relative and moral duty: and thus becomes the most effectual support and brightest ornament of social life, and opens a wider channel for the current of benevolent affections, and a new source to human happiness.

Its laws are reason and equity; its principles, benevolence and love; and its religion, purity and truth. Its intention is peace on earth; and its disposition, good will towards men.

"I think," says a fine writer," "we are warranted in concluding that a society thus constituted, and which may be rendered so admirable an engine of improvement, far from meriting any reproachful or contumelious treatment, deserves highly of the community; and that the ridicule and affected contempt which it has sometimes experienced can proceed only from ignorance or from arrogance; from those, in fine, whose opposition does it honour, whose censure is panegyric, and praise would be

censure."

Assuredly, then, my hearers, you will with me congratulate the members of St. Paul's lodge on the agreeable event of this day.

Right Worshipful Master, Worshipful Wardens, Respected Öfficers, and Beloved Brethren.

Accept my affectionate salutations; accept the felicitations of all the friends of Masonry. We are pleased with your harmony and zeal, and rejoice in your establishment and prosperity. Your success is connected with the best interests of humanity. May the social virtues you cultivate, and the heart-felt pleasures you experience in the lodge, be your companions through life! Their mild influence, their benignant spirit, will animate every scene of duty, alleviate every corrosion of care, heighten every sensation of joy, and in the hour of dissolution, shed divine transport on your souls.

Let all my brethren present be willing I should remind them that in vain do we attempt the vindication of our most excellent society, or the commendatory description of its purposes and requirements, if our conduct contradict our profession. Let us, then, be cautious to avoid all

24 Rev. Dr. Milne, Grand Chaplain, in a sermon before the Grand Lodge of England, 1788.

those improprieties and vices which might tarnish the lustre of our jewels, or diminish the credit of the Craft. Masonry will rise to the zenith of its glory if our lives do justice to its noble principles, and the world see that our actions hold an uniform and entire correspondence with the incomparable tenets we profess. Thus we shall "obtain a good report of them that are without:" "and those who speak evil of us will be ashamed, seeing they falsely accuse our good conversation," and misrepresent our generous purpose. "For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men."

Remember that we are the associated friends of humanity; that our sacred union embraces in its philanthropy the amities of the Gospel; and that charity in its kindest exercise and largest extent is our distinguishing characteristic. Others wear the warmth of summer in their face, and the coldness of winter in their heart; but a Mason's disposition should be mild as the breeze, open as the air, and genial as the sun; cheering and blessing all around him: and his deeds pleasant as the clear shining after the rain; and refreshing as the dewy cloud in a harvest day.25

May the assembly at large be convinced that prejudices against Freemasonry are ill founded, and that the society is worthy of high encouragement and warm commendation.

Finally; let us all pray that the privileges of equal right may be widely extended, and all men become free: that wars and contentions may be for ever terminated : that peace and happiness may be the uninterrupted enjoyment of all mankind: and to God ascend the universal, united, unceasing ascription of love, and joy, and praise'

95 Isaiah xviii., 4.

DISCOURSE X.

“We be slanderously reported, and some affirm that we say, Let us do evil that good may come."-ROм. x., 3.

WHEN partiality is so busily endeavoring to render suspicious the best actions, and prejudice so artful in throwing out insinuations to the disadvantage of the worthiest characters, who can expect to escape "the strife of tongues?" Especially as the ignorant and the evil-minded are ever ready to adopt the surmise, however improbable; and to give currency to the imputation, however unjust.

Even our blessed Lord, the holy and immaculate Jesus, "was despised and rejected of men." Not all the wonderful works that distinguished his ministry, not the divinity of his preaching, the disinterestedness of his conduct, nor the sanctity of his morals, could secure him from the opposition of party and the rage of malignity. He forewarned his disciples of a similar treatment; and told them that they must expect to meet with unkind usage, bitter reproach, and violent persecution, as well as he. Accordingly, "in every city they had trial of cruel mockings, and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds, and imprisonments, and tortures." They were "a sect everywhere spoken against." The apostles were reproached as being pestilent, factious, turbulent, and seditious fellows. They were not only accused of conspiring against the government of their nation and the peace of the world, but also of aiming to overthrow the religious establishment of their own country, and of all others."

