N55 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
MISCELLANY <i THE tOWA MASONIC UBRARV, CEbAR RAPIDS, IOWA 
 
 THE MISSION 
 OF MASONRY 
 
 Stf JOSEPH FORT NEWTON 
 
 PRl^frED FOR THE LIBRARY 
 
 1912 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030277028 
 
REV. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON 
 
The Mission of Masonry 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. Brother Joseph Fort Newton, D. Litt. 
 
 GRAND CHAPLAIN. GRAND LODGE OF IOWA, A. F. AND A. M., AND 
 CHAPLAIN OF MT. HERMON LODGE. No. 263. OF CEDAR RAPIDS 
 
 An address delivered before the 
 
 Grand Lodge of Iowa, A. F. and A. M., at the 
 
 Sixty-ninth Annual Communication 
 
 held at Burlington 
 
 June thirteenth, nineteen hundred and twelve 
 
 CEDAR RAPIDS. IOWA 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 
 
 1912 
 
EXTRACT FROM PROCEEDINGS 
 
 At the Sixty-ninth Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of 
 Iowa, A., P. & A. M., held at Burlington, June 13, 1912, Rev. Brother 
 Joseph Fort Newton delivered an address on the "Mission of 
 Masonry," at the close of which the following resolution was unani- 
 mously adopted by a rising vote : 
 
 Resolved, That the Grand Chaplain be requested to furnish manu- 
 script copy of his address for publication in the Proceedings, and 
 that while in type extra copies be published in paAphlet form in 
 sufficient numbers for distribution to the subordinateWodges. 
 
 We give herewith extracts of the correspondence between Grand 
 Master Block and the Grand Chaplain leading to the preparation and 
 delivery of Grand Chaplain's address, which we trust will make the 
 reading of same more interesting. * 
 
 Newton R. Pabvin, 
 Grand Secretary. 
 
 [Extracts of correspondence between Grand Master and Grand 
 
 Chaplain leading to preparation and delivery of Grand Chaplain's 
 
 address.] 
 
 June 22, 1911. 
 
 Rev. Joseph F. Newton, Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge, Cedar Rapids, 
 Iowa: '' 
 
 Deak Beothee Newton: — I want to speak to you about a matter 
 that lies very close to my heart. I wish I could persuade you to 
 prepare and deliver at the session of the Grand Lodge which will 
 meet in Burlington next June an address on the subject "The Mis- 
 sion of Masonry." This is a theme which has haunted my waking 
 thoughts for many a long day and like the central idea of some great 
 musical inspiration it continues to cry out for adequate expression, 
 an expression which 7 have not been able to give it, and I believe 
 that I have at last found in you a man Mg enough to lorite and sing 
 this song. 
 
 Will you not take this under consideration and give me a favor- 
 
 3.bl6 r6Dly? 
 
 Sincerely your friend and brother, 
 
 Louis Block, 
 
 Grand Master. 
 
Cedab Rapids, Iowa, June 24, 1911. 
 
 Hon. Louis Block, Grand Master of fhe Grand Lodge, Davenport, 
 Iowa: 
 
 My Dear Brother: — I have your good and kind letter of the 22d, 
 and thank you for it most sincerely. * * * * 
 
 I had read your last Report on Fraternal Correspondence, which 
 I enjoyed to the full, and am glad to have the earlier volume. I note 
 that you say that, if asked, you would define Masonry as a "creedless 
 religion." So it is in very truth, and I think we may also use the 
 word church — for, did not Ruskin say that "there is a true church 
 wherever one hand meets another helpfully — ^the only holy or 
 mother church that ever was or ever shall be?" Then, too, your 
 word, when you assume oflBce, that you Intended to labor not simply 
 for an increase of numbers, but for the strengthening of Masonry 
 along "Intellectual, artistic, and spiritual paths," found response in 
 me as being the one supreme end to which my labors in its behalf, 
 such as they are, are devoted. 
 
 To that end, I shall undertake as you request, though not without 
 reluctance, to deliver the address on "The Mission of Masonry." 
 When I think of such a theme, which, as you say, might well be the 
 motive of a supreme symphony, the words of Milton come to mind, 
 and become my prayer: 
 
 "O, Spirit, what In me Is dark 
 Illumine, what Is low raise and support; 
 That to the height of this great argument, 
 I may assert eternal brotherhood." 
 
