our communications? Where in our Lodges are lectures habitually
delivered for the real instruction of the Brethren? Do not our sessions
pass in the discussion of minor matters of business, the settlement of
points of order and questions of mere administration, and the admission
and advancement of Candidates, whom after their admission we take no
pains to instruct?
In what Lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated; corrupted as
they are by time, until their true features can scarcely be
distinguished; and where are those great primitive truths of revelation
taught, which Masonry has preserved to the world?
We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possessors qualify
themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the aims and objects of
Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates who governed empires, does your
influence enter into practical life and operate efficiently in behalf of
well-regulated and constitutional liberty?
Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need concord,
union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite
rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and
ambitious pretensions? How do your own words and acts agree? If your
Masonry is a nullity, how can you exercise any influence on others?
Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high-wrought
eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that you are what you
should be, and nowhere do you look upon yourselves as you are. Is it
true that all our actions are so many acts of homage to virtue? Explore
the recesses of your hearts; let us examine ourselves with an impartial
eye, and make answer to our own questioning! Can we bear to ourselves
the consoling testimony that we always rigidly perform our duties; that
we even _half_ perform them?
Let us away with this odious self-flattery! Let us be men, if we cannot
be sages! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent, cannot wholly
change men's natures. They enlighten them, they point out the true way;
but they can lead them in it, only by repressing the fire of their
passions, and subjugating their selfishness. Alas, these conquer, and
Masonry is forgotten!
After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent
Brethren, who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every one of
us who dies, however useless his life, has been a model of all the
virtues, a very child of the celestial light. In Egypt, among our old
Masters, where Masonry was more cultivated than vanity, no one could
gain admittance to the sacred asylum of the tomb until he had passed
under the most solemn judgment. A grave tribunal sat in judgment upon
all, even the kings. They said to the dead, "Whoever thou art, give
account to thy country of thy actions! What hast thou done with thy time
and life? The law interrogates thee, thy country hears thee, Truth sits
in judgment on thee!" Princes came there to be judged, escorted only by
their virtues and their vices. A public accuser recounted the history of
the dead man's life, and threw the blaze of the torch of truth on all
his actions. If it were adjudged that he had led an evil life, his
memory was condemned in the presence of the nation, and his body was
denied the honors of sepulture. What a lesson the old Masonry taught to
the sons of the people!
Is it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered, affords no
shade; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance-guard of Truth? No.
Is freedom yet universal? Have ignorance and prejudice disappeared from
the earth? Are there no longer enmities among men? Do cupidity and
falsehood no longer exist? Do toleration and harmony prevail among
religious and political sects? There are works yet left for Masonry to
accomplish, greater than the twelve labors of Hercules; to advance ever
resolutely and steadily; to enlighten the minds of the people, to
reconstruct society, to reform the laws, and improve the public morals.
The eternity in front of it is as infinite as the one behind. And
Masonry cannot cease to labor in the cause of social progress, without
ceasing to be true to itself, without ceasing to be Masonry.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: T.D.I.C.G.]
XII.
GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT.
[Master Architect.]
The great duties that are inculcated by the lessons taught by the
working-instruments of a Grand Master Architect, demanding so much of
us, and taking for granted the capacity to perform them faithfully and
fully, bring us at once to reflect upon the dignity of human nature, and
the vast powers and capacities of the human soul; and to that theme we
invite your attention in this Degree. Let us begin to rise from earth
toward the Stars.
Evermore the human soul struggles toward the light, toward God, and the
Infinite. It is especially so in its afflictions. Words go but a little
way into the depths of sorrow. The thoughts that writhe there in
silence, that go into the stillness of Infinitude and Eternity, have no
emblems. Thoughts enough come there, such as no tongue ever uttered.
They do not so much want human sympathy, as higher help. There is a
loneliness in deep sorrow which the Deity alone can relieve. Alone, the
mind wrestles with the great problem of calamity, and seeks the solution
from the Infinite Providence of Heaven, and thus is led directly to God.
There are many things in us of which we are not distinctly conscious. To
waken that slumbering consciousness into life, and so to lead the soul
up to the Light, is one office of every great ministration to human
nature, whether its vehicle be the pen, the pencil, or the tongue. We
are unconscious of the intensity and awfulness of the life within us.
