FUTURE OF FREEMASONRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 May 1921, Page 9

FUTURE OF FREEMASONRY.

HUMANITARIAN TEACHINGS. ..-Concluding a review of the antiquity of Fremasonry at his installation at Auckland ou Wednesday, the grand master, Mr. T. Ross, observed that wherever civilisation extended the great brotherhood was found, using its influence and its authority in breaking down the barriers of national arrogance and of social rank and class that kept men apart, fostering all that was b.|st and noble and elevating in humanity. Masonic bodies everywhere were preaching and practising toleration, helping to bear the burdens of the unfortunate, cheering the despondent, alleviating the distress of the sick, the aged, the widow and the orphan, and setting before every member his duty to his God, his country, and his fellow-men. When many people openly professed their contempt for God, for country, and for all that made society pure and moral, and government secure and stable, might there not be a great future for Freemasonry, with its humanitarian teachings and its toleration, reaching out and taking in all religions, be they Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, or Brahmin? Might not this great universal religion of the craft —for it was a religion, with the Fatherhood of the Great Architect as its fundamental—be the means of uniting every nation, and creed, and class, and color? Then, and then only, would the time come that was predicted by the great Scottish Masonic genius, “When man to man, the world around, shall brothers be. an’ a* that.”