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Masonry A Universal Religion.
MASONRY A UNIVERSAL RELIGION .
AJf OBATION PElMVEltEP BETOllE TUB O-UANI ) I . OTOF . OF 10 AVA OP A . T . AND A . M ., CEDAK RAPinS , 6 m JUNE 1878 .
BY L . D . LEWELLTCG .
( Continued from page 115 . )
" Better for us , perhaps , it might appear , Were there all harmony , all virtne here ; That never air nor ocean felt tho wind , That never passions discomposed the mind . Bnfc all subsists by elemental strife , And passions are tho elements of life . "
The natural tendency of the race is toward perfection , and from Adam till now it has continually , though it may be slowly , progressed . When Adam was placed in tho garden he was innocent ; and I do no violence to his feelings if I say he lacked the knowledge to be mean .
llle was innocent , but he was not stronsr . He was innocent , but ho acked the knowledge which is power . He was a babe in the great world ; and the embodiment of innocence to-day is the sleeping babe in its cradle ; bnfc how much greater is man .
I tell you there is nothing , among all God's creatures , to equal the dignity of manhood . Man , with a mind capable of snbdning earth ; man , who can grasp the lightning and make it do his bidding ; man , whose sonl is a spark of divinity , and whoso destiny is hurh as heaven , and vast as eternity ; and when a man carries about in his
bosom a great , warm heart , throbbing with love for wife and children , and homo and fellow-men ; and when he struggles on and on through the mystery of pain and sorrow for the development of his race , ho is as much superior to the Adam of his race as a suit of broadcloth is superior to an apron of fig leaves .
What then ? Only this : the human race has been a developing race . The law of development was implanted in the natnro of the first Adam , and it impelled him to pluck the first fruit from tho tree of knowledge ; and over since he has been going on thi-ough strife
and pain toward nltimate perfection . I do not believe the Avorld is growing worse every day ; and Avhen a man tells me it is , I set it cloAvn that he is a sour and crusty cynic , and , ten to one , an old bachelor .
I do not believe the race is going to the bad . We have had our dai'k ages , our ages of persecution and intolerance ; but then men had no charity for different views , and so they bound men on the rack , and delivered , them over to exquisite torture . Hundreds of men were murdered for refusing to believe that portions of bread
and wine , made by the bakers and brewers of London , were the real body and blood of Christ . Men and women were bound to stakes by chains , fagots of wood piled high around them and touched with tire , and then , as they writhed in anguish , and as the flames rose higher , and the flesh crisped , and the tendons cracked , men stood back and viewed tho scene with infinite satisfaction .
The Aving of an angel was shown , which was said to have brought over from Jerusalem the point of the spear which pierced tho body of Jesus , and men were punished who refused to believe the
story . A queer notion arose , and it is believed to-day , that it was wrong to eat meat on certain days ; and four men , Av-ho had eaten a goose , were actually hung for the enormity of tho crime !
Well , all that was what people call too mnch of a good thing ! lb was the excess , tho over-doing , the excrescence of Christianity . Did it ever occur to you that tho only sins of meu aro their extremestheir excesses ?
There is no unnecessary machinery in man . His original faculties are all for a pnrpose , and good . Destroy a single faculty of a man ' s brain , and you destroy the equipoise ; develop a single faculty to excess , and you also destroy tho equipoise .
Add a single mountain on one side of the nicely poised earth , and away the world wonld go shrieking through the universe , like Phaiton in the chariot of the sun-god . Take away a single mountain from California or Vermont , and the result would bo the same . Develop a single faculty of man ' s brain to excess , and it carries
him away to destruction . Take away tho animal inclinations from man , says Henry Ward Beechcr , and ho is like an organ without a bellows . How appropriate tho Masonic symbol , the compass , which circumscribes and keep the passions within due bounds . Inside the mystic circle all is Avell , but when one faculty breaks the boundary lime the harmony is destroyed .
