nsistency be left without its particular
symbol.

The WORD, therefore, I conceive to be the symbol of _Divine Truth;_ and
all its modifications--the loss, the substitution, and the recovery--are
but component parts of the mythical symbol which represents a search after
truth.

How, then, is this symbolism preserved? How is the whole history of this
Word to be interpreted, so as to bear, in all its accidents of time, and
place, and circumstance, a patent reference to the substantive idea that
has been symbolized?

The answers to these questions embrace what is, perhaps, the most
intricate as well as most ingenious and interesting portion of the science
of masonic symbolism.

This symbolism may be interpreted, either in an application to a general
or to a special sense.

The general application will embrace the whole history of Freemasonry,
from its inception to its consummation. The search after the Word is an
epitome of the intellectual and religious progress of the order, from the
period when, by the dispersion at Babel, the multitudes were enshrouded in
the profundity of a moral darkness where truth was apparently forever
extinguished. The true name of God was lost; his true nature was not
understood; the divine lessons imparted by our father Noah were no longer
remembered; the ancient traditions were now corrupted; the ancient symbols
were perverted. Truth was buried beneath the rubbish of Sabaism, and the
idolatrous adoration of the sun and stars had taken the place of the olden
worship of the true God. A moral darkness was now spread over the face of
the earth, as a dense, impenetrable cloud, which obstructed the rays of
the spiritual sun, and covered the people as with a gloomy pall of
intellectual night.

But this night was not to last forever. A brighter dawn was to arise, and
amidst all this gloom and darkness there were still to be found a few
sages in whom the religious sentiment, working in them with powerful
throes, sent forth manfully to seek after truth. There were, even in those
days of intellectual and religious darkness, craftsmen who were willing to
search for the _Lost Word_. And though they were unable to find it, their
approximation to truth was so near that the result of their search may
well be symbolized by the _Substitute Word_.

It was among the idolatrous multitudes that the _Word_ had been lost. It
was among them that the Builder had been smitten, and that the works of
the spiritual