the guidance of a man, as instinct is for the guidance of an animal. And
therefore this faith, as a principle of man's nature, has a mission as
truly authentic in God's Providence, as the principle of instinct. The
pleasures of the soul, too, must depend on certain principles. They must
recognize a soul, its properties and responsibilities, a conscience, and
the sense of an authority above us; and these are the principles of
faith. No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can
improve and be happy, 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. Everything in the universe has fixed and certain laws and
principles for its action;--the star in its orbit, the animal in its
activity, the physical man in his functions. And he has likewise fixed
and certain laws and principles as a spiritual being. His soul does not
die for want of aliment or guidance. For the rational soul there is
ample provision. From the lofty pine, rocked in the darkening tempest,
the cry of the young raven is heard; and it would be most strange if
there were no answer for the cry and call of the soul, tortured by want
and sorrow and agony. The total rejection of all moral and religious
belief would strike out a principle from human nature, as essential to
it as gravitation to the stars, instinct to animal life, the circulation
of the blood to the human body.
God has ordained that life shall be a social state. We are members of a
civil community. The life of that community depends upon its moral
condition. Public spirit, intelligence, uprightness, temperance,
kindness, domestic purity, will make it a happy community, and give it
prosperity and continuance. Wide-spread selfishness, dishonesty,
intemperance, libertinism, corruption, and crime, will make it
miserable, and bring about dissolution and speedy ruin. A whole people
lives one life; one mighty heart heaves in its bosom; it is one great
pulse of existence that throbs there. One stream of life flows there,
with ten thousand intermingled branches and channels, through all the
homes of human love. One sound as of many waters, a rapturous jubilee or
a mournful sighing, comes up from, the congregated dwellings of a whole
nation.
The Public is no vague abstraction; nor should that which is done
against that Public, against public interest, law, or virtue, press but
lightly on the conscience. It is but a vast expansion of individual
life; an ocean of tears, an atmosphere of sighs, or a great whole of joy
and gladness. It suffers with the suffering of millions; it rejoices
with the joy of millions. What a vast crime does he commit,--private man
or public man, agent or contractor, legislator or magistrate, secretary
or president,--who dares, with indignity and wrong, to strike the bosom
of the Public Welfare, to encourage venality and corruption, and
shameful sale of the elective franchise, or of office; to sow
dissension, and to weaken the bonds of amity that bind a Nation
together! What a huge iniquity, he who, with vices like the daggers of a
parricide, dares to pierce that mighty heart, in which the ocean of
existence is flowing!
What an unequalled interest lies in the virtue of every one whom we
love! In his virtue, nowhere but in his virtue, is garnered up the
incomparable treasure. What care we for brother or friend, compared with
what we care for his honor, his fidelity, his reputation, his kindness?
How venerable is the rectitude of a parent! How sacred his reputation!
No blight that can fall upon a child, is like a parent's dishonor.
Heathen or Christian, every parent would have his child do well; and
pours out upon him all the fullness of parental love, in the one desire
that he _may_ do well; that he may be worthy of his cares, and his
freely bestowed pains; that he may walk in the way of honor and
happiness. In that way he cannot walk one step without virtue. Such is
life, in its relationships. A thousand ties embrace it, like the fine
nerves of a delicate organization; like the strings of an instrument
capable of sweet melodies, but easily put out of tune or broken, by
rudeness, anger, and selfish indulgence.
If life could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and pleasure;
if the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice, ambition, and
sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and make it their beaten
way; and none would wonder or protest. If we could be patient under the
load of a mere worldly life; if we could bear that burden as the beasts
bear it; then, _like_ beasts, we might bend all our thoughts to the
earth; and no call from the great Heavens above us would startle us
from our plodding and earthly course.