A judge once sentenced a murderer as follows : " Samuel N . Poston : This is is the saddest era of my life . Our parents and their children knew each other . Wo grew up together ; went to the same school ; played upon hill and in valley the same innocent games in boyhood . Years have passed since then ; our roads in life have
diverged . You now stand convicted of a great , a capital offence ; and I , as the minister of the law , have imposed upon me tho painful duty of passing upon you the sentence of death . I would that this cup might pass from me , but I cannot shrink from the official
requirement . It is , therefore , the order of the court that yon be taken within one mile of the court-house , there to be hanged by the neck until you aro dead , and may the Lord have mercy on your soul . "
It was an affecting scene . The judge Avas in tears ; a groan ran through the assembly . The prisoner , trembling like an aspen leaf , grasped a chair for support , and who shall depict the intense agony that wrung his heart as he remembered the innocence of his
Masonry A Universal Religion.
boyish days ? Why had he fallen ? Ask th sturdy oak , who « e top is " overgrown , why it writhes and falls ' neath the di'iving tempest ! Ask Peter why ho cursed tho Saviour of the world , and declared , " I know him not !" Many a drnnkard , excepting the one deformity of character , is an exemplary and noble man , but he is a victim to tho excessive development of a group of faculties . I mean to offer no apolosy for
drunkenness , but , on tho contrary , I stand before you to-day to condemn it , as blasting and imbrnting to man ' s nature ; yet , for all that , a drnnkard is a man . Tho great Charles Dickens once wrote , " Tn tho human heart , aAvay up a great many pairs of stairs , covered with the dust and cobwebs of years , was a door , and on that door was written AVOMAN ; " and so with tho drunkard , there is a door upon which is written MAN .
I once knew a man whose genial , social nature was a perpptnal gleam of sunshino in his household , and anions ? his friends . Men loved and honoured him , and yet he had a darling vice ; his free , convivial natnro , which won him hosts of admiring friends , was at tho same time his deadliest enomy . Ho did not drink to drown sorrow ; no greeu-oyed monster sat upon his hearth-stone—ho know
no trouble there ; bnt ho loved company and mirth and Avino , and when once ho had felt their exhilarating influence his passion know no bounds . Timo wore on ; his eyes reddened , and weakoned , and . watered . Once , twice , many times , ho resolved to leave off his intemperate habits . What of that ? good resolutions cast aside are common-placo objects on tho road to eternal death ; and so he
drank again . On one occasion , recovering from a week ' s debauch , his aged mother called him to her , and bade him promise once more , and in deeper earnest . The large-hearted man fell upon his knees , and as tho great scalding tears found a channel for their flow , he promised in the witness of his God that he would reform . Alas ! he had struggled up to this height but to fall asrain ; each I imo
turning with greater loathing from his debaucheries : each timo repentant andfnll of self-condemnation , but still powerless to resist the sparkling temptation , when it gave its colour in the cup . In his sober moments the man was a model for Christians , over attentive to the cry of suffering humanity ; the sick and afflicted found rolief by his presence , and tho poor rose and called him blessed . And now ,
when he stands hefore tho pearl gates , -with many who have named the name of the Lord , shall it not also be said of him , " Inasmuch as ho did it unto the least of these , he did it unto me ? " Ah ! my friends , there is a close alliance between the man of God and the man of sin . The very noblest attributes of our natures , possessed in excess , stamp ns with condemnation . The passion which gives
us courage to defend the truth against error is the same that ostracises a brother for his honest opinion . The spirit of fearless independence which marks the good leaders of men is the same that actuates the bold outlaw and prompts the fearless murderer . Alas ! for man ' s excesses ! Alas ! for human offences against law and order and charity and life .
Bnt if it must needs bo that offences come—if tho " Great Plan " required that some man should become a Judas , and some man a Pilate ; that some man should smite and spit upon tho Son of God , and that another should thrnsfc the spear into his side—if the plan required tho sacrifice of the life of Jesus , and that men should thug become the wicked instruments to further tho ends of
Divinitywho shall say that the whole plan for the ultimate development of the race did not permit this crime and that excess—this ism and that ology—that their clashing interests might goad the race to superior attainments . "A hundred pieces of nnshaped stone , roughly jostled in a bay , became beautified and polished marbles ;" and so the josfch ' ngs of man against man—his adversity , his prosperity , his mystery of pain and sorrow—has been his moral
discipline , under which ho has grown stronger , and greater , and grander . If it must needs be that offences come , it remains for you and for mo to struggle on through their purifying influences—through the sad results of men ' s excesses—profiting by the experience of the race ; profiting by the history of individual lives , snbdning out passions , developing our manhood ; trusting and believing that the persecutions and intolerance of the past have been the bitter medicines of common good .