 With all the good wishes, both for yourself and for the year of 
 rich and fruitful services before you, I am 
 
 Yours fraternally, 
 
 Joseph F. Newton. 
 
Davbnpobt, Iowa, June 27, 1911. 
 
 Bev. Joseph F. Newton, Orand Chaplain, Brand Lodge of Iowa, Cedar 
 Rapids, Iowa: 
 
 My Deab Bbotheb Newton : — • • • what gives me the greatest 
 pleasure, however, is to Icnow that you have allowed me to impose 
 on you by getting you to agree to deliver an address on the Mission 
 of Masonry. I know it will be an event in the history of the Grand 
 Lodge. I want it to come as the climax of my administration. I 
 can see in your letter signs of the coming splendor of this address. 
 You approach the theme as the great masters always do — ^reverently, 
 appealing for Inspiration to the only genuine source of inspiration. 
 The rising melodies of this great theme seem already to be murmur- 
 ing within you. 
 
 All I have to say is, give yourself full reign. Throw away the 
 curb. Let it come. Write it out "if you choose, but don't let the 
 matter of making a record or of polishing up sentences worry you 
 for an instant. We will have a stenographer there, a court reporter 
 if you please, and we will catch that speech as it comes hot from the 
 forge. You can go over the manuscript afterwards and fix it to suit 
 yourself. We will publish that address in full in our printed Pro- 
 ceedings and send it ringing around the world — this golden gospel 
 of human brotherhood, I shall get over the state quite a little 
 during my year's work and will tell the boys that they will miss it if 
 they don't come to Grand Lodge — ^tell them about the great event but 
 hold back the speaker's name, stir their curiosity to make them 
 come. 
 
 Sincerely your friend, 
 
 Loms Block. 
 
THE MISSION OF MASONRY 
 
 Most Worshipful Grand Master and Members of the Grand 
 Lodge: 
 
 0-DAY we have erected a bronze tablet marking the 
 site of the first lodge of Masons in the territory 
 of. Iowa. Such a memorial of our fathers, the 
 pioneers, is in accord with the fitness of things. 
 It bespeaks a sense of history, a vision of the past out 
 of which the present has come to flower, and from 
 whose wise and prophetic sowing the fruit of the future will 
 grow. We honor ourselves by thus recalling the men of other 
 days, but we also lay upon ourselves the obligation to labor, as 
 they labored, with forward-looking thoughts, while establish- 
 ing more firmly the work of their hands. Others have 
 labored ; we have entered into their labors, and it behooves us 
 to continue that sacred history. 
 
 Those sturdy men who set up the altar of Masonry on the 
 frontier of this comm.onwealth were prophetic souls. They 
 were men of faith who builded better than they knew, as men 
 of faith always do. They believed in the future, in the growth 
 of large things from small beginnings, and in the principles 
 of Masonry as the true foundation of society and the fortress 
 of a free state. They knew that the Masonic lodge is a silent 
 partner of the home, the church, and the school house, toiling 
 in behalf of law and order, without which neither industry 
 nor art can flourish, and that its benign influence would help 
 to build this commonwealth in strength, wisdom, and beauty. 
 Therefore they erected their altar and kindled its flame ; and 
 
8 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 having wrought in faithfulness, they died in faith, obeying 
 
 the injunction of that master poet who said : 
 
 "Keep the young generations in hail, 
 Bequeath to them no tumbled house!" 
 
 Time has more than fulfilled their dream; the facts have 
 outrun their faith. If men see, after death, what passes on 
 this earth, what a picture now lies spread out for their rejoic- 
 ing vision. They behold not only our lakes, hills, and rolling 
 prairies, our rivers running to the sea, our cities shining in 
 the sunlight, trains moving to and fro like shuttles in a loom, 
 park like farms dotted with homes, school houses and children 
 at play, temples of prayer and the sleeping places of the dead ; 
 but also the march of ideas, the growth and flowering of prin- 
 ciples, the unfolding of truths, the increase of liberty, justice, 
 and fraternity among men, and the mystic ties of memory 
 uniting the present in which we toil with the past in which 
 they labored and fell asleep. Their greatest happiness must 
 consist in seeing their good influences widening out from year 
 to year, as rivulets widen into rivers, and shaping the current 
 of history, as our influence, for weal or woe, will help to shape 
 the times to come. 
 
