of the sun's motion. It was a symbol of the sun's apparent
course around the earth.

And so, then, here again we have in Masonry that old and often-repeated
allusion to sun-worship, which has already been seen in the officers of a
lodge, and in the point within a circle. And as the circumambulation is
made around the lodge, just as the sun was supposed to move around the
earth, we are brought back to the original symbolism with which we
commenced--that the lodge is a symbol of the world.

XXII.

The Rite of Intrusting, and the Symbolism of Light.

The _rite of intrusting_, to which we are now to direct our attention,
will supply us with many important and interesting symbols.

There is an important period in the ceremony of masonic initiation, when
the candidate is about to receive a full communication of the mysteries
through which he has passed, and to which the trials and labors which he
has undergone can only entitle him. This ceremony is technically called
the "_rite of intrusting_," because it is then that the aspirant begins to
be intrusted with that for the possession of which he was seeking.[95]
It is equivalent to what, in the ancient Mysteries, was called the
"autopsy," [96] or the seeing of what only the initiated were permitted to
behold.

This _rite of intrusting_ is, of course, divided into several parts or
periods; for the _aporreta_, or secret things of Masonry, are not to be
given at once, but in gradual progression. It begins, however, with the
communication of LIGHT, which, although but a preparation for the
development of the mysteries which are to follow, must be considered as
one of the most important symbols in the whole science of masonic
symbolism. So important, indeed, is it, and so much does it pervade with
its influence and its relations the whole masonic system, that Freemasonry
itself anciently received, among other appellations, that of Lux, or
Light, to signify that it is to be regarded as that sublime doctrine of
Divine Truth by which the path of him who has attained it is to be
illuminated in his pilgrimage of life.

The Hebrew cosmogonist commences his description of the creation by the
declaration that "God said, Let there be light, and there was light"--a
phrase which, in the more emphatic form that it has received in the
original language of "Be light, and light was," [97] is said to have won
the praise, for its sublimity, of the greatest of Grecian critics. "The