At the time we write the beautiful Swiss capital was one of the principal seats of learning in Europe. But, alas! its literature was blasted by the false principles of the Reformation. Like marble cenotaphs that have corruption within, Geneva, clothed with all the beauties of nature and art, was rotten to the core in her moral and religious character. She became the mother of heresiarchs, the theatre of infidelity, and by her press and preaching scattered far and wide the wildest theories of deism and unbelief. All the secret societies of the world were represented in her lodges, and within her walls, were gathered men of desparate and socialistic politics who had sworn to overturn as far as they could the authority of society, to despise the rights of property, and to trample on the laws of order. There was no city in the world guilty of more blasphemy than this beautiful Geneva; and even to this day, as the sins of fathers descend to their children, the teachings of Calvin, of Bayle, and of Servetus hang like a chronic curse over the city to warp every noble feeling of Christian virtue.
Amongst the leaders of the secret societies, amongst the socialists who plot the ruin of their fellow-citizens, and amongst the infidels who blasphemously ridicule the mysteries of Christianity, we must now seek the unfortunate Cassier, who has arrived in Geneva.
Chapter XIII.
The Secret Societies.
To outsiders Masonry is a mystery. When Masons speak or write of themselves they give the world to understand the are but a harmless union for mutual benefit, and for the promotion of works of benevolence. That such is the belief of many individuals in the lower grades of Masonry, and even of some lodges amongst the thousands scattered over the face of the earth, we have no doubt; but that charity in its varied branches has been either the teaching or the fact amongst the great bulk of Freemasons during the last two hundred years we unhesitatingly deny.
In the ceremony of making a master-mason, and in a dark room, with a coffin in the centre covered with a pall, the brethren standing around in attitudes denoting grief and sorrow, the mysterious official who has the privilege of three stars before his name gives the aspirant this interesting history of the origin and aim of his office.
"Over the workmen who were building the temple erected by Solomon's orders there presided Adoniram. There were about 3,000 workmen. That each one might receive his due, Adoniram divided them into three classes—apprentices, fellow-craftsmen, and masters. He entrusted each class with a word, signs, and a grip by which they might be recognized. Each class was to preserve the greatest secrecy as to these signs and words. Three of the fellow-crafts, wishing to know the word of the master, and by that means obtain his salary, hid themselves in the temple, and each posted himself at a different gate. At the usual time when Adoniram came to shut the gates of the temple, the first of the three fellow-crafts met him, and demanded the word of the masters. Adoniram refused to give it, and received a violent blow with a stick on the head. He flies to another gate, is met, challenged, and treated in a similar manner by the second. Flying to the third door, he is killed by the fellow-craft posted there on his refusing to betray the word. His assassins bury him under a heap of ruins, and mark the spot with a branch of acacia.
"Adoniram's absence gives great uneasiness to Solomon and the masters. He is sought for everywhere; at length one of the masters discovers a corpse, ad, taking it by the finger, the finger parts from the hand; he takes it by the wrist, and it parts from the arm; when the master in astonishment, cries out 'Mac Benac,' which the craft interprets by the words, 'The flesh parts from the bones.'"
The history finished, the adept is informed that the object of the degree which he has just received is to recover the word lost by the death of Adoniram, and to revenge this martyr of the Masonic secrecy.