While you were veiled in darkness, you heard repeated by the Voice of
the Great Past its most ancient doctrines. None has the right to object,
if the Christian Mason sees foreshadowed in Chrishna and Sosiosch, in
Mithras and Osiris, the Divine WORD that, as he believes, became Man,
and died upon the cross to redeem a fallen race. Nor can _he_ object if
others see reproduced, in the WORD of the beloved Disciple, that was in
the beginning with God, and that was God, and by Whom everything was
made, only the LOGOS of Plato, and the WORD or Uttered THOUGHT or first
Emanation of LIGHT, or the Perfect REASON of the Great, Silent, Supreme,
Uncreated Deity, believed in and adored by all.
We do not undervalue the importance of any Truth. We utter no word that
can be deemed irreverent by any one of any faith. We do not tell the
Moslem that it is only important for him to believe that there is but
one God, and wholly unessential whether Mahomet was His prophet. We do
not tell the Hebrew that the Messiah whom he expects was born in
Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago; and that he is a heretic
because he will not so believe. And as little do we tell the sincere
Christian that Jesus of Nazareth was but a man like us, or His history
but the unreal revival of an older legend. To do either is beyond our
jurisdiction. Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time; of no one
religion, it finds its great truths in all.
To every Mason, there is a GOD; ONE, Supreme, Infinite in Goodness,
Wisdom, Foresight, Justice, and Benevolence; Creator, Disposer, and
Preserver of all things. How, or by what intermediates He creates and
acts, and in what way He unfolds and manifests Himself, Masonry leaves
to creeds and Religions to inquire.
To every Mason, the soul of man is immortal. Whether it emanates from
and will return to God, and what its continued mode of existence
hereafter, each judges for himself. Masonry was not made to settle that.
To every Mason, WISDOM or INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, and HARMONY,
or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the attributes of God. With
the subtleties of Philosophy concerning them Masonry does not meddle,
nor decide as to the reality of the supposed Existences which are their
Personifications: nor whether the Christian Trinity be such a
personification, or a Reality of the gravest import and significance.
To every Mason, the Infinite Justice and Benevolence of God give ample
assurance that Evil will ultimately be dethroned, and the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful reign triumphant and eternal. It teaches, as it
feels and knows, that Evil, and Pain, and Sorrow exist as part of a wise
and beneficent plan, all the parts of which work together under God's
eye to a result which shall be perfection. Whether the existence of evil
is rightly explained in this creed or in that, by Typhon the Great
Serpent, by Ahriman and his Armies of Wicked Spirits, by the Giants and
Titans that war against Heaven, by the two co-existent Principles of
Good and Evil, by Satan's temptation and the fall of Man, by Lok and the
Serpent Fenris, it is beyond the domain of Masonry to decide, nor does
it need to inquire. Nor is it within its Province to determine how the
ultimate triumph of Light and Truth and Good, over Darkness and Error
and Evil, is to be achieved; nor whether the Redeemer, looked and longed
for by all nations, hath appeared in Judea, or is yet to come.
It reverences all the great reformers. It sees in Moses, the Lawgiver of
the Jews, in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Jesus of Nazareth, and in the
Arabian Iconoclast, Great Teachers of Morality, and Eminent Reformers,
if no more: and allows every brother of the Order to assign to each such
higher and even Divine Character as his Creed and Truth require.
Thus Masonry disbelieves no truth, and teaches unbelief in no creed,
except so far as such creed may lower its lofty estimate of the Deity,
degrade Him to the level of the passions of humanity, deny the high
destiny of man, impugn the goodness and benevolence of the Supreme God,
strike at those great columns of Masonry, Faith, Hope, and Charity, or
inculcate immorality, and disregard of the active duties of the Order.
Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can unite; for
it does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to settle those great
mysteries, that are above the feeble comprehension of our human
intellect. It trusts in God, and HOPES; it BELIEVES, like a child, and
is humble. It draws no sword to compel others to adopt its belief, or to
be happy with its hopes And it WAITS with patience to understand the
mysteries of Nature and Nature's God hereafter.
