ends, it must, after all, have a foundation, either in Reason, Analogy,
the Consciousness, or human testimony. The worshipper of Brahma also has
implicit Faith in what seems to us palpably false and absurd. His faith
rests neither in Reason, Analogy, or the Consciousness, but on the
testimony of his Spiritual teachers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem
also believes, on the positive testimony of the Prophet; and the Mormon
also can say, _"I believe this, because it is impossible."_ No faith,
however absurd or degrading, has ever wanted these foundations,
testimony, and the books. Miracles, proven by unimpeachable testimony
have been used as a foundation for Faith, in every age; and the modern
miracles are better authenticated, a hundred times, than the ancient
ones.
So that, after all, Faith must flow out from some source within us, when
the evidence of that which we are to believe is not presented to our
senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the truth of what is
believed.
The Consciousness, or inhering and innate conviction, or the instinct
divinely implanted, of the verity of things, is the highest Possible
evidence, if not the _only real_ proof, of the verity of certain things,
but only of truths of a limited class.
What we call the Reason, that is, our imperfect human reason, not only
may, but assuredly will, lead us away from the Truth in regard to things
invisible and especially those of the Infinite, if we determine to
believe nothing but that which _it_ can demonstrate, or _not_ to
believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove to be
contradictory, unreasonable, or absurd. Its tape-line cannot measure the
arcs of Infinity. For example, to the Human reason, an Infinite Justice
and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same Being, are inconsistent and
impossible. One, it can demonstrate necessarily excludes the other. So
it can _demonstrate_ that as the Creation had a beginning, it
necessarily follows that an Eternity had elapsed before the Deity began
to create, during which He was inactive.
When we gaze, of a moonless clear night, on the Heavens glittering with
stars, and know that each fixed star of all the myriads is a Sun, and
each probably possessing its retinue of worlds, all peopled with living
beings, we sensibly feel our own unimportance in the scale of Creation,
and at once reflect that much of what has in different ages been
religious faith, could never have been believed, if the nature, size,
and distance of those Suns, and of our own Sun, Moon, and Planets, had
been known to the Ancients as they are to us.
To them, all the lights of the firmament were created only to give light
to the earth, as its lamps or candles hung above it. The earth was
supposed to be the only inhabited portion of the Universe. The world and
the Universe were synonymous terms. Of the immense size and distance of
the heavenly bodies, men had no conception. The Sages had, in Chaldæea,
Egypt, India, China, and in Persia, and therefore the sages always had,
an esoteric creed, taught only in the mysteries and unknown to the
vulgar. No Sage, in either country, or in Greece or Rome, believed the
popular creed. To them the Gods and the Idols of the Gods were symbols,
and symbols of great and mysterious truths.
The Vulgar imagined the attention of the Gods to be continually centred
upon the earth and man. The Grecian Divinities inhabited Olympus, an
insignificant mountain of the Earth. There was the Court of Zeus, to
which Neptune came from the Sea, and Pluto and Persephoné from the
glooms of Tartarus in the unfathomable depths of the Earth's bosom. God
came down from Heaven and on Sinai dictated laws for the Hebrews to His
servant Moses. The Stars were the guardians of mortals whose fates and
fortunes were to be read in their movements, conjunctions, and
oppositions. The Moon was the Bride and Sister of the Sun, at the same
distance above the Earth, and, like the Sun, made for the service of
mankind alone.
If, with the great telescope of Lord Rosse, we examine the vast nebulæ
of Hercules, Orion, and Andromeda, and find them resolvable into Stars
more numerous than the sands on the seashore; if we reflect that each of
these Stars is a Sun, like and even many times larger than ours,--each,
beyond a doubt, with its retinue of worlds swarming with life;--if we go
further in imagination, and endeavor to conceive of all the infinities
of space, filled with similar suns and worlds, we seem at once to shrink
into an incredible insignificance.
The Universe, which is the uttered Word of God, is _infinite_ in extent.
