established with the wisest intentions; and as the usage was adopted by many other institutions, whose organization was similar to that of Freemasonry, we may also suppose that it was connected with the character of an esoteric instruction.
Tho following passage of Scripture is here used:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.
THE SHOCK OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
The material light which sprung forth at the fiat of the Grand Architect, when darkness and chaos were dispersed, has ever been, in Masonry, a favorite symbol of that intellectual illumination which it is the object of the Order to create in the minds of its disciples, whence we have justly assumed the title of "Sons of Light." This mental illumination—this spiritual light, which, after his new birth, is the first demand of the candidate, is but another name for Divine Truth—the truth of God and the soul—the nature and essence of both—which constitute the chief design of all Masonic teaching. And as the chaos and confusion in which, "in the beginning," the earth, "without form, and void," was enwrapt were dispersed, and order and beauty established by the Supreme command which created material light; so, at the proper declaration, and in the due and recognized form, the intellectual chaos and confusion in which the mind of the neophyte is involved are dispersed, and the true knowledge of the science and philosophy, the faith and doctrine of Masonry, are developed.
But what mind can conceive, or what pen portray, that terrible convulsion of nature, that awful disentanglement of its elements, which must have accompanied the Divine command, "Let there be light!" The attempt to describe it would be a presumptuous task. We feel, when we meditate on the subject,
