A
TALE OF ANTI-MASONRY
by Rob Morris
Light and Shadows of
Freemasonry - 1852
It was in the year of
light, 5789, the same year and month that witnessed the
inauguration of George Washington as first President of this
Republic, that Mr. Oliver Lanceroy was installed pastor of the
church at Weeconnet. He was then a young man. He had just
graduated at the well-known school, even then venerable for its
age and character, Harvard University at Cambridge. Many
anticipations were formed concerning him; for his boyish promise
had been brilliant, and his career at college was with the
foremost both for scholarship and good conduct. Add to
this the fact, that Washington himself acknowledged an interest
in his success, having stood by the dying bed of his father
wounded to death at Trenton, and at that solemn hour pledged his
Masonic faith to exercise a supervisory care over the son. When,
therefore, the lad arrived at sufficient age to enter the
University, it was with a warm recommendatory letter from the
General's own hand. And when, with the sand yet fresh on his
diploma, he visited Weeconnet, preparatory to meeting of the vestry,
it was with a second letter more than sustaining the praises
of the first. So it was not strange that the young minister,
pious, learned and coming so well recommended, should have been
unanimously called to the pastorship amidst the most confident
expectations as to his future usefulness. Nor were any of those
hopes falsified. While Mr. Lanceroy never was a popular idol
(he had none of the qualifications of a demagogue) and was never
run after as a clerical wild beast or a reverend monster, yet he
always contrived to secure the attention of his hearers at home,
and a welcomed place in the pulpits of those congregations abroad
with whose pastors he exchanged. His pews were rarely vacant. His
church membership regularly increased. He received his moderate
stipend with punctuality and subsisted on it with frugal
comfort. In due season, he offered his. hand to the daughter
of one of his own parishioners, and was accepted. The union was
in every respect a fortunate one, for he found womanly virtues as
permanent, and love as sincere, as the heart of the fondest
husband could desire. Sons and daughters were born to them. The
stipend was increased from year to year to correspond with
the increased demands upon it, and while there was but little
hoarded up in the treasury at home there was never any real
necessary of life in which they lacked. There is but
little in the life of a pastor wherein the superficial observer
can find an interest. It seems but a routine of ministerial
duty, arduous enough yet practicable, demanding the whole time,
the whole attention; but it is a routine whose results, though
they may appear scanty and insufficient to the unobserving, are
in reality, among the very highest blessings of society. The
marriage bond; the baptismal rite; the consolations of religion
in hours of spiritual conviction, in hours of earthly trial, and
in hours of death; the settlement of disputes; the oversight of
education; the calls of popular charity; - these, and
other charges press from day to day upon the pastor's attention,
and in the well-ordering of these, lies the public weal. Such,
for thirty-seven years was the life of Rev. Oliver Lanceroy, in
charge of the church at Weeconnet. Such in the life of hundreds
who oversee the flock of Christ throughout our broadly-extended
Stakes. May their reward not be lost in the day of reckoning when
each craftsman shall receive his lawful wages. The lapse of
thirty-seven years, though imperceptible in the estimate of
an eternity, is a large hiatus in the life of a mortal. It
removes one generation into darkness and dust, and places another
in their seats. The lapse of thirty-seven years brings down the
history of Rev. Mr. Lanceroy, - now by the favorable judgment of
a neighboring Theological school, Doctor Lanceroy - to the year
of 1826, year of light 5826, year of darkness 1; that period so
rife with anti-Masonic stratagems and discoveries. It was
the time when a large political party made the grand discovery
that Freemasonry is an institution established in opposition to
all laws human and divine! It was the period when the cunning
sought to snatch away her richest jewel, secrecy, that they might
expose her, unchaste and unbefriended, to the scorn and contempt
of the world. Too well did malice and detraction succeed, and
although in the goodness of God it was but for a little while,
and the wings of Jehovah were even then sheltering her, yet many
a true heart despaired, and many an honest though weak one
endeavored for the sake of peace, to untie the indissoluble
bonds of Masonry. Some of the symbols on the tracing board
temporarily lost their value. The slipper, that earliest and most
impressive reminder of allegiance was erased; the brilliant star,
quintuple-rayed, followed it into darkness and disuse; the
daytime labors on the highest hills, nearest heaven, gave place
to the toils and self-denial of the unwearied
twenty-seven. We have in another work given at some length a
sketch of the evil consequences that resulted from the
introduction of Masonry as a religious test. The question of
Masonry and Antimasonry in churches and among the pious, proved
very detrimental to the craft. The shade that bigotry
and superstition gave to the operations of pure morality as
displayed in Freemasonry, was well nigh a fatal
blow. Ignorance, and a lust for an unlawful knowledge, had
wielded the gauge against her, and thereby inflicted a severe
wound; political ambition, that hydra of all republics, had
followed up the stroke until the very heart of the aged victim
palpitated beneath it; but when the voice of the church cried out
crucify, crucify, a crusade against Masonry at once commenced,
as if the Holy Temple were in the Infidel's hands and must be
redeemed at all hazards. During the closing term of Gen.