The greatest mysteries in the Universe are those which are ever going on
around us; so trite and common to us that we never note them nor reflect
upon them. Wise men tell us of the _laws_ that regulate the motions of
the spheres, which, flashing in huge circles and spinning on their axes,
are also ever darting with inconceivable rapidity through the infinities
of Space; while we atoms sit here, and dream that all was made for _us_.
They tell us learnedly of centripetal and centrifugal _forces_, gravity
and attraction, and all the other sounding terms invented to hide a
_want_ of meaning. There are other forces in the Universe than those
that are mechanical.
Here are two minute seeds, not much unlike in appearance, and two of
larger size. Hand them to the learned Pundit, Chemistry, who tells us
how combustion goes on in the lungs, and plants are fed with phosphorus
and carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let her decompose them, analyze
them, torture them in all the ways she knows. The net result of each is
a little sugar, a little fibrin, a little water--carbon, potassium,
sodium, and the like--one cares not to know what.
We hide them in the ground: and the slight rains moisten them, and the
Sun shines upon them, and little slender shoots spring up and grow;--and
what a miracle is the mere growth!--the force, the power, the _capacity_
by which the little feeble shoot, that a small worm can nip off with a
single snap of its mandibles, extracts from the earth and air and water
the different elements, so learnedly catalogued, with which it increases
in stature, and rises imperceptibly toward the sky.
_One_ grows to be a slender, fragile, feeble stalk, soft of texture,
like an ordinary weed; another a strong bush, of woody fibre, armed with
thorns, and sturdy enough to bid defiance to the winds: the third a
tender tree, subject to be blighted by the frost, and looked down upon
by all the forest; while another spreads its rugged arms abroad, and
cares for neither frost nor ice, nor the snows that for months lie
around its roots.
But lo! out of the brown foul earth, and colorless invisible air, and
limpid rain-water, the chemistry of the seeds has extracted
_colors_--four different shades of green, that paint the leaves which
put forth in the spring upon our plants, our shrubs, and our trees.
Later still come the flowers--the vivid colors of the rose, the
beautiful brilliance of the carnation, the modest blush of the apple,
and the splendid white of the orange. Whence come the _colors_ of the
leaves and flowers? By what process of chemistry are _they_ extracted
from the carbon, the phosphorus, and the lime? Is it any greater miracle
to make something out of nothing?
Pluck the flowers. Inhale the delicious _perfumes_; each perfect, and
all delicious. Whence have _they_ come? By what combination of acids and
alkalies could the chemist's laboratory produce _them_?
And now on two comes the fruit--the ruddy apple and the golden orange.
Pluck them--open them! The texture and fabric how totally different! The
_taste_ how entirely dissimilar--the _perfume_ of each distinct from its
flower and from the other. Whence the taste and this new perfume? The
same earth and air and water have been made to furnish a different taste
to each fruit, a different perfume not only to each fruit, but to each
fruit and its own flower.
Is it any more a problem whence come thought and will and perception and
all the phenomena of the mind, than this, whence come the colors, the
perfumes, the taste, of the fruit and flower?
And lo! in each fruit new seeds, each gifted with the same wondrous
power of reproduction--each with the same wondrous _forces_ wrapped up
in it to be again in turn evolved. Forces that had lived three thousand
years in the grain of wheat found in the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy;
forces of which learning and science and wisdom know no more than they
do of the nature and laws of action of God. What can _we_ know of the
nature, and how can _we_ understand the powers and mode of operation of
the human soul, when the glossy leaves, the pearl-white flower, and the
golden fruit of the orange are miracles wholly beyond our comprehension?
We but hide our ignorance in a cloud of words;--and the words too often
are mere combinations of sounds without any meaning. What is the
centrifugal force? A _tendency_ to go in a particular direction! What
external "_force_," then, produces that tendency?
What force draws the needle round to the north? What force moves the
muscle that raises the arm, when the will determines it shall rise?
Whence comes the _will itself_? Is it spontaneous--a first cause, or an
effect? These too are miracles; inexplicable as the creation, or the
existence and self-existence of God.
Who will explain to us the passion, the peevishness, the anger, the
memory, and affections of the small canary-wren? the consciousness of
identity and the dreams of the dog? the reasoning powers of the
elephant? the wondrous instincts, passions, government, and civil
policy, and modes of communication of ideas of the ant and bee?
