CHAPTER XXIII.

SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY,

And the Christian Prophetic Grand Gallery.

Biblical Views of Metrology in General.

VIEWING the Great Pyramid first of all as a monument of metrology alone, that subject has been shown from Scripture by many writers (as Michaelis, in Germany; Paucton, in France; and more recently, John Taylor, in England) to have been deemed worthy of Divine attention, or of Providence, for the good of man. Such instructions as the following having been issued through the approved medium of inspired men honoured with the commands of Revelation, viz.:—

“Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.

“Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

“Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord.”—Leviticus xix. 35—37.

“But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”—Deuteronomy xxv. 15.

“A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.”—Proverbs xi. 1.

“A just weight and balance are the Lord’s: all the weights of the bag are his work.”—Proverbs xvi. 11.

“Thus saith the Lord God; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord God.

“Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath.

“The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth part of an homer, and the ephah the tenth part of an homer: the measure thereof shall be after the homer.”—Ezek. xlv. 9—11.

536This was a department of the Holy Service which King David had appointed, in his days, a portion of the Levites to attend to;¹ and his splendid son and successor, Solomon, established the grand standards of measure in the noblest proportions:² while Moses had been, in his still earlier day, exceedingly particular in all his metrological institutions, as well as impressive in his method of carrying them out;³ his chief standard measures being, as already shown, the earth and heaven founded standards of the Great Pyramid itself (see pp. 347, 355, 395); if they were not also those which had been originally elaborated (according to Josephus) by Seth and his descendants in opposition to the bad inventions of Cain, and under the direct approval of the Almighty. (See pp. 345 and 352.)

With the structure of the Great Pyramid building, indeed, in its main design and ultimate purposes (though never so distinctly or categorically alluded to in Scripture, as thereby to give men any excuse for turning aside to it, for any kind of spiritual worship), the inspired writers of both the Old and New Testaments have evinced a very considerable acquaintance. And not dry knowledge only; for those men, “gifted with thoughts above their thoughts,” have shown an amount of feeling, only to be explained by a holy consciousness of the part which the monument is one day to serve, in manifesting forth in modes adapted to these and the approaching times, the original and ineffable inspiration of Scripture,—as well as the practical reasons for expecting, both the rapture of the true church to meet the Lord in the air, and after that 537His glorious return with his perfected saints following Him to an undoubted personal reign, through a long miraculous season over the entire earth.

Old Testament Witnesses to the Great Pyramid.

So well, too, were the mechanical steps for the foundation of the Great Pyramid understood (those steps being the heavy preliminary works of preparation and subterranean masonry described by Herodotus as having characterized the Great Pyramid; and declared by Lepsius (and his “law” so universally approved by all Egyptologists), to have been eschewed in every other Pyramid erected altogether by, and for, Cainite Egyptian idolaters—see pp. 103, 410) ;—so well, I say, were those features understood by the inspired writers, that the mysterious things of Nature visible to, but not easily apprehended by uninstructed men in the early ages, were occasionally described in Scripture in terms of those simpler features of the Great Pyramid.

Thus, when we read in Job xxxviii., marginally corrected, that the Lord answered the patriarch out of the whirlwind, demanding with power,—

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou knowest understanding.

“Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest; or who hath stretched the line upon it?

“Whereupon are the sockets thereof made to sink? or who laid the corner-stone thereof;

“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

—it is quite plain (since at least John Taylor first pointed it out; for to him we owe almost entirely this branch of the subject) that if the creation of the earth is here alluded to, it is described under a type of something else, and not as the earth really was created; or both as we know it by modern science to be, and as it 538was described in chap. xxvi. of the same Book of Job, in the following words:—

“He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”

The earliest of the first-quoted descriptions might apply to the building of any ordinary house; but as successive practical features are enumerated, the building of a stone pyramid by careful measure, and in the Promethean, or forethought, manner of the Great Pyramid, on a previously prepared platform of rock, is the only known work that will fully correspond.

