X. ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN.
[Elu of the Fifteen ]

THIS Degree is devoted to the same objects as those of the Elu of Nine;
and also to the cause of Toleration and Liberality against Fanaticism and
Persecution, political and religious; and to that of Education, Instruction,
and Enlightenment against Error, Barbarism, and Ignorance. To these
objects you have irrevocably and forever devoted your hand, your heart,
and your intellect; and whenever in your presence a Chapter of this
Degree is opened, you will be most solemnly reminded of your vows here
taken at the altar.
Toleration, holding that every other man has the same right to his opinion
and faith that we have to ours; and liberality, holding that as no human
being can with certainty say, in the clash and conflict of hostile faiths and
creeds, what is truth, or that he is surely in possession of it, so every one
should feel that it is quite possible that another equally honest and sincere
with himself, and yet holding the contrary opinion, may himself be in
possession of the truth, and that whatever one firmly and conscientiously
believes, is truth, to him - these are the mortal enemies of that fanaticism
which persecutes for opinion's sake, and initiates crusades against
whatever it, in its imaginary holiness, deems to be contrary to the law of
God or verity of dogma. And education, instruction, and enlightenment are
the most certain means by which fanaticism and intolerance can be
rendered powerless.
No true Mason scoffs at honest convictions and an ardent zeal in the
cause of what one believes to be truth and justice. But he
does absolutely deny the right of any man to assume the prerogative of
Deity, and condemn another's faith and opinions as deserving to be
punished because heretical. Nor does he approve the course of those who
endanger the peace and quiet of great nations, and the best interest of
their own race by indulging in a chimerical and visionary philanthropy - a
luxury which chiefly consists in drawing their robes around them to avoid
contact with their fellows, and proclaiming themselves holier than they.
For he knows that such follies are often more calamitous than the ambition
of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater
curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than
persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, and the
stake! And he knows also how unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to
whom himself and everything around him are mysteries, to torture and
slay others, because they cannot think as he does in regard to the
profoundest of those mysteries, to understand which is utterly beyond the
comprehension of either the persecutor or the persecuted.
Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief, falsifies
and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Catholic,
the Protestant, each professing his peculiar religion, sanctioned by the
laws, by time, and by climate, must needs retain it, and cannot have two
religions; for the social and sacred laws adapted to the usages, manners,
and prejudices of particular countries, are the work of men.
But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the cardinal tenets
of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the foundation of all
religions. All that ever existed have had a basis of truth; and all have
overlaid that truth with errors. The primitive truths taught by the Redeemer
were sooner corrupted, and intermingled and alloyed with fictions than
when taught to the first of our race. Masonry is the universal morality
which is suitable to the inhabitants of every clime, to the man of every
creed. It has taught no doctrines, except those truths that tend directly to
the well-being of man; and those who have attempted to direct it toward
useless vengeance, political ends, and Jesuitism, have merely perverted it
to purposes foreign to its pure spirit and real nature.
Mankind outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the childhood of
the world. Yet it is easy for human indolence to
linger near these helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the
unadventurous Nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his flock in the same
close-cropped circle where they first learned to browse, while the
progressive man roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures new."
The latter is the true Mason; and the best and indeed the only good
Mason is he who with the power of business does the work of life; the
upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer, the man with the power of thought,
of justice, or of love, he whose whole life is one great act of performance
of Masonic duty. The natural case of the strength of a strong man or the
wisdom of a wise one, is to do the work of a strong man or a wise one.
The natural work of Masonry is practical life; the use of all the faculties in
their proper spheres, and for their natural function. Love of Truth, justice,
and generosity as attributes of God, must appear in a life marked by these
qualities; that is the only effectual ordinance of Masonry. A profession of
one's convictions, joining the Order, assuming the obligations, assisting at
the ceremonies, are of the same value in science as in Masonry; the
natural form of Masonry is goodness, morality, living a true, just,
affectionate, self-faithful life, from the motive of a good man. It is loyal
obedience to God's law.
The good Mason does the good thing which comes in his way, and
because it comes in his way; from a love of duty, and not merely because
a law, enacted by man or God, commands his will to do it. He is true to his
mind, his conscience, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation to do to
others what he would not wish to receive from them. He will deny himself
for the sake of his brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the line of
his duty, both being in conjunction. Not in vain does the poor or the
oppressed look up to him. You find such men in all Christian sects,
Protestant and Catholic, in all the great religious parties of the civilized
world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They are kind fathers,
generous citizens, unimpeachable in their business, beautiful in their daily
lives. You see their Masonry in their work and in their play. It appears in all
the forms of their activity, individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, or
political. True Masonry within must be morality without. It must become
eminent morality, which is philanthropy. The true Mason loves not only his
kindred and his country, but all mankind; not only
the good, but also the evil, among his brethren. He has more goodness
than the channels of his daily life will hold. It runs over the banks, to water
and to feed a thousand thirsty plants. Not content with the duty that lies
along his track, he goes out to seek it; not only willing, he has a salient
longing to do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his generosity, his
Masonry over all the world. His daily life is a profession of his Masonry,
published in perpetual good-will to men. He can not be a persecutor.
Not more naturally does the beaver build or the mocking-bird sing his own
wild, gushing melody, than the true Mason lives in this beautiful outward
life. So from the perennial spring swells forth the stream, to quicken the
meadow with new access of green, and perfect beauty bursting into
bloom. Thus Masonry does the work it was meant to do. The Mason does
not sigh and weep, and make grimaces. He lives right on. If his life is, as
whose is not, marked with errors, and with sins, he ploughs over the
barren spot with his remorse, sows with new seed, and the old desert
blossoms like a rose. He is not confined to set forms of thought, of action,
or of feeling. He accepts what his mind regards as true, what his
conscience decides is right, what his heart deems generous and noble;
and all else he puts far from him. Though the ancient and the honorable of
the Earth bid him bow down to them, his stubborn knees bend only at the
bidding of his manly soul. His Masonry is his freedom before God, not his
bondage unto men. His mind acts after the universal law of the intellect,
his conscience according to the universal moral law, his affections and his
soul after the universal law of each, and so he is strong with the strength
of God, in this four-fold way communicating with Him.
The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will not
suffice us now. The duties of life are to be done; we are to do them,
consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistically, loving only our
selfish gain. There are sins of trade to be corrected. Everywhere morality
and philanthropy are needed. There are errors to be made way with, and
their place supplied with new truths, radiant with the glories of Heaven.
