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Similarly at Mecca, the Kaaba, the pulpit, and the sacred fountain are grouped within a space enclosed on all sides by colonnades. Again, surrounding the Solomonic temple on three sides was a spacious court. This court was enclosed with colonnades. It may well be, therefore, that the edifice around or near the fine court of columns at Nippur was a sacred structure, erected in honor of some deity.
Their progress in human virtues was so rapid and wonderful that they rose to the zenith of the Solomonic sovereignty. Could it be said that Moses was not a real Shepherd and that He did not gather these scattered people together? Christ was a real Shepherd. At the time of His manifestation, the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians and Egyptians were like so many scattered flocks.
The English Masons, although they have not treated the symbolism of the Order with the same abstruse investigation that has distinguished those of Germany and France, still have not been insensible to this idea that the building of the Solomonic temple is intended to indicate a cultivation of the human character.
It may be proper to recall that in the Solomonic temple, likewise, there were a series of jars that stood near the great altar in the large court. A piece of furniture to which great religious importance was attached was a great basin known as 'apsu, the name, it will be recalled, for 'the deep. The name indicates that it was a symbolical representation of the domain of Ea.
The great king fails to corrupt the virtue of a simple country maiden, despite of all his blandishments. Ewald assigns this poem to the northern kingdom, which had separated itself from Judah chiefly in reaction from the Solomonic innovations. It leads us into the homes of the sturdy peasantry of the hill country, where burned the fires on the altars of pure wedded love.
If I might presume to tender a few words of advice to so high and mighty a personage as the president of the University of Texas, I should recommend that he carefully study the Solomonic proverb: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."
In the large court in front of the zikkurats there stood the jars used in connection with the cult, and the presence of these jars furthermore suggests that there was an altar in the great court, precisely as in the case of the Solomonic temple. In the larger of the temples found by Layard, there was a smaller hall in front of the large one.
There appeared Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon. The Holy Land was conquered by the power of the Covenant of God with Abraham, and the glory of the Solomonic wisdom and sovereignty dawned. All this was due to the religion of God which this blessed lineage established and upheld.
MIDDLE CHAMBER. A part of the Solomonic temple, which was approached by winding stairs, but which was certainly not appropriated to the purpose indicated in the Fellow Craft's degree. The legend of the Winding Stairs is therefore only a philosophical myth. It is a symbol of this life and its labors. MISTLETOE. The sacred plant of Druidism; commemorated also in the Scandinavian rites.
The institution of Freemasonry preceded the advent of Christianity. Its symbols and its legends are derived from the Solomonic temple, and from the people even anterior to that. Its religion comes from the ancient priesthood. Its faith was that primitive one of Noah and his immediate descendants.
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