A TALE OF ANTIMASONRY.

Taken from  Light and Shadows of Freemasonry by Rob Morris,
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 fratenity, 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 Freemasonry