Masonry's Grandeur And Goodness.

an age may demand , are held a 3 in golden shrines which cannot pass away . These forms bind century to century , and are unbroken links in the unseen chain of brotherhood . The long ranks of the departed , aproned and jewelled in them , stand around the altars of fellowship , and are ever

visible tp the mental gaze . The sound of such form is not lost \ in the decays of time , but is beard in the tender passion and the magnificence of their tone , as generation speaks to generation face to face . Inclosing the wisest and noblest ideals , they are forerunners for wise and noble action . For

man is body , soul and spirit in the trinity of his personality ; n being of mind and of sense , and for these are needed truths in visible form and expression . A wise ritual , enshrining the beating heart of humanity , lifts man beyond himself , and is a magnificent influence , and teacher . It

appeals to the senses , and so lays a touch and a hand on the heart , and knowledge and wisdom and truth are no longer more memories , but working forces and achievers in the labours and the grandeur unseen endeavours of society .

Eitnal is dignity ; ritual is stability ; ritual is harmony ; ritual is uniformity ; ritual is unity and abiding impression . It is the guard and defence of principles , stronger in its protection than walled fortresses and the shining bayonets of war .

Masonry is a society of ideals . Ideals have been the heritage of all great thinkers . Those powers which have attained special altitude among the nations have not only worked their great principles into their character , but have worked according to an ideal . It is the greatness which

inspires , quickens , moves and pushes them out into loftier efforts and princely deedp . In ideals a people finds a voice for its longing , the hopes it cherishes , and the heights it would attain , and the interpretation of its dreams for

human good . The pyramids , the colossal forms that he in the stone wastes of Egypt , are not dead things only , but the broken expression of a glorious ideal , the mute proclamation that the body of man should live forever . Mount Zion was not a mere rock on which to build a

temple ; it was the enduring monument , to all ages , of the grandeur of the soul as it worships Jehovah , and the beauty of holiness and righteousness in the character . Egypt in a lower sense , Jndea in a higher sense , lived and breathed in the atmosphere of ideals . For the latter , its golden age

was in the promised Messiah . Who in the fullness of time came , and proclaimed with a voice that has been heard through the world , that the resurrection of the body is a

reality , and that life is life immortal m the worship of God night and day before His eternal throne . In the royalty of His nature He became Himself the interpretation of the grandest ideals .

Masonry , by its unwearied patience and energy , has drawn to itself the highest and best things harvested in the centuries . And it has built its temple and shown it to the world to draw these things to itself and fashion them into harmony and the calm beauty of its leading ideals , just as

the windowed arch , the shafted cross , and pointed spire , the strong buttress , have drawn to themselves the gentler moonbeams and sculptured them into mellowed li ght and calm beauty . Each age hap given some great truth , or some contribution , and Masonry has held them up for man

to imitate and make his own . And here again it has become a school of learning , and knowledge , duty , righteousness , integrity , moral beauty , purity , have educated its members to the lofty height such ideals demand . It has kept every ideal before the Mason , whether it has been

enriched by symbol or acted drama or the pageantry of dedicated temple or poised arch . In this , too , it finds its growth , and this will be the standard by which its loftiness will be measured before men . For though Masonry is of the past , it has to do with the present , with times of great

endeavour and the constant miracle of invention , and no standard of action can be hidden from sight , no truth of the ever growing institution can be thrown aside among the wastes of the temple , for Masonry teaches with the unvarying order which nature teaches every artistic soul .

Every flash of light on leaf or tree , every tint of the firmament , on the waves of the sea , or mountain crag , is formed into an ideal , and inspiration for the mind and hand to impress on stone or to repeat the story of its beauty on the p ictured canvas .

Here lies in some measure the educating power of the Lodges and Chapters of the Fraternity . If the Mason is much with its ideals and principles , he can go back to tho world , his face illumined as if in the presence of some higher being ; their power to guide his life resting with

himself , and their power energised to win mankind to a brotherhood which can contribute such things to man . He has established and set forth in enduring shape the

fact that his Fraternity is the home of true greatness , the mansion house of true nobility , the dedicated meeting place where oven tho Holy Religion can closely identif y itself with human helps and human sympathy .

In the temple in tho eternal city there is an arch ; and there is an arch in the royal companionship . Under the dome of the great cathedral there are truths enfolded , and so under tho arch of the imperial Masonic structure . Beneath the arch , builded with human hands , beneath the

dome of the brotherhood , there is an altar of light and a shrine of knowledgo ; the shining path on which tho crooked things are made straight , and the darkness which

blinds the eyes of the seekers after truth is made light . Belief in God has become the attained priviledge of calling on His name ; and the glorions thing that was lost is found , which must be found to render life everlasting .

Among the adornments of the structure of Masonry , and which gives a fair beauty to the temple , is the divine gift of charity and love . It is not only a gift , but a voice sweet and haunting like the voice that comes over tho waters , falling from the lips of the voyagers in the ship

which passes on the summer sea . But it also compasses obedience and respect for the moral laws , which , out of the unapproachable flames of Sinai , came written with the finger of God on tables of stone , to be written henceforth on the heart or conscience . Love to God will issue in

benevolence to man ; for man , as we saw , is not a being of sense only , but of reason , of immortality and likeness to his Creator . And in these moral and spiritual places charity will have its highest service as it has its lower service in ministering to the body . This is true charit y ,

and as it is among the highest gifts it is among the most blessed . It glorifies every right deed done by man , and it glorifies Masonry , of which it forms so large a part , as the sun glorifies the house of stone on the hillside , in the fading day , painting the varied architecture with the richness of colour , the gleam and royalty of purple .

It bears on it the mark of heaven and is a blessing to mankind . In its lower and practical form it is that compassion for Buffering which lifts the burdens which shadow so many live ? , and relieves their wants . One of the noblest pleasures which the mind can attain is to comfort

the weary , to dry the tear of the saddened heart , to hold out tho hand of fullness to the needy . Charity , as it lies at the basis of society , is a strong power to preserve its harmony , and to promote public virtue . If nothing is done to relieve the destitute ; if the needy are left to their

need , the hungry to their hunger , then too often crime is the unsighty issue . But where homes are built , not to foster idleness or pretense , but for the truly poor ; where asylums are founded for the halt and the lame and the blind , in the competition and strifes of business ; where they

are sustained by public opinion and public means , then a strong moral force is projected into society , and charity has become a blessed influence as the light that passes over the land , leaving its benign footsteps in mellowed fruit , in rippling grain and the incense of numberless flowers .

In these later days the Fraternity has tasted the cup of the rich wine of charity in our own jurisdiction , and the Home has arisen beneath the circle of the hills . This may seem a small thing , but it is really a great thing . In the Cordilleras there are peaks which rise above others and

catch the first dawn of the morning which promises the full day , and we admire their grandeur ; but lower down there are wide clefts which are fresh with needed moisture , broad ravines , green with herbage for use and breathed into beauty by the fragrance of the mountain flower .

Their humility has made thera great . There are structures in ouv civilisation which attest the work of the master spirit , which witness to some great conception of the intellect or commercial enterprise , and wo admire the genius which is manifest through all . But there are

structures scattered through the land humbler in their look , which call forth the better feelings of the mind , because they are hallowed and consecrated by sympathy with the needy and broken lives . For while there is hunger to be fed and thirst to be stayed and burdens of

poverty to be lifted from the shoulders , it is a clear mark of Providence that these are a heritage to society , and which , as it has the remedies , society must relieve . So it is with the Home that rises in our fraternal commonwealth . It represents the mind , the love , the generous spirit of