbol to the eye of another is not necessarily to
inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to you. Hence the
philosopher soon superadded to the symbols explanations addressed to the
ear, susceptible of more precision, but less effective and impressive
than the painted or sculptured forms which he endeavored to explain. Out
of these explanations grew by degrees a variety of narrations, whose
true object and meaning were gradually forgotten, or lost in
contradictions and incongruities. And when these were abandoned, and
Philosophy resorted to definitions and formulas, its language was but a
more complicated symbolism, attempting in the dark to grapple with and
picture ideas impossible to be expressed. For as with the visible
symbol, so with the word: to utter it to you does not inform you of the
_exact_ meaning which it has to _me_; and thus religion and philosophy
became to a great extent disputes as to the meaning of words. The most
abstract expression for DEITY, which language can supply, is but a
_sign_ or _symbol_ for an object beyond our comprehension, and not more
truthful and adequate than the images of OSIRIS and VISHNU, or their
names, except as being less sensuous and explicit. We avoid sensuousness
only by resorting to simple negation. We come at last to define spirit
by saying that it is not matter. Spirit is--spirit.
A single example of the symbolism of _words_ will indicate to you one
branch of Masonic study. We find in the English Rite this phrase: "I
will always _hail_, ever conceal, and never reveal;" and in the
Catechism, these:
Q.'. "_I hail_."
A.'. "_I conceal_;"
and ignorance, misunderstanding the word "_hail_," has interpolated the
phrase, "From whence do you _hail_?"
But the word is really "_hele_," from the Anglo-Saxon verb Ðelan,
_helan_, to _cover, hide_, or _conceal_. And this word is rendered by
the Latin verb _tegere_, to _cover_ or _roof over_. "That ye fro me no
thynge woll hele," says Gower. "They _hele_ fro me no priuyte," says the
Romaunt of the Rose. "To _heal_ a house," is a common phrase in Sussex;
and in the west of England, he that covers a house with slates is called
a _Healer_. Wherefore, to "_heal_" means the same thing as to
"_tile_,"--itself symbolic, as meaning, primarily, to _cover_ a house
with _tiles_,--and means to _cover, hide_, or _conceal_. Thus language
too is symbolism, and words are as much misunderstood and misused as
more material symbols are.
Symbolism tended continually to become more complicated; and all the
powers of Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of fiction and
allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error,
which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never
unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and
image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions
of Asia,--the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its
symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined to
poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monotheists: the
people idolaters.
There are dangers inseparable from symbolism, which afford an impressive
lesson in regard to the similar risks attendant on the use of language.
The imagination, called in to assist the reason, usurps its place or
leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for
things are confounded with them; the means are mistaken for the end; the
instrument of interpretation for the object; and thus symbols come to
usurp an independent character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a
necessary path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the
Deity; in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing
signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition; while others, in
avoiding one extreme, plunged into the no less hideous gulf of
irreligion and impiety."
It is through the Mysteries, CICERO says, that we have learned the first
principles of life; wherefore the term "initiation" is used with good
reason; and they not only teach us to live more happily and agreeably,
but they soften the pains of death by the hope of a better life
hereafter.
The Mysteries were a Sacred Drama, exhibiting some legend significant of
nature's changes, of the visible Universe in which the Divinity is
revealed, and whose import was in many respects as open to the Pagan as
to the Christian. Nature is the great Teacher of man; for it is the
Revelation of God. It neither dogmatizes nor attempts to tyrannize by
compelling to a particular creed or special interpretation. It presents
its symbols to us, and adds nothing by way of explanation. It is the
text without the commentary; and, as we well know, it is chiefly the
commentary and gloss that lead to error and heresy and persecution. The
earliest instructors of mankind not only adopted the lessons of Nature,
but as far as possible adhered to her method of imparting them. In the
Mysteries, beyond the current traditions or sacred and enigmatic
recitals of the Temples, few explanations were given to the spectators,
who were left, as in the school of nature, to make inferences for
themselves. No other method could have suited every degree of
cultivation and capacity. To employ nature's universal symbolism instead
of the technicalities of language, rewards the humblest inquirer, and
discloses its secrets to every one in proportion to his preparatory
training and his power to comprehend them. If their philosophical
meaning was above the comprehension of some, their moral and political
meanings are within the reach of all.