Who has yet made us to understand, with all his learned words, how heat
comes to us from the Sun, and light from the remote Stars, setting out
upon its journey earth-ward from some, at the time the Chaldeans
commenced to build the Tower of Babel? Or how the image of an external
object comes to and fixes itself upon the retina of the eye; and when
there, how that mere empty, unsubstantial image becomes transmuted into
the wondrous thing that we call SIGHT? Or how the waves of the
atmosphere striking upon the tympanum of the ear--those thin, invisible
waves--produce the equally wondrous phenomenon of HEARING, and become
the roar of the tornado, the crash of the thunder, the mighty voice of
the ocean, the chirping of the cricket, the delicate sweet notes and
exquisite trills and variations of the wren and mocking-bird, or the
magic melody of the instrument of Paganini?
Our senses are mysteries to us, and we are mysteries to ourselves.
Philosophy has taught us nothing as to the _nature_ of our sensations,
our perceptions, our cognizances, the origin of our thoughts and ideas,
but _words_. By no effort or degree of reflection, never so long
continued, can man become conscious of a personal identity in himself,
separate and distinct from his body and his brain. We torture ourselves
in the effort to gain an idea of ourselves, and weary with the exertion.
Who has yet made us understand how, from the contact with a foreign
body, the image in the eye, the wave of air impinging on the ear,
particular particles entering the nostrils, and coining in contact with
the palate, come sensations in the nerves, and from that, perception in
the mind, of the animal or the man?
What do we know of Substance? Men even doubt yet whether it exists.
Philosophers tell us that our senses make known to us only the
_attributes_ of substance, extension, hardness, color, and the like; but
not _the thing itself_ that _is_ extended, solid, black or white; as we
know the _attributes_ of the Soul, its thoughts and its perceptions, and
not the Soul itself which perceives and thinks.
What a wondrous mystery is there in heat and light, existing, we know
not how, within certain limits, narrow in comparison with infinity,
beyond which on every side stretch out infinite space and the blackness
of unimaginable darkness, and the intensity of inconceivable cold! Think
only of the mighty Power required to maintain warmth and light in the
central point of such an infinity, to whose darkness that of Midnight,
to whose cold that of the last Arctic Island is nothing. And yet GOD is
everywhere.
And what a mystery are the effects of heat and cold upon the wondrous
fluid that we call water! What a mystery lies hidden in every flake of
snow and in every crystal of ice, and in their final transformation into
the invisible vapor that rises from the ocean or the land, and floats
above the summits of the mountains!
What a multitude of wonders, indeed, has chemistry unveiled to our eyes!
Think only that if some single law enacted by God were at once repealed,
that of attraction or affinity or cohesion, for example, the whole
material world, with its solid granite and adamant, its veins of gold
and silver, its trap and porphyry, its huge beds of coal, our own frames
and the very ribs and bones of this apparently indestructible earth,
would instantaneously dissolve, with all Suns and Stars and Worlds
throughout all the Universe of God, into a thin invisible vapor of
infinitely minute particles or atoms, diffused throughout infinite
space; and with them light and heat would disappear; unless the Deity
Himself be, as the Ancient Persians thought, the Eternal Light and the
Immortal Fire.
The mysteries of the Great Universe of God! How _can_ we with our
limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite
SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME,
without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each!
An infinity of suns, the nearest of which only _diminish_ in size,
viewed with the most powerful telescope: each with its retinue of
worlds; infinite numbers of such suns, so remote from us that their
light would not reach us, journeying during an infinity of time, while
the light that _has_ reached us, from some that we _seem_ to see, has
been upon its journey for fifty centuries: our world spinning upon its
axis, and rushing ever in its circuit round the sun; and it, the sun,
and all our system revolving round some great central point; and that,
and suns, stars, and worlds evermore flashing onward with incredible
rapidity through illimitable space: and then, in every drop of water
that we drink, in every morsel of much of our food, in the air, in the
earth, in the sea, incredible multitudes of living creatures, invisible
to the naked eye, of a minuteness beyond belief, yet organized, living,
feeding, _perhaps_ with consciousness of identity, and memory and
instinct.