But we art _not_ insensible brutes, who can refuse the call of reason
and conscience. The soul is capable of remorse. When the great
dispensations of life press down upon us, we weep, and suffer and
sorrow. And sorrow and agony desire other companionships than
worldliness and irreligion. We are not willing to bear those burdens of
the heart, fear, anxiety, disappointment, and trouble, without any
object or use. We are not willing to suffer, to be sick and afflicted,
to have our days and months lost to comfort and joy, and overshadowed
with calamity and grief, without advantage or compensation; to barter
away the dearest treasures, the very sufferings, of the heart; to sell
the life-blood from failing frame and fading cheek, our tears of
bitterness and groans of anguish, for nothing. Human nature, frail,
feeling, sensitive, and sorrowing, cannot bear to suffer for nought.
Everywhere, human life is a great and solemn dispensation. Man,
suffering, enjoying, loving, hating, hoping, and fearing, chained to the
earth and yet exploring the far recesses of the universe, has the power
to commune with God and His angels. Around this great action of
existence the curtains of Time are drawn; but there are openings through
them which give us glimpses of eternity. God looks down upon this scene
of human probation. The wise and the good in all ages have interposed
for it, with their teachings and their blood. Everything that exists
around us, every movement in nature, every counsel of Providence, every
interposition of God, centres upon one point--the fidelity of man. And
even if the ghosts of the departed and remembered could come at midnight
through the barred doors of our dwellings, and the shrouded dead should
glide through the aisles of our churches and sit in our Masonic Temples,
their teachings would be no more eloquent and impressive than the dread
realities of life; than those memories of misspent years, those ghosts
of departed opportunities, that, pointing to our conscience and
eternity, cry continually in our ears, "_Work while the day lasts! for
the night of death cometh, in which no man can work_."
There are no tokens of public mourning for the calamity of the soul. Men
weep when the body dies; and when it is borne to its rest, they follow
it with sad and mournful procession. But for the dying soul there is no
open lamentation; for the lost soul there are no obsequies.
And yet the mind and soul of man have a value which nothing else has.
They are worth a care which nothing else is worth; and to the single,
solitary individual, they ought to possess an interest which nothing
else possesses. The stored treasures of the heart, the unfathomable
mines that are in the soul to be wrought, the broad and boundless realms
of Thought, the freighted argosy of man's hopes and best affections, are
brighter than gold and dearer than treasure.
And yet the mind is in reality little known or considered. It is _all_
which man permanently _is_, his inward being, his divine energy, his
immortal thought, his boundless capacity, his infinite aspiration; and
nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth. Few see a brother-mind
in others, through the rags with which poverty has clothed it, beneath
the crushing burdens of life, amidst the close pressure of worldly
troubles, wants and sorrows. Few acknowledge and cheer it in that humble
blot, and feel that the nobility of earth, and the commencing glory of
Heaven are there.
Men do not feel the worth of their own souls. They are proud of their
mental powers; but the intrinsic, inner, infinite _worth_ of their own
minds they do not perceive. The poor man, admitted to a palace, feels,
lofty and immortal being as he is, like a mere ordinary thing amid the
splendors that surround him. He sees the carriage of wealth roll by him,
and forgets the intrinsic and eternal dignity of his own mind in a poor
and degrading envy, and feels as an humbler creature, because others are
above him, not in mind, but in mensuration. Men respect themselves,
according as they are more wealthy, higher in rank or office, loftier in
the world's opinion, able to command more votes, more the favorites of
the people or of Power.
The difference among men is not so much in their nature and intrinsic
power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have the capacity of
uttering and embodying in words their thoughts. All men, more or less,
_feel_ those thoughts. The glory of genius and the rapture of virtue,
when rightly revealed, are diffused and shared among unnumbered minds.
When eloquence and poetry speak; when those glorious arts, statuary,
painting, and music, take audible or visible shape; when patriotism,
charity, and virtue speak with a thrilling potency, the hearts of
thousands glow with kindred joy and ecstasy. If it were not so, there
would be no eloquence; for eloquence is that to which other hearts
respond; it is the faculty and power of _making_ other hearts respond.
No one is so low or degraded, as not sometimes to be touched with the
beauty of goodness. No heart is made of materials so common, or even
base, as not sometimes to respond, through every chord of it, to the
call of honor, patriotism, generosity, and virtue. The poor African
Slave will die for the master or mistress, or in defence of the
children, whom he loves. The poor, lost, scorned, abandoned, outcast
woman will, without expectation of reward, nurse those who are dying on
every hand, utter strangers to her, with a contagious and horrid
pestilence. The pickpocket will scale burning walls to rescue child or
woman, unknown to him, from the ravenous flames.
