When a year ago, as your Grand Master, I bade you welcome, though our Grand East had been devasted by the resistless cyclone, and our Temple itself unroofed, I could still speak words of cheer, for no lives had been destroyed and our losses had been repaired. To-day, as I greet you, a more gloomy and depressing cloud environs us. The dark wing of the Death Angel casts its sombre shadow across our pathway, and we sit, with heads uncovered, in the ashes of our grief.

Terrible as was the tempest, no word can fitly portray the terrors of that awful night of August 31st, when suddenly, without a moment's warning, that most mysterious and mighty of all forces of nature burst upon us and overwhelmed us in ruin and death. Those of us who experienced that night of agony can never forget its horrors and its sufferings.

But this dark background, with its awful shadows and gloomy tints, but serves, by contrast, to heighten and bring out the warmer, brighter colors in the picture. Black as was the cloud, big with the wails of helpless women and terrified children, and the sobbing heart-bursts of brave men, its other side is bright and glowing with tender love and helpful sympathy. God bless our noble Brethren, who not only sorrowed with us, but stretched out at once the hand of kindness and relief.

Swiftly as the lightning sped the news of our terrible disaster over the wires, just so swiftly came back from warm hands and loving hearts all over our broad land offers of help, and words of sympathy and cheer. It were worth the while to have endured the suffering and the sorrow to have received the love and the kindness. "A Brother is born for adversity," is written in our greatest Light, and we can almost welcome the adversity to have had poured into our hearts such a tide of brotherly love and Masonic sympathy.

Our calamity has indeed been a blessing in disguise. It has proven that deep in all hearts there beats a common love and sympathy for our fellows in distress. Our country is one. There is no North, no South, no East, no West, when the cry of suffering is heard.

Our own lamented Southern bard has fitly sung our thanks in words of living fire:

"Purer than thine own white snow;

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Nobler than thy mountains' height;

Deeper than the ocean's flow;

Stronger than thy own proud might;

Oh! Northland, to thy sister land,

Was late, thy mercy's generous deed and grand.

Blessings on thine every wave,

Blessings on thine every shore,

Blessings that from sorrow save,

Blessings giving more and more,

For all thou gavest thy sister land,

Oh! Northland, in thy generous deed and grand."

Before we could appreciate ourselves the appalling extent of our calamity and our needs, offers of assistance and enquiries as to our necessities came flashing over the wires. Our Brethren waited not to hear our cries for help, but actuated by the glorious principles of Masonry, it was only needful for them to know there was suffering, and their loving hearts prompted them to relieve their Brother's wants. The intrinsic value of our tenets was tested in this crucible of suffering, and was proved to be pure gold and a living reality.

THE DIVINE LAMB-Concluded.

BY BLAZING STAR.

As the ritual informs us that the Lambskin is the Badge of a Mason, we may naturally inquire, why? And because we find, etymologically, that the word badge signifies a sign, symbol, index, mark, or token, for means of distinction, we may, if not very inquisitive, rest content with such explanation. But this is not an altogether sufficient reason there existing a further explication which is more especially because the term Mason in the Masonic sense implies a builder after the manner and fashion of that Chief of Architects-Hiram the Builder- the possibility not existing in time to come as it existed not in time past that the Solar God, found in the Sign of the Ram and therefore allegorically clothed with the Lambskin as the Badge of a Mason, failed or could fail to be a buildera bestower of the fruits and good things of Earth on the dependent family of man, who, thinking himself the Paragon of Nature, assumes to be the just and precise object of her every consideration, way, and effort.

But further informed that the Lambskin is more ancient than the Golden Fleece or Roman Eagle, we may once again inquire-whyand find solution to our inquiry in the fact that the Sign of the Ram, while a symbol of the Light, is also a symbol of the Ether, out of which the Light must ever evolve, the Light being but the positive condition as against the negative or dark condition in which the Ether normally exists—the positive condition being always found in those vortices of the heavens called Suns, and which can only exist by virtue of the prior existence of the Ether-the Ether pouring into those vortices in dark negative currents to reconvert into highly polarized luminous streams issuant to the periphery of each vortex's or Sun's circle of influence. Hence, in the dependence of our Sun upon the Ether and the further dependence of the Golden Fleece upon our Sun in the Sign of the Ram, it follows that the Lambskin, expressing the Ether normally, must necessarily be more ancient than the Golden Fleece; as also, than the Roman Eagle (Aquila) since the Eagle is the bird of Jove in limitation of type to the Sun. Sings the poet:

Vol. 67.-No. 3.—2.