 Under the spell of such a vision we may well pause, look 
 before and after, and ask ourselves the meaning of this fra- 
 ternity, and its mission among men. One of the most impres- 
 sive and touching things in human history is that certain 
 ideal interests have been set apart as especially venerated 
 among all peoples. Guilds have arisen to cultivate the in- 
 terests embodied in art, science, philosophy, fraternity, and 
 religion, to train men in their service, to bring their power to 
 bear upon the common life of mortals and send through that 
 
The Mission of Masonry 9 
 
 common life the glory of the ideal, as the sun shoots its trans^ 
 figuring rays through the great dtill cloud, evoking beauty 
 from the brown earth. Such is Masonry, •which unites all 
 these high interests and brings to their service a vast, world- 
 wide fraternity of free men, built upon a basis of spiritual 
 faith, whose mission it is to make men friends, to refine and 
 exalt their lives, to turn them from the semblance of life to 
 homage for truth, righteousness, and character. Forming one 
 great society over the whole globe, it upholds every noble and 
 redeeming ideal of humanity, making all good things better 
 by its presence, like a meadoj? that rests on a subterranean 
 stream. He who would reckon the spiritual possessions of 
 our race must take account of the genius of Masonry, and its 
 ministry to the highest life of man. 
 
 The very existence of such a great historic fellowship in 
 the quest and service of the ideal is a fact eloquent beyond all 
 words. It is like some lofty mountain uplifted in the midst 
 of the years, at whose feet the generations come and go, whose 
 air sweetens the world, and whose peak assembles the vagrant 
 clouds and invokes showers of refreshing. Apparitions of 
 a day, what is our puny warfare against ignorance and evil 
 compared with the warfare which this venerable order has 
 been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after 
 we are gone. More than an institution, more than a tradi- 
 tion, more than a society, Masonry is one of the forms of the 
 Divine life upon earth. No one may ever hope to describe a 
 spirit so benign and beautiful, an influence so quiet, so un- 
 resting, so persistent, and so gracious. That task belongs of 
 right to the genius of poetry and song, by whose magio those 
 elusive and impalpable realities which hallow the world find 
 
10 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 embodimeiiit and voice. AH titat one can do is ix> state the 
 faith of Masonry, its philosophy, the basis of its demand for 
 freedom, and its plea for universal friendship. 
 
 On the threshhold of the Masonic lodge every man, whether 
 prince or peasant, is asked to confess his faith in God the 
 Father Almighty, the Architect and Master-builder of the 
 world. That is not a mere form of words. To be iadiffereat 
 to God is to be indifferent to the greatest of all realities, that 
 upon whicli the aspiration of humanity rests for its uprising 
 passion and desire. No institution that is dumb oonceming 
 the ultimate meaning and character of this universe can last. 
 It is a house built upon the sand, doomed to fall when the 
 winds blow and the floods beat upon it. ITo human brother^ 
 hood that has not its foundation in a Divine Fatherhood 
 can long endure. It is a rope of sand, weaJs: as water, and 
 its fine sentiment quickly evaporates. Life leads, if we follow 
 its meanings and move in the drift of its deeper conclusions, 
 to one God as the ground of the world, and upon that ground 
 Masonry lays its comer-stone. Therefore, it endures, and the 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
 
 That reverent and enlightened faith from which, as from a 
 never-failing spring, flow heroic devotedness, moral self-re- 
 spect, authentic sentiments of fraternity, infleKible fidelity 
 and effectual consolations, honor in life and hope in death, 
 this great order has in all times religiously preserved. 
 Ardently and perseveringly it has propogated it through the 
 centuries, and in our age more zealously than ever. Scarcely 
 a Masonic discourse is pronounced, or a Masonic lesson read, 
 
The Missiofn of Masomry 11 
 
 by the lughest officer or the humblest lecturer, that does not 
 earnestly teach two extremely simple and profound principles 
 — ^love of God and love of our fellow man. That is the one 
 true religion, and it is the very spirit of Masonry, its light 
 and power, its basis and apex. Upon that faith it rests; in 
 that faith it lives ; and by that faith it will conquer, putting 
 the doubts and bigotries of men to shame with its simple in- 
 sight, and the dignity of its golden voice. 
 