Bat the patient is convalescent now , and I stand hero to-day as ono of the doctors , to declare that we don ' t need any more of that kind of medicine . Wo don't need any more intolerant pills ; we don't need any more inquisitions ; we don'tneed any more thumb-screws , and chains , and fagots , and we don't need any moro doctors of the old school , who think all these appliances aro necessary . But what wo
do need is charity—charity for men with different opinions—charity in word and deed—charity which vannfceth not itself , and is not puffed up—charity which sufforeth long , and is kind . This is the pure philosophy of Masonry ; this is the corner-stone of religionthe Christ in man—tho stone which the builders of faiths have too often rejected .
And now , brethren , to conclude : I have tried to illustrate that thero is a principle in man Avhich urges him to perfection ; that in all progress old things must pass away , and give place to new ; that tho friction incident to such change is the great instrument of man ' s development ; that this friction , unrestrained , may become excessive , and result in violence and crime ; that man , as a moral a ^ ent ,
is in the fullest sense , responsible for his excesses ; but that , seen as God sees , vice and crime , which aro the excesses of men , are only offshoots from tho direct lino of hnman progress , which stretches from the cradle of tho race far into the unborn future . I conclude , therefore , that it is the duty of all men , and especially of Masons , for the sake of human progress , for the sake of human happiness and
ultimate human perfection , to subdue their passions ; to walk uprightly in their several stations beforo God and man ; to sqnare their actions by the square of truth and virtue ; and , above all , to practise charity toward all men , while all are travelling together upon the level of time to that undiscovered country , from whoso bourne no traveller returns .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Masonry A Universal Religion.
MASONRY A UNIVERSAL RELIGION .
AJf OBATION PElMVEltEP BETOllE TUB O-UANI ) I . OTOF . OF 10 AVA OP A . T . AND A . M ., CEDAK RAPinS , 6 m JUNE 1878 .
BY L . D . LEWELLTCG .
( Continued from page 115 . )
" Better for us , perhaps , it might appear , Were there all harmony , all virtne here ; That never air nor ocean felt tho wind , That never passions discomposed the mind . Bnfc all subsists by elemental strife , And passions are tho elements of life . "
The natural tendency of the race is toward perfection , and from Adam till now it has continually , though it may be slowly , progressed . When Adam was placed in tho garden he was innocent ; and I do no violence to his feelings if I say he lacked the knowledge to be mean .
llle was innocent , but he was not stronsr . He was innocent , but ho acked the knowledge which is power . He was a babe in the great world ; and the embodiment of innocence to-day is the sleeping babe in its cradle ; bnfc how much greater is man .
I tell you there is nothing , among all God's creatures , to equal the dignity of manhood . Man , with a mind capable of snbdning earth ; man , who can grasp the lightning and make it do his bidding ; man , whose sonl is a spark of divinity , and whoso destiny is hurh as heaven , and vast as eternity ; and when a man carries about in his
bosom a great , warm heart , throbbing with love for wife and children , and homo and fellow-men ; and when he struggles on and on through the mystery of pain and sorrow for the development of his race , ho is as much superior to the Adam of his race as a suit of broadcloth is superior to an apron of fig leaves .
What then ? Only this : the human race has been a developing race . The law of development was implanted in the natnro of the first Adam , and it impelled him to pluck the first fruit from tho tree of knowledge ; and over since he has been going on thi-ough strife
and pain toward nltimate perfection . I do not believe the Avorld is growing worse every day ; and Avhen a man tells me it is , I set it cloAvn that he is a sour and crusty cynic , and , ten to one , an old bachelor .
