Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

JJ6 ' BttEiENSlOXS OF FRJiL MASONRY.
founded on error, and maintained by delusion; and who,
believing so, would be its debtor ? Who would not stand
aloof from it ? Nay, who would not feel in duty bound to
lay hold of its timbers, and prostrate it to the ground ?
Reared by past ages, supported by the various interests
and prejudices of men, moulded into their language, and
manners, and habits of social intercourse, spread over the
tiations of the earth, and serving as a common bond of
union among strangers and foreigners, it cannot be brought
down by a feeble, or by an injudicious effort; and its fall,
with all possible care to prevent it, will produce a violent
' concussion in the community, and may make a temporary
desolation around in its overthrow.
Free Masonry in America is like a bad system of government
in the hands of a virtuous administration; its faults
are rendered nearly harmless by the purity of its magistrates,
and its advantages are heightened by the integrity
of its supporters. u Why disturb its operations, then ?"
Because the good it seems to do is not its own, and will
not disappear with the loss of Free Masonry; because it
aims at too much, quite misleading some, and darkening
the truth in many; because it offers itself in the way, of a
higher, nobler, brighter, hoKer, happier institution; because
pretending to have descended from the skies, to be the
daughter of Heaven, " The gift of God to the first Masons
;"* it does find a way, with its very emptiness, to serve,
in many minds, as a substitute for that glorious institution,
which alone is heavenly and divine. Free Masonry never
opposes Christianity, or Mahomedanism, or idolatry, or any
such thing. It merely offers itself in the place of either
of them, as a clever thing to suit every body, and offend
none; as a law which secures to the faithful peace
on earth, and bliss in Heaven, of whatever name or nature,
religion or superstition.
* Book of Const, p. 19. Hutchinson, p. 6. of the Appendix. Calcott's
Disquisitions, p. 90. Preston, p. 109. All in llio same words.