that stillness and silence must have fled before the Almighty Voice, and the earth itself have trembled in its new existence, when the gloomy pall of darkness was rolled as a curtain from the face of nature.
And in Masonry, by the Shock of Enlightenment, we seek, humbly, indeed, and at an inconceivable distance, to preserve the recollection and to embody the idea of the birth of material light by the representation of the circumstances that accompanied it, and their reference to the birth of intellectual or Masonic light. The one is the type of the other; and hence the illumination of the candidate is attended with a ceremony that may be supposed to imitate the primal illumination of the universe—most feebly, it is true, and yet not altogether without impressiveness.
The Shock of Enlightenment is, then, a symbol of the change which is now taking place in the intellectual condition of the candidate. It is the symbol of the birth of intellectual light and the dispersion of intellectual darkness.
The Holy Bible is given to us as the rule and guide of out faith; the Square, to square our actions; and the Compasses, to circumscribe our desires and passions in due bounds with all mankind, but more especially with brother Masons; and hence the Bible is the light which enlightens the path of our duty to God; the Square, that which enlightens the path of duty to our fellow-men; and the Compasses, that which enlightens the path of our duty to ourselves.
The lesser lights are intended to remind us of that symbolism which makes the Lodge a type of the world; and hence the