Health and sickness, joy and sorrow, success and disappointment, life
and death, love and loss, are familiar words upon our lips; and we do
not know to what depths they point within us.
We seem never to know what _any_ thing means or is worth until we have
lost it. Many an organ, nerve, and fibre in our bodily frame performs
its silent part for years, and we are quite unconscious of its value. It
is not until it is injured that we discover that value, and find how
essential it was to our happiness and comfort. We never know the full
significance of the words, "property," "ease," and "health;" the wealth
of meaning in the fond epithets, "parent," "child," "beloved," and
"friend," until the thing or the person is taken away; until, in place
of the bright, visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow, where
_nothing_ is: where we stretch out our hands in vain, and strain our
eyes upon dark and dismal vacuity. Yet, in that vacuity, we do not
_lose_ the object that we loved. It becomes only the more real to us.
Our blessings not only brighten when they depart, but are fixed in
enduring reality; and love and friendship receive their everlasting seal
under the cold impress of death.
A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all
the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us,
in all our little worldliness. The rude peasant from the Apennines,
asleep at the foot of a pillar in a majestic Roman church, seems not to
hear or see, but to dream only of the herd he feeds or the ground he
tills in the mountains. But the choral symphonies fall softly upon his
ear, and the gilded arches are dimly seen through his half-slumbering
eyelids.
So the soul, however given up to the occupations of daily life, cannot
quite lose the sense of where it is, and of what is above it and around
it. The scene of its actual engagements may be small; the path of its
steps, beaten and familiar; the objects it handles, easily spanned, and
quite worn out with daily uses. So it may be, and amidst such things
that we all live. So we live our little life; but Heaven is above us and
all around and close to us; and Eternity is before us and behind us; and
suns and stars are silent witnesses and watchers over us. We are
enfolded by Infinity. Infinite Powers and Infinite spaces lie all around
us. The dread arch of Mystery spreads over us, and no voice ever pierced
it. Eternity is enthroned amid Heaven's myriad starry heights; and no
utterance or word ever came from those far-off and silent spaces. Above,
is that awful majesty; around us, everywhere, it stretches off into
infinity; and beneath it is this little struggle of life, this poor
day's conflict, this busy ant-hill of Time.
But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the sounds of
music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude, the shout of joy
and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and all-surrounding
Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noise of visible life, from
the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes up an imploring call, a
beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and unutterable, for revelation,
wailingly and in almost speechless agony praying the dread arch of
mystery to break, and the stars that roll above the waves of mortal
trouble, to speak; the enthroned majesty of those awful heights to find
a voice; the mysterious and reserved heavens to come near; and all to
tell us what they alone know; to give us information of the loved and
lost; to make known to us what we are, and whither we are going.
Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and
about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and
sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down
from heaven into the heart of every one that lives. There is no being so
base and abandoned but hath some traits of that sacredness left upon
him; something, so much perhaps in discordance with his general repute,
that he hides it from all around him; some sanctuary in his soul, where
no one may enter; some sacred inclosure, where the memory of a child is,
or the image of a venerated parent, or the remembrance of a pure love,
or the echo of some word of kindness once spoken to him; an echo that
will never die away.
Life is no negative, or superficial or worldly existence. Our steps are
evermore haunted with thoughts, far beyond their own range, which some
have regarded as the reminiscences of a pre-existent state. So it is
with us all, in the beaten and worn track of this worldly pilgrimage.
There is more here, than the world we live in. It is not all of life to
live. An unseen and infinite presence is here; a sense of something
greater than we possess; a seeking, through all the void wastes of life,
for a good beyond it; a crying out of the heart for interpretation; a
memory of the dead, touching continually some vibrating thread in this
great tissue of mystery.
We all not only have better intimations, but are capable of better
things than we know. The pressure of some great emergency would develop
in us powers, beyond the worldly bias of our spirits; and Heaven so
deals with us, from time to time, as to call forth those better things.
There is hardly a family in the world so selfish, but that, if one in it
were doomed to die--one, to be selected by the others,--it would be
utterly impossible for its members, parents and children, to choose out
that victim; but that each would say, "I will die; but I cannot choose."
