III. In the center of the room is placed the catafalque, which consists
of a rectangular platform, about six feet long by four feet wide, on
which are two smaller platforms, so that three steps are represented. On
the third one should be an elevation of convenient height, on which is
placed an urn. The platform should be draped in black, and a canopy of
black drapery may be raised over the urn and platform.
IV. At each corner of the platform will be placed a candlestick, bearing
a lighted taper, and near it, facing the East, will be seated a brother,
provided with an extinguisher, to be used at the proper time.
V. During the first part of the ceremonies the lights in the room should
burn dimly.
VI. Arrangements should be made to enable the light to be increased to
brilliancy at the appropriate point in the ceremony.
VII. On the catafalque will be laid a pair of white gloves, a lambskin
apron, and if the deceased brother had been an officer, the appropriate
insignia of his office.
VIII. Where the Lodge is held in memory of several brethren, shields
bearing their names are placed around the catafalque.
Opening the Lodge.
The several officers being in their places, and the brethren seated, the
Worshipful Master will call up the Lodge and say:
W. M.: Brother Senior Warden, for what purpose are we assembled?
S. W.: To honor the memory of those brethren whom death hath taken from
us; to contemplate our own approaching dissolution; and, by the
remembrance of immortality, to raise our souls above the considerations
of this transitory existence.
W. M.: Brother Junior Warden, what sentiments should inspire the souls
of Masons on occasions like the present?
J. W.: Calm sorrow for the absence of our brethren who have gone before
us; earnest solicitude for our own eternal welfare, and a firm faith and
reliance upon the wisdom and goodness of the Great Architect of the
Universe.
W. M.: Brethren, commending these sentiments to your earnest
consideration, and invoking your assistance in the solemn ceremonies
about to take place, I declare this Lodge of Sorrow opened.
The Chaplain, or Worshipful Master, will then offer the following, or
some other suitable
Prayer:
Grand Architect of the Universe, in whose holy sight centuries are but
as days; to whose omniscience the past and the future are but as one
eternal present; look down upon Thy children, who still wander among the
delusions of time--who still tremble with dread of dissolution, and
shudder at the mysteries of the future; look down, we beseech Thee,
from Thy glorious and eternal day into the dark night of our error and
presumption, and suffer a ray of Thy divine light to penetrate into our
hearts, that in them may awaken and bloom the certainty of life,
reliance upon Thy promises, and assurance of a place at Thy right hand.
Amen.
Response: So mote it be!
The following, or some other appropriate Ode may here be sung:
Ode.
Tune--Bradford, C. M.
O brother, thou art gone to rest;
We will not weep for thee;
For thou art nowhere, oft on earth,
Thy spirit longed to be.
O brother, thou art gone to rest;
Thy toils and cares are o'er;
And sorrow, pain, and suffering now
Shall ne'er distress thee more.
O brother, thou art gone to rest,
And this shall be our prayer:
That, when we reach our journey's end,
Thy glory we shall share.
The Worshipful Master (taking the skull in his hand) will then say:
Brethren: In the midst of life we are in death, and the wisest cannot
know what a day may bring forth. We live but to see those we love
passing away into the silent land.
Behold this emblem of mortality, once the abode of a spirit like our
own; beneath this mouldering canopy once shone the bright and busy eye;
within this hollow cavern once played the ready, swift, and tuneful
tongue; and now, sightless and mute, it is eloquent only in the lessons
it teaches us.
