Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

Conclusion. 267
ure of Manhood, grasps those eternal principles
which underHe the building of Cosmos and the evolution
and regeneration of man. The charge that
such a man, breathing reverence to truth, love to
man, and aspiration toward light in every sentence
of his voluminous writings, could descend to bestiality
and grovel in convulsions at the feet of a confessed
devil-worshiper, is worthy of his real accusers
; and yet such is the voluminous attack recently
made in the pages of a leading New York
daily. The attack but thinly veils the old-time assassins
of the heroes and martyrs of Masonry, and
is designed to frighten the ignorant and superstitious
into fresh hatred of Masonry. This hysterical
''Granddaughter of Astarte" is herself a victim, if
she has any real existence at all, of the same nefast
body, and is only a fit subject for a madhouse.
History repeats itself; and this fresh attack upon
Masonry, while it can not tarnish the fame of the
honored dead, should warn Masons that even in this
enlightened age the minions of the Prince of Darkness
and the Father of Lies have not renounced
their allegiance or forgotten their cunning. Persecution
is to the Truth what the winds and the rains
are to the sprouting oak. These but sink deeper
the roots of conviction, and spread wider the leaves