And in how many, if that dire extremity had come, would not one and
another step forth, freed from the vile meshes of ordinary selfishness,
and say, like the Roman father and son, "Let the blow fall on me!" There
are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes account
of, or than _we_ take note of; if we would but find them out. And it is
one part of our Masonic culture to _find_ these traits of power and
sublime devotion, to revive these faded impressions of generosity and
self-sacrifice, the almost squandered bequests of God's love and
kindness to our souls; and to induce us to yield ourselves to their
guidance and control.
Upon all conditions of men presses down one impartial law. To all
situations, to all fortunes, high or low, the _mind_ gives their
character. They are, in effect, not what they are in themselves, but
what they are to the feeling of their possessors. The King may be mean,
degraded, miserable; the slave of ambition, fear, voluptuousness, and
every low passion. The Peasant may be the real Monarch, the moral master
of his fate, a free and lofty being, more than a Prince in happiness,
more than a King in honor.
Man is no bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, helpless and
irresponsible upon the tide of events. Out of the same circumstances,
different men bring totally different results. The same difficulty,
distress, poverty, or misfortune, that breaks down one man, builds up
another and makes him strong. It is the very attribute and glory of a
man, that he can bend the circumstances of his condition to the
intellectual and moral purposes of his nature, and it is the power and
mastery of his will that chiefly distinguish him from the brute.
The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new element of
his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, and a ruling
power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human being sunk so low that
he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise. Because God commands him
to rise, it is certain that he _can_ rise. Every man has the power, and
should use it, to make all situations, trials, and temptations
instruments to promote his virtue and happiness; and is so far from
being the creature of circumstances, that _he_ creates and controls
_them_, making them to be all that they are, of evil or of good, to him
as a moral being.
Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of
the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one,
it is all beauty and gladness; the waves of ocean roll in light, and the
mountains are covered with day. Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon
every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more
to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy on
hill and valley, and bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully
gazes at the same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly
aspect. The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar
of the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music of
the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness; the cheerful
light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The great train of
the seasons passes before him like a funeral procession; and he sighs,
and turns impatiently away. The eye makes that which it looks upon; the
ear makes its own melodies and discords; the world without reflects the
world within.
Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we make them
by our social character; by our adaptation, or want of adaptation to the
social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of the world. To the
selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the haughty and presuming, to
the proud, who demand more than they are likely to receive, to the
jealous, ever afraid they shall not receive enough, to those who are
unreasonably sensitive about the good or ill opinions of others, to all
violators of the social laws, the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and
the sensual,--to all these, the social condition, from its very nature,
will present annoyances, disappointments, and pains, appropriate to
their several characters. The benevolent affections will not revolve
around selfishness; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness; the
proud, haughtiness; the passionate, anger; and the violent, rudeness.
Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if their
own are forgotten; and those who stoop to the lowest embraces of sense
must not wonder, if others are not concerned to find their prostrate
honor, and lift it up to the remembrance and respect of the world.
To the gentle, many will be gentle; to the kind, many will be kind. A
good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man
will find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle
will find principle and integrity in the minds of others.
There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the bitterest
of evils; and no trials which it may not transform into the noblest and
divinest blessings. There are no temptations from which assailed virtue
may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and
subdued. It is true that temptations have a great power, and virtue
often falls; but the might of these temptations lies not in themselves,
but in the feebleness of our own virtue, and the weakness of our own
hearts. We rely too much on the strength of our ramparts and bastions,
and allow the enemy to make his approaches, by trench and parallel, at
his leisure. The offer of dishonest gain and guilty pleasure makes the
honest man more honest, and the pure man more pure. They raise his
virtue to the height of towering indignation. The fair occasion, the
safe opportunity, the tempting chance become the defeat and disgrace of
the tempter. The honest and upright man does not wait until temptation
has made its approaches and mounted its batteries on the last parallel.
But to the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt, and
the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and through
every avenue of thought and imagination. He is prepared to capitulate
before the first approach is commenced; and sends out the white flag
when the enemy's advance comes in sight of his walls. He _makes_
occasions; or, if opportunities come not, evil _thoughts_ come, and he
throws wide open the gates of his heart and welcomes those bad visitors,
and entertains them with a lavish hospitality.
The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind,
while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independence,
integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful
refreshment to others. To one, the world is a great harmony, like a
noble strain of music with infinite modulations; to another, it is a
huge factory, the clash and clang of whose machinery jars upon his ears
and frets him to madness. Life is substantially the same thing to all
who partake of its lot. Yet some rise to virtue and glory; while others,
undergoing the same discipline, and enjoying the same privileges, sink
to shame and perdition.