There are great wrongs and evils, in Church and State, in domestic,
social, and public life, to be righted and outgrown. Masonry cannot in our
age forsake the broad way of life. She must journey on in the open street,
appear in the crowded square, and teach men by her deeds, her life more
eloquent than any lips.
This Degree is chiefly devoted to TOLERATION; and it inculcates in the
strongest manner that great leading idea of the Ancient Art, that a belief in
the one True God, and a moral and virtuous life, constitute the only
religious requisites needed to enable a man to be a Mason.
Masonry has ever the most vivid remembrance of the terrible and artificial
torments that were used to put down new forms of religion or extinguish
the old. It sees with the eye of memory the ruthless extermination of all the
people of all sexes and ages, because it was their misfortune not to know
the God of the Hebrews, or to worship Him under the wrong name, by the
savage troops of Moses and Joshua. It sees the thumb-screws and the
racks, the whip, the gallows, and the stake, the victims of Diocletian and
Alva, the miserable Covenanters, the Non-Conformists, Servetus burned,
and the unoffending Quaker hung. It sees Cranmer hold his arm, now no
longer erring, in the flame until the hand drops off in the consuming heat. It
sees the persecutions of Peter and Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, the
trials of Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, and Irenæus; and then in turn the
sufferings of the wretched Pagans under the Christian Emperors, as of the
Papists in Ireland and under Elizabeth and the bloated Henry. The Roman
Virgin naked before the hungry lions; young Margaret Graham tied to a
stake at low-water mark, and there left to drown, singing hymns to God
until the savage waters broke over her head; and all that in all ages have
suffered by hunger and nakedness, peril and prison, the rack, the stake,
and the sword, - it sees them all, and shudders at the long roll of human
atrocities. And it sees also the oppression still practised in the name of
religion - men shot in a Christian jail in Christian Italy for reading the
Christian Bible; in almost every Christian State, laws forbidding freedom of
speech on matters relating to Christianity; and the gallows reaching its
arm over the pulpit.
The fires of Moloch in Syria, the harsh mutilations in the name of Astarte,
Cybele, Jehovah; the barbarities of imperial Pagan Torturers; the still
grosser torments which Roman-Gothic Christians in Italy and Spain
heaped on their brother-men; the fiendish cruelties to which Switzerland,
France, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland, America, have been
witnesses, are none too powerful to warn man of the unspeakable evils
which follow from mistakes and errors in the matter of religion, and
especially from
investing the God of Love with the cruel and vindictive passions of erring
humanity, and making blood to have a sweet savor in his nostrils, and
groans of agony to be delicious to his ears.
Man never had the right to usurp the unexercised prerogative of God, and
condemn and punish another for his belief. Born in a Protestant land, we
are of that faith. If we had opened our eyes to the light under the shadows
of St. Peter's at Rome, we should have been devout Catholics; born in the
Jewish quarter of Aleppo, we should have contemned Christ as an
imposter; in Constantinople, we should have cried "Allah il Allah, God is
great and Mahomet is his prophet!" Birth, place, and education give us our
faith. Few believe in any religion because they have examined the
evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment, upon
weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand knows anything
about the proofs of his faith. We believe what we are taught; and those are
most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which their creed is
based. Facts and testimony are not, except in very rare instances, the
ground-work of faith. It is an imperative law of God's Economy, unyielding
and inflexible as Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief
of those among whom he is born and reared; the faith so made a part of
his nature resists all evidence to the contrary; and he will disbelieve even
the evidence of his own senses, rather than yield up the religious belief
which has grown up in him, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.
What is truth to me is not truth to another. The same arguments and
evidences that convince one mind make no impression on another. This
difference is in men at their birth. No man is entitled positively to assert
that he is right, where other men, equally intelligent and equally wellinformed,
hold directly the opposite opinion. Each thinks it impossible for
the other 'to be sincere, and each, as to that, is equally in error. "What is
truth?" was a profound question, the most suggestive one ever put to man.
Many beliefs of former and present times seem incomprehensible. They
startle us with a new glimpse into the human soul, that mysterious thing
more mysterious the more we note its workings. Here is a man superior to
myself in intellect and learning; and yet he sincerely believes what seems
to me too absurd to merit confutation; and I cannot conceive, and
sincerely do not believe,that he is both sane and honest. 
And yet he is both. His reason is as perfect as mine, and he is as honest as I.
The fancies of a lunatic are realities, to him. Our dreams are realities while
they last; and, in the Past, no more unreal than what we have acted in our
waking hours. No man can say that he hath as sure possession of the
truth as of a chattel. When men entertain opinions diametrically opposed
to each other, and each is honest, who shall decide which hath the Truth;
and how can either say with certainty that he hath it? We know not what is
the truth. That we ourselves believe and feel absolutely certain that our
own belief is true, is in reality not the slightest proof of the fact, seem it
never so certain and incapable of doubt to us. No man is responsible for
the rightness of his faith; but only for the uprightness of it.
Therefore no man hath or ever had a right to persecute another for his
belief; for there cannot be two antagonistic rights; and if one can
persecute another, because he himself is satisfied that the belief of that
other is erroneous, the other has, for the same reason, equally as certain
a right to persecute him.
The truth comes to us tinged and colored with our prejudices and our
preconceptions, which are as old as ourselves, and strong with a divine
force. It comes to us as the image of a rod comes to us through the water,
bent and distorted. An argument sinks into and convinces the mind of one
man, while from that of another it rebounds like a ball of ivory dropped on
marble. It is no merit in a man to have a particular faith, excellent and
sound and philosophic as it may be, when he imbibed it with his mother's
milk. It is no more a merit than his prejudices and his passions.
The sincere Moslem has as much right to persecute us, as we to
persecute him; and therefore Masonry wisely requires no more than a
belief in One Great All-Powerful Deity, the Father and Preserver of the
Universe. Therefore it is she teaches her votaries that toleration is one of
the chief duties of every good Mason, a component part of that charity
without which we are mere hollow images of true Masons, mere sounding
brass and tinkling cymbals.
No evil hath so afflicted the world as intolerance of religious opinion. The
human beings it has slain in various ways, if once and together brought to
life, would make a nation of people; left to live and increase, would have
doubled the population of the civilized portion of the globe; among which
civilized portion it chiefly is that religious wars are waged. 
The treasure and the human labor
thus lost would have made the earth a garden, in which, but for his evil
passions, man might now be as happy as in Eden.
