the oldest
classic of China, _The Book of History_, dating back to the twentieth
century before Christ, we read the instruction: "Ye officers of the
Government, apply the compasses." Even if we begin where _The Book of
History_ ends, we find many such allusions more than seven hundred
years before the Christian era. For example, in the famous canonical
work, called _The Great Learning_, which has been referred to the
fifth century B.C., we read, that a man should abstain from doing unto
others what he would not they should do to him; "and this," the writer
adds, "is called the principle of acting on the square." So also
Confucius and his great follower, Mencius. In the writings of Mencius
it is taught that men should apply the square and compasses morally to
their lives, and the level and the marking line besides, if they would
walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom, and keep themselves
within the bounds of honor and virtue.[20] In the sixth book of his
philosophy we find these words:

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A Master Mason, in teaching apprentices, makes use of the
compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged in the pursuit
of wisdom must also make use of the compass and square.[21]
#/

There are even evidences, in the earliest historic records of China,
of the existence of a system of faith expressed in allegoric form, and
illustrated by the symbols of building. The secrets of this faith seem
to have been orally transmitted, the leaders alone pretending to have
full knowledge of them. Oddly enough, it seems to have gathered about
a symbolical temple put up in the desert, that the various officers of
the faith were distinguished by symbolic jewels, and that at its rites
they wore leather aprons.[22] From such records as we have it is not
possible to say whether the builders themselves used their tools as
emblems, or whether it was the thinkers who first used them to teach
moral truths. In any case, they were understood; and the point here is
that, thus early, the tools of the builder were teachers of wise and
good and beautiful truth. Indeed, we need not go outside the Bible to
find both the materials and working tools of the Mason so
employed:[23]

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For every house is builded by some man; but the builder of
all things is God ... whose house we are.[24]

Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a tried stone, a
precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.[25]

The stone which the bui