Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

182 RENEWING PLAGUES OF EGYPT ON AMERICAN SOIL.
it says that Satan blinds minds; what minds, if not
those of his worshipers? And do we not see in this
how it can be that Masons of apparent candor can say,
and say truly, they can. see nothing in lodgery which
conflicts with the Christian religion?
Isaiah (9, 26), predicting Christ’s coming, Bays:
“The people ShaS walked in darkness have seen a great
lighL” Who were those people “walking in darkness”
but those very men whose hill-top worships Maaons
truly call “lodges,” and the worshipers themselves, “our
ancient brethren,” and who, as Masons have today, had
counterfeit “Princes of Mercy” of their own make?
Read on page 169 the lying promises of this dark
degree. “A newearth, more beautiful and more fertile,
shall become the home of mankind I” These blind
guides, not looking, as Paul did, at “the things not
seen,” promise none but a heavwi on earth with good
crops, etc., etc.; while the Word of God, and the history
of Palestine, nay, our own history also, show that
lust in proportion as lodge-worshipe supplant the
worship of Christ; drought, grasshoppers, potato-rot
and bugs, with swarms of invisible pests, such u desolated
Egypt and sunk the inhabitants to cattle-worshipbig
slaves, whose country i8 mortgaged to a handful of
London merchants, are slowly~ renewing the “plagues of
Egypt” on our own soil; while Charleston, the city
where this Seottish ~Rite was planted, and from which
it has spread over America. and Europe, hM plucked
down wrath on our Continent in the shape of treason,
secession and bloodshed.
Instead of the heaven or fine soil and good crops
prom ised to the “Princes of Mercy,” we seem to be in
great danger of renewing on our prairies the sterility of
once fertile, but now impoverished, monk-worshiping
Palestine; until earthquakes rend the earth under us,
and cyclones lay bare its surface; and in the vigorous
words of t1~e old hymn
“3ayth tr.mbI beneath till her mountAinS 31W WQ.
“And hell ahakec her fetter. with teak!
CHAPTER XLIX
TWENTY-SEVENTH DEGREE, OR COMMANDER OF THU
TEMPLE.’
SOUTH OR sUMMER.
DECORATIONs :—This lodge is styled a Court. The
hangings are red, ornamented here and there with black
columns, upon each of which is placed a branch holding
a light. The canopy and throne are red, sprinkled
with black tears. In the centre of the lodge, which is
circular in its shape, is a chandelier with three rows
of lights one above the other; in the lower circle tivelve,
in the next nine, and in the upper one six; making
twenty-seven in all. Twenty-seven other lights are
placed upon a round table, around which the Knights
are seated when the Court is open.
OFFICER5 :—The presiding officer is styled Most Potent
Grand Commander, and sits in the East. The
Wardens are styled Most Sovereign Commanders, and
the Knights Sovereign Commanders. There is a
Senior and Junior Deacon.
DRESS:—The Grand Commander wears a white tunkc
Note SW.—”Oommsndsi of the Temple. (Scotch Kmaoar~. I—The ninth
deg?ee conferred in the Comalitory of Princes of the Royal Secret. 5cotcb
Mamn~,, and tbe twenty.se,e.th in Ibe catalogue of that system. Tb.
aseemby Is termed a Court. Tb. banging. are red. The light. awe
tweDty4e~eD. The preaMing officer ii styled Moat Potent, and the two
Wardena. Moat 5oyeftigo CommanderE. The title of the memberE Is
foyer.ign CommanderE. Tbe apron ii flesh-colored, limed and edgc~d with
hlack; on it Is £ key: the moyable part dispia~m a Teutonic doff en
circled by a wrath of laurel. The scarf Is red, edged with black and
mustaifh a Teutonic cross in enameled gold. JewFl. a golden triangle.
dimolaying tbe gac?ed tpur-frttei~d name; it I. mnspended from a white
collar, edged with red and embroidered with tour Teutonic Eyoeau. Houts
of woph. open at 10, doe, at 4.’—Konhs’s Masonic Diotlouaq. hztid
Cammads? .f t~e T.mp~..