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Trne it is , and worthy of Masonic appreciation , that prevention is better than cure . Prevent mischief and the •vils that else wonld arise are surely avoided . —Keystone .

Concerning Landmarks.

CONCERNING LANDMARKS .

" rTTHOU shalt not remove thy neighbour ' s landmarks , JL which they of old time have set in thine inheritance , " was an old Jewish law , and such must bave been the sentiment of a majority iu Grand Lodge assembled when they summarily rejected the recommendation of the Revision

Committee to omit certain Masonic Landmarks from the forthcoming new issue of the Book of Constitutions . The incident draws attention to the fact that on the subject of Landmarks thero exists not only a difference of opinion , but conflicting statements ; and this is the more singular as

it is a point on which there should be no suspicion of doubt and no sense of disagreement . The Landmarks , our jurists agree in affirming , form a part of the unwritten law of Masonry , so remote in their origin as to be void of all clue and of a " higher antiquity than memory or history can

reach . " Bro . Dr . Mackey , an able and resourceful writer , fixes their number at twenty-five , and , so far as we have been able to ascertain , he was the first and earliest authority on them , specifying and tabuhting them . His version has been accepted by the generality of English-speaking

Freemasons . These Landmarks lay down certain esoterical , ethical , and religious principles ; prescriptive rights and privileges ; qualifying restrictions ;[ and , finaliy , the maxim that these cannot be subject to mutation , but have been the same from the beginning and must remain so to the end . Thus

far all appears plain and definite , but if we should extend our inquiries and go further afield , we arrive at the knowledge that a claim is put in for fifteen other landmarks with a considerable extention of their design and purport ; and this in face ofthe previous asseveration that they were

limited to twenty-five articles of belief which could know no change or shadow of turning . In addition to this , Brother Dr . Oliver , another learned and prolific writer , yet withal far too imaginative to be accepted without some reserve , says : —Some restrict them" ( the landmarks ) "tothe

O . B ., signs , tokens , and words . Others include the ceremonies of initiation , passing , and raising ; and the form , dimensions , and support ; the ground , situation , and covering ; and the ornaments , furniture , and jewels of a Lodge . " Some think that the Order has no landmarks

beyond its peculiar secrets . " So that their asserted fixity and finality does not stand the test of examination , but only goes to prove that they are a moveable and variable quantity . At whose bidding fifteen more were added , making forty landmarks in all , we cannot say , or what was

the exact purport we cannot charge our memory with ; but to the innovating—though sometimes misdirected—genius of American Masonry we may attribute their conception with some show of probability . Before Mackey treated on them we have grounds for hazarding the conjecture that

the nature of the landmarks was only vaguely understood , and that there was no absolute definition of them to go upon Not one of the Manuscript Masonic Constitutions , or ¦¦ Old Charges , " known to us contains any reference to landmarks , though some of the Old Charges served in

part as a basis whereon to construct them . Neither is there from the creation of Grand Lodges under a Speculative system to the present time any English Book of Constitutions which includes them in its contents . Passing allusions are certainly to be met with in the

Constitutions of the last century , and in the works of Masonic writers of the same period , but nothing in explanation or enumeration of them nntil Mackey undertook the task , about fifty years ago , in his Masonic Cyclopaedia , and a treatise on Masonic Jurisprudence . Bro . R . F .

Gould , in his carefully expressed opinions in the " History of Fiecmasonry , " says— " We shall vainly search in the ricords nf those early times for a full specification of the twevty-Jice 'hu . dinai-ks' which modern search pronounces , to be bothancient and unalterable . " As further illustration

of their di .-credited and unreliable claim , the Freemasons ' MagazUe , of February l-G ' -, has the following passage : — ' Nobody knows what lhey ( landmarks ) comprise or omit ;

they art of no rait !> ly auhonty , U cau o everything is a landmark when a * i opponent desir . s to pi It-nee you , but nothingi 3 a Jandm irk tint i-tunds in i . H o . vn wiy . " Yet these are they which somo of us believe to bo too sacred

Concerning Landmarks.

and indisputable to be doubted , and too aocredited £ to be denied a place in the Constitution Book . Those who will peruse Mackey ' s " Landmarks " ( which are those of our adoption ) together with his commentaries on each and all , will , we are disposed to believe , find nothing of illimitable

antiquity about them , but , on tbe contrary , will detect a distinct bearing on and application to the requirements of modern Freemasonry . Moreover , if they approach thesubject with an unclouded intelligence , a miud free from bais , and a fair understanding of what wo owe to up-to-date

investigation and troth-searching revelation , they cannot fail to bowl the late Bro . Mackey out in some glaring discrepancies and false arguments . Were it not that we should overlap the space allowed us , it would be easy to place these in full before the reader and prove our case . Mackey with clear insight

but some inconsistency , when dealing with the landmarks was most insistent that in relation to them - ' antiquity mnst be an essential element , " for well he kenned that it was the same indispensable element of antiquity whioh invested them with a charm beyond compare . " Anoient "

is . the qualifying adjective by which they have always been known among Speculative Masons , yet the landmarks , as certified to by Mackey have very little of that ascription in fcheir composition ; nothing traceable longer back than the old Craft-Guild system , and much in them that carries

with it the conviction of an intimate connection with modern Freemasonry . So that the balance of evidence is more in favour of a comparatively recent than to a highly remote origin , of something introduced within tbe memory of man , preferably to the same thing boing derived in

unbroken continuity from a source lost in incalculable teons past . In whichever way we may elect to regard these Landmarks , whether venerable with age , or at the stage of adolescence , as prescribing twenty-five guiding princi ples on which to square our Masonic rule and action , they

suffice and may fulfil their part m tbe economy of this jurisdiction without onr bestowing further thought on thequestion of their antiquity , immutableness , or universalit y . Whether it is necessary to allot them a place in our Statute Book is a mere detail which has now been voted for affirmatively . —South Australian Freemason .

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