INSTALLATION OF HON. ROBERT P. DUNLAP, AS G. G. H. PRIEST.

We have been politely favored with a copy of the report of the committee appointed at the late meeting of the Gen. Grand Chapter, to notify the Hon. ROBERT P. DUNLAP of his election as G. G. H. Priest, and, in the event of his acceptance, to make arrangements for his installation. Regarding it as at least a semi-official notice that Comp. Dunlap has been duly qualified, and that he has entered upon the discharge of his official duties, we take great pleasure in laying it before our readers:

To the M. E. Gen. Grand Chapter:

BOSTON, DEC. 28, 1847.

In pursuance of their instructions, the undersigned, charged with the duty of notifying the Hon. ROBERT P. DUNLAP of his election to the office of Grand High Priest of the Gen. Grand Chapter, having attended to that duty, respectfully

REPORT:

That the distinguished Companion having signified his acceptance of the office to which he had been elected, and of his readiness to enter upon its duties, arrangements were made, through the courtesy of the M. E. Grand Chapter of Massachusetts, to have the ceremonies of installation take place in the city of Boston, on the 30th Nov. last.

Your committee, regarding the event as one in which the whole Fraternity of the country were interested, considered themselves at liberty to give to the occasion such a general character as the time and place, and convenience, would permit. They accordingly, with the co-operation of the Grand Chapter of Massachusetts, invited the attendance of the Grand Chapters of Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York; of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts; the Grand Consistory and Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem in the same State; the Boston Encampment of Knights Templars; the subordinate Chapters in that city; and distinguished Companions and Brethren in the vicinity. And they are gratified in being able to report, that most of the bodies above named, were in attendance, in full regalia, and presented a beautiful and encouraging appearance. The occasion was one that will be long remembered by all who had the happiness to witness it.

The ceremony of installation was performed in ample form and in conformity to established Masonic usage, by M. E. Comp. Dean, in accordance with his instructions from the Gen. Grand Chapter.

After the Gen. Grand High Priest had been solemnly proclaimed as duly installed, he addressed the Companions and Brethren present, in an able, eloquent, and impressive manner, evincive of the deep interest he feels in the prosperity of the Masonic Institution generally, and particularly of the important branch of it over which he has been called to preside.

Your committee cannot conclude their report without expressing their sincere thanks to the Grand Chapter of Massachusetts, for the very ample and handsome

manner in which the arrangements for the occasion were conceived and executed

We have also been furnished with a copy of the correspondence between the committee and Comp. Dunlap, which we take equal pleasure in laying before our readers:

BOSTON, Nov. 8, 1847.

My Dear Sir and M. E. Companion :-At the Triennial Communication of the G. G. Royal Arch Chapter of the U. States, held at the city of Columbus, in the State of Ohio, in September last, you were unanimously elected General Grand High Priest of that body for the three years ensuing. And Companions Raymond, of Mass., Barnum, of New York, and Bradford, of Maine, were appointed a committee to communicate the result of that election and request your acceptance of the office.

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My associates on the committee having charged me with this interesting duty, I avail myself of the opportunity, in my own and in their behalf, to assure you the high appreciation in which your personal and Masonic character is held by your Companions throughout the country, and that your compliance with their wishes thus unanimously expressed, would be received by them as renewed evidence of your continued attachment to our beloved and time-honored Institution, and of your well known readiness to promote its honor and interest.

I am further instructed to inform you that the M. E. and Rev. Paul Dean, P. G. High Priest, has been requested by the G. G. Chapter to induct you into office, which duty, he directs me to say, that he will take great pleasure in discharging at such time as may best suit your convenience; and that for this purpose, the G. Chapter of Massachusetts has instructed its High Priest to call a meeting of that body, whenever it shall be convenient for the G. G. High Priest elect to be present. I have the honor to be, very truly and fraternally,

Your friend and Companion,

To Hon. R. P. DUNLAP, Brunswick, Me.

EDWARD A. RAYMOND,

For the Committee.

BRUNSWICK, ME., Nov. 11, 1847.

E. Companion :—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your commuDication of the 8th inst., advising me of my election to the office of General Graud High Priest of the General Grand Chapter of the United States.

An expression of confidence so plain and unequivocal, I cannot consider myself at liberty to disregard. I accept, therefore, the responsible station assigned me by the partiality of my Companions, and will visit your city on Tuesday, the 30th of the present month, for the purpose of being inducted into office.