These mystic shows and performances were not the reading of a lecture,
but the opening of a problem. Requiring research, they were calculated
to arouse the dormant intellect. They implied no hostility to
Philosophy, because Philosophy is the great expounder of symbolism;
although its ancient interpretations were often ill-founded and
incorrect. The alteration from symbol to dogma is fatal to beauty of
expression, and leads to intolerance and assumed infallibility.
* * * * *
If, in teaching the great doctrine of the divine nature of the Soul, and
in striving to explain its longings after immortality, and in proving
its superiority over the souls of the animals, which have no aspirations
Heavenward, the ancients struggled in vain to express the _nature_ of
the soul, by comparing it to FIRE and LIGHT, it will be well for us to
consider whether, with all our boasted knowledge, we have any better or
clearer idea of its nature, and whether we have not despairingly taken
refuge in having none at all. And if they erred as to its original place
of abode, and understood literally the mode and path of its descent,
these were but the accessories of the great Truth, and probably, to the
Initiates, mere allegories, designed to make the idea more palpable and
impressive to the mind.
They are at least no more fit to be smiled at by the self-conceit of a
vain ignorance, the wealth of whose knowledge consists solely in words,
than the _bosom_ of Abraham, as a home for the _spirits_ of the just
dead; the gulf of actual fire, for the eternal torture of _spirits_; and
the City of the New Jerusalem, with its walls of jasper and its edifices
of pure gold like clear glass, its foundations of precious stones, and
its gates each of a single pearl. "I knew a man," says PAUL, "caught up
to the third Heaven; ... that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard
ineffable words, which it is not possible for a man to utter." And
nowhere is the antagonism and conflict between the spirit and body more
frequently and forcibly insisted on than in the writings of this
apostle, nowhere the Divine nature of the soul more strongly asserted.
"With the mind," he says, "I serve the law of God; but with the flesh
the law of sin.... As many as are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons
of GOD.... The earnest expectation of the created waits for the
manifestation of the sons of God.... The created shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption, of the flesh liable to decay, into the
glorious liberty of the children of God."
* * * * *
Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood
and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful
through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are
so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the
greed for wealth. Experience will probably prove that these odious and
detestable vices will grow most rankly and spread most rapidly in a
Republic. When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the
most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the
highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies
and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity
and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by
accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a
reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected to render
service. Other qualifications, less honorable, will be more available.
To adapt one's opinions to the popular humor; to defend, apologize for,
and justify the popular follies; to advocate the expedient and the
plausible; to caress, cajole, and flatter the elector; to beg like a
spaniel for his vote, even if he be a negro three removes from
barbarism; to profess friendship for a competitor and stab him by
innuendo; to set on foot that which at third hand shall become a lie,
being cousin-german to it when uttered, and yet capable of being
explained away,--who is there that has not seen these low arts and base
appliances put into practice, and becoming general, until success cannot
be surely had by any more honorable means?--the result being a State
ruled and ruined by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit,
the greenness of unripe intellect, vain of a school-boy's smattering of
knowledge.
The faithless and the false in public and in political life, will be
faithless and false in private. The jockey in politics, like the jockey
on the race-course, is rotten from skin to core. Everywhere he will see
first to his own interests, and whoso leans on him will be pierced with
a broken reed. His ambition is ignoble, like himself; and therefore he
will seek to attain office by ignoble means, as he will seek to attain
any other coveted object,--land, money, or reputation.
At length, office and honor are divorced. The place that the small and
shallow, the knave or the trickster, is deemed competent and fit to
fill, ceases to be worthy the ambition of the great and capable; or if
not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be used wherein are
unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits of unprincipled
advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates, and pettifoggers
wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and the lives of millions are
at stake. States are even begotten by villainy and brought forth by
fraud, and rascalities are justified by legislators claiming to be
honorable. Then contested elections are decided by perjured votes or
party considerations; and all the practices of the worst times of
corruption are revived and exaggerated in Republics.
It is strange that reverence for truth, that manliness and genuine
loyalty, and scorn of littleness and unfair advantage, and genuine faith
and godliness and large-heartedness should diminish, among statesmen and
people, as civilization advances, and freedom becomes more general, and
universal suffrage implies universal worth and fitness! In the age of
Elizabeth, without universal suffrage, or Societies for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, or popular lecturers, or Lycæa, the statesman, the
merchant, the burgher, the sailor, were all alike heroic, fearing God
only, and man not at all. Let but a hundred or two years elapse, and in
a Monarchy or Republic of the same race, nothing is _less_ heroic than
the merchant, the shrewd speculator, the office-seeker, fearing man
only, and God not at all. Reverence for greatness dies out, and is
succeeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of many,
either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a general feeling
of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or a general, who
has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is unfortunate and sinks
from his high estate. It becomes a misfortune, if not a crime, to be
above the popular level.
