The Name Of God.

The God of Jacob hears our prayer , His saints Jehovah-Jireh feeds , The war Jehovah-Nissi leads , The strife Jehovah-Shalom quells , With us Jehovah-Shammah dwells . What wrongs the God of Patience bears .

The God of Hope , He calms our fears , The God of Peace His thunder stills , Our cup the God of Noah fills . One fearful name bespeaks His ire , Our God is a consuming fire ; But , 0 Immanuel , Thou canst prove That God is Light , ancl God is Love .

Masonic Thinkers.

MASONIC THINKERS .

BY W . W . HIBBEN . . _ , In the "Iowa Advocate . " AN intelligent member of the Masonic Fraternity , who ranks among the first of the Craft in the Queen City , said to us a few weeks ago . " Masons , as a body ,, are

not a reading people . " The expression was sincere , ancl was evidently uttered with reluctant regret . We passed from his presence with the reflection , that his assertion was probably true , notwithstanding the general intelligence of the body in business affairs , ancl in the general interests of the country . ¦ The conviction is doubtless too common , that the communication of the degrees in the lodrooms of the Craftis the chief thing

ge , necessary to make one a Mason . But however common this conception , the very idea is erroneous , because it tends to the budding up of communities of mere Masonic automatons , who never know anything more of the Craft , than , that it is an old secret society . It is a pity that any such Masons are ever made and turned out upon the world as the representatives of the Fraternity . They misrepresent the true animus of its philosophic antiquity , ancl never learn the great mystic fact that no better

foundation of fraternal ancl intedigent society has ever been laid than is comprehended in the moral teachings and philosophic principles of Ancient Craft Masonry . To them ignorance and indifference are most unfortunate , for these hold all such in the outer courts , where even Masters compare only with Entered Apprentices , and where they are never able to work , save where more competent Masters prepare the trestle-board . To teach them to think , to act , and to feel , not for themselves , alone , but for their

feUow men , is the true Masonic phdosophy , which makes known to the Craft the higher trestle-board—tbe grander and more noble work of the moral and social men , where intedigence distinguishes the good from the bad among the sons of humanity , ancl where the rewards of virtue acid to the distinctions of life and give happier sunsets to its dying scenes . All men may not read , yet they should all think , for thought makes the g ' reat differences between man ancl man , ancl distinguishes him from the brute and from all

lower animals . This , indeed ,, is an obligation which is imposed on us by nature itself ancl we cannot ignore it without driving from our presence our higher manhood , and sacrificing the life-time luxury of delightful travel through the mystic regions of what may be truly termed the Masonic heaven of light and knowledge . I £ man had not been a thinking being , then it woidd ¦ not have been necessary to have placed in his hands any revelation of God or of himself . The primitive elements of his nature might have served him for all time , ancl he could have been left to run the