TRESTLE-BOARD. "As the operative Mason erects his temporal building in accordance with the designs laid down upon the Trestle-Board by the master-workman, so should we, both operative and speculative, endeavor to erect our spiritual building in accordance with the designs laid down by the Supreme Architect." What is here masonically designated the " Trestle-Board," artists, poets, and philoso phers denominate the Ideal. All things that exist, save God, are created by the ideal, or are reflections of it. The visible creation is God's ideal, wrought out in material forms; and all the works of man are copies of ideal types which he dis covers traced on the Trestle-Board of his soul. Every nation exists according to an ideal which is reflected in its life, its institutions, and manners; and the life of man, as an indi vidual, is high or low, as his ideals of life are high or low; or, in other words, it is fashioned after the designs that are traced on the moral Trestle-Board. Societies, also, are con
structed from the ideal. If a society have no ideal, it can have uo influence, and can exist but for a brief period, because it has no ability to arouse the enthusiasm, or com mand the respect and allegiance of men. The Masonic society has been able to adapt itself to various and changing circumstances of mankind, with facility, because its ideals of society, of benevolence and virtue, rose higher, and shone brighter, as the ages rolled away. It is a part of its mission to keep the minds of its adepts fixed intently upon the designs pictured upon the Trestle-Board, or, to speak more correctly, to establish a perpetual communion between man and the world of glorious ideals.