Most glorious is this capacity! A power to commune with God and His
Angels; a reflection of the Uncreated Light; a mirror that can collect
and concentrate upon itself all the moral splendors of the Universe. It
is the soul alone that gives any value to the things of this world; and
it is only by raising the soul to its just elevation above all other
things, that we can look rightly upon the purposes of this earth. No
sceptre nor throne, nor structure of ages, nor broad empire, can compare
with the wonders and grandeurs of a single thought. That alone, of all
things that have been made, comprehends the Maker of all. That alone is
the key which unlocks all the treasures of the Universe; the power that
reigns over Space, Time, and Eternity. That, under God, is the Sovereign
Dispenser to man of all the blessings and glories that lie within the
compass of possession, or the range of possibility. Virtue, Heaven, and
Immortality exist not, nor ever will exist for us except as they exist
and will exist, in the perception, feeling, and thought of the glorious
mind.
My Brother, in the hope that you have listened to and understood the
Instruction and Lecture of this Degree, and that you feel the dignity of
your own nature and the vast capacities of your own soul for good or
evil, I proceed briefly to communicate to you the remaining instruction
of this Degree.
The Hebrew word, in the old Hebrew and Samaritan character, suspended in
the East, over the five columns, is ADONAÏ, one of the names of God,
usually translated Lord; and which the Hebrews, in reading, always
substitute for the True Name, which is for them ineffable.
The five columns, in the five different orders of architecture, are
emblematical to us of the five principal divisions of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite:
1.--The _Tuscan_, of the three blue Degrees, or the primitive Masonry.
2.--The _Doric_, of the ineffable Degrees, from the fourth to the
fourteenth, inclusive.
3.--The _Ionic_, of the fifteenth and sixteenth, or second temple
Degrees.
4.--The _Corinthian_, of the seventeenth and eighteenth Degrees, or
those of the new law.
5.--The _Composite_, of the philosophical and chivalric Degrees
intermingled, from the nineteenth to the thirty-second, inclusive.
The North Star, always fixed and immutable for us, represents the point
in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of the Universe.
It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To it, and the seven
that continually revolve around it, mystical meanings are attached,
which you will learn hereafter, if you should be permitted to advance,
when you are made acquainted with the philosophical doctrines of the
Hebrews.
The Morning Star, rising in the East, Jupiter, called by the Hebrews
Tsadōc or Tsydyk, _Just_, is an emblem to us of the ever-approaching
dawn of perfection and Masonic light.
The three great lights of the Lodge are symbols to us of the Power,
Wisdom, and Beneficence of the Deity. They are also symbols of the first
three _Sephiroth_, or Emanations of the Deity, according to the Kabalah,
_Kether_, the omnipotent divine _will_; _Chochmah_, the divine
intellectual _power_ to _generate_ thought, and _Binah_, the divine
intellectual _capacity_ to _produce_ it--the two latter, usually
translated _Wisdom_ and _Understanding_, being the _active_ and the
_passive_, the _positive_ and the _negative_, which we do not yet
endeavor to explain to you. They are the columns Jachin and Boaz, that
stand at the entrance to the Masonic Temple.
In another aspect of this Degree, the Chief of the Architects [[Hebrew:
רב בנים], Rab Banaim,] symbolizes the constitutional executive head and
chief of a free government; and the Degree teaches us that no free
government can long endure, when the people cease to select for their
magistrates the best and the wisest of their statesmen; when, passing
these by, they permit factions or sordid interests to select for them
the small, the low, the ignoble, and the obscure, and into such hands
commit the country's destinies. There is, after all, a "divine right" to
govern; and it is vested in the ablest, wisest, best, of every nation.
"Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding: I am power: by
me kings do reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and
nobles, even all the magistrates of the earth."
For the present, my Brother, let this suffice. We welcome you among us,
to this peaceful retreat of virtue, to a participation in our
privileges, to a share in our joys and our sorrows.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XIII.
ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON.
Whether the legend and history of this Degree are historically true, or
but an allegory, containing in itself a deeper truth and a profounder
meaning, we shall not now debate. If it be but a legendary myth, you
must find out for yourself what it means. It is certain that the word
which the Hebrews are not now permitted to pronounce was in common use
by Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, Laban, Rebecca, and even among tribes
foreign to the Hebrews, before the time of Moses; and that it recurs a
hundred times in the lyrical effusions of David and other Hebrew poets.
We know that for many centuries the Hebrews have been forbidden to
pronounce the Sacred Name; that wherever it occurs, they have for ages
read the word _Adonaï_ instead; and that under it, when the masoretic
points, which represent the vowels, came to be used, they placed those
which belonged to the latter word. The possession of the true
pronunciation was deemed to confer on him who had it extraordinary and
supernatural powers; and the Word itself, worn upon the person, was
regarded as an amulet, a protection against personal danger, sickness,
and evil spirits. We know that all this was a vain superstition, natural
to a rude people, necessarily disappearing as the intellect of man
became enlightened; and wholly unworthy of a Mason.
It is noticeable that this notion of the sanctity of the Divine Name or
Creative Word was common to all the ancient nations. The Sacred Word HOM
was supposed by the ancient Persians (who were among the earliest
emigrants from Northern India) to be pregnant with a mysterious power;
and they taught that by its utterance the world was created. In India it
was forbidden to pronounce the word AUM or OM, the Sacred Name of the
One Deity, manifested as Brahma, Vishna, and Seeva.
These superstitious notions in regard to the efficacy of the Word, and
the prohibition against pronouncing it, could, being errors, have formed
no part of the pure primitive religion, or of the esoteric doctrine
taught by Moses, and the full knowledge of which was confined to the
Initiates; unless the whole was but an ingenious invention for the
concealment of some other Name or truth, the interpretation and meaning
whereof was made known only to the _select few_. If so, the common
notions in regard to the Word grew up in the minds of the people, like
other errors and fables among all the ancient nations, out of original
truths and symbols and allegories misunderstood. So it has always been
that allegories, intended as vehicles of truth, to be understood by the
sages, have become or bred errors, by being literally accepted.
It is true, that before the masoretic points were invented (which was
after the beginning of the Christian era), the pronunciation of a word
in the Hebrew language could not be known from the characters in which
it was written. It was, therefore, _possible_ for that of the name of
the Deity to have been forgotten and lost. It is certain that its true
pronunciation is not that represented by the word Jehovah; and therefore
that _that_ is not the true name of Deity, nor the Ineffable Word.
The ancient symbols and allegories always had more than one
interpretation. They always had a _double_ meaning, and sometimes _more_
than two, one serving as the envelope of the other. Thus the
_pronunciation_ of the word was a symbol; and that pronunciation and the
word itself were lost, when the knowledge of the true nature and
attributes of God faded out of the minds of the Jewish people. That is
_one_ interpretation--_true, but not the inner and profoundest one_.
Men were figuratively said to forget the _name_ of God, when they lost
that _knowledge_, and worshipped the heathen deities, and burned incense
to them on the high places, and passed their children through the fire
to Moloch.
Thus the attempts of the ancient Israelites and of the Initiates to
ascertain the True Name of the Deity, and its pronunciation, and the
loss of the True Word, are an allegory, in which are represented the
general ignorance of the true nature and attributes of God, the
proneness of the people of Judah and Israel to worship other deities,
and the low and erroneous and dishonoring notions of the Grand Architect
of the Universe, which all shared except a few favored persons; for even
Solomon built altars and sacrificed to Astarat, the goddess of the
Tsidunim, and Malcūm, the Aamūnite god, and built high places for Kamūs,
the Moabite deity, and Malec the god of the Beni-Aamūn. The true nature
of God was unknown to them, like His name; and they worshipped the
calves of Jeroboam, as in the desert they did that made for them by
Aarūn.
