Monthly Masonic Summary.

Monthly Masonic Summary .

l TTTITII this January MAGAZINE , Publisher and Editor beg to offer to all their [ VV readers their " hearty good wishes " for the " New Year . " May it be a period I of unmixed happiness and well-being to them and theirs . [ With the opening of another year of Time , we cannot conceal from ourselves that I freemasonry has before it a period of much excitement and perhaps some trial . If in L Great Britain and Canada and America we may feel satisfied that ours are peaceful

I progress and material prosperity , we cannot but be sensible that there is much in the intense increase of our Order sufficient to awaken anxiety , and to suggest caution . f i It cannot do good to Freemasonry eventually , when we notice the evident desire of I many to obtain admission into our fraternity , more because it is popular and prosperous E than for any other really good or constraining motive ! The somewhat indiscriminate I admission now so much in " vogue , " portends weakness to the Craft , and serious demands

I upon our charities . | i And if abroad we look on Freemasonry , we see a spirit of disquiet affecting many Lj forei gn bodies , and new ideas and novel principles , taking the place of the wiser and I more salutary legislation of the past . I , We in England and Ireland and Scotland , as well as in America and Canada , hi fact |; wherever Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry extends , cannot but deplore the rashness and the I miffisclom of the recent proceedings of the French Grand Orient , which may and fepiobably wilHead to most regrettable results .

I It is really almost pitiable to think that able men can be so blinded by their own I subjective fancies as to sujipose that we in England are blind to the real motive and | t ° wl of this deplorable change ! Some writers affirm that it is done for " Toleration ; " I'others , that the Atheistical question has nothing to do with it , though they know per-I icctl y well that such allegations are hollow and unreal . I If the Atheistical party were not touched by the old formula why agitate for its ?

Ijeiiioval But the truth is , just as the law for the reception of Bro . Littre the ritual I d to be made " meet" for his reception , so it is well known in France that under the ° « l declarations Masters and Candidates were equally tied down . 1 ^ ^ acknowledgment to T . G . A . O . T . U . never been jdaced in the Constitutions It ) u ^ Jtevej have raised a question , but , being there , it ought to have remained 111 ^ 88 Inc similar truth with could be asserted in official state

lirwi ! ' * * a , as us , an - I ent bound up with the Book of Constitutions . We do not lay much stress on the t j Vape where the ackuowdedgment of the Most High is found , but if French Freemasonry hi U 1 accor ^ with Cosmopolitan Freemasonry it ought to be somewhere . As it is , taav ) ' ^ reemasolli y > ( in defiance of the old and consistent and continuous teaching , as I 'J be proved from countless French writers , official and nonoificial from 1730 clown-IT