1894 Oration at Grand Lodge

 In our previous post on the history of Olive Branch Lodge and its members, we talked about how connections between lodge members influenced the history of the nation.  One of the members discussed was Brother John C. Black who received the Medal of Honor for heroic actions during the Civil War.  He was also a long-time public servant and served the Grand Lodge of Illinois as Grand Orator in 1894 and 1895.  Today we share the text of the oration he delivered at the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge in 1894.

1894 Oration at Grand Lodge

ORATION.

By R.W. Bro. John C. Black. Grand Orator.

Most Worshipful Grand Master and Brethren :

 

I bow in your presence, for you represent not alone the most venerable of benevolences, but fifty thousand freemen of this imperial state, and by affiliation myriads more, who are all alive to the wants of their fellow-men, their duty to the state, and their reverence for the right. 

I am not, however, today to discuss the Masonic virtues of charity, faith, hope.  I shall speak of 

MASONRY'S PART IN ESTABLISHING LIBERTY AND ORDER. 

Man longs to be free; the aspiration is all but universal, and the higher the grade of enlightenment the firmer seated is the desire for personal liberty; alike those condemned for political offenses, for crimes, or the sufferers of the struggle for existence; the toiler of the galley, the inmate of the penitentiary cell, the slave of the sweater's shop—all hope for a day when the sun will shine for them, and the sweet winds blow for them, and the universal mother yield her riches for them, made free. This it is that makes endurable the living of the unfortunate and the oppressed; and when servitude must last to the end, when all this life long- chains must be worn and burdens carried, this it is that fills with splendor the hoped-for morning of the immortal life. There is no human wisdom which does not recognize this strongest of human desires—implanted in our natures, murmuring in the people's songs, sounding in their heroic music, borne in their traditions, burning in the history of their manifold struggle, making life tolerable and sweetening the patriot's death! 

How patient it behooves the powerful to be in the presence of this great hope, and even of its irregular and violent manifestations! For we know that in the long ages past this priceless jewel has been kept for kings' wearing and for conquerors' swords. We know that the unorganized multitudes have been borne down by the chariots and the horsemen, the legion and the battalion; that order has meant tyranny, and peace slavery. And confusing the true and the false, many have again and again believed that all order was oppression; that all law, which is the symbol and expression of order, was usurpation, and that all authority was tyranny and to be overthrown, and from this despondency has sprung. 

ANARCHY, 

the crazy child of generations of hopeless wrong, the monstrous birth of bad rule; with the sinews of the multitude, the brain of guile, and the conscience of the madman. Anarchy, which sees no way to liberty but by destruction; which seeks to illume the midnight of its brooding wrongs by the torch; which seek to level down and not up, to destroy and not create. Anarchy, which bears in all its parts the parent traces of vast sorrows and utter hopelessness; into whose antenatal annals are wrought in the blood of the world the horrible, vivid recital of all the oppressions of all the ages; the oppression of impious gold, of the flagrant sword, of the fagot, the dungeon, and the noose; of cunning statesman and ruthless soldier; of unjust taxes, of legalized robbery, of plunder of property and of person, of all the machinery of successful wrong; poor, besotted, crazy anarchy, that sees no escape from all this congenital horror but the assassin's dagger and the incendiary's pyre. Anarchy, that does not recognize how the world has bettered, but in its mad memory recalls alone that through all the aeons that stretch away to the beginning, the multitudes have been victims and the monsters have enjoyed the spoil.

Anarchy forgets that all its achievements have been those of destruction. It never reared a temple to justice or peace or God. It never builded a home or gave protection to its little ones. It never sowed a field or reaped a harvest, or gathered the summer's wealth to meet the winter's dearth. Its dreadful logic has no place of safety for babes, nor haven of repose for the aged; its mission is destruction; when it would create it falls under the eternal order and ceases to be anarchy. There never was a sane mind to which the idea of anarchy was real: its criminal or insane are in the grasp of the monster they themselves have created, as Frankenstein was slave to his self-bred prodigy. Anarchy is chaos in which are bred all monsters: which is ruled by the forces of destruction: on which broods darkness and the formless void. Yet throughout and over even chaos rules the beneficent power of order.