No man truly obeys the Masonic law who merely tolerates those whose
religious opinions are opposed to his own. Every man's opinions are his
own private property, and the rights of all men to maintain each his own
are perfectly equal. Merely to tolerate, to bear with an opposing opinion, is
to assume it to be heretical; and assert the right to persecute, if we would;
and claim our toleration of it as a merit. The Mason's creed goes further
than that. No man, it holds, has any right in any way to, interfere with the
religious belief of another. It holds that each mat] is absolutely sovereign
as to his own belief, and that belief is a matter absolutely foreign to all who
do not entertain the same belief; and that, if there were any right of
persecution at all, it would in all cases be a mutual right; because one
party has the same right as the other to sit as judge in his own case; and
God is the only magistrate that can rightfully decide between them. To
1hat great judge, Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide its portals,
it invites to enter there and live in peace and harmony, the Protestant, the
Catholic, the Jew, the Moslem; every man who will lead a truly virtuous
and moral life, love his brethren, sinister to the sick and distressed, and
believe in the ONE, All Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere - Present GOD,
Architect, Creator, and Preserver of all things, by whose universal law of
Harmony ever rolls on this universe, the great, vast, infinite circle of
successive Death and Life:- to whose INEFFABLE NAME let all true
Masons pay profoundest homage! for whose thousand blessings poured
upon us, let us feel the sincerest gratitude, now, henceforth, and forever!
We may well be tolerant of each other's creed; for in every faith there are
excellent moral precepts. Far in the South of Asia, Zoroaster taught this
doctrine: "On commencing a journey, the Faithful should turn his thoughts
toward Ormuzd, and confess him, in the purity of his heart, to be King of
the World; he should love him, do him homage, and serve him. He must
be upright and charitable, despise the pleasures of the body, and avoid
pride and haughtiness, and vice in all its forms, and especially 'falsehood,
one of the basest sins of which man can be guilty. He must forget injuries 
and not avenge himself. He must honor the memory of
his parents and relatives. At night, before retiring to sleep, he should
rigorously examine his conscience, and repent of the faults which
weakness or ill-fortune had caused him to commit." He was required to
pray for strength to persevere in the Good, and to obtain forgiveness for
his errors. It was his duty to confess his faults to a Magus, or to a layman
renowned for his virtues, or to the Sun. Fasting and maceration were
prohibited; and, on the contrary, it was his duty suitably to nourish the
body and to maintain its vigor, that his soul might be strong to resist the
Genius of Darkness; that he might more attentively read the Divine Word,
and have more courage to perform noble deeds.
And in the North of Europe the Druids taught devotion to friends,
indulgence for reciprocal wrongs, love of deserved praise, prudence,
humanity, hospitality, respect for old age, disregard of the future,
temperance, contempt of death, and a chivalrous deference to woman.
Listen to these maxims from the Hava Maal, or Sublime Book of Odin:
"If thou hast a friend, visit him often; the path will grow over with grass,
and the trees soon cover it, if thou dost not constantly walk upon it. He is a
faithful friend, who, having but two loaves, gives his friend one. Be never
first to break with thy friend; sorrow wrings the heart of him who has no
one save himself with whom to take counsel. There is no virtuous man
who has not some vice, no bad man who has not some virtue. Happy he
who obtains the praise and good-will of men; for all that depends on the
will of another is hazardous and uncertain. Riches flit away in the twinkling
of an eye; they are the most inconstant of friends; flocks and herds perish,
parents die, friends are not immortal, thou thyself diest; I know but one
thing that doth not die, the judgment that is passed upon the dead. Be
humane toward those whom thou meetest on the road. If the guest that
cometh to thy house is a - cold, give him fire; the man who has journeyed
over the mountains needs food and dry garments. Mock not at the aged;
for words full of sense come often from the wrinkles of age. Be moderately
wise, and not over-prudent. Let no one seek to know his destiny, if he
would sleep tranquilly. There is no malady more cruel than to be
discontented with our lot. The glutton eats his own death; and the wise
man laughs at the fool's greediness. Nothing is more injurious to the
young than excessive drinking; 
the more one drinks the more he loses his reason; the
bird of forgetfulness sings before those who intoxicate themselves, and
wiles away their souls. Man devoid of sense believes he will live always if
he avoids war; but, if the lances spare him, old age will give him no
quarter. Better live well than live long. When a man lights a fire in his
house, death comes before it goes out."
And thus said the Indian books: "Honor thy father and mother. Never
forget the benefits thou hast received. Learn while thou art young. Be
submissive to the laws of thy country. . Seek the company of virtuous
men. Speak not of God but with respect. Live on good terms with thy
fellow-citizens. Remain in thy proper place. Speak ill of no one. Mock at
the bodily infirmities of none. Pursue not unrelentingly a conquered
enemy. Strive to acquire a good reputation. Take counsel with wise men.
The more one learns, the more he acquires the faculty of learning,
Knowledge is the most permanent wealth. As well be dumb as ignorant.
The true use of knowledge is to distinguish good from evil. Be not a
subject of shame to thy parents. What one learns in youth endures like the
engraving upon a rock. He is wise who knows himself. Let thy books be
thy best friends. When thou attainest an hundred years, cease to learn.
Wisdom is solidly planted, even on the shifting ocean. Deceive no one, not
even thine enemy. Wisdom is a treasure that everywhere commands its
value. Speak mildly, even to the poor. It is sweeter to forgive than to take
vengeance. Gaming and quarrels lead to misery. There is no true merit
without the practice of virtue. To honor our mother is the most fitting
homage we can pay the Divinity. There is no tranquil sleep without a clear
conscience. He badly understands his interest who breaks his word."
Twenty-four centuries ago these were the Chinese Ethics:
"The Philosopher [Confucius] said, 'SAN! my doctrine is simple, and easy
to be understood.' THSENG-TSEU replied, 'that is certain.' The
Philosopher having gone out, the disciples asked what their master had
meant to say. THSENG--TSEU responded, 'The doctrine of our Master
consists solely in being upright of heart, and loving our neighbor as we
love ourself."'
About a century later, the Hebrew law said, "If any man hate his neighbor
... then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to
do unto his brother . . . Better is a neighbor that is near, than a. brother
afar off ... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
In the same fifth century before Christ, SOCRATES the Grecian said,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
Three generations earlier, ZOROASTER had said to the Persians: "Offer
up thy grateful prayers to the Lord, the most just and pure Ormuzd, the
supreme and adorable God, who thus declared to his Prophet Zerdusht:
'Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou wouldst not desire done unto
thyself; do that unto the people, which, when done to thyself, is not
disagreeable unto thee."'
