n met, mingled, passed and repassed,
and learned that human nature is much the same everywhere, with hopes
and fears in common. Still there were many things to divide and
estrange men from each other, and the earth was full of bitterness. Not
satisfied with natural barriers, men erected high walls of sect and
caste, to exclude their fellows, and the men of one sect were sure that
the men of all other sects were wrong--and doomed to be lost. Thus,
when real mountains no longer separated man from man, mountains were
made out of molehills--mountains of immemorial misunderstanding not yet
moved into the sea!

Barriers of race, of creed, of caste, of habit, of training and
interest separate men today, as if some malign genius were bent on
keeping man from his fellows, begetting suspicion, uncharitableness,
and hate. Still there are war, waste, and woe! Yet all the while men
have been unfriendly, and, therefore, unjust and cruel, only because
they are unacquainted. Amidst feud, faction, and folly, Masonry, the
oldest and most widely spread order, toils in behalf of friendship,
uniting men upon the only basis upon which they can ever meet with
dignity. Each lodge is an oasis of equality and goodwill in a desert
of strife, working to weld mankind into a great league of sympathy and
service, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit
even now on a small scale. At its altar men meet as man to man,
without vanity and without pretense, without fear and without
reproach, as tourists crossing the Alps tie themselves together, so
that if one slip all may hold him up. No tongue can tell the meaning
of such a ministry, no pen can trace its influence in melting the
hardness of the world into pity and gladness.

The Spirit of Masonry! He who would describe that spirit must be a
poet, a musician, and a seer--a master of melodies, echoes, and long,
far-sounding cadences. Now, as always, it toils to make man better, to
refine his thought and purify his sympathy, to broaden his outlook, to
lift his altitude, to establish in amplitude and resoluteness his life
in all its relations. All its great history, its vast accumulations of
tradition, its simple faith and its solemn rites, its freedom and its
friendship are dedicated to a high moral ideal, seeking to tame the
tiger in man, and bring his wild passions into obedience to the will
of God. It has no other mission than to exalt and ennoble humanity, to
bring light out of dark