Freemasonry's Sublimity.

truths of Josophua , Herodotu ? , and of Zenophon and Livy . They not only testify to the truth of ancient history , but they are tho lono and awful fragments of national power , and . 'peak ot * the genius of the illustrious past . No tongue can s ;> speak as do the desert bands , sighing through the

lono colonnades that once guarded the Temple of the sun —the Heliopolis of Egypt . What a sublimity of conception , to have built a temple wlmso entrance of marble pillars , of magnificent size , proportions , and decorations , extended more than a mile ! What must have been the thoughts of

tho early Grecian pilgrims who Avandored to Egypt from their savngo homes in the Helen io mountains to learn the arts and tho improvements of life Avhen thoy saw tbe sublime avenues of such temples as these displayed to tho eye in the mountain masses of granite and porphyry and

jasper and marble , connected with a strange , deep and ever-enduring sublimity of awful feeling resting on the soul as a mighty presence , from Avhich no one in tho dread vestibule had either the wish or the power to flee ! This is the work of Physical Masonry .

To rescue men from savageism ; to enthrone the domestic virtues in temples worthy of the pure effulgence that beams from the altar of love by night and by day ; to leave the awful signet of human genius upon matter that shall for thousands of years , through the storm and the

sunshine , defy the tooth of time ; to confirm history ; to teach the far distant futurity how much more dying and transient man is than tho work ho croatcs ; to tell to latest years Avhose bosoms are pressed by the eternal tombs of the

pyramids—have all been the work of Physical Masonry . For this , tho plumb , tho rule , the lino , the compass , the square , were invented aud applied to the modifications of matter .

There have been Masonic erections on this earth so beautiful and lovely that the heartless spectre of Time , as he stood on them with foot of mildew , looked back upon the piles too magnificent for ruin , and Antiquity seized his forelock , that never before turned backward !

Egypt to this day may be read in her stupendous remains—so can Greece—so can Romo ! The Aspian way that bound the city of tho Coesars to tho extremities of an empire that reached from the pillars of Hercules and Britain in the west , to the straits of Babelmandcl in tho east , Avith

the other great military roads diverging from that great heart of power , were all tho work of Physical Masonry ! The triumphs of tho arts in modern times have distanced the proudest achievements of tho past—not in colossal bulk , or in enduring solidity , bnt in tho perfection of

utility , tho concentration of power , and tho adaptation of purpose . New properties aud principles have been discovered in matter , and its various modifications . Matter is now shaped with an astonishing volition . The fingers of man are thrown aside , while the fingers of an engine

pick the knotted cotton , spin its thread , and weave its wool . Steam and water now turn millions of wheels , where once the human hand turned a single one . The miner goes not down now into the sunless mine , where the subterraneous inundations and tho deadly fire-damp conspire against his life . Ho sends clown tho iron arms of an

engine , Avhich with harpy fangs tear out tho heart-strings of mother earth , and suck up tho waters in their urns of reft rocks with the tongue of a vampire and the hiss of a dragon ! Art hath triumphed over Nature , and man only lives

now to celebrate those triumphs Avhich havo bowed the mountains of pride , and bound the lashing ocean , convulsed with agony , with the fillet of a virgin . The night and the day are now tributary to labour and production . Man makes gold of the moonbeam as well as of the

sunshineplays as harmlessly with the snaky lightnings of the Thunderer as with the tresses of the milky-way—and makes the thin air the pavement of his serial chariot , as readil y as he rides up the . face of the loftiest mountains , drawn b y horses which he burns out of the element of

water , and guides with reins of iron . He now loves his mother earth with an exceeding love , and has given her a railway for a zone laid on tidily and chaste , buckled behind with a ahip canal across the backbone of the Andes . He has

given ^ her a head-dress of snow wreaths and polar icicles , which have been described by the man-milliners , Messrs Parry and Back , who , when they had adjusted the " ¦ Ms of an arctic winter , and the curls of the interminable snow-drift ? , had sense enough to Parry off the Greenland "ear * , and find their way Back to where mother earth has

Freemasonry's Sublimity.

more feeling than in her Alpine head , under her ice-bonnd nightcap . Modern Art has made the Atlantic its wash-bowl , Africa its kitchen , Asia its spice-garden , Europe its treasure house , and young America its park—full of wild things , such as

Indians , and alligators , and copper-head snakes , with not a small sprinkling of earthquakes—in other words , of steamboats that are propelled through the air and water on the racing principle , until their explosions make both earth and heaven quake !

Modern Art is a giant that takes hold of Africa with one hand , and of America with the other , pillowing his head upon the Equator , and looking npon Europe as his Avorkshop . Modern Art is Physical Masonry ! Physical Masonry

is this giant who hath rolled in piles the great stones of antiquity , as Avell as invoked the dreadful spirits from the world of matter , and chained them to the car of modern improvement .

Physical Masonry is the Moses who smote tho waves of the oceans , and they have opened a pathway from one realm and continent to another . It hath the same rod Avith which the leader of Israel struck the rook ; and under its descending energy the streams of comfort and

civilisation have spouted , to the very heavens a silvery jet of pure whito waters , leaping from the heart of the earth , bathing the thirsty clouds , then falling back again in translucent cataracts of honey-dew and cooling spray , with ten thousand jeAvels of sunlight embosomed in each pearly

drop . Under such a gush of cooling waters , such a sunburst of golden spray blown into the shining face of Nature—how green will be her fields , how brilliant hor roses , how blue her violets , how fragrant her lilacs , her pride of India , and her magnolias !

Physical Masonry has done more than this : listen to its history . I will tell of its youth , when creation was young . I will tell of its deluge baptism . I will tell of its illustrious deeds through all time . The ancient Masonic writers had a peculiar delight in

tracing Masonry to the Great Father of Wisdom the Eternal Jehovah . There is conclusive evidence that the Almighty is a builder , and the Creation is His edifice , constructed on those perfect rules of Art which Science studies , and which Geometry claims as her own . The

Grand Master of tho Universe had power , through His infinite wisdom , to accomplish at a word , what man , His creature , can never hope to equal ; yet it becomes man

himself , a subordinate creator , to imitate his Grand Master at the most remote distance , too happy to be regarded as a fellow-labourer with his Maker in some great work of moral fitness , of benevolent effort .

Josephus is one of the earliest Avnters extant on tho Masonic Craft . He claims the fellowship of the antediluvians and inventions of Tubal Cain in metals , of Jubal in musical instruments , and of Tubal the first builder of tents . He also declares that brass and marble columns wero

erected before the flood , one of the marble having survived the fury of the deluge , and was standing in the time of that historian , containing on its sides an abridgment of the Arts and Sciences ; particularly those of Geometry and

Astronomy , said to have been done by Enoch , who foretold the deluge , Avith the design that these arts of ancient Masonry should not bo lost amidst the destruction of the flood .

There need be , however , no dispute about the antiquity of the Masonic Order . The wisest men of the old world were builders : in other words , Masons ; aud whether , for their further improvement or greater security ,

they established symbolic signs and took the oaths of faithfulness and secrecy to each other , they were , to all physical and moral purposes , Lodges of Freo and Accepted Masons . —Voice of Masonry . ( To be continued . )

Obedience.

OBEDIENCE .

JEHOVAH , after the work of creation was finished , pronounced it good . Tho eternal purpose of the Divine Mind was completed . Tho morning and the evening were the periods in which wore consummated tho

special creations , the characteristic , and tho eternal laws which governed them . Our Avorld came out of chaos . " The established order