I do not believe the race is going to the bad . We have had our dai'k ages , our ages of persecution and intolerance ; but then men had no charity for different views , and so they bound men on the rack , and delivered , them over to exquisite torture . Hundreds of men were murdered for refusing to believe that portions of bread
and wine , made by the bakers and brewers of London , were the real body and blood of Christ . Men and women were bound to stakes by chains , fagots of wood piled high around them and touched with tire , and then , as they writhed in anguish , and as the flames rose higher , and the flesh crisped , and the tendons cracked , men stood back and viewed tho scene with infinite satisfaction .
The Aving of an angel was shown , which was said to have brought over from Jerusalem the point of the spear which pierced tho body of Jesus , and men were punished who refused to believe the
story . A queer notion arose , and it is believed to-day , that it was wrong to eat meat on certain days ; and four men , Av-ho had eaten a goose , were actually hung for the enormity of tho crime !
Well , all that was what people call too mnch of a good thing ! lb was the excess , tho over-doing , the excrescence of Christianity . Did it ever occur to you that tho only sins of meu aro their extremestheir excesses ?
There is no unnecessary machinery in man . His original faculties are all for a pnrpose , and good . Destroy a single faculty of a man ' s brain , and you destroy the equipoise ; develop a single faculty to excess , and you also destroy tho equipoise .
Add a single mountain on one side of the nicely poised earth , and away the world wonld go shrieking through the universe , like Phaiton in the chariot of the sun-god . Take away a single mountain from California or Vermont , and the result would bo the same . Develop a single faculty of man ' s brain to excess , and it carries
him away to destruction . Take away tho animal inclinations from man , says Henry Ward Beechcr , and ho is like an organ without a bellows . How appropriate tho Masonic symbol , the compass , which circumscribes and keep the passions within due bounds . Inside the mystic circle all is Avell , but when one faculty breaks the boundary lime the harmony is destroyed .
A judge once sentenced a murderer as follows : " Samuel N . Poston : This is is the saddest era of my life . Our parents and their children knew each other . Wo grew up together ; went to the same school ; played upon hill and in valley the same innocent games in boyhood . Years have passed since then ; our roads in life have
diverged . You now stand convicted of a great , a capital offence ; and I , as the minister of the law , have imposed upon me tho painful duty of passing upon you the sentence of death . I would that this cup might pass from me , but I cannot shrink from the official
requirement . It is , therefore , the order of the court that yon be taken within one mile of the court-house , there to be hanged by the neck until you aro dead , and may the Lord have mercy on your soul . "
It was an affecting scene . The judge Avas in tears ; a groan ran through the assembly . The prisoner , trembling like an aspen leaf , grasped a chair for support , and who shall depict the intense agony that wrung his heart as he remembered the innocence of his
Masonry A Universal Religion.
boyish days ? Why had he fallen ? Ask th sturdy oak , who « e top is " overgrown , why it writhes and falls ' neath the di'iving tempest ! Ask Peter why ho cursed tho Saviour of the world , and declared , " I know him not !" Many a drnnkard , excepting the one deformity of character , is an exemplary and noble man , but he is a victim to tho excessive development of a group of faculties . I mean to offer no apolosy for
drunkenness , but , on tho contrary , I stand before you to-day to condemn it , as blasting and imbrnting to man ' s nature ; yet , for all that , a drnnkard is a man . Tho great Charles Dickens once wrote , " Tn tho human heart , aAvay up a great many pairs of stairs , covered with the dust and cobwebs of years , was a door , and on that door was written AVOMAN ; " and so with tho drunkard , there is a door upon which is written MAN .
