FREEMASONRY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 198, 16 November 1871, Page 6

FREEMASONRY.

(From the " Freemason") G-rand is the wisdom Masoni'y in her multifarious contrivances for tae fraternization of the races, the diffusion of truth, the exercise of a world wide philanthropy, the promotion^ of loA'e and goodwill among men, and the liberating of mind from the shackles of, gross sensuality, and lamentable ifirnorrm.ee. Her foundations were laid in the council chambers of eternal goodness; and from before, tho time when angels sang the birth song of creation, until the- present generation after generation, have been added to the superstructure in process of erection on that base of everlasting truth ; though multiplied, thousands of courses have been laid by good arid true workmen in the buried centuries of,the past; -yet,, as higher and higher rises her ,walls, as more ancl more perfectly is seen the. grand outline of this magnificent temple, more and more evident is the wisdom that .devised, and the strength that, executes so God-like a mission.^ Gqnceived in wisdom, resting 021 truth, cemented with love, and banded by faith, Hope, and charity, it stands erect, clear and firm as the eternal granite. When Time was born, it wan. Nations have arisen and fallen; empires have been. born, lived, died, and -are buried ; mighty coalitions have been formed and broken ; inventions nave been made and forgotten ; arts have been discovered and lost ; floods have desolated, fires consumed, sickness blasted, and death devoured ; and yet through all these mighty changes, and these natations, the principles of Masonry have survived, resisting all the elements' of disorganisation and decay, unaffected by surrounding changes or untoward events ; she greets us in this afternoon of the nineteenth century with undimmecl eye, with' unfaltering, step, and' in the completeness of her .perfected majority.