e covenant had been deposited in its appropriate
place, and the Shekinah was hovering over it, the high priest alone, and
on one day only in the whole year, was permitted, after the most careful
purification, to enter with bare feet, and to pronounce, with fearful
veneration, the tetragrammaton or omnific word.

And into the Master Mason's lodge--this holy of holies of the masonic
temple, where the solemn truths of death and immortality are
inculcated--the aspirant, on entering, should purify his heart from every
contamination, and remember, with a due sense of their symbolic
application, those words that once broke upon the astonished ears of the
old patriarch, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon
thou standest is holy ground."

XIX.

The Rite of Investiture.

Another ritualistic symbolism, of still more importance and interest, is
the _rite of investiture_.

The rite of investiture, called, in the colloquially technical language of
the order, the _ceremony of clothing_, brings us at once to the
consideration of that well-known symbol of Freemasonry, the LAMB-SKIN
APRON.

This rite of investiture, or the placing upon the aspirant some garment,
as an indication of his appropriate preparation for the ceremonies in
which he was about to engage, prevailed in all the ancient initiations. A
few of them only it will be requisite to consider.

Thus in the Levitical economy of the Israelites the priests always wore
the abnet, or linen apron, or girdle, as a part of the investiture of the
priesthood. This, with the other garments, was to be worn, as the text
expresses it, "for glory and for beauty," or, as it has been explained by
a learned commentator, "as emblematical of that holiness and purity which
ever characterize the divine nature, and the worship which is worthy of
him."

In the Persian Mysteries of Mithras, the candidate, having first received
light, was invested with a girdle, a crown or mitre, a purple tunic, and,
lastly, a white apron.

In the initiations practised in Hindostan, in the ceremony of investiture
was substituted the sash, or sacred zennaar, consisting of a cord,
composed of nine threads twisted into a knot at the end, and hanging from
the left shoulder to the right hip. This was, perhaps, the type of the
masonic scarf, which is, or ought to be, always worn in the same position.

The Jewish sect of the Essenes, who approached nearer than any other
secret inst