MAGLJoYoung
JOSHUA YOUNG 1823-1904
From Proceedings, Page 1873-385:
REV. JOSHUA YOUNG, FALL RIVER, Unitarian, 1872, 1873.
REV. JOSHUA YOUNG was bbrn Sept. 29, 1823, in the little village of East Pittston, near the shore of the Kennebec River, Maine. When he was about four years of age his father (who is still living, hale and hearty, at the advanced age of ninety-four years) moved to the town (now, city) of Bangor. There, in the public schools, he pursued his preparatory studies, and entered Bowdoin College at sixteen, and graduated, in good standing, in the class of 1845, receiving, with five or six others, the honor of an election to the Bowdoin Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Immediately upon graduating, he entered the Divinity School connected with the University at Cambridge, where he completed the usual course of theological studies; and in the fall of 1848 received, and accepted, a call to the pastorate of the "New North Church," Boston, on Hanover Street. (The society has since disbanded, and the church edifice now has its steeple surmounted with a cross, and " mass " is said within its walls.) In 1852 he accepted a call to take charge of the Unitarian Society in Burlington, Vt., powerfully attracted by the beautiful scenery of that region of country. In what he has always since felt was an unfortunate hour, he severed his relations with the good people there, after a ministry of ten years, and returned to Massachusetts, in order to be nearer his family connections.
Invited to take charge of the "New North Church," in the old town of Hingham, for a few months, he prolonged his residence in that seaside place to five years. At this time an opportunity was given him to go abroad; and, crossing the ocean, he visited Egypt and the Holy Land, and made the usual tour of Europe.
On his return, in 1869, he entered upon his professional duties once more as pastor of the Unitarian Society in Fall River, where he is still engaged in the sacred calling in which a few months more will complete his twenty-fifth year. He was made a Mason while residing in Hingham, being raised to the Third Degree in Old Colony Lodge by the Master, Worshipful E. Waters Burr. He is still a member of the Lodge, and Chaplain by appointment.
His interest in Freemasonry is deep and abiding. He has, on two or three public occasions, ably defended its principles. He believes it has nothing so much to fear as its success. He holds that too much prosperity is apt to give to men and to communities of men, a moral sunstroke; that Masons are made too fast, and that unworthy members injure the whole Body.
He is married to the eldest daughter of the late Sylvanus Plympton, M.D., of Cambridge, and has five children, two sons and three daughters. The appended paper, copied from Moore's Freemason's Magazine for November, 1865, was written by Brother Young, he being the chairman of the committee appointed to report it. It was signed by the Master and Wardens of Old Colony Lodge as well as by the committee.
To the Worshipful Master, Wardens, and Brothers of St. Mary's Lodge, A.F. and A.M., St. Mary's, Georgia.
Old Colony Lodge of Hingham, Mass., sends greeting: —
Circumstances which cannot bo better or more exactly described, perhaps, than as the "fortunes of war," have strangely made us the keepers for some time past of the Charter and Master's Gavel of your Worshipful Lodge; and now that the channels of communication between the Northern and Southern sections of our country are open again, at the close of an unhappy civil war, we determine to return the same to you, with every expression of fraternal interest and good-will.
The Brother but newly initiated into the secret mysteries of our ancient and honored Institution, from whose hands we received them for safe-keeping, and at whose request we became their depositary until such time as we could properly restore them, remained with us but a few days, and is now absent beyond the reach of correspondence (as your letters fail to elicit an answer). Therefore, to state with any fulness of detail how the property of another and so distant a Lodge is rightfully in our possession is, at this time, impossible. Anxious at the earliest available moment to restore their own to the Brethren of St. Mary's Lodge, and to transmit them with our sentiments of undiminished friendship as members of the mystic tie, suffice it to say, that an engineer of a Federal gunboat, connected with the late blockading fleet on the Atlantic coast, on going ashore at the village of St. Mary's, at the close of a bombardment, we believe, found the place deserted by most of its white population; and on entering a building, which had suffered from the guns of our ships, or had been broken into and rifled of its contents, found himself unexpectedly within the sacred precincts of a Masonic Lodge; and on the floor lay a roll of parchment and a small mallet, which, on examination, he believed to be the Charter of the Lodge and the W. Master's Gavel. To him who had but recently gained admission into the sublime arcana of our brotherhood, they were, of course, objects of exceeding interest and value; and lest they should come to the eyes of the unworthy, or be lost utterly, he took them with him to his boat; whereupon, being almost immediately ordered North, he improved the first opportunity to commit them to the strict charge of a sister Lodge, for the purpose, as already stated, of their ultimate restoration to the place from which they were taken.
Through the M.W. Grand Lodge of the State of Massachusetts they will come to you; and when the parchment is again unrolled in your presence, or the venerable gavel in the W. Master's hand shall strike once more the opening or the closing of the Lodge, may the one read to you anew as a pledge of a tried but faithful friendship, and the other echo to you, from a far Northern State, the pulsation of hearts not alienated from their Masonic Brothers in the South. The war so bitterly waged — now ended as we trust forevermore — has proved in many affecting ways the majestic character and regal worth of the great Institution of Free and Accepted Masonry. It has hovered like God's Angel of mercy over the bloody battle-field. It has ministered its loving charities to the wounded and dying. It has relieved the sufferings of the prisoners. It has preserved the sacred ashes of the honored dead; and, when the soldier was struck down, it has discovered to him a friend and brother in the foe. Its principles of liberality, brotherly-love, and charity have stood the fiery trial; and the obligations to which all swear fealty who bow the knee at the consecrated altar have shown their binding force to be strong as links of steel.
And now that the strife is over, and the sword is returned to its scabbard, may we not expect that the same Institution, coextensive with the whole domain of our land, which has so mitigated the cruelties of war, shall also act no small part in the earnest and difficult work of national "reconstruction," of restoring to health and wholeness our dismembered country; of re-establishing in wisdom, strength, and beauty — which Masons are taught to believe "are about God's throne, as the pillars of his court" — a Union of States under one constituted head, whose archetype shall be the human frame, — a living organism of related and co-operative parts, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, edifying itself in love; many members, but one body.
It is at once the pride and the glory of our grand Fraternity, that it measures no man by this world's standard of high and low; that it is above the littleness which makes blood or birthplace the test of moral and intellectual worth; and knows no difference of nation, as Greek or Roman, as Jew or Gentile, in the ministration of its rites, or the bestowment of its gifts. In this it resembles the wisdom and goodness of Deity; of Him, the Supreme Architect of the Universe, the initial of whose Holy name is suspended in every duly appointed Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons, from the canopy in the East. And we are sure that such an Institution, so pure in spirit, so lofty in interest, with principles so noble and so grand, will naturally and inevitably adopt the line of God's gracious providence, and welcome, though it come through tears and agony, every advancement of truth and human happiness. So mote it be ! Once more, Brethren, we salute you.
