Address

venerated this character of these admirable institutions , and eulogiums on their excellence are profusely scattered through the classical pages of antiquity . Thus Pindar , the immortal Poet of the Olympian games , alluding in some of his verses to these systems of initiationsays :

, " Happy is the man AVIIO descends into the grave after having beheld these mysteries , for he knoAVS the origin and the end of life . " Sophocles , the tragedian , says : " They are thrice happy Avho descend to the shades

boloAV after having seen these rites , for they alone have life in Hades , AA'hile all others suffer there every kind of evil . " And Isoorates , the distinguished orator of Greece , and companion of Plato , declares "that those Avho have been initiated into the

mysteries entertain better hopes both as to the end of life , and the Avhole of futurity . " These mysteries , varying in each country in non-essential forms , yet everywhere presented the same substratum of religious truth , taught the same hopeful creed of a future life , and inculcated the same

confiding trust in an immortality of the soul and a superintending Providence . While the great heathen Avorld , from Scandinavia to . Mount Atlas , from the pillars of Hercules to the remotest Ind , presented one vast intellectual Zahara—a desert into AA'hich no true plant of religious truth could live , yet those mysteries of the philosophers , these sacred and secret initiations Avere the oasis Avhich cheered the

Aveary and desponding pilgrim in his journey to the grave , Avith a sight of the tree of knoAvledge aud a draught from the Avaters of life . And when on the coming of a better dispensation the ancient initiations ceased , there Avas still left impregnableand

inde-, structible in its strength of truth , that purer initiation , purer because better developed , and chastened by the' teachings of ackuoAA'iedgcd revelation , Avhich men then called , as they do HOAA ' , Freemasonry . And then , again , AA ' are to look at

Freemasonry as an institution Avhich is charitable , and engaged in tlie perpetuation of Brotherly Love . AVhen men have been long united together in pursuit of any one common object ; Avhen they are in the habitual communion of one common thought ; Avhen they are the united participants in one common labour , and share alike in the

reputation or odium of one common enterprise , AA'hen , in short , they belong to one common household , the natural , and indeed inevitable result of this communion and participation is to engender a AA-anner feeling of interest in each , for the companions of his labours and his dangershis

, acts and deeds , than for the common croAvd of men AA'hose only claim to his regard is founded on the common relation of humanity . Nothing , indeed , is more Avorthy of imitation than the mode in which the charity of

Freemasonry is exercised , Avhile , in strict oliedience to the Divine rule that the left hand shall not kuoAv AA'hat tlie right hand doeth , the virtue is practised Avith such effect that not the Society alone , but every constituent member becomes the almoner

of its deeds of mercy and kindness ; so that the eulogium has been pronounced upon it that its " charities have sent forth their beneficence in countless streams and rivulets , carrying comfort and gladness to thousands of the destitute and afilicted . " And thus silently it Avorks , and Avith no blazon to the world , no printed record of its munificence , its deeds of bounty knoAA'u

only to its recipients ; and , rising from acts of individual aid to labours and enterprises of large moment , it dries the AvidoAv ' stear , it hushes the orphan ' s cry . it feeds the hungry , it clothes the naked , founds hospitals for the sick , builds asylums for the agedand establishes colleges for the

, young , ministers to the Avounded , and extends the right hand of felloAvship to the suffering and dying , so that if it could make no other claim on the respect and admiration of the Avorld , the good it has done and is ever doing to the poor

unfortunate and the ignorant should alone he deemed enough to disarm the acrimony of its enemies , and to make every lover of his race the warm advocate of its character . " HOAV often has it showered doAvn its golden gifts into the seemingly

inaccessibledungeons of misery ? HOAV often has it radiated Avith its beneficent rays the glooms of affliction , and converted its horrors of despair into the meridian splendour of unexpected joy ? Let the Avidow and the orphanthe unfortunate everywhere ,

, Avitness its beneficent deeds , and in a symphony of gratitude declare that on the flight of all the other Aurtues , Charity as Avell as Hope remained to bless mankind . "