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diffidence , if not with trembling , for to some of my hearers my tapestried story may seem fanciful , although it is based upon what I dare to call scientific history . It can , of course , only be a sketch—but a little introduction to a great subject . We often ask what are Freemasons , what is our story ?

Some eighteen hundred years ago , when the great Emperors of Rome—such as Augustus , such as Vespasian and Titussuch as the noble Antonies—were reigning over the Roman world , there existed in Rome and in other mighty cities of the Empire , colleges , as they were called , guilds perhaps

would be a better term , composed of workers in different crafts . Among these the Colleges of Architects , Builders , and the many artisans who carried out the plans and designs of the Masters of the Craft were well known . The Imperial Government ever looked somewhat jealously upon these

confraternities . There were various and stringent Imperial regulations which these confraternities had to comply withthey were watched with extreme care . But that they existed ,

and were a powerful factor in Roman society , is now undisputed . Scholars are gradually now coming to know more and more of these great and popular guilds . The Guild of Architects and Builders was an influential one—it

had many secrets which were not divulged outside its members . The glorious matchless piles we read of , the ruins of some of which we gaze at still with wondering admiration in the Eternal City , were their work . Witness the enormous

system of aqueducts , stretching still in picturesque ruin miles and miles over the vast and desolate Campagna . Witness the lordly Temples , the mighty piles of Imperial ruin on the storied Palatine , the Colosseum , the Pantheon , the Tomb of Hadrian—just to take a few well known examples .

Into the great popular Guild which created these immemorial piles fell the seed of the preaching of the Cross , and many of the Guild became Christian Brothers . When Diocletian reigned in the last years of the fourth century , so runs the old Church legend—it was , no doubt , founded on

fact , and here in passing I would note how the work of archaeologists and historians every year strangely supports the substantial truth of many of these old stories , which some had come to doubt—when Diocletian , the Emperor , who hated the Christians and bitterly persecuted them , reigned , a

little group of painters and sculptors , members of the Collegium or Guild , refused to exercise their art and craft for the Pagan . They said to the heathen Emperor , "We cannot build a temple or shape images in wood or stone for false gods . " They were in consequence cruelly put to death :

their names are preserved in the Church of the Four Holy Crowned Ones— "the Quatuor Coronati " at the foot of the Coelian Hill—now , alas , neglected and almost in ruins . This persecution of Diocletian apparently began that

dispersion of the famous Guild . Not quite a century later , the troubles from the Barbarian invasions fell on Rome , and for several hundred years the metropolis of the world was an unsafe dwelling place , successively pillaged , sacked , and burnt by different hordes of invaders .

We hear nothing after this troublous period began of the Collegium or Guild of Architects . Strangely enough the Guild re-appears in the little Isle of Comacina , on the lake of Corno , in the sixth century . Comacina is spoken of as the only free spot in Italy when the Roman Empire was dying

under the successive inroads of Goth and Vandal . It was to this little town , little known , that the Guild seems to have fled , and there in silence and obscurity for a period preserved their legendary knowledge , handed down to them from Greek and Roman sources—some say even from Solomon ' s builders

of the Great Temple of Jerusalem . One of the conquering races who settled in North Italy , the Lombards , in the sixth century , adopted Christianity as their religion , and alone among the northern invaders who ruined the Roman Empire became zealous as Church builders . The Lombard churches

in the seventh and eight centuries were famous in all the Western world ; they are with us still . But the Lombards had among them the old Masonic Guild of Rome . We now come upon the term in architectural history of the Comacina Masters . These were the inheritors of the secrets of the Craft whose career we have been roughly tracing .

