Papers On The Great Pyramid.

And , singularly enough , among the Mexicans a tradition still survives connecting the pyramidal sun temples Avith a " Golden Age " of peace , and a good Avhite man Avith a long beard , AVIIO taught them IIOAV to live and govern AVOII , but went aAvay Avhen Avars began . Under these circumstances Ave can easily understand that the figure of a four-square pyramid , ivith its peculiar geometrical properties , should have become to be regarded as the sjinbol of Divinity—or the Sacred Symbol ; for apart from a philosophical application

of its natural properties , those early builders Avould be sure to associate in their traditions their original unity on the centre Avith the great work of masonry they had reared . Nor , indeed , docs the Avhole range of myth present us Avith a more striking instance of the rapidity ivith Avhich the early knowledge Avas lost or obscured , than the degenerate orgies to Avhich , among the heathen , the memorial of that pure geometrical figure , the symbol of the source of energy and the creative principle , had given place .

Manetho and Herodotus give us distorted accounts of the invasion of Egypt by a Shepherd race from the East , Avho after occupying Egypt many years betook themselves to Palestine and built Jerusalem ; and RaAvlinson considers it very probable that it was the memory of this early invasion that prejudiced the Egyptians against those fohWing the occupation of Shepherds . Mr . Proctor sums up the evidence thus : — " It seems tolerably clear that certain Shepherd-chiefs , AVIIO came to Egypt during Cheops' reign ,

¦ were connected in some Avay Avith the designing of the Great Pyramid . It is clear , also , that they were men of a different religion from the Egyptians , and persuaded Cheops to abandon the religion of his people . " So far , then , as assigning the building of the Great Pyramid to a people or clan entering Egypt from the East , and of a different religion to the Egyptians , there is not much difference of opinion to meet .

On these grounds Mr . Taylor argued that since the Egyptians ivere confirmed idolaters , and their invaders closed the temples and prohibited their services , it was only reasonable to assume that the Shepherds Avere of a purer religion than the Egyptians , and Avere indeed Avorshippers of the One God . Thus he was led to look to the line of Shem for the builders of this monument , and to consider the hatred of the Egyptians as rather a testimony in their faA'Oiir than othenvise , and as Ave may see by the history of Masonry in all ages , it has frequently been the lot of its professors to have their principles misrepresented , and to have evil imputed . to them .

NOAV , ah the Pyramidalists , from the late Mr . Taylor doAvivwards , are inclined to look to Shem , or Melchisedek , as the Master-Builder , and so strongly does Bro . Cockburn Muir feel on this point , that he holds it to be of fundamental importance . And in this be is but logical ; nor do I see how any one holding in the main to Smyth ' s theory could look to any other than the chosen son of Noah as the Master-Builder . When , also , AVO regard it as a Masonic question , Ave are immediately reminded of the brotherhood existing betAveen tho Israelites and the SyriansAvhich

, Avas of such a nature as to permit of the latter assisting in the building of the House of God , Avhich Solomon the King did build in Jerusalem . Such a brotherhood naturally points to the earlier history of the Shemitic races for its ori gin , and the separate existence of Israel , cut off from the nations of its kindred ancl a stranger in the land of Egypt—requires that that origin must be found before the

¦ Hebrews became separated from tho Shemitic stock . In the master-builder Shem—by right of his headship of the human family , the representative of Man and the type of Him , AVIIO , as the first-born from the , 'dead , became the Second Adam—Ave see , indeed , the only one among his contemporaries entitled to assume the position to which he has "been assigned . Even Mr . Proctor considers that in coming to the conclusion that the Strangers from the EastAvhose coining into E t was so strangely connected With the building of the

, gyp Groat Pyramid , Avere of the Shemitic tribes—or , as he puts it , kinsmen of the patriarch Abraham—Ave do so upon "grounds sufficiently assured . " HOAV , then , does the era of the Great Pyramid accord ivith its assumed connection Avith the life of the patriarch Shem ? This Avas the question which presented itself to