THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

good and beautiful truth. Indeed, we need not go outside the Bible to
find both the materials and working tools of the Mason so
employed:[23]
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For every house is builded by some man; but the builder of
all things is God ... whose house we are.[24]
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Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a tried stone, a
precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.[25]
The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of
the corner.[26]
Ye also, as living stones, are built up into a spiritual
house.[27]
When he established the heavens I was there, when he set the
compass upon the face of the deep, when he marked out the
foundations of the earth: then was I by him as a master
workman.[28]
The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a
plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what
seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord,
Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people
Israel: I will not again pass by them any more.[29]
Ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the
possession of the city.[30]
And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as
the breadth.[31]
Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple of my
God; and I will write upon him my new name.[32]
For we know that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.[33]
If further proof were needed, it has been preserved for us in the
imperishable stones of Egypt.[34] The famous obelisk, known as
Cleopatra's Needle, now in Central Park, New York, the gift to our
nation from Ismail, Khedive of Egypt in 1878, is a mute but eloquent
witness of the antiquity of the simple symbols of the Mason.
Originally it stood as one of the forest of obelisks surrounding the
great temple of the Sun-god at Heliopolis, so long a seat of Egyptian
learning and religion, dating back, it is thought, to the fifteenth
century before Christ. It was removed to Alexandria and re-erected by
a Roman architect and engineer named Pontius, B.C. 22. When it was
taken down in 1879 to be brought to America, all the emblems of the
builders were found in the foundation. The rough Cube and the polished
Cube in pure white limestone, the Square cut in syenite, an iron
Trowel, a lead Plummet, the arc of a Circle, the serpent-symbols of
Wisdom, a stone Trestle-board, a stone bearing the Master's Mark, and