Gloucestershire.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE .

AS briefly reported in our last issue , the Dean of Gloucester preached in the Cathedral on the occasion of the visit of the Provincial Grand Lodge there on the 5 th inst . The Dean took for his text II . Clnou . n ., 4 , " Behold , I build house to the name of the Lord my God , to dedicate it to

him . " He said : In days before the religious houses of the middle ages were swept away , a great Benedictine monastery surrounded the stately Abbey in which we are now gathered for praise and prayer . Daily the crowd of monks who dwelt within ^ s walls were assembled in that storied Chapter Room we have

iust left . There , each time they met , would the abbot of the famous house rise from his seat and say , " Brothers , let us speak about our Order , " and then—sometimes at length , sometimes with only a few earnest woids—he would speak of the mighty Benedictine company to which the Gloucester community

belonged ; of their splendid story , their work , their hopes , their duty , the reason of their existence . These walls on which you and I have just been gazing have heard many such a soul-stirring reminder . Brothers , your fathers in the world-famed Order whose ensigns you all wear have , I believe , had much to do in

this proud Cathedral Church . Let me , who represent the long line of Gloucester abbots , repeat the well-known saying with which my ancestor abbots so often prefaced their words—now quiet and stirring , now meditative , and glowing with storied memories to the old assemblies here . Let me repeat their words

to you to-day . Let me speak of our great Order . We Masons number now in England our thousands , knit together by solemn vows . The heir to the Throne of England , our chief , bound together by solemn obligations . How solemn ; only we who

are Masons know ; vowed to be true and loyal , generous and pure , chivalrous and brave , vowed to be servants of God , devoted to our Queen and country ; surely a strong goodly company , a very bulwark indeed , of the land we love . Ho much for the Freemasons of to-day . Whence come we ?

What now is the story of our Craft ? Let us speak of our past . Look around this glorious House of God . Our Brethren of the Craft designed it , I love to think . Close was the tie which in the early middle ages bound together the mighty Abbot , the Priors , the officers of such a House as Gloucester to the Guild of

Masons . Many the counsels they held together . Now the Monk—the teacher of those far back days , would have a great book of stone from which he could teach the people their faith . The Mason wrote his book . Together they planned , they built , this and many another of these great Houses of Prayer . Turn

we over a few of the pages of our book , and see something of its teaching . Come with me into the Crypt , or under the Church beneath our feet , built in the eleventh century , about 850 years ago . The Crypt with its low browed arches , its solemn aisles , its massive pillars . It represents the waiting place of the souls

separated from the body after death , waiting in God ' s safe keeping the Resurrection morning , hoping for more and even more light . It was the picture of the happy quiet rest of the blessed dead , safe in the haven where they would . be , waiting for the joys of the Resurrection morning .

Each Chapter of the Mason ' s great book of stone has its teaching , and in the old clays again aud again has been used in the training of our people . It was a book , a vast book in stone , a book which in those days when few could read , when printed books existed not and written books were rare and costly , taught

by symbolic language , partly plain and obvious to the simpler man , partly shrouded in not less attractive mystery . It was at once—I quote another ' s words ( the great Dean of St . Paul ' s)—significant and inexhaustible , feeding at once and stimulating profound meditation . See the soaring height of our matchless

choir . It symbolises the infinity ; the incalculable grandeur and majesty of the Divine Works . The mind felt humble under its shadow as before an awful presence . The very form of our great Church was a confession of faith . It typified the Creed . Everywhere was the mystic number ; the Trinity was proclaimed b

y the nave and the aisles . By the three towers , —two of our own are gone , the whole building was a cross . The solemn crypt below represented the under world , the soul of man in darkness and the shadow of death , the body awaiting the Resurrection . This was some of the more obvious universal

language—b y those who sought more abstruse and recondite mysteries . They might be found in all the multifarous details Provoking the jealous curiosity , or dimly suggestive of holy meaning . Sculpture was called in to aid . All the great objective truths of religion had their fitting place .

This association of the great building Abbots of the Middle A ges with the guilds of Masons in their teaching book at once ^ plains and illustrates the forgotten story of the raising of these matchless inimitable piles , the wonder and admiration of

succeeding ages . I have already in another form explained at ength the reason why this great building work came to an end , ud have pointed out how the printed book supplemented the Plendid and more costly book of stone . In passing from tho

Gloucestershire.

storied past of Masons to the present , I would call attention to one singular piece of ornament in the great Cathedral Church which sets something like a seal upon the truth of the theory . I have ventured very briefly and lightly to sketch before you a close link between the great building abbots and the Masons .

