A Short History Of Freemasonry.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY .

FROM Addis and Arnold ' s Catholic Dictionary we quote the following on Freemasonry , written by Prof . Galwey : " A secret order and pantheistic sect , which professes by means of a symbolic language . and certain ceremonies of initiation and promotion , to lay down a code of morality founded on the brotherhood of humanity only .

The origin of Freemasonry is disputed . The Freemasons themselves , in the language of their rituals , assume the sect to have begun its existence at the building of Solomon ' s Temple , but serious Masonic writers , as well as all writers of repute , declare this to be merely a conventional fiction .

But it seems more in consonance with many known historical facts to trace the sect to the mediaeval guild of stonemasons , who were properly called by the very name of Freemasons .

During the Middle Ages the various trades were formed , with the approbation of the church , into guilds of close protective societies . ... Each guild has its patron saint , and several guilds , it is certain , had each its peculiar ritual , using its own tools and technical language of initiation and promotion—that is to say , in entering an apprentice and at the end of his time declaring him a worthy fellow journeyman or Craftsman , & c .

The guild of Freemasons was singular in this , that it was a migratory one , its members travelling under their masters in organised bodies through all parts of Europe , wherever their services were required in building . When first referred to they are found grouped about the monasteries , especially about those of the Benedictines . The earliest form of initiation used by the guild is said to have been suggested by the ritual for the reception of a Benedictine novice .

The South of France , where a large Jewish and Saracenic element remained , was a hotbet of heresies , and that region was also a favourite one with the guild of Masons . It is asserted that as far back as the twelfth century the Lodges of the guild enjoyed the special protection of the Knights Templar . It is easy in this way to understand how the symbolic allusions to Solomon aud

his Temple might have passed from the Knights into the Masonic formulary . ... So far , however , the Freemasons were really working stonemasons ; but the so-called Cologne charter—the genuineness of which seems certain—drawn up in 1535 at a reunion of the Freemasons gathered at Cologne to celebrate the opening of the Cathedral edifice , is signed by Melancthon , Coligny , and other similar ill-omened names .

As we know it now , however , Freemasonry first appeared in 1725 , when Lord Derwenter , a supporter of the expelled Stuart dynasty , introduced the Order into France , professing to have his authority from a Lodge at Kilwinning , Scotland . This formed the basis of that variety of Freemasonry called the Scotch Eite . Eival organisations soon sprang up . Charters were obtained from a Lodge at York , which was said to have been of very ancient foundation .

In 1754 Martinez Pasquales , a Portuguese Jew , began in some of the French Lodges the new degree of " Cohens , " or priests , which was afterward developed into a system by the notorious Saint Martin , and is usually referred to as French-Illuminism . But it remained for Adam Weishaupt , professor of canon law at the University of Ingoldstadt , in Bavaria , to give

a definite shape to the an ti-Christian tendencies of Freemasonry . In 1776 , two years after the expulsion of the Jesuits from the university , he brought together a number of his pupils and friends and organised the order of the Illuminati , which he established on the already existing degrees of Freemasonry . The avowed object of the Illuminati was to bring back

mankindbeginning with tbe Illuminated—to their primitive liberty , by destroying religion , for which this newest philosophical invention was to be substituted , and by reshaping ideas of property , society , marriage , & c . One of the Illuminati , a Sicilian , Joseph Balsamo , otherwise Cagliostro , organised what he . called Cabalistic Freemasonry , under the name of the Eite of Misraimi

He it was who , in 1783 , predicted , as the approaching work of the Freemasons , the overthrow of the French monarchy . Indeed , Freemasonry was very active in the French Revolution / , and assisted in bringing about many of the calamities which accompanied the great upturning , of society . . . ' . Throughout Continental Europe , in the Spanish-American States and in

, Brazil , Freemasonry has of late years become very active . The war against the Catholic Church in Germany had no more bitter supporter than Freemasonry . If the Kulturkampf was nob directed from the Lodges , at least nearly all its leaders were Freemasons . During the Commune of Paris , in 1871 , Masonic

Lodges took part in a body in the insurrection , marching out to the fight with their red banners . In France aud in Belgium the Lodges have officially commanded their members to assist the Ligue de l'Enseignment—a league intended to bring about the complete secularisation of the primary public schools . Freemasonry is essentially opposed to the belief in the

A Short History Of Freemasonry.

personality of God , whose name in the Masonic ritual veils the doctrine of blind force only governing the universe . It is also essentially subversive of legitimate authority , for by professing to furnish man an all-sufficient guide and help to conduct , it makes

him independent of the church , and by its everywhere ridiculing rank in authority , it tends , in spite of its occasional protests of loyalty , to bring all governments into contempt . "— " American Tyler . "

God's Ideal Of A Perfect Man.

