yj^. \^ ^^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /. r/. «? 1.0 ^ts& t^ .r 112 ^o I.I ■^ I 12.2 £ us 110 1-25 II 1.4 m 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions hi«»toriqu6S r Technical and Bibliographic Notaa/Note* tachniquoa at bibliographiquaa Tha tot Tha Inatituta haa attamptad to obtain tha bast original copy availabia for filming. Faaturaa of thia copy which may ba bibliographicaily uniqua, which may altar any of tha imagaa in tha raproduction, or which may significantly change tha uauai method of filming, are checked below. Coloured covera/ Couverture de couleur I I Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagte Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture reataurte et/ou pelliculAe Cover title miaaing/ La titre de couverture manque Coloured maps/ Cartes gAographiquaa an couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) nn Coloured plates and/or illustrations/ Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur 0- D D Bound with other material/ RailA avac d'autrea documenta Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La re liure aarrie paut causer de I'ombre ou de la diatortion la long de la marge IntArieure Blank laavaa added during reatoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II ae paut que certainas pages blanches ajoutAea lore d'une restauration apparaissant dans la terte, mala, lorsque cela 6tait poasibla, ces pages n'ont pea AtA filmtea. 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Tha pos of flN Orii bei the aioi oth firs sioi or I Thi she whi Ma diff ant beg rigr reqi met Thia item ia filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document eat filmA au taux de reduction indiquA ci-deaaous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 26X 30X / 12X 16X 20X 24X 28X 32X r Th« copy film«d h«r« hat b««n r«produc«d thanks to tha ganarotity of: Mttropditan Toronto Librtiy Canadian History Dsrsrlmant Tha imagas appaaring hara ara tha batt quality potaibia contidaring tha condition and lagibility of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha filming contract spacif icationa. Original capiat in printad papar covart ara fiimad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha latt paga with a printad or illuttratad imprat- tion, or tha back covar whan appropriata. Ail othar original copiat ara fiimad baginning on tha firtt paga with a printad or iiluatratad Impraa- tion, and anding on tha latt paga with a printad or illuttratad imprattion. L'axamplaira film* fut raprodult grica k la gAnirotit* da: Mttropditan Toronto Library Canadian Hiftory Dtpartmant Laa imagaa tuivantat ont 6xi raproduitat avec la plut grand aoin. compta tenu da la condition at da la nattatA da l'axamplaira film*, at an conformity avac lat conditions du contrat da filmaga. Lat axamplairat originaux dont la couvartura an papiar att ImprimAa aont fiimts 9n commandant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant soit par la darnlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'iiiustration. soit par la sacond plat, salon la cas. Tous las autras axamplairas originaux sont filmte an commandant par la pramidra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'illustration at an tarminant par la darniAra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Tha last racordad frama on aach microficha shall contain tha symbol -^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol y (maaninfp "END "), whichavar applias. Maps, platas, charts, ate, may ba fiimad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba antlraly Snciudad in ona axposura ara fiimad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar, laft to right and top to bottom, as many framas aa raquirad. Tha following diagrams illustrata tha mathod: Un das symbolas suivants apparattra sur la darnlAra imaga da chaqua microficha, salon la cas: la symbola -** signifie "A SUIVRE", la symbols V signifia "FIN ". Las cartas, planchas, tablaaux, ate pauvant Atra filmte d das taux da rMuction diffArants. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Atra raproduit an un saul clichA, il ast filmA A partir da I'angla supAriaur gaucha, da gaucha A droita, at da haut an bas, an pranant la nombra d'imagas nAcessaira. Las diagrammas suivants iliustrant la mAthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 32X \ i *l 2 H- w £it Fl w^ DISCOURSE, DBX.ITBRBD TO )0t. ;^n>rttD*0 Co^ge (iN^o. 1») of StnmaBonB, ON MONDAY, THE 28th DECEMBER, 5840: BBIiro THB ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF ST. JOHN THE EVANQELI8T. BY THE REV. BROTHER W. T. LEACH, A. M. CHAPLAIN. TORONTO: FBIIfTBD BT OBDBR OF THB XiODeB, BT HUOH SCOBIBi WBLXtlNOTOn BUIIiDINeS. iM ,1 4 n / I /DAjj- TO THB WORSHIPFUL MASTER, WARDENS, AND BRETHREN, oy »U AnHteto's moHjie (No. i,) of freemason*, THIS DISCOURSE, DELIVBRBD BEFORE THEU ON THE AI^NUAL FESTIVAL or ST* JOHN TWfE EVANOEEilST, AND PCBLISBKD AT THEIR RKQDIBT, IS RESPECTFULLY DEPICATED, BT THBIR HOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, AND AFFECTIONATE BROTHER, WILLIAM T. LEACH. PHi 8tl re