MASONIC.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2414, 11 December 1880, Page 4

MASONIC.

AN ELOQUENT ADDEESS. The following able and eloquent address was recently delivered by the Eev. Thomas Star King, the eminent American Unitarian, before the Grand Lodge of the State of California: “In offering salutation to you, with thanks for the honor and privilege connected with the office and duty you have entrusted to me, I shall only attempt briefly, in the discharge of that duty, to note two or three points of harmony and correspondence between the structure and working of our Order and the handiwork of the Almighty in the external world. We belong to the great fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. The implements of our Craft, however, are no longer for operative toil. We do not now, as part of our covenant, set fast the Doric pillar, nor release from marble the ornament of the Corinthian capital. We no longer sketch the complications of Gothic piles and cement the buttresses of haughty towers, and carry up, course by course ,the aspiring stones of pinnacles. The tools of the Craft are representative now of speculative truth, and speak to the inward eye of laws and duties that make life noble, and character symmetrical and strong. Yet, though we build no structures such as our ancient brethren reared ; though the temples in which we meet are not the monuments of our own proficiency in the art whose instruments we cherish,we are builders and preservers in a richer sense,for our Order itself grows stronger and more precious with years, and its uses are more varied and beautiful with the lapse of time. The Masonic Organization is far more remarkable and wonderful than the noblest edifice it ever added to the landscape of history. Let us pause, brotheren, on the word “ organization.” That is the great word of the world. The Almighty is the Organizer. He creates elements in order to mingle and fraternize them in composition and products. In the original chaos matter was unorganized. The process of death is disorganization. All the marvels ef beaut 3% all the victories of life, are exhibitions and triumphs of organizing force. The most fascinating chapters of science are those which unveil to us the vast fields which the forces traverse that sustain the highest forms of life upon the globe. A crystallised gem is the most attractive form of solid matter, because more thought and skill are expended in its structure than in any other stony combination of atoms. A flower is of a higher order of charm, for more various and more subtile elements arc wrought into its composite loveliness ; and the provisions for the growth and support of the flower affects us more profoundly still. The mixture of the air, the various powers hidden in the sun-ray, the alternation of daylight and gloom, the law of evaporation and of clouds, and the currents in the air that carry moisture from zone to zone for the nutriment of vegetation. We soon find in nature that no elements or force exists unrelated. It is in harness with other elements for a common labour, and an interchange of service for a common end. Organization is the idea which science impresses upon us as the secret of life, health, power, and beauty in the realm. An organized product can appear only from forces of nature, which are the movements of the Divine will. Man can arrange manufacture, weave, forge, adjust, refine, but he cannot organize as nature does. He can make machines through which the forces of nature will play for canning ends ; but he cannot conjure the principle of his life into any mould of his working. He can start shuttles that will weave a carpet for the reception room of a palace in one loom ; but he can build no mill, he can start no laboratory where the warp and wool of the banana leaf can be plaited. He can tell how the sugar is secreted in the veins of a clover blossom ; but he cannot make the clover seed. And you might as well ask the wisest scientific man to fashion a world as to create one of the green needles which a pine tree produces by the million, or one of the innumerable blades of grass. But the great glory of organization is when it is revealed in human life. The highest structure of the creative art is the body of man, representing in its complexity and the friendly partnership of its powers, the system and co-ordina-tion which society should attain ; and it is a marked epoch in history when a new movement is made which succeeds in organizing men widely and permanently for noble and beneficent ends. We are not intended to be separate, private persons, but rather fibres, lingers, and limbs. The aim of religion is not to perfect us as persons, looking at each of us as apart from others. The Creator does not intend to polish hearts like so many pins—each one dropping off clean and shiny, with no more organic relations to each other than pins have on a card. We are made to be rather like the steel, the iron, and the brass, which are compacted into an engine, where no modest bolt or rivet is placed so that it does not somehow contribute to the motion or increase the efficiency of the organism A savage life is like a heap of sand ; the atoms are distinct ; they are aggregted, not combined ; no beautiful product springs from them ; and the first wind of disaster blows them away. A half-civil-ized nation is but slightly organized, so far as noble purposes and high sentiments are concerned. Progress is marked by wider, higher, and finer developments, issuing from the combination and copartnership of souls. There can be no such thing as justice until men, in large masses, arc rightly related to each other. There can be no prosperity in a community until the majority of the people arc so organized that their minds receive training and their energies are unfettered. There can be no happiness except as the result of proper relations permanently established between the different classes or strata of the social world. No man liveth to himself. “ Whether one member suffer, all (he members suffer with it; or one member honoured, all the members rejoice with it.” “ How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity !” When a compacted unity of living beings is seen, one of the most precious objects for which the world was built is obtained. A large and well Pt'dpred family is such a jewel. A neighborhood at peace, and free from scandal, is—or rather, I should sa3 r , would be—a still more precious jewel of the same quality. A State a Nation so constructed that the forces of all ranks of its inhabitants should be brought into play, and the rights of all ranks shouldjbe sayed fyom pressure, would be more marvellous and a more inspiring structure than the material order and harmony of our solid globe. {To be Continued .)