The stretching of the line upon it, is more applicable to the inclined surface of a pyramid with an angle to the horizon of 51° 51′, than to the vertical walls of any ordinary house; and—after the pointed and most apposite question, “Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades?”—the further Divine interrogation,—“Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?”—has been happily explained very lately by the Rev. F. R. A. Glover. For he shows it to be, the Great Pyramid’s chronological use of the grand celestial cycle of the precessional movement of the Pleiades, taken at a particular epoch in connection with a special polar distance and meridian transit of the circumpolar star α Draconis; the memorial of which stellar positions in the heavens, made “dominant in the earth,” is exhibited by the lower portion of the entrance-passage of the Great Pyramid, set backwards and downwards into, and deep, deep into, the solid rock of the hill; but in precisely such a direction as to suit the critical position of those two stars under the influence of precession, at the very epoch of the Pyramid’s foundation. (See pp. 371—387.)

But what was meant by “the sockets thereof being made to sink,”—might have been uncertain, had it not 539been for the researches of the French savants at the Great Pyramid in 1800; for they described, without reference to this sentence, the remarkable sockets which had been formed in the previously levelled area of rock on which this Pyramid stands; and (with the assistance of the more modern investigations in 1865) the manner in which each of the lower four corner-stones of the Pyramid were fitted into these prepared hollows in the rock,—causing them to become at once the fiducial points from which all good measurers have, ever since then, stretched their measuring-lines on the building. (See pp. 23, 38, 336.)

Four of the five corner-stones of the Pyramid are thus indicated as of Scriptural notice; while the fifth, which is, in fact, of an entirely diverse character and greater importance, being not one of the foundations, but the topmost portion of the whole building, is alluded to in Job separately; more gloriously; and even as being the finishing and crowning portion of the whole intended work. For when that topmost corner-stone, emphatically called “the corner-stone,” was finally placed,—it is said that the act was greeted by “the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy.”

The Biblical interpretation of the personages here alluded to is, with little doubt, as John Taylor pointed out, “the faithful and the true converts”; “as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” And all such who were present at the time, rejoiced in seeing the completion of the Great Pyramid with a joy far exceeding what the erection of any ordinary building, however palatial, might have been expected to give them; for their cry, when the head-stone of this one “great mountain was brought out with shoutings,” took the exquisite form of “Grace, grace unto it!” ² And if they so cried, and it is so 540reported in the Holy Bible, was it not because they recognised that that stone had been appointed by Divine wisdom, and in the mystery of God's primeval proceedings towards man, to recall some essential ideas connected with the one central point about which all Scripture revolves; viz. the Son of God; His early care for the human race, in several temporary Theophanies; His mediæval incarnation and sacrifice, as the God-man Jesus Christ, for the salvation of all sinners; and, finally, His future Kingly and Divine rule over all the nations of men? But of this elevated Scriptural Centre, we shall be instructed more clearly in the New Testament.

New Testament Allusions to the Great Pyramid.

From a practical worker like St. Paul, we have even a most methodical illustration, in the use which he makes of certain constructive differences between the four lower corner-stones, and the single corner-stone above; constructive differences which, if applicable to any other building at all, are only fully applicable to the awe-inspiring Great Pyramid; for his words are—

“Ye are fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone, in whom the whole building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.” ³

This fitly framing of the whole building as it grows from a broad, four cornered, four socketed, base upwards into one corner-stone above, and which is called the chief, the upper, corner-stone,—was shown by John Taylor to be an unmistakable allusion to the Great Pyramid; and this same noble figurative employment of that particular topmost stone, viz. its representation of the Messiah, and His crowning the scheme of the 541redemption of individual man,—is one frequently employed in Holy Scripture; as in Psalm cxviii. 22; in the Gospels, and the Epistles.* The stone is there alluded to, not only as the chief corner-stone, “elect and precious,” made “the head of the corner” (which is only perfectly and pre-eminently true of the topmost angle of a Pyramid), but as having been for a long time “disallowed by the builders,” and existing only as “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to them.”⁴

The simile is easily and perfectly applicable to our Saviour's appearance on earth; yet evidently, from the very principle of all such figurative allusions, a something bearing on the nature of the figure made use of, must, Mr. Taylor urged, have been existing on the earth before; or it would never have been employed.

