Fraternity The True Mission.

FRATERNITY THE TRUE MISSION .

From the Comer Stone .

" Those wondrous symbols that can retain The phantom forms that pass along the brain , O ' er unsubstantial thoughts hold strong control , And fix the essence of the immortal soul . "

BUT if they are received and practised as bald ceremonies—as but the dried husks and skins from which the goodly grain and wine have been lostwhat further need has the world of them ? Has the ark of the covenant been removed from the tabernacle ? Has Shiloh left the temple ? We may go on adding to our numbers day by day , filling our halls with paraphernalia , our coffers with treasure , and the streets with pompous processions ; but if the

soul of Masonry has departed , what profit is all this , either to us or the world ? The great importance of preserving the exact forms of Masonry is , that the exact symbolism shall also be preserved . Else it will corrupt with time under the " improvements " of Vandals , or worse than that , the meretricious additions of degraded tastes . But the true life is independent of the form , and the latter may continue whilst the former has fled . Yet , to him who hath eyes to see , the emblem will ever be rich with instruction , the symbol ever glowing with meaning .

When the riches of the art treasures of ancient Greece were being conveyed hy the haughty conqueror to Rome , he threatened the sailors that if they were lost , they should be compelled to replace , them at their own expense—a replacement somewhat difficult , it would seem . But many , in these times , appear to think it the easiest of things to replace that portion of the forms of Masonry which they have lost , from the workshop of their own crude fancies . In Oriental tale , the slave of the lamp , at Aladdin ' s order , finished but

twentythree of the twenty-four windows of the grand ball of his palace , aud we read that the treasures of the Sultan ' s empire were vainly exhausted in the attempt to finish the twenty-fourth , and the effort was given up in despair . But these brothers undertake not only to finish the Masonic temple , but to remodel it from the north-east corner to the sanctum sanctorum . Replacing the lost art with their own chisels ! ornamenting the windows of its high halls with paint and stucco and carved excrescences from " chaos come again ! "

The answer to the sternly questioning time is this : Masonry , with all its ancient forms , lives because it is necessary to mankind that it should live . It finds expression in fixed forms , because those forms , more universally than any other , convey to its membership the grand ideas , the fundamental principles upon which it is based . You can no more replace them by new forms than you could replace a lost Venus de Medicis or Apollo Belvidere . It is not an insurance or mutual relief association . It is not reli gious or even moral

merely . It is all these and more . It is an ideal system , built upon the brotherhood of those who consent to " walk together in unity . " " Though , like two twigs which from one stem diverge , Their growth , perhaps , doth tend toward different points ; Yet search un o the root , they still are joined—One sap pervades the twig , one blood the brothers' vsin » , "