CHAPTER V_The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry

_Universal Masonry_

Henceforth the Masons of England were no longer a society of

handicraftsmen, but an association of men of all orders and every

vocation, as also of almost every creed, who met together on the broad

basis of humanity, and recognized no standard of human worth other

than morality, kindliness, and love of truth. They retained the

symbolism of the old Operative Masonry,[133] its language, its

legends, its ritual, and its oral tradition. No longer did they build

churches, but the spiritual temple of humanity; using the Square not

to measure right angles of blocks of stone, but for evening the

inequalities of human character, nor the Compass any more to describe

circles on a tracing-board, but to draw a Circle of goodwill around

all mankind.

Howbeit, one generation of men, as Hume remarks, does not go off the

stage at once, and another succeed, like silkworms and butterflies. No

more did this metamorphosis of Masonry, so to name it, take place

suddenly or radically, as it has become the fashion to think. It was a

slow process, and like every such period the Epoch of Transition was

attended by many problems, uncertainties, and difficulties. Some of

the Lodges, as we have noted, would never agree to admit Accepted

Masons, so jealous were they of the ancient landmarks of the Craft.

Even the Grand Lodge, albeit a revival of the old Assembly, was looked

upon with suspicion by not a few, as tending toward undue

centralization; and not without cause. From the first the Grand Master

was given more power than was ever granted to the President of an

ancient Assembly; of necessity so, perhaps, but it led to

misunderstanding. Other influences added to the confusion, and at the

same time emphasized the need of welding the order into a more

coherent unity for its wider service to humanity.

There are hints to the effect that the new Masonry, if so it may be

called, made very slow progress in the public favor at first, owing to

the conditions just stated; and this despite the remark of Anderson in

June, 1719: "Now several old Brothers that had neglected the Craft,

visited the Lodges; some Noblemen were also made Brothers, and more

new Lodges were constituted." Stuckely, the antiquarian, tells us in

his _Diary_ under date of January, 1721--at which time he was

initiated--that he was the first person made a Mason in London for

years, and that it was not easy to find men enough to perform the

ceremony. Incidentally, he confides to us that he entered the order in

search of the long hidden secrets of "the Ancient Mysteries." No doubt

he exaggerated in the matter of numbers, though it is possible that

initiations were comparatively few at the time, the Lodges being

recruited, for the most part, by the adhesion of old Masons, both

Operative and Speculative; and among his friends he may have had some

difficulty in finding men with an adequate knowledge of the ritual.

But that there was any real difficulty in gathering together seven

Masons in London is, on the face of it, absurd. Immediately

thereafter, Stuckely records, Masonry "took a run, and ran itself out

of breath through the folly of its members," but he does not tell us

what the folly was. The "run" referred to was almost certainly due to

the acceptance by the Duke of Montagu of the Grand Mastership, which

gave the order a prestige it had never had before; and it was also in

the same year, 1721, that the old Constitutions of the Craft were

revised.

Twelve Lodges attended the June quarterly communication of the Grand

Lodge in 1721, sixteen in September, twenty in December, and by April,

1723, the number had grown to thirty. All these Lodges, be it noted,

were in London, a fact amply justifying the optimism of Anderson in

the last paragraph of the _Book of Constitutions_, issued in that

year. So far the Grand Lodge had not extended its jurisdiction beyond

London and Westminster, but the very next year, 1724, there were

already nine Lodges in the provinces acknowledging its obedience, the

first being the Lodge at the Queen's Head, City of Bath. Within a few

years Masonry extended its labors abroad, both on British and on

foreign soil. The first Lodge on foreign soil was founded by the Duke

of Wharton at Madrid, in 1728, and regularized the following year, by

which time a Lodge had been established at the East India Arms,

Bengal, and also at Gibraltar. It was not long before Lodges arose in

many lands, founded by English Masons or by men who had received

initiation in England; these Lodges, when sufficiently numerous,

uniting under Grand Lodges--the old Lodge at York, that ancient Mecca

of Masonry, had called itself a Grand Lodge as early as 1725. The

Grand Lodge of Ireland was created in 1729, those of Scotland[134] and

France in 1736; a Lodge at Hamburg in 1737,[135] though it was not

patented until 1740; the Unity Lodge at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1742,

another at Vienna the same year; the Grand Lodge of the Three

World-spheres at Berlin in 1744; and so on, until the order made its

advent in Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

Following the footsteps of Masonry from land to land is almost as

difficult as tracing its early history, owing to the secrecy in which

it enwrapped its movements. For example, in 1680 there came to South

Carolina one John Moore, a native of England, who before the close of

the century removed to Philadelphia, where, in 1703, he was Collector

of the Port. In a letter written by him in 1715, he mentions having

"spent a few evenings in festivity with my Masonic brethren."[136]

This is the first vestige of Masonry in America, unless we accept as

authentic a curious document in the early history of Rhode Island, as

follows: "This ye [day and month obliterated] 1656, Wee mett att y

House off Mordicai Campanell and after synagog gave Abram Moses the

degrees of Maconrie."[137] On June 5, 1730, the first authority for

the assembling of Free-masons in America was issued by the Duke of

Norfolk, to Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, appointing him Provincial

Grand Master of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and three

years later Henry Price, of Boston, was appointed to the same office

for New England. But Masons had evidently been coming to the New World

for years, for the two cases just cited date back of the Grand Lodge

of 1717.

How soon Coxe acted on the authority given him is not certain, but the

_Pennsylvania Gazette_, published by Benjamin Franklin, contains many

references to Masonic affairs as early as July, 1730. Just when

Franklin himself became interested in Masonry is not of record--he was

initiated in 1730-31[138]--but he was a leader, at that day, of

everything that would advance his adopted city; and the "Junto," formed

in 1725, often inaccurately called the Leathern-Apron Club, owed its

origin to him. In a Masonic item in the _Gazette_ of December 3, 1730,

he refers to "several Lodges of Free-masons" in the Province, and on

June 9, 1732, notes the organization of the Grand Lodge of

Pennsylvania, of which he was appointed a Warden, at the Sun Tavern, in

Water Street. Two years later Franklin was elected Grand Master, and

the same year published an edition of the _Book of Constitutions_--the

first Masonic book issued in America. Thus Masonry made an early

advent into the new world, in which it has labored so nobly, helping to

lay the foundations and building its own basic principles into the

organic law of the greatest of all republics.

Returning to the Grand Lodge of England, we have now to make record of

ridicule and opposition from without, and, alas, of disloyalty and

discord within the order itself. With the publication of the _Book of

Constitutions_, by Anderson, in 1723, the platform and principles of

Masonry became matters of common knowledge, and its enemies were alert

and vigilant. None are so blind as those who will not see, and not a

few, unacquainted with the spirit of Masonry, or unable to grasp its

principle of liberality and tolerance, affected to detect in its

secrecy some dark political design; and this despite the noble charge

in the _Book of Constitutions_ enjoining politics from entering the

lodge--a charge hardly less memorable than the article defining its

attitude toward differing religious creeds, and which it behooves

Masons to keep always in mind as both true and wise, especially in our

day when effort is being made to inject the religious issue into

politics:

/#[4,66]

In order to preserve peace and harmony no private piques or

quarrels must be brought within the door of the Lodge, far

less any quarrel about Religions or Nations or State-Policy,

we being only, as Masons, of the Catholic Religion above

mentioned (the religion in which all men agree); we are also

of all Nations, Tongues, Kindreds and Languages, and are

resolved against all Politics as what never yet conduced to

the welfare of the Lodge, nor ever will. This charge has

always been actively enjoined and observed; but especially

ever since the Reformation in Britain or the dissent and

secession of these Nations from the communion of Rome.

No sooner had these noble words been printed,[139] than there came to

light a secret society calling itself the "truly Ancient Noble Order

of the Gormogons," alleged to have been instituted by Chin-Quaw Ky-Po,

the first Emperor of China, many thousand years before Adam. Notice of

a meeting of the order appeared in the _Daily Post_, September 3,

1723, in which it was stated, among other high-sounding declarations,

that "no Mason will be received as a Member till he has renounced his

noble order and been properly degraded." Obviously, from this notice

and others of like kind--all hinting at the secrets of the Lodges--the

order was aping Masonry by way of parody with intent to destroy it,

if possible, by ridicule. For all that, if we may believe the

_Saturday Post_ of October following, "many eminent Freemasons" had by

that time "degraded themselves" and gone over to the Gormogons. Not

"many" perhaps, but, alas, one eminent Mason at least, none other than

a Past Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton, who, piqued at an act of the

Grand Lodge, had turned against it. Erratic of mind, unstable of

morals, having an inordinate lust for praise, and pilloried as a

"fool" by Pope in his _Moral Essays_, he betrayed his fraternity--as,

later, he turned traitor to his faith, his flag, and his native land!

Simultaneously with the announcement that many eminent Masons had

"degraded themselves"--words most fitly chosen--and gone over to the

Gormogons, there appeared a book called the _Grand Mystery of

Freemasons Discovered_, and the cat was out of the bag. Everything was

plain to the Masons, and if it had not been clear, the way in which

the writer emphasized his hatred of the Jesuits would have told it

all. It was a Jesuit[140] plot hatched in Rome to expose the secrets

of Masonry, and making use of the dissolute and degenerate Mason for

that purpose--tactics often enough used in the name of Jesus!

Curiously enough, this was further made evident by the fact that the

order ceased to exist in 1738, the year in which Clement XII published

his Bull against the Masons. Thereupon the "ancient order of

Gormogons" swallowed itself, and so disappeared--not, however, without

one last, futile effort to achieve its ends.[141] Naturally this

episode stirred the Masons deeply. It was denounced in burning words

on the floor of the Grand Lodge, which took new caution to guard its

rites from treachery and vandalism, in which respects it had not

exercised due care, admitting men to the order who were unworthy of

the honor.

There were those who thought that the power of Masonry lay in its

secrecy; some think so still, not knowing that its _real_ power lies

in the sanctity of its truth, the simplicity of its faith, the

sweetness of its spirit, and its service to mankind, and that if all

its rites were made public today it would still hold the hearts of

men.[142] Nevertheless, of alleged exposures there were many between

1724 and 1730, both anonymous and signed, and they made much ado,

especially among men who were not Masons. It will be enough to name

the most famous, as well as the most elaborate, of them all, _Masonry

Dissected_, by Samuel Prichard, which ran through three editions in

one month, October, 1730, and called out a noble _Defence of Masonry_,

written, it is thought, by Anderson, but the present writer believes

by Desaguliers. Others came later, such as _Jachin and Boaz_, the

_Three Distinct Knocks_, and so forth. They had their day and ceased

to be, having now only an antiquarian interest to those who would know

the manners and customs of a far-off time. Instead of injuring the

order, they really helped it, as such things usually do, by showing

that there must be something to expose since so many were trying to

do it. But Masonry went marching on, leaving them behind in the

rubbish of things forgotten, as it does all its back-stair spies and

heel-snapping critics.

