Page:Manual of the Lodge.pdf/88

Rh to form a quorum, and when the Bible, Square, and Compasses are present. It is legally constituted when it is acting under the authority of a Warrant of Constitution, which is an instrument written and printed on parchment or paper (but properly it should be on the former), emanating from the Grand Lodge in whose jurisdiction the Lodge is situated, and signed by the grand officers, which authorizes the persons therein named, and their successors, to meet as Masons and perform Masonic labor. As no assemblage of Masons is legal without such an instrument, it is not only the privilege, but the duty, of every Mason on his first visit to a strange Lodge, to demand a sight of its Warrant of Constitution; nor should any brother sit in a Lodge whose members are unwilling to exhibit the authority on which they act.



Our ancient brethren met on the highest hills and in the lowest valleys, the better to observe the