it it ai hf ri| tb d( n \ h 8 • n ] DISCOURSE. FkALM £8—5. "BecauM they regard not the works of the Lord nor the operation of hia hands, be ahall destroy them and not build them up." It must have occurred to every diligent and intelligent studAntnf the Scriptures, that God is there repeatedly represented as a mnsnn. It is he that lays the foundation; it is he that builds up the edifice, and it is he that beautifies it '' Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands." " Mine hand also has laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens." "Where wast thou," says God, " when I laid the foundations of the earth 7 declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof! Who hath stretched the line upon itt Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, and who hath laid the comer-stone thereof 1 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." It is said of Abraham, " that he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." He laid the foundation and completed the superstructure. ** And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he (builded hp) n woman." " Except the Lord build the house, they labour in. vain that build it." " Tn that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David, that is fallen; and I will raise up his ruins ; and I will build it, a? in the days of old." You will observe the same idea in almost every expression of the divine procedure, in every representation of the things operated by the hand of God. The creation is his work — the providence that governs and orders all things is his work — and redemption from the power of sin I' I' I and the woe of death ig his work. What ii thui repre- sented as proper to God, you will likewise find to be ascribed to the godlike among nnen. They worked con- structively. They were co workers with God— at once the workmanship and day-labourers of the divinity. Jacob built an altar; Moses and Aaron built an altar to the Lord; Joshua, and Gideon, and Samuel, and Saul, David. Solomon, and Klisha, built '< altars to the Lord." In the long memo- rials of recorded days, these works of theirs still shine brightly, stilt endure in " the sphere of lame." Bui God is said to beautify, as well as to hui/d. For what says the Holy One of Israel, " the glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, to beautify the place of my sanctuary ; and I will make the place of my feet glorious." And " by his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens." These three operations are ascribed to God — to lay the foundation, to build, and to beautify. The above passages may serve to shew that the mighty and glorious being whicb men call God, may be regarded with all the decency and veneration of religion as the great architect of the universe. There is a scrip- tural propriety and a most unexceptionable ground of reason, as we may yet see, to regard him in that light through which he has chosen most conspicuously to mani- fest himself; whether the case bo physical or whether it be moral, he may be contemplated as the great master-builder under whose care the xotf^og or earth in its beauty, and under whose care the universe in its immensity, are ad- vancing to perfection in strict accordance to his plan and calculations, according to the wise ('esign and construction of an unsearchable and unchangeable God. The same language is employed anH the same idea ex- pressed in the text. " Because they regard not the works of the Lord nor the operation of his hands, he will destroy i a them and not build them up." Hore is the assertion of a duty; hero the obligation upon us i* established of viewing the divine character in the light which the above passages represent it in. Let us then, in acknowledgment of the obli- gation which this passage of the sacred scriptures imposes, and consistently with the practice of that order of "free and accepted masons" to which we belong, turn the eye ol our minds to some few of those works, some few of the operations of the hands of the Lord, in order that we may acquire some klea of his exalted character as the divine constructor, the supreme architect of the universe. The prime qualities of every good piece of architecture are its commodiousness, its durability, and its beauty. Its com- modiousness consists in the proper extent and distribution of the spaces enclosed ; its durability, in the strength, the right position, and adjuRtment of thn mntprinU; its beauty, in the per- ception of fitness, together with a graceful combination of order and variety in the whole construction. Now with regard to this great building of nature in which the hand of the Almighty has placed us for a time, we can judge of it very imperfectly ; the design of it is too vast for the reach of our thoughts ; we can only see it through a f^lass darkly, and even then we can behold but a little speck or atom of it at a time. Laying toge- ther, however, all the observations we can mnl^e and collect, we may see evidence enough to warrant the conclusion that this round world is a commodious structure, that it is adapted to the ends which it was intended to sei /e. One of these ends was evklently the production and preservation of life in various forms and in degrees more or less calculated to excite admi- ration. Look then into every room of the mighty house which the hand of God has made — behold it filled with the guests which he has invited to dwell in it. See how they revel in the enjoyment of life. The mountains for some and the valleys for others— the open plain, the woods— the rivers, the ocean L 6 ¥ i ■ ^ stream, are the spacious and commodious habitations prepared < others. " The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies — as for the stork, the 6r trees are her house.'