tion of the devil, who would, if
possible, prevent you from unveiling him. By this time it will be well
to recur to the number 9; your chain of reasoning has established that
it possesses a horrible significance. Now take the number and follow it
through the history of religions by means of some theological
ready-reckoner, such as a cheap dictionary by Migne. You will be sure to
find something to your purpose--_i.e._, something sufficiently bad.
Place that significance against the use of that number in Masonry.
Repeat this process, picking up anything serviceable by the way, and
continue so doing till your volume has attained its required dimensions.
You will never want for materials, and this is how Masonry is unveiled.

There is no exaggeration in this sketch; Mgr. Meurin is indeed by far
more fatuous. On the 26th of May 1876 the Supreme Council of Sovereign
Grand Inspectors General of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted
Scotch Rite are said to have issued a circular, dated from 33 Golden
Square, London. Will my readers believe their own eyes or my sincerity
when I say that the most illustrious of the French Anti-Masonic
interpreters, member of the Society of Jesus, and Archbishop of Port
Louis, solemnly enjoins us to "remark the No. 33 and the square of gold,
which signify the supreme place in the world assigned to the liberty of
gold"? By thus commenting on a significant number attaching to a real
address, situated, as everyone knows, in the most central district of
this city, Archbishop Meurin believes that he is not descending from
pleasant comedy into screaming farce of interpretation, but that he is
acting seriously and judiciously, has a right to look wise, and to
believe that he has hit hard!

No person who is acquainted with the Kabbalah, even in its historical
aspects, much less the ripe scholar, M. A. Franck, from whom the
materials are derived, will tolerate for a moment the theory that this
mystical literature of the Jewish nation is capable of a diabolical
interpretation. In particular it lends itself to the crude Manichaean
system attributed to Albert Pike about as much and as little as it does
to atheistic materialism. The reading of Mgr. Meurin may be compared
with that of Mirandola, who discovered, not dualism, but the Christian
mystery of the Trinity contained indubitably therein, who regarded it
with more reason as the bridge by which the Jew might ultimately pass
over to Christ, who infec