GOD'S IDEAL OF A PERFECT MAN .

WHILE eminently patriotic , the ideal Mason is pre-eminently religious . The sublime principles which mould his character and the noble precepts which rule his life are all divine . They are as ancient as God . The fountain on which he rears his stately edifice is the Volume of the Sacred Law . The sublime ideal of every Mason is that imposing temple which , " like a

mountain of white marble steeped in light , like floating gold , proudly uprose on Zion ' s sacred brow . But that temple , so rich in symbol and enwoven in mystery , was but the incarnation of a divine thought which God proposed to incarnate in human life . It was the heavenly pattern for the earthly building ;

it was a pattern of divine beauty . Every graceful arch , every carved columned pillar , every beam of fragrant cedar , the graven gold , the beaten brass , was a revelation of the beautiful . He has made everything beautiful in His season . There is beauty in the sombreness oi the mountain gloom and the sublimity of the

mountain glory . It is on the tossing billow and in the ripple of the brooklet . There is beauty in the jewelled sky and in the enamelled meadow . It is unfolded in the . tapestry of the spring time , it is in the pomp of summer , and in the golden autumn . There is beauty in the burst of sunrise and the bars of sunset gold .

But the divinest beauty is that which is enwrought within a human life , when more resplendent than costliest gems that life glows radiant with celestial virtues ; when the deeds and the doings of the daily life are squared by the divine decalogue and every transaction responds to the perfect level of the Sermon on

the Mount , and when , like the orchard tree breaking forth into bud , unfolding into blossom coronals in ripening fruit pendant on every graceful branch . Life is only beautiful when life and love , charter and creed , hand and heart , muscle and brains , bud , blossom and ripen into that divinest fruitage—that charity which

never faileth , when like the Good Samaritan it bends over a stricken brother , when the grasp of the hand is the touch of helping and healing , and when the welcome voice is the voice of consolation and of comfort . Therefore , " to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction , " and " to keep himself unspotted from the world" is the grand creed of every Mason .

But that temple was a divine pattern of divinest brotherhood , and the whole round globe was laid under tribute to build that massive structure . The mountains were quarried , the forest was hewed , the earth was explored for gems and gold , and then all the material was chiselled , hewed and graven into varying forms of

beauty and assigned places of honour or abasement , so that when blended and built , they formed but one stately temple . There it stood , that temple , God's sublime ideal of divinest brotherhood for all the coming race , not equality of gift or talent of place , or power of wealth or honour , not uniformity , but unity ; no barrier

of class or creed , but cultured aud uncultured , gentle and simple , wealth and poverty , capital and labour , man with man , blended , bound and built into one grand , massive , divine brotherhood of men . That purpose is the great genius of Freemasonry , for when once a Brother crosses the threshold of a Masonic Lodge

" we meet upon the level , " though from every station come the King from out his palace and the poor man from out his home , " For the one must leave his diadem outside the Mason ' s door , and the other finds respect upon the checkered floor . "

That temple was a pattern of divine perfection . Like all the great masterpieces of the great Master Mason , the building of a world , the launching of a star , the freseoeing of the wing of a butterfly or carving the frond of a fern , that temple was perfectperfect , in its chaste design , perfect in exquisite appointment ,

perfect as a temple , but it is in the temple of a human life that God has revealed His highest perfection . That Eternal Son who came' forth from the great silence of eternity is God's ideal of a perfect manv Perfection is the Alpha and the Omega , the goal and horizon , of every royal hearted man in every purpose and pursuit of life . ¦ But who has attained unto it ? Not Milton in

his gorgeous imagery , nor Shakespeare in his rapt drama of human life , nor Raphael in his divinest colours , nor Handel in his loudest Hallelujah , nor Paul iu his highest attainment or noblest achievement . With him the most proficient and most accomplished Masons exclaim , " Not as though I had already attained , " but I press forward . Brethren of the mystic tie , with unwavering loyalty to the grand principles of our noble Order , incarnating its beautiful