 Of no one age. Masonry belongs to all time; of no one re- 
 ligion, it finds great truths in all. Indeed, it holds that 
 truth which is common to all*elevating and benign religions, 
 and is the basis of each; that faith which underlies all sects 
 and over-arches all creeds, the sky above and the river bed 
 below the flow of mortal years. It is not a religion, stiU less 
 a cult, but it is a worship in which all good men may unite, 
 that each may share the faith of all. It does not undertake 
 to esplain or dogmatically to settle those great mysteries 
 which out-top human knowledge. Beyond the facts of faith 
 it does not go. With the subtleties of speculation concerning 
 these truths, and the unworldly envies growing out of them, 
 it has not to do. There divisions begin, and Masonry was not 
 made to divide men, but to unite them. It asks not for toler- 
 ance, but for fraternity, leaving each man free to think his 
 own thought and fashion his own system of ultimate truth. 
 Therefore, all through the ages it has been, and is today, a 
 meeting place of differing minds, and a prophecy of the final 
 union of all reverent and devout souls. 
 
 In the olden time one man framed a dogma and declared it 
 to be the eternal truth. Another man did the same thing; 
 then the two began to hate each other with an unholy hatred, 
 
12 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 each tiyiiig to impose his private scheme of the universie upon 
 the other, and that is an epitome of some of the blackest pages 
 of history. Against those old sectarians who substituted in- 
 tolerance for charity, persecution for friendship, and did uot 
 love God because they hated their neighbors, Masonry made 
 perpetual protest in a voice which is now becoming the elo- 
 quence of the world. A vast change of heart is now taking 
 place in the religious world, by reason of an exchange of 
 thought and courtesy, and a closer personal touch, and the 
 various sects, so long estranged, are learning to unite upon the 
 things most worth while and the least open to debate. That 
 is to say, they are moving toward the Masonic position, and 
 when they arrive Masonry will preside over a scene whidi she 
 prophesied from the beginning. 
 
 At last, in the not distant future, the old and bitter feuds 
 of the sects will come to an end. Our little systems will have 
 their day and cease to be, lost in the vision of a truth so great 
 that all men are one in their littleness ; one in their victorious 
 assurance of "the ultimate descency of things, and the kind- 
 ness of the veiled Father of men." Then men of every creed 
 will ask, when they meet : 
 
 "Not what is your creed? 
 But what is your need?" 
 
 What is your vision of the meaning of this infinite universe, 
 luminous and dark, glorious and terrible, in which we live? 
 Then Masonry, having fulfilled a part of its sublime and pro- 
 phetic mission upon earth, will rejoice. High above all dog- 
 mas that bind, all bigotries that blind, all bitterness that di- 
 vides it will write the eternal verities of the Fatherhood of 
 God, the brotherhood of man, the moral law, the golden rule, 
 and the hope of a life everlasting ! 
 
Tlie Mission of Masonry 13 
 
 n. 
 
 Out of this simple faith grows the philosophy which Mar 
 sonry teaches in. signs and symbols, in pictures and parables. 
 Stated freely, stated sympathetically, it is that behind the 
 pageant of nature, in it and over it, there is a Supreme Mind 
 which initiates, impels, and controls all. That behind the life 
 of man and its pathetic story in history, in it and over it, 
 there is a righteous will, the intelligent conscience of the 
 Most High. In short, that the first and last thing in the uni- 
 verse is mind, that the highest and deepest thing is con- 
 science, and that the final reanty is the absoluteness of love. 
 Higher than that faith cannot fly; deeper than that thought 
 cannot go. 
 