There is no empty space beyond creation on any side. The Universe, which
is the Thought of God pronounced, never was _not_, since God never was
inert; nor WAS, without thinking and creating. The forms of creation
change, the suns and worlds live and die like the leaves and the
insects, but the Universe itself is infinite and eternal, because God
Is, Was, and Will forever Be, and never did _not_ think and create.
Reason is fain to admit that a Supreme Intelligence, infinitely powerful
and wise, must have created this boundless Universe; but it also tells
us that we are as unimportant in it as the zoöphytes and entozoa, or as
the invisible particles of animated life that float upon the air or
swarm in the water-drop.
The foundations of our faith, resting upon the imagined interest of God
in our race, an interest easily supposable when man believed himself the
only intelligent created being, and therefore eminently worthy the
especial care and watchful anxiety of a God who had only this earth to
look after, and its house-keeping alone to superintend, and who was
content to create, in all the infinite Universe, only one single being,
possessing a soul, and not a mere animal, are rudely shaken as the
Universe broadens and expands for us; and the darkness of doubt and
distrust settles heavy upon the Soul.
The modes in which it is ordinarily endeavored to satisfy our doubts,
only increase them. To _demonstrate_ the necessity for a cause of the
creation, is equally to demonstrate the necessity of a cause for that
cause. The argument from plan and design only removes the difficulty a
step further off. We rest the world on the elephant, and the elephant on
the tortoise, and the tortoise on--nothing.
To tell us that the animals possess instinct only and that Reason
belongs to us alone, in no way tends to satisfy us of the radical
difference between us and them. For if the mental phenomena exhibited
by animals that think, dream, remember, argue from cause to effect,
plan, devise, combine, and communicate their thoughts to each other, so
as to act rationally in concert,--if their love, hate, and revenge, can
be conceived of as results of the organization of matter, like color and
perfume, the resort to the hypothesis of an immaterial Soul to explain
phenomena of the same kind, only more perfect, manifested by the _human_
being, is supremely absurd. That organized matter can think or even
_feel_ at all, is the great insoluble mystery. "Instinct" is but a word
without a meaning, or else it means inspiration. It is either the animal
itself, or God _in_ the animal, that thinks, remembers, and reasons; and
instinct, according to the common acceptation of the term, would be the
greatest and most wonderful of mysteries,--no less a thing than the
direct, immediate, and continual promptings of the Deity,--for the
animals are not machines, or automata moved by springs, and the ape is
but a dumb Australian.
Must we _always_ remain in this darkness of uncertainty, of doubt? Is
there _no_ mode of escaping from the labyrinth except by means of a
blind faith, which explains nothing, and in many creeds, ancient and
modern, sets Reason at defiance, and leads to the belief either in a God
without a Universe, a Universe without a God, or a Universe which is
itself a God?
We read in the Hebrew Chronicles that Schlomoh the wise King caused to
be placed in front of the entrance to the Temple two huge columns of
bronze, one of which was called YAKAYIN and the other BAHAZ; and these
words are rendered in our version _Strength_ and _Establishment_. The
Masonry of the Blue Lodges gives no explanation of these symbolic
columns; nor do the Hebrew Books advise us that they were symbolic. If
not so intended as symbols, they were subsequently understood to be
such.
But as we are certain that everything _within_ the Temple was symbolic,
and that the whole structure was intended to represent the Universe, we
may reasonably conclude that the columns of the portico also had a
symbolic signification. It would be tedious to repeat all the
interpretations which fancy or dullness has found for them.
The key to their true meaning is not undiscoverable. The perfect and
eternal distinction of the two primitive terms of the creative
syllogism, in order to attain to the demonstration of their harmony by
the analogy of contraries, is the second grand principle of that occult
philosophy veiled under the name "_Kabalah_," and indicated by all the
sacred hieroglyphs of the Ancient Sanctuaries, and of the rites, so
little understood by the mass of the Initiates, of the Ancient and
Modern Free-Masonry.
The Sohar declares that everything in the Universe proceeds by the
mystery of "the Balance," that is, of Equilibrium. Of the Sephiroth, or
Divine Emanations, Wisdom and Understanding, Severity and Benignity, or
Justice and Mercy, and Victory and Glory, constitute pairs.
