this Grand Chapter, continue unaltered and unimpaired, except so far as they have been granted to the Grand Chapter.

Every act of the Grand Chapter, and every act of a subordinate chapter, and every part of law or action of any chapter which is repugnant to the constitution, is necessarily void.

According to a strict and equitable construction of the constitution, we must decide that original jurisdiction over membership is in subordinate chapters.

The Grand Chapter in its capacity to legislate, apply and execute a law, may create evil, but they can never suppress it. The subordinate chapters, by their individual action in the legitimate pursuit of their Masonic life, supplies the Grand Body with the vital current which creates and sustains universal prosperity. To secure that immunity is the task devolved upon us all.

The action of this Grand Chapter, at the last annual convocation, in expelling Benjamin F. Dawson, a member of this Grand Chapter, from all the rights and privileges of Royal Arch Masonry, should so far be reconsidered and amended as to make the expulsion from all the rights and privileges of this Grand Chapter only.

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX.-The riddle of the Sphinx is at length on the point of being solved. The great man-headed, lionbodied monument, which has for ages been more than half-buried by the accumulating sands of the desert, is now being rapidly brought to light, and ere long one of the most extraordinary relics of Egyptian civilization will be once more visible in its entirety. The work has been going on ever since January last, when, at the suggestion of M. Maspero, the chief director of the department of antiquities in Egypt, the French public, in the course of a few hours, subscribed sufficient funds to enable the work of excavation to be carried to completion. The interest of such news for Egyptologists may be conceived, when it is remembered that the last time the Sphinx was dug out of the sands was by King Thothemes IV., fifteen centuries before Christ, or about thirty-four hundred years ago. Scholars, in fact, are of the opinion that the Sphinx is the oldest monument in the world. In the opinion of some it was erected or chisled out of rock more than forty-five centuries before the Christian era. The body is more than 130 feet long. ears of the human-shaped head are about six feet in length,—the other features being in proportion. The learned explorers who are engaged in the work of excavation hold it probable that when the statue is fully brought to light a number of other important discoveries will be made. — Journal and Messenger.

The

THE ROUGH ASHLAR.

BY BLAZING STAR.

The Rough Ashlar is Masonically defined as a stone of crude and primitive condition requiring the Working Tools of the Fellow Craft to properly prepare it for adjustment in the building, which, fashioned after the mutations of Nature, can never find completion. The ordinary title of stone, given it, in its primary sense, denotes firmness, and is characteristic of Lodge labor essential to the preparing of the Masonic stone (male intrant no woman can be made a Mason) for a place in the building-the building bespeaking, as intimated, an eternal and successive line of procreation, or generating of Masons ad infinitum.

That stone should have been the chosen symbol in this connection is no cause of marvel, for, of all substances in Nature, it is doubtless the best suited to illustrate the plastic and transmuting qualities of matter in that by its capacity to mould it is ever suggestive of the beautiful forms that may be evoked from concealment beneath a rough exterior by the deft and cunning hand of man, or that may be called forth from atoms in an apparently chaotic condition through the ever potent voice of erotic Light! Its roughness, therefore, to represent, as it is made to do, chaos, night, Winter, and confusion, and its symmetry, with equal certitude, to denote order, beauty, excellence, and Summer is as felicitous as befitting inasmuch as the former period is one of sterility and consequent formless matter, and the latter, that of fecundity and every beautiful gift in developed Nature. But of its quality of firmness or hardness a consonant mystic interpretation must be found in the Heat or Caloric of the physics as this sets the Electric Force free to tension and strengthen the Ether thereby promoting the restoration of order and the filling of the Earth with teeming life in all the diversified forms with which we see it bedecked. Hence, in the way of prelude to generation, cognizant of the parts Caloric and the Electric Force play, we note : "And God said, Let there be a firmament (expansion) in the midst of the waters; and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God (Gad-the Electric Force) made (caused) the firmament (expansion) and divided the waters which were under the firmament (expansion) from the waters

And

which were above the firmament (expansion): and it was so. God (equivalently the Electric Force-Jupiter is One with his Thunderbolt) called (named) the firmament (expansion) Heaven (Life)."—Gen. i, 6, 7, 8.

Thus, without such expansion of the Ether, called the firmament (as necessarily comes with every Spring), there could be no generation, and consequently no rejuvenation and no rehabili tation of the Earth with verdure. The Caloric being inherent in the Ether and peculiarly the property of the Red Ray, the Red Ray causes polarization to the Light on its flux or increase, sequent to the Sun's apparent northward course of travel. Whence, premising Caloric as the Holy Ghost or Begetting Principle carrying with it electric action, it follows that electric action must be and is the sine qua non of all sexual communion, whether pertinent to the animal or vegetable kingdom, and that within the arena of the positive and negative forces lies the all that constitutes sexual dualism. Hence, finding the following language in the writings of Prof. Mitchell, we quote it as germain to the subject. He says: "All the elements of compounds susceptible of galvanic decomposition—and all substances are thus susceptible— possess the feature of electric polarity, which fact implies that they were not only formed from electricity, but that each simple element contains the same chemical endowment as electricity itself, which renders it not only susceptible of electrical government, but discovers an affinity between it and all other forms of organic and inorganic matter, demonstrating the fact that it contains the posi tives for all the negatives, and the negatives for all the positives in Nature.