 There is but one real alternative of this philosophy. It is 
 not atheism, because the adherents of atheism are too few, and 
 its intellectual position is too precarious ever to be a menace. 
 An atheist is an orphan, a waif wandering the midnight 
 streets of time, homeless and alone. IS'or is the alternative 
 agnosticism, which in the nature of things can be only a pass- 
 ing mood of thought, when, indeed, it is not a confession of 
 intellectual bankruptcy, or a labor-saving devise to escape the 
 toil and fatigue of high thinking. It trembles in perpetual 
 hesitation, like the donkey equi-distant between two bundles 
 of hay, starving to death but unable to make a decision. No, 
 the real alternative is materialism, which played so large a 
 part in scholarly circles fifty years ago, and which, defeated 
 there, has betaken itself to the field of opportunity and prac- 
 tical affairs. This is the dread alternative of a denial of 
 faith, a blight which would apply a sponge to all the high 
 
14 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 aspirations and ideals of our race. According to this dogma, 
 the last things in the universe are atoms, their niunber, dance, 
 combination, and growth. All mind, aU will, all emotion, 
 all character, all love is incidental, transitory, vain. The 
 sovereign fact is mud, the final reality is dirt ! 
 
 Against this horror Masonry has in every age stood as a 
 witness for the soul. In the war of the mind against dust, in 
 the choice between dirt and Deity, it has allied itself on the 
 side of the great idealisms and optimisms of humanity. It 
 takes the spiritual view of life aad the world as being most in 
 accord vsdth the facts of experience, the promptings of right 
 reason, the voice of conscience, and the vision of the soul. It 
 dares to read the meaning of the universe through what is 
 highest in human nature, not through what is lower; to assert 
 that the soul is akin to an eternal spirit, and therefore death- 
 less as God its Father is deathless. Think of what it means 
 to say that. It means that what a man thinks, the manner of 
 his feeling, the character of his activity and career are of vital 
 and ceaseless concern to the eternal God. It means that we 
 are not shapes of mud placed here by chance, but sons of the 
 Most High, citizens of eternity, and that there is laid upon 
 us an abiding obligation to live in a manner befitting the 
 digaity and worth of the soul. 
 
 Here is a philosophy which lights up the world like a sun- 
 rise, evolving meaning out of mystery, and hope out of what 
 would else be despair. It brings out the colors of human 
 life, investing our fleeting mortal years — ^brief at their 
 longest, broken at their best — ^with enduring significance and 
 beauty. It gives each of us, however humble and obscure, a 
 place and a part in the stupendous historical enterprise; 
 
The Mission, of Masomry 15 
 
 makes us fellow workers with tke Eternal in His redemptive 
 making of humanity, and binds us to do His will upon earth 
 as it is done in heaven. It subdues the intellect; it touches 
 the heart ; it begets in the will that sense of self-respect with- 
 out which high and heroic living cannot be. Such is the phil- 
 osophy upon which Masonry rests; and from it flow those 
 bright streams that wander through and water this human 
 world of ours. 
 
 in. 
 
 Because this is so ; because the human soul is akin to God, 
 and is endowed with powers to which no one may set a limit, 
 it is and of right ought to be free. Thus, by the logic of its 
 philosophy, not less than by the inspiration of its faith. Ma- 
 sonry has been impelled to make its historic demand for 
 liberty of conscience, for the freedom of the intellect, and for 
 the right of all men to stand erect, unfettered, and unafraid, 
 equal before God and the law, each respecting the rights of his 
 fellows. What we have to remember is, that before this truth 
 found embodiment in any political constitution it was em- 
 bedded in the will of God and the constitution of the human 
 souL If the Magna Charta demanded rights which govern- 
 ment can grant, Masonry from the first asserted those in- 
 alienable rights of man derived from God the Father of man. 
 Nor will it ever swerve one jot or tittle from its ancient and 
 eloquent demand tiU all men, everywhere, are free in body, 
 mind, and souL 
 
 Never did this truth find sweeter voice than in the tones of 
 the old Scotch fiddle on which Eobert Bums, a Master Mason, 
 sang, in lyric glee, of the sacredness of humanity, and the 
 