Now we know that the Great Pyramid did stand on its desert hill before any of the inspired authors wrote; and also, that they seem to have been spiritually conversant with many principles of its construction, although they were not visitors to the land of Egypt; and it is they who allude to some notorious objections by the builders against the head corner-stone, while their work was in progress.

What were these?

The stones required for building the Great Pyramid were evidently, from the quarry-marks and instructions to the masons still legible upon some of them, prepared 542at the quarries according to the architect's orders a long time beforehand. For the vast majority, too, of stones, nothing but one unvarying figure, rather flattish and chiefly rectangular, was required. But amongst them, and different therefrom, one was ordered which did not chime in with any of the Egyptian building notions; certainly not of their temples, tombs, or palaces. For, in place of being cubic, or with nearly parallel sides and rectangular corners, this single stone was all acutely angled; all sharp points; so that turn it over on any side as it lay on the ground, one sharp corner, or edge, was always sticking up in the air; as, too, could not but be the case when the stone was a sort of model pyramid in itself, with five sides, five corners, and sixteen distinct angles.⁵

Such a stone was of course "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence"² to builders whose heads did not understand, and hearts did not appreciate, the work they were engaged upon. It was to them "the terrible crystal;"³ the pointed stone "on which whosoever shall fall, shall be broken;" and so huge a stone as a coping for the vast structure of the whole Great Pyramid, that "on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."⁴

Yet when once this unique, five-cornered, and many-angled stone was raised up to its intended place on the summit of the Great Pyramid, the propriety of its figure must have appeared evident to every impartial beholder; though the Egyptian workmen, as may be gathered from Herodotus, notwithstanding that they were forcibly prevented from breaking out into open opposition, yet went on concealing sinful hatred in their hearts; and did—after the deaths of Cheops and Chephren, and after the Shepherd-Prince Philitis had 543left the country—return with renewed vehemence to their bestial idolatry under Mencheres, "like dogs to their vomit, or the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." ⁶

For such determined resisters of grace was surely prepared, in their very midst, that type of the bottomless pit, the not sepulchral, but really unfinished and floorless subterranean chamber in the Great Pyramid (see pp. 100, 106, 222, 434), yawning to receive them :—

"For they are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit."²

"This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God."—Ezekiel xxxi. 14 and 18.

But again, and now for the instruction of backsliding Israel, this prophetic and historic monument—which had no similar predecessor—was without architectural parentage or descent; and yet took rank at once as the most kingly of all architecture up to the present time (see p. 505),—this more than historic monument, I say, seems to speak to us in the words of the only wise Architect :—

"I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass."

"I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I showed it to thee; lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image and my molten image hath commanded them."—Isaiah xlviii. 3 and 5.

Never, then, was there any building so perfect as the Great Pyramid in fulfilling both the earliest words of the Lord given by Inspiration, and also the latest types of the Messiah. And if the Great Pyramid is not mentioned by actual name in the New Testament, that may arise from—as circumstances still to be related will indicate—its being connected, not so much with the First 544and now long past, coming of Christ (which indeed the New Testament was mainly to chronicle, expound and recommend to man),—as for His Second, and still future coming for the benefit of nations. An event of little practical importance in the personal Christianity and Gospel ministrations to each individual soul for its own salvation, eighteen centuries ago;—but of the utmost consequence to all, both collectively and individually now, if the time be really close at hand.

Of the Future in the Great Pyramid.

If there is any subject wherein we should pay special attention to that truly Christian warning, “Be not high-minded, but fear,” it ought to prevail in any attempt to read what it has pleased Divine Inspiration to record of the future, whether in writing or monumentalization.

But though the danger of erring be great, we are not, therefore, instructed not to make any attempt; on the contrary, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,”⁷ was given unto him by God, in order “to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass”: and those particular servants were promised blessing, who should both read and hear the words of that prophecy, and struggle in spirit and wrestle in prayer to understand its mysterious sayings even in number. Indeed, as the time of the end draws near, it would even seem to be a growing duty of the present day to compare the end, thus far arrived at, with what was said of it in the beginning; and thereby realize more Scripture miracles (viz. its having prophesied future events truly) in our own day, and before our own eyes; together with such positive, and irresistible proof that there is no God like our God of Israel and the Bible.

