GNOSTICISM, on GNOSTICS, from the Greek word, gnosis, knowledge. This name was assumed by a philosophical sect which sought to unite the mystical notions of the East with ideas of the Greek philosophers, and teachings of Christianity. The system has features which show conclu sively that it was a development of the old Persian or Chal dean doctrine. According to the gnostics, God, the highest intelligence, dwells in the fullness of light, and is the source of all good; matter, the crude, chaotic mass of which all things were made, is like God, eternal, and is the source of all evil. From these two principles, before time com menced, emanated beings called aeons, which are described as divine spirits. The world and the human race were created out of matter by the aeons and angels. They made the body and sensual soul of man, of this matter; hence the origin of evil in man. God gave man the rational soul; hence the constant struggle of reason with the senses. What are called gods by men—as Jehovah, the god of the Jews—they say are only aeons or creators, under whose dominion man becomes more and more wicked and misera ble. To destroy the power of these malicious gods, and redeem man from the thraldom of matter, God sent the most exalted of all mons—Christ—who, in the form of a dove, descended upon a Jew—Jesus—and revealed, through him the doctrines of Christianity; but before the crucifixion of Jesus separated from him, and at the resurrection of the dead will be again united with him, and lay the foundation of a kingdom of the most perfect earthly felicity, to continue a thousand years. There h7ve been no gnostic sects since the fifth century; but many of their principles . and ideas reappear in later philosophical systems. There are some traces of gnosticism in several parts of Freemasonry, par ticularly in the degree of the Adepts of the Eagle or Sun, andalso in the rite of the mystic Mason. Fessler, and his
friends Krause and Mossdorf, were much interested in gnos ticism, and Fessler's rite is tinctured with some of its ideas.
GOD. The highest and most perfect intelligence in which all things exist, and from which all things depend. The belief in God is not the result of teaching, not the result of the exercise of reason, not a deduction from the order and regularity of the universe; for faith in a Supreme Being was universal among men in the infancy of the race, and before the human mind was capable of that power of analysis, or had attained to that degree of science which this study of the universe and of the laws of nature sup poses. As the notion of an Infinite Being transcends the circle of sensible and material objects, and is clearly beyond the power of a finite being to create, therefore, that notion must have been communicated directly to man by God himself. Man believes in a God, therefore God exists; because, were there no God the notion of such a being could not exist. The crowning attribute of man, and what distinguishes him from the brute, is not the faculty of reason; for that, the brute has in common with man; but the power of seeing and aspiring to the ideal. Thus man had no sooner looked upon the grandeur, and glory, and beauty of the world, than he saw enthroned far above the world that which was vaster, more beautiful, more glorious than the world, the IDEAL, that is to say, God. Therefore, Free masonry accepts the idea of God, as a supreme fact, and bars its gates with inflexible sternness against those who deny his existence. No atheist can become a Mason.