With high regard, truly and fraternally yours,

EDWARD A. RAYMOND, Esq.

R. P. DUNLAP.

ON THE PILLARS AT THE PORCH OF THE TEM

PLE.

BY ALBERT G. MACKEY, M. D.,

G. SECRETARY AND G. LECTURER OF 8. CAROLINA.

THERE is no part of the architecture of the ancient Temple, which is so difficult to be understood in its details, as the scriptural account of the two memorable pillars that stood at the porch. Masons in general, intimately as the symbolic signification of these pillars is connected with some of the most beautiful portions of their ritual, appear to have but a confused notion of their construction, and of the true disposition of the various parts of which they were composed. Many attempts have been made by biblical commentators to disentangle the labyrinthine difficulties which surround the description in the books of Kings and Chronicles, in the works of Josephus, and in the writings of the Jewish Talmudists and Rabbins.

Another effort, in which the principal object will be to adapt the biblical history to our Masonic traditions, and to condense, in one brief essay, the multitude of learned thoughts and suggestions which have been published on this abstruse topic, may possibly, by simplifying an intricate subject, become useful as well as interesting to the Masonic reader. I must acknowledge, however, in the commencement, my indebtedness to the profound work of Lightfoot, entitled "A Prospect of the Temple," for much valuable information, although I have been sometimes reluctantly compelled to dissent from his conclusions.

The situation of these pillars, according to Lightfoot, was within the Porch, at its very entrance and on each side of the gate. They were therefore seen, one on the right and the other on the left, as soon as the visitor stepped within the Porch. And this, it will be remembered, in confirmation, is the very spot where Ezekiel places the pillars that he saw in his vision of the Temple. "The length of the porch was twenty cubits and the breadth eleven cubits; and he brought me by the steps whereby they went up to it, and there were pillars by the posts, one on this side and another on that side." Ezek. xi. 49.

These pillars, we are told, were of brass, as well as the chapiters that surmounted them, and were cast hollow. The thickness of the brass of each pillar was "four fingers or a hand's breadth," which is equal to three inches. According to the accounts in I. Kings, viii. 15, and in Jeremiah lii. 21, the circumference of each pillar was twelve cubits. Now according to the Jewish computation, the cubit used in the measurement of the Temple buildings, was six hand-breadths, or eighteen inches. According to the tables of Bishop Cumberland, the cubit was rather more, he making it about twentytwo inches; but I adhere to the measure laid down by the Jewish writers, as probably more correct and certainly more simple for calculation. The circumference of each pillar, reduced by this scale to English measure, would be eighteen feet, and its diameter about six.

*If this position he the correct one, and Lightfoot supports the hypothesis by strong arguinents, then Oliver, as well as most of our lecturers, is wrong in the statement that the pillars were placed before the Porch of the Temple and must have been passed before entering it. See Oliver & "Landmarks," vol. 1, p. 451.

The reader of the scriptural accounts of these pillars will be not a little puzzled with the apparent discrepancies that are found in the estimates of their height as given in Kings and Chronicles. In the former book, it is said their height was eighteen cubits, and in the latter that it was thirtyfive. But the discrepancy is easily reconciled by supposing, which indeed must have been the case, that, in the book of Kings, the pillars are spoken of separately, and that, in Chronicles, their aggregate height is calculated; and the reason why, in this latter book their united height is placed at thirty five cubits instead of thirtysix, which would be the double of eighteen, is because they are there measured as they appeared with the chapiters upon them, and half a cubit of each pillar was concealed in what Lightfoot calls "the hole of the chapiter," that is, half a cubit's depth of the lower edge of the chapiter covered the top of the pillar, making each pillar apparently only 17 1-2 cubits high, or the two 35 cubits, as laid down in the book of Chronicles.

This is a much better method of reconciling the discrepancy than that adopted by Calcott, who supposes that the pedestals of the pillars were seventeen cubits high,—a violation of every rule of architectural proportion, with which we would be reluctant to charge the memory of so "cunning a workman" as Hiram the Builder. The account in Jeremiah agrees with that in Kings. The height, therefore, of each of these pillars was, in English measure, twentyseven feet. The chapiter or pomel was five cubits more, but as half a cubit was common to both pillar and chapiter, the whole height from the ground to the top of the chapiter was twentytwo cubits and a half, or thirtythree feet and nine inches.

