conceptions of truth, intellectual honesty, and social justice. That there are jutting peaks of human consciousness, stretching far away into invisible realms of possibility, is so unmeaning a fact to most of mankind that it is almost useless to proclaim it. But far above the peaks of physical, intellectual, and moral consciousness ascend the unfrequented reaches of divine and spiritual potencies, to dream of which is to most men crude insanity-to a bare few a reality too precious to proclaim to the uninitiated.

ALL of God's sun shines on our commonest day.-Henry Wilder Foote.

"FRET not thyself," said an old Greek dramatist-"fret not thyself because of things; for they care naught about it!"

FAITH is a sort of sight-draft which we draw upon the goodness of things for our needs in the business of living. Our only trouble is that we never make our drafts large enough.-Harry White.

THOU God of all, infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by what means they may avoid them.Euripides.

HUMAN help in our need, human forgiveness of our wrongdoing, human love in our loneliness, these are the sacraments through which, at their sweetest and purest, we feel a divine help and forgiveness and love flowing into our souls.-G. S. Merriam.

SO MANY thoughts are just touched and laid aside, half thought and then forgotten, that it is pitiable how much is wasted in ourselves. We go through the meadows of our own hearts crushing with a careless step the flowers. There is no need to walk so fast. -Stopford A. Brooke.

PRACTICAL BROTHERHOOD AMONG THE

ANCIENTS.

BY HELEN VAN-ANDERSON.

Carlyle says that "the history of the world is the biography of great men." We would say, the history of the world is the witness borne in the works of great men to the Principle that made their greatness.

The Principle of Creation that produced the universe is the same that has ever moved man to the doing of great things, to the creation of the mighty works that are scattered over this wonderful earth. It is not to one man in any age, but a combination of men that we must look for the magnificent monuments of matter or mind with which the world is enriched; men who wrought not for self, but for each other, who even in the misty ages, when the shadow of paganism shrouded the world, when brutality and torture were a phase of religious rites, banded together for the betterment of social and material conditions.

This was the beginning of Brotherhood. Aye, though it had many crude, even unlovely phases, yet the desire to be and to do, like the subtle fanning of fire into a flame, took possession of men and brought about that union of forces which wrought the marvels of art, science, and religion into such forms as will endure as long as the world stands-forms of beauty and grandeur, into which were wrought with consummate skill the ideals, aspirations, and history of their time and

race.

To the mysterious Pyramids, obelisks and temples of ancient Egypt, India, China, Mexico, Yucatan, we may turn for evidence of the union of ideas, as well as the unity of labor which made possible the conception and completion of these

wonders that bear witness to the One source of inspiration, the One creative power.

The earliest corporations known were those by which the "sacred mysteries" were formulated as religious and scientific teachings, and it is to these priestly Brotherhoods we are indebted for the preservation and interpretation of their marvelous secrets.

This priesthood, possessing the wisdom of their country, were organized into grades and degrees through which the initiate passed in order to gain the desired knowledge. Architecture, as the most useful and comprehensive branch of knowledge and into which could be incorporated the symbols of all knowledge, was the most important in rank and practicability, hence the initiates were instructed in architecture and given charge of the work of erecting temples, monuments, tombs, etc., of which designs had been prepared by more advanced priests or Masters of the Order.

Organized, well directed, efficient, and intelligent supervision characterized the building of these miracles in stone, of which the Great Pyramid is a stupendous example.

Mr. R. G. Poole, a recognized authority, tells us, in speaking of the marvelous work here exhibited: "The Pyramid covers twelve acres of ground, its height was originally 480 feet, 4 inches, its base 764 feet square. The finer stone used for casings and lining passages was quarried on the other side of the river ten miles away, and the red granite used for linings was quarried at Syene nearly five hundred and fifty miles away by the river course. The labor of quarrying was enormous. The Pyramid is a model of constructive skill. Even at this date, forty centuries later, a sheet of paper cannot be placed between the casing stones."

Herodotus, the Greek historian, says the work was carried on "by relays of one hundred thousand workmen, and that each relay worked ten months and was then relieved by another. The total number thus engaged reached into the millions."

This was the kind of coöperation that accomplished the wonders of the world; the visible outworkings of an invisible idea. May it not have been the idea that the wide and treeless deserts of Egypt, the Nile with its mysterious waters coming from no one knew whence and flowing toward the unexplored and mighty sea, unknown and impenetrable, all were types of the boundless and eternal, of which this superb architecture is the shadowing forth?

Later in the annals of history, 715 B.C., under the peaceful and justice-loving Emperor of Rome, Numa Pompilius, were established famous Collegia Fabrorum, or Colleges of Builders, which embraced the hieroglyphic erudition of Egypt, the teachings of the Gymnosophists, or priest-philosophers of India, the wisdom of Hebrew kings and prophets, and the Dionesian mysteries, better understood as the arts of the Greek architects. These colleges were civil, religious, and independent and were granted the exclusive privilege of erecting the public temples and monuments of Rome.

Thus this Brotherhood of Builders patronized by the government soon became scattered throughout all the Roman provinces, and wherever the sword of desolation had wrought havoc and destruction these beneficent bodies, with their unity of aim and labor, erected monuments and taught the arts of refined civilization. Throughout every hamlet in the provinces of Rome, in Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Saxony, wherever the Roman Legion was victor, went the Builders.

How significant the word, and how significant of the work! Was it not Mirabeau who said "words are things?" What marvelous "things" have grown out of the word thus coined in the far away centuries of earth's fair morning!

A new era began when the Goths and other northern races poured down from the German Ocean with resistless might and overwhelmed the Romans. These conquerors introduced what is known as the Order of Gothic Architecture and from them came the grand cathedrals, palaces, and churches to be

found all over Europe. The lofty spires, pointed arches, and exquisite vinelike traceries bespeak the lights and shadows of the forests, the rugged caverns and beetling mountain gorges which inspired their design. Thus on and ever on with undying zeal, with increasing knowledge, with secret wisdom garnered through preceding ages, these banded workers, from age to age, wrought the imperishable proofs of their combined skill and spontaneous unity into the monuments they left behind.

Solomon, the wise, the magnificent, had in his early youth been given the best and most complete education his age afforded. He had gathered the learning of the Orient and was wise. In the language of Scripture, "his wisdom excelled the wisdom of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt."

And Solomon was a Builder! To erect a Temple to the Living God was his ambition, and concordant with this design the Temple at Jerusalem was erected according to the regulations and rules of the Master Builders of the countries wherein building was the highest art, embodying ideals of the loftiest spiritual character.

And thus we are introduced to the oldest known Fraternity in the world, the Brotherhood of Freemasons, who, as builders in every clime and race throughout the succeeding eons of a vast and hoary past, maintain an indisputable record. As one vested with the authority of knowledge so eloquently says, "this fraternity was old when the soldiers of Caesar landed on the shores of Britain; old when Alexander carried the civilization of Asia to Europe. It antedated Rome and Athens, the years of Confucius, Buddha, David, and Solomon, and who can know but the Grand Master of the long ago may have tested with plumb and level the foundation stones of the Pyramids?"

And this last is verily so.

Masonic emblems, symbols,

postures, and records carved on the adamantine stone of monuments in Egypt, Mexico, Central America, bear witness of the antiquity of Freemasonry.