Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crow's meat, for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their flag-which, had you sold it in any market-cross, would not have brought over three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaise Joseph pocketed their iron crown?—an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value, little differing from a horse-shoe. It is in and through symbols that man, consciously and unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical work, and prize it the highest. For is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike? : "Of symbols, however, I remark further, that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value: oftenest the former only. What, for instance, was in that clouded shoe which the peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their Bauemkreig (peasants' war)? Or in the wallet and staff round which the Netherland gueux, glorying in that nickname of beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself? Intrinsic significance these had none-only extrinsic; as the accidental standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together, in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic coats-of-arms; military banners everywhere; and generally all national or other sectarian costumes and customs; they have no intrinsic, necessary diviners, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless, through all these there glimmers something of a divine idea; as through military banners themselves, the divine idea of duty, of heroic daring; in some instances, of freedom of right. Nay, the highest ensign that man ever met and embraced under, the cross itself, had no meaning, save an accidental extrinsic one. "Another matter it is, however, when your symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself fit that men should unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to sense; let but eternity look, more or less visibly, through the time-figure (Zeitbild)! Then is it fit that men unite there, and worship together before such symbol, and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness! "Of this latter sort are all true works of art; in them (if thou know a work of art from a daub of artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here, too, may an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself; thus, certain Iliads, and the like, have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. But nobler than all in this kind are the lives of heroic, God-inspired men; for what other work of art is so divine? In death, too, in the death of the just, as a last perfection of a work of art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured sleep, as of victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of time with eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. "Highest of all symbols are those wherein the artist or poet has risen into the prophet, and all men can recognize a present God, and worship the same; I mean religious symbols, what we call religious; as men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could worse or better body forth the Godlike some symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this matter, look on our divinest symbols; on Jesus of Nazareth, and his life, and his biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human thought not yet reached; this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character, whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into and anew made manifest." CHAPTER VIII. Philosophy and Moral Enfluence of Symbols, Signs, and Mysteries. IN a former chapter we spoke of that skeptical, material, and utilitarian spirit, which repudiates all rites, forms, badges of distinction, and symbolic language. "Where is the utility of these things?" men are constantly inquiring. There are many among us who pretend to see no reason in ceremonies and decorations which do not confer an immediate and material benefit. They do not seem to know that the spiritual is incarnated in the material-that the reason can never be disembodied—that truth never makes so deep an impression as when it is proclaimed by solemn ceremonies, or shadowed forth by appropriate representation, or embodied by art in beautiful forms. Freemasonry is often opposed by many who approve of its general objects, because its instructions are ritual, and it employs decorations and solemnities as instruments by which it may accomplish its purpose. But this, instead of marring the beauty of Masonry, in our opinion, surrounds it with additional attractions. For ourselves, we cannot find language sufficiently strong to express our deep abhorrence of this unsanctified spirit, which, could it get itself elected to the kingship of the world, would pluck from the skies the last star, and from the earth the last flower-divest life of all its embellishment, rob the universe of its beauty, because that beauty has no material utility-and, in a word, dry up the very fountains of spiritual life! One of the very greatest errors of the age is the constant employ of the naked, abstract reason, in all instruction, whether moral, scientific, or religious; the reducing all precepts to words, and the incessant addressing of the understanding, as if men were not creatures of imagination and soul, as well as of spirit or reason. By discarding the language of symbols, which through the imagination speaks to the soul, we lose the most efficient and powerful means of imparting religious and moral instruction. Mere words never make a lasting impression on the heart, nor do they ever stir up profound emotion, unless they are accompanied by some significant acts, gestures, or attitudes, on the part of the speaker, or are wrought up in a highly metaphorical and symbolical style. Words may enlighten the understanding, but acts, ceremonies, images, address the profoundest sentiments of the heart. That faculty which we denominate the reason, the spirit, whose appropriate instrument of utterance is speech, is not the source of activity, nor is it the noblest |