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most worshipful grand lodge - Louisiana State University

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10 SPECIAL COMMUNICATION OP THE GRAND LODGEschemes to unravel or policies to shape. Their aims are selfish ;their operations designed to meet present emergencies ; the resultsthey achieve are transitory and evanescent, as their failuresand successes. They deal with conditions; we build on principles.Some things there are—immutable, indestructible—ever oneand ever the same; they have no yesterday and no to-morrow ;they have been, and are, and ever will be.But of these, are not the temples and habitations of man, createdby Iiimself, nor the cities, nor the <strong>State</strong>s, founded and builtand made strong by the passions of mankind. These rise andfall; cities prosper and decay ; states, empires, erect triumphalmonuments, whose ruins alone remain to attest departed powerand stir a pitying memory of vanished splendor and vain glory.Man himself " cometh forth to-day, and to-morrow he is cutdown like a flower." All things physical—of the earth earthy—perish. Nothing endures but time, and nothing lives but God!Nothing is imperishable but truth, and nothing immortal but theSpirit of God.Of these, is Freemasonry: hence it exists without "localhabitation" and may nourish without temples.Founded on the belief in God, it partakes of His attributes." Universality " becomes the essential condition of its being, andthe brotherhood of man, a logical necessity and an indisputablefact.I recognize that my function, in the execution of the workbefore us, is comparatively formal, and I must not trespass uponthe tasks assigned to others. Yet, it has seemed to me not inappropriatein this hour of our success, and amidst these anthemsof glorification, to warn the brethren not to be carried away bythat which is merely material; to bid them remember that thetemple is but (he means to the end; that Freemasonry is supreme;greater than her temples and greater than her votaries ; an idealwhose shrines are not made " with human hands ;" which flour -isheth not in earthly soil, and prospereth only in the spirit world

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