The real question, after all, is not the quantity of life, but its quality, its depth, its purity, its fortitude, its fineness of spirit and gesture of soul.

Instead of criticizing Masonry, let us than God for one alter where no man is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an indistinguishable atom on a mass of sectarian agglomeration.

Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no one can tell, through there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted them together he thought out a faith by which to live.

More than an institution, more than a tradition, more than a society, Masonry is one of the forms of Divine life upon earth.

It is not strange that men of note and learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism on Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity perhaps, also by its secrecy began at an early date to ask to be accepted as members of the order; hence Accepted Masons. How far back the custom of admitting such men to the Lodge goes is not clear, but hints of it are discernable in the oldest documents of the order.

We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end.

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.