Freemasonry And Its Mission.

FREEMASONRY AND ITS MISSION .

( From the "Daily News . " Freemasonry , let us concede to its apologists , needs no apology for its existence , or

explanation of its success , in a country like ours , devoted to humanitarian ideas , and proud of its enlightened toleration and its cosmopolitan charity . If we may trust the fervent assertions of the Brotherhood , it is older than all the Churches , completer

in its catholicity , more mysterious in its origin , humaner in its influences and effects upon society , and if disfigured , as all sublunary institutions must be , by some imperfections and some absurdities , has remained constant and faithful to the perfect simplicity of its law of kindness , and its

faith in the moral unity of mankind . There may be myths , the adepts tell us , in Masonic history , as there are in the history of more exclusive and particular religions . But these myths ,, whatever they may be , must , it is urged , be harmless and

beneficent , since they have never provoked a heresy or countenanced a crime against the peace and order of societies and states , or the happiness of the human family . The original connection between the operative builder's craft and the

Masonry , whose good works are not built with hands , may be wrapt in obscurity to the profane . But the vitality of an institution must be indestructable which makes a certain hand-grip intelligible to the initiated from the remotest East to the farthest

West , superseding , or rather embracing in one common bond , all diversities of creed , colour , race , and language , all politics , all power of worship , all conditions and degrees of civilization . Corruptions , ib is admitted , very probably may have crept in ;

and Freemasonry is no more free from indifference , infidelity , and what is called worldliness , ' than the purest ecclesiastical foundation . Nor is it any depreciation , say its defenders , ofthe essential virtue of the Order , to say that it has the faculty

of adapting itself to national idiosyncracies , and even to local usages and characteristics . This is only saying in other words , that nothing that pertains to any portion of humanity is alien to its spirit and its doctrine . Indeed , the " profane , "

who are disposed to mock at the convivialities of the Brotherhood , at the apparent tendency of their labour to degenerate into refreshment , at the portentous nature of secrets which sit as lightly

upon the Pharisees as on the publicans and sinners who partake in the celebrations , are fain to confess that no man was ever the worse for being a Mason , if many are no better for the badge , and that , as M . Theirs said of the Republic , it has the

evident merit of being the institution of all others which divides mankind the least . "We shall not discuss or dispute these pleas ; though , remembering them , it is amusing to find an eminent English Brother such as Lord

Carnarvon discoursing in the true English vein upon Freemasonry , and affirming before a fraternal audience in Lancashire , that " if there was one part in the whole habitable globe where Masonry had taken deep and firm root , he claimed that part

for England ; and if there was one corner of England where Masonry had taken deeper root than elsewhere , he thought they might claim it for Lancashire . " This is , we were going to say , a truly British way of looking at an institution which ,

claims to be nothing if not universal , and which , as the same speaker observed , " in every part of the world had gone on spreading . " Perhaps we ought to say , a truly English form of speech , for our Scottish fellow-countrymen would hardly be

disposed to accept the superiority of Lancashire , or of England , in this respect . Lord Carnarvon probably meant to include all Great Britain when he added the very justifiable interpretation of the phrase that , as " about three hundred years ago

it had been said by one of the wisest men of the time that England was the place above all others where the love of truth prevailed , in conjunction with reverence for that which was old , " it was natural for a truth-loving and reverential and

practical nation such as ours to be foremost in the cultivation of the Masonic precepts . Lord Carnarvon laments that " in other countries Masonry unfortunately had too often lent herself to other societies , who had taken advantage of her , and ,

under the shadow of her great name had dared to foist upon society their own miserable doctrines and theories . " There is , we dare say , some justification for this charge ; but is there a single institution , a devout Mason may fairly ask , | . which

has preserved throughout the whole course of its existence an undisturbed exemption from abusive and eccentric manifestations ? Freemasonry , for all its catholicity and simplicity of doctrine , has not escaped the accidents of time , place , and the contact of surrounding associations . In some