The Badge Of Innocence."

Fortitude , Ave learn from the " Wisdom of Solomon . ' ' Surely , if the teaching of the Mosaic Tassels with our own be thus identical , so must the Tassels themselves be . Truly , Ave have here , a Badge of Innocencemore ancient and more honourable

, than any other in existence ! One word in conclusion : — The reverence that the Jew paid to his tasseled garment was immense . It is set forth in the Talmud that ivhen K . Joseph b . Eabba was asked by E . Joseph

" which commandment has your father admonished you to observe more than any other . " he received as a reply , " the law about the Tassels . Once , ivhen my father , on coming down a ladder , stepped on one of the threads and tore it off ; he would not move from the place until it was repaired . "'!" The Commandment of the Tassels is

held by some Eabbins to be as important as all the rest of the laws put together . % In the time of Christ these borders and tassels were held in the highest veneration , as witness the prominence accorded to them by the Pharisees , who even enlarged them to give an outward profession of extreme

regard for God ' s commands ;§ the conviction , again , of the Syro-Phcenician Woman that if she could but touch the hem ( border ) of His garment , she should be whole , 4 which actually came to pass ; as did also the same thing in the case of the inhabitants of

Gennesaret who brought their sick into His presence with the same intent . * * Such was the veneration of the Jew for the . Badge bestowed upon him by the God of his fathers ; such , again , on the one hand , the hypocritical purpose to which

the Pharisee put it ; such , on the other hand , the reward so earnestly sought , and as certainl y found , through its means ( as a channel of charity ) to the faithful believer in the Divine power of the wearer . Surel there is here to us revealed a word

y of caution that our Tasseled Badge of Innocence be to us no empty mockery of profession without practice , no outward cleansing with a heart left foul and fester-

The Badge Of Innocence."

ing within ; but that it rather prove to us the incentive ., to high and holy aims , and lofty motives , leading us—by the aid of the four cardinal virtues—becpiests of our Almighty Creator—to such work as shall neither disgrace our Badge of Innocence here on earth , nor lead it , ivrongly used , to brand us Avith everlasting disgrace , at the Opening of the Grand and Eternal Lodge above .

Lights And Shadows Of Scottish Freemasonry.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF SCOTTISH FREEMASONRY .

AKTtCLE FlEST . WE remember having once heard a gentleman say of Scottish Freemasonry that it was a blot upon the escutcheon of the craft ; that the good points it had , were , as against the bad onesso comparatively

, few as to render it nearly worthless . To those who hold such an opinion we would say : — " If you only knew a little more about ; us in Scotland you would think a very great deal better of us . " We know that we are not in that position to which

our rank , looking at the matter from a chronological point of view , surely entitles us , and knowing this , those amongst us to whom the interests of the craft are precious are doing our very utmost to reach it . Every system has its two sidesits bright

, side , and its dark one , its lights and its shadows , and to attempt to assert that the Freemasonry of Scotland forms any exception to the general rule were to attempt a fruitless task .

Still we can by no means agree with those who tell us that the shadows are so great as entirely to obscure the li ghts , believing as we do that the li ghts are in themselves so bright and pure , as by their very brilliancy to render the shadows the more easily discernible .

In the present series of papers it is not our intention to deal at length Avith any particular feature , but simply to take a kind of cursory glance at some of those more prominent ones , Avhich Ave fancy would be the most apt to attract the

attention of the stranger . Taking the less agreeable portion of our subject first , we see the greatest of our shadows , standing out in the light gloomily and conspicuously in the fact of our having