ly summed up in the following
axioms.

_Morally_, the candidate must be a man of irreproachable conduct, a
believer in the existence of God, and living "under the tongue of good
report."

_Physically_, he must be a man of at least twenty-one years of age,
upright in body, with the senses of a man, not deformed or dismembered,
but with hale and entire limbs as a _man_ ought to be.

_Intellectually_, he must be a man in the full possession of his
intellects, not so young that his mind shall not have been formed, nor so
old that it shall have fallen into dotage; neither a fool, an idiot, nor a
madman; and with so much education as to enable him to avail himself of
the teachings of Masonry, and to cultivate at his leisure a knowledge of
the principles and doctrines of our royal art.

_Politically_, he must be in the unrestrained enjoyment of his civil and
personal liberty, and this, too, by the birthright of inheritance, and not
by its subsequent acquisition, in consequence of his release from
hereditary bondage.

The lodge which strictly demands these qualifications of its candidates
may have fewer members than one less strict, but it will undoubtedly have
better ones.

But the importance of the subject demands for each class of the
qualifications a separate section, and a more extended consideration.

Section I.

_Of the Moral Qualifications of Candidates._

The old charges state, that "a Mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the
moral law." It is scarcely necessary to say, that the phrase, "moral law,"
is a technical expression of theology, and refers to the Ten Commandments,
which are so called, because they define the regulations necessary for the
government of the morals and manners of men. The habitual violation of any
one of these commands would seem, according to the spirit of the Ancient
Constitutions, to disqualify a candidate for Masonry.

The same charges go on to say, in relation to the religious character of a
Mason, that he should not be "a stupid atheist, nor an irreligious
libertine." A denier of the existence of a Supreme Architect of the
Universe cannot, of course, be obligated as a Mason, and, accordingly,
there is no landmark more certain than that which excludes every atheist
from the Order.

The word "libertine" has, at this day, a meaning very different from what
it bore when the old charges were compiled. It then signified what we now
call a "free-thinker," or disbeliever in th