The Grand Gallery Prophecies of the Christian Religion.

Now we have already,. in Chapter XX., concluded that the north wall of the Grand Gallery represents the date of the Birth of Christ; and that thence, upwards, along the said gallery's inclined floor, stretches Christian religious history since that time. Not that we are to expect to meet with markings to show every, or even any, event of mere human ecclesiastical arrangements; for the region begins with the birth of the Son of God, as Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour; and thereby bids us look to the supernatural and the Divinely Inspired only.

But if it so begins, how does the said region, viz. the Grand Gallery, end?

The long-continued floor line, passing between the ramps and their ramp-holes on either side, is interrupted only by a modern dilapidation or two, including some shallow foot-holds, until we arrive at the great step, 3 feet high; and then, at 61 inches horizontal beyond that, comes the south end of the Grand Gallery. And a positive end, too, it is of the said Gallery; for though there may be on the step-level, a low passage leading on further to the Ante-chamber and King's Chamber (see Plates XIV. and XVI.), and a still smaller and ordinarily quite inaccessible passage-way leading from very high up, or close under the ceiling of the Grand Gallery to the lowest of the hollows of construction over the King's Chamber,—yet neither of these narrow ways can represent the majestic Grand Gallery, with the seven overlappings of its walls, its 36 roof-stones, and 28 ramp-holes on either side. All these things end above that great 36-inch step, and are ended inwardly and positively upon themselves with the "impending" south wall (see p. 462); and 546without the slightest symbolization of anything like uniform perpetuity; or of the higher, religious, history repeating itself mechanically through indefinite ages.

Hence for all those who have already accepted the beginning of the Grand Gallery, for the beginning of the Christian Dispensation which commenced 1,879 years ago, and under which we are still living,—there is nothing for it but also to accept that a period, distinct and finite, was appointed to that Dispensation by God, and that that end is close upon us. Not an end of the world, or of nations, or of men; or unhappily of armies and slaughterous wars; but of some of the arrangements and forms of religious service to God, as required by the personal Gospel published 1,850 years ago.

How close then, is such an end? The answer to that question must depend solely on the length of the Grand Gallery by measure in Pyramid inches.

As usual with the accounts of travellers at the Great Pyramid, there are many various results in print; and even Howard-Vyse, whose length of the external base-side of the monument was too great, has published a length for the Grand Gallery equal to only 1,872 Pyramid inches, or a time which is now past: while Mr. Lane, on the contrary, gave one equal to 1,894 Pyramid inches. My own measures, however, taken in 1865, at a far greater sacrifice of time and labour than theirs, amounted to, for the length up to the great step, 1813.0 Pyramid inches; and thence up to the end wall, in the line concluded for the slanting floor, 68 inches farther, = 1881.0 Pyramid inches in all; or, as computed more exactly by Mr. H. A. Powers, of Cincinnati,⁸ 1881.4.

547Something, then, seems to be appointed to take place at that particular time, and it is much easier to say what it is not, than what it is. It is not, for instance, as just stated above, “the end of the world,”—for there is a “passage-floor,” leading on from the great step, to the Ante-chamber; through that also, and onwards into the King’s Chamber, the granite-lined and most glorious part of the whole interior of the building. And equally it is not Christ’s second coming, neither is it the Millennium beginning, for there is rather a cessation, or at least a decrease, than an exaltation, of the Christian faith, though but for a short time only, indicated at that 1881.4 A.D. point of the progress of time and history.

In fact, it is rather like the unexampled days of future trouble which our Saviour himself announced should immediately precede His second, but which must as certainly succeed the dispensation of His first, coming.

Of the unutterable anguishes of those most exceptional days to come, we read (Mark xiii. 19) that “there shall be affliction, such as there was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.” But its duration will not be long; “for,” continues the Saviour, “except the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved; but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.”

The severities of those times are Pyramidally expressed at the place by the exit passage from the south end of the Grand Gallery being lower still than any of the low passages which marked the troubles of the profane world 548in early times. Those passages were 47 inches in transverse, and 52 in vertical, height; painfully low, therefore, for any full-sized man to creep through; but the passage after 1881.4 A.D. is only 44 inches in vertical height, and is the most trying part of the whole passage system. But this excruciating portion is exceedingly short; for after no more than 53 inches in length, it enters into the freedom of the Ante-chamber, its quiet, peace and presently granite protection.

