Western Enquirer

[Richmond Enquirer.]

A just and eloquent tribute to the principles of Masonry

EXTRACT

From an Address delivered before the Masonic Fraternity on the occasion of laying the corner stone of St. James' Church in the city of Richmond.-- April 2d, 1838, by Rev. A. Empie, D. D.

My brethren of the Masonic Fraternity--notwithstanding the storm has swept over our afflicted societies at the North, I am not deterred from recognising you as brethren. Some of the circumstantials of Masonry may have been affected, but its essential principles have not been touched. The general duties of Masons, as inculcated in their public standards, are still the great duties of philanthropy and patriotism, of virtue and piety, and their specific obligations the love and exertions of truth, brotherly kindness and charity. There still remains I trust, and ever will remain with them, the disposition to promote science and the useful arts; the disposition to seek and to value truth and knowledge; the heart to feel and commiserate: and the hand to relieve those who are in need. Let Masons, then, profit by experience. Let them look upon past disasters as the judgment of heaven upon their sins. Let them rally around their standards, and live up to the principles of the Order, and live down by their virtues, the calumnies of their foes. According to the principles of your own Order, my brethren the present occasion must be as interesting to you as to the most devoted friends of religion and virtue. Your society professes, and is in duty bound, to rejoice at whatever promotes the cause of morals and of happiness. Your object is not only to improve yourselves, to do good to others, to patronize honest industry, together with the mechanical and the liberal arts; but the distinctive principles of unadulterated Masonry, if carried out to their legitimate results, directly tend, and are expressly calculated to act in coincidence with, and as auxiliaries to the revealed laws and institutions of Heaven: they directly tend to advance you to the most perfect state of human character and to render you a blessing to yourselves and to society. Uncorrupted Masonry enforces all the ordinary duties of life and of morality and especially the great duties of benevolence and charity. It is her peculiar characteristic, to avail herself, and to make use of all the light, truth and knowledge, to which she can obtain access: she, therefore, distinctly and emphatically gives prominency to the revealed word of God, as the great light of Masonry, and under God, the light of the world, and her object has always been, to preserve in the world, spread abroad and render efficacious, the knowledge and practice of those most important religious truths and duties, which are universally acknowledged as the great principles of natural and revealed religion. But my brethren, as it is in Christians so it is in Masonic societies. Comparatively few live up to the tenets of their profession; and let us therefore strive to improve. Let us value Masonry, not merely as an amusement for leisure hours, but also as a means of moral advancement. Through its forms and emblems let us look up to its substance. Let us square our conduct according to its admirable principles, that we may become 'Masons good and true.' Let brotherly love, innocence and purity, be cultivated by us. Let us keep our desires within compass and live ever mindful of 'the All-seeing Eye.' Let the incense of devotion daily rise from our hearts, and while the hour-glass is measuring out our lives, let us divest our minds and consciences of every thing offensive to Heaven, and labor to fit our bodies, 'living stones' for that spiritual building--that 'house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens'--that when called off from our labors on earth we may be prepared for admission into that celestial Lodge above, where the Supreme Architect of the Universe presides. In fine, let us keep 'the light of Masonry,' the Holy Bible, always open before us. Let us study and treasure up its sacred contents. Let us govern our thoughts, words and actions, by its blessed precepts. Let us cause our light to shine, so that the world may know that we are persons 'to whom the burdened heart may pour out its sorrows-- to whom distress may prefer its suit with confidence--whose hand is guided by justice-whose heart is expanded by benevolence,' and who endeavor, in all things to walk by the revealed will of our Supreme Grand Master in heaven. Let us not forget that we must die--but let us daily so prepare for our last summons, that Almighty God of his infinite goodness and mercy through Jesus Christ our Saviour, may, 'at the grand tribunal of unbiased justice,' extend his mercy towards each and all of us, and crown our hope with everlasting bliss, in the expanded realms of a boundless eternity.