Wisdom, or the Intellectual Generative _Energy_, and Understanding, or
the _Capacity_ to be impregnated by the Active Energy and produce
intellection or thought, are represented symbolically in the Kabalah as
male and female. So also are Justice and Mercy. Strength is the
intellectual Energy or Activity; Establishment or Stability is the
intellectual Capacity to produce, a passivity. They are the POWER of
_generation_ and the CAPACITY of _production_. By WISDOM, it is said,
God creates, and by UNDERSTANDING establishes. These are the two Columns
of the Temple, contraries like the Man and Woman, like Reason and Faith,
Omnipotence and Liberty, Infinite Justice and Infinite. Mercy, Absolute
Power or Strength to do even what is most unjust and unwise, and
Absolute Wisdom that makes it impossible to do it; Right and Duty. They
were the columns of the intellectual and moral world, the monumental
hieroglyph of the antinomy necessary to the grand law of creation.
There must be for every Force a Resistance to support it, to every light
a shadow, for every Royalty a Realm to govern, for every affirmative a
negative.
For the Kabalists, Light represents the Active Principle, and Darkness
or Shadow is analogous to the Passive Principle. Therefore it was that
they made of the Sun and Moon emblems of the two Divine Sexes and the
two creative forces; therefore, that they ascribed to woman the
Temptation and the first sin, and then the first labor, the maternal
labor of the redemption, because it is from the bosom of the darkness
itself that we see the Light born again. The Void attracts the Full; and
so it is that the abyss of poverty and misery, the Seeming Evil, the
seeming empty nothingness of life, the temporary rebellion of the
creatures, eternally attracts the overflowing ocean of being, of riches,
of pity, and of love. Christ completed the Atonement on the Cross by
descending into Hell.
Justice and Mercy are contraries. If each be infinite, their
co-existence seems impossible, and being equal, one cannot even
annihilate the other and reign alone. The mysteries of the Divine Nature
are beyond our finite comprehension; but so indeed are the mysteries of
our own finite nature; and it is certain that in all nature harmony and
movement are the result of the equilibrium of opposing or contrary
forces.
The analogy of contraries gives the solution of the most interesting and
most difficult problem of modern philosophy,--the definite and permanent
accord of Reason and Faith, of Authority and Liberty of examination, of
Science and Belief, of Perfection in God and Imperfection in Man. If
science or knowledge is the Sun, Belief is the Man; it is a reflection
of the day in the night. Faith is the veiled Isis, the Supplement of
Reason, in the shadows which precede or follow Reason. It emanates from
the Reason, but can never confound it nor be confounded with it. The
encroachments of Reason upon Faith, or of Faith on Reason, are eclipses
of the Sun or Moon; when they occur, they make useless both the Source
of Light and its reflection, at once.
Science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs; and Faith
succumbs to reasoning. For the two Columns of the Temple to uphold the
edifice, they must remain separated and be parallel to each other. As
soon as it is attempted by violence to bring them together, as Samson
did, they are overturned, and the whole edifice falls upon the head of
the rash blind man or the revolutionist whose personal or national
resentments have in advance devoted to death.
Harmony is the result of an alternating preponderance of forces.
Whenever this is wanting in government, government is a failure, because
it is either Despotism or Anarchy. All theoretical governments, however
plausible the theory, end in one or the other. Governments that are to
endure are not made in the closet of Locke or Shaftesbury, or in a
Congress or a Convention. In a Republic, forces that seem contraries,
that indeed are contraries, alone give movement and life. The Spheres
are held in their orbits and made to revolve harmoniously and
unerringly, by the concurrence, which seems to be the opposition, of two
contrary forces. If the centripetal force should overcome the
centrifugal and the equilibrium of forces cease, the rush of the
Spheres to the Central Sun would annihilate the system. Instead of
consolidation the whole would be shattered into fragments.
Man is a free agent, though Omnipotence is above and all around him. To
be free to do good, he must be free to do evil. The Light necessitates
the Shadow. A State is free like an individual in any government worthy
of the name. The State is less potent than the Deity, and therefore the
freedom of the individual citizen is consistent with its Sovereignty.
These are opposites, but not antagonistic. So, in a union of States, the
freedom of the States is consistent with the Supremacy of the Nation.
When either obtains the permanent mastery over the other, and they cease
to be _in equilibrio_, the encroachment continues with a velocity that
is accelerated like that of a falling body, until the feebler is
annihilated, and then, there being no resistance to support the
stronger, it rushes into ruin.
So, when the equipoise of Reason and Faith, in the individual or the
Nation, and the alternating preponderance cease, the result is,
according as one or the other is permanent victor, Atheism or
Superstition, disbelief or blind credulity; and the Priests either of
Unfaith or of Faith become despotic.
"_Whomsoever God loveth, him he chasteneth_," is an expression that
formulates a whole dogma. The trials of life are the blessings of life,
to the individual or the Nation, if either has a Soul that is truly
worthy of salvation. "_Light and darkness_," said ZOROASTER, "_are the
world's eternal ways_." The Light and the Shadow are everywhere and
always in proportion; the Light being the reason of being of the Shadow.
It is by trials only, by the agonies of sorrow and the sharp discipline
of adversities, that men and Nations attain initiation. The agonies of
the garden of Gethsemane and those of the Cross on Calvary preceded the
Resurrection and were the means of Redemption. It is with prosperity
that God afflicts Humanity.
The Degree of Rose is devoted to and symbolizes the final triumph of
truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery, of light over darkness,
of life over death, and of good over evil. The great truth it inculcates
is, that notwithstanding the existence of Evil, God is infinitely wise,
just, and good: that though the affairs of the world proceed by no rule
of right and wrong known to us the narrowness of our views, yet all _is_
right, for it is the work of God; and all evils, all miseries, all
misfortunes, are but as drops in the vast current that is sweeping
onward, guided by Him, to a great and magnificent result: that, at the
appointed time, He will redeem and regenerate the world, and the
Principle, the Power and the existence of Evil will then cease; that
this will be brought about by such means and instruments as He chooses
to employ; whether by the merits of a Redeemer that has already appeared
or a Messiah that is yet waited for, by an incarnation of Himself or by
an inspired prophet, it does not belong to us as Masons to decide. Let
each judge and believe for himself.
In the mean time, we labor to hasten the coming of that day. The morals
of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity, are ours. We
recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer, as a brother in
this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of Liberty, the Compasses
of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and our order of Fraternity.
Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope, and Charity as our armor, we will
wait with patience for the final triumph of Good and the complete
manifestation of the Word of God.
No one Mason has the right to measure for another, within the walls of a
Masonic Temple, the degree of veneration which he shall feel for any
Reformer, or the Founder of any Religion. We teach a belief in no
particular creed, as we teach unbelief in none. Whatever higher
attributes the Founder of the Christian Faith may, in our belief, have
had or not have had, none can deny that He taught and practised a pure
and elevated morality, even at the risk and to the ultimate loss of His
life. He was not only the benefactor of a disinherited people, but a
model for mankind. Devotedly He loved the children of Israel. To them He
came, and to them alone He preached that Gospel which His disciples
afterward carried among foreigners. He would fain have freed the chosen
People from their spiritual bondage of ignorance and degradation. As a
lover of all mankind, laying down His life for the emancipation of His
Brethren, He should be to all, to Christian, to Jew, and to Mahometan,
an object of gratitude and veneration.
The Roman world felt the pangs of approaching dissolution. Paganism, its
Temples shattered by Socrates and Cicero, had spoken its last word. The
God of the Hebrews was unknown beyond the limits of Palestine. The old
religions had failed to give happiness and peace to the world. The
babbling and wrangling philosophers had confounded all men's ideas,
until they doubted of everything and had faith in nothing: neither in
God nor in his goodness and mercy, nor in the virtue of man, nor in
themselves. Mankind was divided into two great classes,--the master and
the slave; the powerful and the abject, the high and the low, the
tyrants and the mob; and even the former were satiated with the
servility of the latter, sunken by lassitude and despair to the lowest
depths of degradation.
When, lo, a voice, in the inconsiderable Roman Province of Judea
proclaims a new Gospel--a new "God's Word," to crushed, suffering,
bleeding humanity. Liberty of Thought, Equality of all men in the eye of
God, universal Fraternity! a new doctrine, a new religion; the old
Primitive Truth uttered once again!
Man is once more taught to look upward to his God. No longer to a God
hid in impenetrable mystery, and infinitely remote from human sympathy,
emerging only at intervals from the darkness to smite and crush
humanity: but a God, good, kind, beneficent, and merciful: a Father,
loving the creatures He has made, with a love immeasureable and
exhaustless; Who feels for us, and sympathizes with us, and sends us
pain and want and disaster only that they may serve to develop in us the
virtues and excellences that befit us to live with Him hereafter.
Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of man," is the expounder of the new Law of
Love. He calls to Him the humble, the poor, the Pariahs of the world.
The first sentence that He pronounces blesses the world, and announces
the new gospel: "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be
comforted." He pours the oil of consolation and peace upon every crushed
and bleeding heart. Every sufferer is His proselyte. He shares their
sorrows, and sympathizes with all their afflictions.
He raises up the sinner and the Samaritan woman, and teaches them to
hope for forgiveness. He pardons the woman taken in adultery. He selects
his disciples not among the Pharisees or the Philosophers, but among the
low and humble, even of the fishermen of Galilee. He heals the sick and
feeds the poor. He lives among the destitute and the friendless. "Suffer
little children," He said, "to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom
of Heaven! Blessed are the humble-minded, for theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven; the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth; the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy; the pure in heart, for they shall see God; the
peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God! First be
reconciled to they brother, and _then_ come and offer thy gift at the
altar. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee turn not away! Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do
good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully use you
and persecute you! All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye also unto them; for this is the law and the Prophets! He that
taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me. A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another: by this shall all know that ye are
My disciples. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friend."
The Gospel of Love He sealed with His life. The cruelty of the Jewish
Priesthood, the ignorant ferocity of the mob, and the Roman indifference
to barbarian blood, nailed Him to the cross, and He expired uttering
blessings upon humanity.
Dying thus, He bequeathed His teachings to man as an inestimable
inheritance. Perverted and corrupted, they have served as a basis for
many creeds, and been even made the warrant for intolerance and
persecution. We here teach them in their purity. They are our Masonry;
for to them good men of all creeds can subscribe.
That God is good and merciful, and loves and sympathizes with the
creatures He has made; that His finger is visible in all the movements
of the moral, intellectual, and material universe; that we are His
children, the objects of His paternal care and regard; that all men are
our brothers, whose wants we are to supply, their errors to pardon,
their opinions to tolerate, their injuries to forgive; that man has an
immortal soul, a free will, a right to freedom of thought and action;
that all men are equal in God's sight; that we best serve God by
humility, meekness, gentleness, kindness, and the other virtues which
the lowly can practise as well as the lofty; this is "the new Law," the
"WORD," for which the world had waited and pined so long; and every true
Knight of the Rose will revere the memory of Him who taught it, and
look indulgently even on those who assign to Him a character far above
his own conceptions or belief, even to the extent of deeming Him Divine.
Hear Philo, the Greek Jew. "The contemplative soul, unequally guided,
sometimes toward abundance and sometimes toward barrenness, though ever
advancing, is illuminated by the primitive ideas, the rays that emanate
from the Divine Intelligence, whenever it ascends toward the Sublime
Treasures. When, on the contrary, it descends, and is barren, it falls
within the domain of those Intelligences that are termed Angels ... for,
when the soul is deprived of the light of God, which leads it to the
knowledge of things, it no longer enjoys more than a feeble and
secondary light, which gives it, not the understanding of things, but
that of words only, as in this baser world...."