Post by offramp on Mar 22, 2019 16:45:07 GMT
From the Cambridge Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Number 49, 12 December 1874
The Illinois Anti-Secret Society Association has once more mounted its hobby of Anti-Masonry and put the animal through some very remarkable paces.
They have lifted the veil and put masonry before the public in a garb which is calculated to give simple-minded people, who never go to the Lodge and ride goats, the horrors for the rest of their natural lives, and cause them to regard a member of the Sovereign Consistory or a full-fledged Knight of the Apollo Commandery as a butcher of humanity, who takes his coffee every morning from a fresh skull of some apostate Mason, and dines on the fricasseed children of the victim.
If we are to believe the enemies of Masonry, the Lodge-room must be a chamber of horrors, in comparison with which Dante's Inferno is quite insignificant. We are told that the brethren go round shrieking, "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," as Solomon did to the workmen who w«re building the Temple, which, of course, is quite absurd, because "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," is Latin, and Solomon never spoke Latin, the classics not being a part of his many accomplishments.
Clergymen are led into the lodgeroom with ropes about their necks, one shoe off and the other on, (Hey diddle dumpling, my son John), and stripped of a portion of their raiment, a costume almost as unique as that worn upon some occasions by the Sons of Malta. This is sufficiently distressing, and ought to be a solemn warning to the brethren how they dally with the deceitful goat.
Let them cling to the horns of the altar lest the horns of this goat lead them to the halter. One of the members told a story of a friend of his who joined the Knights Templar and was compelled, after partaking of the sacramental wine, to drink the fifth libation from a human skull without even knowing the character of the gentleman who once occupied it, while the other Knights gathered about him with drawn swords, executing a savage war dance, and threatening to cut his throat across, tear out his tongue, and bury what there was left of him in the sands of the sea, if he divulged any of the secrets. After some Irish melodies on the organ by Prof Merrill, another member arose and told his little story, announcing to those present the dire disasters which overtake such luckless Masons as inform their wives, in moments of inebriation or absent-mindedness, of any secrets of the Order. First, they cut his throat across. Then his tongue is torn out.
Then, notwithstanding his complaints at their rough treatment, they let out his heart and bowels, so that he has no further use for affection or food. Having accomplished this, they then burn him to ashes, singing "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," we presume, and dancing up and down, kicking up a dust with the ashes of the late departed.
Then they gather the ashes up in a dust-pan and scatter them to the four winds of heaven, arrangements having been made, of course, beforehand with the Signal Service to have the wind blow all four ways at once on that day, in order to distribute the late deceased as impartially as possible.
The horrors of such a treatment are enhanced by the fact that it will be next to impossible for the deceased to find the whole of himself when he wants to rise at the summons of Gabriel's trumpet.
The worst, however, is yet to come, for one of the members knew of a man who asked the word of the Grand Master and was struck upon the windpipe with a square by Jubilo. Then Jubila hit him a terrible blow on the breast with a compass; and Jubilum knocked him clean out of time and fixed him for the rest of the night with a stuffed club.
The very next day the victim went to church and discovered that Jubilum was his minister. We haven't much sympathy for the victim, however, who would coolly stand this kind of business, and not get even with Jubilum at the first opportunity. To all such twaddle as this, there can, of course, be no answer made. It answers itself by its own absurdity. We have no more sympathy with Masonry than the Anti-Secret Society has; but if a man wants to put on a white apron and other silly toggery, march about with square and compass behind a brass band, ride a goat or fancy that he belongs to the order in which Solomon and Hiram once flourished, in the name of all that is sensible let him do so, and have as many secrets as he pleases to keep from his wife.
Ten to one, where he has one secret she will have a dozen. Silly as Masons may be, the height of silliness is reached by these Anti-Secret Society individuals, who met here a few months to rehearse these skull-and-crossbone stories, and go into spasms every time they see a square and compass. — Chicago Tribune.
They have lifted the veil and put masonry before the public in a garb which is calculated to give simple-minded people, who never go to the Lodge and ride goats, the horrors for the rest of their natural lives, and cause them to regard a member of the Sovereign Consistory or a full-fledged Knight of the Apollo Commandery as a butcher of humanity, who takes his coffee every morning from a fresh skull of some apostate Mason, and dines on the fricasseed children of the victim.
If we are to believe the enemies of Masonry, the Lodge-room must be a chamber of horrors, in comparison with which Dante's Inferno is quite insignificant. We are told that the brethren go round shrieking, "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," as Solomon did to the workmen who w«re building the Temple, which, of course, is quite absurd, because "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," is Latin, and Solomon never spoke Latin, the classics not being a part of his many accomplishments.
Clergymen are led into the lodgeroom with ropes about their necks, one shoe off and the other on, (Hey diddle dumpling, my son John), and stripped of a portion of their raiment, a costume almost as unique as that worn upon some occasions by the Sons of Malta. This is sufficiently distressing, and ought to be a solemn warning to the brethren how they dally with the deceitful goat.
Let them cling to the horns of the altar lest the horns of this goat lead them to the halter. One of the members told a story of a friend of his who joined the Knights Templar and was compelled, after partaking of the sacramental wine, to drink the fifth libation from a human skull without even knowing the character of the gentleman who once occupied it, while the other Knights gathered about him with drawn swords, executing a savage war dance, and threatening to cut his throat across, tear out his tongue, and bury what there was left of him in the sands of the sea, if he divulged any of the secrets. After some Irish melodies on the organ by Prof Merrill, another member arose and told his little story, announcing to those present the dire disasters which overtake such luckless Masons as inform their wives, in moments of inebriation or absent-mindedness, of any secrets of the Order. First, they cut his throat across. Then his tongue is torn out.
Then, notwithstanding his complaints at their rough treatment, they let out his heart and bowels, so that he has no further use for affection or food. Having accomplished this, they then burn him to ashes, singing "Jubila, jubilo, jubilum," we presume, and dancing up and down, kicking up a dust with the ashes of the late departed.
Then they gather the ashes up in a dust-pan and scatter them to the four winds of heaven, arrangements having been made, of course, beforehand with the Signal Service to have the wind blow all four ways at once on that day, in order to distribute the late deceased as impartially as possible.
The horrors of such a treatment are enhanced by the fact that it will be next to impossible for the deceased to find the whole of himself when he wants to rise at the summons of Gabriel's trumpet.
The worst, however, is yet to come, for one of the members knew of a man who asked the word of the Grand Master and was struck upon the windpipe with a square by Jubilo. Then Jubila hit him a terrible blow on the breast with a compass; and Jubilum knocked him clean out of time and fixed him for the rest of the night with a stuffed club.
The very next day the victim went to church and discovered that Jubilum was his minister. We haven't much sympathy for the victim, however, who would coolly stand this kind of business, and not get even with Jubilum at the first opportunity. To all such twaddle as this, there can, of course, be no answer made. It answers itself by its own absurdity. We have no more sympathy with Masonry than the Anti-Secret Society has; but if a man wants to put on a white apron and other silly toggery, march about with square and compass behind a brass band, ride a goat or fancy that he belongs to the order in which Solomon and Hiram once flourished, in the name of all that is sensible let him do so, and have as many secrets as he pleases to keep from his wife.
Ten to one, where he has one secret she will have a dozen. Silly as Masons may be, the height of silliness is reached by these Anti-Secret Society individuals, who met here a few months to rehearse these skull-and-crossbone stories, and go into spasms every time they see a square and compass. — Chicago Tribune.