and all things to be produced by the common consent of the three.' 9949 Every Mason will fully comprehend this reasoning, because it is nearly allied to a most beautiful illustration contained in the first Lecture of Masonry. 49 Boyle, Lect. CHAPTER VI. CONTAINING FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS. View of Masonry from the Universal Deluge to the Offering of Isaac. NOAH remained in the ark while the waters inundated the world, for the space of six months, at the expiration of which time the ark rested on Ararat, a mountain in Armenia. After remaining about three months in that situation, Noah sent out a raven' and a dove, that he might ascertain whether the waters had subsided. The birds very soon returned to the ark, unable, from the prevalence of the waters, to find a place of rest. At the end of seven days he sent forth the dove a second time, which returned to the ark with an olive leaf in her mouth, as a token of peace and reconciliation with God; and the olive branch has consequently been adopted as a symbol of peace by every nation under the sun. When seven days were again expired, he sent forth the dove a third time, which returned to him no more; hence Noah concluded that the 1 Ravens were birds of evil omen. When they appeared about an army, they were objects of terror, particularly if they came croaking on the left hand. Pliny says that the worst omens were given by them when they made a harsh sort of noise-rattling in their throats as if they were choking. waters were dissipated from off the face of the earth; and at the end of twelve months and ten days from his entering the ark, he left it on the summit of the mountain, and all the creatures in it were soon dispersed over the earth. The first act of Noah, after his escape from the general destruction of all created flesh, was an act of gratitude and devotion to his Great Preserver. He erected an altar and offered a burnt offering of every clean beast and fowl. Here God covenanted with Noah, that he would no more destroy the world by water, and placed a rainbow in the clouds as a token, which was to remain as a perpetual memento of His most gracious promise.3 The assurances of preservation delivered to Noah were accompanied by an injunction to observe cer 2 "In the time of Josephus, there was a city in Armenia which he calls Aroßaτngov, or the place of descent: it is called by Ptolemy, Naxuana; by Moses, Choronensis Idsheuan; and at the place itself it was called Nach-Idsheuan, which signifies the first place of descent. This city was a lasting monument of the preservation of Noah in the ark, upon the top of that mountain at whose foot it was built, as the first city or town after the flood." -(Bishop Tomline's Theol., pt. i. c. 1.) › A phenomenon, so remarkable and so frequently recurring amidst excessive rains, serves to impress this assurance firmly on our minds. The appearance of this bow is said to excite very extraordinary sensations upon the Jews, even to this day. Superstitiously imagining the sacred name of God to be visibly displayed in the rainbow, they turn from it in the utmost veneration, lest they should behold the majesty of God, whom no one may see and live and after an humble confession of their sins, they acknowledge themselves worthy to be cut off by a similar visitation, and celebrate His clemency who spares them, while deformed by a series of accumulated transgressions. : tain precepts, which the Jewish Rabbins say were seven:*-1. Judgment; or punishment for the commission of unnatural crimes. 2. Blessings; particularly the institution of the Sabbath, and praising the name of God. 3. Against the practice of idolatry. 4. Uncovering our own nakedness forbidden. 5. Punishment for shedding the blood of our fellow creatures. 6. Against theft, fraud, and dissimulation: and the seventh forbade eating the flesh of a beast, taken from it before it was dead.5 In process of time the unnatural conduct of Ham elicited his father's curse. He denounced judgments upon his posterity; and particularly on Canaan, which were inflicted with unremitting vengeance.6 • Maimonides informs us that Adam had six precepts given him after the fall; which were-1. Against idolatry. 2. Against blasphemy. 3. Against murder. 4. Against adultery. 5. Against stealing. 6. To appoint judges to enforce these precepts. These, he adds, were enjoined on Noah, with this addition, that he should not cut off any portion of a living animal and eat it. 5 Sheindler in Pentaglot. 6 The curse of a father, in ancient times, was deemed an inexpiable misfortune. Heathen nations were impressed with an idea, that one principal commission of the Furies was, to execute vengeance on wayward children, lying under the parental curse. In after ages, the descendants of Canaan became addicted to the very worst species of idolatry, and even sacrificed their sons and their daughters on the impious altars of false and impure deities. (Deut. xii. 31.) They practised the most monstrous and unnatural vices, and lost every vestige of that pure science which places a restraint on all unruly lusts and passions. They were guilty of incest, sodomy, and every kind of bestiality. (Levit. xviii.) Thus when the Israelites, who sprang from Shem, had been delivered from their Egyptian bondage, and brought with them the science of Masonry, which they practised under the auspices of their grand His immediate posterity partook largely of their progenitor's perversity; stimulated probably by the curse. They removed by gradual migrations from east to west, until they found themselves on the plains of Shinar, about a century after the Deluge.7 master Joshua, who succeeded Moses in that high office, the effects of Noah's curse became visible; for the Canaanites were destroyed or driven out of the land, to experience every privation and misery in strange lands, where human foot had never before trod. And those that escaped destruction, and remained in the land, were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Israelites. They who fled and planted other nations obtained no continuance of rest or peace. The Tyrians were destroyed by Alexander, a descendant of Japheth; and the Carthaginians by the Romans, who were of the same original. And the miserable remains of this unhappy people are slaves to the Turkish nation, descendants also from the same patriarch. Egypt was the land of Ham, as it is often called in Scripture, and for many years it was a great and flourishing kingdom; but it was subdued by the Persians, who descended from Shem, and afterwards by the Grecians, who descended from Japheth; and from that time to this it hath constantly been in subjection to some or other of the posterity of Shem or Japheth. The whole continent of Africa was peopled principally by the children of Ham; and for how many ages have the better parts of that country lain under the dominion of the Romans, and then of the Saracens, and now of the Turks! In what wickedness, ignorance, barbarity, slavery, misery, live most of the inhabitants! And of the poor negroes, how many hundreds every year are sold and bought like beasts in the market, and conveyed from one quarter of the world to do the work of beasts in another! Nothing can be more complete than the execution of the sentence upon Ham as well as Canaan!" (Newton on the Proph., Diss. 1.) 7 To enter on the origin and planting of nations, would be a discussion too wide and uncertain for the limits that could be assigned to it in a work of this nature. Nor is it necessary. I may, however, remark, that India and Egypt were the great schools of the world. Here all wisdom and learning were concentrated, at a |