Think of those brethren, who, but a few days since, were among us in all
the pride and power of life; bring to your minds the remembrance of
their wisdom, their strength, and their beauty; and then reflect that
"to this complexion have they come at last;" think of yourselves, thus
will you be when the lamp of your brief existence has burned out. Think
how soon death, for you, will be a reality. Man's life is like a flower,
which blooms today, and tomorrow is faded, cast aside, and trodden under
foot. The most of us, my brethren, are fast approaching, or have already
passed the meridian of life; our sun is setting in the West; and oh! how
much more swift is the passage of our declining years than when we
started upon the journey, and believed--as the young are too apt to
believe--that the roseate hues of the rising sun of our existence were
always to be continued. When we look back upon the happy days of our
childhood, when the dawning intellect first began to exercise its powers
of thought, it seems as but yesterday, and that, by a simple effort of
the will, we could put aside our manhood, and seek again the loving
caresses of a mother, or be happy in the possession of a bauble; and
could we now realize the idea that our last hour had come, our whole
earthly life would seem but as the space of time from yesterday until
today. Centuries upon centuries have rolled away behind us; before us
stretches out an eternity of years to come; and on the narrow boundary
between the past and the present flickers the puny taper we term our
life. When we came into the world, we knew naught of what had been
before us; but, as we grew up to manhood, we learned of the past; we saw
the flowers bloom as they had bloomed for centuries; we beheld the orbs
of day and night pursuing their endless course among the stars, as they
had pursued it from the birth of light; we learned what men had thought,
and said, and done, from the beginning of the world to our day; but only
through the eye of faith can we behold what is to come hereafter, and
only through a firm reliance upon the Divine promises can we satisfy the
yearnings of an immortal soul. The cradle speaks to us of
remembrance--the coffin, of hope, of a blessed trust in a never-ending
existence beyond the gloomy portals of the tomb.
Let these reflections convince us how vain are all the wranglings and
bitterness engendered by the collisions of the world; how little in
dignity above the puny wranglings of ants over a morsel of food, or for
the possession of a square inch of soil.
What shall survive us? Not, let us hope, the petty strifes and
bickerings, the jealousies and heart-burnings, the small triumphs and
mean advantages we have gained, but rather the noble thoughts, the words
of truth, the works of mercy and justice, that ennoble and light up the
existence of every honest man, however humble, and live for good when
his body, like this remnant of mortality, is mouldering in its parent
dust.
Let the proud and the vain consider how soon the gaps are filled that
are made in society by those who die around them; and how soon time
heals the wounds that death inflicts upon the loving heart; and from
this let them learn humility, and that they are but drops in the great
ocean of humanity.
And when God sends his angel to us with the scroll of death, let us look
upon it as an act of mercy, to prevent many sins and many calamities of
a longer life; and lay down our heads softly and go to sleep, without
wrangling like froward children. For this at least man gets by death,
that his calamities are not immortal. To bear grief honorably and
temperately, and to die willingly and nobly, are the duties of a good
man and true Mason.
Ode.
Tune--Naomi. C. M.
When those we love are snatched away,
By Death's relentless hand,
Our hearts the mournful tribute pay,
That friendship must demand.
While pity prompts the rising sigh,
With awful power imprest;
May this dread truth, "I too must die,"
Sink deep in every breast.
Let this vain world allure no more;
Behold the opening tomb!
It bids us use the present hour;
Tomorrow death may come.
The voice of this instructive scene
May every heart obey;
Nor be the faithful warning vain
Which calls to watch and pray.
At its conclusion the Chaplain will read the following passages:
Lo, He goeth by me and I see Him not. He passeth on also, but I perceive
Him not. Behold He taketh away, who can hinder Him?
Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He
cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow,
and continueth not. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his
months are with Thee: Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot
pass; turn from him that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an
hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that
it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die
in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring
forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man
giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea,
and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down, and riseth not;
till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of
their sleep.
My days are passed, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my
heart. If I wait, the grave is mine house; I have made my bed in the
darkness. I have said to corruption, thou art my father. And where is
now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the
bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh. Oh, that my words were now
written; Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven
with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever! For I know that my
Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the
earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall
behold, and not another.
For Thou cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and Thy floods
compassed me about; all Thy billows and Thy waves passed over me. Then I
said, I am cast out of Thy sight; yet will I look again toward Thy holy
temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul, the depth
closed me round about, the weeds were wrapt about my head.
I said, in the cutting off of my days I shall go to the gates of the
grave! I am deprived of the residue of my years; I said, I shall not see
the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living; I shall behold man no
more with the inhabitants of the world. Behold, for peace I had great
bitterness; but Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit
of corruption. For the grave cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate
Thee; the living, the living, he shall praise Thee as I do this day.
