[168] "Thus, then, it appears that the historical reference of the legend of Speculative Freemasonry, in all ages of the world, was--to our death in Adam and life in Christ. What, then, was the origin of our tradition? Or, in other words, to what particular incident did the legend of initiation refer before the flood? I conceive it to have been the offering and assassination of Abel by his brother Cain; the escape of the murderer; the discovery of the body by his disconsolate parents, and its subsequent interment, under a certain belief of its final resurrection from the dead, and of the detection and punishment of Cain by divine vengeance."--OLIVER, _Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry_, vol. ii. p. 171. [169] "Le grade de Maître va donc nous retracer allegoriquement la mort du _dieu-lumière_--mourant en hiver pour reparaître et ressusciter au printemps."--RAGON, _Cours Philos. et Interp. des Init._ p. 158. [170] "Dans l'ordre moral, Hiram n'est autre chose que la raison éternelle, par qui tout est pondéré, réglé, conservé."--DES ETANGS, _Œuvres Maçonniques_, p. 90. [171] With the same argument would I meet the hypothesis that Hiram was the representative of Charles I. of England--an hypothesis now so generally abandoned, that I have not thought it worth noticing in the text. [172] "The initiation into the Mysteries," he says, "scenically represented the mythic descent into Hades and the return from thence to the light of day; by which was meant the entrance into the Ark and the subsequent liberation from its dark enclosure. Such Mysteries were established in almost every part of the pagan world; and those of Ceres were substantially the same as the Orgies of Adonis, Osiris, Hu, Mithras, and the Cabiri. They all equally related to the allegorical disappearance, or death, or descent of the great father at their commencement, and to his invention, or revival, or return from Hades, at their conclusion."--_Origin of Pagan Idolatry_, vol. iv. b. iv. ch. v. p. 384--But this Arkite theory, as it is called, has not met with the general approbation of subsequent writers. [173] Mount Calvary is a small hill or eminence, situated in a westerly direction from that Mount Moriah on which the temple of Solomon was built. It was originally a hillock of notable eminence, but has, in modern times, been greatly reduced by the excavations made in it for the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Buckingham, in his Palestine, p. 283, says, "The present rock, called Calvary, and enclosed within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, bears marks, in every part that is naked, of its having been a round nodule of rock standing above the common level of the surface."