Astronomy And Masonry.

You may not have heard of the latest achievements of this analysis , how it reveals motions invisible to the eye aided by the greatest telescopes , and enables us for the first time to put a girdle about a star , to measure and to weigh it . For example , take the variable star Algol . By the study of the spectrum of this star we have learned that it is twice as large as our sun , but only half as heavy ; that it resolves in an orbit of a mean diameter of about three millions of miles about a

dark companion , which we shall never see , but of whose existence and location we are certain , for it depends upon no other assumption than that of the universality of the law of gravitation . We know that the speed of Algol in its orbit is twenty-six miles a second , and that it completes a revolution in about three days . It is to be remembered that nothing of all this could be learned by direct observation . Like all the stars Algol appears

in the largest telescopes without any disk , but only as a bright point of light , and the better the telescope the smaller appears that point . Even the width of its orbit is wholly imperceptible . Viewed at its distance from us three million miles is no more in visual size than the diameter of a silver three-cent piece placed at Chicago and viewed from New York . It is almost wholly by means of the spectroscope that we have learned the little we know of the dimensions , composition and movements of the . fixed stars .

The little we know . That is the last and greatest lesson of astronomy . I have never known or heard of a great astronomer , or , indeed , of a man great in any kind of natural science , who was not modest , simple , and humble . Sir Isaac Newton , was a man ,

to merely comprehend whose greatness , and measure it from below , requires a liberal education . You have all heard of his famous saying that he seemed to himself like a child playing on the shore , picking up a pebble or a shell here and there while the great ocean of the infinite lay unexplored before him .

Most of all , perhaps , we learn from , astronomy how . little we understand the work of God and the thought of God . We look at those beautiful suns and the silent wandering planets and we speculate about their past and their future and the ultimate destiny of all that . We think we see in the moon an ember of a burnt-out world . We think the sun may be shrinking and cooling , and we are tempted to speculate as to when it will cease to

send us its life-giving rays . We picture . the sun and the attendant planets at some time in the future all cold , dark and lifeless , circling uselessly through space to all eternity . How vain such speculations . What do we know of God ' s plan ; of the use He has designed to make of this world when eold and dark , or of His design for renewing light' and heat in some vast cycle of change .

I have read somewhere of a race of ephemera that were born , brought forth of their kind , grew old and died in . the space of au hour . The great-grandchildren of those that saw . the sun slowly rising in the east beheld him quite high in the sky . Ten generations later , his rim was touching the western horizon and the

race of ephemera came together in the shelter of an ancient mushroom to debate on the probable effect upon their race . And one of the oldest and wisest among them , one bowed with the weight of almost sixty minutes of age , stood up to speak to them . He fold them that-authentic tradition had handed it down from

generation to generation , among the ephemera , that ages before , when the mushroom under which they had assembled was young , the sun had been in the east . That it had always moved westward . That enlightened reason must conclude that it could move in no other direction and could not return upon its path .

That therefore it was . about to disappear for . ever , and that the race of ephemera , for the sake of whose warmth and light and comfort and life it existed , would also disappear and die for ever . What they thought of his argument I do not know , but I have heard that the sun rose again the next morning . — " American Tyler . "

Solicited And Soliciting.

SOLICITED AND SOLICITING .

IF there is any one tenet of Freemasonry that is known alike by the initiate and the profane it is that of opposition to proselytism . No one is solicited to become a Freemason . This is a part of the great unwritten law that-must not be and , in fact , no

Mason ever violates . Free-will and voluntary action on the part of the applicant for the degrees is absolutely prerequisite . Were this not so the very application itself would bear on its face a falsehood , and the signature thereto would attest a lie .

This is as it should be . The ego is so pre-eminently a factor in Freemasonry ; so much is Freemasonry concerned with the personality ; its responsibilities are so individualised , that , although as a whole it is an organisation in which the parts are

bound together by the most solemn and impressive ties , the work it does is accomplished more through the personal factors of energy and character than combined effort . The unsolicited applicant is taught through signs and symbols ,

Solicited And Soliciting.

and voluntarily obligates himself to door not to do certain things . All this concerns hi in personally . As he profits by the teachings he becomes a character builder . If he becomes really a . Freemason , and not merely a member of the Fraternity ( for , mark you , there is a vast difference between the two ) , it is his individuality that works for good . As he lets his light shine , so does he reflect credit upon the Institution . The one absorbs what the other teaches . Then the taught in turn becomes the teacher .

Advancement in Freemasonry should be along the same lines as those which led to the acceptance of the applicant ; " What !" do you exclaim : " Should the Freemason become a solicitor , for honours ? " Not at all . He came to Freemasonry unsolicted ,

and Freemasonry received him . He solicited . Freemasonry investigated and , accepting , taught him to become a Freemason . As Freemasonry does not solicit , neither should he as a Freemason solicit , for Freemasonry is but the aggregation of Freemasons .

But does Freemasonry never solicit ? Yes ! Freemasonry solicits of her votaries that they shall be good men and true , and conform their lives upon the moral principles symbolised by the plumb , the level , and the square . She asks that they apportion their time as she has taught them by the gauge . She solicits that they shall spread the cement of brotherly love and , with the Great Light in Freemasonry as their guide , build such a spiritual temple as shall make them worthy of all honour .

Once a Freemason soliciting should forever cease . As no Freemason would dare solicit a profane , neither should he solicit preferment or honours . By living such a life as would make him worthy of these , he will be the solicited . Freemasonry delights to honour her worthy ones . She solicits their services and honours worthy performance . — " Keystone . "

It may be mentioned in connection with the investiture of Bro . Alfred H . Bevan in the position of Treasurer of the Grand Mark Lodge , that it is the first time in the history , of English Freemasonry that the positions of Grand Treasurer

of United Grand Lodge , of Supreme Grand Chapter , and of Grand Mark Lodge have been held in the same year by one and the same person , and Bro . Bevan has been- warmly congratulated upon the distinction thus accorded him .

Ad00503

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