Thorough, faithful, and honest endeavor to improve, is always
successful, and the highest happiness. To sigh sentimentally over human
misfortune, is fit only for the mind's childhood; and the mind's misery
is chiefly its own fault; appointed, under the good Providence of God,
as the punisher and corrector of its fault. In the long run, the mind
will be happy, just in proportion to its fidelity and wisdom. When it is
miserable, it has planted the thorns in its own path; it grasps them,
and cries out in loud complaint; and that complaint is but the louder
_confession_ that the thorns which grew there, _it_ planted.
A certain kind and degree of spirituality enter into the largest part of
even the most ordinary life. You can carry on no business, without some
faith in man. You cannot even dig in the ground, without a reliance on
the unseen result. You cannot think or reason or even step, without
confiding in the inward, spiritual principles of your nature. All the
affections and bonds, and hopes and interests of life centre in the
spiritual; and you know that if that central bond were broken, the world
would rush to chaos.
Believe that there is a God; that He is our father; that He has a
paternal interest in our welfare and improvement; that He has given us
powers, by means of which we may escape from sin and ruin; that He has
destined us to a future life of endless progress toward perfection and a
knowledge of Himself--believe this, as every Mason should, and you can
live calmly, endure patiently, labor resolutely, deny yourselves
cheerfully, hope steadfastly, and be conquerors in the great struggle of
life. Take away any one of these principles, and what remains for us?
Say that there is no God; or no way opened for hope and reformation and
triumph, no heaven to come, no rest for the weary, no home in the bosom
of God for the afflicted and disconsolate soul; or that God is but an
ugly blind _Chance_ that stabs in the dark; or a _some_what that is,
when attempted to be defined, a _no_what, emotionless, passionless, the
Supreme _Apathy_ to which all things, good and evil, are alike
indifferent; or a jealous God who revengefully visits the sins of the
fathers on the children, and when the fathers have eaten sour grapes,
sets the children's teeth on edge; an arbitrary supreme _Will_, that has
made it _right_ to be virtuous, and wrong to lie and steal, because IT
_pleased_ to _make_ it so rather than otherwise, retaining the power to
reverse the law; or a fickle, vacillating, inconstant Deity, or a cruel,
bloodthirsty, savage Hebrew or Puritanic one; and we are but the sport
of chance and the victims of despair; hapless wanderers upon the face of
a desolate forsaken, or accursed and hated earth; surrounded by
darkness, struggling with obstacles, toiling for barren results and
empty purposes, distracted with doubts, and misled by false gleams of
light; wanderers with no way, no prospect, no home; doomed and deserted
mariners on a dark and stormy sea, without compass or course, to whom no
stars appear; tossing helmless upon the weltering, angry waves, with no
blessed haven in the distance whose guiding-star invites us to its
welcome rest.
The religious faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensable to the
attainment of the great ends of life; and must therefore have been
designed to be a part of it. We are made for this faith; and there must
be something, somewhere, for us to believe in. We cannot grow
healthfully, nor live happily, without it. It is therefore _true_. If we
could cut off from any soul all the principles taught by Masonry, the
faith in a God, in immortality, in virtue, in essential rectitude, that
soul would sink into sin, misery, darkness, and ruin. If we could cut
off all sense of these truths, the man would sink at once to the grade
of the animal.
No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can improve
and be happy, otherwise than as the swine are, without conscience,
without hope, without a reliance on a just, wise, and beneficent God. We
must, of necessity, embrace the great truths taught by Masonry, and live
by them, to live happily. "_I put my trust in God_," is the protest of
Masonry against the belief in a cruel, angry, and revengeful God, to be
feared and not reverenced by His creatures.
Society, in its great relations, is as much the creation of Heaven as is
the system of the Universe. If that bond of gravitation that holds all
worlds and systems together, were suddenly severed, the universe would
fly into wild and boundless chaos. And if we were to sever all the moral
bonds that hold society together; if we could cut off from it every
conviction of Truth and Integrity, of an authority above it, and of a
conscience within it, it would immediately rush to disorder and
frightful anarchy and ruin. The religion we teach is therefore as really
a principle of things, and as certain and true, as gravitation.