CONCLUSION. The Fraternity of Freemasons has been of considerable assistance in promoting the work of civilisation, although the pages of history supply but scanty records of its usefulness, and those only single pictures, not a connected whole. Freemasonry has no reality but to its followers. The strength of the Confederacy does not lie in what it is in itelf as as a whole, but what it effects in its members themselves and through their means. But this is more or less withdrawn from the gaze of the inquirer, as also from the world in general; for, as Lessing says, the actual deeds of a Freemason are his secrets. Even in the most troubled period of her history, when deceit, error, and degeneracy were her most marked features, Freemasonry has never ceased to be an incentive to noble thoughts and actions, a sanctuary where truth, freedom, and peace have found shelter and protection; and the more she returned to her original simplicity, purity, and worth, the more did she both inwardly and outwardly increase in comprehensiveness, mental depth, and dignity. But she has never yet accomplished in the past that which she is capable of performing, and ought to carry out, partly because at all times and wheresoever she has struck root she has had to struggle for existence, and partly because she has in many respects deviated from her ideal, and permitted that union and concord which was her boast and aim to be broken up into a thousand disjointed parts. If her object is to show to the world the path to perfection, then must she of necessity strive to her utmost first to realise what this perfection is. With this intent she must execute those reforms which the most judicious, well meaning, and solid amongst the Brethren have since the commencement of this century longed to see carried out. For the idea is indissolubly grafted into Freemasonry, that the fraternity should form one grand whole, and this cannot possibly be established by the usurpation of supreme power by any, but by a voluntary agreement and intimate connection between the majority of Masons, Lodges, and Grand Lodges. A modern masonic author1 rightly says: "It would be a very limited and therefore undignified interpretation of the ancient institution of Freemasonry, if we now, or at any time, looked upon it as complete and perfected, and with inconsiderate resignation sacrificed ourselves to the authoritative dogmas of one system or of one single era of cultivation, renouncing that constant development which is the sublime fundamental principle of the system, the germ infused into her at her very existence. But on the other hand the hasty relinquishment of all tradition, the wandering up and down in the wide regions of morality and cosmopolitanism, the wantonly passing over of the positive and substantial ground-work of the ancient Fraternity, is no less to be deprecated. Both extremes can only satisfactorily be accommodated along the beaten track of personal experiment." The basis of all substantial reform is the adaptation of the constitutions to these three requisites, liberty, equal 1 Observations of a Freemason upon the Statutes, etc. (By Br. Krieg.) Leipzig, 1841. Page 1. ity, and Fraternity, having regard at the same time to the age and honour of the individual members of the Order and of the body generally; for not in the ritual, but in the constitution, is the only true and certain perception of the Society to be sought. Each Masonic legislative body must recognize the universality of Freemasonry, keeping in view the totality of the Confederacy and the animation. and vitality in its organisation, nor losing sight either of the special feature of the single Lodges, i. e., their independence and self-government. The Grand Lodges are merely the executive and administrative communities, and must utter the genuine unadulterated sentiments of the Lodges they represent. Like every other sacred truth, Freemasonry cannot do without an outward form, i. e., without symbols and ceremonies, or a Rite; but this must be under the banner of its primitive form, and on the basis of its simplest and most ancient ritual, re-modelled and perfected to suit the age. But more than all things else, it is imperatively necessary to elevate the tone of the Lodges, to make the meetings more significant and attractive, to grasp a more comprehensive view of Freemasonry, with its individuality stamped on all its regulations, as well as to quicken the force and power of Masonic laws in a word, that the real may more closely resemble the ideal that the Freemasonry may be regarded as an influential and weighty. matter, in order that all single Lodges may be transformed into genuine sanctuaries of liberty, peace, love, and light. We had nearly finished the printing of the present edition of this work when Brother D. Murray Lyon favoured us with the following information in correction of an error into which the historian of the Grand Lodge of Scotland has fallen when he says that "it appears from the minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel), that Thomas Boswell, Esq. of Auchinleck, was made a Warden of the Lodge in the year 1600. "In the course of our examination of the oldest minutebook of the Lodge of Edinburgh, now by the kindness of the Rt. Wor. Br. William Officer, S. S. C., temporarily in our possesion, we find that only in one minute is the name of Boswell of Auchinleck mentioned, and that is under date June 8, 1600, where he is entered in the sederunt of those present by the designation of "the laird of Auchinleck." The Warden of the Lodge was in attendance at the same meeting. The admission of Boswell and Moray in a Scotch Lodge, and of Ashmole in an English Lodge, have long been pointed to as the three oldest authentic instances of non-operatives being members of the Fraternity. The minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh shew the Rt. Hon. Lord Alexander and other non-operatives to have been admitted into that Lodge in 1634, twelve years prior to Elias Ashmole being "made a Freemason."" Br. Lyon remarks further, that "the first of the St. Clair Charters (referred to at page 104 of this work) bears internal evidence of its having been written before the union of the Scotch and English crowns, probably in 1600-1." |