Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

394 CONCLUSION.
Masonics, could never again run the lines and establish the
corners; without a very free use of her faculty of Abrac.
It has not fared better with our ancient customs and usages.
Time was when men disabled in body or limbs, men
of mean parentage, and without some reputable mode of
obtaining a living, were excluded from our privileges. But
the licentiousness of modern times makes little account of
these wholesome regulations, admits the halt, the maimedr
and the disreputable alike; and this to an extent that we
are sometimes pinched for want of honourable men to sustain
the dignities of the society; ojiir very grand masters
being lifted up by their station. And, if only men were admitted,
we might yet hopet, that some Napoleon in.Masonry,
by a complete overthrow of the temple, would remodel
it upon the ancient foundation, according to the usages of
antiquity; but wKh the admission of ladies, all hope is
lost. Once a Mason always a Mason; the ladies have their
lodges, their fetes, their funerals; the ship is lost, we cannot
hinder it; we have only to seize a plank, and save our
own lives.
Again, our emblems were our boast. We learned to circumscribe
our passions by the compasses; to do as we
would be done by, upon the square; and freedom, fervency,
and zeal, were deeply instilled into our minds with chalk,
charcoal, and clay. We could see the very image of innocence
in our white aprons, the frailty of mortal hopes in a
broken column, and the truth of history in the death of Hiram.
But another has robbed us of our art; an infernal
grand master has entered into our schools, takes our master's
gavel to knock off all religious prejudices, the trestleboard
of Hiram to draw schemes of infidelity, and the Mason's
trowel to spread the cement of hatred to the cross..
It is high time for common men to forsake the school.
In view of these things, brethren, it had been my duty as a
master Mason, to confer with you plainly upon this subject;
(Vide Master's Charge;) my duty as one appointed " to correct
irregularities" " to preserve unsullied the reputation of