The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-07-03
st. Johns Day.

The oath of June brings round festival
which has the seal of remote antiquity upon it.
1t was formerly time of high observance
among the English. Bonfires were lighted,
and the people leaped through the flames Ia
remnant of the Baal festival) with wild shouts,
striking at each other.
ST. Johns eve gave wonderful outlook into
futurity. On that eve the great gates which
hide coming events from the gaze were left
ajar, that whosoever choose might take a peep.
To be sure, as q prelude, there is vervain to be
gathered, rosemary to twine, and certain cabal-
istic ceremonies to be performed by the seeker.
But those tasks accomplished, let him seek
remote church--the more lonely the better
at the hour of midnight, and then the ghost
seer beholds solemn procession OF all who
are to die within the year filing before him.
Not unfrequently his own unhappy phiz salutes
him from the ghastly ranks, and too often SUI
perstitious men have died, or gone utterly mad
from some practical joke played at this season
on their oyerwrought nerves.
To US, who have nothing but some remote
ancestral connection with the old superstitions,
st. Johns Day is only interesting from its Ma
sonic celebrations. Throughout the world, on
this day, in the different Lodges, are gathered
in the brotherhood of the oldest living order
on earth. If, as Testullian says, whatever is
ancient is true, whatever is modern is spurious,
we may safely assert that, tried by the infalli-
BILE test of time, which only preserves what is
worthy of preservation, Masonry stands to-day
as an indestructible element of an everything
truth. Schiller's three words of belief: Free
dom, Virtue, God, are its pillars of strength,
which bid defiance to all the mutabilities of
time.
Beyond the building of Solomon's Tenn
pie, which is the inaugural period of the
history of Freemasonry, we look back to
certain ceremonies of initiation among the
workers in wood and stone. In the infancy of
the world, symbolism filed up the hiatus be-
tween thought and speech. Words were few,
and the uncultivated mind struggled to find
expression for the thoughts that crowded it.
The workmen who welded the twenty-four-
inch gauge insensibly fell into the practice of
dividing the hours of the day into certain du-
ties or habits. The gavel, destroying irregu-
larities; the compass, marking certain bounda-
ries the square alike on every side, the plumb
unswerving in its action, the level which re-
duces to a common surface each and all, at
least all which were in use at an early period,
awakened moral analogies in these untaught
minds struggling to the light.
Whatever might have been done at the
building of the Temple, to purify the ritualism
of the craftsmen from the Egyptian abomina-
tions which had crept into it, the order in a
rude form certainly antedated that period.
Looking upon it from q philosophical stand
point, we believe that Masonry is silently
paving the way to the grand unity of all ma
tions of the earth. 1t recognizes no differences
in language, none in creeds, rich and poor,
great and humble, alike sit down in its halls,
into which the distinctions and jeaIousies of
the outer world never penetrate. The vexed
questions of politics and polemics are hushed
at the peaceful threshold. The men who enter
bring with them none of the factious distinc-
tions of nativity or fortune, but are judged by
their innate worth, and sometimes the highest
in outside honors and place stand far below
those whose only possessions are the virtues to
which Masonry gives the highest seat.
Open-handed and l,argsc-hearted, bound by
no prejudice, and full of prophetic insight,
Masonry is one of the great interpreters OF
progress. The world can never reach point
above its teachings, because it is itself the
great embodied truth of a high humanity, cast,
Ing off the weights which impede the race, and
stretching up to ternity-Gainesvi1e Eagle.