Of the Upper way of Escape from the further End of the Grand Gallery.

But the final reception into the Ante-chamber is not the only mode of mitigating the threatened horrors of that lower, middle, passage; for before entering that at all, there is a very peculiar mode of possible entire escape, from the summit end of the Grand Gallery itself; though only for a few, and not by their own power.

This escape is by the doorway of exit into the small passage, at the upper south-east corner (or rather upper Southern end of the East wall) of the Grand Gallery, and is no less than 27 feet above the history-recording floor; only therefore, accessible to something approaching more to winged, and flying, rather than walking, beings; and leading to a sort of retreat, more than apartment for earthly life, immediately over the grand and final granite hall, the so-called King’s Chamber. (See, again, Plate XVI.) That said retreat is one of the five hollows of construction which Colonel Howard-Vyse found to exist above the King’s Chamber; but while the upper four had been absolutely closed in, and about, with solid masonry, the fifth and lowest was furnished as above described with the passage-way leading to it from the almost inaccessible top of the southern end of the Grand Gallery, on the eastern side thereof. Why it was so 549furnished there is nothing either in the scientific, or Egyptologic, theories to show; though in the sacred and historic symbology it immediately reminds of what the Evangelists in the New Testament promise, viz. of the angels being sent to gather up the elect before the dread period of wars and tribulations on earth begins; and also of those elect thus saved, meeting the Lord in the air, and being retained with him in heaven for awhile before His second coming to the earth; this time to establish His visible Kingdom; the Kingdom of stone cut out without hands, ordained to rule over nations in truth, righteousness, and universal extent, by grandly supernatural means, of which the world under the present Christian Dispensation, however Divine its precepts, knows absolutely nothing practically.

The date of the rapture of the saints is necessarily therefore one thing, perhaps now impending, but not to be certainly known as to day and hour by any man; the return of Christ, the Lord, with His glorified saints to commence the Millennium, is quite another, and perhaps a more certainly fixable, time;—as indicated in the Pyramid by the greater proximity of its markings to the chronicling floor-surface.

But all these things, protest resistingly many devout readers, have been continually expected every single year since the Ascension, 1845 years ago. Not a few, too, of the most excellent Evangelistic preachers, have occasionally announced, that all the miraculous raptures of the saints,—away from this earth and into the air to meet the Lord,—might take place before the conclusion of their then discourses; but they never have. Can, therefore, any special reason be now shown from Scripture, as well as from the Great Pyramid, why, at all events, this first of the latter-day miracles should be more likely to occur in, or near to $1881.4$ A.D., than to any of the long past years.

550Those who have studied prophecy earnestly, must be aware that a very great number of results have been brought out, all converging on the year 1881 A.D.; but for the present I will confine myself to one, the latest, as given in his Mongrelian pamphlet, by Dr. Watson F. Quinby, of Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.; and founding, as a matter of course, upon that most chronologically rich and exact of all the prophets, Daniel.

“The rise and fall of the three great empires mentioned by name, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the fourth so well described as evidently to refer to the Roman, have all taken place as foretold; and the time seems approaching for the setting up of the fifth and final kingdom. A ‘great day of preparation for this event is foretold,’ when ‘many shall run to and fro,’ and ‘knowledge shall be increased,’ which may well refer to our own day.

“When shall these things be? In the book of the prophet Daniel it is said, ‘Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city.’ Seventy weeks of years would be four hundred and ninety years, at which time (from the decree to rebuild it) Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. In another vision, though near the same time, he says, ‘How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days.’ These days are usually considered to mean years. Now Jerusalem was destroyed in Anno Domini 70. In order, then, to bring the date to the commencement of our era, the seventy years must be taken from the four hundred and ninety years, which leaves four hundred and twenty years.

“Four hundred and twenty years taken from two thousand and three hundred years, leave eighteen hundred and eighty years, which brings us to the year 551eighteen hundred and eighty-one. ‘Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,’ whatever that may mean.”

