Note 181 — Chapter III · ToC

Suggested by a noble passage in the Recollections of Washington Gladden; and the great preacher goes on to say: "If the church could accept this truth—that Religion is Friendship—and build its own life upon it, and make it central and organic in all its teachings, should we not have a great revival of religion?" Indeed, yes; and of the right kind of religion, too! Walt Whitman found the basis of all philosophy, all religion, in "the dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend" (The Base of all Metaphysics). As for Masonic literature, it is one perpetual pæan in praise of the practice of friendship, from earliest time to our own day. Take, for example, the Illustrations of Masonry, by Preston (first book, sect, i-x); and Arnold, as we have seen, defined Masonry as Friendship, as did Hutchinson (The Spirit of Masonry, lectures xi, xii). These are but two notes of a mighty anthem whose chorus is never hushed in the temple of Masonry! Of course, there are those who say that the finer forces of life are frail and foolish, but the influence of the cynic in the advance of the race is—nothing!