Year: 1871

another, they were never universal, nor
c)nsonant to the taste, or interest of all
nations


Philanthropy was not their basis. The
love of country badly understood, and
pushed into limits on which they should
not verge, destroys often, in warlike re-
pubics, the love of general humanity
Men are not to be essentially distinguish
ed by the difference of tongues 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 child. It was to revive and
reanimate such maxims that the Society
Of Speculative Freemasons was first insti-
tuted. The great design was to unite all
men of sense, knowledge, and worthy
qualities, not only by q reciprocal
love of the fine arts, but still more by the
great principles of virtue, where the in
terest of the fraternity might become
that of the whole human race, where all
nations might increase in all knowledge,
and where every subject of every country
might exert himself without jealousy, live
without discord, and embrace mutually
without forgetting or too scrupulouslyre-
membering 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 con-
tact?


The sanctity which attends the moral
qualities of tho Masonic Society, is a
branch of the subject worthy ofobserva-
ton. Religious orders were instituted
to render man more perfect; military or
ders werer founded to inspire love of glo-
ry; but Speculative Freemasonry was in
stituted to forIa men into good citizens
to make them inviolable in their promises,
faithful votaries to the God of Friend
ship, and more lovers of iberality 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
it's votaries, SO the establishment under
consideration renders man amiable, by
the attraction of social though innocent
pleasures, pure joys, and rational gaities.
Every vice OF the head and heart is ex-
cluded hbertinism, irreligion, incredu-
lity and debauchery are banished and
unqualifiedly rejected. The meetings of
Freemasons resemble those amicable en-
tertainments spoken of by Horace, where
Ill 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 truth, the
good, or the great:


From the society in question are ban
ished all the disputes which might alter
the tranquility Of friendship, or interrupt
that perfect harmony which cannot sub
sist but by rejecting all indecent excesses
and every discordant passion. The obli-
CATION imposed upon this Fraternity is,
that each member is to protect brother
by his authority, to advise him by his
ability, to edify him by his virtues, to
assist him in an exigence, to sacrifice al
personal resentment, and to seek diligent.
ly for everything that may contribute to
the pleasure and profit of the Society.


True it is that this Society has its Sc.
crets, but let not those who are initiated
laugh at the confession; for those fgura.
tive signs and sacred words which consti
tute among Freemasons alanguage some
times mute and sometimes eloquent, are
only invented to prevent imposition, tc
communicate at the greatest distance
and to know the true member from the
false of whatever country or tongue ht
may be. Another quality required by
those who enter our Sanctuaries is tast.
for all useful sciences and liberal acts o
all kinds.


Thus the decorum expected from eacl


of its members is o work which neithe


academy nor university have so well es


tablished. The name Freemason, there


fore, ought not to be taken in htera


sense, as if the institutors had been rea


workers in stone and marble. They wer


not only in their Operative capacity abl'


architects, but as Speculative; many prih


ces, both warlike and religious, dedicated