. The book of the chapter : or, Monitorial instructions, in the degrees of mark, past and most excellent master, and the holy Royal arch. tained,while the other half was presented to the guest, so that if,at any future period, they, or any of their descendants,should meet again, a means of recognition was established,and the hospitable connection was renewed, or its favorsreturned. Among the Romans a similar custom prevailed,and the mark or die was called tessera hospitalis, or thehospitable token. It descended from father to son, and theclaim of friendly assistance that it had established cou
. The book of the chapter : or, Monitorial instructions, in the degrees of mark, past and most excellent master, and the holy Royal arch. tained,while the other half was presented to the guest, so that if,at any future period, they, or any of their descendants,should meet again, a means of recognition was established,and the hospitable connection was renewed, or its favorsreturned. Among the Romans a similar custom prevailed,and the mark or die was called tessera hospitalis, or thehospitable token. It descended from father to son, and theclaim of friendly assistance that it had established could on-ly be abolished by a formal renunciation, and the breakingof the tessera to pieces.* The primitive Christians used a similar token, on whichthe initials of the Greek words for Father, Son, and HolyGhost were inscribed. It served in the place of a certificateof Christian membership, and, being carried by them fromtown to town, secured the assistance and protection of theirbrethren. * See an interesting Masonic tale, entitled Tlio Broken Tessera, in LigM*CMd Shadows of Freemasonry, by Kob Mobbis, p. 239. 80 BOOK OF THE JEWISH 6HEKEU The value of a mark is said to be a Jewish half shekel ofsilver, or twenty-five cents in the currency of this shekel of silver was a weight of great antiquity amongthe Jews, its value being about a half dollar. It is morethan probable that there was a coin of fixed value in thedays of Solomon, but the earliest specimens which havereached the present times, and are to be found in the cabi-nets of collectors, are of the coinage of Simon Maccabeus,issued about the year 144 B. C. Of these, we generally find,on the obverse, the sacred pot of manna, with the inscrip-tion, Shekel Israel, in the old Samaritan character; onthe reverse, the rod of Aaron, having three buds, with theinscription, lerushalem Kadoshah, or Jerusalem the Holy,in a similar character. We learn from the Book of Exodus that every Israeliteabove twenty years of
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