The basis of Freemasonry is a Faith which can neither be demonstrated nor argued down - Faith in God the wise Master-Builder by whose grace we live, and whose will we must learn and obey. Upon this basis Masonry builds, digging deep into the realities of life, using great and simple symbols to enshrine a Truth too vast for words, seeking to exalt men, to purify and refine their lives, to ennoble their hopes; in short to build men and then make them Brothers and Builders.
There is no need - nay, it were idle - to argue in behalf of this profound and simple Faith, because any view of life which is of value is never maintained, much less secured, by debate. For though God, which is the name we give to the mystery and meaning of life, may be revealed in experience He cannot be uttered, and in a conflict of words we easily lose the sense of the unutterable God, the Maker of Heaven and earth and all that in them is, before whom silence is wisdom and wonder becomes worship. It is enough to appeal to the natural and uncorrupted sense of humanity, its right reason, its moral intuition, its spiritual instinct. Long before logic was born man, looking out over the rivers, the hills and the far horizon, and into the still depths of the night sky, knew that there was Something here before he was here; Something which will be here when he is gone.
Happily we are not confronted by a universe which mocks our intelligence and aspiration, and a
system of things which is interpretable as far as we can go by our minds, must itself be the
expression and embodiment of Mind. What is equally wonderful and awful, lending divinity to our
dust, is that the Mind within and behind all the multicolored wonder of the world is akin to our own,
since the world is both intelligible by and responsive to our thought - a mystery not an enigma. And,
if one door yields to our inquiry, and another door opens at our knock, and another and another, it
only requires a certain daring of spirit - that is, Faith - to believe that, if not yet by us, why, then, by
those who come after us, or, mayhap, by ourselves in some state of being in which we shall no
longer be restrained by the weaknesses of mortality, or befogged by the illusions of time, the mind
of man shall find itself at home and unafraid in the universe of God, a son and citizen of a City that
hath foundations.