Masonic Loyalty.

general regulations . " Again , " all these charges you are to observe , and also those that shall be communicated to you in another way : cultivating brotherly love , tiie foundation and cape stone , the cement and glory of this ancient fraternity — avoiding all Avrangling and quarreling , all slander and backbiting , nor permitting others to slander any honest brother , but defending his character , aud doing him all good oliices , as far as is consistent

Avith your honour and safety , and no further . " How forcibly , beautifully ancl eloquently the above extracts set forth the duties of Freemasons , and their obligations to be loyal ancl true to the civil government , the Masonic institution and its principles . It ivould be scarcely possible to express more clearly the duties and obligations of Freemasons , and the language is so plain that every one worthy to be admitted to the

privileges of Freemasonry , can understand them . These extracts have a particular significance . As they form a part of the Masonic Constitutions , the obligation to observe them is imperative . Let every Freemason put the questions to himself , for it is important that he should , if ho would be loyal to his trust . Do I live up to these requirements ? As a Mason , am I faithful and true to my country , to the Masonic institution , and to my Masonic brethren ?

Unless Freemasons can honestly and sincerely answer these questions affirmatively , they have covenanted falsely , and are living in violation of A-OWS solemnly made . Society can only progress in cii-ilization and morals when the people are loyal to the government and true to their obligations ; otherwise there must be anarchy and retrogression ; and in every community there is anarchy in proportion to the number who transgress the civil ancl moral laws . So in Masonry , every A-iolator of Masonic law is a disunionist . a promoter of ' discord , a disturber of order , an anarchist .

It is of the utmost importance for every Freemason to consider well the ancient charges , and square his conduct by them , so that each one will be able to give a satisfactory response to the inquiry —Am I living in conformity to my Masonic and civil obligations ? Freemasonry , as its disciples live up to its requirements and practise its teachings , is a promoter of good will among men , ancl always advances the best interests of society , of civil and legal because of the

government , loyal principles Avhich form the essential element of its constitutions . Eevolutionary ' and disunion sentiments are antagonistic to Freemasonry . The latter promotes peace and harmony among men , and advances the prosperity of society ; the former produces discord , confusion , strife , anarchy , with their attendant train of evils . AA'e actively participate in promoting the one or the other , as we live up to the teachings of Freemasonry , or violate its peaceful and beneficent precepts . — American Mirror and Keystone .

Rough Jottings About Teadition.

ROUGH JOTTINGS ABOUT TEADITION .

BY w . M . BRO . rnma . c . TUCKEH , G . SI . or VF . H _ . OXT . II- the traditions of ancient Masonry lay , like the fossil casts of geological science , in the solid rocks of the external crusts of the earth , we might not only hope , at some time , to find them , but to understand and comprehend them when they became the subjects of our observation . AVe are not thus favoured . The lowest reptile and the highest mammal ields its mould of form

y up " " to the bar , the chisel , and the hammer ofthe industrious geologist , to speak its history in the far past ages . They are the physical traditions of science . The traditions of Misonry are solely moral ; ancl where they exist or have existed , depended upon a far less permanent record , upon a far less solid and ever-continuing doubtful establishment of iacts . Tiie one takes its proof from the eternal hills the

; other from the uncertainty of mere human action . Still , with so slight a- base as mere human action , and the poverty of history in its preservation in the early ' a" -es of the earth , we shall not bo acting wisely in undervaluing all human tradition . True , the subject is surrounded b y difficulties and would probably gain no strength b y the action of an overcrcdnlous or hi ghly imaginative man : because such a man is apt to at anything sliht

grasp , upon ggrounds , Avhich would favour any preconceived opinion of his own : and reject anything even more strongly supported , which was adverse to it . In extracting real truth from traditionary transmissions of fact « teachings , and principles , not only a fair amount of learning but the most absolute candour and impartiality of 'judgment should be brought to the examination . The absence of this in many case * in past years has brought something worse than confusion amou " us . ° Traditions , in the early ages , were doubtless embarrassed bv

Rough Jottings About Teadition.