I once knew a man whose genial , social nature was a perpptnal gleam of sunshino in his household , and anions ? his friends . Men loved and honoured him , and yet he had a darling vice ; his free , convivial natnro , which won him hosts of admiring friends , was at tho same time his deadliest enomy . Ho did not drink to drown sorrow ; no greeu-oyed monster sat upon his hearth-stone—ho know
no trouble there ; bnt ho loved company and mirth and Avino , and when once ho had felt their exhilarating influence his passion know no bounds . Timo wore on ; his eyes reddened , and weakoned , and . watered . Once , twice , many times , ho resolved to leave off his intemperate habits . What of that ? good resolutions cast aside are common-placo objects on tho road to eternal death ; and so he
drank again . On one occasion , recovering from a week ' s debauch , his aged mother called him to her , and bade him promise once more , and in deeper earnest . The large-hearted man fell upon his knees , and as tho great scalding tears found a channel for their flow , he promised in the witness of his God that he would reform . Alas ! he had struggled up to this height but to fall asrain ; each I imo
turning with greater loathing from his debaucheries : each timo repentant andfnll of self-condemnation , but still powerless to resist the sparkling temptation , when it gave its colour in the cup . In his sober moments the man was a model for Christians , over attentive to the cry of suffering humanity ; the sick and afflicted found rolief by his presence , and tho poor rose and called him blessed . And now ,
when he stands hefore tho pearl gates , -with many who have named the name of the Lord , shall it not also be said of him , " Inasmuch as ho did it unto the least of these , he did it unto me ? " Ah ! my friends , there is a close alliance between the man of God and the man of sin . The very noblest attributes of our natures , possessed in excess , stamp ns with condemnation . The passion which gives
us courage to defend the truth against error is the same that ostracises a brother for his honest opinion . The spirit of fearless independence which marks the good leaders of men is the same that actuates the bold outlaw and prompts the fearless murderer . Alas ! for man ' s excesses ! Alas ! for human offences against law and order and charity and life .
Bnt if it must needs bo that offences come—if tho " Great Plan " required that some man should become a Judas , and some man a Pilate ; that some man should smite and spit upon tho Son of God , and that another should thrnsfc the spear into his side—if the plan required tho sacrifice of the life of Jesus , and that men should thug become the wicked instruments to further tho ends of
Divinitywho shall say that the whole plan for the ultimate development of the race did not permit this crime and that excess—this ism and that ology—that their clashing interests might goad the race to superior attainments . "A hundred pieces of nnshaped stone , roughly jostled in a bay , became beautified and polished marbles ;" and so the josfch ' ngs of man against man—his adversity , his prosperity , his mystery of pain and sorrow—has been his moral
discipline , under which ho has grown stronger , and greater , and grander . If it must needs be that offences come , it remains for you and for mo to struggle on through their purifying influences—through the sad results of men ' s excesses—profiting by the experience of the race ; profiting by the history of individual lives , snbdning out passions , developing our manhood ; trusting and believing that the persecutions and intolerance of the past have been the bitter medicines of common good .
Bat the patient is convalescent now , and I stand hero to-day as ono of the doctors , to declare that we don ' t need any more of that kind of medicine . Wo don't need any more intolerant pills ; we don't need any more inquisitions ; we don'tneed any more thumb-screws , and chains , and fagots , and we don't need any moro doctors of the old school , who think all these appliances aro necessary . But what wo
do need is charity—charity for men with different opinions—charity in word and deed—charity which vannfceth not itself , and is not puffed up—charity which sufforeth long , and is kind . This is the pure philosophy of Masonry ; this is the corner-stone of religionthe Christ in man—tho stone which the builders of faiths have too often rejected .
And now , brethren , to conclude : I have tried to illustrate that thero is a principle in man Avhich urges him to perfection ; that in all progress old things must pass away , and give place to new ; that tho friction incident to such change is the great instrument of man ' s development ; that this friction , unrestrained , may become excessive , and result in violence and crime ; that man , as a moral a ^ ent ,
is in the fullest sense , responsible for his excesses ; but that , seen as God sees , vice and crime , which aro the excesses of men , are only offshoots from tho direct lino of hnman progress , which stretches from the cradle of tho race far into the unborn future . I conclude , therefore , that it is the duty of all men , and especially of Masons , for the sake of human progress , for the sake of human happiness and
ultimate human perfection , to subdue their passions ; to walk uprightly in their several stations beforo God and man ; to sqnare their actions by the square of truth and virtue ; and , above all , to practise charity toward all men , while all are travelling together upon the level of time to that undiscovered country , from whoso bourne no traveller returns .