passed this limit, and designed buildings of greater proportionate length, yet this dimension was never entirely abandoned, but continued to be a standard proportion, to which they paid great attention throughout all ages, even to the latest times.

Its scientific application, whatever abstruse hypotheses may be founded upon it at the present day, undoubtedly constituted the great secret of operative Freemasonry which was communicated to few; and hence, in process of time, like the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton amongst the Jews, it fell into desuetude, and at length was irrecoverably lost. The best architects admitand even our Grand Master, Sir Christopher Wren, did not deny the fact that "the true principles on which our cathedral churches were constructed is beyond the art of man to discover." And Dallaway confesses that "towards the end of the fourteenth century innumerable innovations were made in Gothic architecture, both with regard to form as well as decoration, which broke the rectitude of its lines and interfered with the harmony of the general design." In the fifteenth century it perceptibly degenerated into fantastic refinements and false tastes, by departing from the nobleness of

tuted the chief element of the figure seen on the thrones of the Pharaohs, especially Memnon, the colossal of the Theban plain, which appears there to represent materially a knot of love, but scientifically the birth of harmony out of the contending elements of discord. The Vesica Piscis entered into the design of the structure of the central room in the Great Pyramid, and was connected with the entire train of Egyptian masonry which that pyramid internally and externally embodied and comprised.

M

elevation, and by acquiring, towards the end of that period, a superabundant mass of unmeaning ornament, which totally corrupted the style and brought it into disrepute; and in another century it fell, to rise no more.

LECTURE XXXIX.

THE PILLARS.

"The instrumental part of Masonry consists in the use and application of various tools and implements, such as the common gauge, the square, the plumb-line, the level, and others that may be called mathematical; invented to find the size or magnitude of the several parts or materials whereof our buildings, &c., are composed; and those more properly belong to our Brethren of the Second Degree, styled Fellow-crafts."-DUNCKERLEY.

"The celestial and terrestrial globes have been most wisely adopted as emblems of the Order. The study of geography is particularly important to an accurate knowledge of the Scriptures. Sacred geography may be said to embrace the surface of the whole earth; not merely the Holy Land, with its mountains, plains, rivers, and cities, but all lands, rivers, and seas; for Christianity will ultimately spread over all the world.”— SCOTT'S ANCIENT CRAFT MASONRY.

THE passage from the first to the second degree, according to an hypothesis which was prevalent amongst the Craft a hundred years ago (although modern interpretation, more judiciously and with much greater reason, refers it to a very different event), was denoted by an allusion to certain remarkable circumstances which attended the passage of the Israelites into the land that had been promised to their great progenitor Abraham when he offered his son Isaac on Mount Moriah as an inheritance for his posterity; and was included in the triad, Banner

Water-Corn. The legend is now obsolete, but I give it in extenso, because few living Brethren are acquainted with it, although it is quite as reasonable as many other traditions of the Order. It is, indeed, a curiously connected triad, and only to be explained by Masonic tradition, which, it must be admitted, is not always a reliable basis for any sound historical hypothesis, unless it be borne out by substantial evidence culled from other sources. But in treating on some of the collateral incidents of Freemasonry we must condense our subject according to the lights we possess. The facts, such as they are, have been carefully transmitted, but the vouchers may, in some cases, be difficult to find. We have, however, presumptive evidence in favour of our present triad, and with this we must content ourselves in the absence of historical testimony from records which are no longer in existence. And as Freemasonry is founded on oral communication, we cannot complain if our traditions rest on the same basis. That a society formed on leges non scripta, as Noorthouck justly observes, "should not be able to produce very ancient records, is perfectly consistent. Whatever old writings the Brethren may possess in different places, the revolutions of time and accidents of various kinds continually diminish; and the losses which the society sustained, in the year 1720, when the ignorant zeal of some rash Brethren induced them to burn their manuscripts, from a dislike probably of having the Constitutions printed, cannot now be estimated."

The tradition here referred to assumes that there

was an ancient bridge at the point where the Israelites crossed the Jordan at their entrance into the promised land; and when they arrived at its foot the waters receded and they found a convenient road open to them; for the waters had congregated on a heap in the upper part of the stream, forming a wall on their right hand; while on the left the river exhausted itself by running into the Dead Sea, leaving a dry and sandy bottom. And this extraordinary arrangement continued until all the people had passed over. The process would necessarily occupy a great length of time, for more than a million persons, with their luggage and cattle, went across the bed of the Jordan. This event occurred at the vernal equinox, during the barley harvest, and the river, as usual at that season, was swollen by the melting of the snows of Lebanon, and consequently overflowed its banks.

It is true the depth of the water where the ark rested might have been reduced by the ford consisting of a causeway of great stones covered with sand from the mountains. But such a convenience would have been of no avail to the wayfarers under the circumstances in which they were placed; for the passage over the river was a standing miracle unattended by any natural agency; and no sooner did the feet of the priests who bore the ark of the covenant touch the border of the stream than the bed of the channel was left dry. The priests with their sacred burden stood on the

causeway in the

More probably a ford. See Josh. ii. 7.