Annual Festival Of The Emulation Lodge Of Improvement.

Master and tbe Dep . Grand Master , whom they had known so very long both in Masonry and in private society , and when he saw himself flanked by so many Grand Officers , he had no hesitation in saying that the work of Grand Lodge was well done by those officers , taken as a whole , though he himself could not claim to have have had anything but a very small share in it .

Bro . the Rev . R . J . SIMPSON , P . G . C , rose and remarked that much had been said in later times against a dual control , but he was quite sure that the dual control under which the brethren had been that ni ght was in every sense most satisfying . They knew what took place in another place ( the Temple of Grand Lodge )

they knew how they were presided over ; there was dignity and precision , and they knew the very great treat they had , " the feast of reason and the flow of soul , " which was produced in the Emulation Lodge of Improvement , the largest number that ever assembled in that lodge since its commencement . But they also ,

he was sure , would regret that the absence of the chief workman who was to have controlled them under the present dispensation at the banquet table had been absolutely owing to ill-health ; particularly as the first Magistrate of the greatest City in the empire , as an old and true working Mason , and as one of the best

speakers , even in that great City , they all deeply regretted the absence of the Lord Mayor . At the same time they were consoled by the fact that there sat in the chair that the Lord Mayor was to have adorned one who was a distinguished civic dignitary , who , he had no doubt , though Lord Mayors come and Lord Mayors

go , went on for ever doing City work and civic business , but at the same time finding plenty of time to devote to that Craft to which he was so ardentl y attached—Freemasonry . The brethren knew the distinguished position Bro . Sir John Monckton had held in the Order , who , over and above the positions he had held in the

City and in Freemasonry , stood high in the opinion , regard , and affection of every brother Mason , which , in the words of the first Grand Master , was " more precious than rubies , and all the things that are to be desired are not to be compared to it . " Therefore , in asking the brethren to drink "The Health of the W . M . " now

presiding , he assured them they would be drinking the health of one who , whether as a man , as a Mason , or as a member of the City of London , had presided so kindly and ably on that occasion . The CHAIRMAN said there was nothing so difficult as to speak about oneself ; he therefore proposed to do so

in the very briefest terms . Let him , however , follow Bro . Simpson in his sincere regret at the reason for his being in the chair . Some years ago , on his own merits , he presided on a similar occasion , and was very proud and happy to do so as a very old member of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement . He spent his half-crown

to belong to it so long ago that he calculated what a sum it would have amounted to if he had kept and invested it . He was then looking for his first chair , and the success he had met with in working he owed entirel y to the Lodge of Emulation . Therefore , if that ni ght he acceded to the urgently made request of Bro .

Fenn that he should occupy the chair of his distinguished chief in the City it was not to be wondered at . He was sorry for the brethren , though glad for himself . He saw the Lord Mayor in the morning , and he bore witness that his lordshi p was not well enough to come out ; he was very poorl y indeed . The Lord Mayor told

him that if towards the end of the day he was not well enough to take the chair at that meeting , he ( Bro . Monckton ) was to express his most sincere regret to the brethren . The Lord Mayor was no new Mason ; his lordship sincerely regretted his inability to attend . He ( Bro . Monckton ) was not going to say anything of

himself except that he was proud to be in the chair . He was now going to ask the brethren to give him their best attention while he endeavoured to propose to them —he would not say as worthily as it ought to be proposed , but to the best of his ability— " Success to the Emulation Lodge of Improvement , " coupled with the

name of Bro . Fenn , the Treasurer . A cousin of his ( Bro . Monckton ) , who was in the Church , once told him that the only difficulty he knew of in preparing a sermon was to get a good text . Well , he had to say that he enjoyed that cousin ' s society more abroad than in the pulpit . He said that to lead up to the suggestion that

he had now got the best possible text . Not only was the toast thebest of the evening , but it was coupled with the name of one who was the Freemason of England . He was going in a very few words to exemplify what he thought that Lodge of Emulation had done . An eminent brother in Freemasonry had passed up to

him that evening a cutting from an old newspaper of 1858 containing a length y report of a similar festivit y to the present in the month of December of that year . There was a hideously long speech made by the Chairman of that meeting , and he ( Bro . Monckton ) was glad he was not present ; but one

portion of it seemed to him to bear a little on the subject on which he desired to say a few words . The Chairman on that occasion told the brethren of that day a little story ; he ( Bro . Monckton ) dared say it was a great story , for he did not suppose it ever happened , but the moral was everything in all stories , whether they were true or not . The hero of the story was the

greatjupiter , king of the gods , who desired at some time in his immortal career to do a turn , as they said in the City , to the mortals on earth : and he packed up a large parcel of something he thought would be very acceptable , and , as the report said , there being no Pickfords in that day , gave it to Momus to take down to Olympus to the earth , and when opened it was found to contain nothing but spectacles . The peculiar

