Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1895-05-29

the Masonic order that breathes in
those words. But we must go far be-
yond the letter here to catch the full
meaning and the extensive truth.
This is but the Eastern picture of a
pure, good, true, helping life-a life
filled with brotherly love and courtesy
and truth and good. 1t is the spirit
that goes out into the world and keeps
itself pure, and builds up the broken
hearted, and helps the weak. and rights
the wrong. and crushes out the sland-
er, and pulls down the lie, and kills the
injustice, and hates and fights the evil.
and delights in all that is good. 1t is
the spirit say, of your organization.
Masonry is nothing if it is not that.
No one can see the work of a lodge, or
hear its lectures without being dazzled
almost with its pure AND clean teach
ings. It's morals are those that God
has commanded, and so high is its ideal
that men have often said that to be
good Mason is all that can be asked OF
any man, that it is hardly necessary
for him to Join Christian church. His
Masonry is good enough for him. Is
it? And it is here that I speak my
word of warning Is it? Take
care of mistakes in your reason.
ing and in your conclusion and
in your personal observations. That
little slander that you heard about
some brother did you crush it down ?
Are you sure you did all you
could to keep his reputation,
to see that no injustice was done him .
Yet this was in the spirit, if not in the
letter, of your obligation. And so we
might run it out in the thousand differ
ent ways in which your obligation
meets your life. Have you been true
and faithful in it all? Your answer, If
YOU are true with yourself, must be
that YOU have not been faithful; that
YOU never have, and never can be
thoroughly true to the spirit of your
obligation when you were made
Mason. No, the lodge is not church.
| said at the beginning that you were
Christian body, but you are not
Christ's church. Far from taking its
place, the lodge should be the door
through which men would come into
the church. For if there is one secret
which Masonry discloses to the man
conscientious aud thoughtful, and not
Christian, it is his inability to keep
that which he assumed when he first
entered the doors OF his lodge. Those
ideals in which he set out then and
there are TOO lofty for him to reach un-
less he has the aid of q power greater
than himself. Masonry is revelation
of human weakness and need. And in
the Christian church. and in that only,
is the revelation and secret of the
strength which alone can keep one
true and pure in this present life. Ma.
sonry can tell US much about moral
truth and beauty, aud help some little,
but we want help mightier than it
can give-the help of the church of the
living God. have told you nothing
new. But in these old truths lies the
preachers field of exhortation. They
are never old; they are extremely new.
The true Mason must, if he be true, be
the true Christian. Anything else than
that shows he, somehow, has not seen
the cardinal points of his profession.
His Masonry has became dry formal
ism. My brothers, you are here as the
representatives OF what is true, just,
temperate, pure, Christian, because
Templars. 1t means responsibility.
May you have grace and wisdom to
meet it, to live in reality what you are
in profession, as becometh the soldiers
our Lord Jesus Christ.