And as the primal chaos disappeared, so all the lesser of its imitations are subjected to the mild, eternal, resistless sway of ever acting law. Set two atoms wide apart as the flaming walls of the firmament, and they influence each other and all the world between. Eventually they join the procession of the spheres and are united forever. Not less so are all men, and all their passions and hopes and accomplishments. In God's wide domain there is no isolation. The solemn sway of law is regnant everywhere, and as its influence increases the void takes form; the atoms unite; their union, blessed, is increased; the monsters die; a happier life arises; the stars appear: the rounded world moves in its course; the sun blazes to rule the day and the moon to govern by night: and lol we have beauty and light and wide harmony, and regnant over all order and unmisplaceable 

LAW 

And under the sway of law the little things and the little ones have their place and power; under the law they rule, the many and the weak; without its influence they are but victims. The powerful and violent can do without law; the weak demand its constant operation.

Order is creation; it is parent of beauty, of growth, of strength, of peace, of development. Order makes the highways safe for the solitary traveler, the home secure for wife and child; order walks the long streets of our cities by night and lights their myriad lamps, and diminishes the dangers that would otherwise possess them; order builds the state and preserves the citizen: it stretches out the railway and digs the canal, and paves the mighty marts of trade; order sets the myriad hands of toil at work and feeds its myriad mouths. Order, sublime, far-reaching, God's and nations', and man's one best law, is that eternal barrier which arises in our modern society, behind which the weak are secure, and which cannot be successfully passed by oppression, so long as treason or folly do not breach it from within. How mad, how utterly mad, are those weak ones who attack and wreck their own and only defenses. The divine prayer breathes over them from the lips of astonished and pitying benignity, "Father forgive them; they know not what they do."

Nor can I separate in the Masonic mind the anarchy that riots and burns, from that which violates the social order by stealth and by evading the law or the corruption of those who are charged with its ministry, brings it into disrepute. When the poor see that the very wealthy

escape in their purses their just share of public burdens, when they know that they are exempt from personal charges, when they know that the rich violator of law can purchase immunity, or reaching to the very foundation of authority, shape the statutes to his selfish ends, then those who suffer, retaliate; they meet fraud with force, and chicane with violence. These results are inevitable; they show that the parent of anarchy is corruption; that social disorder is the frenzied effort to escape social oppression, legalized and formulated in statutes and decisions. 

AN ILLUSTRATION OF VIOLENT REMEDIES IN GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS. 

I give you here a single page from a bloody volume, showing what was the cost to a brave and gallant nation of such long oppression as produced resistence.

The 'Annales of d' Hygiene Publique' recently published an interesting article on the loss of life caused by the wars in which France has been engaged in the last century. At the beginning of the Revolution, the standing army numbered about 120,000 men. In the course of the year 1793, the footing was increased to 1,380,000, of whom about 1,200,000 marched off to the various battlefields. In 1798 there was hardly one-third of this legion alive.

"Ten years later, that is, after the wars in Belgium, along the Rhine, in Egypt and the Vendee, there were again 677,588 soldiers in the French army. In the period between 1800 and 1815, the wars of the Consulate and the Empire cost the country, according to Thiers, 2,000,000 men, and according to Charles Richet, 3,000,000."

This cost France was compelled to meet in the effort of its people to become free. In that effort they trod the whole dreary round from slavery, through license and anarchy, back by the way of imperial rule to the first stage of peace. From thence, striving by gentler means, but always striving, they have attained a measure of relief.  But the lesson taught is that wrong doing by those who control, produces the measureless retribution of civil chaos and disorder. Truly, anarchy is not new; its kindred have preceded it all and always of one lineage, the offspring of despotic, corrupt, and irresponsible wrong. 

MASONRY IS CONSERVATIVE. 