16 The Missiom, of Masonry 
 
 native divinity of human nature as the only lawful basis of 
 society and the state. That music, heard long before in every 
 Masonic lodge, went marching on, striding over continents, 
 and trampling kingdoms down until it took form in the 
 declaration of independence and constitution of this republic, 
 over whose birth Masonry presided and with whose growth 
 it has had so much to do. It was not an aceident that the 
 Boston Tea Party, with its protest against taxation without 
 representation, was planned in a Masonic lodge and executed 
 by its members. ISTor should we forget that the convention 
 which framed our constitution, with four men absent, could 
 have been opened in form as a Masonic lodge. The fathers 
 of this nation, inspired by Masonry, dared to assert the divine 
 right of man to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
 to secure which governments are instituted among men, de- 
 riving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 So it has been all through our national history — of which, 
 if you are not proud, you ought to have public prayers said 
 for you next Sunday — and today this great order, with its 
 plea for liberty, equality, and fraternity, is worth more for 
 the safety and sanctity of this republic than both its army 
 and its navy. At every turn of events, when the rights of 
 man have been threatened by enemies open and obvious, or 
 subtle and insidious. Masonry has stood guard. In time of 
 conflict she has softened the horrors of war, and in time of 
 peace her altar light has shone as a signal fire along the 
 heights of liberty, keeping watch over the principles wrought 
 out by the blood and prayers and tears of our fathers. Not only 
 in our own land, but everywhere over the broad earth, when 
 men have thrown off the yoke of tyranny and demanded the 
 
The Mission of Masonry 17 
 
 rights that belong to manhood, they have found a friend in 
 the Masonio order. Nor must we be less alert and vigilant 
 today when, free of the danger of foes from without, our re- 
 public is imperilled by the negligence of iadifference, the 
 seduction of luxury, and the shadow of a passion-clouded, im- 
 patient discontent, whose end is madness and folly. 
 
 "Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
 From out the storied past, and used 
 Within the present, but transfused 
 Through future time by power of thought" 
 
 Some day, when the clou(^of prejudice has been dispelled 
 by the searchlight of truth, the world will honor Masonry for 
 its heroic service to freedom of thought and the liberty of 
 faith. No part of its ministry has been more noble, no prin- 
 ciple of its teaching has been more precious than its age-long 
 and unwavering demand for the right and duty of every soul 
 to seek that light by which no maa was ever injured, and that 
 truth which makes man free. Down through the ages — often 
 when the highest crime was not murder, but thinking, and 
 when the human conscience was dragged as a slave at the 
 wheel of the ecclesiastical chariot — always and everywhere 
 Masonry has stood for the right of the soul to know the truth, 
 and to look up unhindered from the lap of earth into the face 
 of Him in whose great hand it stands. Not freedom from 
 faith, but freedom of faith, has been its watchword, on the 
 ground that as despotism is the mother of anarchy, so bigoted 
 dogmatism is the prolific source of scepticism. 
 
 Against those who would fetter thought in order to per^ 
 petuate an effete authority, who would give the skinny hand 
 of the past a scepter to rule the aspiring and prophetic 
 
18 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 present, and seal the lips of living thinkers with the dicta of 
 dead scholastics, Masonry will never ground arms. Her plea 
 is for government without tyranny and religion without su- 
 perstition, and as surely as the suns rise and set her fight will 
 be crowned with victory. She fights not with force, stiU less 
 with intrigue, hut with the power of truth, the persuasions of 
 reason, and the might of gentleness, seeking not to destroy 
 her enemies but to win them to the liberty of the truth and 
 the fellowship of love. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For, if there be a God at all, who is the life of all that was, 
 is, and is to be, that God must be the Father of all mankind ; 
 and if we are all bom into this world by one high wisdom and 
 one vast love, then we are brothers to the last man of us, for- 
 ever. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sick- 
 ness and in health, till death do us part, men are held together 
 by ties of spiritual kinship, sons of one eternal Father. Upon 
 this spiritual fact must rest every real human f ratei^nity, and 
 it is the basis of the age-old plea of Masonry not only for free- 
 dom, but for friendship among men. And, though long de- 
 layed — 
 
 "It's comin' yet for a' that, 
 
 And man to man, the world o'er. 
 Shall brothers be for a' that." 
 
