The wonderful miracles of God at the exodus did not prevent that nation from repeated lapse into paganism, and acts of open disobedience to the Theocratic law. Still less were they debarred thereby the mere oriental customs of imparting moral instruction in secret associations, or the pursuit of science in hidden confraternities. But the train of thought and instruction in the Hebrew societies was singularly pure, and directly at variance with the mysteries of paganism. While the whole result of the teaching of the heathen mysteries was to represent, symbolically, the fructifying energies of nature (which they supposed to be the sum of both science and theology), that of the Israelites was the inculcation alone of virtue, the acquisition of science, and the preservation of the name of Deity under peculiar forms and ceremonies, the recognition of which by members of the initiated, opened from one to the other every heart in perfect confidence, constantly reminding them of their duty to him as well as to each other. The whole system of oriental instruction, save that proclaimed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, was secret. Even the name of Deity could not be pronounced except at low breath, or in a whisper, under prescribed forms. Has the reader ever asked himself the meaning of the passage in the Lord's Prayer, "_Hallowed be thy name_?" The Hebrews had a visible manifestation of God. That was not the only object of reverence. It was limited {47} not to any manifestation, but to the _name_ of Deity. And that teaching has received the express recognition of our Saviour, by his making it a part of the selections from the Jewish euchologies which form his prayers. We profess to worship Deity in spirit and in truth. Do we hallow his _name_? Mere abstinence from profanation is a negative duty. How must it be hallowed? That is a positive duty. Christianity, rejecting the Hebrew form, regards this as a mere Hebraism, substituting the name for the being himself. The Israelites do not: and one secret society still existing, whose origin we shall trace in this essay, still preserves the Hebraistic sanctification of the original holy name as their form of recognition of each other, under solemnities which hallow it. We know that Moses[48] "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds." At his day pagan hieratic and hieroglyphic symbols only were written on papyrus, or carved and engraved on stone.