* There is a crevice or a leaf— a hut or a hive, a house or a city of habitation for all — a palace for the prince and a hole fo" the fox. All have room and suitable lodgings in this commodious edifice of God's. We may remember too that this is but a small part of the handywork of God. Could we lift up our eyes firom the lesser to the greater, and behold the many mansions which he has erected above. Had we senses fide enough and mstruments perfect enough to discover the innumerable worlds and systems of worlds which he has already con- structed, and may be constructing still, in the distant borders of space, which has nc borders at all, our thoughts no doubt would wander like ahenp that have no shepherd, in the view of his vast incomprehensible works ; but this impres" sion would certainly remain — how wonderful the works, how wonderful the constructive power of God. Let us suppose that a human or angelic spirit were called by its Creator to witness the operation of his hands from some high and com- manding point in the field of space. Suppose him to be instructed in his view and comprehension of the vast architec- ture that has proceeded and still proceeds from the supreme builder of all things. Come and behold how I lay the foun- dations of these mansions, that seem to fill like rays of light the immensity of space. See how I fashion, out of the thin and nebulous material that floats unformed in the empty ether, a glorious orb whose eye of light shall declare my glory to other orbs far away in the unfathomable depths. See how I draw together and build up the rough ashlars of a habitation that shall endure for the honour of my name, and fot the residence of such a multitude of bright and breathing creatureg as you can have no calculus to number. Behold how it rises in stren^h and beauty, a commodious dwelling-plnce for the tenniilrv I sh»ll send it. I ask aijuiii, in the wiinessinj, of such a work of God's, wh it «vould be the conviction most penetrat- ing] what would be the impression most permjment] Would it not he a conviction most profound — a. pe suasion against which no temp'.afion could prevail, that his attribute of cou- struciion is marvelously displayed. When we speak of God we are sure to br involved in .i series of infinities — infinite when he creates, in^nite when be redeems— but no property of his nature is more .nanifest and more intelligible than this which describes him as the supreme and the sole architect of all things. Another property of a good piece of architecture is its dura- bility. What is the worth of it if it have no fitness to endure. The woik <»f a good mason is always durable. Il will stand the test ot time as well as the test of criticism. All human works whose materials r.re physical, will perish ; but the last works that will perish are those which were best constructed at firs'. They were well designed^ they were laid on a good .foundation, they were bnilt with evenness, and were therefore durable. They were built by those who regarded the woiks -of the Lord and the operation of his hands, who studied with watchful anxiety the mode o( his piocednre, and who were therefore rewarded with a godlike power. It is true that the most elaborate monumen's of human masonry are in ruins — but they are ruins which have resi.sted the malice of time, the rage of the elements, and the foolish hatred of wild and bar- barous men. Go to the valley of Ednm ; and although the curse of God descended on its dwellers, and made it desolate, unknown, and quite forgotten in (he lapse ot ages, the works of some good mason still remain to indicate the ancient scene of the merry but sinful activity of the throng. Go to ihe valley of the Nile, there is durable masonry in the broad-based B II ii S .■% I 10 H pyramids ; and if you travel westward from that memorable stream of water, towards the desert of Lybia, there are works of masonry there that have not been buried in their grave by the sandy storms of thousands of years. Look even to South America ; had there been no mason there, how should we have known of the existence of a happy and prosperous people at an end of the world with respect to which we had neither knowledge nor concern. But there were masons there. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Their temples, their pyra- mids, their canals, shall convince you. Even there there were good masons who regarded the works of the Lord. There will always be some to build, how many soever there may be intent to destroy. It is true, nevertheless, that the works of • man are perishable, because they partake of the nature of their builders. If the good works of man are durable, far more durable are the works of God. The agencies that cause the works of man to decay and moulder into dust, are the ministers Qod employs, the labourers of his pleasure. The air, the rain, the lightning of his thunder and the hidden power that causes the earthquake, act at his bidding and work to his hand. We have no sufficient data, and no power to calculate, how long the terrestrial globe, one among the 'countless structures of his hand, has existed. We have no intimation nor assurance how long it shall continue. It is given us, indeed, to understand that the day will come when its present system of colonization shall be utterly changed, when all life shall depart from it, with every green and flourishing thing that grows in the garden of earth ; but then we are assured that this event is only an intentional effect, subservient to a new and better construction; that when the sui face of the globe shall be covered with a robe of fire, drawn from its unknown and sunless centre, that only another application shall be made towards the perfection of the house, its additional repairment and decoration, for the better Isl m lie re 11 accommodation of happier souls than we. It shall be a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. But that is a far pros- pect of the future. When we look back to the past we sec that the works of God have stood on a foundation sure and stedfast. - What is it to us if there was a time, in the ancient date of things, when the Megatherium grazed on the meadow of the world, and the Megalo saurum wallowed in its oceans, when the trees were like mountains and the shrubs like trees. We are men and not gods, and our works are to be jud^ced of accord- ing to the measure of men. For any thing that we know, ever since our race became the tenants of this house, the same sun has measured the days and the years, and the same moon paid us her monthly visits. The Euphrates still rolls its waters into the gulph of Persia: the garden of Eden, which it encompassed, is the province of the TurL , The Indus leaves the land of Cashmere, to pursue its wonted course. The Nile and the Danube still run on in their familiar bed ; and even the same flowers bloom on the borders of their parent streams, an immortal species. They are durable enough — they were works completed by the hand of the Lord, and the buildings of that architect remain firm and fast. . Again, there is the beauty of architecture. No matter what the principle or principles are which, in simple and organized forms, give the perfection of beauty, no piece of architecture is reckoned perfect without it. It would be difficult to analyze the various sentiments with which one regards the pillar-propped edifices of the acropolis of Athens, a pyramid in the desert, a gothic cathedral in the Holy Island, or the Abbey of Melrose. The ideas are various with which we associate the various objects. But if they are not beautiful, they impress us with the apprehension of lame- ness and incongruity. We consider them as the work of a blundering mason. Id Such are never the feelings with which nn intelligent witness contemplates the wot Ich of God : and if in any case it be difficult to see that all nature i» beauty to the eye and music to the ear, the defect may be thought to lie in the imperfectness of our own instruments of perception. Such a witness will always ascribe to a constructive power, such as can be supposed to reside in God alone, the wonderful variety of ingf nious contrivances with which the world abounds. He will associate them with every image of wisdom and beauty. He will always derive from them the sense of order and grace- fulness. The whole countenance of creation, instead of a blank and speechless expanse, will be regarded as a temple filled with the glory of God, whose walls are hung around with the symbols of his perfections, with pictures of beauty, and inscriptions of wisdom. He will see in every object of nature what speaks forth the name and sounds the praises of the Almighty. Even iti this terrestrial work, which his hands have raised, it is given us to behold the beauty of the Lord - and to inquire in his teniple. These observations respect the physical masonry or archi- tecture of God, but there remains his moral workmanship. The compound is always superior to the sitnple — the organ- ized is always better than the mass it was made of. There is more order in it, more harmony, more construction It is true in the moral universe, as it is true in the physical, God does every thing but what the wicked do. He builds up — they pull down. He always constructs — they alwctya destroy. God inspires a man with power to build a palace, a barbarian comes and levels it with the dust. God gives d poor mnn bread, a wicked man comes and snatciies it from his mouth.