Provincial Grand Lodge of East Lancashire><br /> <h1 class=Address to the Lodge Charity Steward

Brother Charity Steward

The Worshipful Master has appointed and invested you as the Lodge Charity Steward. The Jewel of your Office is the Trowel. Its use in building a structure is to spread cement and reminds us that nothing in that building can be united without proper cement. Indeed, the perfection, strength and beauty of the edifice will depend on the quality and disposition of the cement.

In like manner, the cement of Freemasonry is Charity, the bond of perfection and social union that must link separate minds and separate interests. Charity, with its principle of universal benevolence, must spread from the centre of Freemasonry out to every part of the Brotherhood and from there into the community as a whole.

I have no doubt that you and the Brethren of the Lodge are aware of the importance of the East Lancashire Masonic Charity in the life of our Province. Through its Benevolence Fund we seek to look after needy Freemasons and their families and by use of its Community Fund, we seek to assist a whole range of non Masonic good works across the whole of East Lancashire .

Brother Charity Steward, you are charged by the RW Provincial Grand Master to use the Trowel of your Office with empathy and care to reawaken those feelings towards Charity which are central to our Masonic way of life and so fulfil the promise we all made at our Initiation.

As the MW Grand Master expressed at Grand Lodge in 2006, “through our charitable work, and openness about it, the world may know the happy and beneficial effects of Freemasonry”.

Brother Charity Steward, look well to your duties.