Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

198 COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE.
innocence still need protectors. To purity and innocence
evcr~ where, the Knights Commanders owe protection
as of old, against bold violence or thohe more
guIlty, the murderers who by art and treachery beck to
slay the soul; and against that grim want and~ gaunt,
and haggard destitution that drive too many to sell their
honor and their innocence for food. In no age of the
world has man had better opportunity than now, to display
those lofty virtues and that noble heroism that so
distinguished the three great military and religious orders
in their youth, before they became corrupt and
vitiated by prosperity and power. When a fearful
epidemic ravages a city, and death is inhaled with the
air men breathe; when the living scarcely suffice to bury
the dead, most men flee in abject terror, to return and
live respeetable and influential when the danger has
passed away.
But the old Knightly spirit of devotion and disinterestedness
and eontempt of death, still lives, and is not
extinct in the hnman heart. Everywhere a few arc found
to stand firmly and inflinchingly at their posts, to front
and (lefy the danger, not for money, or to be honored
for it, or to proteet their own household, but from mere
humanity ~nd to obey the unerring dictates of duty.
They nurse the siek, breathing the pestilential atmosphere
of the hospital. They explore the abodes of want
and mi~erv. They perform the last sad offices to the
dead, and they seek no other reward than the ajproval
of their own eonscience. These are the true Knights of
the present age. To the performanee of acts of heroism
like these, you Ilave devoted yourself, my brother, by
becoming a Knigllt Commander of the Temple.
Soldier of the truth and of loyalty, protector of purity
and innocenee, defier of plague and pestilence, nurser
of the sick and burier of the dead; Knight preferrin~.c
death to the abandonment of the post of duty, weleome
to the bosom of this order.
CLOSING CEREMONIES
COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE.sas
Grand Commander—( Knocks three; 000.) All rise,
draw swords and bring them to a carry.)
Grand Commander—Most Sovereign Commander in
the West, what is the hour?
Senior Warden—It is four in the afternoon, Most
Potent Grand Commander.
Grand Commander—Since the sun is declining in the
West, it is time that we should close this Court; that we
may not omit, even for one day, our duties in the world.
Sovereign Commanders, let us assemble around the altar
that we may close this Court. (All form as in opening
ceremonies.)
Grand Commander—Let us be one, Sovereign Commanders,
now and hence forward, and let our swords,
our arms, our hearts, be devoted to the great cause of
truth, humanity and duty. Let us pray. (All kneel and
the same prayer is said as at opening, after which all
rise and take their stations.)
Grand Commander—(Knocks three; 000.)
Senior Warden—(Knocks twelve; 000000000000.)
Junior Warden—(Knoeks twelve; 000000000000.)
Grand Commander—Attention Commanders! As this
is the honr in which we terminate our operations, I dedare
this Court of Grand Commanders of the Temple of
Jerusalem elosed.
Note 312.—”Vsmal expresses the following opinion of the degree:
‘The 27th degree does not deserve to be classed in the 5coteh Rite as a
degree, since it contains neither symbols nor allegories that connect it
with initiation. It deserves stIll less to be ranked among the philosophIcal
degrees. I imagine that it has been intercalated only to anpply an
hiatus, and as a memorial of an Order once justly celebrated ‘— Masoy’s
Eneyciopadia and Dictionary of Freemasonry, Article Sovereign Con,.
sander of the Temple.