Freemasonry's Sublimity.

tho dow , tho rain , tho sunbeam . His frail body , in which tho seeds of his immortal life aro planted , formed of tho very elements from whose rage he needs protection , must be sheltered alike from tho heat and the cold . An angel

meets him at nightfall and teaches him how to weave the foliage over his head as a shelter—and thus he made tbo arch of the first dome . That angel Avas Art .

Masonry is Art . —In a world ot imperfection and error , where a life of virtue is one of continual struggle , and whore vicious influences sometimes gain ascendancy over oven tho good , there is need that tho mantlo of charity should bo thrown widely and lightly over tho deviations of

tho weak . Charity covereth a multitude of sins . Thero is need that tho whole restoro tho sick ; that the strong assume a part of the burdens of tho feeble , and that that tbo wise enlighton the darkness of tho ignorant . Charity is the crowning grace of Christianity .

Masonry is Charity . —There is an adaptation in the human heart to one great absorbing , soothing emotion—one for which the vagrant soul is a wandering pilgrim , and for which she would gladly barter fame , and wealth and power . That priceless jewel is love . Who so base as would not bo loved ?

The prisoner , shut by his stupendous crimes from his fellow men , in Ceillon ' s dungeon , a thousand feet below the lake that idly chafes the rock of which his impenetrable fortress is made—if perchance in bis darkness , to which long yoars have accustomed his eye , ho should seo the timid

monso como from his retreat , and wait to be fed by the hand that earth had thrown from its fellowship in disgust , what a gush of affection would thrill tho bosom of the

hermit of tho cell ! How would he feel that he was yet linked to being ; hold by one tio to creation ; had one living thing yet to look on him without horror and without loathing .

More than half tbe battles of earth have been fought for love . Ambition and power have been its slaves , poetry and eloquence its worshippers , and virtue and piety the most ardent expectants of its rewards . Love is the religion of the Bible .

Masonry is Love!—With tbese preliminary remarks I grasp the great subject before me—Masonry in its two-fold form , physical and moral . The sea of eternity was ebbing and flowing with the pulsations of eternal benevolence . Deity was a brooding

cloud of love , embracing being and breathing blessedness on the multiform orders of mind that dwelt in the heaven of heavens . As yet no dial had measured time—no pendulum paced its seconds—no clock recorded its hours . As it was in the begining so it was ever . The enunciated

Now covered its boundless expanse of being—enjoymentaction . Heaven was everywhere save in the far-off chaos , where matter warred with opposite and discordant principles , making jargon that might have been wafted b y strong winds on the ear of heaven in some pause of Bong .

The spirit world had long been created ; it had no chronology . No era had stood at its dawn—no event ran parallel with its duration—Time had never swung his scythe over its vales—Death's spectral chariot had never

been seen on its sun-bright hills . It was a world of strange and inconceivable being , on which tho centuries of earth , after they shall have passed away , will measure no space , nor leave a foot-print .

God—the Jehovah , whose incomprehensible and incommunicable name is expressed in one of the hieroglyphics of Hebrew Masonry , looked upon the ruinous space , planted His compass at the foot of the throne and

swept its unmeasured circle farther than thought had power to travel . The periphery lay like a faint line of light on the wasteful sea of matter . Here was laid the plan of the material world .

I have no language to speak anew the light-creating word . Masonry veils it in her hieroglyphics , and speaks it in another tongue . Are there art and design in the unbounded fields of the illimitable sky , and among the orbs of creation ? Ask tbe

astronomer who will tell you that the orbs are thousands of times larger than our earth , with all its oceans , continents and mountains ; and as they thunder through space on wings that almost defy the speed of thought , can be

calculated in their course with far more precision than the wheels of a watch . They have , since creation , kept on their unseen celestial railways , never dashing against each other , to darken half tho [ heavens with the fragments of their ruin ! Even the comet , the mail carrier from one

Freemasonry's Sublimity.

system to another , as ho drivos by torchlight across tho abysm of space profound , coming up to each goal with a curve , and bonding the necks of his fiery coursers in a graceful , elongated sphere—may be calculated in his stages , and his returns precisely foretold .