 Our human history, saturated with blood and blistered with 
 tears, is the story of man making friends with man. Society 
 has evolved from a feud into a friendship, by the slow growth 
 of love and the welding of man first to his kin, and then to his 
 kind. The first men who lived in the red dawn of time lived 
 every man for himself, his heart a sanctuary of suspicions, 
 
The Mission of Masonry 19 
 
 every man feeling that every other man was his foe, and there- 
 fore his prey. So there was war, strife, ajid bloodshed. 
 Slowly there came to the savage a gleam of the truth that it 
 is better to help than to hurt, and he organized clans and 
 tribes. But tribes were divided by rivers and mountains, 
 and the men on one side of the river felt that the men on the 
 other side were their enemies. Again there was war, pillage, 
 and sorrow. Great empires arose and met in the shock of 
 conflict, leaving a trail of skeletons across the earth. Then 
 came the great roads, reaching out with their stony clutch, and 
 bringing the ends of the eartlj together. Men met, mingled, 
 passed, and repassed, and learned that human nature is much 
 the same everywhere, with hopes axid fears in common. Still 
 there were many things to divide and estrange men from each 
 other, and the earth was full of bitterness. 
 
 ISTot satisfied with natural barriers, men erected high walls 
 of sect and caste, to exclude their fellows, and the men of one 
 sect were sure that the men of all other sects were wrong — 
 and would be lost. Thus, when real mountains no longer 
 estranged man from man, mountains were made out of mole- 
 hills — ^mountains of immemorial misunderstanding not yet 
 moved into the sea. Barriers of race, of creed, of caste, of 
 habit, of training, and interest separate men today, as if some 
 malign genius were bent on keeping man from his fellows, 
 begetting suspicion, uncharitableness, and hate. AU through 
 the ages men were unfriendly, and, therefore, imjust and 
 cruel, largely because they were unacquainted. 
 
20 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 "Here lies the tragedy of our race; 
 Not that men are poor; 
 All men know something of poverty; 
 Not that men are ■wicked; 
 Who can claim to be good? 
 Not that men are ignorant; 
 Who can boast that he is wise? 
 But that men are strangers." 
 
 In the meantime — and, verily, it was a mean time — Ma- 
 sonry, the oldest and most widely spread order, was toiling in 
 behalf of friendship, uniting men upon the only basis upon 
 which they can ever meet with dignity, each lodge an oasis of 
 equality and good-will in a desert of feud and strife. At its 
 altar men met as man to man, without vanity and without 
 pretense, without fear and without reproach, held together by 
 common vows to the right, as tourists crossings the Alps tie 
 themselves together, so that if one slip and fall all may hold 
 him up. Its tie of friendship — ^peculiar, particular, and 
 unique — ^was like those tiny fibers running through the 
 glaciers, along which sunbeams journey, melting the frozen 
 mass and sending it to the valleys below in rivulets of bless- 
 ing. Other fibers were there, but none more far-ramifying, 
 none more tender, none more responsive to the light than the 
 mystical tie of Masonic love. No tongue can tell the mean- 
 ing of that gentle tie binding men together, no pen can trace 
 the influences that traveled along it, melting the hardness of 
 the world into pity. 
 
 Toward a great friendship, long foreseen by Masonic faith, 
 the world is slowly moving, amid difficulties and delays ; and 
 today the sun looks down and sees men everywhere getting 
 together, as though the race were fast becoming a vast league 
 of sympathy and service. Of that day, which will surely 
 
The Mission of Masonry 21 
 
 come, when nations "will be reverent in the use of freedom, 
 just in the exercise of power, humane in the practice of wis- 
 dom; when no man will ride over the rights of his fellows; 
 when no woman will be made forlorn, no little child wretched, 
 by bigotry or greed. Masonry has ever been a prophet. Nor 
 will she be content until the various threads of human fellow- 
 ship are woven into one mystic cord of friendship, encircling 
 the earth and holding the race in unity of spirit and the bonds 
 of peace, as in the will of God it is one in origin, history, and 
 end. Having outlived empires and philosophies, having seen 
 generations appear and vanish, she will yet live to see the 
 travail of her soul, and be satisfied — 
 
 "When the ■war-drum throbs no longer, 
 And the battle flags are furled; 
 In the parliament of man, 
 The federation of the world." 
 
