The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-04-26

some of them would have met with a courteous
but unsurmountable obstacle in the ante
room of the asylum which would have pre-
vented further progress. 1t is unnecessary to
state that the announcement was an error.
A very valuable remembrance of the death
of Gen. Pike was obtained through the fore
sight of Bro. James H. Trimble who has
charge of the sanctuary on G street He had
several photographs of the cathedral taken
while the remains lay in state in the darkened
and draped room. The pictures are excellent
reproductions, several views from different
points having been secured, and they will be
greatly priced by those who procure copies.
Two excellent negatives of the room, one
from the gallery and the other from the floor
looking west, and one showing the east of the
cathedral were secured. In both the catafalque,
with the grouping of lilies and palms surround
ing it on the south and north, is the principal
object of interest, while the sombre draperies
hung upon the walls are brought out with
vivid distinctness. Copies can be secured
from Bro. Trimble at the sanctuary.
Ballantines Pale Extra Beer cures the la
grippe.
AT this time the following extract from the
allocution of the Provincial Grand Master of
the Royal Order of Scotland, Gen. Albert Pike,
read at the last session of that body in this CITY,
will be ofinterest and furnish new fields for the
researches of Masonic students: # u # 81
had not long been Mason when the symbolism
OF the Blue degrees began to attract my atten-
tion. In the shadows behind the monitorial
explanations of the symbols I though that
got occasional glimpses of indefinite shapes of
other and higher meanings. % One by
one, sometimes with long intervals between,
meaning after meaning disclosed itself to me,
and l. had not gone far before / became con-
vinccd that in Freemasonry the Ancient
Greater Mysteries were revived; and that, as
theirs did, its supereXcellence consisted in the
philosophical and religious doctrines concealed
in symbols; and these entitled it to be spoken
of with that admiration and reverence with
which Cicero spoke of those mysteries. This
conviction long ago ripened into proven GER
tainty, but even while it had as yet hardly
taken shape | began dimly to discern that
Masonry was far greater thing than it had
seemed to me when / received the degrees
Notwithstanding this, it began to
shape itself to my intellectual vision into
something more imposing and majestic, sol
emnly mysterious and grand, like those great
rock-temples of India, in the glooms of whose
recesses the mighty shape of the grave, SILENT
serene, impassive illapidations of quiescent
power and intellect seem to say that, if they
chose to speak, they could reveal all the awful
secrets of the material and spiritual uni
verse. 1t seemed to me like the Pyramids
in the grandeur of their loveliness,
in whose as yet undiscovered chambers may
be hidden, for the enlightenment of the com
ing generations, the sacred books of the
ESypIldIb, SO lOuS lOSI W WOrlu, ike bNe
Sphynx half buried in the sands of the desert.
Then the conviction dawned upon me that in
its symbolism, which and its spirit of brother
hood are the essence, Freemasonry is more
ancient and venerable than any of the worlds
living religions. 1t has the symbols and
doctrines of the old Aryan faith, which, far
older than himself, Zarathusta inculcated.
The Brahmins never knew the meaning of the
Vedic Hymns, nor what the Dieties were whom
these eXtolled; and the old Gathas of the Zend-
Avesta speak to the Parsees of to-day in an
unknown tongue, and it seemed to me a
spectacle sublime, yet pitiful, that of the
ancient faith of the kindred of our ancestors,
a faith already crowned with the hour-frost
of antiquity when the first stone of the first
| pyramid was laid, holding out to the world its
symbols at once so eloquent and so mutely
and in vain asking for an interpreter, and SO
came at last to see clearly that the true great
ness and majesty of Freemasonry consists in
| the propnetorship of these and other symbols,
and that its symbolism is its soul"