Is there room for the play of this immense machine ? Ask the planets that walk their far-sweeping rounds on one plane , but at awful distances from each other , making their own years as they accomplish the mighty circlo round tho sun !

Is thero proporation in creation ? Ask Jupiter with his moons , or Saturn with his far-off cloudy skies and his broad girdle of light , if tho great central urn of five bo not large enough to warm their hemispheres , too , as thoy turn toward tho unwinking eyo of day .

I come down to tho Masonry of our own planet and read the fitness of Almighty design inscribed to overy mountain and imbedded in every vale . . The central core of firo is wrapped , thousand of miles deep , in successive layers of stratified rocks up through which sometimes the molten

lava burns its way , and congeals its metallic pillars , that seem to chain the surface to the inner crust , against which lash tho serges of the perpetual firo . The strata of the rocks are covered with the layers of earths and soils ; over

these God ' s own enamelling of green—the carpeting for a giant's tread or a fairy's foot—is thrown , in beautiful order , bespangled with flowers of strange loveliness and fragrance .

Above , the tall trees of tho forest wave ; and higher still tho mountain tbronos aro pitched , on which the kings of thunder take their seats when the alarm of tho storm is beaten , and the thick clouds are mustered for the black tempest . Above these still , a dome of blue , a wondrous

beauty—first gazed on by infant eyes—last seen by eyes swimming in death;—an elastic canopy that seems to settle low over the valley , or round up like an arch over the tallest hills , into which as the aeronaut penetrates , ho sees it rise higher and higher still—tho unapproachable

barrier that bounds the vision—best image of the heavenly eternity that hath no beginning , nor yet an end ! To this wide canopy tbe stars aro but the gems , and the ten thousand meteors of night but the spangles that are thrown like five-flies in bewitching profusion on the robe of ni ght .

This is the Masonry of God . —The earth , which was once under the Creator ' s eye " without form and void , " is still a dreary waste before the surface is improved by the hand of man . It is his proud task to hew the rocks from their mountain quarries and mould them into proportion , and

then throw them into piles of surpassing grandeur and sublimity . Where once was spread a dull and uninviting expanse of sand now rises a city to be the abode of millions , the home of the hearts , and the throne of commercial and political power for a continent . How much enjoyment , and

comfort , and luxury , are implied in the erection of a dwelling for man—a home for his children—a nucleus round which his affections may grow in unwasting fondness ; to which his weary foot may turn at eventide , as the sun

of nature goes down , but as the richer orb of his domestic bliss is just rising ! What hath built this home of peacoa sublunary heaven that reconciles man to his lot and woman to her sorrows ?

PHYSICAL MASONRY . While communities lived in a roving state , following their herds by day , and pitching their tents by night , but few of the triumphs of civilization could be achieved . Tho pilgrims of a day were too much the pilgrims of a life ; they

followed their flocks from one oasis to another until Death , a mightier shepherd , herded the keeper of the flocks , and counted the gains for himself . No mausoleum rose to point out their places of sepulture , unless , perchance , the dead were buried as were those of Abraham ' s family , in the cave

of Machpelah . Generations of men after generations might thus live and leave no more trace behind them on the face of tho earth than the sea-bird that walks for a moment over the shifting sands of the shore . Bnt Physical Masonry came to the rescue , and burdened and

beautified the plains of Shinar and the vale of the Nile with the stupendous structures that breathed the air of immortality , handing down from age to age the mighty thought that swayed the bosoms of the builders—the Masons of Babylon and Nineveh , and of the palaces of tho Pharaohs . The Masonic erections of the east are the chroniclers of the past . They prove in their eloquent ruins the historical