 The Mission of Masonry! Years have fled, like hooded 
 figures in hurried march, since our fathers set up their altar 
 on the frontier, kindled its light and fell asleep, but the spirit 
 and purpose of this ancient order remain. The forms of 
 beauty into which the earth is rushing today are not the forms 
 that greeted their eyes in 1840; the aspect of the sky has 
 changed a thousand times since their eager and faithful vision 
 looked up into it. Time has swept us on the wave of advance 
 into a new world with vnder horizons, mightier aspirations, 
 and vaster obligations. But life is the same, unchangeable 
 save for its onward march, the earth abideth, and the sky, 
 though like a fleeting tent, is built anew after the same eternal 
 
22 The Mission of Masonry 
 
 model. Just so, though the forms of life alter, and new times 
 demand new methods, the truths of faith and immutable duty 
 of doing good abide. 
 
 The Mission of Masonry! He who would describe that 
 must be a poet, a musician, and a seer — a master of melodies, 
 etehoes, and long, far-sounding cadencies, l^ow, as always, 
 it toils to make man better, to refine his thought and purify 
 his dream, to broaden his outlook, to lift his altitude, to estab- 
 lish in amplitude and resoluteness his life in all its relations. 
 All its great history, its vast accumulations of tradition, its 
 simple faith and its solemn rites, its freedom and its friend- 
 ship are dedicated to a high moral ideal, seeking to tame the 
 tiger in man, and bring all his wild passions into obedience to 
 the wiU of God. Unwearyingly it holds aloft, in picture and 
 in dream, that temple of character which it is the noblest 
 labor of life to build in the midst of the years, and which will 
 outlast time and death. It has no other mission than to exalt 
 and ennoble hiunanity, to bring light out of darkness, beauty 
 out of angularity; to make every hard-won inheritance more 
 secure, every sanctity more sacred, every hope more radiant. 
 
 The Mission of Masonry! When the spirit of this order 
 has its way upon earth, as at last it certainly will, society will 
 be a vast league of sympathy and justice, business a system of 
 human service, law a rule of beneficence; the home will be 
 more holy, the laughter of childhood more joyous, and the 
 temple of prayer mortised and tenoned in simple faith. Evil, 
 injustice, bigotry, and greed, and every vile and slimy thing 
 that defiles humanity will skulk into . the dark, unable to 
 endure the light of a juster, wiser, more merciful order. In- 
 dustry will be upright, education prophetic, and religion not 
 a shadow, but a real presence, when man has become ac- 
 
The Mission of Masonry 23 
 
 quainted with man and has learned to worship God by seirving 
 his fellows. When Masonry is victorious every tyranny will 
 fall, every bastile crumble, and man will be not only un- 
 fettered in mind and hand, but free of heart to walk erect in 
 the light and dignity of the truth. 
 
 Such is the ideal, and by as much as are true to it, by so 
 much are we loyal to the benign mission of Masonry upon the 
 eartL Fidelity to all that is holy demands that we give our- 
 selves to it, trusting the power of truth, the reality of love, 
 and the sovereign worth of character. For only as we incar- 
 nate this vision in actual lif e<«nd activity does it become real, 
 tangible, and effective. God works for man through man and 
 seldom, if at all, in any other way. He asks for your voice 
 and mine to speak His truth to man, for your hand and mind 
 to do His work here below — sweet voices and clean hands to 
 work His will and make liberty and love prevail over in- 
 justice and hate. The most precious wealth in the world is 
 the wealth of established character; it makes all our moral 
 currency valid. Not all of us can be learned or famous, but 
 each of us can be pure of heart, undefiled by evil, undaunted 
 by error, noble and true, faithful and useful to our fellow 
 souls. Life is a capacity for the highest things. Let us make 
 it a pursuit of the highest — an eager, incessant quest of truth ; 
 a noble utility ; a genuine worth, a lofty honor, a wise freedom 
 — that through us the Mission of Masonry may be yet further 
 
 advanced. 
 
 "I go mine, thou goest thine; 
 
 Many ways we wend. 
 Many ways and many days, 
 
 Ending in one end. 
 Many a wrong and its crowning song. 
 
 Many a road and many an inn, 
 Far to roam, but only one home. 
 For all the world to win." 
 
HS397 .N5™" ""'"""" '■"'"^ 
 The mission of masonry 
 
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