Annual Festival Of The Emulation Lodge Of Improvement.

feature of the spectacles was that they were of different colours and tints , and when the mortals put them on each saw his brother mortal differently tinted to what his brother mortal saw him ; and the moral of the story which he ( Bro . Monckton ) gathered from the story of the brother who presided at the Emulation

festival was that there was something in Masonry going on then of different colours . He supposed from that that there were some little discussion , or dissensions , rife at that time . They were not so now . and he was inclined to put it down to the uniformity , the discipline , that had been fostered b y the Emulation Lodge of

Improvement . That was the moral he had to draw , and he was obliged to the brother ( Bro . George Everett ) who sent up to him the newspaper slip containing the speech . The lodge had met that night in larger numbers than ordinary . According to the returns of the valuable Secretary , there were 400 brethren

present , and his pockets were in danger of bursting with the 95 half-crowns paid by the brethren who were proposed as joining members . The lodge had to congratulate itself on having still more members in the future who would take an interest in it . Let him say something of the excellent Mason on his left ( Bro .

Fenn ) . If ever there was a lily in the Craft , there sat that lily , and he needed no painting from him ( Bro . Monckton ) . He looked upon Bro . Fenn as the life and soul of Masonry in England , not only in the Emulation Lodge of Improvement ; wherever English Masonry was thought of or known , there the

name of Bro . Fenn was known and honoured . He offered the brethren the toast of " Success to the Emulation Lodge of Improvement , " coupled with the name of Bro . Thomas Fenn . Bro . FENN , President of the Board of General Purposes ( the toast having been received with great

heartiness ) , said , in responding to the toast which the Chairman had proposed in terms so flattering to himself ( Bro . Fenn ) , on behalf of the Committee , permit him first to thank Bro . Monckton for having so promptly and kindly undertaken to fill the chair in the unavoidable absence of the Lord Mayor . As Bro . Monckton

had said , that was the largest meeting the Emulation Lodge of Improvement had ever held . There had been a great many brethren in the room who had never visited that lodge before . They would , therefore , permit him , in a very few words , to give again what he had given on many such occasions , the reasons

why they claimed for that lodge that the work which they did was absolutely and exactly the work that was taught by the Lodge of Reconciliation , which was chartered for a limited period after the Union to instruct the Masters of lodges in the ritual that had then recently been agreed upon . Bro . Peter Gilkes , a

very well-known Mason , was a constant visitor of the Lodge of Reconciliation , and a few years after he became the ruling spirit and president of that lodge . Shortly after that lodge met , many Grand Officers were present who were well acquainted with the work done at the Lodge of Reconciliation , and they

declared that it was perfectly correct . Bro . Stephen Barton Wilson , the friend and pupil of Bro . Peter Gilkes , after Peter Gilkes' death , presided at the Lodge of Emulation till his death in 1866 . Bro . Murton , a former member of the Committee , and himself ( Bro . Fenn ) were taught the ritual and lectures from him , and

he had frequentl y heard Bro . S . B . Wilson declare that although there was a little variation in the lectures , he adhered to the ritual as taught to him by Bro . Peter Gilkes . There were , therefore , only three links in the chain that connected this Emulation Lodge of Improvement with the Lodge of Reconciliation . No doubt

the difficulties of communication and the limited period which was allowed for the teaching of that lodge prevented them then from disseminating completely the authorised ritual in the provinces , and the consequence was that many of the lodges in the provinces worked as they had worked before . Although

a uniform ritual was agreed upon at that time and ordered to be used by all the lodges under the English Constitution , he believed , as the Chairman had said , they were nearer uniformity now than ever they were before . The strictadherenceof thatEmulation Lodged Improvement to the ritual handed down to them , the fact that it

was undoubtedly the leading lodge of instruction in the Craft , and its ritual now the acknowledged standard , was doing much , and would continue to do much , in the future to forward that uniformity which so many of the brethren desired ; but while lodges and brethren would persist in indulging fancies of their own , it was

impossible to expect entire and complete uniformity . The vast number of suggestions which had been made to him during the many years he had been more or less a leading member of that lodge forcibly impressed upon him the danger of deviating in the slightest degree from the ritual as it had been handed down . He recollected

some years ago being asked by a new Master of a lodge to visit his lodge and see him perform the . third ceremony in which he had introduced some very great improvements , but he need not tell the brethren he denied himself the pleasure of accepting that invitation . A Provincial Grand Master recentl y talked of

ordering the lodges in his province to omit words to which he had taken objection , and he ( Bro . Fenn ) quite recentl y was very much surprised to hear that in one province an important part of the obligation in the Third Degree was omitted , because , forsooth , it did not meet with the

approbation of some of the members of that province . It was difficult to define strictly what were and what were not the landmarks of Freemasonry , but the obligations in the Three Degrees were undoubtedl y landmarks , and that was strongly insisted upon by the Grand Master , the late Duke of Sussex , who himself from the

