But on the advent of Christianity, the spirit of the new religion being infused into the old masonic system, the whole symbolism of the grave was affected by it. The same interpretation of a resurrection or restoration to life, derived from the ancient "pastos," was, it is true, preserved; but the facts that Christ himself had come to promulgate to the multitudes the same consoling dogma, and that Mount Calvary, "the place of a skull," was the spot where the Redeemer, by his own death and resurrection, had testified the truth of the doctrine, at once suggested to the old Christian Masons the idea of Christianizing the ancient symbol.
Let us now examine briefly how that idea has been at length developed.
In the first place, it is necessary to identify the spot where the "newly-made grave" was discovered with Mount Calvary, the place of the sepulchre of Christ. This can easily be done by a very few but striking analogies, which will, I conceive, carry conviction to any thinking mind.
1. Mount Calvary was a small hill.[173]
2. It was situated in a westward direction from the temple, and near Mount Moriah.
3. It was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is thus the very spot where a weary brother, travelling on that road, would find it convenient to sit down to rest and refresh himself.[174]
4. It was outside the gate of the temple.
5. It has at least one cleft in the rock, or cave, which was the place which subsequently became the sepulchre of our Lord. But this coincidence need scarcely to be insisted on, since the whole neighborhood abounds in rocky clefts, which meet at once the conditions of the masonic legend.
But to bring this analogical reasoning before the mind in a more expressive mode, it may be observed that if a party of persons were to start forth from the temple at Jerusalem, and travel in a westward direction towards the port of Joppa, Mount Calvary would be the first hill met with; and as it may possibly have been used as a place of sepulture, which its name of Golgotha[175] seems to import, we may suppose it to have been the very spot alluded to in the Third Degree, as the place where the craftsmen, on their way to Joppa, discovered the evergreen acacia.
Having thus traced the analogy, let us look a little to the symbolism.