CHAPTER XII.

FOURTH, OR MARK MASTER-MASON'S DEGREE.

THIS is one among other degrees, which will be duly noticed in the subsequent part of this work, denominated appendant, and may justly be considered an elucidation of the Second, or Fellow Craft's Degree. As a proof of my position, I again introduce the most respectable authority, which has ever fallen to my lot to peruse. Hutchinson, treating of the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, says:

The first worshippers of the God of nature, in the nations of the east, represented the Deity by the figures of the Sun and Moon, from the influence of those heavenly bodies on the earth; professing that the universe was the temple in which the Divinity was at all times, and in all places, present.

They adopted these, with other symbols, as a cautious mode of preserving or explaining divine knowledge: but we perceive the danger arising from thence to religion; for the eye of the ignorant, the bigot, and enthusiast, cast up towards these objects, without the light of understanding, introduced the worship of images, and at length the idols of Osiris and Isis became the Gods of the Egyptians, without conveying to their devotees the least idea of their great archetype. Other nations (who had expressed the attributes of the Deity by outward objects, or who had introduced pictures into the sacred places, as ornaments, or rather to assist the memory, claim devout attention, and warm the affections) ran into the same error, and idols multiplied upon the face of the earth.

Amongst the ancients, the worshippers of idols, throughout the world, had at last entirely lost the remembrance of the original, of whose attributes their images were at first merely symbols; and the second darkness in religion was more tremendous than the first, as it was strengthened by prepossession, custom, bigotry, and superstition.

Moses had acquired the knowledge of the Egyptians, and derived the doctrines of truth from the righteous ones of the nations of the east; he being also touched by divine influence, and thence truly comprehending the light from out the dark ness, taught the people of Israel the worship of the true God, without the enigmas and pollutions of the idolatrous nations which surrounded them.

This was the second æra of the worship of the God of nature: and at this period the second stage of masonry arises. The ruler of the Jews, perceiving how prone the minds of ignorant men were to be led aside by show and ceremony; and that the eye being caught by pomp and solemn rites, perverted the opinion and led the heart astray; and being convinced that the magnificent festivals, processions, sacrifices and ceremonials of the idolatrous nations, impressed the minds of mankind with a wild degree of reverence and enthusiastic devotion, thought it expedient for the service of the God of Israel, to institute holy offices, though in an humbler and less ostentatious mode; well judging that the service and adoration of the Deity, which was only clothed in simplicity of manners, and humble prayer, must be established in the judgment and conviction of the heart of man; with which ignorance was ever waging war.

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In succeeding ages, Solomon built a Temple for the service of God, and ordained its rites and ceremonies to be performed with a splendour equal to the most extravagant pomp of the idolaters.

As this Temple* received the second race of the servants of the true God, and as the true Craftsmen were here proved in their work, I will crave your attention to the circumstances which are to be gathered from holy writ, and from historians, touching this structure, as an illustration of those secrets in masonry, which may appear to my brethren, dark or insignificant, unless they are proved from thence.

In the first book of Kings, we are told that "Hiram, king of Tyre, sent his servants unto Solomon, and Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, Behold I intend to build a house unto the name of the Lord my God. And Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel, and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month, by courses; a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home; and Adoniram was over the levy. And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bear burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; besides the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people which

Ezekiel xliv. 2. "The cast gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it, because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut."

Ver. 3. "It is for the prince: the prince shall sit in it to eat bread before the Lord."

wrought in the work. And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stone-squarers or Gibilites. In the fourth year was the foundation of the house laid, and in the cleventh year was the house finished throughout all the parts thereof, and according to all the fashion of it. And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass. He cast two pillars of brass, with two chapiters, which were of lily-work, and he set up the pillars in the porch of the Temple. And he set up the right pillar, and he called the name thereof Jachin; and he set up the left pillar, and called it Boaz." In the second book of Chronicles, we read that he set three hundred and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burthens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountains; and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people at work. And Solomon sent to Hiram, king of Tyre, to send him a man cunning to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in purple, in crimson, and in blue, and skilful in engravings. And Hiram sent unto him a cunning man, endued with the understanding of Hiram his father. And he made before the house two pillars, and called the name of that on the right hand-Jachin, and that on the left Boaz.*

When this splendid structure was finished, "Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord, in the presence of all the