And, on the other side, as an additional testimony to how the Grand Gallery measures for total duration to a most miraculous event, may be taken, the Rev. J. J. B. Coles, writes thus from Calcutta:—“If you let fall a plumb-line from the entrance of the way of escape at the S.E. top of the Grand Gallery, it will intersect the top of the great step. So that then, instead of continuing an imaginary line of floor distance measurement through the step, measure up the step, and along the top to the spot where the plumb-line would intersect, and I fancy the measurement would be $1813 + 36 + 31.2 = 1881.2$.”

The Two Pathways, and the Two Religions (Christian and Christless), at the Commencement of the Grand Gallery.

But before proceeding further with the great step, at the Southern, or unaccomplished,—let us return for awhile to the Northern and historically accomplished, end of the Grand Gallery,—to endeavour to understand a certain large arrangement there; viz. the horizontal passage which breaks away from that gallery's ascending line of floor, at the date assumed of Christ's birth, and continues thence on a dull level southward until it ends in the solitary, closed-in, Queen's Chamber.

“The Queen's Chamber,” argues Mr. Hartwell A. Powers, U.S. (in a most eloquent private letter, and still keeping up all the metrical features for metrical purposes already found in it), “is symbolical of the House of Judah and law of Moses, set aside during the dispensation of the Christian religion; i.e. the Christian Grand Gallery's progress upwards and onwards.” (See Plates IX. and XI.)

“Paul, the apostle, says that that law of Moses was 552‘holy, just, and good’ (Rom. x.); but he also says, ‘The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did’ (Heb. vii. 19. See also Heb. ix. 9—11; x. 1). The unfinished floor of this chamber and the passage leading thereto, in contrast with all other floors in the Pyramid, illustrate, to my mind, this ‘imperfection’ of the law; while the fine white stone composing its walls and roof, so exquisitely wrought on surface and joint, tell with emphatic voice that the law was ‘holy, just, and good.’ Again, but four overlappings in its niche, in contrast with seven, the symbol of completeness in Scripture, in the Grand Gallery. True, the room has seven sides, but only six finished in Great Pyramid sense of the term.

“Then, what means that salt exuding so freely from the walls of the Queen’s Chamber and passage thereto? The law says, ‘Every oblation of thy meat-offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering: with all offerings shalt thou offer salt’ (Lev. ii. 13).

““‘The Lord spake unto Aaron, Behold, I also have given the charge of mine heave-offerings of all the hallowed things of the children of Israel :—it is a covenant of salt, for ever before the Lord unto thee and thy seed with thee’ (Num. xviii. 8, 19).

“Abijah said to Jeroboam and all Israel, ‘Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt ?’

“This is a passage much quoted by several recent authors, and much assisted to my understanding by this pillar of witness unto the Lord of Hosts in the land of Egypt, the Great Pyramid, containing salt in abundance only in that part devoted to the House of Judah; though there are slight traces of it in the Grand Gallery, 553where, too, it ought to appear in order to symbolize the seed of David reigning over the House of Israel until the second coming of the Anointed.”

Air Channels, and their Symbolic Allusions to past Judaism and future Christianity.

“Since I first read ‘Life and Work at the Great Pyramid,’” continues Mr. H. A. Powers, “I have never been able to divest myself of the idea that the air-channels of the King’s Chamber were symbolical of the second coming of Christ as King, and his reascension, ‘when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power’ (1 Cor. xv. 24).

“A recent re-perusal of your description of the discovery of the air-channels in the Queen’s Chamber (so contrasting in some respects to those of the King’s Chamber), by Mr. Dixon, has, to my mind, shed much light (from the other side) upon this theory.

“John the Baptist testified saying, ‘Reform! because the Royal Majesty of the Heavens has appeared’ (Matt. iii. 2); thus translated by Benjamin Wilson in the ‘Emphatic Diaglott.’ Mr. Wilson says in a foot note, ‘Basileia means kingly power, authority, royal dignity, majesty, &c., as well as kingdom, realm, or reign.’ He translates Matt. xii. 28, thus, ‘But if it be by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then God’s royal majesty has unexpectedly appeared among you;’ and says in a note, ‘It is not according to fact to make Jesus say that the Kingdom of God has come unto you, as rendered in the common version. The context shows that our Lord is speaking of himself. These miracles were proof of his Messiahship.’

