Belief is truth held in the mind; faith is a fire in the heart.

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.

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

Masonry superadds to our other obligations the strongest ties of connection between it and the cultivation of virtue, and furnishes the most powerful incentives to goodness.

To be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving, No self centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting.

Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity.

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.