An Oration Upon Masonry.

no attempt to p lease your ears Avith florid , high-Avrought periods , or to fill your minds with sentimental , languid self-approval by descanting on the benefits of Masonry . I am , however , thoroughly in earnest in my desire and effort to contribute as I can

not only to tbe successful issue ot the day ' s ceremony , but also to the progress of Masonry and the welfare of our own Lodge . It is with this consciousness and this desire that I dare to answer the call for a speech upon " Masonry , "

" MASONBY , " A short text for a sermon , if it were a sermon I had to preach to you , as I may have to do , if spared , ere long . But it would have puzzled you , as for a time it perplexed mewhat topics from amid so

, grand and far-reaching a subject were capable of illustration within the short limits prescribed to me . I would say then first of all a few words on the trustfulness and the antiquity of Masonry , and I beg for the serious

attention of thoughtless and thoughtful alike—I know we have both among us—while I add to the expression of my own absolute and sincere conviction and belief some brief points of the grounds upon which they rest .

Few of us perhaps have escaped acquaintance with a treacherous and pernicious volume , which , while professing to

give information about our Order , not only discredits the order itself , but blasphemously denies the truth of Holy Scripture ^ scarcely acknowledging even the name of God , refuses the notion of any spiritual or immortal principle in the soul of manand rejects with scorn the hope of

, a Resurrection . All this is done with a tone of presumptions authority that may easily prevail to unsettle the faith of some and disturb the minds of others who do not know how often and how thoroughly such wicked falsehoods have

been disproved . I am not going to enter upon the controversy now , but only to examine , iu passing , one assertion made in this volume , that the Jews never existed as a nation , ivhich assertion is made a sort of foundation to the subsequent argument . This examination may enable us all to estimate at their true worthlessness other

statements of the like land depending upon the same authority . Now we all know that Jews , equally proud of their nationality , are found in every station of society , from the wealthiest to the poorest , in almost every country in the world . All these look to

Judtea as their country , to Jerusalem as their common capital and national metropolis . Whence or when could this farspread sense of nationality have arisen , if it had not existed before the destruction of

Jerusalem by Titus ? That it did exist wo have abundant evidence , even in the records of heathen historians . There are few more vivid and striking pictures given by any than that by Ctesias how Alexander the Great was received at the gate of Jerusalem by the High Priest , in his gorgeous

pontificial robes , attended by a train of priests and Levites . In awe-stricken wonder the mighty conqueror refrained from entering the sacred city , and remitted to tbe Jews either the whole or great part of the tribute imposed

upon other nations . AVhen shortly afterwards he founded his city of Alexandria , ivhich you know still subsists , he invited thither a colony from Jerusalem a colony of Jews . His invitation was accepted , and many learned Jews settled there and founded a school of teaching , from ivhich

Jewish morality , Jeivish thought , Jewish learning spread in their influence and acceptance to centres of civilization which they could scarcely have reached from Jerusalem . These things surely could not have taken place if the Jeivs had not then been a nation .

Quite recently has been discovered a sculp tured record of far earlier date , upon which no hint or shadow of a hint of fraud or collusion of any kind has been or can be thrown . This agrees , even in minute details , with the Jewish record of the events

referred to in such a way that it is impossible to deny the validity of the Jewish record contained in our canonical Scriptures , of these things at least as true and real * . The truth of Holy Scripture as a whole depends indeed upon far larger and wider considerations than any I can