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Contents ; — PAGE FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE : — Freemasonry and its Influence 301 The Late Roman Government 302 Masonic Jott " mgs , No . 66 303 Light from the East 301 305

Masonic Notes and Queries Correspondence 306 Masonic Sayings and Doings Abroad 309 Reviews 309 MASONIC MIEKOB : — Masonic Mems 310 Lodge of Benevolence 310 Royal Masonic Institution for Boys 810

CEAET LOUGE MEETINGS-. — Metropolitan 311 Provincial 312 India 315 Royal Arch 316 Ancient and Accepted Rite 31 / Cheshire Educational Masonic Institution 317 Masonic Female Orphan School , Dublin 318

Knights Templar 319 Poetry 319 List of Lodge , & c , Meetings for ensuing week 320 LONDON , SATURDAY , APHID 22 , 1871 .

Freemasonry And Its Influence.

FREEMASONRY AND ITS INFLUENCE .

The institution of Freemasons is understood by the initiate , if not also believed by the profane , to have an absolute tendency to inculcate everything laudable and useful to society ; and its leading qualities are , well-directed Philanthropy , pure

Morality , inviolable Secresy , and a taste for the Arto . It may be observed that Solon , Lycurgns , Numa , and all the other political legislators have not been able to render their establishments durable , and

that , however sagacious might have been their laws , they had at no time the power to expand themselves over all countries , and to all ages . Having little more in view than , victories and

conquests , military violence , and the elevation of one set of people above another , they were never universal , nor consonant to the taste , or genius , or interest of all nations . Philanthropy was not their basis . T -ove of

country badly understood , and pushed v ¦> limits on which they should not verge , destroys often , in warlike republics , the love of general humanity . Men are not to be essentially distinguished by the difference of tongue they speak , of clothes which

they wear , of countries which they inhabit , nor of dignities with which they are ornamented . The whole world is no other than one great republic , of which each nation is a family , and each individual a child . It was to revive and reanimate such maxims that the Society of Speculative Freemasons was first instituted . The great design was

Freemasonry And Its Influence.

to unite all men of sense , knowledge , and worthyqualities , not only by a reciprocal love of the Arts , but still more by the great principles of virtue , where the interests of the fraternity might become that of the whole human race , where all

nations might increase in knowledge , and where every subject of every country might exert himself himself without jealousy , live without discord and embrace mutually without forgetting or too scrupulously remembering the spot on which he

was born . What obligations do we not owe to those superior souls , who , without listening to the suggestion of interest , or the natural desire to surpass others in power , first conceived an establishment whose end was the reunion of the

understanding and the heart , to render both better by contact ? The sanctity which attends the moral qualities of the Masonic Society , is a branch of the subject worthy of observation . Eeligious orders were

instituted to render man more perfect ; militaryorders were founded to inspire love of glory ; but Speculative Freemasonry was instituted to form men into good citizens , to make them inviolable in their promises , faithful votaries to the God of

Friendship , and more lovers of liberality than of recompense . But Freemasonry is not branded by the display of virtues merely civil . As a severe , savage , sorrowful , and misanthropic kind of philosophy disgusts its votaries , so the establishment

under consideration renders man amiable , by the attraction of social though innocent pleasures , pure joys , and rational gaieties . Every vice of the head and heart is excluded ; libertinism , irreligion , incredulity and debauchery are banished and

unqualifiedly rejected . The meetings of Freemasonry resembles those amicable entertainments spoken of by Horace , where all those are made welcome guests whose understandings may be enlightened , whose hearts may be mended , or who may be any way emulous to excel in the trnth , the good ., or the great :

" O noctes , ccena ? que Deum , Sermo oritur , non de villis , domibusve alienis ; .. Sed quod magis ad nos Pertinet , efc nescire malum est agitamus : TJfcrumme divitiis homines . " From the society in question are banished all '

the disputes which might alter the tranquility of friendship , or interrupt that perfect harmony which cannot subsist but by rejecting all indecent excesses , and every discordant passion . The obli-