secrets, symbols, grips, and oaths developed with the dangers of communication between the Stuarts' emissaries and their British adherents. On the accession of George I the four London lodges, which met in taverns and had degenerated into drinking clubs, forswore the Pretender and in 1717 formed a united Lodge under the patronage of the Prince of Wales for mutual assistance and a worship of the "Grand Architect of the Universe," in which Jews, Christians, Mahometans, and pagans could equally participate. This Lodge was the parent of all Masonry. The former symbols, rules and ceremonies, and others borrowed from various cults and crafts and orders, were framed into a Constitution and Ritual by the Prince's Huguenot chaplain and a Scotch Presbyterian minister, and the Stuart "secret" was transformed into the "light." This "light" had at first no anti-religious or other definite significance; it is now definitely anti-Catholic and anti-Christian, and in inner Masonry is identified with Lucifer whom its official poet, Carducci, acclaims in his "Hymn to Satan" as Supreme Spiritual Chief of the Masonic army.

The evolution developed rapidly in France, where in 1721 English Masonry was grafted on the Stuart clubs. Aided by the contempt of religious authority and the neglect of the sacraments that Gallicanism and Jansenism had fostered, and by the Voltairian and rationalistic element which it readily absorbed, it proceeded to organize humanity on a purely naturalistic basis and, for this purpose, to uproot Christianity and the systems of government that were built on it. Soon the socalled "Scottish Rite" had added thirty others to the three English "Degrees," while the Templar system further developed its anti-Christian tendencies; and its final purpose of universal domination it has since typified by establishing its

headquarters in Rome in defiant opposition to the Papacy. Its programme, as stated in 1750 by Boos, its historian, closely coincided with the programme of the French Revolution, and the ripening of its plans was notably quickened in 1780 when Weishaupt established the inner circle of the Illuminati. This "Illuminated Masonry," an elaborate hierarchical system graded with consummate craft on ecclesiastical and religious models and in blasphemous imitation of sacramental rites, was cunningly devised to attain, through concerted and secret interference in the government of nations and even of the Church, the grand Masonic design of supplanting existing religion and government by a natural religion and a universal democracy, which Masonry alone would plant and guide and govern. This system was accepted by the International Masonic Convention at Wilhelmsbad in 1782, and soon its teachings and methods had impregnated Masonry everywhere. Seven years later the French Revolution was accomplished.

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Nor did America escape Continental " enlightenment.” In 1798 George Washington wrote to a Protestant minister who had invoked his aid against "the mischievous tenets" which the Illuminati were grafting on American Masonry, that though he had not been in a lodge more than once or twice in thirty years, he had heard much of the "nefarious and dangerous doctrines" of the Illuminati, but he did not believe that their diabolical tenets" and "pernicious principles" were propagated in American lodges.

The tenets and principles he denounced had made further progress in American Masonry than Washington supposed. Introduced from England to America in 1729, its initial activities were confined to social, or rather, convivial purposes; and in both countries the meetings continued long to be held in taverns, in which the allowance of "three small glasses of

punch" was frequently exceeded. Bishop Carroll wrote, in 1794, of the "intemperate drinking, obscene conversation, and indelicate songs, to say nothing of other vices," that he was told frequently obtained at lodge meetings; but apparently he had heard of nothing dogmatically or morally wrong in their essential purposes, for he thought the papal decrees against Masonry did not then apply to the United States. Nor could these have been much insisted on in Great Britain and Ireland at that period, for in ignorance of them Daniel O'Connell had joined the fraternity.

English Masonry also remained social in character and largely free from anti-religious bias until reacted upon by the Continental Masonry which it had begotten. But in 1772 Preston illumined it with the "science" of its more virulent French daughter, and a little later Webb wove into the American Rite the philosophy of the high Continental degrees. The Scottish Rite of Perfection, the first fruit of the Illuminati, was brought to the United States in 1783, and in 1801 "a Supreme Council with thirty-three Continental high degrees," permeated by the principles that Washington had denounced three years before, was opened in Charleston, S. C. This Rite, which almost exclusively prevails in the Latin countries, where its anti-Christian activities are notorious, has long absorbed or dominated the lodges of America and is in direct affiliation with the Grand Orient of France. Albert Pike, the American who became Supreme Grand Master of the Scottish Rite and was acclaimed "the greatest Mason of the century," holds it up as a model to American Masons, while clearly expounding its naturalistic tenets and anti-Christian purposes and advocating the destruction of the Papacy as "the torturer and curse of humanity." The initiation to its thirtieth degree includes the trampling on the papal tiara.

Pike's Morals and Dogmas of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Mackey's Encyclopædia and Lexicon, and other authoritative works insist that Masonry's end and goal is the same in America as elsewhere. They deny that its great design is charity or sociability, as Washington thought and, as Mackey admits, "the great majority of its disciples" still think. These "Exoteric" or "outer" Masons, kept in outer darkness till ripe for enlightenment, are numerous in countries where the true Masonic temperament has not been nurtured by apostasy; but the "Esoteric" or "inner" group, who direct its policies and propagate its doctrines, are taught here, and teach when they deem it opportune, the same "pernicious principles " as in France, Italy, and Portugal. The American Freemason warmly commends the Masonic Junta that is brutally persecuting religion and freedom in Portugal, and publishes with approval the resolutions of the International Masonic Club glorifying the French Masons and the Grand Orient of France.

In 1878 the Grand Orient was repudiated by Anglo-American Masonry because it had stricken from its ritual the names of God and Christ and the Bible and everything suggestive of the supernatural, even the " Grand Architect of the Universe." Now the same Grand Orient, after it had inspired, directed, and sustained religious persecution in France, is declared by the official organ in America "much nearer to the original plan of Masonry than is the Grand Lodge of England. At this day it is the model for all the world. There is no American jurisdiction that can compare with it." This and other Masonic journals commend Buck's Genius of Freemasonry, which advocates a Kulturkampf in the United States, and show that only expediency retards them; and they reiterate the statements of Mackey, Pike, and other authorities that Masonry is

everywhere one and its grand object is "Enlightenment," that is, by "the science and philosophy, the symbolism and religion of Masonry," to secure the dominance of Masonic thought, speculative and practical, in general government and individual activities and exclude the supernatural from the mind and conduct of men.

Daniel O'Connell, who had entered Masonry as a youth, but promptly left it on learning of its condemnation, declared in his renunciation that:

"The wanton and multiplied taking of oaths, in the name of the Deity and on the Book of God, either in mockery or with a solemnity that makes the taking of them without adequate motive only the more criminal, is alone sufficient to prevent any serious Christian from belonging to that body."

This is one of the reasons given for its condemnation in 1738 by Clement XII, who also points out its naturalistic character, which undermines faith and generates contempt for religion in its members and in the society they influence; its inscrutable secrecy and ever-changing deceptive disguises, and the dangers it consequently involves to the security of the State and of the Church.

The blind obedience exacted of its members, of which Mackey says: "The government of Grand Lodges is despotic, and their edicts must be respected and obeyed without examination," has been condemned by many pontiffs; and Pius IX, considering its immoralities and sacrileges, the cunning of its anti-Christian machinations and the diabolical uses of its despotism, pronounced Freemasonry "the Synagogue of Satan," a phrase that recalls the "diabolical tenets" of Washington. Leo XIII includes in their condemnation the numerous societies that Masonry controls as "really one with the Masonic sect, whence they all proceed and whither they all return." Pope Leo was aware that many of its members in