Washington's administration he had presided at the conferring of
Masonic honors upon the son of his old friend, and thus Mr.
Lanceroy had become a Mason. We have often observed that the
most enthusiastic lovers of the royal art, these whose zeal the
longest endures, whose fire goes the most reluctantly out, are
those who were the slowest to appreciate the full beauties of
Masonry. Such men ponder; they compare; they reflect. They
anticipated much from their knowledge of the character of the
membership and from the published code of Masonic morals. They
were sufficiently conversant with human nature not to took for a
perfect development of Masonic principles in any one man this
side of the grave, yet they were prepared to judge the tree by
its fruits, by all its fruits considered in one cluster. In time
their judgments become convinced. If the Lodge in which their
membership commenced is a working Lodge, prompt in ceremonies, in
explanations, in landmarks, and in morals, they become zealous as
a furnace of charcoal, and their zeal burns as long as the fires
beneath a mountain. It was so with Dr. Lanceroy. The
earliest East of his Masonry was glorious with light. A
succession of enlightened officers in his Lodge at
Weeconnet followed up and fixed the impression, and it was not
strange, therefore, that a few years witnessed the reverend
gentleman himself at the head or the order, not only in his own
village, but in all that Masonic district. Years stole
noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, upon him, until he
numbered nearly half a century. Then the shafts of death flew
suddenly around him and struck clown his wife, beloved by all as
a mother in Israel, a married daughter and two sons, the staff of
his declining years. The patriarch gathered up the remaining
sheaves of his harvest, and from that day withdrew his active
participation in the management of the Lodge, declaring that a
higher duty now awaited him at home. It was only a few years
after this afflictive dispensation of providence, that the storm
of Antimasonry began its ravages. Churches, formerly
as harmonious as the Christmas angels, now became like unto
heathen temples dedicated to the goddess of discord. The sound of
ax, hammer, and many other unlawful weapons rang through the
sacred chambers, disturbing the peace and harmony of the workmen.
Amongst others, the old congregation at Weeconnet caught the
infection. Whence it started, in whom it originated, none could
tell. What wonder in that! what wisdom has traced the cholera
to its source! what quarantine, was ever efficient to wall out
the plague! There was a Judas somewhere among. the patriots, and
that enough. But in whatever source it originated, its course
was rapid and violent, and the cry of Down with all secret
societies! Death to the mother of serpents! soon became popular.
Ah! but the wrath of man is a fearful judgment in the hands of
God. By the side of the numerous evils inflicted on Masonry
through this persecution, there was nevertheless one advantage
that grow out of it. It brought back the decaying lights of the
last generation into the Lodge; it called back much retired
Masons as Dr. Lanceroy from their hermitage, and placed them
around the old altar once more, in the cast, and in the
south, and in the west. This was the case with many an
aged brother, and of Dr. Lanceroy among the rest. When the first
list of renouncing (and denouncing) Masons was presented to him,
as he sat in his library preparing his Sabbath discourses, he
construed it as as the second Cincinnatus had construed
his country's summous to the field. It aroused the force of
remembered vows; it called back cherished hours, and festive
nights, and linked professions. Shadows of the dead, memories of
the living, seemed, to group around him as he read the perjured
catalogue. A voice as from one who had authority, seemed to
command him, Comfort ye my people, The veteran crumpled the
foul sheet in his hand and hurled it from him, as he turned
around to write a petition for membership in his old Lodge.
