Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/59

54 And now I would say one word in regard to contemporary societies. Many of them were organized with meritorious objects in the days gone by, but the state of things that gave them being has long since passed away. They presented a sad spectacle of having outlived their usefulness, and drag out a fitful existence of senseless ceremonies and abstract forms, from which the soul has long departed. A few should receive the tribute of respect due to that which is venerable and good, and Freemasonry should ever be associated with the broad mantle of its charity.

In the superstructures which have been erected at different periods, upon these foundations, one will often observe a pillar, here or there, called the Rose Croix, or occasionally hear the mystic name Eulis, softly pronounced.

I was conversing with a gentleman whom I supposed to be a member of one of these "Chapters," and he said, "The Rosy Cross is dead. We have, it is true, galvanized its skeleton into a transitory life, but the Rosy Cross of history is dead." Dead! I cried. She lives!—lives with the rich blood of the South in her veins; with the vigor of the North in her constitution; with the clear brains of the temperate zone, the depth of thought of the Orient, the versatility of France, and earnestness of purpose, and boldness of resolution of the New World; lives these three hundred years that you think her dead, as she lived the countless centuries before you thought her born; and may she never cease to have a fitting casket for her jewels, and remain a reflex of the glorious truth and beauty of the superlative wisdom, power and goodness. So far well; but at last the world wants to know more of that wonderful fraternity, which, nameless at times for long centuries, blossomed a few centuries ago as Rosicrucia, but now has leaped to the fore-front of all the real reform movements of this wonderful age, and lo! the banner of peerless Eulis floats proudly—rock-founded—on the breeze. We, the people of Eulis, be it known, are students of nature in her interior departments, and rejecting alike the coarse materialism of the ages, and the sham "philosophies" of the ages past and current, accept only that which forces conviction by its irresistible logic. Men who realize the existence