More serious by far was the series of schisms within the order which

began in 1725, and ran on even into the next century. For the student

they make the period very complex, calculated to bewilder the

beginner; for when we read of four Grand Lodges in England, and for

some years all of them running at once, and each one claiming to be

the Grand Lodge of England, the confusion seems not a little

confounded. Also, one Grand Lodge of a very limited territory, and few

adherents, adopted the title of Grand Lodge of _all_ England, while

another which commenced in the middle of the century assumed the title

of "The Ancients," and dubbed the older and parent Grand Lodge "The

Moderns." Besides, there are traces of an unrecorded Grand body

calling itself "The Supreme Grand Lodge,"[143] as if each were trying

to make up in name what was lacking in numbers. Strict search and due

inquiry into the causes of these divisions would seem to show the

following results:

First, there was a fear, not unjustified by facts, that the ancient

democracy of the order had been infringed upon by certain acts of the

Grand Lodge of 1717--as, for example, giving to the Grand Master power

to appoint the Wardens.[144] Second, there was a tendency, due to the

influence of some clergymen active in the order, to give a

distinctively Christian tinge to Masonry, first in their

interpretations of its symbols, and later to the ritual itself. This

fact has not been enough emphasized by our historians, for it explains

much. Third, there was the further fact that Masonry in Scotland

differed from Masonry in England, in details at least, and the two did

not all at once harmonize, each being rather tenacious of its usage

and tradition. Fourth, in one instance, if no more, pride of locality

and historic memories led to independent organization. Fifth, there

was the ever-present element of personal ambition with which all human

societies, of whatever kind, must reckon at all times and places this

side of heaven. Altogether, the situation was amply conducive to

division, if not to explosion, and the wonder is that the schisms were

so few.

III

Time out of mind the ancient city of York had been a seat of the

Masonic Craft, tradition tracing it back to the days of Athelstan, in

926 A.D. Be that as it may, the Lodge minutes of York are the oldest

in the country, and the relics of the Craft now preserved in that city

entitle it to be called the Mecca of Masonry. Whether the old society

was a Private or a Grand Lodge is not plain; but in 1725 it assumed

the title of the "Grand Lodge of All England,"--feeling, it would

seem, that its inherent right by virtue of antiquity had in some way

been usurped by the Grand Lodge of London. After ten or fifteen years

the minutes cease, but the records of other grand bodies speak of it

as still working. In 1761 six of its surviving members revived the

Grand Lodge, which continued with varying success until its final

extinction in 1791, having only a few subordinate Lodges, chiefly in

Yorkshire. Never antagonistic, it chose to remain independent, and its

history is a noble tradition. York Masonry was acknowledged by all

parties to be both ancient and orthodox, and even to this day, in

England and over the seas, a certain mellow, magic charm clings to

the city which was for so long a meeting place of Masons.[145]

Far more formidable was the schism of 1753, which had its origin, as

is now thought, in a group of Irish Masons in London who were not

recognized by the premier Grand Lodge.[146] Whereupon they denounced

the Grand Lodge, averring that it had adopted "new plans" and departed

from the old landmarks, reverted, as they alleged, to the old forms,

and set themselves up as _Ancient_ Masons--bestowing upon their rivals

the odious name of _Moderns_. Later the two were further distinguished

from each other by the names of their respective Grand Masters, one

called Prince of Wales' Masons, the other the Atholl Masons.[147] The

great figure in the Atholl Grand body was Lawrence Dermott, to whose

keen pen and indefatigable industry as its secretary for more than

thirty years was due, in large measure, its success. In 1756 he

published its first book of laws, entitled _Ahiman Rezon, Or Help to a

Brother_, much of which was taken from the _Irish Constitutions_ of

1751, by Pratt, and the rest from the _Book of Constitutions_, by

Anderson--whom he did not fail to criticize with stinging satire, of

which he was a master. Among other things, the office of Deacon seems

to have had its origin with this body. Atholl Masons were presided

over by the Masters of affiliated Lodges until 1756, when Lord

Blessington, their first titled Grand Master, was induced to accept

the honor--their warrants having been left blank betimes, awaiting the

coming of a Nobleman to that office. Later the fourth Duke of Atholl

was Grand Master at the same time of Scotland and of the Atholl Grand

Lodge, the Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland being represented at

his installation in London.

Still another schism, not serious but significant, came in 1778, led

by William Preston,[148] who afterwards became a shining light in the

order. On St. John's Day, December 27, 1777, the Antiquity Lodge of

London, of which Preston was Master--one of the four original Lodges

forming the Grand Lodge--attended church in a body, to hear a sermon

by its Chaplain. They robed in the vestry, and then marched into the

church, but after the service they walked back to the Hall wearing

their Masonic clothing. Difference of opinion arose as to the

regularity of the act, Preston holding it to be valid, if for no other

reason, by virtue of the inherent right of Antiquity Lodge itself.

Three members objected to his ruling and appealed to the Grand Lodge,

he foolishly striking their names off the Lodge roll for so doing.

Eventually the Grand Lodge took the matter up, decided against

Preston, and ordered the reinstatement of the three protesting

members. At its next meeting the Antiquity Lodge voted not to comply

with the order of the Grand Lodge, and, instead, to withdraw from that

body and form an alliance with the "Old Grand Lodge of All England at

York City," as they called it. They were received by the York Grand

Lodge, and soon thereafter obtained a constitution for a "Grand Lodge

of England South of the Trent." Although much vitality was shown at

the outset, this body only constituted two subordinate Lodges, and

ceased to exist. Having failed, in 1789 Preston and his friends

recanted their folly, apologized to the Grand Lodge, reunited with the

men whom they had expelled, and were received back into the fold; and

so the matter ended.

These divisions, while they were in some ways unhappy, really made for

the good of the order in the sequel--the activity of contending Grand

Lodges, often keen, and at times bitter, promoting the spread of its

principles to which all were alike loyal, and to the enrichment of its

Ritual[149] to which each contributed. Dermott, an able executive and

audacious antagonist, had left no stone unturned to advance the

interests of Atholl Masonry, inducing its Grand Lodge to grant

warrants to army Lodges, which bore fruit in making Masons in every

part of the world where the English army went.[150] Howbeit, when

that resourceful secretary and uncompromising fighter had gone to his

long rest, a better mood began to make itself felt, and a desire to

heal the feud and unite all the Grand Lodges--the way having been

cleared, meanwhile, by the demise of the old York Grand Lodge and the

"Grand Lodge South of the Trent." Overtures to that end were made in

1802 without avail, but by 1809 committees were meeting and reporting

on the "propriety and practicability of union." Fraternal letters were

exchanged, and at last a joint committee met, canvassed all

differences, and found a way to heal the schism.[151]

Union came at length, in a great Lodge of Reconciliation held in

Freemason's Hall, London, on St. John's Day, December 27, 1813. It was

a memorable and inspiring scene as the two Grand Lodges, so long

estranged, filed into the Hall--delegates of 641 Modern and 359

Ancient or Atholl Lodges--so mixed as to be indistinguishable the one

from the other. Both Grand Masters had seats of honor in the East. The

hour was fraternal, each side willing to sacrifice prejudice in behalf

of principles held by all in common, and all equally anxious to

preserve the ancient landmarks of the Craft--a most significant fact

being that the Atholl Masons had insisted that Masonry erase such

distinctively Christian color as had crept into it, and return to its

first platform.[152] Once united, free of feud, cleansed of rancor,

and holding high its unsectarian, non-partisan flag, Masonry moved

forward to her great ministry. If we would learn the lesson of those

long dead schisms, we must be vigilant, correcting our judgments,

improving our regulations, and cultivating that spirit of Love which

is the fountain whence issue all our voluntary efforts for what is

right and true: union in essential matters, liberty in everything

unimportant and doubtful; Love always--one bond, one universal law,

one fellowship in spirit and in truth!

Remains now to give a glimpse--and, alas, only a glimpse--of the

growth and influence of Masonry in America; and a great story it is,

needing many volumes to tell it aright. As we have seen, it came early

to the shores of the New World, long before the name of our great

republic had been uttered, and with its gospel of Liberty, Equality,

and Fraternity it helped to shape the institutions of this Continent.

Down the Atlantic Coast, along the Great Lakes, into the wilderness of

the Middle West and the forests of the far South--westward it marched

as "the star of empire" led, setting up its altar on remote frontiers,

a symbol of civilization, of loyalty to law and order, of friendship

with school-house and church. If history recorded the unseen

influences which go to the making of a nation, those forces for good

which never stop, never tarry, never tire, and of which our social

order is the outward and visible sign, then might the real story of

Masonry in America be told.

Instead of a dry chronicle,[153] let us make effort to capture and

portray the spirit of Masonry in American history, if so that all may

see how this great order actually presided over the birth of the

republic, with whose growth it has had so much to do. For example, no

one need be told what patriotic memories cluster about the old Green

Dragon Tavern, in Boston, which Webster, speaking at Andover in 1823,

called "_the headquarters of the Revolution_." Even so, but it was

also a _Masonic Hall_, in the "Long Room" of which the Grand Lodge of

Massachusetts--an off-shoot of St. Andrew's Lodge--was organized on

St. John's Day, 1767, with Joseph Warren, who afterwards fell at

Bunker Hill, as Grand Master. There Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Warren,

Hancock, Otis and others met and passed resolutions, and then laid

schemes to make them come true. There the Boston Tea Party was

planned, and executed by Masons disguised as Mohawk Indians--not by

the Lodge as such, but by a club formed within the Lodge, calling

itself the _Caucus Pro Bono Publico_, of which Warren was the leading

spirit, and in which, says Elliott, "the plans of the Sons of Liberty

were matured." As Henry Purkett used to say, he was present at the

famous Tea Party as a spectator, and in disobedience to the order of

the Master of the Lodge, who was _actively_ present.[154]

As in Massachusetts, so throughout the Colonies--the Masons were

everywhere active in behalf of a nation "conceived in liberty and

dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Of the

men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the following are

known to have been members of the order: William Hooper, Benjamin

Franklin, Matthew Thornton, William Whipple, John Hancock, Philip

Livingston, Thomas Nelson; and no doubt others, if we had the Masonic

records destroyed during the war. Indeed, it has been said that, with

four men out of the room, the assembly could have been opened in form

as a Masonic Lodge, on the Third Degree. Not only Washington,[155] but

nearly all of his generals, were Masons; such at least as Greene, Lee,

Marion, Sullivan, Rufus and Israel Putnam, Edwards, Jackson, Gist,

Baron Steuben, Baron De Kalb, and the Marquis de Lafayette who was

made a Mason in one of the many military Lodges held in the

Continental Army.[156] If the history of those old camp-lodges could

be written, what a story it would tell. Not only did they initiate

such men as Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall, the immortal Chief

Justice, but they made the spirit of Masonry felt in "times that try

men's souls"[157]--a spirit passing through picket-lines, eluding

sentinels, and softening the horrors of war.

Laying aside their swords, these Masons helped to lay wide and deep

the foundations of that liberty under the law which has made this

nation, of a truth, "the last great hope of man." Nor was it an

accident, but a scene in accord with the fitness of things, that

George Washington was sworn into office as the first President of the

Republic by the Grand Master of New York, taking his oath on a Masonic

Bible. It was a parable of the whole period. If the Magna Charta

demanded rights which government can grant, Masonry from the first

asserted those inalienable rights which man derives from God the

Father of men. Never did this truth find sweeter voice than in the

tones of the old Scotch fiddle on which Robert Burns, a Master Mason,

sang, in lyric glee, of the sacredness of the soul, and the native

dignity of humanity as the only basis of society and the state. That

music went marching on, striding over continents and seas, until it

found embodiment in the Constitution and laws of this nation, where

today more than a million Masons are citizens.

How strange, then, that Masonry should have been made the victim of

the most bitter and baseless persecution, for it was nothing else, in

the annals of the Republic. Yet so it came to pass between 1826 and

1845, in connection with the Morgan[158] affair, of which so much has

been written, and so little truth told. Alas, it was an evil hour

when, as Galsworthy would say, "men just feel something big and

religious, and go blind to justice, fact, and reason." Although Lodges

everywhere repudiated and denounced the crime, if crime it was, and

the Governor of New York, himself a Mason, made every effort to detect

and punish those involved, the fanaticism would not be stayed: the

mob-mood ruled. An Anti-Masonic political party[159] was formed, fed

on frenzy, and the land was stirred from end to end. Even such a man

as John Quincy Adams, of great credulity and strong prejudice, was

drawn into the fray, and in a series of letters flayed Masonry as an

enemy of society and a free state--forgetting that Washington,

Franklin, Marshall, and Warren were members of the order!

Meanwhile--and, verily, it was a mean while--Weed, Seward, Thaddeus

Stevens, and others of their ilk, rode into power on the strength of

it, as they had planned to do, defeating Henry Clay for President,

because he was a Mason--and, incidentally, electing Andrew Jackson,

another Mason! Let it be said that, if the Masons found it hard to

keep within the Compass, they at least acted on the Square. Finally

the fury spent itself, leaving the order purged of feeble men who were

Masons only in form, and a revival of Masonry followed, slowly at

first, and then with great rapidity.

No sooner had Masonry recovered from this ordeal than the dark clouds

of Civil War covered the land like a pall--the saddest of all wars,

dividing a nation one in arts and arms and historic memories, and

leaving an entail of blood and fire and tears. Let it be forever

remembered that, while churches were severed and states were seceding,

_the Masonic order remained unbroken_ in that wild and fateful hour.

An effort was made to involve Masonry in the strife, but the wise

counsel of its leaders, North and South, prevented the mixing of

Masonry with politics; and while it could not avert the tragedy, it

did much to mitigate the woe of it--building rainbow bridges of mercy

and goodwill from army to army. Though passion may have strained, it

could not break the tie of Masonic love, which found a ministry on red

fields, among the sick, the wounded, and those in prison; and many a

man in gray planted a Sprig of Acacia on the grave of a man who wore

the blue. Some day the writer hopes to tell that story, or a part of

it, and then men will understand what Masonry is, what it means, and

what it can do to heal the hurts of humanity.[160]

Even so it has been, all through our national history, and today

Masonry is worth more for the sanctity and safety of this republic

than both its army and its navy. At every turn of events, when the

rights of man have been threatened by enemies obvious or insidious, it

has stood guard--its altar lights like signal fires along the heights

of liberty, keeping watch. Not only in our own land, but everywhere

over the broad earth, when men have thrown off the yoke of tyranny,

whether political or spiritual, and demanded the rights that belong to

manhood, they have found a friend in the Masonic order--as did Mazzini

and Garibaldi in Italy. Nor must we be less alert and vigilant today

when, free of danger of foes from without, our republic is imperiled

by the negligence of indifference, the seduction of luxury, the

machinations of politicians, and the shadow of a passion-clouded,

impatient discontent, whose end is madness and folly; lest the most

hallowed of all liberties be lost.

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought

From out the storied past, and used

Within the present, but transfused

Through future time by power of thought.

Truly, the very existence of such a great historic fellowship in the

quest and service of the Ideal is a fact eloquent beyond all words,

and to be counted among the precious assets of humanity. Forming one

vast society of free men, held together by voluntary obligations, it

covers the whole globe from Egypt to India, from Italy to England,

from America to Australia, and the isles of the sea; from London to

Sidney, from Chicago to Calcutta. In all civilized lands, and among

folk of every creed worthy of the name, Masonry is found--and

everywhere it upholds all the redeeming ideals of humanity, making all

good things better by its presence, like a stream underflowing a

meadow.[161] Also, wherever Masonry flourishes and is allowed to build

freely after its divine design, liberty, justice, education, and true

religion flourish; and where it is hindered, they suffer. Indeed, he

who would reckon the spiritual possessions of the race, and estimate

the forces that make for social beauty, national greatness, and human

welfare, must take account of the genius of Masonry and its ministry

to the higher life of the race.

Small wonder that such an order has won to its fellowship men of the

first order of intellect, men of thought and action in many lands, and

every walk and work of life: soldiers like Wellington, Bluecher, and

Garibaldi; philosophers like Krause, Fichte, and John Locke; patriots

like Washington and Mazzini; writers like Walter Scott, Voltaire,

Steele, Lessing, Tolstoi; poets like Goethe, Burns, Byron, Kipling,

Pike; musicians like Haydn and Mozart--whose opera, _The Magic Flute_,

has a Masonic motif; masters of drama like Forrest and Edwin Booth;

editors such as Bowles, Prentice, Childs, Grady; ministers of many

communions, from Bishop Potter to Robert Collyer; statesmen,

philanthropists, educators, jurists, men of science--Masons many,[162]

whose names shine like stars in the great world's crown of

intellectual and spiritual glory. What other order has ever brought

together men of such diverse type, temper, training, interest, and

achievement, uniting them at an altar of prayer in the worship of God

and the service of man?

For the rest, if by some art one could trace those invisible

influences which move to and fro like shuttles in a loom, weaving the

network of laws, reverences, sanctities which make the warp and woof

of society--giving to statutes their dignity and power, to the gospel

its opportunity, to the home its canopy of peace and beauty, to the

young an enshrinement of inspiration, and to the old a mantle of

protection; if one had such art, then he might tell the true story of

Masonry. Older than any living religion, the most widespread of all

orders of men, it toils for liberty, friendship, and righteousness;

binding men with solemn vows to the right, uniting them upon the only

basis upon which they can meet without reproach--like those fibers

running through the glaciers, along which sunbeams journey, melting

the frozen mass and sending it to the valleys below in streams of

blessing. Other fibers are there, but none is more far-ramifying, none

more tender, none more responsive to the Light than the mystical tie

of Masonic love.

Truth will triumph. Justice will yet reign from sun to sun, victorious

over cruelty and evil. Finally Love will rule the race, casting out

fear, hatred, and all unkindness, and pity will heal the old hurt and

heart-ache of humanity. There is nothing in history, dark as much of

it is, against the ultimate fulfilment of the prophetic vision of

Robert Burns--the Poet Laureate of Masonry:

Then let us pray, that come it may--

As come it will, for a' that--

. . . . . . . .

That man to man, the world o'er

Shall brothers be, for a' that.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] Operative Masonry, it should be remembered, was not entirely

dead, nor did it all at once disappear. Indeed, it still exists in some

form, and an interesting account of its forms, degrees, symbols,

usages, and traditions may be found in an article on "Operative

Masonry," by C.E. Stretton (_Transactions Leicester Lodge of Research_,

1909-10, 1911-12). The second of these volumes also contains an essay

on "Operative Free-masons," by Thomas Carr, with a list of lodges, and

a study of their history, customs, and emblems--especially the

Swastika. Speculative Masons are now said to be joining these Operative

Lodges, seeking more light on what are called the Lost Symbols of

Masonry.

[134] The Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland, it may be added, were

self-constituted, without assistance or intervention from England in

any form.

[135] A deputation of the Hamburg Lodge initiated Frederick--afterwards

Frederick the Great of Prussia--into the order of Masons at Brunswick,

August 14, 1738 (_Frederick and his Times_, by Campbell, _History of

Frederick_, by Carlyle, Findel's _History of Masonry_). Other noblemen

followed his example, and their zeal for the order gave a new date to

the history of Masonry in Germany. When Frederick ascended the throne,

in 1740, the Craft was honored, and it flourished in his kingdom. As to

the interest of Frederick in the order in his later years, the facts

are not clear, but that he remained its friend seems certain (Mackey,

_Encyclopedia_). However, the Craft underwent many vicissitudes in

Germany, a detailed account of which Findel recites (_History of

Masonry_). Few realize through what frightful persecutions Masonry has

passed in many lands, owing in part to its secrecy, but in larger part

to its principle of civil and religious liberty. Whenever that story is

told, as it surely will be, men everywhere will pay homage to the

Ancient Free and Accepted Masons as friends of mankind.

[136] This letter was the property of Horace W. Smith, Philadelphia.

John Moore was the father of William Moore, whose daughter became the

wife of Provost Smith, who was a Mason in 1775, and afterward Grand

Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and whose son was Grand

Master of Masons in Pennsylvania in 1796 and 1797 (_History of

Freemasonry_, by Hughan and Stillson).

[137] _Ibid_, chapter on "Early American Masonic History."

[138] _Benjamin Franklin as a Free Mason_, by J.F. Sachse. Oddly

enough, there is no mention of Masonry by Franklin in his

_Autobiography_, or in any of his letters, with but two exceptions, so

far as known; which is the more remarkable when we look at his Masonic

career in France during the later years of his life, where he was

actively and intimately associated with the order, even advancing to

the higher degrees. Never for a day did he abate by one jot his

interest in the order, or his love for it.

[139] This injunction was made doubly strong in the edition of the

_Book of Constitutions_, in 1738. For example: "no quarrels about

nations, families, religion or politics must by any means or under any

color or pretense whatever be brought within the door of the Lodge....

Masons being of all nations upon the square, level and plumb; and like

our predecessors in all ages, we are resolved against political

disputes," etc.

[140] Masons have sometimes been absurdly called "Protestant Jesuits,"

but the two orders are exactly opposite in spirit, principle, purpose,

and method. All that they have in common is that they are both _secret_

societies, which makes it plain that the opposition of the Latin church

to Masonry is not on the ground of its being a secret order, else why

sanction the Jesuits, to name no other? The difference has been stated

in this way: "Opposite poles these two societies are, for each

possesses precisely those qualities which the other lacks. The Jesuits

are strongly centralized, the Freemasons only confederated. Jesuits are

controlled by one man's will, Freemasons are under majority rule.

Jesuits bottom morality in expediency, Freemasons in regard for the

well-being of mankind. Jesuits recognize only one creed, Freemasons

hold in respect all honest convictions. Jesuits seek to break down

individual independence, Freemasons to build it up" (_Mysteria_, by

Otto Henne Am Rhyn).

[141] For a detailed account of the Duke of Wharton and the true

history of the Gormogons, see an essay by R.F. Gould, in his "Masonic

Celebrities" series (_A. Q. C._, viii, 144), and more recently, _The

Life and Writings of Philip, Duke of Wharton_, by Lewis Melville.

[142] Findel has a nobly eloquent passage on this point, and it tells

the everlasting truth (_History of Masonry_, p. 378). His whole

history, indeed, is exceedingly worth reading, the more so because it

was one of the first books of the right kind, and it stimulated

research.

[143] A paper entitled "An Unrecorded Grand Lodge," by Sadler (_A. Q.

C._, vol. xviii, 69-90), tells practically all that is known of this

movement, which merged with the Grand Lodge of London in 1776.

[144] Nor was that all. In 1735 it was resolved in the Grand Lodge

"that in the future all Grand Officers (except Grand Master) shall be

selected out of that body"--meaning the past Grand Stewards. This act

was amazing. Already the Craft had let go its power to elect the

Wardens, and now the choice of the Grand Master was narrowed to the

ranks of an oligarchy in its worst form--a queer outcome of Masonic

equality. Three months later the Grand Stewards presented a memorial

asking that they "might form themselves into a special lodge," with

special jewels, etc. Naturally this bred discontent and apprehension,

and justly so.

[145] Often we speak of "the York Rite," as though it were the oldest

and truest form of Masonry, but, while it serves to distinguish one

branch of Masonry from another, it is not accurate; for, strictly

speaking, there is no such thing as a York Rite. The name is more a

tribute of reverence than a description of fact.

[146] _Masonic Facts and Fictions_, by Henry Sadler.

[147] _Atholl Lodges_, by R.F. Gould.

[148] William Preston was born in Edinburgh in 1742, and came as a

journeyman printer to London in 1760, where he made himself conversant

with the history, laws, and rites of the Craft, being much in demand as

a lecturer. He was a good speaker, and frequently addressed the Lodges

of the city. After his blunder of seceding had been forgiven, he was

honored with many offices, especially the Grand Secretaryship, which

gave him time to pursue his studies. Later he wrote the _Freemason's

Callender_, an appendix to the _Book of Constitutions_, a _History of

Masonry_, and, most famous of all, _Illustrations of Masonry_, which

passed through a score of editions. Besides, he had much to do with the

development of the Ritual.

[149] The history of the Ritual is most interesting, and should be

written in more detail (_History of Masonry_, by Steinbrenner, chap.

vii, "The Ritual"). An article giving a brief story of it appeared in

the _Masonic Monthly_, of Boston, November, 1863 (reprinted in the _New

England Craftsman_, vol. vii, and still later in the _Bulletin of Iowa

Masonic Library_, vol. xv, April, 1914). This article is valuable as

showing the growth of the Ritual--as much by subtraction as by

addition--and especially the introduction into it of Christian imagery

and interpretation, first by Martin Clare in 1732, and by Duckerley and

Hutchinson later. One need only turn to _The Spirit of Masonry_, by

Hutchinson (1802), to see how far this tendency had gone when at last

checked in 1813. At that time a committee made a careful comparative

study of all rituals in use among Masons, and the ultimate result was

the Preston-Webb lectures now generally in use in this country. (See a

valuable article by Dr. Mackey on "The Lectures of Freemasonry,"

_American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry_, vol. ii, p. 297.) What a

pity that this _Review_ died of too much excellence!

[150] _Military Lodges_, by Gould; also Kipling's poem, _The Mother

Lodge_.

[151] Among the articles of union, it was agreed that Freemasonry

should consist of the three symbolic degrees, "_including the Holy

Royal Arch_." The present study does not contemplate a detailed study

of Capitular Masonry, which has its own history and historians (_Origin

of the English Rite_, Hughan), except to say that it seems to have

begun about 1738-40, the concensus of opinion differing as to whether

it began in England or on the Continent ("Royal Arch Masonry," by C.P.

Noar, _Manchester Lodge of Research_, vol. iii, 1911-12). Lawrence

Dermott, always alert, had it adopted by the Atholl Grand Lodge about

thirty years before the Grand Lodge of England took it up in 1770-76,

when Thomas Duckerley was appointed to arrange and introduce it.

Dermott held it to be "the very essence of Masonry," and he was not

slow in using it as a club with which to belabor the Moderns; but he

did not originate it, as some imagine, having received the degrees

before he came to London, perhaps in an unsystemized form. Duckerley

was accused of shifting the original Grand Masonic word from the Third

Degree to the Royal Arch, and of substituting another in its stead.

Enough to say that Royal Arch Masonry is authentic Masonry, being a

further elaboration in drama, following the Third Degree, of the spirit

and motif of old Craft Masonry (_History of Freemasonry and Concordant

Orders_, by Hughan and Stillson).

[152] It is interesting to note that the writer of the article on

"Masonry" in the Catholic _Encyclopedia_--an article admirable in many

ways, and for the most part fair--makes much of this point, and rightly

so, albeit his interpretation of it is altogether wrong. He imagines

that the objection to Christian imagery in the ritual was due to enmity

to Christianity. Not so. Masonry was not then, and has never at any

time been, opposed to Christianity, or to any other religion. Far from

it. But Christianity in those days--as, alas, too often now--was

another name for a petty and bigoted sectarianism; and Masonry by its

very genius was, and is, _unsectarian_. Many Masons then were devout

Christians, as they are now--not a few clergymen--but the order itself

is open to men of all faiths, Catholic and Protestant, Hebrew and

Hindu, who confess faith in God; and so it will always remain if it is

true to its principles and history.

[153] As for the chronicle, the one indispensable book to the student

of American Masonry is the _History of Freemasonry and Concordant

Orders_, by W.J. Hughan and H.L. Stillson, aided by one of the ablest

board of contributors ever assembled. It includes a history of Masonry

in all its Rites in North, Central, and South America, with accurate

accounts of the origin and growth of every Grand Lodge in the United

States and British America; also admirable chapters on Early American

Masonic History, the Morgan Excitement, Masonic Jurisprudence, and

statistics up to date of 1891--all carefully prepared and well written.

Among other books too many to name, there are the _History of Symbolic

Masonry in the United States_, by J.H. Drummond, and "The American

Addenda" to Gould's massive and magnificent _History of Masonry_, vol.

iv. What the present pages seek is the spirit behind this forest of

facts.

[154] For the full story, see "Reminiscences of the Green Dragon

Tavern," in _Centennial Memorial of St. Andrew's Lodge, 1870_.

[155] _Washington, the Man and the Mason_, by C.H. Callahan. Jackson,

Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft,

all were Masons. A long list may be found in _Cyclopedia of

Fraternities_, by Stevens, article on "Freemasonry: Distinguished

Americans."

[156] _Washington and his Masonic Compeers_, by Randolph Hayden.

[157] Thomas Paine, whose words these are, though not a Mason, has left

us an essay on _The Origin of Freemasonry_. Few men have ever been more

unjustly and cruelly maligned than this great patriot, who was the

first to utter the name "United States," and who, instead of being a

sceptic, believed in "the religion in which all men agree"--that is, in

God, Duty, and the immortality of the soul.

[158] William Morgan was a dissolute, nondescript printer in Batavia,

New York, who, having failed in everything else, thought to make money

by betraying the secrets of an order which his presence polluted.

Foolishly misled, a few Masons had him arrested on a petty charge, got

him out of the country, and apparently paid him to stay out. Had no

attention been paid to his alleged exposure it would have fallen

still-born from the press, like many another before it. Rumors of

abduction started, then Morgan was said to have been thrown into

Niagara River, whereas there is no proof that he was ever killed, much

less murdered by Masons. Thurlow Weed and a pack of unscrupulous

politicians took it up, and the rest was easy. One year later a body

was found on the shore of Lake Ontario which Weed and the wife of

Morgan identified--a _year afterward!_--she, no doubt, having been paid

to do so; albeit the wife of a fisherman named Munroe identified the

same body as that of her husband drowned a week or so before. No

matter; as Weed said, "_It's good enough Morgan until after the

election_"--a characteristic remark, if we may judge by his own

portrait as drawn in his _Autobiography_. Politically, he was capable

of anything, if he could make it win, and here he saw a chance of

stirring up every vile and slimy thing in human nature for sake of

office. (See a splendid review of the whole matter in _History of

Masonry_, by Hughan and Stillson, also by Gould in vol. iv of his

_History_.)

[159] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens, article,

"Anti-Masonry," gives detailed account with many interesting facts.

[160] Following the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, there was a

Lodge meeting in town, and "Yanks" and "Johnny Rebs" met and mingled as

friends, under the Square and Compass. Where else could they have done

so? (_Tennessee Mason_). When the Union army attacked Little Rock,

Ark., the commanding officer, Thomas H. Benton--Grand Master of the

Grand Lodge of Iowa--threw a guard about the home of General Albert

Pike, _to protect his Masonic library_. Marching through burning

Richmond, a Union officer saw the familiar emblems over a hall. He put

a guard about the Lodge room, and that night, together with a number of

Confederate Masons, organized a society for the relief of widows and

orphans left destitute by the war (_Washington, the Man and the Mason_,

Callahan). But for the kindness of a brother Mason, who saved the life

of a young soldier of the South, who was a prisoner of war at Rock

Island, Ill., the present writer would never have been born, much less

have written this book. That young soldier was my father! Volumes of

such facts might be gathered in proof of the gracious ministry of

Masonry in those awful years.

[161] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens (last edition), article,

"Free Masonry," pictures the extent of the order, with maps and

diagrams showing its world-wide influence.

[162] Space does not permit a survey of the literature of Masonry,

still less of Masonry in literature. (Findel has two fine chapters on

the literature of the order, but he wrote, in 1865, _History of

Masonry_.) For traces of Masonry in literature, there is the famous

chapter in _War and Peace_, by Tolstoi; _Mon Oncle Sosthenes_, by

Maupassant; _Nathan the Wise_, and _Ernest and Falk_, by Lessing; the

Masonic poems of Goethe, and many hints in _Wilhelm Meister_; the

writings of Herder (_Classic Period of German Letters_, Findel), _The

Lost Word_, by Henry Van Dyke; and, of course, the poetry of Burns.

Masonic phrases and allusions--often almost too revealing--are found

all through the poems and stories of Kipling. Besides the poem _The

Mother Lodge_, so much admired, there is _The Widow of Windsor_, such

stories as _With the Main Guard_, _The Winged Hats_, _Hal o' the

Draft_, _The City Walls_, _On the Great Wall_, many examples in _Kim_,

also in _Traffics and Discoveries_, _Puck of Pook's Hill_, and, by no

means least, _The Man Who Would be King_, one of the great short

stories of the world.

Part III--Interpretation

WHAT IS MASONRY

_I am afraid you may not consider it an altogether substantial

concern. It has to be seen in a certain way, under certain

conditions. Some people never see it at all. You must understand,

this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a_

LIVING _thing._

_When you enter it you hear a sound--a sound as of some mighty

poem chanted. Listen long enough, and you will learn that it is

made up of the beating of human hearts, of the nameless music of

men's souls--that is, if you have ears to hear. If you have eyes,

you will presently see the church itself--a looming mystery of

many shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor to dome. The

work of no ordinary builder!_

_The pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes; the

sweet flesh of men and women is molded about its bulwarks, strong,

impregnable; the faces of little children laugh out from every

corner stone; the terrible spans and arches of it are the joined

hands of comrades; and up in the heights and spaces are inscribed

the numberless musings of all the dreamers of the world. It is yet

building--building and built upon._

_Sometimes the work goes on in deep darkness; sometimes in

blinding light; now under the burden of unutterable anguish; now

to the tune of great laughter and heroic shoutings like the cry of

thunder. Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear

the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome--the

comrades that have climbed ahead._

--C.R. KENNEDY, _The Servant in the House_

CHAPTER I

_What is Masonry_

What, then, is Masonry, and what is it trying to do in the world?

According to one of the _Old Charges_, Masonry is declared to be an

"ancient and honorable institution: ancient no doubt it is, as having

subsisted from time immemorial; and honorable it must be acknowledged

to be, as by natural tendency it conduces to make those so who are

obedient to its precepts. To so high an eminence has its credit been

advanced that in every age Monarchs themselves have been promoters of

the art, have not thought it derogatory from their dignity to exchange

the scepter for the trowel, have patronized our mysteries and joined

in our Assemblies."

While that eulogy is more than justified by sober facts, it does not

tell us what Masonry is, much less its mission and ministry to

mankind. If now we turn to the old, oft-quoted definition, we learn

that Masonry is "a system of morality veiled in allegory and

illustrated by symbols." That is, in so far, true enough, but it is

obviously inadequate, the more so when it uses the word "peculiar" as

describing the morality of Masonry; and it gives no hint of a

world-encircling fellowship and its far-ramifying influence. Another

definition has it that Masonry is "a science which is engaged in the

search after divine truth;"[163] but that is vague, indefinite, and

unsatisfactory, lacking any sense of the uniqueness of the Order, and

as applicable to one science as to another. For surely all science, of

whatever kind, is a search after divine truth, and a physical fact, as

Agassiz said, is as sacred as a moral truth--every fact being the

presence of God.

Still another writer defines Masonry as "Friendship, Love, and

Integrity--Friendship which rises superior to the fictitious

distinctions of society, the prejudices of religion, and the pecuniary

conditions of life; Love which knows no limit, nor inequality, nor

decay; Integrity which binds man to the eternal law of duty."[164]

Such is indeed the very essence and spirit of Masonry, but Masonry has

no monopoly of that spirit, and its uniqueness consists, rather, in

the form in which it seeks to embody and express the gracious and

benign spirit which is the genius of all the higher life of humanity.

Masonry is not everything; it is a thing as distinctly featured as a

statue by Phidias or a painting by Angelo. Definitions, like delays,

may be dangerous, but perhaps we can do no better than to adopt the

words of the German _Handbuch_[165] as the best description of it so

far given:

/#[4,66]

_Masonry is the activity of closely united men who, employing

symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade

and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind,

striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and

thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which

they aspire to exhibit even now on a small scale._

Civilization could hardly begin until man had learned to fashion for

himself a settled habitation, and thus the earliest of all human arts

and crafts, and perhaps also the noblest, is that of the builder.

Religion took outward shape when men first reared an altar for their

offerings, and surrounded it with a sanctuary of faith and awe, of

pity and consolation, and piled a cairn to mark the graves where their

dead lay asleep. History is no older than architecture. How fitting,

then, that the idea and art of building should be made the basis of a

great order of men which has no other aim than the upbuilding of

humanity in Faith, Freedom, and Friendship. Seeking to ennoble and

beautify life, it finds in the common task and constant labor of man

its sense of human unity, its vision of life as a temple "building and

built upon," and its emblems of those truths which make for purity of

character and the stability of society. Thus Masonry labors, linked

with the constructive genius of mankind, and so long as it remains

true to its Ideal no weapon formed against it can prosper.

One of the most impressive and touching things in human history is

that certain ideal interests have been set apart as especially

venerated among all peoples. Guilds have arisen to cultivate the

interests embodied in art, science, philosophy, fraternity, and

religion; to conserve the precious, hard-won inheritances of humanity;

to train men in their service; to bring their power to bear upon the

common life of mortals, and send through that common life the light

and glory of the Ideal--as the sun shoots its transfiguring rays

through a great dull cloud, evoking beauty from the brown earth. Such

is Masonry, which unites all these high interests and brings to their

service a vast, world-wide fraternity of free and devout men, built

upon a foundation of spiritual faith and moral idealism, whose

mission it is to make men friends, to refine and exalt their lives, to

deepen their faith and purify their dream, to turn them from the

semblance of life to homage for truth, beauty, righteousness, and

character. More than an institution, more than a tradition, more than

a society, Masonry is one of the forms of the Divine Life upon earth.

No one may ever hope to define a spirit so gracious, an order so

benign, an influence so prophetic of the present and future upbuilding

of the race.

There is a common notion that Masonry is a secret society, and this

idea is based on the secret rites used in its initiations, and the

signs and grips by which its members recognize each other. Thus it has

come to pass that the main aims of the Order are assumed to be a

secret policy or teaching,[166] whereas _its one great secret is that

it has no secret_. Its principles are published abroad in its

writings; its purposes and laws are known, and the times and places of

its meetings. Having come down from dark days of persecution, when all

the finer things sought the protection of seclusion, if it still

adheres to secret rites, it is not in order to hide the truth, but the

better to teach it more impressively, to train men in its pure

service, and to promote union and amity upon earth. Its signs and

grips serve as a kind of universal language, and still more as a

gracious cover for the practice of sweet charity--making it easier to

help a fellow man in dire plight without hurting his self-respect. If

a few are attracted to it by curiosity, all remain to pray, finding

themselves members of a great historic fellowship of the seekers and

finders of God.[167] It is old because it is true; had it been false

it would have perished long ago. When all men practice its simple

precepts, the innocent secrets of Masonry will be laid bare, its

mission accomplished, and its labor done.

Recalling the emphasis of the foregoing pages, it need hardly be added

that Masonry is in no sense a political party, still less a society

organized for social agitation. Indeed, because Masonry stands apart

from partisan feud and particular plans of social reform, she has been

held up to ridicule equally by the unthinking, the ambitious, and the

impatient. Her critics on this side are of two kinds. There are those

who hold that the humanitarian ideal is an error, maintaining that

human nature has no moral aptitude, and can be saved only by

submission to a definite system of dogma. Then there are those who

look for salvation solely in political action and social agitation,

who live in the delusion that man can be made better by passing laws

and counting votes, and to whom Masonry has nothing to offer because

in its ranks it permits no politics, much less party rancor. Advocates

of the first view have fought Masonry from the beginning with the

sharpest weapons, while those who hold the second view regard it with

contempt, as a thing useless and not worth fighting.[168]

Neither adversary understands Masonry and its cult of the creative

love for humanity, and of each man for his fellow, without which no

dogma is of any worth; lacking which, the best laid plans of social

seers "gang aft aglee." Let us look at things as they are. That we

must press forward towards righteousness--that we must hunger and

thirst after a social life that is true and pure, just and

merciful--all will agree; but they are blind who do not see that the

way is long and the process slow. What is it that so tragically delays

the march of man toward the better and wiser social order whereof our

prophets dream? Our age, like the ages gone before, is full of schemes

of every kind for the reform and betterment of mankind. Why do they

not succeed? Some fail, perhaps, because they are imprudent and

ill-considered, in that they expect too much of human nature and do

not take into account the stubborn facts of life. But why does not the

wisest and noblest plan do more than half what its advocates hope and

pray and labor so heroically to bring about? Because there are not

enough men fine enough of soul, large enough of sympathy, sweet enough

of spirit, and noble enough of nature to make the dream come true!

There are no valid arguments against a great-spirited social justice

but this--that men will not. Indolence, impurity, greed, injustice,

meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all

jealousy--these are the real obstacles that thwart the nobler social

aspiration of humanity. There are too many men like _The

Master-Builder_ who tried to build higher than any one else, without

regard to others, all for his own selfish glory. Ibsen has shown us

how _The Pillars of Society_, resting on rotten foundations, came

crashing down, wounding the innocent in their wreck. Long ago it was

said that "through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding it

is established; and by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with

pleasant and precious riches."[169] Time has shown that the House of

Wisdom must be founded upon righteousness, justice, purity, character,

faith in God and love of man, else it will fall when the floods

descend and the winds beat upon it. What we need to make our social

dreams come true is not more laws, not more dogmas, not less liberty,

but better men, cleaner minded, more faithful, with loftier ideals and

more heroic integrity; men who love the right, honor the truth,

worship purity, and prize liberty--upright men who meet all

horizontals at a perfect angle, assuring the virtue and stability of

the social order.

Therefore, when Masonry, instead of identifying itself with particular

schemes of reform, and thus becoming involved in endless turmoil and

dispute, estranging men whom she seeks to bless, devotes all her

benign energy and influence to _ennobling the souls of men_, she is

doing fundamental work in behalf of all high enterprises. By as much

as she succeeds, every noble cause succeeds; by as much as she fails,

everything fails! By its ministry to the individual man--drawing him

into the circle of a great friendship, exalting his faith, refining

his ideals, enlarging his sympathies, and setting his feet in the long

white path--Masonry best serves society and the state.[170] While it

is not a reformatory, it is a center of moral and spiritual power, and

its power is used, not only to protect the widow and orphan, but also,

and still more important, to remove the cause of their woe and need by

making men just, gentle, and generous to all their fellow mortals. Who

can measure such a silent, persistent, unresting labor; who can

describe its worth in a world of feud, of bitterness, of sorrow!

No one needs to be told that we are on the eve, if not in the midst,

of a most stupendous and bewildering revolution of social and

industrial life. It shakes England today. It makes France tremble

tomorrow. It alarms America next week. Men want shorter hours, higher

wages, and better homes--of course they do--but they need, more than

these things, to know and love each other; for the questions in

dispute can never be settled in an air of hostility. If they are ever

settled at all, and settled right, it must be in an atmosphere of

mutual recognition and respect, such as Masonry seeks to create and

make prevail. Whether it be a conflict of nations, or a clash of class

with class, appeal must be made to intelligence and the moral sense,

as befits the dignity of man. Amidst bitterness and strife Masonry

brings men of every rank and walk of life together as men, and nothing

else, at an altar where they can talk and not fight, discuss and not

dispute, and each may learn the point of view of his fellow. Other

hope there is none save in this spirit of friendship and fairness, of

democracy and the fellowship of man with man. Once this spirit has its

way with mankind, it will bring those brave, large reconstructions,

those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that

will yet turn human life into a glad, beautiful, and triumphant

cooeperation all round this sunlit world.

Surely the way of Masonry is wise. Instead of becoming only one more

factor in a world of factional feud, it seeks to remove all hostility

which may arise from social, national, or religious differences. It

helps to heal the haughtiness of the rich and the envy of the poor,

and tends to establish peace on earth by allaying all fanaticism and

hatred on account of varieties of language, race, creed, and even

color, while striving to make the wisdom of the past available for the

culture of men in faith and purity. Not a party, not a sect, not a

cult, it is a great order of men selected, initiated, sworn, and

trained to make sweet reason and the will of God prevail! Against the

ancient enmities and inhumanities of the world it wages eternal war,

without vengeance, without violence, but by softening the hearts of

men and inducing a better spirit. Apparitions of a day, here for an

hour and tomorrow gone, what is our puny warfare against evil and

ignorance compared with the warfare which this venerable Order has

been waging against them for ages, and will continue to wage after we

have fallen into dust!

III

Masonry, as it is much more than a political party or a social cult,

is also more than a church--unless we use the word church as Ruskin

used it when he said: "There is a true church wherever one hand meets

another helpfully, the only holy or mother church that ever was or

ever shall be!" It is true that Masonry is not _a_ religion, but it is

Religion, a worship in which all good men may unite, that each may

share the faith of all. Often it has been objected that some men leave

the Church and enter the Masonic Lodge, finding there a religious

home. Even so, but that may be the fault, not of Masonry, but of the

Church so long defamed by bigotry and distracted by sectarian feud,

and which has too often made acceptance of abstract dogmas a test of

its fellowship.[171] Naturally many fine minds have been estranged

from the Church, not because they were irreligious, but because they

were required to believe what it was impossible for them to believe;

and, rather than sacrifice their integrity of soul, they have turned

away from the last place from which a man should ever turn away. No

part of the ministry of Masonry is more beautiful and wise than its

appeal, not for tolerance, but for fraternity; not for uniformity, but

for unity of spirit amidst varieties of outlook and opinion. Instead

of criticizing Masonry, let us thank God for one altar where no man is

asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an

indistinguishable atom in a mass of sectarian agglomeration. What a

witness to the worth of an Order that it brings together men of all

creeds in behalf of those truths which are greater than all sects,

deeper than all doctrines--the glory and the hope of man!

While Masonry is not a church, it has religiously preserved some

things of highest importance to the Church--among them the right of

each individual soul to its own religious faith. Holding aloof from

separate sects and creeds, it has taught all of them how to respect

and tolerate each other; asserting a principle broader than any of

them--the sanctity of the soul and the duty of every man to revere, or

at least to regard with charity, what is sacred to his fellows. It is

like the crypts underneath the old cathedrals--a place where men of

every creed who long for something deeper and truer, older and newer

than they have hitherto known, meet and unite. Having put away

childish things, they find themselves made one by a profound and

childlike faith, each bringing down into that quiet crypt his own

pearl of great price--

/#[4,66]

The Hindu his innate disbelief in this world, and his

unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist his

perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his

gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his

sobriety; the Jew his clinging, through good and evil days,

to the one God who loveth righteousness, and whose name is "I

AM;" the Christian, that which is better than all, if those

who doubt it would try it--our love of God, call Him what you

will, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living,

our love of the dead, our living and undying love. Who knows

but that the crypt of the past may become the church of the

future?[172]

Of no one age, Masonry belongs to all ages; of no one religion, it

finds great truths in all religions. Indeed, it holds that truth which

is common to all elevating and benign religions, and is the basis of

each; that faith which underlies all sects and over-arches all creeds,

like the sky above and the river bed below the flow of mortal years.

It does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to settle those

questions or solve those dark mysteries which out-top human knowledge.

Beyond the facts of faith it does not go. With the subtleties of

speculation concerning those truths, and the unworldly envies growing

out of them, it has not to do. There divisions begin, and Masonry was

not made to divide men, but to unite them, leaving each man free to

think his own thought and fashion his own system of ultimate truth.

All its emphasis rests upon two extremely simple and profound

principles--love of God and love of man. Therefore, all through the

ages it has been, and is today, a meeting place of differing minds,

and a prophecy of the final union of all reverent and devout souls.

Time was when one man framed a dogma and declared it to be the eternal

truth. Another man did the same thing, with a different dogma; then

the two began to hate each other with an unholy hatred, each seeking

to impose his dogma upon the other--and that is an epitome of some of

the blackest pages of history. Against those old sectarians who

substituted intolerance for charity, persecution for friendship, and

did not love God because they hated their neighbors, Masonry made

eloquent protest, putting their bigotry to shame by its simple

insight, and the dignity of its golden voice. A vast change of heart

is now taking place in the religious world, by reason of an exchange

of thought and courtesy, and a closer personal touch, and the various

sects, so long estranged, are learning to unite upon the things most

worth while and the least open to debate. That is to say, they are

moving toward the Masonic position, and when they arrive Masonry will

witness a scene which she has prophesied for ages.

At last, in the not distant future, the old feuds of the sects will

come to an end, forgotten in the discovery that the just, the brave,

the true-hearted are everywhere of one religion, and that when the

masks of misunderstanding are taken off they know and love one

another. Our little dogmas will have their day and cease to be, lost

in the vision of a truth so great that all men are one in their

littleness; one also in their assurance of the divinity of the soul

and "the kindness of the veiled Father of men." Then men of every name

will ask, when they meet:

Not what is your creed?

But what is your need?

High above all dogmas that divide, all bigotries that blind, all

bitterness that beclouds, will be written the simple words of the one

eternal religion--the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the

moral law, the golden rule, and the hope of a life everlasting!

FOOTNOTES:

[163] _Symbolism of Freemasonry_, by Dr. Mackey.

[164] _History and Philosophy of Masonry_, by A.C.L. Arnold, chap. xvi.

To say of any man--of Socrates, for example--who had the spirit of

Friendship and Integrity, that he was a Mason, is in a sense true, but

it is misleading. Nevertheless, if a man have not that spirit, he is

not a Mason, though he may have received the thirty-third degree.

[165] Vol. i, p. 320. The _Handbuch_ is an encyclopedia of Masonry,

published in 1900. See admirable review of it, _A. Q. C._, xi, 64.

[166] Much has been written about the secrecy of Masonry. Hutchinson,

in his lecture on "The Secrecy of Masons," lays all the stress upon its

privacy as a shelter for the gentle ministry of Charity (_Spirit of

Masonry_, lecture x). Arnold is more satisfactory in his essay on "The

Philosophy of Mystery," quoting the words of Carlyle in _Sartor

Resartus_: "Bees will not work except in darkness; thoughts will not

work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy"

(_History and Philosophy of Masonry_, chap. xxi). But neither writer

seems to realize the psychology and pedagogy of secrecy--the value of

curiosity, of wonder and expectation, in the teaching of great truths

deemed commonplace because old. Even in that atmosphere, the real

secret of Masonry remains hidden to many--as sunlight hides the depths

of heaven.

[167] Read the noble chapter on "Prayer as a Masonic Obligation," in

_Practical Masonic Lectures_, by Samuel Lawrence (lecture x).

[168] Read a thoughtful "Exposition of Freemasonry," by Dr. Paul Carus,

_Open Court_, May, 1913.

[169] Proverbs 24:3, 4.

[170] While Masonry abjures political questions and disputes in its

Lodges, it is all the while training good citizens, and through the

quality of its men it influences public life--as Washington, Franklin,

and Marshall carried the spirit of Masonry into the organic law of this

republic. It is not politics that corrupts character; it is bad

character that corrupts politics--and by building men up to spiritual

faith and character, Masonry is helping to build up a state that will

endure the shocks of time; a nobler structure than ever was wrought of

mortar and marble (_The Principles of Freemasonry in the Life of

Nations_, by Findel).

[171] Not a little confusion has existed, and still exists, in regard

to the relation of Masonry to religion. Dr. Mackey said that old

Craft-masonry was sectarian (_Symbolism of Masonry_); but it was not

more so than Dr. Mackey himself, who held the curious theory that the

religion of the Hebrews was genuine and that of the Egyptians spurious.

Nor is there any evidence that Craft-masonry was sectarian, but much to

the contrary, as has been shown in reference to the invocations in the

_Old Charges_. At any rate, if it was ever sectarian, it ceased to be

so with the organization of the Grand Lodge of England. Later, some of

the chaplains of the order sought to identify Masonry with

Christianity, as Hutchinson did--and even Arnold in his chapter on

"Christianity and Freemasonry" (_History and Philosophy of Masonry_).

All this confusion results from a misunderstanding of what religion is.

Religions are many; religion is one--perhaps we may say one thing, but

that one thing includes everything--the life of God in the soul of man,

which finds expression in all the forms which life and love and duty

take. This conception of religion shakes the poison out of all our wild

flowers, and shows us that it is the inspiration of all scientific

inquiry, all striving for liberty, all virtue and charity; the spirit

of all thought, the motif of all great music, the soul of all sublime

literature. The church has no monopoly of religion, nor did the Bible

create it. Instead, it was religion--the natural and simple trust of

the soul in a Power above and within it, and its quest of a right

relation to that Power--that created the Bible and the Church, and,

indeed, all our higher human life. The soul of man is greater than all

books, deeper than all dogmas, and more enduring than all institutions.

Masonry seeks to free men from a limiting conception of religion, and

thus to remove one of the chief causes of sectarianism. It is itself

one of the forms of beauty wrought by the human soul under the

inspiration of the Eternal Beauty, and as such is religious.

[172] _Chips from a German Workshop_, by Max Mueller.

THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY

_Masonry directs us to divest ourselves of confined and bigoted

notions, and teaches us, that Humanity is the soul of Religion. We

never suffer any religious disputes in our Lodges, and, as Masons,

we only pursue the universal religion, the Religion of Nature.

Worshipers of the God of Mercy, we believe that in every nation,

he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.

All Masons, therefore, whether Christians, Jews, or Mahomedans,

who violate not the rule of right, written by the Almighty upon

the tables of the heart, who_ DO _fear Him, and_ WORK

_righteousness, we are to acknowledge as brethren; and, though we

take different roads, we are not to be angry with, or persecute

each other on that account. We mean to travel to the same place;

we know that the end of our journey is the same; and we

affectionately hope to meet in the Lodge of perfect happiness. How

lovely is an institution fraught with sentiments like these! How

agreeable must it be to Him who is seated on a throne of

Everlasting Mercy, to the God who is no respecter of persons!_

--WM. HUTCHINSON, _The Spirit of Masonry_

CHAPTER II

_The Masonic Philosophy_

"Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?"[173] was the question of

Touchstone in the Shakespeare play; and that is the question we must

always ask ourselves. Long ago Kant said that it is the mission of

philosophy, not to discover truth, but to set it in order, to seek out

the rhythm of things and their reason for being. Beginning in wonder,

it sees the familiar as if it were strange, and its mind is full of

the air that plays round every subject. Spacious, humane, eloquent, it

is "a blend of science, poetry, religion and logic"[174]--a

softening, enlarging, ennobling influence, giving us a wider and

clearer outlook, more air, more room, more light, and more background.

When we look at Masonry in this large and mellow light, it is like a

stately old cathedral, gray with age, rich in associations, its steps

worn by innumerable feet of the living and the dead--not piteous, but

strong and enduring. Entering its doors, we wonder at its lofty

spaces, its windows with the dimness and glory of the Infinite behind

them, the spring of its pillars, the leap of its arches, and its roof

inlaid with stars. Inevitably we ask, whence came this temple of faith

and friendship, and what does it mean--rising lightly as a lyric,

uplifted by the hunger for truth and the love for beauty, and exempt

from the shock of years and the ravages of decay? What faith builded

this home of the soul, what philosophy underlies and upholds it? Truly

did Longfellow sing of _The Builders_:

In the elder years of art,

Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and hidden part,

For the gods see everywhere.

If we examine the foundations of Masonry, we find that it rests upon

the most fundamental of all truths, the first truth and the last, the

sovereign and supreme Reality. Upon the threshold of its Lodges every

man, whether prince or peasant, is asked to confess his faith in God

the Father Almighty, the Architect and Master-Builder of the

Universe.[175] That is not a mere form of words, but the deepest and

most solemn affirmation that human lips can make. To be indifferent

to God is to be indifferent to the greatest of all realities, that

upon which the aspiration of humanity rests for its uprising passion

of desire. No institution that is dumb concerning the meaning of life

and the character of the universe, can last. It is a house built upon

the sand, doomed to fall when the winds blow and floods beat upon it,

lacking a sure foundation. No human fraternity that has not its

inspiration in the Fatherhood of God, confessed or unconfessed, can

long endure; it is a rope of sand, weak as water, and its fine

sentiment quickly evaporates. Life leads, if we follow its meanings

and think in the drift of its deeper conclusions, to one God as the

ground of the world, and upon that ground Masonry lays her

corner-stone. Therefore, it endures and grows, and the gates of hell

cannot prevail against it!

While Masonry is theocratic in its faith and philosophy,[176] it does

not limit its conception of the Divine, much less insist upon any one

name for "the Nameless One of a hundred names." Indeed, no feature of

Masonry is more fascinating than its age-long quest of the Lost

Word,[177] the Ineffable Name; a quest that never tires, never

tarries, knowing the while that every name is inadequate, and all

words are but symbols of a Truth too great for words--every letter of

the alphabet, in fact, having been evolved from some primeval sign or

signal of the faith and hope of humanity. Thus Masonry, so far from

limiting the thought of God, is evermore in search of a more

satisfying and revealing vision of the meaning of the universe, now

luminous and lovely, now dark and terrible; and it invites all men to

unite in the quest--

One in the freedom of the Truth,

One in the joy of paths untrod,

One in the soul's perennial Youth,

One in the larger thought of God.

Truly the human consciousness of fellowship with the Eternal, under

whatever name, may well hush all words, still more hush argument and

anathema. Possession, not recognition, is the only thing important;

and if it is not recognized, the fault must surely be, in large part,

our own. Given the one great experience, and before long kindred

spirits will join in the _Universal Prayer_ of Alexander Pope, himself

a Mason:

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime adored,

By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

With eloquent unanimity our Masonic thinkers proclaim the unity and

love of God--whence their vision of the ultimate unity and love of

mankind--to be the great truth of the Masonic philosophy; the unity of

God and the immortality of the soul.[178] Amidst polytheisms,

dualisms, and endless confusions, they hold it to have been the great

mission of Masonry to preserve these precious truths, beside which, in

the long result of thought and faith, all else fades and grows dim. Of

this there is no doubt; and science has come at last to vindicate this

wise insight, by unveiling the unity of the universe with overwhelming

emphasis. Unquestionably the universe is an inexhaustible wonder.

Still, it is a wonder, not a contradiction, and we can never find its

rhythm save in the truth of the unity of all things in God. Other

clue there is none. Down to this deep foundation Masonry digs for a

basis of its temple, and builds securely. If this be false or

unstable, then is

The pillar'd firmament rottenness,

And earth's base built on stubble.

Upon the altar of Masonry lies the open Bible which, despite the

changes and advances of the ages, remains the greatest Modern

Book--the moral manual of civilization.[179] All through its pages,

through the smoke of Sinai, through "the forest of the Psalms,"

through proverbs and parables, along the dreamy ways of prophecy, in

gospels and epistles is heard the everlasting truth of one God who is

love, and who requires of men that they love one another, do justly,

be merciful, keep themselves unspotted by evil, and walk humbly before

Him in whose great hand they stand. There we read of the Man of

Galilee who taught that, in the far distances of the divine

Fatherhood, all men were conceived in love, and so are akin--united in

origin, duty, and destiny. Therefore we are to relieve the distressed,

put the wanderer into his way, and divide our bread with the hungry,

which is but the way of doing good to ourselves; for we are all

members of one great family, and the hurt of one means the injury of

all.

This profound and reverent faith from which, as from a never-failing

spring, flow heroic devotedness, moral self-respect, authentic

sentiments of fraternity, inflexible fidelity in life and effectual

consolation in death, Masonry has at all times religiously taught.

Perseveringly it has propagated it through the centuries, and never

more zealously than in our age. Scarcely a Masonic discourse is

pronounced, or a Masonic lesson read, by the highest officer or the

humblest lecturer, that does not earnestly teach this one true

religion which is the very soul of Masonry, its basis and apex, its

light and power. Upon that faith it rests; in that faith it lives and

labors; and by that faith it will conquer at last, when the noises and

confusions of today have followed the tangled feet that made them.

Out of this simple faith grows, by inevitable logic, the philosophy

which Masonry teaches in signs and symbols, in pictures and parables.

Stated briefly, stated vividly, it is that behind the pageant of

nature, in it and over it, there is a Supreme Mind which initiates,

impels, and controls all. That behind the life of man and its pathetic

story in history, in it and over it, there is a righteous Will, the

intelligent Conscience of the Most High. In short, that the first and

last thing in the universe is mind, that the highest and deepest thing

is conscience, and that the final reality is the absoluteness of love.

Higher than that faith cannot fly; deeper than that thought cannot

dig.

No deep is deep enough to show

The springs whence being starts to flow.

No fastness of the soul reveals

Life's subtlest impulse and appeals.

We seem to come, we seem to go;

But whence or whither who can know?

Unemptiable, unfillable,

It's all in that one syllable--

God! Only God. God first, God last.

God, infinitesimally vast;

God who is love, love which is God,

The rootless, everflowering rod!

There is but one real alternative to this philosophy. It is not

atheism--which is seldom more than a revulsion from

superstition--because the adherents of absolute atheism are so few, if

any, and its intellectual position is too precarious ever to be a

menace. An atheist, if such there be, is an orphan, a waif wandering

the midnight streets of time, homeless and alone. Nor is the

alternative agnosticism, which in the nature of things can be only a

passing mood of thought, when, indeed, it is not a confession of

intellectual bankruptcy, or a labor-saving device to escape the toil

and fatigue of high thinking. It trembles in perpetual hesitation, like

a donkey equi-distant between two bundles of hay, starving to death but

unable to make up its mind. No; the real alternative is materialism,

which played so large a part in philosophy fifty years ago, and which,

defeated there, has betaken itself to the field of practical affairs.

This is the dread alternative of a denial of the great faith of

humanity, a blight which would apply a sponge to all the high

aspirations and ideals of the race. According to this dogma, the first

and last things in the universe are atoms, their number, dance,

combinations, and growth. All mind, all will, all emotion, all

character, all love is incidental, transitory, vain. The sovereign fact

is mud, the final reality is dirt, and the decree of destiny is "dust

unto dust!"