Hence-forth he was punctual to every meeting, whether stated or
special, nor neglected a single opportunity of expressing in
public places, as well as in the tyled chambers of the temple,
his indebtedness to Freemasonry. As his congregation
received the shameful impulse of Antimasonry from without, they
began one by one to withdraw from Dr. Lanceroy's ministry. The
unaccustomed sight of empty pews began to pain his eyes, the murmers
of alienated friends his cars. His doors, once like the city
gates for publicity, were deserted. Letters from those whose
parents had sat beneath his ministry, and who had themselves
cherished his ministrations until chilled by this cruel blast,
letters always disrespectful, often violent, sometimes insulting,
were placed in his hands. He wept over them in
his retirement. The All-Seeing Eye, whom the sun, moon,
and stars obey, and under whose watchful care even comets perform
their stupendous revolutions, that Eye which pervades the inmost
recesses of the human heart, that Eye beheld the drops of mingled
mortification and grief that showered from his eyes; but still he
endured patiently and he made no complaint. But when on a
certain Sabbath morning as he endeavored to fulfill an engagement
to exchange pulpits with an old friend, gray-haired like himself,
and was publicly forbidden by the vestry to raise his voice
in that church, the cup of his sorrow was full, and Dr. Lanceroy
returned home to himself on the charity of God, seeing that the
hearts of men were embittered against him. That very week
a summons from the officers of his own church was presented him,
citing him to appear and answer certain charges of official
misconduct that had been preferred against him. The motives that
prompted this course were sufficiently obvious. The charges that
had been trumped up were intended only as a blind, and whether
sustained or not, it mattered little with the persecutor, for
reasons enough would be found for declaring his pulpit vacant,
and that was the main thing sought for. With this painful
prospect in view Dr. Lanceroy, accompanied. by a legal adviser,
and the remaining members of his family, took his way to
the vestry room at the appointed hour, prepared for the
worst. He anticipated wisely. The scene that presented itseIf
as the place of trial was one that offered some remarkable
features. The room was the same in which the church officers had
assembled thirty-seven years before, to give the young graduate a
unanimous call to the pastorship of that church. All the old
members of that official board, with one exception, were
dead. That exception consisted of Elder Drane, for the last
fifteen years in his dotage, favored only with occasional returns
to sanity. It was in one of these lucid intervals that, hearing
of the pastor's trial, he had demanded to be conducted to the
vestry, that he might be a spectator; but long before he reached
the door his imbecility returned, and he was now lying at full
length in one of the pews, apparently unconscious of all that
was passing around him. Besides Elder Drane, there was not
one of the church officers present, who had not received baptism
at the hands of Dr. Lanceroy, and bowed beneath his heartfelt
pleadings with God, and been joined by him in the bands of
matrimony, and shared with him in the happiness of
revival seasons, as well an in the distress of spiritual
dearth. As he took his seat with the board there was a marked
contrast between the youthful locks of the judges. and the gray
hairs of the accused. Before him in the body of the house, a
large old fashioned square room, was a crowd densely packed,
comprehending not only his own flock (banded against this gentle
shepherd) but the residents of the surrounding farmsteads
gathered together, some in sympathy, more in curiosity,
many, alas! in derision, to witness the trial. Amongst the former
his aged eye could see several of his Masonic brethren from the
various Lodges in the district, and there was a gleam of hope in
the glance. The charges were read. They were wordy and
diffuse, but involved only these propositions: "that the accused
had contumaciously resisted the advice both of official and
lay-members, and had stubbornly published his attachment
to Masonry by conducting the members of that order in public
processions as well as in their secret meetings; that in this act
he had fallen behind both the spirit and light of the age; that
the church pews were fast becoming vacant on account of his
obstinacy; that spiritual revivals had ceased; that his
usefulness in the administration of the word was destroyed, the
interest of Christ's kingdom retarded" - and much more or the
same sort. The legal gentleman who had volunteered to aid Dr.