Are not my days few? Cease, then, and let me alone, that I may take
comfort a little, before I go whence I shall not return, even to the
land of darkness, and the shadow of death. A land of darkness, as
darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and
where the light is as darkness.
An interval of profound silence will be observed. The general lights of
the hall, if there be convenience, will be turned low, and the four
brethren will extinguish the tapers near which they are placed.
Prayer by the Chaplain.
Our Father Who art in heaven, it hath pleased Thee to take from among us
those who were our brethren. Let time, as it heals the wounds thus
inflicted upon our hearts and on the hearts of those who were near and
dear to them, not erase the salutary lessons engraved there; but let
those lessons, always continuing distinct and legible, make us and them
wiser and better. And whatever distress or trouble may hereafter come
upon us, may we ever be consoled by the reflection that Thy wisdom and
Thy love are equally infinite, and that our sorrows are not the
visitations of Thy wrath, but the result of the great law of harmony by
which everything is being conducted to a good and perfect issue in the
fullness of Thy time. Let the loss of our brethren increase our
affection for those who are yet spared to us, and make us more punctual
in the performance of the duties that friendship, love and honor demand.
When it comes to us also to die, may a firm and abiding trust in Thy
mercy dispel the gloom and dread of dissolution. Be with us now, and
sanctify the solemnities of this occasion to our hearts, that we may
serve Thee in spirit and understanding. And to Thy name shall be
ascribed the praise forever. Amen.
Response: So mote it be!
The Wardens, Deacons and Stewards, will now approach the East and form a
procession, thus:
Two Stewards, with rods.
Two Wardens.
The Worshipful Master, supported by the Deacons, with rods.
This procession will move once around the catafalque to slow and solemn
music. On arriving at the East, the procession will halt and open to the
right and left. The Junior Warden will then advance to the catafalque,
and, placing upon it a bunch of white flowers, will say:
Junior Warden: In memory of our departed brethren I deposit these white
flowers, emblematical of that pure life to which they have been called,
and reminding us that as these children of an hour will droop and fade
away, so, too, shall we soon follow those who have gone before us, and
inciting us so to fill the brief span of our existence that we may leave
to our survivors a sweet savor of remembrance.
The Junior Warden will now return to his place, and an interval of
profound silence will be observed. The procession will again be formed,
and move as before, to the sound of slow music, twice around the
catafalque. They will open as before, and the Senior Warden approaching
the catafalque will place upon it a wreath of white flowers, and say:
Senior Warden: As the sun sets in the West, to close the day and herald
the approach of night, so, one by one we lay us down in the darkness of
the tomb to wait in its calm repose for the time when the heavens shall
pass away as a scroll, and man, standing in the presence of the
Infinite, shall realize the true end of his pilgrimage here below. Let
these flowers be to us the symbol of remembrance of all the virtues of
our brethren who have preceded us to the silent land, the token of that
fraternal alliance which binds us while on earth and which we hope will
finally unite us in heaven.
The Senior Warden returns to his place, and an interval of profound
silence will be observed. The procession will again be formed, and move
three times around the catafalque to slow and solemn music, as before.
Arrived in the East, the Worshipful Master will advance and place upon
the Urn a wreath of evergreen, and say:
Worshipful Master: It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after
death cometh the resurrection. The dust shall return to the earth and
the spirit unto God who gave it. In the grave all men are equal; the
good deeds, the lofty thoughts, the heroic sacrifices alone survive and
bear fruit in the lives of those who strive to emulate them.
While, therefore, nature will have its way, and our tears will fall upon
the graves of our brethren, let us be reminded by the evergreen symbol
of our faith in immortal life that the dead are but sleeping, and be
comforted by the reflection that their memories will not be forgotten;
that they will still be loved by those who are soon to follow them; that
in our archives their names are written, and that in our hearts there is
still a place for them. And so, trusting in the infinite love and tender
mercy of Him without whose knowledge not even a sparrow falls, let us
prepare to meet them where there is no parting, and where with them we
shall enjoy eternal rest.
