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How I Was First Prepared To Be Made A Mason.
the sea-shore , with " the hateful issue of Polixenes" cradled in his senile arms , didn't the gods detect the applicability at once , and didn't they salute the aged male nurse—the faithful old lord—with stentorian quotations of the injunction which forms the chorus of their favourite music-hall ditty ? How many of those happy , gay , healthy , apparently immortal , revellers have since then gone over to tho majority ? Nay , is not the question rather , how many remain to
" in this harsh world draw their breath with pain " ? Well , well , Eheu ! fugaces * * * * * ami labuntur . It is a reflection that every recurring Christmas will bring ¦ with it , and alas ! each succeeding one presents it in gloomier tinting ! I have often thought that in the copious literature of this blessed season , one aspect of its joviality , of its apparent recklessness and sentimental gush—to use a hateful but expressive modern word coinage—one idea has escaped due attention . I
mean the leading thought of this festivity as a standing protest against dry selfishness , that cold realism and negation of sentiment which some philosophers worship—they probably worship nothing else—under the name of common-sense . Indeed , it was with the French equivalent for this very phrase that the work , the production of a French Abbe—which , translated by Thomas Paine , and re-christened by him with the name of the " Age of Reason , " professed to make the most formidable attack ever directed against Christianity since its foundation—first appeared towards the close of the last , ¦ century . But that peculiar cult which consists in the adoration of a" god called
Common-sense , created by its worshippers and-usually in their own image , does not now , in this country at least , take the direction so much of an assault upon ancient faiths as of a contempt for traditional sentiments . Utilitarianism , in its modern costume of political economy , is no new idol , nor is it now for the first time that heretics , who will not bow the knee to this would-be absolute Baal , lift up their voices against its extreme pretensions . There is in horology a compensating principle to the apparently inflexible
working of metallic machinery known as an escapement , and , map and measure humau existence and its inevitable incidents as we may , some such principle must be invoked to qualify the effects of an inexorable series -of operations , which , logically , consistently , coldly , unimpassionedly , carried out , would render the desiderated perfection of existence a phase of being , having the same relation to our present assumed imperfect but eminently practicable state , that the icy moon bears to our sun-warmed planet . This
principle of compensation , this longing after a relaxation of strict inevitable order , common to the whole human race , found expression in the pure and innocent festivals instituted by the Church , succeeding as they did the corresponding but wholly gross recreations of heathenism . To the same feeling of the necessity of sentiment , to the same instinct that life was dual , and that its perfection required the indulgence of the emotions as well as the perception of pure palpabilities , may be ascribed the inculcation of the exercise of charity—the principle of chivalry , founded , as it was , upon the benevolent duty of protection to the weak , by means of valour acquired and encouraged for the purpose of controlling the tyrannically strong .
I do not know that I can adduce a better illustration of what I mean than by directing attention to the opening chapter of the late Mr . Charles Dickens's " Christmas Carol . " Indeed , the whole book is a . sermon upon this text . Mr . Scrooge , it will be remembered , is a very learned professor in the school of modern political economy , and his opening sentences display , in sententious terms , certain axioms which are not easily controverted by the intellect , however intolerable and even false they appear when their import strikes and shocks the heart . How their real hollowness is exemplified ,
how an important factor , human emotion , is left out of the sum—and—and—how the product comes out , is known , I should think , to nine hundred ancl ninety-nine out of every thousand readers of these pages . Sneh a protest , then , against materialistic self-love , mere self-aggrandisement , the institution of Christmas supplies . In such a light , this glorious festival has always presented itself to my mind . Nay , may I say it ?—I am sure I mean it reverently—in such a light was it , I think , in its inception commended to mankind by the pagans of the heavenly heralds singing in the star-lit firmament above Bethlehem .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
How I Was First Prepared To Be Made A Mason.
the sea-shore , with " the hateful issue of Polixenes" cradled in his senile arms , didn't the gods detect the applicability at once , and didn't they salute the aged male nurse—the faithful old lord—with stentorian quotations of the injunction which forms the chorus of their favourite music-hall ditty ? How many of those happy , gay , healthy , apparently immortal , revellers have since then gone over to tho majority ? Nay , is not the question rather , how many remain to
" in this harsh world draw their breath with pain " ? Well , well , Eheu ! fugaces * * * * * ami labuntur . It is a reflection that every recurring Christmas will bring ¦ with it , and alas ! each succeeding one presents it in gloomier tinting ! I have often thought that in the copious literature of this blessed season , one aspect of its joviality , of its apparent recklessness and sentimental gush—to use a hateful but expressive modern word coinage—one idea has escaped due attention . I
mean the leading thought of this festivity as a standing protest against dry selfishness , that cold realism and negation of sentiment which some philosophers worship—they probably worship nothing else—under the name of common-sense . Indeed , it was with the French equivalent for this very phrase that the work , the production of a French Abbe—which , translated by Thomas Paine , and re-christened by him with the name of the " Age of Reason , " professed to make the most formidable attack ever directed against Christianity since its foundation—first appeared towards the close of the last , ¦ century . But that peculiar cult which consists in the adoration of a" god called
Common-sense , created by its worshippers and-usually in their own image , does not now , in this country at least , take the direction so much of an assault upon ancient faiths as of a contempt for traditional sentiments . Utilitarianism , in its modern costume of political economy , is no new idol , nor is it now for the first time that heretics , who will not bow the knee to this would-be absolute Baal , lift up their voices against its extreme pretensions . There is in horology a compensating principle to the apparently inflexible
working of metallic machinery known as an escapement , and , map and measure humau existence and its inevitable incidents as we may , some such principle must be invoked to qualify the effects of an inexorable series -of operations , which , logically , consistently , coldly , unimpassionedly , carried out , would render the desiderated perfection of existence a phase of being , having the same relation to our present assumed imperfect but eminently practicable state , that the icy moon bears to our sun-warmed planet . This
principle of compensation , this longing after a relaxation of strict inevitable order , common to the whole human race , found expression in the pure and innocent festivals instituted by the Church , succeeding as they did the corresponding but wholly gross recreations of heathenism . To the same feeling of the necessity of sentiment , to the same instinct that life was dual , and that its perfection required the indulgence of the emotions as well as the perception of pure palpabilities , may be ascribed the inculcation of the exercise of charity—the principle of chivalry , founded , as it was , upon the benevolent duty of protection to the weak , by means of valour acquired and encouraged for the purpose of controlling the tyrannically strong .
I do not know that I can adduce a better illustration of what I mean than by directing attention to the opening chapter of the late Mr . Charles Dickens's " Christmas Carol . " Indeed , the whole book is a . sermon upon this text . Mr . Scrooge , it will be remembered , is a very learned professor in the school of modern political economy , and his opening sentences display , in sententious terms , certain axioms which are not easily controverted by the intellect , however intolerable and even false they appear when their import strikes and shocks the heart . How their real hollowness is exemplified ,
how an important factor , human emotion , is left out of the sum—and—and—how the product comes out , is known , I should think , to nine hundred ancl ninety-nine out of every thousand readers of these pages . Sneh a protest , then , against materialistic self-love , mere self-aggrandisement , the institution of Christmas supplies . In such a light , this glorious festival has always presented itself to my mind . Nay , may I say it ?—I am sure I mean it reverently—in such a light was it , I think , in its inception commended to mankind by the pagans of the heavenly heralds singing in the star-lit firmament above Bethlehem .