The same doctrine had been long taught in the schools of Babylon,
Alexandria, and Jerusalem. A Pagan declared to the Pharisee HILLEL that
he was ready to embrace the Jewish religion, if he could make known to
him in a few words a summary of the whole law of Moses. "That which
thou likest not done to thyself," said Hillel, "do it not unto thy neighbor.
Therein is all the law: the rest is nothing but the commentary upon it."
"Nothing is more natural," said CONFUCIUS, "nothing more simple, than
the principles of that morality which I endeavor, by salutary maxims, to
inculcate in you . . . It is humanity; which is to say, that universal charity
among all of our species, without distinction. It is uprightness ; that is, that
rectitude of spirit and of heart, which make; one seek for truth in
everything, and desire it, without deceiving one's self or others. It is,
finally, sincerity or good faith; which is to say, that frankness, that
openness of heart, tempered by self-reliance, which excludes all feints
and all disguising, as much in speech as in action."
To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure
forerunner of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of the great day,
when the dawn of general knowledge shalt ,chase away the lazy, lingering
mists of ignorance and error, even from the base of the great social
pyramid, is indeed a high calling, in which the most splendid talents and
consummate virtue may well press onward, eager to bear a part. From the
Masonic ranks ought to go forth those whose genius and not their
ancestry ennoble them, to open to all ranks the temple of science, and by
their own example to make the humblest men emulous to climb steps no
longer inaccessible, and enter the unfolded gates burning in the sun.
The highest intellectual cultivation is perfectly compatible with
the daily cares and toils of working-men. A keen relish for the most
sublime truths of science belongs alike to every class of Mankind. And, as
philosophy was taught in the sacred groves of Athens, and under the
Portico, and in the old Temples of Egypt and India, so in our Lodges ought
Knowledge to be dispensed, the Sciences taught, and the Lectures
become like the teachings of Socrates and Plato, of Agassiz and Cousin.
Real knowledge never permitted either turbulence or unbelief; but its
progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration. Whoso
dreads these may well tremble; for he may be well assured that their day
is at length come, and must put to speedy flight the evil spirits of tyranny
and persecution, which haunted the long night now gone down the sky.
And it is to be hoped that the time will soon arrive, when, as men will no
longer suffer themselves to be led blindfolded in ignorance, so will they no
more yield to the vile principle of judging and treating their fellowcreatures,
not according to the intrinsic merit of their actions, but
according to the accidental and involuntary coincidence of their opinions.
Whenever we come to treat with entire respect those who conscientiously
differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of a difference will be, to
make us enlighten the ignorance on one side or the other, from which it
springs, by instructing them, if it be theirs; ourselves, if it be our own; to
the end that the only kind of unanimity may be produced which is
desirable among rational beings, - the agreement proceeding from full
conviction after the freest discussion.
The Elu of Fifteen ought therefore to take the lead of his fellow-citizen, not
in frivolous amusements, not in the degrading pursuits of the ambitious
vulgar; but in the truly noble task of enlightening the mass of his
countrymen, and of leaving his own name encircled, not with barbaric
splendor, or attached to courtly gewgaws, but illustrated by the honors
most worthy of our rational nature; coupled with the diffusion of
knowledge, and gratefully pronounced by a few, at least, whom his wise
beneficence has rescued from ignorance and vice.
We say to him, in the words of the great Roman: "Men in no respect so
nearly approach to the Deity, as when they confer benefits on men. To
serve and do good to as many as possible, - there is nothing greater in
your fortune than that you should be able,
and nothing finer in your nature, than that you should be desirous to do
this." This is the true mark for the aim of every man and Mason who either
prizes the enjoyment of pure happiness, or sets a right value upon a high
and unsullied renown. And if the benefactors of mankind, when they rest
from their noble labors, shall be permitted to enjoy hereafter, as an
appropriate reward of their virtue, the privilege of looking down upon the
blessings with which their exertions and charities, and perhaps their toils
and sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence, it will not,
in a state of exalted purity and wisdom, be the founders of mighty
dynasties, the conquerors of new empires, the Cæsars, Alexanders, and
Tamerlanes; nor the mere Kings and Counsellors, Presidents and
Senators, who have lived for their party chiefly, and for their country only
incidentally, often sacrificing to their own aggrandizement or that of their
faction the good of their fellow-creatures; - it will not be they who will be
gratified by contemplating the monuments of their inglorious fame; but
those will enjoy that delight and march in that triumph, who can trace the
remote effects of their enlightened benevolence in the improved condition
of their species, and exult in the reflection, that the change which they at
last, perhaps after many years, survey, with eyes that age and sorrow can
make dim no more, - of Knowledge become Power, - Virtue sharing that
Empire, - Superstition dethroned, and Tyranny exiled, is, if even only in
some small and very slight degree, yet still in some degree, the fruit,
precious if costly, and though late repaid yet long enduring, of their own
self-denial and strenuous exertion, of their own mite of charity and aid to
education wisely bestowed, and of the hardships and hazards which they
encountered here below.
Masonry requires of its Initiates and votaries nothing that is impracticable.
It does not demand that they should undertake to climb to those lofty and
sublime peaks of a theoretical and imaginary unpractical virtue, high and
cold and remote as the eternal snows that wrap the shoulders of
Chimborazo, and at least as inaccessible as they. It asks that alone to be
done which is easy to be done. It overtasks no one's strength, and asks no
one to go beyond his means and capacities. It does not expect one whose
business or profession yields him little more than the wants of himself and
his family require, and whose time is necessarily occupied by his daily
vocations, to abandon or neglect the business
by which he and his children live, and devote himself and his means to the
diffusion of knowledge among men. It does not expect him to publish
books for the people, or to lecture, to the ruin of his private affairs, or to
found academies and colleges, build up libraries, and entitle himself to
statues.
But it does require and expect every man of us to do something, within
and according to his means; and there is no Mason who cannot do some
thing, if not alone, then by combination and association.
If a Lodge cannot aid in founding a school or an academy it can still do
something. It can educate one boy or girl, at least, the child of some poor
or departed brother. And it should never be forgotten, that in the poorest
unregarded child that seems abandoned to ignorance and vice may
slumber the virtues of a Socrates, the intellect of a Bacon or a Bossuet,
the genius of a Shakespeare, the capacity to benefit mankind of a
Washington; and that in rescuing him from the mire in which he is
plunged, and giving him the means of education and development, the
Lodge that does it may be the direct and immediate means of conferring
upon the world as great a boon as that given it by John Faust the boy of
Mentz; may perpetuate the liberties of a country and change the destinies
of nations, and write a new chapter in the history of the world.