Masonry has always stood against oppression on the one hand and social disorder on the other. So it stands today, approved of the ages, a great conservative organization, avoiding extremes and teaching resistance to tyrants and obedience to just law. Such are our precepts and our traditions. With the first great light in Masonry in our hands, we read in open pages the old story, never better told than when Israel stood up in Egypt, and from unutterable grievances departed on the difficult way to the promised land. The land of the pyramids and the sphinx shook with the departing footsteps of a people long enslaved and lifted into liberty. As ignorant a people as ever lived, as low slaves, as hopeless and helpless as ever journeyed

towards the light. Bondage had fettered their bodies and their souls alike, but freedom was before! A nation garbed as slaves, but to be free! Scarred, bound, broken, starving—but to be free. From the strength of the fortress and the slave-plenty of the palace, out through a wilderness, full of dangers—but to be free! Surely, brethren, that great light in Masonry tells the full story of our humanity as nowhere else it is found. He who knows it knows the beginning

and may foresee the end; will know that on the evil will come ruin, and out of the ruin will come good, and that in the end prosperity and glory awaits the humblest who will but walk in the ways of righteousness.

But with this story in its details, I have nought this day to do.  The Mason will know where to find them. I pass to a time of other deeper interests to us who are assembled. The many experiences had been endured, the vicissitudes of a simple national existence had occurred, and Israel was to signify a people's reverence for a people's God. The great poet-king whose music will sound above all storms and echo from all shores, and break all desert silences, and vocalize all human emotion, and roll on with time to the end, had begun the preparation for the temple; but his hands were bloody. He was not the master builder of almighty Beneficence; and so to his son, whose prayer had been for righteous wisdom, it was given to build the shining fane in whose immortal preparation Masonry was organized.

Masonry is a human expression of the human needs for liberty and order. The sacred chronicle tells us that a vast host of men, some working in the shadow of Lebanon, and some at sea, and some on the mountain top where the temple was to stand, in the confines of crowded Jerusalem, all so wrought together that without pause, without confusion, without noise, the majestic fabric based on earth, rose into the sky, itself a type, as every other building is, of man who is of the earth earthly, yet stands up where the stars of thought can circle in his gloom, and the sun of right reason chase away his shadows, and all this majestic world and the bending heavens be in sight from his soul's windows. The vast host of toilers were drawn from different lands; they were workmen, subjects but not slaves. More was required of them than toil. They had to think, to plan, to contrive, to fit, and so they had to organize that order might prevail, that there should be due recognition of equality in natural rights and due observance of rightful authority, and I care not whether the early accounts of Masonic organization be or be not exactly true, or whether they are part true and in part mellowed and refracted by the intervening ages, it is enough to know that the spirit of Masonry has always been the same, and as it is true to-day and as it was true in Solomon's time, there was one spot where king- and craftsman stood absolutely upon the same level and knew no superior but the Lord God Omnipotent, and no sway but the sway of order, and no law but the law of coordinating self-organization. 

SPECULATIVE MASONRY. 

Here came into practice amongst men the great doctrines which often interrupted, turned aside, dammed up, nevertheless have widened and deepened and advanced, until today all peoples know of them and many practice them, and all shall. In such speech as best befitted the age, men were taught the two fundamentals of all just governmental schemes, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. Before the Netherlands rose from amidst the endyked waves, before the commonwealth of England had formulated Magna Charta, before the great republic had risen with declaration and constitution and set on fire the beacons of freedom that should be reflected on all shores, the Masonic order had taught a hundred generations of men the undying essentials of growth and freedom — liberty and law.

Ah! It is much to know that you are in sympathy and touch with a power so venerable, so august, so benign! I have stood by the Atlantic and curiously studied the antiquated structures raised by our fathers many years ago: simple they seem and outgrown; and the splendid piles that are being builded around them shame them; soon their places will be demanded that other and greater may arise on their sites, but they sheltered the pioneer men and women of a great race; they have been hallowed by the fathers' labors and the mothers' prayers; they have been the tomb-portals and the cradle-rooms of those who have led us, and no later glories will ever outdo the glory of the frontier home. Mayhap the world will outgrow Masonic organization, but never its influence, never its history, never its truth and record. They are enwoven with the warp and woof of things.  They are part of man's history and progress.

Stop for one moment and ask, how could liberty be saved in the confines of an Assyrian dominion?  How could it have been preserved through the numberless sorrows that marked the mediaeval ages?  How could humanity have kept in touch over the frontiers in spite of the ruthless oppression of the world's robbers, but by some such agency as Masonry which now is and has continued through all the ages?

In the land of antiquity and at the bases of its most ancient structure the great soldier of democracy, his soul fired with his supreme surroundings, broke into that wonderful appeal that will not be forgotten: "Soldiers, from the top of yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you." Yet our Craft was old when the pyramid building dynasty passed to their mummied dust. It has survived all changes and is today the most ancient organization known to the civilization of the west. The blood of worldly immortality is in the Masonic heart, yet its charters, its fraternities, its concords, are as young and vivid as when it had its first lodge in far India; and it will so endure while man requires its organization. Why should it not endure?  Study the record of three thousand years: it has never oppressed the lowly; it has never forgotten the laborer; its century old rules for the division of time into equal periods for toil, for rest, and for refreshment, are today the most prayed for by the labor world; and when its ideal shall be realized labor will be content, and therefore capital secure. Masonry has never aided tyrants; it has always taught the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man; in its light princes and poor disappear and man stands revealed in equal natural light. Masonry has never allied itself with unjust authority. It could not. The law of its being does not tolerate alliance with oppression; the essence of its existence is organized justice; the weak and many banded for self-protection, for justice, and for charity. Masonry has never drawn an unholy sword or sought to hallow an unholy altar; no prisons builded by its malice stand along the pathway of man's progress; no men demand their martyrs of its channels; no nations demand their liberty of its usurping power.  Drawing its inspiration from the Holy Bible, formulating in its creed the essentials of human growth, and safety, and freedom, encroaching on no reserved ground of church or state, it lays its foundations in the human heart, and fortifies itself in human affections. The father of the country knew whereon to lean in the midnight of revolution, and the children of the land believe that its designs are still patriotic, still ennobling, still elevating. 

THE FUTURE DUTY OF MASONRY. 

Even if the Masonic Order did for humanity in the past all that I have claimed for it, the question remains, what can it accomplish now? In this pushing period it is capability and not sentiment that determines the usefulness of institutions. What can one do, not what has one been, is the vital test. Look through and under the surface of our magnificence. Are there men to be elevated, great purposes to be accomplished? Are there still slaves of injustice, still toilers to be aided, still right principles to be inculcated, still need for inviolable union of brothers in the cause of brothers and of all the world, still need for a sanctuary for the weak and a confidence unbreakable for those who strive? Is man anywhere in bonds, do vast oppressions still survive? Then there is need for Masonry, and the great order of mankind. And this is the judgment of the people.  Today in America alone we number three-fourths of a million.

Our younger brothers, the Odd-Fellows, molded in part on our ancient fashions, number even more; and near a half million Pythians, in their way, tell the story of fraternity and power; and besides these are other aids and allies in the cause, which in degree inculcate the solemn rights of man and the power of organization. And whatever may be the excellence of these multitudinous associations, they will all acknowledge that before they were formed a vast and solemn host marched before them, making their paths straight and leading the blind by ways they knew not; which taught organization, practiced order, afforded asylum, and made confidences inviolable. And in this age, the age of gigantic philanthropies, look where, like angels whose shining feet are on the mountain top all radiant with the dawn, stand art and science and invention. See how the light steals down the crags into the valleys of oppression and wrong. Listen to the far voice of the trumpets blown at the head of the hosts of advancing men as they overcome resistance and strive to make the world a habitation of righteousness.  See how the forms of all civilization move on to conquer. Yes, great is the glory of the age, great its accomplishments, great the peace it will bring and is bringing; but, as in peace and war, throughout all our national life, from Valley Forge to today. Masonry has taught patriotism, true democracy, a broad republicanism, so through the coming years it will practically assist in solving national and social problems. It will teach that on the American trestle-board all the designs displayed for the guidance of the workman, howsoever intricate their tracings, must begin and end in the ballot-box. For it is all powerful and stays violence. It accomplishes in due season and order all reforms and all needed changes. 

