sts--in
reality a brotherhood of initiates and their pupils--were the
custodians. These ceremonies were made the occasion for the initiation
of neophytes into the order, and the advancement of the already
initiated into its successive degrees. For the practice of such rites,
and others designed to impress not the elect but the multitude, the
great temples of Egypt were constructed. Everything about them was
calculated to induce a deep seriousness of mind, and to inspire
feelings of awe, dread and even terror, so as to test the candidate's
fortitude of soul to the utmost.

The avenue of approach to an Egyptian temple was flanked on both
sides, sometimes for a mile or more, with great stone sphinxes--that
emblem of man's dual nature, the god emerging from the beast. The
entrance was through a single high doorway between two towering
pylons, presenting a vast surface sculptured and painted over with
many strange and enigmatic figures, and flanked by aspiring obelisks
and seated colossi with faces austere and calm. The large court thus
entered was surrounded by high walls and colonnades, but was open
to the sky. Opposite the first doorway was another, admitting to a
somewhat smaller enclosure, a forest of enormous carved and painted
columns supporting a roof through the apertures of which sunshine
gleamed or dim light filtered down. Beyond this in turn were other
courts and apartments culminating in some inmost sacred sanctuary.

Not alone in their temples, but in their tombs and pyramids and
all the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians, there is the same
insistence upon the sublimity, mystery and awefulness of life,
which they seem to have felt so profoundly. But more than this, the
conscious thought of the masters who conceived them, the buildings of
Egypt give utterance also to the toil and suffering of the thousands
of slaves and captives which hewed the stones out of the heart of the
rock, dragged them long distances and placed them one upon another, so
that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them
no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt
presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law.

In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul
awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once
of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope.
Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilica