The Red Cross of Constantine, West Yorkshire Division

150th Anniversary: 22nd October 2025

Oration: Revd Roger Quick, Divisional High Prelate

Most Puissant Sovereign, Most Illustrious Grand Sovereign, Worthy Knights all.

To live to be 150 years old is a matter for congratulation! You are looking pretty good for your age.  (Most of you).

We celebrate today West Yorkshire’s part in The Masonic and Military Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, for which as we know, every Candidate must be a Master Mason, a Royal Arch Mason and a Trinitarian Christian.

In 1875, England was arguably a more Christian, a more military, and a more masonic country.  All three of those things  were more universally agreed to be good, an assertion rather less likely to be accepted in our own time.  It is unlikely, for example, that anyone founding a new movement for Salvation now would model it on the Army, as William Booth did in 1878.  For our predecessors, there were no such qualms.  Even forty years later, the number of conscientious objectors during the First World War was considerably less than three in every thousand.

But what of the year of our Consecration: 1875?  It was a very different time: average life expectancy then was just 43 – but infant mortality was appallingly high.  Queen Victoria was just over halfway through her long reign.  Disraeli was Prime Minister, about to do a deal on the Suez Canal, and have Victoria declared Empress of India.  Three months earlier, the American Civil War had ended.  More locally, the South Cliff lift in Scarborough was opened.

Born that same year were Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, and George Formby.   For those of you who – like Bro Crowley – are tempted to believe in astrology, I will leave it to you to decide which of those three our Division most resembles.

But anyone born on the 12th June 1875 in Sheffield, as our Division was, would have Scorpio in the Ascendant, and should thus carry an aura of mystery, intensity, and depth  – which would seem appropriate for any masonic organisation.  They would have many talents, be very intelligent and quick-witted.  And if you are happy to apply that to yourself, since we are referring to the whole Division, perhaps you could just glance and make sure it also applies to the brethren either side of you.

Twenty years later, opening our Divisional Conclave,

Illustrious Knight Britain gave the following address: “Sir Knights, our Order is of no recent date. Formed in the year 314 by the Illustrious Constantine it was revived by Brethren of Eminence in Masonry, of whom the late Judge Waller Rodwell Wright was the chief, in the later part of the last Century, and who in 1806 drew up a declaration of the principles of the Order….”

Well.  Probably none of that is true – or not exactly, anyway.

To examine it further, we need to return to the beginning.  Constantine’s father, Constantius, married a girl of humble origin.  Nine centuries later, the Anglican curate of Horbury, just down the road, Sabine Baring Gould, did the same thing, and married a mill-girl.  This was pretty scandalous at the time; but it is not recorded whether Constantius did the same thing as Baring Gould, and sent his new wife off to stay with cousins to learn how to go on in polite society.  It was Baring Gould, who wrote the hymn we often sing; Onward Christian Soldiers.  Not surprising, in that he numbered amongst his ancestors one of the Crusaders.

The Yorkshire connection of our origins is well attested.  Our patron Constantine  – Flavius Valerius Constantinus  – was proclaimed Augustus of the Western Empire in the year of grace 306 by the Sixth Victris Legion in Eboracum.  In York!  Our Order may thus reasonably be described not only as the most profoundly Christian Order, but also as the most Yorkshire!   He were one of us, tha knows!  A previous Grand Sovereign once commented that the West Yorkshire Division was the oldest within the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine.

It was another Yorkshire member of our Brotherhood, The Revd Neville Barker Cryer of blessed memory, who when considering the lack of historical evidence to link us to the mediaeval order of the Holy Sepulchre noted that Surely it is the recognition of Christ’s death and resurrection by proximity to ‘a sepulchre’, our dedication as knights in Our Lord’s service, and our duties no less to both our companions and the community in which we live, that are the abiding strands which link us with this recorded past.

And that reflection takes us to the heart of what we do, as members of the Masonic and Military Order of the Red Cross of Constantine: as Masons, as Trinitarian Christians, emulating our military origins.

It may help for me to tell you something of my own journey.  Like so many others, my one regret on joining our wonderful Order, is that I had not done so sooner.  But that was not by chance.  As a young mason,  I deliberately did not join any specifically Christian Order.  That was because I do not know of any other forum where Christians, Jews,  Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs – be a man’s religion what it may –  are brought together, talk and laugh together, and yes, pray together.  How much the world needs our brotherhood now.  Now, more than ever, we need a place which draws us close together, and recognizes that we are all climbing different sides of the same mountain.

It was in the end considering that which brought me to a different conclusion.  Another man’s belief is not diminished by my own.   Holding fast to the faith we profess does not deny the validity of another’s faith.  Quite the opposite.  Our mutual respect one for another is enhanced by the depth with which we embrace our own belief.  That, also, goes back to our founder Constantine; and indeed to his blessed mother Helena.

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, did not force his own religion on others.  His Edict of Milan, in the year 313, said:  Let no one disturb another, let each man hold fast to that which his soul wishes… Does that sound familiar?  Let a man’s religion be what it may….

By embracing fully what we believe; by carrying out, as our ritual says: in our daily life the Divine principles of Charity and Truth; by living out what we profess from day to day; by Zealously upholding the tenets of our belief; in Faith, and in Unity together, we encourage others to do the same; to embrace fully whatever faith the Sovereign Ruler of All has been pleased to nurture in them. What we believe is prophetic.  More than ever, we need that now.

But for me, there was a further conflict.  I was never a pacifist.  My father was a soldier, and was later ordained; his father had  done the same.  But how can the life of a Christian be reconciled with the life of a soldier?  I considered this when acting as honorary padre to the Cameronians.  But it was becoming a member of our Order which called me to reflect yet more deeply on those things, when I was asked whether I would be prepared to wear a sword.

The High Prelate is not armed; that has generally been the tradition for military padres for centuries; but it was not always the case, nor is it a fixed or universal rule; as recently as the Second World War, the order was given that in exceptional circumstances… a Chaplain needs the use of firearms and on these occasions a rifle would prove the best form of protection.  Indeed, the patron saint of military chaplains, St John Capistrano, actually led his troops into battle.

In the Burma campaign, one Chaplain regularly carried both a revolver and a Sten gun.  Those he served knew only too well that most soldierly of virtues, the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life for another’s.  For your tomorrow, we gave our today. Greater love hath no man.

If  Our Lord Jesus Christ ever told the Centurion to give up his military profession, it is not recorded.

As Masons, we are taught to regard everything material as a metaphor; St Paul teaches us to use the weapons of the Spirit: the shield of Faith;  the breastplate of Righteousness.

So in the end, I have been proud to wear a sword; one forged for me by my son, who is a blacksmith.   As I wear it, I dedicate it, as the generations before us have, to the service of Our Lord, and had it laid up on the altar, as our ceremonies requires.

As we reflect on these truths today, we pray that the generations to come may celebrate with us; that those as yet unborn will range themselves under our banners.

And as Red Cross Masons, let us hold fast to the truth which is vouchsafed us, trusting that we may assuredly in this sign conquer; trusting that the victory over evil  is already won.

In so doing, we place our faith, as our founder, Illustrious Knight William Henry Brittain, Intendant General, repeated to us then, whose words give us all we need, as we begin our second sesquicentenary:  Faith in the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe,

Unity by which we as brethren are bound together, Zeal, which animates our labours.   

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen              [11:18]