The conclusion from these facts and principles is that were all earthly substances, compound or simple, reduced to the highest sublimation, the product would be electricity,' with its negatives and positives, possessing chemical affinities for all other forms of matter; and these peculiarities were its creation.

"It is a universal law of chemical solution that if one substance will decompose another, it must be in chemical affinity with that substance; and as electricity or galvanism will decompose all other substances, it must, therefore, contain the chemical properties of all others—of course in their highest etherial degree. It is this endowment which adapts it to be a universal agent, penetrating, as it does,

every element or compound of Nature, whether it be the most compact formation or the finest ether."--(Cosmogony, Vol. I, pp. 212, 213.)

Elsewhere, speaking of germination in the Vegetable Kingdom, the same writer expresses the following views: To produce germination a degree of heat is demanded sufficient to burst the shell of the seed. This requires a substance which can pass freely through the stomata or breathing pores of the shell, expanding the particles of the kernels, but not those of the shell; for were both expanded equally, there would be no bursting of the shell, and as a consequence no vegetable growth.

"It is also a fact that atmospheric air cannot penetrate the walls of the seed, else it would have decomposed the seed in a few days after the peach had fallen ripe from the tree, just as it did the rest of the peach. This substance, then, must be some modification of electricity, whose particles are so minute that they penetrate and permeate everything in Nature. Coming now in contact with the kernel of the seed and charging each atom with an electric atmosphere, and of course expanding it, they develop motion; the movement of the atoms against each other produces friction, and the friction generates heat, the latter adding to the expansive force until the shell, unable to bear the pressure, bursts. This gives the embryonic roots of the seed access to the carbonic acid of the surrounding earth, which it absorbs, and which the embryo cells of the plant decompose, and out of which other cells are formed; and thus the tree grows."-(Cosmogony, Vol. I, p 178.)

But to recall the Rough Ashlar it may be stated that the nature of the stone shows it to be, according to the best geological authorities of fiery origin, and for the reason that all hard rock, in which category the Rough Ashlar is placed, is devoid of stratification in and of itself, breaking in pieces in a multiplicity of directions. This hard rock being agreeably to the most eminent Masonic writers the emblem of Divine Truth, and no doubt because the Fire-Principle was in adoration by the ancient Persians and others as the GodPrinciple of the Universe--this Principle still having recognition and perpetuation in the ritualism of Freemasonry through the Rough Ashlar and the Triune Lights that surround the Masonic Altar. But an extended dissertation on stone worship may be seen by consult ing Mackey's "Symbolism of Freemasonry," article The Stone of Foundation."

Since, however, the Rough Ashlar is fashioned by the Working Tools of the Fellow Craft-the Square, the Level, and the Plumbit may be proper to ask what really is the Rough Ashlar in the deeper sense, and what the implements that fashion it? Looking to the arcane character of the mysteries we must know that the Rough Ashlar in symbolizing the Masonic intrant can but represent the Grand Luminary of our Solar System the God of Day, who becomes the Rough Ashlar because the Red Ray represented by the Level of the West is subordinated to the Blue Ray represented by the Plumb of the South. The Light or the Ether that circumfuses the Earth north of the equator and in Winter being depolarized through the function of the Blue Ray makes of the Sun. during that period of the year a very Rough Ashlar indeed, and this for the reason that the Blue Ray being a negative force paralyzes the productive powers of Nature and changes the whole face of the Vegetable Kingdom through the decomposition which then sets up This subordination of the Red Ray to the Blue is pointedly shown by the positions of the columns in the West and South respectively during the hours of refreshment which symbolically cover the Winter months of the year or that precise period that answers to the Sun's sojourn below the Equinoctial. But knowing what the Gavel is and its employment by the Operative Mason to break off the superfluous corners of rough stones, the better to fit them for the builder's use, we may confidently assure ourselves that the Rough Ashlar is that particular object in Nature which we so truly declare it to be. This opinion finding strength in the fact that the ancients were wont to call the Sun a very hot stone, as surely he mystically is.

The uncouth or Winter character of the Sun, however, is exchanged at the moment of the Spring equinox, when he is transformed into a Perfect Ashlar, and we

"See through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick and bursting into birth."

A thorough squaring having been effected within that quadrant of the Zodiac defined by the Equinoctial and Solstitial Colures and embracing the Signs Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, causing them to rejoice in the restoration of Life and Light to a benighted and wayward world that has known only dark and hidden paths since the year's high twelve or the incoming of Summer solstice day!