William Hughan
Published: 2018-03
Total Pages: 158
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Even regarded in this light alone, these old legends and traditions, these bye gone usages and regulations of the operative guilds, thus happily preserved, have and always must have for all thoughtful freemasons, the deepest value and the most lasting interest. For it is, as I have often before ventured to observe, in these very peculiar usages of the handicraft assemblies, the local and general customs of the Masonic sodalities, that while on the one hand, we are still able to find, (and there only) the explanation of our own speculative rites and customs to-day; so on the other, it is by the gradual development of these old traditions, as time ran on, habits changed, new wants arose, and old landmarks were swept away, that we are permitted to advance the only consistent and satisfactory theory of the wonderful existence and permanency of Freemasonry among us, and its change from an actual operative and mechanical association to a speculative and accepted Brotherhood.