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This cloud contained a typical reference to Christ the true Jehovah.29 The divinity condescended, for the benefit of his people the Jews, to reside personally in the cloud; and Christ, for the everlasting advantage of all mankind, clothed himself in human flesh and resided amongst the same people. If the presence of Jehovah in the cloud was glorious, much more glorious was the presence of Jehovah in Christ;31 the benefits

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to have been the effect of an earthquake. It is about 300 yards long, 100 yards wide, and as many deep; and what is the curiosity, in the middle of the gulf, a single column of stone raises its head to the surface of the earth. We ascended the mountain on foot. As we mounted the steep, we frequently blessed ourselves that we were not riding—as the path was so narrow that the least false step must have sent the beast down the bordering precipice. The appearance of the road is so frightful in many places, that we do not wonder why our people have hitherto laid by in the night." Through this dangerous wilderness, a land of pits-as the prophet denominates it—where a small amateur party of travellers finds it so difficult to make their way, were 2,000,000 of people, with their cattle and appendages, led in perfect safety by the pillar of a cloud and of fire.

29 Even Philo the Jew admitted this fact. He says, (Lib. de Agricul. p. 152.) " as if they were a flock, God the royal shepherd governs them by his authority and law, &c. All which he accomplishes by appointing over them his Word, his first-begotten Son, who, as the deputy of a great king, takes upon himself the care of this sacred flock. For it is said in a certain place-behold here I am, and I will send my angel before thy face to keep thee in the way."

30 This pillar, as we have already seen, was a type of Christ; as a pillar of the church, and as guiding us in the way to eternal life. Here was both fire and a cloud, referring to his divinity and humanity. It was a covering to the Israelites from the heat of the sun; Christ overshadows us from the heat of temptation.

31" Jehovah miraculously conducted the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, and therefore Moses commanded that they should serve him alone. This is the

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of the former were temporal, of the latter eternal;" and Christ was the brightness of his father's glory, as Isaiah had predicted that he should be beautiful and glorious.34

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direct purport of the first of the ten commandments. I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of Egyptian bondage. Thou shalt have no other God but (or with) me.' (Michaelis, vol. i. P. 186.) 32 This is the perfection of our system of Freemasonry. "If any Brother in the secrecy of his heart," says our Rev. Bro. Brookfield, P. G. Chaplain for Hants, "believes that there is anything in the theory of Freemasonry at variance with the strictest rule of christianity—if he has ever been present at a Lodge which has not opened and closed with most solemn invocation of the divine blessing, and which invocation has been responded to with devotional attentionthen let him be silent to what I shall say, and put me to open shame before this multitude for asserting too much. But if, on the other hand, you believe that without the favour of God all our doings are nothing worth-then, and in that case, I ask you, while I solemnly implore the blessing of God upon our work and labour of lovewhile I solemnly beseech Christ for the benefit of his advocacy at the throne of grace-while I solemnly adjure the Holy Ghost not to spare the outpouring of his influence-while of all three I ask pardon for the past, and strength for days to come-while, to the tribune of God, I ascribe all majesty and power, and praise, and dominion-I demand of you to respond to that prayer, and to ratify that ascription, not only in the secrecy of your hearts, but aloud with your lips to exclaim, in the presence of men, and of angels, and of God- so mote it be!'"

33 Dr. Lushington, in his "Expiation of a Sinner" (1646, p. 3), says, "Christ was the lustre, ray, or beam of God's majesty; for seeing God is invisible and cannot be seen of men, by reason of his immense and infinite light, therefore God sent forth Christ as a ray or beam of his light, that in Christ men might have a kind of sight of God's majesty."

34 Simeon, when he was presented in the temple, proclaimed him to be a Light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of the people of Israel. He was the true Shekinah, of which all others were types, that came down from heaven to save the people from their sins.

Such is a comprehensive view of these famous pillars. Our Grand Master, King Solomon, was impressed in after ages with such a reverential sense of the benefits which were conferred on the Hebrews by their means, that, in order to impress on the minds of his subjects a due regard for the mercy and goodness of God in that glorious dispensation, he constructed two pillars at the entrance of the porch leading into the holy place, and crowned them with spherical balls, the public symbols of the divine presence; that the Israelites might have the recollection of the miraculous deliverance of their forefathers from Egyptian bondage continually present, whenever they assembled in the courts of the Lord's house for public worship. And had the king himself adhered in practice to his own teaching, those melancholy consequences, arising from the apostacy of his subjects, excited to disobedience by the prevalence of his example, would never have taken place. Israel might still have been a powerful and influential people, directed by the inspired prophets of their God, and occupying a high rank amongst the nations of the earth.

And the same imagery is used when Christ's kingdom was proposed as a sanctuary in the extremity of evils. "The Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Sion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and a smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain." (Isaiah iv. 5, 6.)

LECTURE XVIII.

THE GRAND ARCHITECT'S SIX PERIODS.

In six days God created the heavens and the earth, and rested upon the seventh day, the seventh, therefore, our ancient Brethren dedicated as a day; of rest from their labours, thereby enjoying frequent opportunities to contemplate the glorious works of the creation, and to adore their great Creator."—WEBBE.

"The Egyptian astronomers taught that the creation of the world took place at the precise period of time when the sun rose in Leo." BRYANT.

"Creator of the radiant light,

Dividing day from sable night;
Who, with the Light's bright origin,

The world's creation didst begin."

CHANT IN THE DEGREE OF KNIGHTS OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE,”

WE are informed by Moses, that at the uncertain period when the earth was without form and void,' and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' the Spirit of

1 Commentators make some difference in their explanations of this passage. The Hebrew words are tohu ve bohu. Pagninus translates them, "desert and emptiness;" the Latin Vulgate, "empty and void;" the Septuagint, "invisible and incomposed;" the Syriac, "desert and uncultivated;" the Samaritan the same as the Vulgate; in the Arabic it is, "covered with abysses." In these explanations there is very little difference, for they express the first state of the earth, without animals, vegetables, or any green herb; in a word, empty and void of all things.

2 The cosmogony of the Mysteries of India commenced thus, as appears from an ancient Purana, translated by Halhed:-" Of all the objects in the created world water existed first, when as yet there was neither devatah, nor man, nor animal, nor vegetable, nor star, nor other heavenly body. The whole universe was dark and water. In this primeval water did Bhagavat, in a masculine form, repose for the space of one calpa (a thousand ages), after which period, the

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God brooded on the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be LIGHT-and there was LIGHT.' What could this light be? It was not the material light of the sun, for that luminary was not yet created. The solar system was not in being, and yet there was light. It could then be no other than an effusion of the Divinity, that lucid splendour, in which the celestial

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intention of creating other beings, for his own wise purposes, became predominant in the mind of the great Creator. Thus, observing the whole world involved in darkness and submerged in water, he placed in them a seed, which soon became an egg, brilliant as the meridian sun. Out of this egg Brahma was produced, after having remained a full year inclosed in absolute absorption; and he was hence termed an emanation of the Deity. The egg was afterwards divided into two parts, to form the concave or egg-like canopy of heaven and the earth."

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This sublime truth formed one of the secrets of primitive Freemasonry, and was handed down to posterity by oral communication. The original word which conveyed this secret was merachepheth, which may be also truly interpreted by the image of a dove brooding over its eggs. Hence we find in all the illustrations of the spurious Freemasonry, a reference to a primeval egg when describing the process of creation.

In the 28th degree of philosophical Masonry, the emblem occurs which represents lux e tenebris.

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