have been borrowed from, and would be easily traced to, the peculiar phraseology of the philosophic sects which had given it birth.  There would have been the sophists and the philosophers; the grammatists and the grammarians; the scholars, the masters, and the doctors.  It would have had its trivial and its quadrivial schools; its occupation would have been research, experiment, or investigation; in a word, its whole features would have been colored by a grammatical, a rhetorical, or a mathematical cast, accordingly as it should have been derived from a sect in which any one of these three characteristics was the predominating influence.

But in the organization of Freemasonry, as it now presents itself to us, we see an entirely different appearance.  Its degrees are expressive, not of advancement in philosophic attainments, but of progress in a purely mechanical pursuit.  Its highest grade is that of Master of the Work.  Its places of meeting are not schools, but lodges, places where the workmen formerly lodged, in the neighborhood of the building on whose construction they were engaged.  It does not form theories, but builds temples.  It knows nothing of the rules of the dialecticians,—­of the syllogism, the dilemma, the enthymeme, or the sorites,—­but it recurs to the homely implements of its operative parent for its methods of instruction, and with the plumb-line it inculcates rectitude of conduct, and draws lessons of morality from the workman’s square.  It sees in the Supreme God that it worships, not a “numen divinum,” a divine power, nor a “moderator rerum omnium,” a controller of all things, as the old philosophers designated him, but a Grand Architect of the Universe.  The masonic idea of God refers to Him as the Mighty Builder of this terrestrial globe, and all the countless worlds that surround it.  He is not the ens entium, or to theion, or any other of the thousand titles with which ancient and modern speculation has invested him, but simply the Architect,—­as the Greeks have it, the [Greek:  a)rcho\s], the chief workman,—­under whom we are all workmen also;[201] and hence our labor is his worship.

This idea, then, of masonic labor, is closely connected with the history of the organization of the institution.  When we say “the lodge is at work,” we recognize that it is in the legitimate practice of that occupation for which it was originally intended.  The Masons that are in it are not occupied in thinking, or speculating, or reasoning, but simply and emphatically in working.  The duty of a Mason as such, in his lodge, is to work.  Thereby he accomplishes the destiny of his Order.  Thereby he best fulfils his obligation to the Grand Architect, for with the Mason laborare est orare—­labor is worship.

The importance of masonic labor being thus demonstrated, the question next arises as to the nature of that labor.  What is the work that a Mason is called upon to perform?