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ch is almost over, but the lesson, humiliating to human nature, is to be taught, that in this life--gloomy and dark, earthly and carnal--pure truth has no abiding place; and contented with a substitute, and to that _second temple_ of eternal life, for that true Word, that divine Truth, which will teach us all that we shall ever learn of God and his emanation, the human soul. So, the Master Mason, receiving this substitute for the lost Word, waits with patience for the time when it shall be found, and perfect wisdom shall be attained. But, work as we will, this symbolic Word--this knowledge of divine Truth--is never thoroughly attained in this life, or in its symbol, the Master Mason's lodge. The corruptions of mortality, which encumber and cloud the human intellect, hide it, as with a thick veil, from mortal eyes. It is only, as I have just said, beyond the tomb, and when released from the earthly burden of life, that man is capable of fully receiving and appreciating the revelation. Hence, then, when we speak of the recovery of the Word, in that higher degree which is a supplement to Ancient Craft Masonry, we intimate that that sublime portion of the masonic system is a symbolic representation of the state after death. For it is only after the decay and fall of this temple of life, which, as masons, we have been building, that from its ruins, deep beneath its foundations, and in the profound abyss of the grave, we find that divine truth, in the search for which life was spent, if not in vain, at least without success, and the mystic key to which death only could supply. And now we know by this symbolism what is meant by masonic _labor_, which, too, is itself but another form of the same symbol. The search for the Word--to find divine Truth--this, and this only, is a mason's work, and the WORD is his reward. Labor, said the old monks, is worship--_laborare est orare_; and thus in our lodges do we worship, working for the Word, working for the Truth, ever looking forward, casting no glance behind, but cheerily hoping for the consummation and the reward of our labor in the knowledge which is promised to him who plays no laggard's part. Goethe, himself a mason and a poet, knew and felt all this symbolism of a mason's life and work, when he wrote that beautiful poem, which Carlyle has thus thrown into his own rough but impulsive language. "The mason's ways are A type of existence,-- And to his persi
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