"The towering Eagle next doth boldly soar,

As if the thunder in his claws he bore;

He's worthy Jove, since he, a bird, supplies

The heavens with sacred bolts, and arms the skies."

The Constellation Aquila has 71 visible stars catalogued, and 71 is a Scriptural Dove Value, as shown by Skinner in his "Source of Measures," whence, having repetition but 5 times in the Bible, it denotes 355 (71x5) for the numerical value of the Hebrew Lunar Year, establishing a cyclic connection that denotes the Dove, the symbol of the periodical presence and absence of the bright God of Day in relation to our Northern hemisphere. Says Didron (Christian Icon., p. 439), "The Dove caught the first rays of the dawn and the last rays of the setting Sun," meaning, as no otherwise he could mean, that with the advent of the Sun to the Spring equinox the dawn of the Summer with the presence of the Dove began, terminating at that point of the Ecliptic where the Solar God, taking his departure from our hemisphere, sheds his last boreal rays, and the Dove wings his way to austral climes. Hence, standing for the Sun as the Sun in turn typifies the Ether, the Dove and the Eagle are equal and coördinate mythological expressivesthe Dove emblemizing St. John as does the Eagle Jove-St. John proving the "disciple whom Jesus loved," and into whose keeping he commended his mother. Wherefore, in universal cult, behold the Eagle's wing!

Assured that the Lambskin Apron is more honorable than the Star and Garter, we are brought in further knowledge to a realization of the doctrine taught in the Elusinian mysteries, that the soul's marriage to matter was its debasement, which is to the effect that the Lambskin Apron, bespeaking the unincarnated Ether, so far transcends, in the scale of purity, the Star and Garter as the soul-principle exceeds the gross matter in which it lies imprisoned in that the Star and Garter is but a mere phallic symbol to denote the incarnation of the Ether in gross tangible substance--the soulprinciple being the Light-principle, and the Light-principle being the Ether-principle, which is incapable of incarnation in gross substance except as polarized or intensified into brightness-the dedication of the Star and Garter to the Holy Virgin (Virgo) riveting the facts here enunciated.

Regarding the modes of wearing the Apron, we glean: "Every Freemason shall be obliged to wear his Apron in the form established

by the Degrees he has received," (Const. Rule XV.-Gray's Mystic Circle, p. 227,) which argues transition from Darkness to Light as in gradation marked by the Mystic Compasses. Says Mackey: "The construction of the Apron is the same in each of the Symbolic Degrees, which are only distinguished by the mode in which the Apron is worn," (Lexicon, p. 41,) the First Degree, of course, marking Primitive Darkness; the Second, Partial Light; and the Third, its ultimate-Perfect Light. These modes, says Scott, "remind us of our mortality and the interminable future," (Keystone, p. 328,) wherefore it is that the Man of Light should give such words intrinsic heed and just and perfect application.

THADDEUS STEVENS WAS NOT REJECTED.

LANCASTER, PA., March 19, 1887.

In your January MASONIC REVIEW, you have an article headed "Reply to Brother Lyte," from our veteran friend, Brother Rob. Morris, in answer to a statement I made some months ago, that Hon. Thaddeus Stevens had never been rejected in a Masonic Lodge. If you will allow me a little space in your REVIEW, I know that I can, beyond a doubt, explode the story that Stevens was ever black-balled. It has been going the rounds of the Masonic press every few years-has been published in Masonic books, and is as old, almost, as anti-Masonry in the United States. We find in Row's " Masonic Biography and Dictionary," page 32, under the head of anti-Masonry, Thaddeus Stevens is spoken of as "a rejected applicant of Good Samaritan Lodge, Gettysburg, Pa." In Brother Morris' letter, he also says: "Will Bro. Lyte make

inquiry at Gettysburg?"

Now for the facts in the case :

It has, we believe, always been at Gettysburg that he was supposed to have been rejected. They have never had but one Masonic Lodge in that town. Good Samaritan, No. 200, was organized in 1825, and was in existence in 1832, when it was broken up by the anti-Masonic crusade. It was re-organized in 1859, and is now Good Samaritan Lodge, No. 336, on the roll of Lodges in Pennsylvania. The Secretary of the present Lodge is Daniel A. Skely, and he says: "We have the minutes of our Lodge from its organization in 1825 complete. I have examined the minutes.