sentiments which did pervade those assembled hearts, and which, originating with Bro. Crystal, were finally adopted by a rising, unanimous vote:

"It can not be denied, my sorrowing fellow-members, that Bro. Shipman has been, in all respects, to human observation at least, our Right Eye, our Right Hand. He has so identified himself with all our deeds of a Masonic character, that to think of Masonry as it has operated around us is to think of Bro. Shipman. His hand has been the first to strew the evergreen and the clods over the remains of all who have been carried from this lodge to the grave. His foot has been the first to tread the threshold of want, and his contributions the first to relieve it. He has been our Wisdom and our Strength-yea, our Beauty likewise, for there was no comeliness we desired beside him."-A pause, emphatic with sobs from the entire group.

So

"The loss to us appears quite irreparable. much as we have boasted before other lodges of our intelligent and enlightened Master, so much does his loss now afflict us. For me, I can devise no method by which this immense breach in our temple wall can be repaired. To undertake the heavy cares of the lodge, rendered to us all the heavier by the remarkable perfection of system to which Bro. Shipman has reduced them, and the perfect facility with which he performed them, who is equal to it?

"But what then, my brethren? Admitting, as all of us do and must do, that Bro. Shipman is the Right Eye and the Right Hand of this lodge, and that his

loss to us is irreparable, is our duty rendered any the less plain? Nay, is not our duty the plainer and the more perceptible? Does it not, in fact, loom upon our vision in a gigantic figure from this very acknowledgment that it is a hard duty? Open, Bro. Chaplain, to that blessed Sermon on the Mount, given, as it would appear, for the use of just such a distressed, unhappy band as this, and read the twenty-ninth and thirtieth verses.

"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

"There, my brethren, is a succinct statement of our duty. Pluck it out, cut it off, and cast it from us.' Better that one of our members, though the most valued and cherished of all, should perish, than that we should falsify every principle of the Masonic system by retaining in our ranks one who is so egregiously unworthy of us."

Amid

And so thought they all. In due time, and by the due course of law-for it is a tedious and an embarrassing case thus to dispose of a Master-the Right Hand, the Right Eye was cast away. a flood of public scandal it was effected. It afforded every possible facility, for awhile, to the tale-bearer and the antimason, and Freemasonry in Spondylus

Lodge languished under it. There was but little work offered for a considerable period, and for a more considerable period there was but little spirit. in the lodge to do work.

But gradually public prejudice wore off. The immense sacrifice the lodge had made upon the altar of truth and justice won for them, in due time, the favor of the just and true. Hope revived in their hearts. They were aroused to industry by the very necessity of their position. Every available means of acquiring information were put into requisition. The immense vacancy formed by the abstraction of their Wisdom, Strength and Beauty was filled, though slowly and with difficulty. Each officer and member took it upon himself to learn his part, and that, too, a large part of Masonry. Masonic books and papers took their proper place as teachers. The visits of authorized lecturers were encouraged, and in due time they reaped the reward of their devotion.

How many lodges, beside Spondylus, have found themselves suddenly deprived of their Right Hand, their Right Eye! How many have been suddenly bereft by death! What then? Shall the Temple of Masonry fall, like that of Dagon, because some Samson is prostrate? Nay, verily. The lodge is made up of men. No eunuchs, no women, no persons of ill report, none of feeble intellect. All its membership is men, mentally, morally and physically perfect. Let such, then, in a contingency like this, bestir themselves up to repair the breach, and their present loss shall be their future and lasting gain.

The Good Man, True Man.

Inscribed to R. W. Bro. James S. Reeves, M.Q.

OF MCCONNELLSVILLE, OHIO.

HERE

CHAPTER I.

HERE were various causes, in the melancholy months and years of Antimasonry, why the minds of the loving Brotherhood were disposed to a mournful cast. Brother of the present generation, you will follow us through

this disclosure and read them for yourself. Under any state of circumstances, the initiate must lament "the casting-down of the dwelling of God's name to the ground; the lodge-room, once consecrated, can never, in the heart of its former denizens, be divested of all the mystery and sanctity that once possessed it. Its wood, its stone, its metals are ever afterward sacred in the esteem of the faithful Craftsman. But there were special reasons to grieve over the ruins made among the temples of Masonic devotion, when the strong arm of the enemy was unloosed upon them, and made the words of David seem reala man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.

For example, there was the scoff of the enemy, keen as a serpent's tooth to the mind of a Mason. Then

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were the prophecies of the timid fulfilled, and the fears of the coward, "for the days of the Institution are numbered!"; and the accomplished threats of the rejected and the expelled, two classes whose reasons for wrath against Masonry are indisputable; and worst of all, the sharp rebukes of conscience, that told how these evils might have been remedied had the Craft but put shoulder to shoulder when first threatened, and interlocked their shields, forming bulwarks that no foe ever penetrated-shields, I rede you, “of faith, and patience, and prayer," forged in the armories of God.

Freemasonry gains nothing by concealing the truth; our fathers, previous to the period named, had committed one serious error which brought its own penalty after it: they threw open the portals of the lodge too widely. The loaded camel passes not the needle's eye. What then? why either the loaded camel should be turned away from the gate, which may God grant! or the larger gate, a passway for the caravan be thrown open, which may God avert! By some infatuation, the temple-builders, prior to 1826, had broken down the barriers of ages, opened the larger gate and admitted the multitude. The story we give you, reader, shall carry nothing along with it but truth, though sometimes possibly offensive and unpalatable. Our fathers opened the greater portals as well as the needle's eye, and lo! the results will never be forgotten by those conversant with the history of that day. The evils remain in too many a lodge, the city gates remain open and the loaded camel continues to enter.