bending the knees; gratitude by prostration; humility by uncovering the head, or by kneeling down and spreading forth the hands; piety by stretching out the right arm with the hand open: supplication by placing both hands on the heart; liberality by throwing back the right hand; innocence by washing the hands; fear by casting the eyes to the ground; and blessing by the imposition of hands. The sign of Faith was an upright posture of the body; Hope, lifting up the hands; and Charity rising from the knees. They adopted likewise the Pythagorean pentalpha, as the sign of salutation; the five wounds of Christ being imagined to correspond with the five angular points of the figure. This was the portraiture. Again, the body of Christ, when extended on the Cross, was considered a symbol of the Jewish Temple; his head, the Holy of Holies; his breast, the altar; his feet, the eastern portal; and his stretched out hands, the north and south doors of the edifice. "In like manner the same figure, called by Bishop Kennet, the pentangle of Solomon, which was used as the banner of Antiochus Soter, was employed all over Asia in ancient times as a charm against witchcraft. It was anciently in use among the Jews, as a symbol betokening safety; and to this day the English shepherd cuts it on the grass, or in the green sward, little thinking of its ancient composition and signification; the entire figure representing the Greek characters vyear health."10

These tokens are curious, and the Free and Accepted Mason will derive much gratification from finding that the same observances which he has been taught to esteem, as being the conservators of great symbolical

Os homini sublime dedit; cælumque tueri
Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

And our own Young has deduced from man's upright form a lesson of devotion.

Nature no such hard task enjoins; she gave
A make to man directive of his thought;
A make set upright, pointing to the stars;
As who should say-read thy chief lesson there.

truths and important moral references, were employed by the early teachers of our most holy faith to embody and express, with significancy and truth, the internal feelings and emotions of the heart.

It is wonderful to reflect on the facility with which the hieroglyphics of heathenism passed into Christianity. Mr. Hope has furnished a lucid view of the subject, which may not be inappropriately quoted at the conclusion of this Lecture, although I must admit that, in some particulars, the comparison is strained. "Among the first Christians, the emblems of heathen deities or worship, rendered allusive to the parables of our Saviour, or the points of his doctrine, from being odious and profane, became suddenly objects of respect and veneration. Thus the vine, the genii sporting among its tendrils, and the various processes of converting its fruit into the most universal of beverages, all belonging, among the heathens, to the rites of Bacchus, were by the first Christians rendered symbolical of the labours in the vineyard of the faith; or, perhaps, the cup of wine which our Saviour, at the last supper, presented to his disciples as the type of his own blood, and were thence introduced in the edifices and tombs of Christians, as we see in numberless early Christian monuments, which not only deceived the Pagans, who knew not the subterfuge, but the later Christians also, who had again forgotten it, and who have mistaken most of these works for heathen relics. As the vine of Bacchus furnished the emblem for the wine, so did the ear of corn of Ceres furnish that for the bread, which, on the eve of his crucifixion, our Saviour divided among his disciples.

The palm branch, which, among heathens, denoted worldly victories, was made among Christians to mark the triumphs of the cross, and was wrested from the hands of heathen gods to be placed in those of a saint or martyr. Venus' dove became the Holy Ghost; Diana's stag, the Christian soul thirsting for the living waters; Juno's peacock, under the name of the phoenix, that soul after the resurrection. One evangelist was gifted with Jupiter's eagle; another with Cybele's lion; and winged genii and cupids became angels and cherubs. 11 Archit. p. 180.

Even the sphinx, the griffin, and the chimera of mythology, were by the Christians adopted as having the same power of warding off evil spirits and fascination which was supposed to belong to the head of the Gorgon. The holy image of the cross itself was disguised in the semblance of an insignificant ornament. At Lavinia, in the posterior pediment of that small edifice called the Temple of Chiturnus, we see that cross composed of acanthus leaves, so blended among the surrounding scrolls of vine and poppy as to have escaped the eye of later and less sharp-sighted Christians. Afterwards, a more distinctly formed cross, covered with gems, was used as the emblem of the Christian faith; and it was not till the sixth century that the body of Christ was exhibited on it; nor was it till the council was held at Constantinople, in 692, that the superseding of allegory by actual representation was positively enjoined.

