The great pyramid passages and chambers

workers to dig down through the hills of rubbish at the north side, and having exposed three of the original casing-stones in situ, adhering closely by their original cement to the platform base of the building, demonstrated what was once the outside of the Great Pyramid—Plate VII. These casing-stones consisted of white, dense limestone, almost like marble, and exhibited matchless workmanship practically as true as modern work by optical instrument-makers. The joints are no thicker than silver-paper, yet they include between the polished surfaces an extraordinarily fine film of white cement.

86 Professor Flinders Petrie in his work, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, gives a description of the joints of these casing-stones. He writes: ‘‘ The mean thickness of the joints there is one-fiftieth part of an inch; and the mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight line, and from a true square, is but one-hundredth part of an inch ina length of 75 inches up the face, an amount of accuracy equal to most modern optician’s straight-edges of such a length. These joints, with an area of some 35 square feet each, were not only worked as finely as this, but were cemented throughout. Though the stones were brought as close as one-five-hundredth part of an inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean opening of the joint was but one-fiftieth part of an inch, yet the builders managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved—some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the sides would be careful work, but to do so with cement in the joints seems almost impossible.’ Colonel Howard Vyse, in drawing attention to this wonderful cement, writes: ‘‘ Such is the tenacity of the cement with which they (the casing-stones) are held together, that a fragment of one that has been destroyed remained firmly fixed in its original alignment, notwithstanding the lapse of time, and the violence to which it had been exposed '’—Plate VIII.

87 Thus does the Great Master Architect illustrate the close union of all the “ living-stones with the Headstone and with each other. The invisible cement which binds them so tenaciously together is Love. But before they are ready to be compactly fitted together and the building completed, they must first undergo much knocking, shaping and polishing to conform them to the harmonious lines of the top-stone, for the least want of conformity in any of these “stones” would prevent their close adherence to their fellow-members. Like their ‘chief corner-stone,’ they must be perfected through sufferings

“Until by means of strokes and blows, The shapeless mass appears Symmetric, polished, beautiful, To stand th’ eternal years.”

RESUME OF SCRIPTURAL TEXTS.

Psa, 118. 22 The stone which the builders re- Isa, 28. 16 Therefore thus saith the Lord God, fused is become the head stone of the Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a corner. stone, a tried stone, a precious corner

23 This is the Lord's doing it is mar- stone, a sure foundation: he that bevellous in our eyes. lieveth shall not make haste,

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