For we never know the importance of the act we do. The daughter of
Pharaoh little thought what she was doing for the human race, and the
vast unimaginable consequences that depended on her charitable act,
when she drew the little child of a Hebrew woman from among the rushes
that grew along the bank of the Nile, and determined to rear it as if it were
her own.
How often has an act of charity, costing the doer little, given to the world a
great painter, a great musician, a great inventor! How often has such an
act developed the ragged boy into the benefactor of his race! On what
small and apparently unimportant circumstances have turned and hinged,
the fates of the world's great conquerors. There is no law that limits the
returns that shall be reaped from a single good deed. The widow's mite
may not only be as acceptable to God, but may produce as great results
as the rich man's costly offering. The poorest boy, helped by benevolence,
may come to lead armies, to control senates, to decide an peace and war,
to dictate to cabinets; and his magnificent thoughts and noble words may 
be law many years hereafter to millions of men yet unborn.
But the opportunity to effect a great good does not often occur to any one.
It is worse than folly for one to lie idle and inert, and expect the accident to
befall him, by which his influences shall live forever. He can expect that to
happen, only in consequence of one or many or all of a long series of acts.
He can expect to benefit the world only as men attain other results; by
continuance, by persistence, by a steady and uniform habit of laboring for
the enlightenment of the world, to the extent of his means and capacity.
For it is, in all instances, by steady labor, by giving enough of application
to our work, and having enough of time for the doing of it, by regular
pains-taking, and the plying of constant assiduities, and not by any
process of legerdemain, that we secure the strength and the staple of real
excellence. It was thus that Demosthenes, clause after clause, and
sentence after sentence, elaborated to the uttermost his immortal orations.
It was thus that Newton pioneered his way, by the steps of an ascending
geometry, to the mechanism of the Heavens, and Le Verrier added a
planet to our Solar System.
It is a most erroneous opinion that those who have left the most
stupendous monuments of intellect behind them, were not differently
exercised from the rest of the species, but only differently gifted; that they
signalized themselves only by their talent, and hardly ever by their
industry; for it is in truth to the most strenuous application of those
commonplace faculties which are diffused among all, that they are
indebted for the glories which now encircle their remembrance and their
name.
We must not imagine it to be a vulgarizing of genius, that it should be
lighted up in any other way than by a direct inspiration from Heaven nor
overlook the steadfastness of purpose, the devotion to some single but
great object, the unweariedness of labor that is given, not in convulsive
and preternatural throes, but by little and little as the strength of the mind
may bear it; the accumulation of many small efforts, instead of a few grand
and gigantic, but perhaps irregular movements, on the part of energies
that are marvellous; by which former alone the great results are brought
out that write their enduring records on the face of the earth and in the
history of nations and of man.
We must not overlook these elements, to which genius owes the best and
proudest of her achievements; nor imagine that qualities so generally
possessed as patience and pains-taking, and resolute industry, have no
share in upholding a distinction so illustrious as that of the benefactor of
his kind.
We must not forget that great results are most ordinarily produced by an
aggregate of many contributions and exertions; as it is the invisible
particles of vapor, each separate and distinct from the other, that, rising
from the oceans and their bays and gulfs, from lakes and rivers, and wide
morasses and overflowed plains, float away as clouds, and distill upon the
earth in dews, and fall in showers and rain and snows upon the broad
plains and rude mountains, and make the great navigable streams that are
the arteries along which flows the life-blood of a country.
And so Masonry can do much, if each Mason be content to do his share,
and if their united efforts are directed by wise counsels to a common
purpose. "It is for God and for Omnipotency to do mighty things in a
moment; but by degrees to grow to greatness is the course that He hath
left for man."
If Masonry will but be true to her mission, and Masons to their promises
and obligations - if, re-entering vigorously upon a career of beneficence,
she and they will but pursue it earnestly and unfalteringly, remembering
that our contributions to the cause of charity and education then deserve
the greatest credit when it costs us something, the curtailing of a comfort
or the relinquishment of a luxury, to make them - if we will but give aid to
what were once Masonry's great schemes for human improvement, not
fitfully and spasmodically, but regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise
and the springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up into the
heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be attained and a
great work done. And then it will most surely be seen that Masonry is not
effete or impotent, nor degenerated nor drooping to a fatal decay.

XI. SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE
OR
PRINCE AMETH.
[Elu of the Twelve.]


The duties of a Prince Ameth are, to be earnest, true, reliable, and
sincere; to protect the people against illegal impositions and exactions; to
contend for their political rights, and to see, as far as he may or can, that
those bear the burdens who reap the benefits of the Government.
You are to be true unto all men.
You are to be frank and sincere in all things.
You are to be earnest in doing whatever it is your duty to do.
And no man must repent that he has relied upon your resolve, your
profession, or your word.
The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy with his
kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family, all connected
with himself by those invisible links, and that mighty net-work of
circumstance, forged and woven by God.
Feeling that sympathy, it is his first Masonic duty to serve his fellow-man.
At his first entrance into the Order, he ceases to be isolated, and
becomes one of a great brotherhood, assuming now duties toward every
Mason that lives, as every Mason at the same moment assumes them
toward him.
Nor are those duties on his part confined to Masons alone. He assumes
many in regard to his country, and especially toward the great, suffering
masses of the common people; for they too are his brethren, and God
hears them, inarticulate as the moanings of their misery are. By all proper
means, of persuasion and influence, and otherwise, if the occasion 
and emergency require, he is bound to defend them against oppression, 
and tyrannical and illegal exactions.
He labors equally to defend and to improve the people. He does not
flatter them to mislead them, nor fawn upon them to rule them, nor
conceal his opinions to humor them, nor tell them that they can never err,
and that their voice is the voice of God. He knows that the safety of every
free government, and its continuance and perpetuity depend upon the
virtue and intelligence of the common people; and that, unless their liberty
is of such a kind as arms can neither procure nor take away; unless it is
the fruit of manly courage, of justice, temperance, and generous virtue -
unless, being such, it has taken deep root in the minds and hearts of the
people at large, there will not long be wanting those who will snatch from
them by treachery what they have acquired by arms or institutions.