To the insignia borrowed from polytheism, the Christians still added others, useful in allaying the wrath which more undisguised representations would have raised. The lamb was made to designate the meek and faithful Christian; twelve such, in regular procession, represented the Apostles; and a thirteenth, more exalted than the rest, and adorned by a nimbus, was our Saviour. As the Greek word for a fish, Ivos contained the initials of Ιεσους Χριστος θεος Υιος ο Σοτηρ, even the inhabitants of the deep were made to represent Christ; and the rough outline of the fish, formed of two curves, meeting in a point at their extremities, was made to enclose, under the name vesica piscis, the figure of our Saviour in his glorified state, or of the Madona, or of the patron saint; and displayed in the pediments, or over the porches of churches, or in the seats of bishops, as objects destined to call forth the recollection of these holy personages."

In the above illustrations, the well-instructed Mason will find many things which he has already learned in the several Degrees of his Order; for the great union of Speculative and Operative Masonry at the building of the Temple introduced a series of Jewish symbols, which will for ever remain to dignify and adorn the science. The architectural emblems of the First Degree may be rather considered of Sidonian extraction, as they emanate

almost entirely from Operative Masonry; but though they appear to the uninitiated as mere instruments of manual labour, yet, as they embody a mass of moral reference, we consider them to be jewels of inestimable value. And are they not so? How did Solomon inculcate industry? Go to the ant, said he. If, in like manner, we desire to teach morality and justice, what better reference can we have than to the Master's jewel? If equality, that attribute of the Deity,

Who sees with equal eye as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall;

we point to that of the Senior Warden; of integrity, to that of the Junior Warden; and each reads the Mason a lecture, which is highly calculated to make him a wiser and a better man. What can be more beautiful or more significant than the Immovable Jewels? Even the simple working tools of an Entered Apprentice embody the wisdom and utility which alone would enhance the practice of virtue, and enrich the mind with precepts of inestimable value.

Do we pass on to the Second and Third Degrees; the symbolical interpretation of each Floor Cloth increases in interest as we gradually advance through the field of corn by the river side,12 past the enriched pillars of the temple to the awful Sanctum Sanctorum, where ethereal Light, the essence and perfection of Freemasonry, enthroned between the Cherubim of the Mercy Seat, shall reign for ever and ever.

12 Hutchinson has ventured a curious opinion respecting the above symbol, which I do not think has been adopted by any other writer. Being one of the attributes of Ceres, he is rather inclined to refer it to the spurious than the true Free Masonry. "The application which is made of the word Sibboleth amongst Masons is a testimony of their retaining their original vow uninfringed, and their first faith with the Brotherhood uncorrupted. And to render their words and phrases more abstruse and obscure, they selected such as by acceptation in the Scriptures, or otherwise, might puzzle the ignorant by a double implication. Thus Sibboleth, should we have adopted the Eleusinian mysteries, would answer, as an avowal of our profession; the same implying ears of corn. But it has its etymology or derivation from the following compounds in the Greek language, as it is adopted by Masons, viz.: oßo colo; and Judov lapis: so Zipoldov Sibbolithon, colo Lapidem, implies that_they retain and keep inviolate their obligations as the Juramentum per Jovem Lapidem, the most obligatory oath held amongst the heathen."-Hutch. Spirit of Masonry. Ed. 1775. p. 181.

LECTURE VIII.

ENQUIRY WHETHER THE UNION OF SPECULATIVE

AND

OPERATIVE MASONRY WAS ACCOMPLISHED AT THE BUILDING OF KING SOLOMON'S TEMPLE.

A kingly pile sublime.

For this exhausted mines

Supplied the golden store;

For this the central caverns gave their gems;

For this the woodman's axe

Open'd the cedar forest to the sun;

The silkworm of the East
Spun her sepulchral egg.

Southey.

THE chain of social relations is constituted on such a just and equitable principle of mutual dependency and mutual aid, that if a single link be broken, a sense of disorganization is felt from the highest down to the most inferior class in the community. Precisely thus it is in the system of Freemasonry which we profess. Taken collectively as a speculative and operative science, it is the pride of human institutions. Separate these component parts, and it becomes meagre, useless, and void of meaning. No person who has been initiated into Freemasonry can have paid the slightest attention to its principles without discovering that it is composed of two parts-morality and science. And these are interwoven with such delicacy and art, that every scientific illustration conveys some moral truth, or points, with unerring certainty, to the Great Architect of the Universe, as the divine source of all knowledge, and the sole object of human adoration. When the rich treasures of masonic lore are unfolded, the heart is improved by its moral disquisitions, and the affections tempered into soberness and brotherly love. And if historic records of the science be investigated, we shall find, in the