Lanceroy, (since become a Grand Master of Masons in the same
State,) arose now to speak to the technical points. He answered
the charges in a. dry business way that while it proved how
illegal and unchristian would be the action of the vestry
in ordering Dr. Lanceroy's dismissal, it failed in touching any
chords of sympathy, or turning the popular current that had set
so fatally against his client. A rejoinder from the
lawyer selected by the vestry on account of his violent
Antimasonic prejudices, smothered the law and the gospel under
a mountain of words that denoted one idea very clearly.
"Antimasonry is about to rule the land and it shall rule it with
a rod of iron!" After some further altercation between the
professional gentleman, the presiding officer enquired of the
accused if he desired to say anything for himself, before the
vote on the charges was taken. A dead silence of considerable
duration followed, and as no response was heard, the chairman had
again risen, preparatory to putting the question, when Dr. Lanceroy
at length arose. It was with strange difficulty that he
gathered himself erect, he had never felt so weak in body before,
and he was compelled to place his hands upon his chair for
support, even as Jacob in his death-bad injunctions, leaned on
the top of his staff. It was with still greater difficulty
that his tongue performed its office. A weight clogged it heavily
at the very time when its eloquence was most needed. He had
succeeded however in stammering a few incoherent words, and was
collecting his ideas into a more rational channel, when he
suddenly caught the eye of Elder Drane, the superannuated church
officer, the friend of his youth, one of the working Freemasons
of the last generation. This old main had arisen from his
seat, and was standing upright with superhuman strength, staring
full upon him. His eye was filled with a strange
meaning. A quick gesture came from his hand, to the casual
observer it might have seemed as the movement of an idiot. But
there was method in that madness, and a gleam of acknowledgment
passed over the minister's face as he beheld it. Dr. Lanceroy sat
down. Every eye was now tuned in the direction of the Elder,
and great was the sensation in that large audience when the
veteran, with more than ninety years upon his head, and for
nearly a score of them a second child both in body and intellect,
opened his pew door and walked with firm strides up
the aisle. The crowd deferentially gave way, and closed
behind him. A seat upon the platform was offered to him, the seat
in which he had presided long before. But steadily rejecting
every offer, and making no other acknowledgment of the general
courtesy, save a dead stare, he at once began to speak. Never
will that strange oration be forgotten while one of its
hearers remains alive. In this latter half of the century there
abides a tradition among the elderly portion of the population
that has preserved the leading points and much of the peculiar
language used. * "Vile pack!" shouted the frenzied Elder with
a voice stern and threatening as when it thundered in front of
the forlorn hope at Stony Point; "vile pack, that has joined in
the howl of Antimasonry a dogs bay the moon, and know her not as
their source of light, what would ye of this man! has he ever
defrauded any of ye! or stricken ye with his hands! has he fallen
away into base doctrines that endanger your soul! lo these
thirty-seven years he has gone in and out before ye and your
fathers before ye, and served at the table of the Lord, and has
one accusing voice ever been raised against him! but he is a
Freemason! and has the fraternity of mystics cajoled him to join
them in his declining years! I tell you, base descendants of
an honored stock, he was a Freemason before ye had any being, and
such as he are Masons wherever dispersed around the world, though
they may never hear of a Mason's Lodge. He was a Mason in heart,
in life, in practice, in aims though the mystic rites * A
short hand reporter was present, and the writer has read his
verbatim copy of the latter portion of this speech had
never been performed upon him, Ye would have him to renounce
Masonry! Fools, do ye know what ye would have him renounce! what
shall he recant! ye know not what ye ask! Would ye have him to
declare himself the friend of the Serpent and the foe of the
Trampler! the opponent of Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and
Justice, and the servant of Drunkenness, Cowardice, Indiscretion
