Ideal Freemasonry.

IDEAL FREEMASONRY .

Address given by Bro . D . J . Murray Grand Chaplain , at the Anniversary Service of St . Augustine Lodge , No . 4 ( N . Z . ) , 4 th December 1898 . TO be invited to address a company like the present is no empty honour or shallow courtesy ; to worthily address such

a gathering of Brethren and their friends is no . easy task . A Brother of less modesty than myself would shrink from it , and I frankly admit my inability to do justice to the Craft on this occasion . But the Brethren have called upon me , and a popular hymn has taught me that

" Where duty calls , or danger , Be never wanting there . " At an installation during the past week the installing Officer uttered a sentence that has lived with me ever since— " You have not done all when vou are letter-perfect in your Eitual . You

roust live and act as true Masons should . " It decided me as to the subject of my address , and reixinded me of the remark of a late comer to an ordinary church service . " What ! is it all done ? " To which came the answer , "No ; all is said—the doing has to begin ! " *

As a preacher , custom forces me to take a text , and I have selected one from the Epistle of James , i ., 27—" Pure religion and undented before God and the Father in this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep himself unspotted

from the world . " I feel no difficulty or shame in paraphrasing this text— " True Freemasonry and perfect before God and men is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep himself unspotted from the . world . "

There is a critical moment when every Brother has had to face tbe question— " What is Freemasonry ? " And the answer has mechanically leaped to his lips— " A peculiar system of morality , veiled in allegory and illustrated by * ' symbols . ' " That is not all ; that is not enough . It may do as a part of our

Catechism , but we must go further in our conduct , even to the full terms of the words of the text . Tbe apostolic author of my text was rich in that practical wisdom the Hebrew lore—the "wisdom whose natural speech is the proverb and whose organ is a sort of transcendent common sense . He is pre-eminently the

apostle of Christian duty in its homeliest aspects and everyday acts and functions . The men who made up bis Church , which was indeed bis world , were better in creed than in conduct ; and what he said were the things they most needed to hear . He was the apostle of reality . An earnest worker himself , he was

thoroughly alive to the importance of Christian activity . What a rubbing of eyes and a pricking up of ears there would be on the part of our drowsy church members if the Apostle James could visit New Zealand and stand in our pulpits and tell the churches what he had seen and heard , and what was needed to be done in

this Christian colony ! Of all the apostles I do not think that I would surrender my pulpit to any so willingly as to St . James . You cannot read his epistles and not feel that the writer was all aglow with the conviction that the churches were in imminent danger . He had an eye quick to see , and was

always ready to reprove inconsistency . To him the worst quality was a life which contradicted the faith , making professions of right while leaving practice in the wrong . Like us , he held that the best thing for a man was not to say , but to do the truth—to love God by loving his brother man . Without this there could

not be tbe truth of nature that most surely secured truth of speech . God is love , and so only he who dwelt in love could truly do and truly speak the truth of God . Other men might seem to be religious , but religious those alone where who— " Swift to hear , " " Slow to speak "—lived a § in the sight of God—benevolent ,

beneficent , blameless in the world . In this verse he gives us not so much a definition as a description of " pure and undefiled religion . " And , my Brethren , all I have said of religion might be be said with equal force and application to Freemasonry . Wha ** t is required to complete and perfect the Christian and Mason alike are

beneficence and blamelessness of heart and life . Both Christianity and Freemasonry aim at building up the character . They are both to be regarded as a growth , a development , a life . In Freemasonry proper there is , as far as I know , only that which serves to inculcate the principles of piety and virtue among all its genuine

professors . And it is no idle boast that the solid foundation upon which Freemasonry rests is " the practice of every moral and social virtue , " while it is admitted the world over , by all competent to judge and to speak , " that the disuinguishing characteristic of a Freemason ' s heart is charity . " Of this last there is abundant proof , and time would fail me to tell now of the history of Masonic

benevolence and charity . But , should we be challenged on this point , may we not with a pardonable pride point to those noble educational and benevolent institutions in the Old Country ( and which I trust will soon be copied here ) . May we not speak ofthe hundreds of thousands of pounds contributed and expended annually upon them ? Nor need we be ashamed of the growth of

Ideal Freemasonry.

