Page:Manual of the Lodge.pdf/66

Rh moral and intellectual condition. He is already beginning to discover that the design of Masonry is to introduce him to new views of life and its duties. He is, indeed, to commence with new lessons in a new school. There is to be, not simply a change for the future, but also an extinction of the past; for initiation is, as it were, a death to the world and a resurrection to a new life. And hence it was that among the old Greeks the same word signified both to die and to be initiated. But death, to him who believes in immortality, is but a new birth. Now, this new birth should be accompanied with some ceremony to in indicate symbolically, and to impress upon the mind, this disruption of old ties and formation of new ones. Hence the impression of this idea is made by the symbolism of the shock at the entrance. The world is left behind—the chains of error and ignorance which had previously restrained the candidate in moral and intellectual captivity are to be broken—the portal of the Temple has been thrown widely open, and Masonry stands before the neophyte in all the glory of its form and beauty, to be fully revealed to him, however, only when the new birth has been completely accomplished. Shall this momentous occasion be passed unnoticed? Shall this great event—the first in the Masonic life of the aspirant—have no visible or audible record? Shall the entrance, for the first time, into the Lodge—the birth, as it has justly been called, into Masonry—be symbolized by no outward sign? Shall the symbolism of our science, ever ready at all other times, with its beautiful teachings, here only be dumb and senseless? Or, rather, shall not all the Sons of Light who witness the impressive scene feel like the children of Korah, who, when released from the captivity of Babylon, and once more returning to the Temple, exclaimed, in the heart-burst of their grateful joy, "O, clap your hands all ye people; shout onto God with the voice of triumph."

The is, then, the symbol of the disruption of the candidate from the ties of the world, and his introduction into the life of Masonry. It is the symbol of the agonies the first death and of the throes of the new birth.