and Fraud. Shall he quench the bible-light and fall back upon the
book of nature! repudiate all yearnings for immortality and,
like yourselves, all charity to suffering humanity! I tell you,
insensate pack, as I told your granthers, (grandfathers) before
ye - well that they did not live to see the generation of vipers
that from their loins have sprung - I told them as I tell ye,
that an honest man cannot renounce Masonry though a hypocrite
may!" The eyes of the veteran here flashed as the eyes of a
basilisk, upon Lawyer Savin, the renouncing Mason, the rabid
editor of an Antimasonic sheet; and the time-serving lawyer
cowered beneath the glance. "The wolf may cast off the
sheep's clothing," pursued the old man in a still higher key,
"the sheep's clothing that concealed his marauding errand, and he
is a wolf again as he was all the time a wolf, a
prowling, marauding, murderous wolf. But the lamb cannot lose its
gentle heart, its spotless robe, its meek and loving character,
to become a wolf. Masonry in my day was taught to a system of
morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Shall he
renounce the morality as ye have done! or is it that ye would
have the allegory expounded and the symbols explained, Ah,
pitiful wretches! there were fifteen like ye in the Wise Man's day
who could not wait for the word, and well did they despair, for
they found that obstacle in their own hearts which forbade all
hope of their ever being recipients of so great a trust. And ye
like them would snatch at that of which you are so thoroughly
unworthy! but think God, your unholy efforts are in vain, for
from the days of Sanballat Masonry has withstood such as
ye. "Dr. Lanceroy, Pastor, Dear Brother beloved - " the
pastor of well nigh forty years experience, stood up and meekly
bowed his head before the veteran who laid both hands, withered,
trembling and cold, upon it; "Brother beloved, I warn ye, as a
voice from the grave, BE YE TRUE! By the memory of the immortal
Washington, by the virtues of the holy Saints John, by the
inspiration of Solomon wisest of men by the strength and beauty
of the Tyrian, twain, and in the name of the whole fraternity, I
warn you let this great trail that is come upon you, fall to
shake your integrity. Be fortitude yours. Though your column may
be broken in the midst, soul to heaven, dust to earth, yet the
remembrance of you, only continuing faithful, shall be treasured
in the hearts of faithful brothers, while the name of the
righteous shall flourish there an a green bay tree." Headlong
prone to the floor, the Elder fell, all the powers of
nature having even away at one instant. The meeting was of course
dissolved in confusion. Upon the next Sabbath the pastor stood at
the head of a newly-opened grave, around which was grouped a bond
of Masons, the last beheld in Weecounet for twelve years, and
there they honored the resting spot Elder Drano by the
significant emblem of the resurrection. Upon the Pastor's
table at home lay the order of dismissal, passed by unanimous
vote of the officers of the church. A few more weeks and he
was seen to leave the parsonage with his remaining family. His
furniture and effects followed after him, and then the old brick
house was tenantless; for his successor, a brisk, finical
gentleman, up to the spirit of the age, declined residing there,
and took his boarding at a more showy place. Reports were
soon circulated that Dr. Lanceroy was removing to a considerable
distance westward. A few months more and the newspapers of
the day announced his death by a sudden stroke of
apoplexy. Twelve years afterwards the Deputy Grand Master of
that Masonic district, with a noble train of brethren and
surrounded by an honored band of officers, spoke an eulogy, well
deserved and eloquently declared, upon Dr. Lanceroy, the Mason
who was faithful unto death. And then the craft, joining
together their means as God had dealt bounteously with them,
reared a tombstone, stamped with the symbols of Masonry, to
remind coming generations of one well worthy to be their standard
in the aims of the order. And beneath the name and age of
departed they engraved these solemn charges deduced the history
of the dead; to sustain a failing cause; to fly to the relief of
a distressed principle; to prop the falling temple or to
fall with it; to support the adherents, to cherish the endangered
secrets, and to honour the slighted virtues of
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