A French Priest's View Of Masonry.

A FRENCH PRIEST'S VIEW OF MASONRY .

FATHER N . Deschamps has just published , at Avignon , France , a notable work on Freemasonry , entitled "Les Soeietes Secretes et la Societe , " * which is the subject of a no less notable review in the February number of the New York Catholic World , just issued . The statements of both author and reviewer are so much more accurate than usual , and their opinions are so much less seasoned with virulence than are those of the average oontroversalist , that deem Father Deschamps' workand the article of his reviewerworth

, , y of mention to our readers . Every Freemason knows that our Craft is the handmaid of religion , ancl hence proscribes no religion . It favors no particular creed , but is the friend of all that acknowledge the one true and ever-living God . Its creed ( if it may be said to have a creed ) is the mother-creed , the basis-truth of all creeds . It says with Pope—the poet , not the prelate :

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; He can't be wrong whose life is in the right . Hence Freemasonry is not unfriendl y to the Roman Catholic religion , any more than it is to the United Presbyterian reli gion , or any other religionalthough when prelate , minister , or layman , of either of these , or any other creed , proscribes Freemasonry , we smile at their anger , and pity their

ignorance . Many acts have been clone in the name of reli gion , in times past , that religion shudders at now . Murder is no less murder because it is made to assume the form of martyrdom at the stake , as an auto da fe , than it is when the assassin ' s knife perpetrates the bloody deed . So intolerance is no less intolerance when directed against "the handmaid of reli gion , " than when aimed at the peaceful Quaker , the harmless Baptist , or the self-sacrificing Puritan .

Freemasonry proscribes onl y the baldest irreligion—that of the atheist and libertine . It is the friend of religion , and hence that reli gion which is inimical to it blindly undermines the very foundation of its own faith in God , for he who has not faith in God is no Freemason . We have stated that Roman Catholic writers who treat of Freemasonry usually do not consider it , but only ignorantly condemn it . And they single out so-calledand often falsely calledFreemasonry in some continental country

, , of Europe , hold its faithless character , ancl possibly erratic action , up to contempt , and say , " from one , learn all . " Not so Father Deschamps . We quote his language : " In those countries" [ the United States ancl Great Britain ] , says the author of Les Soeietes Secretes et la Societe , " thanks to the superior social condition ancl to the force of political tradition , Masonry has undergone a sort of

transformation . It has been fused with the Protestant sects , and has even given a great deal of space in its ritual to the Bible . If religion has not been the gainer by this , the lodges have at least , in this way , lost a great deal of the character which they originally had . But the English and American lodges are different from all others . " His reviewer endorses this language , ancl manifests the same freedom from ignorance , for he says : —