of Freemasonry. There is no other human institution under the
sun which has set forth this great principle in such bold relief. We hear
constantly of Freemasonry as an institution that inculcates morality, that
fosters the social feeling, that teaches brotherly love; and all this is
well, because it is true; but we must never forget that from its
foundation-stone to its pinnacle, all over its vast temple, is inscribed,
in symbols of living light, the great truth that _labor is worship_.

It has been supposed that, because we speak of Freemasonry as a
speculative system, it has nothing to do with the practical. But this is a
most grievous error. Freemasonry is, it is true, a speculative science,
but it is a speculative science based upon an operative art. All its
symbols and allegories refer to this connection. Its very language is
borrowed from the art, and it is singularly suggestive that the initiation
of a candidate into its mysteries is called, in its peculiar phraseology,
_work_.

I repeat that this expression is singularly suggestive. When the lodge is
engaged in reading petitions, hearing reports, debating financial matters,
it is said to be occupied in _business_; but when it is engaged in the
form and ceremony of initiation into any of the degrees, it is said to be
at _work_. Initiation is masonic labor. This phraseology at once suggests
the connection of our speculative system with an operative art that
preceded it, and upon which it has been founded. This operative art must
have given it form and features and organization. If the speculative
system had been founded solely on philosophical or ethical principles, if
it had been derived from some ancient or modern sect of
philosophers,--from the Stoics, the Epicureans, or the Platonists of the
heathen world, or from any of the many divisions of the scholastics of the
middle ages,--this origin would most certainly have affected its interior
organization as well as its external form, and we should have seen our
modern masonic reunions assuming the style of academies or schools. Its
technical language--for, like every institution isolated from the ordinary
and general pursuits of mankind, it would have had its own technical
dialect--would have been borrowed from, and would be easily traced to, the
peculiar phraseology of the philosophic sects which had given it birth.
There would have been the _sophists_ and the _philosophers_; the
_grammatists_ and the _grammarian