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.
Joseph Fort NewtonTo 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.
Joseph Fort NewtonGod works for man through man and seldom, if at all, in any other way. He asks for our voices to speak His truth, for our hands to do His work here below, sweet voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate.
Joseph Fort NewtonMasonry 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.
Joseph Fort NewtonMasonry 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.
Joseph Fort Newton