The mass of the Hebrews did not believe in the existence of one only God
until a late period in their history. Their early and popular ideas of
the Deity were singularly low and unworthy. Even while Moses was
receiving the law upon Mount Sinai, they forced Aarūn to make them an
image of the Egyptian god Apis, and fell down and adored it. They were
ever ready to return to the worship of the gods of the Mitzraim; and
soon after the death of Joshua they became devout worshippers of the
false gods of all the surrounding nations. "Ye have borne," Amos, the
prophet, said to them, speaking of their forty years' journeying in the
desert, under Moses, "the tabernacle of your Malec and Kaiūn your idols,
the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves".
Among them, as among other nations, the conceptions of God formed by
individuals varied according to their intellectual and spiritual
capacities; poor and imperfect, and investing God with the commonest and
coarsest attributes of humanity, among the ignorant and coarse; pure and
lofty among the virtuous and richly gifted. These conceptions gradually
improved and became purified and ennobled, as the nation advanced in
civilization--being lowest in the historical books, amended in the
prophetic writings, and reaching their highest elevation among the
poets.
Among _all_ the ancient nations there was one faith and one idea of
Deity for the enlightened, intelligent, and educated, and another for
the common people. To this rule the Hebrews were no exception. Yehovah,
to the mass of the people, was like the gods of the nations around them,
except that he was the _peculiar_ God, first of the family of Abraham,
of that of Isaac, and of that of Jacob, and afterward the _National_
God; and, as they believed, _more powerful_ than the other gods of the
same nature worshipped by their neighbors--"Who among the Baalim is
like unto thee, O Yehovah?"--expressed their whole creed.
The Deity of the early Hebrews talked to Adam and Eve in the garden of
delight, as he walked in it in the cool of the day; he conversed with
Kayin; he sat and ate with Abraham in his tent; that patriarch required
a visible token, before he would believe in his positive promise; he
permitted Abraham to expostulate with him, and to induce him to change
his first determination in regard to Sodom; he wrestled with Jacob; he
showed Moses his person, though not his face; he dictated the minutest
police regulations and the dimensions of the tabernacle and its
furniture, to the Israelites; he insisted on and delighted in sacrifices
and burnt-offerings; he was angry, jealous, and revengeful, as well as
wavering and irresolute; he allowed Moses to reason him out of his fixed
resolution utterly to destroy his people; he commanded the performance
of the most shocking and hideous acts of cruelty and barbarity. He
hardened the heart of Pharaoh; he repented of the evil that he had said
he would do unto the people of Nineveh; and he did it not, to the
disgust and anger of Jonah.
Such were the popular notions of the Deity; and either the priests had
none better, or took little trouble to correct these notions; or the
popular intellect was not enough enlarged to enable them to entertain
any higher conceptions of the Almighty.
But such were not the ideas of the intellectual and enlightened few
among the Hebrews, It is certain that _they_ possessed a knowledge of
the true nature and attributes of God; as the same class of men did
among the other nations--Zoroaster, Menu, Confucius, Socrates, and
Plato. But their doctrines on this subject were esoteric; they did not
communicate them to the people at large, but only to a favored few; and
as they were communicated in Egypt and India, in Persia and Phœnicia, in
Greece and Samothrace, in the greater mysteries, to the Initiates.
The communication of this knowledge and other secrets, some of which are
perhaps lost, constituted, under other names, what we now call
_Masonry_, or _Free_ or _Frank-Masonry_. That knowledge was, in one
sense, _the Lost Word_, which was made known to the Grand Elect,
Perfect, and Sublime Masons. It would be folly to pretend that the
_forms_ of Masonry were the same in those ages as they are now. The
present name of the Order, and its titles, and the names of the Degrees
now in use, were not then known. Even Blue Masonry cannot trace back
its _authentic_ history, _with its present Degrees_, further than the
year 1700, _if so far_. But, by whatever _name_ it was known in this or
the other country, Masonry existed as it now exists, the same in spirit
and at heart, not only when Solomon builded the temple, but centuries
before--before even the first colonies emigrated into Southern India,
Persia, and Egypt, from the cradle of the human race.