ANACHRONISM

Some Ritual makers, especially when they have been ignorant and uneducated, have often committed anachronisms or errors as to periods of time or dates by the introduction into Masonic ceremonies of matters entirely out of time. Thus, the use of a bell to indicate the hour of the night, practiced in the Third Degree; the placing of a celestial and a terrestrial globe on the summit of the pillars of the porch, in the Second Degree; and quotations from the New Testament and references to the teachings of Christ, in the Mark Degree, are all anachronisms But, although it were to be wished that these disturbances of the order of time had been avoided, the fault is not really of much importance.

The object of the ritualist was simply to convey an idea, and this he has done in the way which he supposed would be most readily comprehended by those for whom the ritual was made. The idea itself is old, although the mode of conveying it may be new. Thus, the bell is used to indicate a specific point of time, the globes to symbolize the universality of Freemasonry, and passages from the New Testament to teach the practice of duties whose obligations are older than Christianity.