MASONIC POLICY. 

Yet these things it will do without departing from its policy of strict adhesion to Masonic duty. So we know that as it never has been so, it will not be a participant in party strifes. So may it ever be! Outside the storm, within the calm! One place in all this troublous world where all may meet in fraternity as wide as the race!  Masonry does not seek to supplant nor to antagonize the church.  "To Caesar, Caesar's, and to God, God's own," is its motto. On these lines, and teaching the creed of brotherly love, it has outlived all opposition, and is greater today than ever before since Solomon sat in the East. 

THE COMPLETED TEMPLE. 

There came a time when the completed temple was devoted to its sacred uses, and those who builded it went forth throughout the world, carrying with them the fame of their achievements, the knowledge of their practical arts, and greater and more useful still, the  lessons of organization and obedience to rightful law. Who can fancy the wide and dispersed wanderings of them and their successors?  Around all the wide world, amongst all nations and kindreds, and speaking all tongues, Masonry has journeyed on its silent, shining way. The lodges of the wilderness, set up with far watchmen at their borders, have still their uses, but amongst us they have given place to the stately piles rising splendid amidst the city's din. Wherever they are, humanity is alert to its duties and awake to its rights.  Wherever they are, there abides neither tyrant nor anarchist, but God has an altar and man a resting place. 

The visitors to the World's Fair, that majestic aggregation of the beautiful and useful, prepared by the generations, always came, in the course of their curious inspection, to that pavilion where the Krupp guns were placed. The world is familiar with the history of that exhibit. There is a striving village in the Prussian hills where the gloomy shadows fall, over which hangs by day the heavy smoke, and where at night the furnace fires roar ceaselessly in forging the awful engines of death, while far removed the Hartz mountains uprear their ragged heights and seem to have yielded their gigantic phantoms, long the terror of the peasant, from the forest depths, to have become the genii of the death-preparing piles—the spirits of the Brocken turned to the laborers of the cannon factory!  And when the hands of hateful genius had fashioned the masterpieces of death the groaning trains and shivering ships bore them to the world's great congress of the loving arts. There they were set up and fancy poured about their metal bases and solid mechanism the torrents of red, warm blood, the ruin and havoc they were prepared to inflict! My soul grew sad as I pondered the horrible anachronism. Yet I had but to traverse a few spaces to stand in front of the sewing-machine, where sat a beautiful American girl, light of foot and hand, dainty in person, who trod the flying pedal and set at work the little curving needle, making neat clothing for the poor and the many, blessing all homes with the work of divine and multiplied toil; and listening to its cheerful click and hum, I knew that that curved needle was more powerful in the hand of human labor than the warriors sword, more blessed than a scepter; and that the vast and ponderous machine of death would soon be but a monument to the terrors of the past, while peace and its victorious inventions would sway and bless the world.

So it yet may be that liberty and law, twin and universal, shall dominate the globe; that freedom shall be each man's accredited possession; that equality shall be exercised by all in all legal rights; that brotherhood shall sway all breasts; and peace, happy and profound peace, with all its vassal arts and blessings, shall rule all shores. In that event. Masonry, its mission accomplished, its work all done, will be absorbed in the higher and greater religion and own the creed of the universal church. Then the sinewy hand of our Order, which so long has uplifted the flag of fraternity, shall hang it like a knightly banneret over our idle altars and in our silent fanes, the glory and the pall of a past all spent and giving place to a broadening future.  Then the wardens shall leave the lodges untyled, the guards shall hang up their useless arms, for humanity will not longer require the most noble of its organizations, and the Grand Master shall open and govern the Grand Lodge of a world —

"Redeemed, regenerate, and disenthralled." 

 

VOTE OF THANKS-To Grand Orator.

M.W. Bro. James A. Hawley.

M. W. Grand Master, I move that the thanks of this Grand Lodge be returned to R.W. Bro. Black for his excellent oration, and that it be published in the proceedings of this Grand Lodge.

 

Motion carried unanimously.