More Noble Building.

By aid of the monuments our ancient brethren left , we can gaze backward through fcho misty aisles of intervening ages , and read as in a book " The thoughts , the passions , the desires " of those to whom we look as the forefathers of our own Masonry .

So far back in the dim day-break of history , that only the keen sight of recent learning has penetrated the veil of centuries which enwrapped that old-time civilisation , there dwelt at the delta of the Nile , a mighty nation , even then

so ancient that it boasted a fabled origin from men who had peopled a vanished continent , and called themselves the children of the stars . This nation was skilled in the arts , proud of its antiquity and learning , victorious in warfareruling widely .

Alike from Papyrus rolls , telling of the mysteries of Isis and Osiris—from records cut in hardest granite , and from sarcophagi freighted with spice-embalmed dead , we learn that the ruling characteristic of Egyptian civilisation , was

the desire for material permanence , —one might almost say material immortality , —and the leading thought was , that knowledge was the heritage of the chosen few , and should be kept a sealed book , unread and nnthought of , by the

many . The desire for material permanence crystallized into stone , and what has it left us ? The mighty Pyramids ; builded on sand and yefc eternal ; reared from a plain , and yet sky-piercing ; on whose unyielding sides the centuries

drop like summer rain and leave no trace ! The thought that knowledge was for the few , hardened into stone , and what has it left us ? That wondrous woman-face , which belying all the traditions of her sex , has set a seal upon her

lips through all the ages ! The mystic Sphinx , whose riddle all the seers have tried , but none have fully guessed . We read in Holy Writ that a man-child was born of a race held in bondage by the Egyptians , at a time when

Egypt ' s King , fearing the increasing numbers of the bond race , ordered thafc all their male children should be slain ; that this child ' s parents made an ark , placed the child in it , and trusted the frail craffc wifch its precious freight to

the tender mercies of Father Nile . A royal princess of Egypt found the helpless babe , and , her woman's heart touched with pity , claimed him as her son , and had him reared in the sacred temples , and taught , until skilled in

all the knowledge of the Egyptians . Thafc babe , grown to manhood , became the leader and deliverer of his enslaved race , and spurning the thought of keeping them ignorant of so great a good , taught them all the knowledge of the

one and only GOD , —the secret so safely kept by the Egyptian priests . The Hebrew people became thenceforth the chosen people—chosen of GOD because of their

steadfastness to keep alive in the world , amid surrounding idolatry , the knowledge of the Great Architect who made the universe and holds the world as in the hollow of his

hand . After many wars , and much slipping from their devotion to this sacred knowledge , at last a time came when it was fitting for this people to build a temple to the GOD they

knew and adored . Again the leading thought of their race and time—the oneness and glorious power of JEHOVAHwrought itself into stone ; and in Solomon ' s Temple , from which Masonry draws so many of its traditions , we see a

building which had no forerunner and no follower , a wholly new and unique style , wrought wifch all manner of cunning work , in brass and gold—a fit temple to Him who has no fellow—no sharer in His grlory or in His maiestv .

The lucid air of Greece , the rock-bound isles of tbe Grecian Archipelago—the tossing waves of the blue Mgean , and the flaming skies which in that fair land heralded the dawn and bade the dav farewell , consnired to awfikan in

the quick and lively mind of the Greek an overweening love for the beautiful in all its forms . With him the good and the beautiful were but the two sides of the shield , ancl were coupled as equal yoke-fellows in one phrase . Good , because beautiful—beautiful , because good . This ruling love

tuougnt— or the beaufcitul—embodied in stone , gave us the matchless Parthenon , a dream of perfect beauty , whose every line and measure has been the envy and despair of every builder since—the standard and gauge of perfect beauty and of perfect symmetry .

J-he ruling thought of Ancient Rome was the greatness and power of the Commonwealth , and we find ifc written jn the mighty sewers , the stately aqueducts and public baths , the military roads which cut the corners of the then

Known world—in triumphal arches , the Coliseum and the iorurn . With the change from heathenism to Christianity , the

More Noble Building.

mind of Rome was diverted from the comtemplation ofthe enduring power , and earth-encircling vastness of the Roman Commonwealth , and led to behold and ponder upon the everlasting power and grander majesty of the revealed Creator . Emerson has fitly told how this idea embodied itself in stone :

" The hand thafc rounded Pefcer ' a dome , And grained the aisles of Sacred Eome , Wrought in a sad sincerity ,

Himself from GOD he could nofc free , He builded better than he knew , The conscious stone to beauty grew . " Yes ! Grew to beauty , but to beauty so vast , that a

myriad men might hide within the walls of that great temple and be scarce found . From the earliest time the nature-loving Germans had adored the Creative Spirit and consecrated groves to his

worship . When they changed natural for revealed religion and began to build temples , their minds were full of the thought that fche One to whom they built was He from whom the living world drew life , and they wrought their

love of nature into temples consecrate to Nature s GOD . From drooping branches of their holy beechen groves , they caught the fashion of the pointed arch ; from moonlit glades and arching boughs of oak and elm they drew the

graceful aisles and slender columns which adorn their work ; they took the " starry pointing " pinnacle , from lonely form of fir or pine , and from the interlacing stems of flowers and reed and fern , from leaf and acorn , root and

tender twig , they drew the countless forms of beauty and of grace , which make their work a joy for ever , and less a building than a growth in stono—all forms of nature blent to honour Nature ' s GOD .

When the art of printing was perfected , architecture lost its use as a mode of expressing character , and men no longer recorded their thoughts by the slow shaping of the senseless stone . The master mind no longer meant the

master builder , and Masonry changed from an operative to a speculative art . But the work of the world ' s enlightenment has marched along with steady tread , and in this march the successors of the early Masons have ever kept

the front . They have still sought to find and share with others the blessed light—the light of human liberty . They have builded governments rather than temples . One by one they have stricken off the fetters which bound man to

his low estate ; the galling fetters of priestly craffc ; the heavy chains of kingly tyranny ; the cursed bonds of human slavery ! The ruling thought of our age is the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man—a Fatherhood better

worshipped by the building of pure and spotless character than by the grace of carven stone—a Brotherhood which , by its kindly touch , sends the warm thrill of human sympathy through every hand that trembles with the stress

of pain or sorrow ; the Brotherhood which keeps a helping hand for him who stumbles and is like to fall ; a word of council and of hope for him who strives , but fears defeat :

a charity which serves the father while it aids his sons ; that links all human kind by sacred ties of brotherly affection .

In all these ways Masonry to-day is building as noble temples as our fathers built ; more lasting than theirs , as the human soul outlasts the hardest stone ; more acceptable

to God , as a contrite spirit is dearer to him than a jewelled altar ; more precious than theirs , as the welfare of a human life outstrips in worth the gleam of carven gems .

While our Institution continues to teach and practise the great virtues , " Relief for suffering , Truth in all things , aud Charity to all mankind , " it will in the best sense be

still a Master builder , to whom the Masons of old can look with love and awe , and say : "Oh ! Brother , your work is greater than mine , as your light is brighter , but we yet are brethren since we both have worked for , and under , the Great Architect , the Father of us all . "

More On The Philadelphia Question.

MORE ON THE PHILADELPHIA QUESTION .

BY BRO . JACOB NORTON . TYPOGRAPHICAL errors are not uncommon , and though the FREEMASON ' CHRONICLE is more free from such errors than some other papers I could mention , yefc I noticed , in a letter by " A Student of Bro . Gould ' s