He knows that if, after being released from the toils of war, the people
neglect the arts of peace; if their peace and liberty be a state of warfare; if
war be their only virtue, and the summit of their praise, they will soon find
peace the most adverse to their interests. It will be only a more
distressing war; and that which they imagined liberty will be the worst of
slavery. For, unless by the means of knowledge and morality, not frothy
and loquacious, but genuine, unadulterated, and sincere, they clear the
horizon of the mind from those mists of error and passion which arise from
ignorance and vice, they will always have those who will bend their necks
to the yoke as if they were brutes; who, notwithstanding all their triumphs,
will put them up to the highest bidder, as if they were mere booty made in
war; and find an exuberant source of wealth and power, in the people's
ignorance, prejudice, and passions.
The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy to
avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and their
families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the poor, and
labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice and low indulgence, and to
keep the industrious from starving in sight of luxurious festivals, will find
that it has cherished, in that avarice, ambition, sensuality, selfishness,
and luxury of the one class, and that degradation, misery, drunkenness,
ignorance, and brutalization of the other, more stubborn and intractable
despots at home than it ever encountered in the field; and even its very 
bowels will be continually teeming with the intolerable progeny of tyrants.
These are the first enemies to be subdued; this constitutes the campaign
of Peace; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far more
honorable than those trophies which are purchased only by slaughter and
rapine; and if not victors in this service, it is in vain to have been
victorious over the despotic enemy in the field.
For if any people thinks that it is a grander; a more beneficial, or a wiser
policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps and imposts, for increasing
the revenue and draining the life-blood of an impoverished people; to
multiply its naval and military force; to rival in craft the ambassadors of
foreign states; to plot the swallowing up of foreign territory; to make crafty
treaties and alliances; to rule prostrate states and abject provinces by fear
and force; than to administer unpolluted justice to the people, to relieve
the condition and raise the estate of the toiling masses, redress the
injured and succor the distressed and conciliate the discontented, and
speedily restore to every one his own; then that people is involved in a
cloud of error, and will too late perceive, when the illusion of these mighty
benefits has vanished, that in neglecting these, which it thought inferior
considerations, it has only been precipitating its own ruin and despair.
Unfortunately, every age presents its own special problem, most difficult
and often impossible to solve; and that which this age offers, and forces
upon the consideration of all chinking men, is this - how, in a populous
and wealthy country, blessed with free institutions and a constitutional
government, are the great masses of the manual-labor class to be
enabled to have steady work at fair wages, to be kept from starvation, and
their children from vice and debauchery, and to be furnished with that
degree, not of mere reading and writing, but of knowledge, that shall fit
them intelligently to do the duties and exercise the privileges of freemen;
even to be intrusted with the dangerous right of suffrage?
For though we do not know why God, being infinitely merciful as well as
wise, has so ordered it, it seems to be unquestionably his law, that even
in civilized and Christian countries, the large mass of the population shall
be fortunate, if, during their whole life, from infancy to old age, in health
and sickness, they have enough of the commonest and coarsest food to
keep themselves and their
children from the continual gnawing of hunger - enough of the commonest
and coarsest clothing to protect themselves and their little ones from
indecent exposure and the bitter cold; and if they have over their heads
the rudest shelter.
And He seems to have enacted this law - which no human community has
yet found the means to abrogate - that when a country becomes
populous, capital shall concentrate in the hands of a limited number of
persons, and labor become more and more at its mercy, until mere
manual labor, that of the weaver and ironworker, and other artisans,
eventually ceases to be worth more than a bare subsistence, and often, in
great cities and vast extents of country not even that, and goes or crawls
about in rags, begging, and starving for want of work.
While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed, it is not
always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance to work at
anything like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing object of a man's
life. The capitalist can live without employing the laborer, and discharges
him whenever that labor ceases to be profitable. At the moment when the
weather is most inclement, provisions dearest, and rents highest, he turns
him off to starve. If the day-laborer is taken sick, his wages stop. When
old, he has no pension to retire upon. His children cannot be sent to
school; for before their bones are hardened they must get to work lest
they starve. The man, strong and able-bodied, works for a shilling or two
a day, and the woman shivering over her little pan of coals, when the
mercury drops far below zero, after her hungry children have wailed
themselves to sleep, sews by the dim light of her lonely candle, for a bare
pittance, selling her life to him who bargained only for the work of her
needle.
Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees, that with
the price of one child's life they may continue life in those that survive.
Little girls with bare feet sweep the street-crossings, when the winter wind
pinches them, and beg piteously for pennies of those who wear warm
furs. Children grow up in squalid misery and brutal ignorance; want
compels virgin and wife to prostitute themselves; women starve and
freeze, and lean up against the walls of workhouses, like bundles of foul
rags, all night long, and night after night, when the cold rain falls, and
there chances to be no room for them within; and hundreds of families are
crowded into a single building, rife with horrors and teeming
with foul air and pestilence; where men, women and children huddle together
in their filth; all ages and all colors sleeping indiscriminately together; while, in
a great, free, Republican State, in the full vigor of its youth and strength, one
person in every seventeen is a pauper receiving charity.
How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal disease is by far the
most important of all social problems. What is to be done with pauperism and
over-supply of labor? How is the life of any country to last, when brutality and
drunken semi-barbarism vote, and hold offices in their gift, and by fit
representatives of themselves control a government? How, if not wisdom and
authority, but turbulence and low vice are to exalt to senatorships miscreants
reeking with the odors and pollution of the hell, the prize-ring, the brothel, and
the stock-exchange, where gambling is legalized and rascality is laudable?
Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and cooperation, to improve
and inform as well as to protect the people; to better their physical condition,
relieve their miseries, supply their wants, and minister to their necessities. Let
every Mason in this good work do all that may be in his power.
For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the
same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal
and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all
these is the same as to be a slave. And it usually happens, by the
appointment, and, as it were, retributive justice of the Deity, that that people
which cannot govern themselves, and moderate their passions, but crouch
under the slavery of their lusts and vices, are delivered up to the sway of those
whom they abhor, and made to submit to an involuntary servitude.
And it is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the constitution of
Nature, that he who, from the imbecility or derangement of his intellect, is
incapable of governing himself, should, like a minor, be committed to the
government of another.
Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great
brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound
to sympathize with each other.
For no tower of Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its possessor above the
trials and fears and frailities of humanity. No human hand ever built the wall,
nor ever shall, that will keep out
affliction, pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and death, are
dispensations that level everything. They know none, high nor low. The
chief wants of life, the great and grave necessities of the human soul, give
exemption to none. They make all poor, all weak. They put supplication in
the mouth of every human being, as truly as in that of the meanest
beggar.
