perpendicular, so should every mason conduct himself towards the world.

To rule our affections by justice, and our actions by truth, is to wear a JEWEL, which would ornament the bosom of the greatest sovereign on earth Human nature has her impulses from desires, which are often too inordinate; love blinds with prejudices, and resentment burns with fevers; contempt renders us incredulous, and covetousness deprives us of every generous and humane feeling. To steer the bark of life upon the sea of passion, without quitting the course of rectitude, is one of the highest excellencies, to which human nature can be brought.

Yet merely to act with justice and truth, is not all that man should attempt; for even that excellence would be selfishness; that duty would not be relative; but merely proper. It is only touching our own character, and doing nothing for our neighbour; for justice is an indispensable duty in each individual. We were not born for ourselves alone, to shape our course through life, in the tracks of tranquillity, and solely to study that, which should afford peace to the conscience at home. But men were made as mutual aids to each other; for no one, however opulent, can subsist without the assistance of his fellow creatures. Nature's wants are numerous. Our nakedness must be clothed, our hunger satisfied, our thirst allayed, our diseases remedied, &c. Where shall the proud man toil for susten

ance, if he stand unaided by his neighbour. When we look through the varied scene of life, we see our fellow creatures attacked with innumerable calamities, and were we without compassion, we should exist without one of the finest feeling of the human heart. To love, is a movement in the soul of man, which yields him pleasure; but to pity gives him heavenly sensations, and to relieve is divine. Thus CHARITY has her existence; her rise is from the consciousness of our similarity in nature. We weigh the necessities of our suffering fellow creatures by our natural equality, by compassion, our sympathy, and our own abilities and dispense our gifts from affection. Pity and pain are sisters by sympathy.

To be an upright man, is to add still more to the mason's character; to do justice, and to have charity are excellent steps in human life; but to act uprightly, gives a superlative degree of excellence; for we shall thus become examples in religious, in civil, and in moral conduct. It is not enough, that we are neither enthusiasts, nor persecutors; that we neither bend towards innovation, nor infidelity; nor is it enough, that we should be in the passive only; but we should appear in the active character. We should be zealous observers and practisers of religious duties. In civil matters, we should submit to the laws of our country without murmuring, and endeavour, as far as may be in our power, that our

constitution should remain pure and uncontaminated. In morality, it is required of us, not only to abstain from error by injuries, betraying or deceiving; but that we should do good as far as may be practicable, in that station of life, in which kind Providence may have ordered our lot.

By such metes, let the mason be proved, and thus convey to the world, that his emblamatical jewels are only ensigns of the inward man. He will thus stand approved before God and his fellow mortais, purchasing honour to his PROFESSION, and happiness to the PKO

FESSOR.

CHAPTER XIX.

A Description of Solomon's Temple.

THE first worshippers of God, in the nations of the East, represented the Deity, by 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 explaining divine knowledge but we perceive the danger arising from thence to religion; for the eye of the ignorant, the bigot, and the enthusiast, cast up

towards these objects, without the light of understanding, introduced the worship of images; and, at length, the worship 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 into their sacred places as ornament, or rather to assist the memory, ran into the same error, and idols multiplied in every direction.

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

Moses had acquired the knowledge of the Egyptians, and derived the doctrines of truth from the enlightened men of the East. He was also illuminated by Divine Grace, and taught the people of Israel the worship of the true God, without the enigmas of the idolatrous nations, which surrounded them.

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 attracted by pomp and solemn rites, perverted the opinion, and led the heart astray; and being convinced, that the magnificent festivals, processions and ceremonials of the idolatrous nations, impressed the minds

of mankind with an enthusiastic devotion, thought it expedient, for the service of the God of Israel, to institute holy offices, though in a less ostentatious mode, well judging, that the adoration of the Deity, must be established in the judgement and conviction of the heart of man, with which ignorance was ever waging war.

Åt an after period, 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 craftsmen were here proved, in their work, it may not be improper to crave the attention of my readers to those circumstances, which are gathered from holy writ, and from historians, touching this structure, as an illustration of some of the most important secrets of masonry.

In the fifth chapter of 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 in

* Ezekiel xliv. 2, 3, 4. "The east gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it; therefore it shall be shut. It is for the prince the prince shall sit in it, to eat bread before the Lord. he brought me by the way of the north gate, before the

house."

Then