s materially affecting the cosmopolitan character of the
institution.

This tendency to Christianization has, in some instances, been so
universal, and has prevailed for so long a period, that certain symbols
and myths have been, in this way, so deeply and thoroughly imbued with the
Christian element as to leave those who have not penetrated into the cause
of this peculiarity, in doubt whether they should attribute to the symbol
an ancient or a modern and Christian origin.

As an illustration of the idea here advanced, and as a remarkable example
of the result of a gradually Christianized interpretation of a masonic
symbol, I will refer to the subordinate myth (subordinate, I mean, to the
great legend of the Builder), which relates the circumstances connected
with the grave upon "_the brow of a small hill near Mount Moriah._"

Now, the myth or legend of a grave is a legitimate deduction from the
symbolism of the ancient Spurious Masonry. It is the analogue of the
_Pastos_, _Couch,_ or _Coffin_, which was to be found in the ritual of all
the pagan Mysteries. In all these initiations, the aspirant was placed in
a cell or upon a couch, in darkness, and for a period varying, in the
different rites, from the three days of the Grecian Mysteries to the fifty
of the Persian. This cell or couch, technically called the "pastos," was
adopted as a symbol of the being whose death and resurrection or
apotheosis, was represented in the legend.

The learned Faber says that this ceremony was doubtless the same as the
descent into Hades,[172] and that, when the aspirant entered into the
mystic cell, he was directed to lay himself down upon the bed which
shadowed out the tomb of the Great Father, or Noah, to whom, it will be
recollected, that Faber refers all the ancient rites. "While stretched
upon the holy couch," he continues to remark, "in imitation of his
figurative deceased prototype, he was said to be wrapped in the deep sleep
of death. His resurrection from the bed was his restoration to life or his
regeneration into a new world."

Now, it is easy to see how readily such a symbolism would be seized by the
Temple Masons, and appropriated at once to _the grave at the brow of the
hill_. At first, the interpretation, like that from which it had been
derived, would be cosmopolitan; it would fit exactly to the general dogmas
of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.

But on the advent of Christianity, the spi