ness, beauty out of angularity; to make every
hard-won inheritance more secure, every sanctuary more sacred, every
hope more radiant![183]

The Spirit of Masonry! Ay, when that spirit has its way upon earth, as
at last it surely will, society will be a vast communion of kindness
and justice, business a system of human service, law a rule of
beneficence; the home will be more holy, the laughter of childhood
more joyous, and the temple of prayer mortised and tenoned in simple
faith. Evil, injustice, bigotry, greed, and every vile and slimy thing
that defiles and defames humanity will skulk into the dark, unable to
bear the light of a juster, wiser, more merciful order. Industry will
be upright, education prophetic, and religion not a shadow, but a Real
Presence, when man has become acquainted with man and has learned to
worship God by serving his fellows. When Masonry is victorious every
tyranny will fall, every bastile crumble, and man will be not only
unfettered in mind and hand, but free of heart to walk erect in the
light and liberty of the truth.

Toward a great friendship, long foreseen by Masonic faith, the world
is slowly moving, amid difficulties and delays, reactions and
reconstructions. Though long deferred, of that day, which will surely
arrive, when nations will be reverent in the use of freedom, just in
the exercise of power, humane in the practice of wisdom; when no man
will ride over the rights of his fellows; when no woman will be made
forlorn, no little child wretched by bigotry or greed, Masonry has
ever been a prophet. Nor will she ever be content until all the
threads of human fellowship are woven into one mystic cord of
friendship, encircling the earth and holding the race in unity of
spirit and the bonds of peace, as in the will of God it is one in the
origin and end. Having outlived empires and philosophies, having seen
generations appear and vanish, it will yet live to see the travail of
its soul, and be satisfied--

/P
When the war-drum throbs no longer,
And the battle flags are furled;
In the parliament of man,
The federation of the world.
P/

III

Manifestly, since love is the law of life, if men are to be won from
hate to love, if those who doubt and deny are to be wooed to faith, if
the race is ever to be led and lifted into a life of service, it must
be by the fine art of Friendship. Inasmuch as this is the purpose of
Masonry, its mission determines the method not les