The raising pillars and obelisks was a custom of the eastern nations, and of Egypt in particular; the use of which we are told was to record the extent of dominion, and the tributes of nations subject to the Egyptian empire, &c. or in commemoration of memorable events. Diodorus tells us, that Sesostris signalized his reign by the erection of two obelisks, which were cut with a design to acquaint posterity of the extent of his power, and the number of nations he had conquered. Augustus, according to the report of Pliny, transported one of these obelisks to Rome, and placed it in the Campus Martius. Pliny says the Egyptians were the first devisers of such monuments, and that Mestres, king of Heliopolis, erected the first. Marsham and others attribute the invention to Jesostris. The obelisk of Shannesses exceeded all that had preceded it: Constantine, and Constans, his son, caused it to be moved to Rome, where it remains the noblest piece of Egyptian antiquity existing in the world. Solomon had pursued this custom in erecting his pillars in the porch of the temple, which he designed should be a memorial to the Jews as they entered the holy place, to warm their minds with confidence and faith; by this record of the promises made by the Lord unto his father David, and which were repeated unto him in a vision, in which the voice of God proclaimed, 1 Kings ix. 5, "I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever."

congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands and said, O Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee in the heaven and in the earth: O Lord my God hearken unto the cry and the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee: 0 Lord God turn not away the face of thine anointed."

In the conduct of this great work, we must admire the sagacity of this pious architect; he discerned the necessity there was to assign to portions of his people, the particular labour they were to pursue; he gave them particular signs and secret tokens,* by which each rank should be distinguished, in order that the whole might proceed with propriety, and without confusion; he selected those of most enlightened minds and comprehensive understandings, religious men, piously zealous in good works, as masters to superintend the workmen; men skilful in geometry and proportions, who had been initiated and proved in the mystical learning of the ancient sages; those he made overseers of the work: the whole was conducted with that degree of holy reverence, that even the noise of a tool or instrument was not permitted to disturb the sacred silence on Moriah, sanctified by the presence of the Almighty, and by his miraculous works. Was it not reasonable, then, to conceive, under this exalted degree of pious attention, that no part of this structure was to be formed, but by men of pure hands and holy minds, who had professed themselves devoted to the service of the true God, and had enrolled themselves under the banner of true religion and virtue. As the sons of Aaron alone were admitted to the holy offices, and to the sacrificial rites, so none but devotees were admitted to this labour. On this stage, we see those religious who had received the truth and the light of understanding as possessed by the first men embodied as artificers, and engaged in this holy work as architects. This, together with the construction of the tabernacle under Moses, are the first instances of our predecessors being exhibited to the world as builders: for, although it is not to be doubted, the sages amongst the Hebrews, Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Bramins, Druids, and Bards, understood geometry and the rules of

These were meant for the better conduct of the work, and were totally abstracted from those other principles which were the foundation of our profession; they were manual proofs of the part each was stationed to perform; the light which had possessed the soul, and which was the first principle, was in no wise to be distinguished by such signs and tokens, or revealed, expressed, or communicated thereby.

proportion and numbers, yet we have no evidence of their being the actual executors of any plan in architecture; and yet without question they were the projectors and superin tendants of such works in every age and nation.

Without such regulations as Solomon had devised for the government of his servants, without such artificers, and a superior wisdom overruling the whole, we should be at a loss to account for the beginning, carrying on, and finishing that great work in the space of seven years and six months, when the two succeeding temples, though much inferior, employed so much more time; and when we have good authority to believe that the temple of Diana at Ephesus, a structure not comparable to the temple at Jerusalem, was two hundred and twenty years in building.

The building being conducted by a set of religious, makes it natural to conceive, that from devotion and pious fervor, as well as emulation, those employed had unceasing motives to prompt their diligence, and preserve harmony and order; as their labor was probationary, and led to an advancement to superior privileges, higher points of knowledge, and at the last, to that honorable preeminence of a master of the holy work.

Solomon himself was an extraordinary personage, and his wisdom and magnificence had gained him the wonder and attention of the neighbouring nations; but this splendid strucsture, the wonder of the earth, thus raised by the pious hands of men laboring in the worship and service of the God of Israel, would of consequence extend his fame, and attract the admiration of the more distant parts of the world: his name, and his artificers, would become the wonder of mankind, and his works their example and emulation: from thence the masons of Solomon would be dispersed into different states, to superintend the works of other princes, and there would convert infidels, initiate brethren in their mysteries, and extend their order over the distant quarters of the known world.

We find that the like distinction was retained on rebuilding the temple in the reign of Cyrus, and that the work was performed by the religious of the Israelites, and not by ordinary mechanics; for they refused to admit the Samaritans to a share of the work, although they petitioned it, under the denomination of servants of the same God: but they were rejected, as unworthy of the works of piety, and unacceptable to the God of Israel: for though they professed themselves to be servants of the true God, they polluted their worship by idols.