Freemasonry's Sublimity.

was a traitor and a murderer , invalidates the glory of the Apostolic character . The secrecy of Masonry is its only sybil voice proclaiming—Procul 0 Procul ! este profani . It is only the secrecy of tho lawyer to his client—of the minister to the penitent

—of the physician to the patient—or of friend to friend . The trustworthy confidence is the glory of man . Scandal dies like an echo on the shore , where the tongue is bridled by truth and honour . " Where is no tale-bearer the strife ceaseth . " Wrench from the heart of a Mason tho secret

of his brother , and from that same heart you may blot out the image of bis God , the vows made to a confiding wife , or the duty he owes to his children , to country and to home . Tho betrayer of secrets is a moral renegade too foul for tho atmosphere of honour ;—he is the Judas of friendship , and the assassin of character .

Nor nevor may an honest , open-hearted Mason fear that tho hotter part of creation will urge against his Order , to its detriment , the circumstance that the ladies are not admitted to a membership among Free and Accepted Masons . Let him tell , what is the fact , that Minerva , the

goddess of wisdom , presides in the Masonic Lodges , in which she would have indeed but a divided empire if the goddess of beauty were admitted along with her . We surely could not trust Venus and Minerva together in our Lodges , lest we should become too much distracted by the

blandishments of Beauty to hear at all tho severer teachings of Wisdom . But it will be high time to attempt a laboured defence of this Masonic usage when a lady shall complain of it , or when she shall refuse to make a secretkeeping Mason the lord of her affections , pillowing on her

pure heart both the unlocked casket and the secret which it contains ! Ah , could she make him a renegade to honour , how would she loathe him ! How unsafe in such hands

and in such keeping would she ever after consider her own fame , and those gems of affection which woman never gives save to the trusty , the brave , the unconquerable , the inflexible in purpose !

There is a sublime secret connected with everything that ia valuable . Says the great light of Masonry , the Bible , " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him . " There is a secret in each profession of life , in every science , in each beautiful art . There is a secret in love—an

unspoken language that sometimes glances from the eye , but which is oftener hid by virgin modesty until the heart becomes an urn of suffering , in which tho fires of hidden attachment crimson the inceDso of the affections . There

is a secret in hate , whispered only to the moon , as its pale cold eye gleams on tho assassin ' s dagger . There are secrets everywhere in nature , from the pedestal to the capital of the pillar of the Universe , over which the mysterious eye of tho Omnipotent burns with its secret

meaning . Let those who object to Masonic oaths they never saw or heard pronounced , read the oath taken between two

ancient Masonic brethren , David and Jonathan : " As the Lord liveth and as thy send livelh ! " What an adjuration for fraternal love to bind itself with ! Does Masonry more than this ?

And let those who object to signals of recognition between Masonic brethren go with me to the field where David lay hid day by day ; see Jonathan and his

armourbearer approach ; and see the arrow as it flies through the air , —it bears a message of recognition to David . Such are the signals of Masonry . They are the tokens which one friend sends to another—the all ' s well , or the beware , of fraternal affection .

MORAL MASONRY

As the world of matter is but the outer covering , —the caskot of tho world of intellect , —so is Physical Masonry but the outer covering of Moral Masonry . The pearl lies within the casket—the precious meat within the shell ; so does Moral Masonry lie within the ceremonies which reach

only the eye and come in contact with the senses . Moral Masonry speaks to the heart . It has a language independent of all •the languages of the earth , which may be understood by Hindoo and Moor , by the Persian and Turk ,

by African aud American , by the Tartar and the European alike . It is the great symbolic tongue whose words I may not repeat save in the honour guarded Lodge .

Moral Masonry has a tongue of power that shall make itself heard amidst the thunder of a thousand cannon . In tho awful charge of the Scotch Greys upon the broken

Freemasonry's Sublimity.

squadrons of the French cuirassiers at Waterloo , it is said that a French officer leaned upon his horse , wounded , faint with the loss of blood , and unable to proceed ; at that moment he saw the gleam of a broad sword at his breast . A heart of sternness and power urged on the weapon of

destruction , and the frown of unappeasable anger and natural hate shot from the soldior ' s eye , as he measured tho distance between his victim and death . The officer hail just strength to give the signal of distress , which rings in a Mason ' s heart like the cry of Mercy , and the

Scotch Grey relented , with a smile , as the sun chases the thunder-cloud from the craggy peak of Ben Lomond , and paints it with golden gleams of dying day . " God blesa

you , brother ! " was the warrior ' s response to that thrilling signal ; and on he went , with a tender heart and a moistened eye , wherever the storm of subsiding battlo bore him—tho stalwart warrior of Scotia ' s cloud-girded and

stormy hills . Moral Masonry has pictures the proudest and most sublime on tho canvas of tho world's history . Oh might I sketch them ! Might I thrill this mixed audionco with tho symbolic lectures of Moral Masonry ! Might I throw

aside the veils and open before your wondering vision tho glories of the inner temple ! Might I breathe in your hearing the seraphic harmonies of that heaven , not made with hands , typed in the beautiful outlines that our great Grand Master has drawn upon the magnificent pile that is destined to survive tho * ' wreck of matter and the crush of

worlds . " Never—never—until my tongue shall glow with the fires of the upper Shekinah , and the Grand Master of Eternity shall take the finger of silence and secrecy from

my lip , may I show to an assembled world the emotions that have rolled' their grandeurs over my soul , as the curtains of the Lodges rose upon the great moral pictures of all time !

Human nature is grand even in ruins ! The soul is a temple of angelic and superhuman proportions . Age cannot bronze it over with its years . Death cannot dim the outlines of sublimity and beauty . For ever shall its

proportions swell upon the eye of the spiritual world , developing more fully while the young eternity sweeps towards the unapproachable goal of endless being the majesty of its powers , and the splendour of its moral achievements .

I leave untouched the vast picture of the crusades . I pass by the age of chivalry . I take a hasty leave of the great age of improvement and action , on each of which the suu of Masonry shines with undying effulgence and glory .

I falter under this part of my subject—the moral dignity of Masonry . I am full of its intense beautyravished by its ineffable brilliance . The broad wild , and holy pictures of its glory cluster on my heated spirit , and I seem to seize one of the grandest representations that

ever hung out a banner of illuminated stars on the outer wall of heaven . Like the wing of an angel half seen and then withdrawn—it is gone—its harmonies die away on my ear , and its cloudy and far reaching splendours die in the eye of my imagination , like faint pencillings of twilight on the tablets of the west .

Oh , how Masonry has suffered scorn , contumely , and reproach , and the faggot , and the rack , and the chill countless years of the dungeon ' s gloom ! What a fiery trial has Masonry passed through of late years throughout the world ! The demon that would drag upon the irou

bed of Procrustus all mankind to cut them shorter if they were too long , or to stretch them with cruel tenter hooks if they were too short—this maddening impulse has often dashed against the foundations of the Masonic Temple like an enraged and mountainous sea ; but the serene rock has

boaten back the surges . How often were the Lodges suppressed , their charters taken away—yet all the oaths and inquisitious of the enemies of our Order could not worm out the secret , or make the Fraternity recreant to their

principles . Their attitude was not unlike that of the man who undertook to destroy a massive diamond by dashing it in pieces—yet found that every scattered fragment was equally perfect and in itself a fortune .

Break up the Lodges and scatter the members from Nova Zembla to Peru , and still each Masonic bosom would be a Lodge in itself—still would it hold in its sacred deposit the inviolable mysteries ! Companions of the Order I Knights Templars , Royal Arch , Past , Mark , and Master Masons , Fellow Craftsmen