Each of these pillars was surmounted by a chapiter, which was five cubits or seven and a half feet in height. The shape and construction of this chapiter demands some consideration. The Hebrew word which is used in this place is

, or koteret. Its root is to be found in the word, keter, which signifies a "crown," and is so used in Esther, vi. 8, to designate the royal diadem of the king of Persia. The Chaldaic version expressly calls the chapiter "a crown," but Rabbi Solomon, in his commentary, uses the word, siguifying "a pomel or globe," and Levi Gershom describes it as "like two crowns joined together." Lightfoot says, "it was a huge, great oval, five cubits high, and did not only sit upon the head of the pillars, but also flowered or spread them, being larger about, a great deal, than the pillars themselves." The Jewish commentators say that the two lower cubits of its surface were entirely plain, but that the three upper were richly ornamented. To this ornamental part we now arrive.

In I. Kings, vii. 17-20, 22, the ornaments of the chapiters are thus described:

"And nets of checker-work and wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters which were upon the tops of the pillars; seven for the one chapiter and seven for the other chapiter.

"And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates: and so did he for the other chapiter.

"And the chapiters that were upon the tops of the pillars were of lily work in the porch, four cubits.

"And the chapiters upon the two pillars had pomegranates also above, over against the belly which was by the network and the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other chapiter.

"And upon the top of the pillars was lily work; so was the work of the pillars finished."

With the aid of Lightfoot, I will endeavor to render this description, which appears somewhat confused and unintelligible, plainer and more comprehensible. The "nets of checker work" is the first ornament mentioned. The words thus translated are, in the original, w nʊyo `ɔɔw, which Lightfoot prefers rendering "thickets of branch work"; and he thinks that the true meaning of the passage is, that "the chapiters were curiously wrought with branch work, seven goodly branches standing up from the belly of the oval, and their boughs and leaves curiously and lovelily intermingled and interwoven, one with another." He derives his reason for this version from the fact that the same word, na, is translated "thicket," in the passage in Genesis, (xxii. 13,) where the ram is described as "being caught in a thicket by his horns ;" and in various other passages the word is to be similarly translated. But on the other hand, we find it used in the book of Job where it evidently signifies a net made of meshes: "For he is cast into a net by his own feet and he walketh upon a snare." Job, xvii. 8. In II. Kings, 1, 2, the same word is used, where our translators have rendered it a lattice: "Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber." I aın, therefore, not inclined to adopt the emendation, but rather coincide with the received version as well as the Masonic tradition that this ornament was a simple net-work or fabric consisting of reticulated lines.

The "wreaths of chain work," that are next spoken of, are less difficult to be understood. The word here translated "wreaths,” is, and is to be found in Deuteronomy, xxii. 12, where it distinctly means fringes: "Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture." Fringes, it should also be translated here. The "fringes of chain work," we suppose, were, therefore, attached to, and hung down from, the net work spoken of above, and were probably in this case, as when used upon the Jewish garments, intended as a "memorial of the law."

Below the net work were placed two rows of pomegranates, an hundred in each row. Lightfoot, adhering to his notion that the net work was a thicket of boughs and leaves, presumes that the pomegranates "were wrought artificially below the boughs of these branches, as if they had been the apples that those branches bare." But if, as I contend, the net work was simply what that word imports, then it must be supposed that the pomegranates were upon or mingled with, the "fringes of chain work." In this I am supported by the description in II. Chronicles, iii. 16, where it is said, "he made an hundred pomegranates and put them on the chains."

The "lily work" is the last ornament that demands our attention. And here the description of Lightfoot is so clear and evidently correct, that I shall not hesitate to quote it at length: "At the head of the pillar, even at the setting on of the chapiter, there was a curious and a large border or circle of lily work, which stood out four cubits under the chapiter, and then turned down, every lily or long tongue of brass with a neat bending, and so seemed as a flowered crown to the head of the pillar, and as a curious garland whereon the chapiter had its seat."

There is a very common error among Masons, which has been fostered by the plates in our "Monitors," that there were on the pillars chapiters, and that these chapiters were again surmounted by globes. The truth, however, is, that the chapiters themselves were the pomels or globes, to which our lecture in the