WHY FREEMASONRY SURVIVES
by
Chauncey M. Depew (1834-1928)
Financier, U.S. Senator
Institutions do not survive through the ages by accident; they
live only through the possession and operation of everlasting
principles. When an organization runs back beyond historic
records, and relies upon tradition for the story of its origin, its
career during a known period either justifies or falsifies the
tradition. An ancestry of virtue and good works is a liberal
education. The power of the accumulated wisdom of the past
is a resistless impelling force upon the present. The
architects, the decorators, the draftsmen, the woodcarvers,
the workers in precious metals and the Masons who were
building the famous Temple of King Solomon came from
every nation in the then-known world. Their union of mutual
help, protection, society and improvement was the marvel of
an age when all navies were pirates and all nations enemies.
Masonry, marching under the leadership of God and the
banner that bears the motto, "Love thy neighbor as thyself,"
with the peasant and the prince, the mechanic and the
merchant, the learned and the unlearned following in equal
rank and common step, knows neither race nor nationality,
neither caste nor condition, as it proudly and beneficially
moves down the centuries.
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