Such are some of the mysteries of the great Universe of God. And yet we,
whose life and that of the world on which we live form but a point in
the centre of infinite Time: we, who nourish animalculæ within, and on
whom vegetables grow without, would fain learn how God created this
Universe, would understand His Powers, His Attributes, His Emanations,
His Mode of Existence and of Action; would fain know the plan according
to which all events proceed, that plan profound as God Himself; would
know the laws by which He controls His Universe; would fain _see_ and
_talk_ to Him face to face, as man talks to man: and we try not to
believe, because we do not _understand_.
He commands us to love one another, to love our neighbor as ourself; and
we dispute and wrangle, and hate and slay each other, because we cannot
be of one opinion as to the Essence of His Nature, as to His Attributes;
whether He became man born of a woman, and was crucified; whether the
Holy Ghost is of the _same_ substance with the Father, or only of a
_similar_ substance; whether a feeble old man is God's Vicegerent;
whether some are elected from all eternity to be saved, and others to be
condemned and punished; whether punishment of the wicked after death is
to be eternal; whether this doctrine or the other be heresy or
truth;--drenching the world with blood, depopulating realms, and turning
fertile lands into deserts; until, for religious war, persecution, and
bloodshed, the Earth for many a century has rolled round the Sun, a
charnel-house, steaming and reeking with human gore, the blood of
brother slain by brother for opinion's sake, that has soaked into and
polluted all her veins, and made her a horror to her sisters of the
Universe.
And if men were all Masons, and obeyed with all their heart her mild
and gentle teachings, that world would be a paradise; while intolerance
and persecution make of it a hell. For this is the Masonic Creed:
BELIEVE, in God's Infinite Benevolence, Wisdom, and Justice: HOPE, for
the final triumph of Good over Evil, and for Perfect Harmony as the
final result of all the concords and discords of the Universe: and be
CHARITABLE as God is, toward the unfaith, the errors, the follies, and
the faults of men: for all make one great brotherhood.
INSTRUCTION.
_Sen. W. Brother Junior Warden, are you a Prince of Mercy?
_Jun. W. I have seen the Delta and the HOLY NAMES upon it, and am an
AMETH like yourself, in the TRIPLE COVENANT, of which we bear the mark.
_Qu_ What is the first Word upon the Delta?
_Ans_ The Ineffable Name of Deity, the true mystery of which is known
to the Ameth alone.
_Qu_ What do the three sides of the Delta denote to us?
_Ans_ To us, and to all Masons, the three Great Attributes or
Developments of the Essence of the Deity; WISDOM, or the Reflective and
Designing Power, in which, when there was naught but God, the Plan and
Idea of the Universe was shaped and formed: FORCE, or the Executing and
Creating Power, which instantaneously acting, realized the Type and Idea
framed by Wisdom; and the Universe, and all Stars and Worlds, and Light
and Life, and Men and Angels and all living creatures WERE; and HARMONY,
or the Preserving Power, Order, and Beauty, maintaining the Universe in
its State, and constituting the law of Harmony, Motion, Proportion, and
Progression:--WISDOM, which _thought_ the plan; STRENGTH, which
_created_: HARMONY, which _upholds_ and _preserves_:--the Masonic
Trinity, three Powers and one Essence: the three columns which support
the Universe, Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual, of which every
Masonic Lodge is a type and symbol:--while to the Christian Mason, they
represent the Three that bear record in Heaven, the FATHER, the WORD,
and the HOLY SPIRIT, which three are ONE.
_Qu_ What do the three Greek letters upon the Delta, _Ι Η Σ_
[_Iota, Eta_, and _Sigma_] represent?
_Ans_ Three of the Names of the Supreme Deity among the Syrians,
Phoenicians, and Hebrews ... IHUH [Hebrew: יהה]; _Self-Existence_ ...