But the principle of misery is not an evil principle. We err, and the
consequences teach us wisdom. All elements, all the laws of things
around us, minister to this end; and through the paths of painful error and
mistake, it is the design of Providence to lead us to truth and happiness. If
erring only taught us to err; if mistakes confirmed us in imprudence; if the
miseries caused by vicious indulgence had a natural tendency to make us
more abject slaves of vice, then suffering would be wholly evil. But, on the
contrary, all tends and is designed to produce amendment and
improvement. Suffering is the discipline of virtue; of that which is infinitely
better than happiness, and yet embraces in itself all essential happiness.
It nourishes, invigorates, and perfects it. Virtue is the prize of the
severely-contested race and hard-fought battle; and it is worth all the
fatigue and wounds of the conflict. Man should go forth with a brave and
strong heart, to battle with calamity. He is to master it, and not let it
become his master. He is not to forsake the post of trial and of peril; but to
stand firmly in his lot, until the great word of Providence shall bid him fly,
or bid him sink. With resolution and courage the Mason is to do the work
which it is appointed for him to do, looking through the dark cloud of
human calamity, to the end that rises high and bright before him. The lot
of sorrow is great and sublime. None suffer forever, nor for nought, nor
without purpose. It is the ordinance of God's wisdom, and of His Infinite
Love, to procure for us infinite happiness and glory.
Virtue is the truest liberty; nor is he free who stoops to passions; nor he in
bondage who serves a noble master. Examples are the best and most
lasting lectures; virtue the best example. He that hath done good deeds
and set good precedents, in sincerity, is happy. Time shall not outlive his
worth. He lives truly after death, whose good deeds are his pillars of
remembrance; and no day but adds some grains to his heap of glory.
Good works are seeds, that after sowing return us a continual harvest;
and the memory of noble actions is more enduring than monuments of
marble.
Life is a school. The world is neither prison nor penitentiary, nor a palace
of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and spectacles; but a place of
instruction, and discipline. Life is given for moral and spiritual training;
and the entire course of the great school of life is an education for virtue,
happiness, and a future existence. The periods of Life are its terms; all
human conditions, its forms; all human employments, its lessons. Families
are the primary departments of this moral education; the various circles of
society, its advanced stages; Kingdoms and Republics, its universities.
Riches and Poverty, Gayeties and Sorrows, Marriages and Funerals, the
ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate, or untoward and painful, are
all lessons. Events are not blindly and carelessly flung together.
Providence does not school one man, and screen another from the fiery
trial of its lessons. It has neither rich favorites nor poor victims. One event
happeneth to all. One end and one design concern and urge all men.
The prosperous man has been at school. Perhaps he has thought that it
was a great thing, and he a great personage; but he has been merely a
pupil. He thought, perhaps, that he was Master, and had nothing to do,
but to direct and command; but there was ever a Master above him, the
Master of Life. He looks not at our splendid state, or our many
pretensions, nor at the aids and appliances of our learning; but at our
learning itself. He puts the poor and the rich upon the same form; and
knows no difference between them, but their progress.
If from prosperity we have learned moderation, temperance, candor,
modesty, gratitude to God, and generosity to man, then we are entitled to
be honored and rewarded. If we have learned selfishness, selfindulgence,
wrong-doing, and vice, to forget and overlook our less
fortunate brother, and to scoff at the providence of God, then we are
unworthy and dishonored, though we have been nursed in affluence, or
taken our degrees from the lineage of an hundred noble descents; as truly
so, in the eye of Heaven, and of all right-thinking men, as though we lay,
victims of beggary and disease, in the hospital, by the hedge, or on the
dung-hill. The most ordinary human equity looks not at the school, but at
the scholar; and the equity of Heaven will not look beneath that mark.
The poor man also is at school. Let him take care that he
learn, rather than complain. Let him hold to his integrity, his candor, and
his kindness of heart. Let him beware of envy, and of bondage, and keep
his self-respect. The body's toil is nothing. Let him beware of the mind's
drudgery and degradation. While he betters his condition if he can, let
him be more anxious to better his soul. Let him be willing, while poor, and
even if always poor, to learn poverty's great lessons, fortitude,
cheerfulness, contentment, and implicit confidence in God's Providence.
With these, and patience, calmness, self-command, disinterestedness,
and affectionate kindness, the humble dwelling may be hallowed, and
made more dear and noble than the loftiest palace. Let him, above all
things, see that he lose not his independence. Let him not cast himself, a
creature poorer than the poor, an indolent, helpless, despised beggar, oft
the kindness of others. Every man should choose to have God for his
Master, rather than man; and escape not from this school, either by
dishonesty or alms-taking, lest he fall into that state, worse than disgrace,
where he can have no respect for himself.
The ties of Society teach us to love one another. That is a miserable
society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought to be
supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and polished
insincerity; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust rule, in place of
simplicity, confidence, and kindness.
So, too, the social state teaches modesty and gentleness; and from
neglect, and notice unworthily bestowed on others, and injustice, and the
world's failure to appreciate us, we learn patience and quietness, to be
superior to society's opinion, not cynical and bitter, but gentle, candid,
and affectionate still.
Death is the great Teacher, stern, cold, inexorable, irresistible; whom the
collected might of the world cannot stay or ward off. The breath, that
parting from the lips of King or beggar, scarcely stirs the hushed air,
cannot be bought, or brought back for a moment, with the wealth of
Empires. What a lesson is this, teaching our frailty and feebleness, and
an Infinite Power beyond us! It is a fearful lesson, that never becomes
familiar. It walks through the earth in dread mystery, and lays it hands
upon all. It is a universal lesson, that is read everywhere and by all men.
Its message comes every year and every day. The past years are
crowded with its sad and solemn mementoes; and death's finger traces its
handwriting upon the walls of every human habitation.
It teaches us Duty; to act our part well; to fulfill the work assigned us.
When one is dying, and after he is dead, there is but one question: Has
he lived well? There is no evil in death but that which life makes.
There are hard lessons in the school of God's Providence; and yet the
school of life is carefully adjusted, in all its arrangements and tasks, to
man's powers and passions. There is no extravagance in its teachings;
nor is anything done for 'the sake of present effect. The whole course of
human life is a conflict with difficulties; and, if rightly conducted, a
progress in improvement. It is never too late for man to learn. Not part
only, but the whole, of life is a school. There never comes a time, even
amidst the decays of age, when it is fit to lay aside the eagerness of
acquisition, or the cheerfulness of endeavor. Man walks, all through the
course of life, in patience and strife, and sometimes in darkness; for, from
patience is to come perfection; from strife, triumph is to issue; from the
cloud of darkness the lightning is to flash that shall open the way to
eternity.