1 Delivered at the consecration of King David's Lodge, in Taunton, August 28, 1799.

2 Matt. X., 24-26.

Acts xxiv., 5, 6.

• Acts vi., 13, 14; xviii., 13.

Heb. xi., 36. " Acts xvii., 6.

Not only were there imputed to them practices that were dangerous, but principles that were unjust. So St. Paul intimates, in the passage selected as a text, that there were those who charged him and his fellow-laborers in the propagation of the Gospel, with holding tenets that he detested. He says no more in confutation of the vile imputation than that those who profess and practise upon such a principle deserve and will receive the highest condemnation: but to attribute to him and his associates such a motive, was a false and insidious charge.

Thus we see that the best men and the worthiest conduct may be misrepresented and slanderously reported: and that the purest purposes and the noblest exertions in behalf of virtue, humanity, and peace, have been stigmatized by some, and opposed by others.

The most unfair and disingenuous, need I add the most successful mode of attack, is to insinuate that the design, however plausible, is mischievous; or that the end, however commendable, is effected by means reprehensible and unjust.

The base and vile doctrine of "doing evil that good may come," or, in other words, that "the end justifies the means," has also been alledged against the Freemasons. Or, rather, it is expressly asserted of the Jesuits and Illuminees,' by authors who designedly implicate and involve our society with those corrupt associations: declaring it to be formed upon the same plan, founded on the same principles, and furthering the same designs. To be sure, they make some reserves and abatements in favor of Freemasonry; but still assert it to be the fatal source to which all these bitter and destructive streams are to be traced.o

I doubt not, my brethren, but it will strike your minds with surprise and astonishment, not unmixed with indignation and horror, to be informed that our venerable

See Abbé Barruel's History of Jacobinism, vol. 3, New York edit.,

pp. 61, 93, and 189. Professor Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy against the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, &c.

8 Barruel, vol. 3, pp. 12 (Note), 91, 136, &c. Philadelphia edit., pp. 83, 42, 72, 75, 342, &c.

Professor Robison,

Professor Robison,

Barruel, vol. 3, pp. 11, 38, 41, 52, 87, 152, &c. pp. 15, 165, 343, &c. M. Le Franc, "La Voile Retirée."

and ancient fraternity is implicated with the infidels, atheists, and disorganizers of the present day, in a charge of no less atrocity than a premeditated design, a longpreconcerted plan, to destroy the religion of Christ, to subvert every established government upon earth, and to overthrow every system of civil society which the virtuous ingenuity of man has been able to invent, with a view to improve and secure the happiness of the world!10

Looking into yourselves, my brethren, and feeling conscious of the purity of your own intentions; referring, too, to the principles of our ancient and hitherto respected Institution, you are at a loss even to conjecture the motive for fabricating an allegation so unfounded, and bringing forward an imputation so undeserved and so unjust.

By artful insinuations, forced constructions, and palpable misrepresentations, modern alarmists have ascribed to the Freemasons principles which they hold in detestation, motives to which they are strangers, and actions of which they were not authors. They blend them with societies to which they have no affinity; mere political clubs whose intentions and pursuits are diametrically opposite to ours, and altogether inconsistent both with our rules and dispositions.

For those excesses, those moral and political evils which have of late not only spread war and confusion, and every evil work, through the kingdoms of Europe, but endangered the security and peace of the world: the advocate for Freemasonry has no apology to offer. He

10 The Abbé Barruel has this assertion: "Irreligion and unqualified Liberty and Equality are the genuine and original secrets of Freemasonry, and the ultimatum of a regular progress through all its degrees." And Professor Robison declares, that "the Mason Lodges in France were the hot-beds, where the seeds were sown and tenderly reared, of all the pernicious doctrines which soon after choaked every moral or religious cultivation, and have made the society worse than a waste, have made it a noisome marsh of human corruption, filled with every rank and poisonous weed." And again: "Germany has experienced the same gradual progress from religion to atheism, from decency to dissoluteness, and from loyalty to rebellion, which has had its course in France. And I must now add, that this progress has been effected in the same manner, and by the same means, and that one of the chief means of seduction has been the Lodges of Freemasons."