THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE FREEMASONS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5372, 15 June 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE FREEMASONS.

(From The Tims, 25th April.) The Prince of Wales entered-yesterday on his fourth year of office as Most Worshipful Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge of Freemasons. The ceremonies of the occasion, were, of course, most impressive. It is by its external- splendors that freemasonry is best known to the world outside its ranks, • Its gorgeous dresses, its, mysterious tokens of rank and office, and its. dignified - method of procedure, are well calculated to impress the mind with due reverence for those awful secrets of tho craft which they at once veil and symbolize. ■ Nothing was wanting yesterday to tho full effect of the day. There was a largo and distinguished company, including among tho guests tho Crown Prince of Denmark, Grand Master of tho Danish Freemasons. ' There was a profuse display of tho well-known, insignia of tho freemasons’ order. Tho sun and tho mspn, the compasses, tho squares, and tho triangles were resplendent amid the gold and silver and blue of the aprons, or shone upon tho breasts of tho assembled brethren ns marks of a nobility at 1 once the highest and most venerable of any. Freemasonry has had its dark days. It has met with suspicion and persecution from Church aud State. . Its practice, even in this country, has been forbidden by express statute. Elsewhere it has been under the ban of the Inquisition, and its members have suif ored accordingly. It has had its martyrs and confessors, its false and weak-hearted brethren, its schisms and discords from within, its relentless enemies who have been ever ott the watch to surprise it and put it down. It has passed safely through all these dangers. It has survived with unbroken front, guarding its secrets meanwhile from an intrusive and hostile world. In this country it has been its good fortune for some time past to enjoy the favor of royalty. The ceremonial of yesterday is not tho first of tho kind that tho

English world has seen. From the days of King Henry VI., who passed suddenly'from a persecutor to an admitted member of the order, the connection of the English Royal Family with freemasonry has been close and frequent. At the present day, with its sixteen hundred lodges, its innumerable band of brothers, and with the Heir-Apparent as its Grand Master, English freemasonry stands more firmly than over. Its enemies, if such it has, must be looked for among the sex which is debarred for ever from its privileges. Women, it is well known, unhappily for themselves and for freemasonry, have an evil reputation for not keeping secrets. The great ceremonial of yesterday was, therefore, less perfect than it might have been made if the sex had been less frail.

The freemasons are, beyond all dispute, a very ancient body indeed., Their descent has been variously traced down from the patriarchs of old days. Solomon, Noah, and Adam have all been claimed as founders or prominent members of the order. Probable evidence in all its degrees must bo taken for what it is worth in a case of this kind, where strict proof has now ceased to be possible. The finisher of the great Temple must, in all reason, be thought to have been conversant with the builder’s art. His workmen, if not himself, were certainly masons; and, as the presumption is that a man is free in the absence of proof to the contrary, we may venture to speak of them as free masons. From these early members of the masonic order, through Pythagoras, and with a process of filiation not very strictly ma de out, we come next to the masons of the early middle ages, to the Constructors of the magnificent Gothic churches which in this country and on the Continent are among the most precious monuments of antiquity. The men who erected these buildings wore certainly possessed of secrets which have not yet been divulged. Their unapproached supremacy as artists is sufficient proof of this. Nor need we have any difficulty in believing that they were frequently united in a kind of brotherhood.of the craft known to one another in their necessary wanderings from place to place by signs of their own, and possessed of professional knowledge which they guarded jealously from outsiders. All this is so likely that it would need proof that the old builders were not something of this kind rather than that they were; whereas, in point of fact, the evidence, such as it is, is almost wholly confirmatory. But between these men and the modern freemasons there is only one more chasm to be bridged over, and it is not nearly as broad and difficult, as the previous one which we have already passed. As time went on, and as the constitution of society changed, the early trade companies of Europe lost, together with their uses, a good deal of their original meaning. There has been a process of transformation in a good mapy of them. The guild has survived, but it has been less and less closely connected with the craft or business from which it took its name. ‘ Modern freemasonry has no very close connection with the building trade. It scarcely, indeed, affects to have any in the ordinary sense of the words. Its buildings are of a kind not made with hands. Virtue and brotherhood and good-fellowship are the intangible results at which it is contented to aim. But we may still, in spite of the wide difference between old and new Masonry, trace some, at least, of the steps by which the process of development has been carried on. Before the time of modern freemasonry there had already been something of mystification introduced into the Masonic Order. When the obvious uses of that order were at an end, it was thought wise to devise something or other by way of justifying its continued existence. Curiosity was piqued by half glances which the world was suffered to have into the inner secrets of the order. This was the state of things which went on apparently until the seventeenth century and the genius of Elias Ashmole gave freemasonry a fresh start. Ashmole, in his various characters as herald, astrologer, and antiquary, was well fitted for the work; and freemasonry ripened into a perfection which could scarcely.have; bean expected. It is of the symbolism of freemasonry that we must be understood as speaking. Of its real secrets we can, of course, say nothing. They have been made public a dozen times since Ashmole’s day. Scotchmen and Americans, with an imperfect sense of humor, or with a want of love for the mysterious, have come forward to divulge them. Weak members have been forced into betraying them, sometimes by downright violence. The Grand Inquisitor of Portugal—so the record runs : — joined the order of the freemasons for the express purpose of betrayingthem to their enemies. But, from whatever cause it has happened, the secret of the order—if' secret indeed there be —has never been made known. The world sees it as a society which unites practical benevolence with good-fellowship, and is contented to honor it for its more obvious as well as for its more occult excellencies. The patronage of the Prince of Wales, however honorable, is not needed for keeping it in popular favor. Its great charity alone suffices to give it real merit, by which the outer world may be satisfied to judge of it. Its secrets are its own affair, and we are not bold enough to indulge even the wish of prying into them.