“Now of Jesus it is written, ‘He came to his own (tribe), and his own received him not.’ Again it is written, ‘Their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes 554they have closed,’ &c. (Matt. xiii. 15; Acts xxviii. 27.) That ‘the Scriptures might be fulfilled,’ concerning the House of Judah, their ears were closed, and ‘a veil is upon their hearts even unto this day when Moses is read—nevertheless, when it (House of Judah) shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.’

“Wherefore these closed air-channels of the Queen’s Chamber symbolize the Messiah’s first coming and ascension, unperceived by the House of Judah; nor could these channels be opened until ‘the time of the end’ symbolized by the great 36-inch step in the Grand Gallery; when a ‘man-of-all-work,’ under the direction of his intelligent master, breaks through that ‘intentionally left thin plate (veil) of soft limestone.’ (See pp. 427—430.)

“But the previous labours of such men as Howard-Vyse, John Taylor, and others, prepared the way for Mr. Waynman Dixon to direct Bill Grundy where to ply his hammer and chisel. And thus, doubtless, are the previous labours of John Wilson, Edward Hine, F. R. A. Glover, E. W. Bird, and others, preparing the way for the instrumentality yet to be used, in breaking through the veil yet covering the eyes, and through the plate of stone yet stopping the ears, of the House of Judah, ere their King shall come in his glory.”

The Great Step at the end of the Grand Gallery, and its intimation of existing Religious History in Britain.

Thus far, then, the admirable contribution in a private letter from Mr. Hartwell A. Powers⁹ on the now historic, and accomplished, Queen’s Chamber; and wherein he is joined by many other independent investigators, specially including the remarkable Edward Hine; so that, in so far as rapidly growing testimony is 555concerned, that chamber and the horizontal passage on a dead level leading to it, may be taken as testifying to both the House of Judah, their Mosaic Law, and the Old Testament used as finality, for all the period from the first appearance of Christ and his crucifixion in Jerusalem, up to the present time.

But the ascending floor of the Grand Gallery testifies to Christianity; which, as a Canadian correspondent remarks, continually repeats in effect, “Come up hither.” Not, indeed, those forms of the Christian faith which have forgotten to look forward to the second coming of Christ, and have made for themselves, out of the past alone, worldly temples wherein they repose on the earthly arm of State, forgetful how soon it may turn upon them. Such semi-political Christians may be relegated to share the Queen’s Chamber’s cul de sac with mammon-seeking Jews. But all true Christians desiring and expecting to see their Lord once again upon earth, and a few Jews too, looking forward to the same event and still thinking it the first coming of Messias,—they all ascend the Grand Gallery slope with time, and are ever nearer and nearer to the coming of their Lord.

And who are more particularly, the great national body of these rising, improving, and we may trust approved, Christians?

Some will claim the Church of one nation, and some another; some will argue for spiritual Israel, and others literal and hereditary Israel, whether spread among Teutonic people, or mainly confined to the British Isles and America. And who shall decide amongst them?

None but the Great Pyramid itself. Advance we, therefore, to the great step of 1813 A.D. (i.e. at 1,813 Pyramid inches from the North, or Christian nativity, beginning) of the Grand Gallery, and inquire there what is signified.

556The step marks there, by that date, the most energetic advances made by Great Britain in its latter-day spread of the Bible, and its latter-day preaching of Christianity to all the world. It marks indeed all the most peculiar and precious fruits of voluntary Christianity, apart from State Churches and their political ecclesiastic establishments. Some most excellent officials in the Anglican Church no doubt followed in the line; but it was the Dissenters and laymen who began the carrying about of the pure Gospel to every thirsty soul.¹⁰

But why should we esteem Great Britain in particular as alluded to, by this unique piece of architecture, a step which is too high for a human step, at the further end of the Grand Gallery? Because the height' of this step is precisely the 36.0 inches of the linear national standard of Great Britain at that time. And if the upper surface of the step, from its north edge up to its southern termination, is not also

The first effort of Wilberforce in this cause was in 1793; but it was unsuccessful; and up to 1812, according to a case duly chronicled in the Madras Police Office, on May 22 of that year, all Missionaries who might arrive in India bent on preaching the Gospel to the Natives, were "at once expelled the country" by the British Government, or East India Company acting as such, with its due salaried portion of the State Church of Great Britain.

