Thadeu

v. . .11
are the fit rewards of those who have deserved well of their Order, their Country and the World . Not to
gratify or please the dead, whose souls are lifted far above such honours, but to do that which it is eminently
fit and becoming for ourselves to do, we perform these ceremonies .
A desire fur our name to be perpetuated to after times, by monuments erected by public gratitude, in
memory of noble deeds, is a worthy spring of action everywhere, and most of all in a Republic . Is an inducement
to great deeds : and a monument to the memory of a great and good man is an Orator in bronze or marble,
teaching glorious lessons to after generations ; the silent but impressive evidence of his immortal influence ;
and itself exercising an influence not often inconsiderable upon men's actions, their country's welfare and the
world's destiny. The record of noble actions and heroic devotion is more fitly written on the enduring marble
or the pyramid of granite, than on the paper pages of a destructible book . The marble or the granite is itself
a book, like those on which the Ilicroph ants of Egypt cut in hieroglyphics the history of the Ancient Ages .
:ugh monuments regard not alone those to whom they are erected . How noble an office do they not fulfil in
making known to future ages that a People or Fraternity had loftiness of soul enough to appreciate, honour and
glorify great deeds l , They are the best evidence of the virtues of those who erect them ; silent exhorters to
lofty actions, perpetual Teachers of the finest lessons of virtue and patriotism!
judgment
It does not become any one to set little value on the general opinion of his own time, or on the final
of posterity. That the desire for fame and reputation is universal and instinctive, proves that it is
laudable and proper ; for it is a Force and Power . one of those Laws of God which Ile has been pleased to
enact, as part of the great laws of Harmony and Attraction by which lie rules the Universe .
But as that judgment and that opinion are not infallible ; as the World and Posterity may condemn the
good, the wise, the disinterested, and decree honours to the bad, the ignorant and the base ; to gain that judgment
of approval must not be the only or even the chief motive of a Mason's action . For Duty is the great
Law that governs him ; to be obeyed, no matter with what result ; and his conscience the true judge, from
whose judgment there is no appeal except to God .
If you would fain direct your regards on high, and aspire to an eternal happiness hereafter, you neither
will regard the rumours of the vulgar, nor will you rest your hopes and your interest on human rewards .
Virtue herself must attract you by her own charms to true glory . What others may any of you, as they will talk,
so let themselves consider. For all that is so said is confined to the narrow limits of, these region ; that you
see. ,None respecting any man was ever eternal . It is extinguished by the death of the individual, or perishes
altogether in the oblivion of posterity .
The swan that wings her way to the lofty heights of heaven, inquires not whether the shadow of her
wings falls on the sordid earth below . The monuments which we erect in-human memories, are transient as
the delicate tracery of frost-work woven from leaf to leaf, of a morning in the spring . Time, like a river,
carries them all away with a rapid course ; they swim above the stream for a while, but are quickly swallowed
up and seen no more . The marbles that men rear to perpetuate their names, are consumed by time and
silently moulder away, and proclaim their own mortality while they testify to ours . But the enjoyments of
the immortal soul in that future existence promised us by God will be superior to decay, and endless in duration.
They will be ever full, fresh and entire, like the stars and orbs above, which shine with the same
undiminished lustre, and move with the same unwearied motion with which they did from the first date of
their creation . Nny, the joys of heaven will abide when these lights of heaven will be put out, and when .
sun and moon . and nature itself shall be discharged their stations, and be employed by Providence no more .
The good Mason shall then appear in his full glory ; and fixed in the Divine presence, enjoy one perpetual and
everlasting day ; a day commensurate to the unlimited Eternity of God Himself, the Great Sun of Righteous .
neee, who is always rising, and never sets .
The world is filled with the voices of the dead . They speak, not from the public records of the great
world, only, but from the private history of our own experience . They speak to us in a thousand remembrances,
incidents, events, associations. They speak to us, not only from the silent graves, but from the throng
of life . They are invisible, and yet life is filled with their presence . They are with us by the silent fireside,
and in the secluded chamber ; in the paths of society, and in the crowded assemblies of men . They speak to
us from the lonely wayside ; and from the venerable walls that echo to the steps of a multitude and to the