Under the Lombard Sovereigns , the Guild of Masons became powerful , and highly organised . There seems to have been at the head of the Order a Grand Master . The Order was divided into many Lodges , with a Master ruling over each Lodge . Each Lodge had three classes of members

—Master Masons , Working Brethren , and Novices . The whole organisation and nomenclature with which we are so familiar , was in actual and working form in the Comacina Guild under the Lombard rulers in the sixth , seventh , and eighth centuries . They began to be termed Freemasons

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because they were builders of a privileged class ,, absolved from taxes and servitude , free to travel where they pleased in the times when feudal custom and restriction , and almost feudal servitude , everywhere prevailed . The term was largely applied to them both in England and in Germany

after the time of Charlemagne . They spread with curious rapidity over most of the countries of Europe . They were largely protected by the ecclesiastical powers . Many of the

Popes conferred on this great Guild the privileges they had obtained under their natural sovereigns . Ecclesiastics of high degree were frequently enrolled in the company of these Freemasons as members .

It is difficult to trace how many of the great buildings of Europe , from the eighth century onward , were designed and built by this great fraternity of Freemasons , many of which have perished , and others have been so altered and restored in different ages as to bear few of the original signs . of their

origin . One who has made a careful study of their work traces to these Comacina Freemasons the successors of the old Roman Guild , driven out of the Imperial City by Diocletian , A . D . 302 , in the course of his terrible persecutions of Christians , and recruited by others of the ssame Guild

when Rome became no home for Arts and Crafts ; when the Goths and Vandals had worked their wild will upon the immemorial city—traces to these Comacina Freemasons all that was architecturally good in Italy during the dark Barbarian period lasting well-nigh 500 years . Their hand

is visible in the noble Lombard Basilicas . Their work is to be seen still in very many if not in all the grand churches of France , Spain , Germany , and England of the early Middle Ages . But I must hurry on , remembering this is but a sketch . Whence now did this strange and marvellous Guild

derive the mighty secrets of their Craft ? The Roman Collegium or Guild to which the martyred crowned ones belonged , possessed them . But they were not the kindlers of the Divine fire ; they only kept the bright lamp burning . Had they learned their wondrous secret skill from Greece ,

from Pheidias and Praxiteles , from the unknown builders of the glorious temples and shrines of Athens , the bright and happy , the immemorial Athens of the Violet Crown ? Or in our quest must we go to yet older , to yet higher and grander sources still ? You Masons catch my meaning quickly . Very familiar to the Brothers of the Craft is another and

sublimer cradle of true practical Masonry . Nor is it only tradition . The Comacina Freemasons of very early days had a special mark—a loved signature . Hard indeed is it to find a church , an altar , a pulpit even of these early Masons , without the famous mark graved on it—that beautiful device

of a single strand mysteriously interlaced—the sign of the one God—of His inscrutable and infinite ways whose nature is Unity . It is known as Solomon ' s knot . This signature is very , very old . The other Comacina signature—somewhat later—is a lion—the lion of the tribe of Judah ; the lion of

God of whom Isaiah sings in his pathetic story ; this , too , we find in a hundred ways woven into their lovely work . This mighty guild ceased to be in the fifteenth century . A few great spirits such as Brunelleschi , of Florence , and Michael Angelo , of Rome , had learned the traditions of the glorious

past , and worked on . But they died , as you and I shall die , and then the lamp went out . The " new learning , " as it is sometimes called , killed it , and men did other things , beautiful things , perhaps noble things , useful things . But they did not build ; they have never built since ! We of the Craft inherit

their traditions , though we use them now in a different way . We keep alive a memory , a very glorious memory . We bear a great name , we are heirs of a noble inheritance , we are entrusted with a great work . We have a task before us—a fair example of faith and of patient industry to follow , and

Brethren " whatsoever things are true , whatsoever things are honest , whatsoever things are just , whatsoever things are pure , whatsoever things are lovely , whatsoever things are of

good report—if there be any virtue , if there be any praisethink on those things . " Then and then only will you be good Masons in the truest , noblest sense of the word as we teach Masonry now in England .

The service closed with the hymn , " O God our help , " vigorously taken up by the Brethren and the large congregation outside the screen . During the singing a collection was

made on behalf of the work on the stained glass windows of the Lady Chapel . The Brethren having formed up in the same , order the procession returned to the Chapter House , where Lodge was resumed and business disposed of .

In discussing the charity votes the Deputy Provincial Grand Master proposed that £ 10 be voted to the fund for the Relief of Refugees from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State—or rather the Orange River Colony , and the new title