By the light of the Great Pyramid, we can now easily see that 1793 was not the ordained time. Poor Wilberforce knew nothing of that. He only saw the grand efforts he had been making in so holy a cause, thrown out before Parliament on the third reading. For a while he was quite stricken down; and wrote painfully, yet under Grace, in his private diary: "how mysterious, how humbling, are the dispensations of God's providence. Defeat of the East Indian Clauses! Oh! may not 55736, but 61, inches; that is because $36 + 25 = 61$; or indicates that the linear standards of Great Britain and Israel, the yard and the sacred cubit of Noah, Moses, Solomon, and the Great Pyramid, are now, or are to be before 1881.4 A.D., both of them respected as standards, not only in Great Britain, but also in all Anglo-Saxon inhabited regions around the whole globe; testifies Hartwell A. Powers, from America.

And his testimony is Pyramidally true; for, first, I believe my measures of the 36 and 61 inches made in 1865 under ignorance of any such explanation, are practically correct; and second, as previously explained at p. 299, the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain involuntarily uses at this time the 25-inch scale of the Great Pyramid as well as a British yard; already, too, the so-called geometrical 25-inch cubit has its followers in the land; already are the Israelite measures of old being sought out as a God-given heirloom to our race in the

this have been because one so unworthy as I undertook this hallowed cause, and carried it on with so little true humility, faith, self-abasement, and confidence in God through Christ?”

But the Lord had not abandoned his faithful servant, and on the contrary preserved him, even in his weak bodily health through twenty long years, until another opportunity came, and at the right time, or on June 22nd, 1813.

Then was Wilberforce’s strength renewed as almost with eagle wings. “This East Indian subject,” he then wrote, “is assuredly the greatest that ever interested the heart or engaged the efforts of man. How wonderful that a private individual should have such an influence on the temporal and eternal happiness of millions; literally millions on millions yet unborn! O God, make me more earnest for Thy glory; and may I act more from real love and gratitude to my redeeming Lord. O Lord, bless us; pardon our past lukewarmness and slothfulness, and make us more diligent for the time to come.”

When the eventful evening in Parliament arrived, never had Wilberforce spoken with greater power, or produced a greater effect; and the clauses he had failed to carry 20 years before were now, in 1813, carried by a majority of 53, and became law in India in April, 1814. He gave the praise to God, “the good Providence of God really;” and still spoke of it as “the greatest of all causes, above even the Abolition; the cause, namely, of laying a ground for the communication to our Indian fellow-subjects of Christian light and moral improvement.” While in his private diary he added, “I humbly hope that God has great designs in view for the East, and that they will be executed by Great Britain.” 558beginning of the world, and considered as a priceless treasure which must not be dropped,¹¹—while Great Britain is day by day being identified, by the light of prophecy, with the lost tribes of Israel; not Judah or the Jews, but of the remaining ten, or with Manasseh eleven, tribes; so long lost to the eye of the world, but of whom the Lord has long since announced that He will acknowledge them in the days approaching, and be glorified in them as no other nation ever was glorified from the beginning of the world.

What manner of people, then, ought not we of Great Britain now, of Israel in ages past, to be at this juncture of our eventful history; saved above all nations by the Providence of God in a manner we have never deserved, and for Divine purposes of the future, respecting which nothing but the glorious Scriptures of Inspiration can give us any sufficient or saving idea; a halcyon time, when Ephraim shall be united once more with Judah, and both shall be on the Lord's side. And when, as well expressed by the author of that most Scriptural book, “The Last Week; or, Things which must shortly come to Pass,” p. 90, “the Apostle who received the Revelations, as also the Ancient Prophets, seems to indicate that there will be in those last days (not last of the world, but of this Dispensation only), a concentration of the fulfilment of Bible truths.”