Page:Oration Delivered on the Centennial Day of Washington's Initiation into Masonry (1852).djvu/20

20 The efforts recently made there for liberty failed, as they ought to have failed, and as such should ever fail, for they were not of truth but of error, folly and madness. Europe shall be free only when truth makes her free. Truth and liberty are benevolent, their possession inspires the heart, with none but sentiments and principles of the purest benevolence—and this is an evidence that they are of God. And hence it is, that we cannot but sympathise with the down trodden, and the oppressed of other lands, and desire to see them free.

Nor can we, nor should we be idle, in this warfare of truth and liberty, against error and oppression. We should be actively engaged in that warfare; using only the weapons of truth; for in this warfare none other can succeed. And though it is right, and a sacred duty, to defend truth and liberty by the sword; it is never right, and never a duty, to propagate them by the sword.

The weapons of this warfare are not carnal or material, but spiritual and moral, yet mighty to the pulling down of the strong holds of error and ignorance, prejudice and oppression. And though these strong-holds are, indeed, strong, and many, and diversified; but in the magazine of truth there are arms and material sufficient to destroy them all. And in this contest, which has been carried on for thousands of years, truth will, eventually prevail, though it may continue for thousands of years to come.

And when her final battle is fought, and her last victory is won: when all her enemies are put under her feet: when the star of her celestial glory, in its full orbed splendor, shall shine in the East and illumine the West, glow in the South and warm in the North: when her sons and her daughters shall sing her praise to the ends of the earth, and the nations rejoice in their deliverance, then, greater than all, and by its superior glory and power, out-shining all—may this, our country, still appear; while high over all, may still float the Stars and the Stripes of that land, which, by his sword, his wisdom, and his virtue, redeemed.

5th. — Music by the Band.

6th. — The following Ode, written expressly for the occasion, by Bro. Doct. A. Featherman, of Weston Lodge 53, and sung by the Choir, with thrilling effect:

Sons of Light, you here are kneeling,
 * Bowing to Jehovah’s name,

Mystic lore to you revealing;
 * Love and Truth as law proclaim:

Hail! the glorious, hail! the glorious,
 * Chieftain of immortal fame.