Let the Mason be faithful in the school of life, and to all its lessons! Let
him not learn nothing, nor care not whether he learns or not. Let not the
years pass over him, witnesses of only his sloth and indifference; or see
him zealous to acquire everything but virtue. Nor let him labor only for
himself; nor forget that the humblest man that lives is his brother, and
hath a claim on his sympathies and kind offices; and that beneath the
rough garments which labor wears may beat hearts as noble as throb
under the stars of princes.
God, who counts by souls, not stations,
Loves and pities you and me;
For to Him all vain distinctions
Are as pebbles on the sea.
Nor are the other duties inculcated in this Degree of less importance.
Truth, a Mason is early told, is a Divine attribute and the foundation of
every virtue; and frankness, reliability, sincerity, straightforwardness,
plain-dealing, are but different modes in which Truth develops itself. The
dead, the absent, the innocent, and those that trust him, no Mason will
deceive willingly. To all these he owes a nobler justice, in that they are
the most certain trials of human Equity. Only the most abandoned of men,
said Cicero, will deceive him, who would have remained uninjured if he had not
trusted. All the noble deeds that have beat their marches through
succeeding ages have proceeded from men of truth and genuine courage.
The man who is always true is both virtuous and wise; and thus possesses
the greatest guards of safety: for the law has not power to strike the
virtuous; nor can fortune subvert the wise.
The bases of Masonry being morality and virtue, it is by studying one and
practising the other, that the conduct of a Mason becomes irreproachable.
The good of Humanity being its principal object, disinterestedness is one of
the first virtues that it requires of its members; for that is the source of
justice and beneficence.
To pity the misfortunes of others; to be humble, but without meanness; to
be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every sentiment of hatred and
revenge; to show himself magnanimous and liberal, without ostentation and
without profusion; to be the enemy of vice; to pay homage to wisdom and
virtue; to respect innocence; to be constant and patient in adversity, and
modest in prosperity; to avoid every irregularity that stains the soul and
distempers the body - it is by following these precepts that a Mason will
become a good citizen, a faithful husband, a tender father, an obedient son,
and a true brother; will honor friendship, and fulfill with ardor the duties
which virtue and the social relations impose upon him.
It is because Masonry imposes upon us these duties that it is properly and
significantly styled work; and he who imagines that he becomes a Mason by
merely taking the first two or three Degrees, and that he may, having
leisurely stepped upon that small elevation, thenceforward worthily wear
the honors of Masonry, without labor or exertion, or self-denial or sacrifice,
and that there is nothing to be done in Masonry, is strangely deceived.
Is it true that nothing remains to be done in Masonry?
Does one Brother no longer proceed by law against another Brother of his
Lodge, in regard to matters that could be easily settled within the Masonic
family circle?
Has the duel, that hideous heritage of barbarism, interdicted among
Brethren by our fundamental laws, and denounced by the municipal code,
yet disappeared from the soil we inhabit? Do Masons of high rank
religiously refrain from it; or do they not,
bowing to a corrupt public opinion, submit to its arbitrament, despite the
scandal which it occasions to the Order, and in violation of the feeble
restraint of their oath?
Do Masons no longer form uncharitable opinions of their Brethren, enter
harsh judgments against them, and judge themselves by one rule and their
Brethren by another?
Has Masonry any well-regulated system of charity? Has it done that which it
should have done for the cause of education? Where are its schools, its
academies, its colleges, its hospitals, and infirmaries?
Are political controversies now conducted with no violence and bitterness?
Do Masons refrain from defaming and denouncing their Brethren who differ
with them in religious or political opinions?
What grand social problems or useful projects engage our attention at our
communications? Where in our Lodges are lectures habitually delivered for
the real instruction of the Brethren? Do not our sessions pass in the
discussion of minor matters of business, the settlement of points of order
and questions of mere administration, and the admission and advancement
of Candidates, whom after their admission we take no pains to instruct?
In what Lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated; corrupted as
they are by time, until their true features can scarcely be distinguished; and
where are those great primitive truths of revelation taught, which Masonry
has preserved to the world?
We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possessors qualify
themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the aims and objects of
Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates who governed empires, does your
influence enter into practical life and operate efficiently in behalf of wellregulated
and constitutional liberty?
Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need concord,
union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite
rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and
ambitious pretensions'? Now do your own words and acts agree? If your
Masonry is a nullity, how can you exercise any influence on others?
Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high
wrought eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that you are
what you should be, and nowhere do you look upon yourselves as you
are. Is it true that all our actions are so many acts of homage to virtue?
Explore the recesses of your hearts; let us examine ourselves with an
impartial eye, and make answer to our own questioning! Can we bear to
ourselves the consoling testimony that we always rigidly perform our
duties; that we even half perform them?
Let us away with this odious self-flattery! Let us be men, if we cannot be
sages! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent, cannot wholly
change men's natures. They enlighten them, they point out the true way;
but they can lead them in it, only by repressing the fire of their passions,
and subjugating their selfishness. Alas, these conquer, and Masonry is
forgotten!
After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent Brethren,
who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every one of us who
dies, however useless his life, has been a model of all the virtues, a very
child of the celestial light. In Egypt, among our old Masters, where
Masonry was more cultivated than vanity, no one could gain admittance to
the sacred asylum of the tomb until he had passed under the most solemn
judgment. A grave tribunal sat in judgment upon all, even the kings. They
said to the dead, "Whoever thou art, give account to thy country of thy
actions! What hast thou done with thy time and life? The law interrogates
thee, thy country hears thee, Truth sits in judgment on thee!" Princes
came there to be judged, escorted only by their virtues and their vices. A
public accuser recounted the history of the dead man's life, and threw the
blaze of the torch of truth on all his actions. If it were adjudged that he
had led an evil life, his memory was condemned in the presence of the
nation, and his body was denied the honors of sepulture. What a lesson
the old Masonry taught to the sons of the people!
Is it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered, affords no
shade; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance-guard of Truth?
No. Is freedom yet universal? Have ignorance and prejudice disappeared
from the earth? Are there no longer enmities among men? Do cupidity
and falsehood no longer exist? Do toleration and harmony prevail among
religious and political sects? There are works yet left for Masonry to
accomplish, greater than the twelve labors of Hercules: to advance ever
resolutely and steadily; to enlighten the minds of the people, to
reconstruct society, to reform the laws, and to improve the public morals.
The eternity in front of it is as infinite as the one behind. And Masonry
cannot cease to labor in the cause of social progress, without ceasing to
be true to itself, Masonry.