There in the South Transcept , there in that spot to which all our scholarly architects point as the birthplace of the school of English Gothic , copied in a thousand abbeys , minsters , and churches in England , where was devised the peculiarly English Gothic men call Perpendicular . On the east wall that most

remarkable and interesting limb of this great House of God is a highly-ornamental bracket , somewhat large . Its purpose is unknown , but there it stands . It has been there—in quaint suggestive beauty—for more than five centuries and a half , part of the original work . No one but a Freemason could have

designed it , carved it , and placed it there . Brother Masons , mark it well . That grey old carved device in stone , in its curious beauty of design , it may be in coming years a fresh study to throw a new light upon this message from the fourteenth

century . But as it stands now it seems to tell us who devised our favourite English Gothic . It tells us who stood by Thoky , Wigmore , Stansfield , and Hortou , the great Gloucester Abbots of the building ages , giving them a new order in architecture which England has made her own .

Now , there are others in this most ancient House of God this afternoon besides the Brethren of our loved Craft . They mark with curious attention our strange quaint symbols , the jewelled apron , the gold embroidered scarf , the sacred emblems which wa Masons wear—emblems which belong to death and life . Men

wonder what the secret is which has the strange power of drawing together all sorts and conditions of men . What is the magnet which attracts the sovereign prince and the peasant , the highly-cultivated scholar , the thoughtful merchant , the great statesman , the learned ecclesiastic of our Church of England ,

the lawyer , and the doctor , the artisans of our people ? What magnet draws all these together , welds with one great company the old man nearing the city which has foundations , and the younger man just stepping over the mysterious threshold of life ? What draws them here together ? What fills the ranks of our

Masonic Brotherhood of England with so many willing faithful Companions ? I address the strangers to our Craft . It is something , believe me , nobler , grander far than mere enjoyment ;

something more far-reaching than good fellowship ; it is , I think , the initiation of the Divine sympathy which is the secret of the Order , which so wonderfully , so happily , finds an echo in many hearts , and draws us so many and such varied recruits .

Our England would be poorer without the spirit of Masonry It makes but little noise , it asks for no recruits . It silently does its quiet work . It aids not only its own homes touched with sorrow , where the widow and the orphan are tenderly cared for , not only its own suffering , sad-hearted Brothers , not only is it ever doing its quiet blessed work among those linked to their

own Order , but it whispers its noble maxims to many a heart . Not a few generous , high-souled deeds are the fruit of English Masonry . It is a secret Order , says the caviller at its high and lofty aims . Yes , secret , chiefly because it never boasts ; secret , because it carries out in silence the Lord ' s own sweet command

which , in good deeds , bids the right hand often be ignorant of what the left is doing . We Englishmen love well our religion and our Queen ; our bravest , best , and purest believe that the vast edifice of the Anglo-Saxon empire endures age after age because it rests upon the mighty pillars of religion and loyalty ,

upon the Altar and the Throne . Am I not right in telling out with no uncertain , wavering voice that at least in our England this bond of loyalty and religion are indeed sacred and precious to English Masons ? I affirm that in our favoured laud not a few of its most religious and most loyal among our citizens are Brothers of our Masonic Order .

Once more I turn to you , my Brothers , speaking with the voice of that authority in the Craft to which your generous trust has raised me , and to which I am well and sorrowfully conscious I have no claim , but simply a hard-worked scholar ' s love for Masonry to urge—yes , mine is a deep love for the Craft . For

Masonry has , I believe , a noble future in front of it . Throughout Europe there is now a painful , anxious feeling of unrest and discontent . Many of our poorer Brothers , who know not their right hand from their left , guided too often by unwise and reckless advisers , are dissatisfied and reckless . They wish to

disturb , to break up , to destroy the present Order of things amongst UP . Am I exaggerating ? Again , again , sad wishes and sad words are scattered broadcast . You have all heard them , read them , grieved over them , not once or twice . These poor souls little think that if their wishes were granted , and a great levelling

of all classes was accomplished , they little think that the sure result would be a poverty far deeper , a misery far more reaching than that which all pitiful loving men now deplore and long to relieve ; for if wealth ware shattered , shattered too would be work . The same fell blow which destroys capital must , at tho same time , destroy labour .