the religious aud political institutions of some of the ancient nations . AVho can tell us what the priests of Egypt , iu its glory , actually believed ? Nominally , they with then people , ivere absolutely pagans , worshipping the ibis , the crocodile and other animals . ' Ancl yet Joseph was a " Priest of On , " and Moses ivas learned " in all the wisdom of the Egyptians . " Did these two believers in the great I AM—the one teach paganism as a priest ,

and the other learn only that " Avisdom" Avhich ivas " of the earth , earthy ?* ' It is difficult to believe so . Ancl it is equally difficult to believe that when the historian Herodotus was initiated into the mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood , he found nothing better there than the paganism of the surface , which ivas somewhat more degraded than that which existed in his own country . His own account of it—though he was bound to secrecy—leads us to

a far different conclusion . The local position of Eg } 7 pt , its prominent place among the early existing nations , its conquests , its change of dynasties by war , the extent of its knowledge of building and architecture , its written language , all come up to our minds as reasons why it could not have missed the traditions of the East , and among them the almost universal tradition of one God , the Creator ancl

Preserver . AVe are often met by the assertion of the great difficulty of preserving any knowledge for long periods of time , through merely traditional transmissions , and the fact that any reliable transmission can thus be made has been strongly denied . If any man has lived , for the last hundred years , ivho has lived in stern facts and the hilosophical to which they naturally

p consequences and logically led , that man was the learned Baron Alexander Von Humboldt . I know of no other man ' s writings from whom I would dare to quote so much at length as I shall now do from his ; and I know of no paragraphs of great length in any other , which embody in the same space so much of information bearing

upon the subject before ns . He says that there are races and nations of men now existing , " whose ancestry , in their present localities , stretches backward till its fading memorials outmeasure not only all that have been written , but all that has been erected , in brick or in marble , or in the aged granite itself—the primeval father of mountain and of rock . They are the men of the mountains . Glance your eye OA'er Asia , and you Avill find that while lains of the h

conquest and change of race have swept the p Euprates and the Ganges like floods , and the level steppes of Siberia like the north Avind , Caucasus and Himalaya haA'e retained their people , and their tuneful cliffs echo the same language as they did in the clays of the patriarchs . Who had footing on the Alps before the Swiss , or on the Pyrenees before the Basques ; and how long did the expiring sounds of the Celtic language wail

among the Cornish rocks , after the lowlands of England had become Boman , Saxon , Dane , and Norman by turns , and the mingling of a five-fold race had given to that country the most capable population under the sun ? Turn Avhither yon will on the surface of the globe , or in the years of its history , the discovery is ever the same . The Phoenicians were once great in Northern Africa , and the Egyptians mighty by the flood of the Nile ; but where now are the ships of Carthage , the palaces of Memphis , or the gates of Thebes ; or where is the race by which they ivere erected , or the descendants of the conquerors by whom

they were laid waste . The cormorant sits solitary on those heaps by the Euphrates where the conqueror of Egypt erected his throne ; the Goth and the Hun tread with mockery over the tombs of the Scipios , ancl the turbaned Arab has erected his tent over the fallen palaces of Numantia ; but the cliffs of Atlas hare retained , their inhabitants , and the same race ivhich dwelt there before Carthage , or Eome , or Babylon , or Memphis had existence , mountains

dwell there still ; and shielded by the fastnesses of their , the sword will not slay them , nor the fire burn . It is everywhere the same . If we turn to the west—the plains of-Guiana , and Brazil , ancl Mexico , ancl Peru , and Chili , and Paraguay have been rendered up to the grasping hand of conquest ; and because of the gold aud silver they contain , the thickly serried Andes havo been held bthe skirtsbut the lied Indian is yet in his

y ; mountain dwelling ; ancl in spite of all that fanaticism and avarice have beeu able to accomplish , in the very passion and intoxication of their daring , Chimborazo looks down from his lofty dwelling among the earthquakes on the huts of his primeval inhabitants ; and Orizaba yet mingles his smoke Avith that of fires kindled by the descendants of those Avhose ancestors tenanted his sides before Mexico was a cityor the Aztec race had journeyed into Central

, America . " AA e have then , according to Humboldt , races and nations of men still intact , passing very far back into the " dim distance of the past , " and yet speaking the same language which their pre-