We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take counsel
with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great men seem never
so scarce as when they are most needed, and small men never so bold to
insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity and incapable pretence and
sophomoric greenness, and showy and sprightly incompetency are most
dangerous. When France was in the extremity of revolutionary agony, she
was governed by an assembly of provincial pettifoggers, and Robespierre,
Marat, and Couthon ruled in the place of Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and
Carnot. England was governed by the Rump Parliament, after she had
beheaded her king. Cromwell extinguished one body, and Napoleon the
other.
Fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deceit in national affairs are the
signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis. To
bully the weak and crouch to the strong, is the policy of nations
governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for office are
re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dispenser of patronage,
chiefly to the most unworthy; and men are bribed with offices instead of
money, to the greater ruin of the Commonwealth. The Divine in human
nature disappears, and interest, greed, and selfishness takes it place.
That is a sad and true allegory which represents the companions of
Ulysses changed by the enchantments of Circe into swine.
* * * * *
"Ye cannot," said the Great Teacher, "serve God and Mammon." When the
thirst for wealth becomes general, it will be sought for as well
dishonestly as honestly; by frauds and overreachings, by the knaveries
of trade, the heartlessness of greedy speculation, by gambling in stocks
and commodities that soon demoralizes a whole community. Men will
speculate upon the needs of their neighbors and the distresses of their
country. Bubbles that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up
by cunning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistants and
instrument. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the
earthquakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of
the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, the
crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, prey on the
savings of self-denial, and trouble with their depredations the first
nourishment of infancy and the last sands of life, and fill with inmates
the churchyards and lunatic asylums. But the sharper and speculator
thrives and fattens. If his country is fighting by a levy en masse for
her very existence, he aids her by depreciating her paper, so that he
may accumulate fabulous amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is
distressed, he buys his property for a song. If he administers upon an
estate, it turns out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank
explodes, he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society
worships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians
worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most obsequiously when
in actual solid wealth they are the veriest paupers. No wonder men think
there ought to be another world, in which the injustices of this may be
atoned for, when they see the friends of ruined families begging the
wealthy sharpers to give alms to prevent the orphaned victims from
starving, until they may find ways of supporting themselves.
* * * * *
States are chiefly avaricious of commerce and of territory. The latter
leads to the violation of treaties, encroachments upon feeble neighbors,
and rapacity toward their wards whose lands are coveted. Republics are,
in this, as rapacious and unprincipled as Despots, never learning from
history that inordinate expansion by rapine and fraud has its inevitable
consequences in dismemberment or subjugation. When a Republic begins to
plunder its neighbors, the words of doom are already written on its
walls. There is a judgment already pronounced of God upon whatever is
unrighteous in the conduct of national affairs. When civil war tears the
vitals of a Republic, let it look back and see if it has not been guilty
of injustices; and if it has, let it humble itself in the dust!
When a nation becomes possessed with a spirit of commercial greed,
beyond those just and fair limits set by a due regard to a moderate and
reasonable degree of general and individual prosperity, it is a nation
possessed by the devil of commercial avarice, a passion as ignoble and
demoralizing as avarice in the individual; and as this sordid passion is
baser and more unscrupulous than ambition, so it is more hateful, and at
last makes the infected nation to be regarded as the enemy of the human
race. To grasp at the lion's share of commerce, has always at last
proven the ruin of States, because it invariably leads to injustices
that make a State detestable; to a selfishness and crooked policy that
forbid other nations to be the friends of a State that cares only for
itself.
Commercial avarice in India was the parent of more atrocities and
greater rapacity, and cost more human lives, than the nobler ambition
for extended empire of Consular Rome. The nation that grasps at the
commerce of the world cannot but become selfish, calculating, dead to
the noblest impulses and sympathies which ought to actuate States. It
will submit to insults that wound its honor, rather than endanger its
commercial interests by war; while, to subserve those interests, it will
wage unjust war, on false or frivolous pretexts, its free people
cheerfully allying themselves with despots to crush a commercial rival
that has ared to exile its kings and elect its own ruler.