The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

FREEMASONRY AND KNIGHTS TEMPLARthey had lost all feeling of independence and selfconfidence,and the peculiarities of their race werecontaminated and perverted, instead of 1having beendeveloped into a national character ; they were utterlyunfit for the conquest of a country, for theorganization of a state, and for the part they weredestined to play in history.According to the Biblical narrative (Acts vii.),Moses was forty years old when he fled fromEgypt into Arabia, eighty when he returned andled the march across the Red Sea to Sinai, and1 20 when he died on Mount Nebo. Under hisleadership the Hebrew people, during their fortyyears of penal wandering in the desert, took on thereligious and moral character which enabled themto begin their career in Palestine.Judah, one of the twelve patriarchs, and the progenitorof the tribe of the same name, became sopredominant in Palestine as to giveits name to thekingdom of Judea and ultimately to the whole raceof the descendants of Abraham (Jews). Judahappears to have exercised a kind of leadershipamong his brothers it was he who; persuaded themnot to kill Joseph, but to sell him to the Midianites,and on the journey to Egypt to buy corn it wasJudah who acted as spokesman for the whole company.As such he offered himself to Joseph as aslave to ransom his half-brother Benjamin. Hemarried a Canaanite woman, by whom he had threesons :Er, Onan and Shelah. Er and Onan died inthe land of Canaan without issue. Tamar, hisdaughter-in-law, through deceit, bore him twinsons, Pharez and Zarah (Gen. xxxviii.), from thefirst of whom David, and ultimately Christ, weredescended. Of the life of Judah in Egypt nothing