Against this ultimate horror, it need hardly be said that in every age

Masonry has stood as a witness for the life of the spirit. In the war

of the soul against dust, in the choice between dirt and Deity, it has

allied itself on the side of the great idealisms and optimisms of

humanity. It takes the spiritual view of life and the world as being

most in accord with the facts of experience, the promptings of right

reason, and the voice of conscience. In other words, it dares to read

the meaning of the universe through what is highest in man, not

through what is lower, asserting that the soul is akin to the Eternal

Spirit, and that by a life of righteousness its eternal quality is

revealed.[180] Upon this philosophy Masonry rests, and finds a rock

beneath:

On Him, this corner-stone we build,

On Him, this edifice erect;

And still, until this work's fulfilled,

May He the workman's ways direct.

Now, consider! All our human thinking, whether it be in science,

philosophy, or religion, rests for its validity upon faith in the

kinship of man with God. If that faith be false, the temple of human

thought falls to wreck, and behold! we know not anything and have no

way of learning. But the fact that the universe is intelligible, that

we can follow its forces, trace its laws, and make a map of it,

finding the infinite even in the infinitesimal, shows that the mind of

man is akin to the Mind that made it. Also, there are two aspects of

the nature of man which lift him above the brute and bespeak his

divine heredity. They are reason and conscience, both of which are of

more than sense and time, having their source, satisfaction, and

authority in an unseen, eternal world. That is to say, man is a being

who, if not actually immortal, is called by the very law and necessity

of his being to live as if he were immortal. Unless life be utterly

abortive, having neither rhyme nor reason, the soul of man is itself

the one sure proof and prophet of its own high faith.

Consider, too, what it means to say that this mighty soul of man is

akin to the Eternal Soul of all things. It means that we are not

shapes of mud placed here by chance, but sons of the Most High,

citizens of eternity, deathless as God our Father is deathless; and

that there is laid upon us an abiding obligation to live in a manner

befitting the dignity of the soul. It means that what a man thinks,

the parity of his feeling, the character of his activity and career

are of vital and ceaseless concern to the Eternal. Here is a

philosophy which lights up the universe like a sunrise, confirming the

dim, dumb certainties of the soul, evolving meaning out of mystery,

and hope out of what would else be despair. It brings out the colors

of human life, investing our fleeting mortal years--brief at their

longest, broken at its best--with enduring significance and beauty. It

gives to each of us, however humble and obscure, a place and a part in

the stupendous historical enterprise; makes us fellow workers with the

Eternal in His redemptive making of humanity, and binds us to do His

will upon earth as it is done in heaven. It subdues the intellect; it

softens the heart; it begets in the will that sense of self-respect

without which high and heroic living cannot be. Such is the philosophy

upon which Masonry builds; and from it flow, as from the rock smitten

in the wilderness, those bright streams that wander through and water

this human world of ours.

III

Because this is so; because the human soul is akin to God, and is

endowed with powers to which no one may set a limit, it is and of

right ought to be free. Thus, by the logic of its philosophy, not less

than the inspiration of its faith, Masonry has been impelled to make

its historic demand for liberty of conscience, for the freedom of the

intellect, and for the right of all men to stand erect, unfettered,

and unafraid, equal before God and the law, each respecting the rights

of his fellows. What we have to remember is, that before this truth

was advocated by any order, or embodied in any political constitution,

it was embedded in the will of God and the constitution of the human

soul. Nor will Masonry ever swerve one jot or tittle from its ancient

and eloquent demand till all men, everywhere, are free in body, mind,

and soul. As it is, Lowell was right when he wrote:

We are not free: Freedom doth not consist

In musing with our faces toward the Past

While petty cares and crawling interests twist

Their spider threads about us, which at last

Grow strong as iron chains and cramp and bind

In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind.

Freedom is recreated year by year,

In hearts wide open on the Godward side,

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere,

In minds that sway the future like a tide.

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;

She chooses men for her august abodes,

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn.

Some day, when the cloud of prejudice has been dispelled by the

searchlight of truth, the world will honor Masonry for its service to

freedom of thought and the liberty of faith. No part of its history

has been more noble, no principle of its teaching has been more

precious than its age-long demand for the right and duty of every soul

to seek that light by which no man was ever injured, and that truth

which makes man free. Down through the centuries--often in times when

the highest crime was not murder, but thinking, and the human

conscience was a captive dragged at the wheel of the ecclesiastical

chariot--always and everywhere Masonry has stood for the right of the

soul to know the truth, and to look up unhindered from the lap of

earth into the face of God. Not freedom from faith, but freedom of

faith, has been its watchword, on the ground that as despotism is the

mother of anarchy, so bigoted dogmatism is the prolific source of

scepticism--knowing, also, that our race has made its most rapid

advance in those fields where it has been free the longest.

Against those who would fetter thought in order to perpetuate an

effete authority, who would give the skinny hand of the past a scepter

to rule the aspiring and prophetic present, and seal the lips of

living scholars with the dicta of dead scholastics, Masonry will never

ground arms! Her plea is for government without tyranny and religion

without superstition, and as surely as suns rise and set her fight

will be crowned with victory. Defeat is impossible, the more so

because she fights not with force, still less with intrigue, but with

the power of truth, the persuasions of reason, and the might of

gentleness, seeking not to destroy her enemies, but to win them to the

liberty of the truth and the fellowship of love.

Not only does Masonry plead for that liberty of faith which permits a

man to hold what seems to him true, but also, and with equal emphasis,

for the liberty which faith gives to the soul, emancipating it from

the despotism of doubt and the fetters of fear. Therefore, by every

art of spiritual culture, it seeks to keep alive in the hearts of men

a great and simple trust in the goodness of God, in the worth of life,

and the divinity of the soul--a trust so apt to be crushed by the

tramp of heavy years. Help a man to a firm faith in an Infinite Pity

at the heart of this dark world, and from how many fears is he free!

Once a temple of terror, haunted by shadows, his heart becomes "a

cathedral of serenity and gladness," and his life is enlarged and

unfolded into richness of character and service. Nor is there any

tyranny like the tyranny of time. Give a man a day to live, and he is

like a bird in a cage beating against its bars. Give him a year in

which to move to and fro with his thoughts and plans, his purposes

and hopes, and you have liberated him from the despotism of a day.

Enlarge the scope of his life to fifty years, and he has a moral

dignity of attitude and a sweep of power impossible hitherto. But give

him a sense of Eternity; let him know that he plans and works in an

ageless time; that above his blunders and sins there hovers and waits

the infinite--then he is free!

Nevertheless, if life on earth be worthless, so is immortality. The

real question, after all, is not as to the quantity of life, but its

quality--its depth, its purity, its fortitude, its fineness of spirit

and gesture of soul. Hence the insistent emphasis of Masonry upon the

building of character and the practice of righteousness; upon that

moral culture without which man is rudimentary, and that spiritual

vision without which intellect is the slave of greed or passion. What

makes a man great and freed of soul, here or anywhither, is loyalty to

the laws of right, of truth, of purity, of love, and the lofty will of

God. How to live is the one matter; and the oldest man in his ripe age

has yet to seek a wiser way than to build, year by year, upon a

foundation of faith in God, using the Square of justice, the

Plumb-line of rectitude, the Compass to restrain the passions, and the

Rule by which to divide our time into labor, rest, and service to our

fellows. Let us begin now and seek wisdom in the beauty of virtue and

live in the light of it, rejoicing; so in this world shall we have a

foregleam of the world to come--bringing down to the Gate in the Mist

something that ought not to die, assured that, though hearts are dust,

as God lives what is excellent is enduring!

Bede the Venerable, in giving an account of the deliberations of the

King of Northumberland and his counsellors, as to whether they should

allow the Christian missionaries to teach a new faith to the people,

recites this incident. After much debate, a gray-haired chief recalled

the feeling which came over him on seeing a little bird pass through,

on fluttering wing, the warm bright hall of feasting, while winter

winds raged without. The moment of its flight was full of sweetness

and light for the bird, but it was brief. Out of the darkness it flew,

looked upon the bright scene, and vanished into the darkness again,

none knowing whence it came nor whither it went.

"Like this," said the veteran chief, "is human life. We come, our wise

men cannot tell whence. We go, and they cannot tell whither. Our

flight is brief. Therefore, if there be anyone that can teach us more

about it--in God's name let us hear him!"

Even so, let us hear what Masonry has to say in the great argument for

the immortality of the soul. But, instead of making an argument linked

and strong, it presents a picture--the oldest, if not the greatest

drama in the world--the better to make men feel those truths which no

mortal words can utter. It shows us the black tragedy of life in its

darkest hour; the forces of evil, so cunning yet so stupid, which come

up against the soul, tempting it to treachery, and even to the

degredation of saving life by giving up all that makes life worth

living; a tragedy which, in its simplicity and power, makes the heart

ache and stand still. Then, out of the thick darkness there rises,

like a beautiful white star, that in man which is most akin to God,

his love of truth, his loyalty to the highest, and his willingness to

go down into the night of death, if only virtue may live and shine

like a pulse of fire in the evening sky. Here is the ultimate and

final witness of our divinity and immortality--the sublime,

death-defying moral heroism of the human soul! Surely the eternal

paradox holds true at the gates of the grave: he who loses his life

for the sake of truth, shall find it anew! And here Masonry rests the

matter, assured that since there is that in man which makes him hold

to the moral ideal, and the integrity of his own soul, against all

the brute forces of the world, the God who made man in His own image

will not let him die in the dust! Higher vision it is not given us to

see in the dim country of this world; deeper truth we do not need to

know.

Working with hands soon to be folded, we build up the structure of our

lives from what our fingers can feel, our eyes can see, and our ears

can hear. Till, in a moment--marvelous whether it come in storm and

tears, or softly as twilight breath beneath unshadowed skies--we are

called upon to yield our grasp of these solid things, and trust

ourselves to the invisible Soul within us, which betakes itself along

an invisible path into the Unknown. It is strange: a door opens into a

new world; and man, child of the dust that he is, follows his

adventurous Soul, as the Soul follows an inscrutable Power which is

more elusive than the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Suddenly,

with fixed eyes and blanched lips, we lie down and wait; and life,

well-fought or wasted, bright or somber, lies behind us--a dream that

is dreamt, a thing that is no more. O Death,

Thou hast destroyed it,

The beautiful world,

With powerful fist:

In ruin 'tis hurled,

By the blow of a demigod shattered!

The scattered

Fragments into the void we carry,

Deploring

The beauty perished beyond restoring.

Mightier

For the children of men,

Brightlier

Build it again,

In thine own bosom build it anew!