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A Charge Delivered To The Faithful Lodge, No. 499,
Masonry , may I not say , wipes away by it ' s genial influence , the tear from the eye of sorrowing humanity , —checks the vicious tendency , —and lends the salutary aid to the efforts of virtue . Say ye who respect the divine image in the human soul , say iiow it brightens through the ' medium of our Order . Sensibility , the sweetest , gentlest , daughter of Heaven ! dwells in the Masonic Temple . In revelationit is her to labour
conjunction with reason and , province in the important work of building up the human soul , into a beautiful fabric for the inhabitation of the divinity . She finds the mind , indeed , in a state that requires great improvement , being under the influence of selfish passions and evil dispositions . The Royal Art is exerted in breaking off those extraneous qualitiesin order to
ren-, der the mind fit for the application of the perfect square . The o-enuine discip le is led through the graduated scale of active virtues to the footstool of his Creator ; he is assimilated by itto the divinity , and rendered meet to be an inhabitant of the celestial Lodge , where our supreme Grand Master ever presides . All it ' s principles and
ceremonies have this tendency . The central point of Masonry is theglory of the Great Architect , under whose auspices it professeth to act in the perfection of man . Every thing visible and oral in Masonry is directed to this great object;—an object compared with which every other is vain and trifling—for this comprises all our duties , all our interests , and all our hopes . Combine every thing that is great and goodbeautiful and praise-worthy , it only shows
, what the mind of man naturally is not , but what it undoubtedly ought to be . For the purpose of realizing such a combination of excellencies our Order was instituted , hath flourished , does flourish , and ever will do so , while Virtue is prized on earth . But here it may be asked , if Masonry hath this aim , why do we not see more of it ' s professors exhibit correspondent good effects to the world . not therefore
The answer is obvious—all who profess Masonry , are Masons . To be such thoroughly we must be good men and true . How high then , and exalted a character is the true Freemason ! Masonry is the science not so much of the head as of the heart , and no further than as a person enters into this knowledge can he be said to be , what is certainly the hig hest character on the face of the
earth—A FREE AND AN ACCEPTED MASON .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A Charge Delivered To The Faithful Lodge, No. 499,
Masonry , may I not say , wipes away by it ' s genial influence , the tear from the eye of sorrowing humanity , —checks the vicious tendency , —and lends the salutary aid to the efforts of virtue . Say ye who respect the divine image in the human soul , say iiow it brightens through the ' medium of our Order . Sensibility , the sweetest , gentlest , daughter of Heaven ! dwells in the Masonic Temple . In revelationit is her to labour
conjunction with reason and , province in the important work of building up the human soul , into a beautiful fabric for the inhabitation of the divinity . She finds the mind , indeed , in a state that requires great improvement , being under the influence of selfish passions and evil dispositions . The Royal Art is exerted in breaking off those extraneous qualitiesin order to
ren-, der the mind fit for the application of the perfect square . The o-enuine discip le is led through the graduated scale of active virtues to the footstool of his Creator ; he is assimilated by itto the divinity , and rendered meet to be an inhabitant of the celestial Lodge , where our supreme Grand Master ever presides . All it ' s principles and
ceremonies have this tendency . The central point of Masonry is theglory of the Great Architect , under whose auspices it professeth to act in the perfection of man . Every thing visible and oral in Masonry is directed to this great object;—an object compared with which every other is vain and trifling—for this comprises all our duties , all our interests , and all our hopes . Combine every thing that is great and goodbeautiful and praise-worthy , it only shows
, what the mind of man naturally is not , but what it undoubtedly ought to be . For the purpose of realizing such a combination of excellencies our Order was instituted , hath flourished , does flourish , and ever will do so , while Virtue is prized on earth . But here it may be asked , if Masonry hath this aim , why do we not see more of it ' s professors exhibit correspondent good effects to the world . not therefore
The answer is obvious—all who profess Masonry , are Masons . To be such thoroughly we must be good men and true . How high then , and exalted a character is the true Freemason ! Masonry is the science not so much of the head as of the heart , and no further than as a person enters into this knowledge can he be said to be , what is certainly the hig hest character on the face of the
earth—A FREE AND AN ACCEPTED MASON .