of metal, or other durable
and worthy material, contained within the apartment of council, as
also the Holy Bible; nor will I ever see a council opened for
business, without the ceremony of testing the mark, exercised on
the character of every brother, prayers, and the reading of the
35th Psalm of David; nor will I ever see, consent to, or
countenance, more than two persons of the same business or calling
in life, to belong to, or be inducted and advanced in any one
council of which I am a member, at the same time; nothing therein
going to exclude members from other parts of the country, or from
foreign parts, from joining us, if they consent formally and truly
to stand in deference and defence, first, of their special
BAR-BRETHREN in the council, nor to prevent advancements to fill
vacancies, occasioned by death or removal. To all this, and every
part thereof, I do now, as before, by the honor and power of the
mark, as by an honorable and awful oath, which confirmeth all
things in the dread presence of the Most Holy and Almighty God,
solemnly and in truth, bind and obligate my soul; and in the
earthly penalties, to wit, that, for the violation of the least
matter or particle of any of the here taken obligations, I become
the silent and mute subject of the displeasure of the Illustrious
Order, and have their power and wrath turned on my head, to my
destruction and dishonor, which, like the NAIL OF JAEL, may be the
sure end of an unworthy wretch, by piercing my temples with a true
sense of my ingratitude--and for a breach of silence in case of
such an unhappy event, that I shall die the infamous death of a
traitor, by having a spear, or other sharp weapon, like as my
Lord, thrust in my left side--bearing testimony, even in death, of
the power of the mark of the Holy and Illustrious Cross, before I.
H. S., our thrice Illustrious Counsellor in Heaven, the Grand
Council of the good. To this I swear.

* * * * *

THE LODGE OF PERFECTION: COMPRISING THE ELEVEN INEFFABLE DEGREES OF
MASONRY.

In these several degrees some name of God is used, as the
distinguishing word. Each name, however, is only a mode of
pronouncing the Hebrew word Jehovah. The later Jews have a
superstitious fear of pronouncing that name. Whenever it occurs in
the Hebrew Text, they substitute the word Adonai in its place. To
those who read the origi