A Lecture On The Antiquity Of Laying Corner Stones With Religious And Mystical Ceremonies.*

But when those who aspired to master the hig hest branches of the arts of architecture , exulting in the art-halo of the renaissance , threw off their connection with the practical grades , disowned their fellowship in the Craft , and , deriding the old Gothic art , devoted themselves to the Palladian , the unbalanced craft seemed likely to fall into obscurity . The public rapidly forgot that the old g lories of the art were the master mason ' s work , and lost sight of the Frankmason

the noble and intellectual distinctions which had separated from the art and calling of the wall builder and the bricklayer . A few lingering lodges of Freemasons continued through the seventeenth century in England ancl Scotland , admitting gentlemen , artists , and other citizens to their fellowship , dimly preserving the traditions of their more glorious past , until in the time of Wren occurred that revival of lodge Freeall familiarKnowing practical

masonry with whose history we are . Masonry only as it exists in its last metamorphous , a respectable number of our students have questioned whether this revival was an attempt to embody ancl preserve fading traditions of the Craft ancl its former organisation , or whether its cherished traditions were the invention of some enthusiasts . No man has a riht to deny the truth of history because he is ignorant . It is a Masonic

g duty to seek lig ht as to landmarks , that we may live up to them . I ask intelligent and brig ht Masons like yon , when my story is told , to judge of the tenacity with which traditions ancl usages will cling in the memory and habits of a Craft descending thousands of years , until all recollection of their origin is lost in oblivion .

LlCllIT FROM THE S'TONES . VERY recently this age has learned how far into the past can be traced the usage of laying corner stones with important ceremonies , and the mystic reverence popularly attached to them . The allusions in the Bible to the laying of corner stones are not nnfrequent , ancl in the New Testament Christ is symbolized as the corner stone .

Job is held by scholars to be the oldest book of the Bible , and there we read that the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind , asking " where wast thou when I laid the foundations of . the earth ? " ancl bid him to declare if he had understanding , " who laid the " corner stone thereof , when the morning stars sung together , and all the sons of God shouted for joy ? " ( King James version )

. . These sublime words simply paraphrase the mystic reverence which m the adjacent civilized states of that time hung around the ceremonial of the laying of the corner stone . Masonic art began earlier in Egypt than in any country whose records are preserved to us ; there the oldest specimens of Masonic art yet known to man are still extant ; on these ancient edifices craftsmen have carved those hieroof the art of

glyp hics which students agree are the beginning , the infancy , writing . The earliest of these inscrip tions are more than forty centuries old , and for the past fifteen or eig hteen centuries no man until within our clay has been able to translate the records they bear . By aid of the key which Champollion discovered , the persistent labour of scholars has at last uncovered the contents of these records of the past . Many matters of curious interest to Masonic students are thus freshly brought to our knowledge .

PATAU . IT may well surprise any one how closely the Masonic art was interwoven with relig ion in the time of the early dynasties of Egypt . As early as 4400 B . C . the leading god in their system of worship , Patah , was sty led the Holy Architect Patah ! In like technology and allusions the high priest of the country was called " the Foreman , "