Page 159 - Cornelius Hedges Story

For This And Succeeding Generations Gardiner 146

Even though he had not attended the session and was not the
Grand Secretary of Eastern Star, Judge Hedges prepared the first
set of Eastern Star Grand Chapter Proceedings.490

About the time of the establishment of Grand Chapter, Cornelius
Hedges wrote the following brief essay concerning the place of the
Order of Eastern Star in the Masonic family of orders. It expresses
well his ideas about Eastern Star:

“We can say from our observation in other departments of the
great realm of Masonry, that the Order of the Eastern Star has
passed its darkest days of indifference and opposition and is
emerging into a bright, broad field of active usefulness, where
the value of its services cannot long remain unnoticed and its
efficient aid remain unsought in the greatest of all Masonic
work, the dispensation of charity in the broadest and strictest
sense, as well as in the sweet charities of daily intercourse
with one another, and in ministering to the wants of the
widows and orphans, the poor and despairing ones that are to
be found in every community, of whom many are too proud
to ask assistance, or let their wants be known. Then, again,
the present is an era in the Masonic world when enlightened
energies and great resources of the craft seem specifically
directed to the establishment of Masonic homes. At the very
beginning of this great work, the aid of woman’s inspiration
and quick sympathies is felt as a necessity to any measure of
success. A home without a woman would be an anomaly, if not
an impossibility. Woman by all her instincts and endowments is
fitted to be the ministering angel of charity, and when Masonry
enters in earnest upon its greatest of all missions it will soon
see and feel its need of woman’s co-operation. The Order of the
Eastern Star tenders such co-operation in an organized form
and it comes like a dispensation of Providence at the moment
that the Masonic world is awakening to its past dereliction of
duty and is seriously striving to reduce professions to practice.
We still see in places a pitiable spirit of ignorant hostility,
which would refuse the use of lodge rooms for a meeting
of chapters of the Eastern Star. Let it pass in silence for it is
fast passing away and soon will disappear forever. The fifty
thousand members of the Order today will, in a few years,
swell to five hundred thousand, and Masonry, instead of having
cause to blush or mourn will rejoice that its strength and ability
for good and true Masonic work has been quadrupled.”491