The Worshipful Master will return to his place, and a period of silence
will obtain. The Chaplain will now be conducted to the altar, where he
will read:
But some man will say: How are the dead raised up? and with what body do
they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it
die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall
be, but bear grain; it may chance of wheat or of some other grain; but
God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own
body.
All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men,
another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There
are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the
celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and
another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in
glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is
raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural
body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man
Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the
earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy,
such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are
they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I
show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed;
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we
shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and
this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have
put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then
shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed
up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy
victory?
As the Chaplain pronounces the concluding words, "O grave, where is thy
victory?" the lights in the hall will be raised to brilliancy, the four
brethren seated around the catafalque will relight the tapers, while a
strain of triumphant music will be played.
The Chaplain will return to his place in the East, and the following, or
some other appropriate Ode, will be sung to music of a more cheerful
character:
Ode.--Tune, Cary.
One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er;
I am nearer home today
Than I ever have been before.
Nearer my Father's house,
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne;
Nearer the crystal sea.
Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the cross;
Nearer gaining the crown.
But lying darkly between,
Winding down through the night,
Is the deep and unknown stream,
That leads at last to the light.
Father, perfect my trust!
Strengthen the might of my faith;
Let me feel as I would when I stand
On the rock of the shore of death.
Feel as I would when my feet
Are slipping over the brink;
For it may be, I am nearer home--
Nearer now than I think.
The Orator will then pronounce the Eulogium.
Then follows the following, or some other appropriate Ode:
Ode.--Tune: Old Hundred. L. M.
Once more, O Lord, let grateful praise
From ev'ry heart to Thee ascend;
Thou art the guardian of our days,
Our first, our best and changeless friend.
Hear now our parting hymn of praise,
And bind our hearts in love divine;
Oh, may we walk in wisdom's ways,
And ever feel that we are Thine.
Closing.
Worshipful Master: Brother Senior Warden, our recollection of our
departed friends has been refreshed, and we may now ask ourselves, were
they just and perfect Masons, worthy men, unwearied toilers in the
vineyard, and possessed of so many virtues as to overcome their faults
and shortcomings? Answer these questions, as Masons should answer.
Senior Warden: Man judgeth not of man. He Whose infinite and tender
mercy passeth all comprehension, Whose goodness endureth forever, has
called our brethren hence. Let Him judge.
In ancient Egypt no one could gain admittance to the sacred asylum of
the tomb until he had passed under the most solemn judgment before a
grave tribunal.
Princes and peasants came there to be judged, escorted only by their
virtues and their vices. A public accuser recounted the history of their
lives, and threw the penetrating light of truth on all their actions. If
it were adjudged that the dead man had led an evil life, his memory was
condemned in the presence of the nation, and his body was denied the
honors of sepulture. But Masonry has no such tribunal to sit in judgment
upon her dead; with her, the good that her sons have done lives after
them; and the evil is interred with their bones. She does require,
however, that whatever is said concerning them shall be the truth; and
should it ever happen that of a Mason, who dies, nothing good can be
truthfully said, she will mournfully and pityingly bury him out of her
sight in silence.
Worshipful Master: Brethren, let us profit by the admonitions of this
solemn occasion, lay to heart the truths to which we have listened, and
resolve so to walk that when we lay us down to the last sleep it may be
the privilege of the brethren to strew white flowers upon our graves and
keep our memories as a pleasant remembrance.
Brother Senior Warden: Announce to the brethren that our labors are now
concluded, and that it is my pleasure that this Lodge of Sorrow be
closed.
Senior Warden: Brother Junior Warden, the labors of this Lodge of Sorrow
being ended, it is the pleasure of the Worshipful Master that it be now
closed. Make due announcement to the brethren, and invite them to
assist.
Junior Warden [calling up the Lodge]. Brethren, the labors of this Lodge
of Sorrow being ended, it is the pleasure of the Worshipful Master that
it be now closed.
W. M.: Let us unite with our Chaplain in an invocation to the Throne of
Grace.
* * *
W. M.: This Lodge of Sorrow is now closed.
Transcriber's Note:
The following have been retained as they appear in the original
publication: