y division
which so universally prevailed throughout the ancient world, and the
influence of which is still felt even in the common day life and
observances of our time. Seven was, among the Hebrews, their perfect
number; and hence we see it continually recurring in all their sacred
rites. The creation was perfected in seven days; seven priests, with
seven trumpets, encompassed the walls of Jericho for seven days; Noah
received seven days' notice of the commencement of the deluge, and seven
persons accompanied him into the ark, which rested on Mount Ararat on the
seventh month; Solomon was seven years in building the temple: and there
are hundreds of other instances of the prominence of this talismanic
number, if there were either time or necessity to cite them.

Among the Gentiles the same number was equally sacred. Pythagoras called
it a "venerable number." The septenary division of time into weeks of
seven days, although not universal, as has been generally supposed, was
sufficiently so to indicate the influence of the number. And it is
remarkable, as perhaps in some way referring to the seven-stepped ladder
which we have been considering, that in the ancient Mysteries, as Apuleius
informs us, the candidate was seven times washed in the consecrated waters
of ablution.

There is, then, an anomaly in giving to the mystical ladder of Masonry
only _three_ rounds. It is an anomaly, however, with which Masonry has had
nothing to do. The error arose from the ignorance of those inventors who
first engraved the masonic symbols for our monitors. The ladder of
Masonry, like the equipollent ladders of its kindred institutions, always
had seven steps, although in modern times the three principal or upper
ones are alone alluded to. These rounds, beginning at the lowest, are
_Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice, Faith, Hope,_ and _Charity_.
Charity, therefore, takes the same place in the ladder of masonic virtues
as the sun does in the ladder of planets. In the ladder of metals we find
gold, and in that of colors yellow, occupying the same elevated position.
Now, St. Paul explains Charity as signifying, not alms-giving, which is
the modern popular meaning, but love--that love which "suffereth long and
is kind;" and when, in our lectures on this subject, we speak of it as the
greatest of virtues, because, when Faith is lost and Hope has ceased, it
extends "beyond the grave to realms of endless bliss," we there refer it
to the