[122] From a meager sketch of Dr. Anderson in the _Gentlemen's Magazine_, 1783, we learn that he was a native of Scotland--the place of his birth is not given--and that for many years he was minister of the Scots Presbyterian Church in Swallow Street, Piccadilly, and well known to the folk of that faith in London--called "Bishop" Anderson by his friends. He married the widow of an army officer, who bore him a son and a daughter. Although a learned man--compiler of a book of _Royal Genealogies_, which seems to have been his hobby--he was somewhat imprudent in business, having lost most of his property in 1720. Whether he was a Mason before coming to London is unknown, but he took a great part in the work of the Grand Lodge, entering it, apparently, in 1721. Toward the close of his life he suffered many misfortunes, but of what description we are not told. He died in 1739. Perhaps his learning was exaggerated by his Masonic eulogists, but he was a noble man and manifestly a useful one (Gould's _History of Masonry_, vol. iii). [123] Having emphasized this point so repeatedly, the writer feels it just to himself to state his own position, lest he be thought a kind of materialist, or at least an enemy of mysticism. Not so. Instead, he has long been an humble student of the great mystics; they are his best friends--as witness his two little books, _The Eternal Christ_, and _What Have the Saints to Teach Us?_ But mysticism is one thing, and mystification is another, and the former may be stated in this way: First, by mysticism--only another word for spirituality--is meant our sense of an Unseen World, of our citizenship in it, of God and the soul, and of all the forms of life and beauty as symbols of things higher than themselves. That is to say, if a man has any religion at all that is not mere theory or form, he is a mystic; the difference between him and Plato or St. Francis being only a matter of genius and spiritual culture--between a boy whistling a tune and Beethoven writing music. Second, since mysticism is native to the soul of man and the common experience of all who rise above the animal, it is not an exclusive possession of any set of adepts to be held as a secret. Any man who bows in prayer, or lifts his thought heavenward, is an initiate into the eternal mysticism which is the strength and solace of human life. Third, the old time Masons were religious men, and as such sharers in this great human experience of divine things, and did not need to go to Hidden Teachers to learn mysticism. They lived and worked in the light of it. It shone in their symbols, as it does in all symbols that have any meaning or beauty. It is, indeed, the soul of symbolism, every emblem being an effort to express a reality too great for words.