Annual Festival Of The Emulation Lodge Of Improvement.

chair of Grand Lodge recited the three obligations from which no deviation was to be permitted . Omitting , therefore , any part of the obligations was to his ( Bro . Fenn ' s ) mind the removing of an ancient landmark of Freemasonry , and he regretted to add , but it seemed to him to follow

as a logical sequence , that it was a breach of the obligation of a Master elect . Believe him , he did not say that with the intention of wounding the feelings of any brother in the province he had alluded to or elsewhere , but he ventured to mention it in order to shoiv what pitfalls beset the path of those who to indulge a

fancy of their own , or of some would-be reformer , intentionally deviated from the strict line of authority . No doubt it was very easy to argue that the omission of certain words , or the addition of certain words , or the alteration of certain words , would be an improvement ; it was just as easy to argue that it would as to argue

that it would not be an improvement . No doubt some members of the learned profession present , he saw one at all events ( Bro . Philbrick ) , could tell them it was just as easy to argue that white was black as that white was white . He mentioned that as a compliment to their learning and their skill in logic , and they evidently

took it as he meant it . It was easy to object to some of our modes of expression because they differed from modern ideas of composition , but he believed parallel expressions could be found in good writers of former years . The Committee of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement were so conscious of the interminable

difficulties which would arise from allowing the slightest deviation from the words of the ritual that they refused and he trusted they ever would refuse to listen to any suggestion of change . The present Committee —and he would more particularly allude to Bro . Sudlow —were well qualified to maintain in all its purity the

ritual that had been handed down to them , and they , including himself , were more strongly convinced than ever that the success of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement , which thebrethren had so kindly wished them , and in which none could join more heartil y than the Committee themselves , depended on a strict adherence

to the ritual which had been bequeathed to them b y their predecessors . Bro . F . A . PHILBRICK , Q . C , G . Reg ., proposed " Success to the Lodge of Unions , " under whose sanction the Emulation Lodge of Improvement worked . He had the highest respect for Bro . Fenn ,

but he was not quite sure he had given him ( Bro . Philbrick ) the very best introduction in talking at him as one of some people who could prove black was white . But when there were those who argued that black was white , or white was black , or that a mixture of the two was no colour at all , he was quite satisfied

that even he would not attempt to deny any mixture of colours that produced the Lodge of Unions , and the services that had been rendered to the Craft b y the distinguished lodge which had taken the Emulation Lodge of Improvement under its banner , and bade it go on its career of usefulness . After what had been said

that ni ght , he would not add a word about uniformity . Some of them had seen in the newspapers and had heard something about organisations which had found difficulty on the question of uniformity , but it was clear that habits of accuracy of thought , and the promotion of neutral discipline fostered b y the Emulation

Lodge of Improvement did a great deal of good . When everybod y wrote to contradict what everybody else had said in the newspapers , and when the person contradicting said he had been misunderstood , and if he had not been misunderstood then that the words were not used in the language which he intended , or if they

were they were susceptible of a double meaning , he was quite satisfied that anybody or institution which pointedly called the attention of those who belonged to it to verbal accuracy and the extreme need of wei ghing words and maintaining that which had been handed down in Masonry as a precious heritage unimpaired

and uninjured , unaltered and unvaried , as the brethren of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement hoped to hand down to those who came after them , rendered an essential and valuable service to the Craft . It was because those functions were performed b y the Emulation Lodge of Improvement , because it had acted , and

was acting thus , and reflected so much credit on the Craft under the Lodge of Unions that he ventured with every confidence to give "Success and Prosperit y to the Lodge of Unions , " and with that toast he would couple the •name of the W . M . of the lodge , Bro . Wallington .

Bro . WALLINGTON , W . M . 256 , said it required not many words from the Lodge of Unions to express to all the brethren present their obligation for the way in which that toast had been received , and the manner in which it was always responded to at the annual festival of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement . The Lodge

of Unions was very proud , as it should be , to have such an institution working under its charter as the Emulation Lodgeof Improvement , and the pride and pleasure it felt was certainly enhanced that evening by witnessing such excellent working as the brethren had seen in the Temple . He did not propose to say more than that

the Lodge of Unions heartily congratulated the Emulation Lodge of Improvement upon the splendid success that was now evidently being attained , and wished it every prosperity in the future . The CHAIRMAN next asked the brethren to drink a

toast which came home to the heart of every Mason" The Masonic Institutions . " That toast also , like good wine , needed no bush—whatever that old proverb mig ht mean , though he did not understand it himself , but he did understand that the Masonic Institutions were dear to the hearts of Masons , and that Masons were anxious