An Oration Upon Masonry.

touch upon hero , but when I show you a completely independent 2 ) arallel account of a particular event recorded therein ivhich confirms and agrees with their account , the effect of this evidence is not limited to that particular eventbut ( in tho absence

, of any equally cogent disproof ) strengthens our confidence in tho acceptance of the whole . The existence , indeed , of such a people as tho Jews of tho present clay , identical in their reverence for the same Holy Book , in dogma , in worship ,

in national hope—identical in all these amid the changeful influences of the lapse of years , of residence among nations the most diverse , of climate , of circumstancetheir existence cannot be denied . Neither can it be explained save on the acceptance of the Hebrew historical books as a true

national record of real persons and events . Accepting then , as I do , with absolute and unfeigned conviction , the general truthfulness of Old Testament history , I accept , ivith certainty scarcely less certain , our system and order of Masonry as a

living growth surviving from those far-off centuries to our OAVH clay . There is , I knoAV , an opinion supported by not a few names of credit and influence , that " Masonry " Avas invented ( forsooth ) some eight or nine hundred years ago . But such

an opinion is quite incapable of any historical proof , and to my OAVJI mind it seems utterly unreasonable . Tho Christian religion was then all but universally accepted , though in a somewhat corrupted and adulterated formand I

ac-, count it a human impossibility , a thing inconsistent with human nature , which was then what it is now , that men whoso lives and thoughts and feelings were in any degree moulded by the observances , the prayersthe creeds of the Churchand by

, , the lessons of the New Testament , could have contrived so large a system , from Avhich all reference to these things should have been so completely and ( as it Avere )

instinctively left out and ignored . Nov indeed , can I see IIOAV it should be worth the while of any such inventor or inventors supposing such possible , to seek the acceptance of a system so unselfish , or b y what means they could workif they yet

, desired it , for the propagation of so quiet a Society as ours . I cannot then find in Masonry , as I know it , anything consistent with a medieval beginning . But I do find in it exactly the sort of recognition of tho

government by Almighty God of the Universe , of nations , of men , revealed step by stop , from time to time , through chosen , accredited and specially-gifted messengers , ivhich . recognition I suppose to have been the spiritual life of David , the Psalmist ,

of a Solomon , an Isaiah , an Ezekiel , a Micah , a Daniel , an Habakkuk , Jealous watchfulness over the ancient landmarks of our Order is surely no modem growth , and those who have learned its lessons and received its tokens , before our Lord ' s fuller revelation of grace and truth , would be conscious of no guilty reticence

in handing on to their immediate successors without change or addition tho lessons they had received aud rejoiced in under the earlier dispensation . Accept Masonry according to its own claims , and it is a consistent , coherent , living truth and reality , such as all the

manifold abuses to which it has been exposed have not been able to destroy . Its reference to the Old Testament history are natural—an undesigned coincidence , underlying , pervading the whole , such as could not have boon found in any invention of a

latter age , in Avhich the holy name of Jesus must have appeared , either for scornful derision or for worshipful homage . What we have , what we use as Masons , is a form of worship , an order of dicipline , a traditional history that may well have been moulded

by a Solomon to suit his greater purposes from some more antique form , handed on to an Isaiah , an Ezekiel , a Daniel , an Ezra , a Malachi , shared according to our tradiditions by John Baptist and John Evangelist , by Gamaliel and Paul , yea , even by Jesus of Nazareth himself . But it is such

as could never have been put together , contrived or invented in an age of ignorance , cruelty and rapacity , by any human ingenuity , into a system utterly void of