The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1873-06-14
SOlOmOn's Temple.

| The skill, the art, the mighty toll
that lave been devoted to the adorn-
ment, and to the desccration, of this
most ancient place of worship, have
been Of extraordinary magnitude.
The grandest legacy of Egyptian anti
| guilty, the Great Pyramid, demanded,
indeed, q larger amount of naked hu
man labor; but i'll MoriaI there is a
compulsion of the features Of Nature
herself to the service of the builder.
In actual bulk, the Great Pyramid is
to the Temple rock as five to nine, if
we descend but as far as the sills of
the five double gates of the mountain
Of the house. If we carry the compar-
ison down to the level at which the
lowest foundation of the walls is in
laid in the rock at the angles of the
enclosure, the bulk is three times that
of the Great Pyramid. The cubic con
tents of the mason's work may not
amount to q tenth part of that piled
up by Souphis. But the hill has been
honey -combed with chambers and gal
leries, and the declining part to the
south covered with vaults and arches,
to which Gheezeh can show no paral-
lei. No merely artificial structure
could have so successfully resisted
the resolute efforts of the two greatest
military nations of the ancient world
to destroy it's existence and obliterate
it's memory. No other monument,
long surviving the era of Asiatic and
italian power, can ever, like the noble
Sanctuary, mark by its very ruins,
the successive periods of its glory and
it's fall
If we regard not so much the evi-
dence of the labor devoted to the work
of the Temple as the effect produced
on the mind by its apparent magni-
tnde, we may suggest the following
comparison: the length of the eastern
wall of the Sanctuary is rather more
than donble that of one side of the
Great Pyramid. Its height, from the
foundation on the rock at the south,
and near the northern angles, was
nearly d third of that OF the Egyptian
structure. If to this great height of
one hundred and fifty two feet of solid
wall be added the descent of one
hundred and fourteen feet to the bed
of the kedron, and the futher eleva-
ton of one hundred and sixty feet
attained by the pinnacle of the Tenn
pie porch, We have total height of
four hundred and twenty six feet,
which is only fifty nine feet less than
that of the Great Pyramid. The area
of tire face Of the eastern wall is more
than double that of one side Of the
pyramid. Thus the magnitude of the
noble Sanctuary of Jerusalem far ex-
cecdcd that of amy other temple in
the world. Two mphithcatrcs of the
size OF the Coliseum would have stood
within its colossal girtlle, and left
room to spare. The Coliseum is said
to have seated eighty seven thousand
spectators, and accommodated twenty
two thousand more in it's arena and
passages. For such Il number to
have been crammed within its circle,
the space for each person must have
been limited to seventeen inches by
twenty inches. Allowing two cubits
each way, OF four square cubits for
each worshipper in the temple, the
Sanctuary would have contained thir-
ty thousand the Chel, excluding the
Priests Court, twenty thousand more,
and there would yet have been room
in the Great Court and the cloistcrs to
make the total reach to more than
two hundred and ten thoDsand.-Ed-
inburgh Rericm.