AL [Hebrew: א]: _the Nature-God, or Soul of the Universe_ ... SHADAI
[Hebrew: שד] _Supreme Power_. Also three of the Six Chief Attributes of
God, among the Kabbalists:--WISDOM [IEH], the _Intellect_, ([Greek:
Νούς]) of the Egyptians, the _Word_ ([Greek: Λόγος]) of the Platonists,
and the _Wisdom_ ([Greek: Σοφία]) of the Gnostics: ... MAGNIFICENCE
[AL], the Symbol of which was the Lion's Head: ... and VICTORY and GLORY
[_Tsabaoth_], which are the two columns JACHIN and BOAZ, that stand in
the Portico of the Temple of Masonry. To the Christian Mason they are
the first three letters of the name of the Son of God, Who died upon the
cross to redeem mankind.
_Qu_ What is the first of the THREE COVENANTS, of which we bear the
mark?
_Ans_ That which God made with Noah; when He said, "I will not again
curse the earth any more for man's sake, neither will I smite any more
everything living as I have done. While the Earth remaineth, seed-time
and harvest, and cold and heat, and Winter and Summer, and day and night
shall not cease. I will establish My covenant with you, and with your
seed after you, and with every living creature. All mankind shall no
more be cut off by the waters of a flood, nor shall there any more be a
flood to destroy the earth. This is the token of My covenant: I do set
My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between
Me and the earth: an everlasting covenant between Me and every living
creature on the earth."
_Qu_ What is the second of the Three Covenants?
_Ans_ That which God made with Abraham; when He said, "I am the
Absolute Uncreated God. I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and
thou shalt be the Father of Many Nations, and Kings shall come from thy
loins. I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy
descendants after thee, to the remotest generations, for an everlasting
covenant; and I will be thy God and their God, and will give thee the
land of Canaan for an everlasting possession."
_Qu_ What is the third Covenant?
_Ans_ That which God made with all men by His prophets; when He said:
"I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My
Glory. I will create new Heavens and a new earth; and the former shall
not be remembered, nor come into mind. The Sun shall no more shine by
day, nor the Moon by night; but the Lord shall be an everlasting light
and splendor. His Spirit and His Word shall remain with men forever.
The heavens shall vanish away like vapor, and the earth shall wax old
like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die; but my salvation
shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not end; and there shall be
Light among the Gentiles, and salvation unto the ends of the earth. The
redeemed of the Lord shall return, and everlasting joy be on their
heads, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away."
_Qu_ What is the symbol of the Triple Covenant?
_Ans_ The Triple Triangle.
_Qu_ Of what else is it the symbol to us?
_Ans_ Of the Trinity of Attributes of the Deity; and of the triple
essence of Man, the Principle of Life, the Intellectual Power, and the
Soul or Immortal Emanation from the Deity.
_Qu_ What is the first great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?
_Ans_ No man hath seen God at any time. He is One, Eternal,
All-Powerful, All-Wise, Infinitely Just, Merciful, Benevolent, and
Compassionate, Creator and Preserver of all things, the Source of Light
and Life, coextensive with Time and Space; Who thought, and with the
Thought created the Universe and all living things, and the souls of
men: THAT IS:--the PERMANENT; while everything beside is a perpetual
genesis.
_Qu_ What is the second great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?
_Ans_ The Soul of Man is Immortal; not the result of organization, nor
an aggregate of modes of action of matter, nor a succession of phenomena
and perceptions; but an EXISTENCE, one and identical, a living spirit, a
spark of the Great Central Light, that hath entered into and dwells in
the body; to be separated therefrom at death, and return to God who gave
it: that doth not disperse nor vanish at death, like breath or a smoke,
nor can be annihilated; but still exists and possesses activity and
intelligence, even as it existed in God, before it was enveloped in the
body.
_Qu_ What is the third great Truth in Masonry?
_Ans_ The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters from
crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, but coeval
with that Divine Being Who sees and rules both Heaven and earth. Nor did
Tarquin less violate that Eternal Law, though in his reign there might
have been no written law at Rome against such violence; for the
principle that impels us to right conduct, and warns us against guilt,
springs out of the nature of things. It did not begin to be law when it
was first _written_, nor was it _originated_; but it is coeval with the
Divine Intelligence itself. The consequence of virtue is not to be made
the end thereof: and laudable performances must have deeper roots,
motives and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues.
_Qu_ What is the fourth great Truth in Masonry?