our own Colonial Grand Lodge Benevolent Fund—reaching , I believe , between £ 2 , 000 and £ 3 , 000 . Can we not tell with a joy that trembles with , delight and thankfulness of the homes made bright and happy—of the widows who are being cared for—and the , children that have been . educated and put on the high road to eminent and honourable positions throught our instrumentality . So that without fear or blame or shame every true Freemason can

say relatively— : " When the ear heard me , then it blessed me , and when the eye saw me , it gave witness unto me . .. Because I delivered the poor that cried , and the fatherless , and him that had none to help him . The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me , and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy . "

The test of all personal religion and true Freemasonry may be found in our care for the weak and lonely . The subjects of our charity mentioned here are typical as well as special . One great question pressing upon this age of ours is " What shall the strong do for the weak ? " And the G . A . 0 . T . U . has chosen for our notice widows and orphans . - The most trying condition in

this world is brought to our mind . A woman from whom has been taken the staff and stay of her life is one of the most pitiable objects of human sympathy . She has all the wounded feelings which any other mourner has , and yet is constrained to repress them . And a lonely mouher with fauherless children , and the prospect of dubious self-support in the future , is not only a living

appeal for assistance and succour , but a thorough and exhaustive type by which to teach the lesson that a true man ' s piety and a good Mason ' s charity must be tested by the care he accepts for others . But when is this duty of caring ? That brings out the occasion— " In their affliction ; " i . e ., in the time and in the place of it . Our help should be given when our help is needed . I say

" needed" because due care must be exercised to guard against indiscrimination on our own pari , and imposition on the part of others . Consider tioaes of narrowness ,- of panic , of business depression as offering special occasion . Then the poor are poorer than ever , and yet then our own craven greedy human nature is most inclined to run to cover . We retrench because of close

markets , but who feels close markets the most ? When it seems as if we had nothing to spare , when all time of leisure is exhausted , when one ' s brain is heavy with overwork '—then our first impluse is to draw aside from labour among the poor . But the slenderest philopsohy ought to be enough to show us that these are the very occasions above all others when the need is

most pressing . The depression we feel a little the poor feel greatly . Eemembering our own sense of need , let us on all occasions cheerfully embrace the opportunity of practising towards others that virtue which we profess to admire . The measure of this obligation is perfectly clear . We have seen that our religion and our Freemasonry are to be tested by

our feeling for the fatherless and widow , and the feeling is to be measured by the Fatherhood of God . And I would be willing , if challenged seriously , to put Christianity and Freemasonry to the proof on that ! Where is the man who has ever been in philanthropic or humanitarian or Christian or Masonic effort a parent to the poor , with a fatherly care and patience and

persistence , whose work can be measured by the fatherhood of the Father of Lights ! This can only be done by practically observing the final clause of the text , and " to keep himself unspotted from the world . " The good , the ideal Freemason must not only be benevolent , but blameless— "Unspotted from the world . " Oh ! how much that means !

I have heard Brethren speak sometimes disparagingly of Church goers and religious professors ,. because of real or supposed inconsistencies . Brethren , if we were judged of our Masonic profession by the same causes , should we not also be found wanting ? Would there be found in us no self , no lust for office , no waiting for applause , no expectation of return ? Has there been a

constant absence of " mercenary or other unworthy motives ? " Have there not been occasions when the cardinal virtues of Temperance , Fortitude , Prudence and Justice existed in tradition only ? Have the distinguishing characteristics of a good Freemason—virtue , honour , mercy—always been found in our breasts ? Have we not sometimes thought more of our creed than

of our conduct , our regalia than of our responsibility ? Have we at all times bent with humility and resignation to the will of T . G . A . O . T . U ., and dedicated our hearts to His Glory and the welfare of our fellow mortals ? Have we at all times felt that the stain of falsehood and dishonour has been more terrible than the terror of death ?

Brethren , to this must ihe ideal Freemason come ! To deny this is to say there is no spirit , no soul , no mission iu Freemasonry . It is to say that all our beautiful system of truth and teaching is a lie , and our solemn ritual a meaningless formality and a

wretched- farce . But we know otherwise—Freemasonry is the most honourable society that ever existed . It is a noble and an ennobling system . It is a growth , a development , a life . Above its mystery and through its ritualism comes to every one ranged under its banners the still small voice— " Go , seek thy fallen