The Religion of
Masonry
by Bro. Joseph Fort Newton, Litt. D.
The Master Mason - 1925
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Mystic Tie
Chapter 2 - The Builders
Chapter 3 - The Corner Stone
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS RELIGION? What is Masonry? What is the
relation, if any, between them? Is Masonry a religion? If so,
what religion is it? What is a religion as distinct from
Religion? If Masonry is not a religion, what is its attitude
toward Religion? That is to say, what is the Religion of
Masonry, and how are we to interpret it?
Such questions, and others of a sort similar, have been more
discussed than almost any other questions connected with
the existence and study of Masonry. They are asked by
friends and foes alike, often from different motives and with
widely differing answers. Nor is it to be wondered at,
remembering the confusion of thought in the minds of men
regarding religion and what they mean by it. By the very fact
that the things of religion are so important, so decisive, and
touch life so deeply, men want to know how Masonry is
related to the chief interest of human life. In what mood or
from what motive soever the question is asked, it is fair and
proper to ask it.
As a clearance of issues, if nothing else, there is need of a
careful, reverent, discriminating, sympathetic study of the
matter, in order to clarify our own thought and to set it forth
in a manner worthy of its importance. Obviously, if we are to
study the question to any profit, we must know what we
mean by the words we use and the realities with which we
have to do. But first, by way of introduction, it may be well to
survey, in swift glance, the situation as it stands in the
Masonry of our day in its formal attitude to religion.
I.
IN THE organized Masonry of the world one discovers at
least three different attitudes in respect to the relation of the
Craft to religion. They are far apart, as will presently appear,
and it is difficult to see how they can be reconciled, in view of
the sentiments which religion evokes and its essentially
conservative spirit. Each of these attitudes, it need hardly be
said, is due to differences of race, as well as of religion, to
say nothing of the different environments in which they
developed; and here. we have to do with forces hard to
manage. For the same reason, it behooves us to invoke all
our powers not simply of toleration, but of insight and
understanding, if we are not to lose ourselves in a tangle of
racial prejudices and antipathies, to say nothing of the
unholy confusion which religion, by the strangest freak of
fact, has the power to create.
(1) In English-speaking lands, as we know well enough, our
Masonry is essentially and nobly religious, both in its faith
and its practice, and we are quite well agreed as to what we
mean by the Religion of Masonry. To enter our Lodges a
man must confess - not merely profess - his faith in God -
though he is not required definitely to define in what terms
he thinks of God - in the principles and practice of morality,
and in the immortality of the soul; though here again the
exact nature of the future life, whether it be a physical
resurrection or a triumph of spiritual personality, is not
usually defined. In some Grand Lodges, however, the
Monitors do specifically state that they mean "the
resurrection of the body."
THE MOST elaborate statement, so far as I am aware, is
that adopted by the Grand Lodge of New York, as a
preamble to its Constitution and Laws. It is an expression of
"the simplest form of the faith of Masonry, not exhaustive,
but incontrovertible and suggestive," to which is added a
brief exposition intended to utter, so far as such things can
be uttered, the atmosphere of thought and attitude of heart
implied in the statement of religious truth, which is quite as
important as the statement itself. It is as follows:
"There is one God, the Father of all men.
"The Holy Bible is the Great Light in Masonry, and the rule
and guide for faith and practice.
"Man is immortal.
"Character determines destiny.
"Love of man is, next to love of God, man's first duty.
"Prayer, communion of man with God, is helpful."
Recognizing the impossibility of confining the teaching of
Masonry to any fixed forms of expression, yet
acknowledging the value of authoritative statements of
fundamental principles, the following is proclaimed as the
Masonic teaching:
"Masonry teaches man to practice charity and benevolence,
to protect chastity, to respect the ties of blood and friendship,
to adopt the principles and revere the ordinances of religion,
to assist the feeble, guide the blind, raise up the
downtrodden, shelter the orphan, guard the altar, support the
Government, inculcate morality, promote learning, love man,
fear God, implore His mercy and hope for happiness."
SUCH IS the statement of Masonic faith and teaching in
English-speaking lands, lucid, concise, noble in its simplicity
and comprehensiveness, in all ways worthy of the Craft and
of the Grand Lodge which put it forth. Others would go even
further into detail, but a majority, perhaps, prefer a statement
less detailed content to leave much of what is here stated
specifically to be assumed as implied and understood, by
virtue of the religious and racial environment in which we
live. Still, it is well to have an authoritative and detailed
pronouncement of a great Grand Lodge, if only to prevent
any possible misinterpretation and misunderstanding as to
the attitude of the Craft.
(2) In German lands, as well as in the three Scandinavian
Grand Lodges, it is demanded that a man be definitely
Christian - that is to say, trinitarian - in his religious faith
before he can be admitted into the fellowship of the Craft. In
consequence of this attitude - quite uncompromising, so far
as the old Prussian Grand Lodges are concerned - Jews are
refused admission even to the Craft Degrees. Howbeit, in
late years there has grown up a "Humanitarian" Masonry, as
it is described, in Germany, which does not require a strict
Christian, or trinitarian, faith as a basis of fellowship. There
has been some friction between the two kinds of Masonry in
German, but a tacit treaty of understanding seems to have
been reached by which they can live together in mutual, if
rather formal and distant, goodwill. It ought to be added.
however, that even the old Prussian Grand Lodges found no
great difficulty, in pre-war days, in meeting French Masons,
who take a very different attitude.
(3) Of Masonry in Latin lands it is enough to say that -
excepting that part of it which lives under English obedience
or in affiliation with the Grand Lodge of England - it is frankly
Agnostic in its attitude toward the fundamental faiths of
religion. Neither French nor Belgian Masonry requires faith in
God as a condition of fellowship, much less do they forbid
such faith - though in Belgium such faith is required in some
of their higher degrees, with which we have not to do here.
They simply refuse to ask what faith a man may hold on the
subject, and avoid retaining anything in the ritual which
implies that Masonry rests upon or seeks to cultivate, faith in
God. It is not my wish to discuss, here and now, the wisdom
or unwisdom of this attitude, still less to recite the historical
reasons why French Masonry took and maintains its present
position. It is sufficient to indicate the wide gulf between the
Christian Grand Lodges of Sweden and Germany and the
Agnostic Grand Lodge of France; and the almost equally
wide gulf between both of them and the Masonry of our
English-speaking lands.
II.
BY THE same token, one finds among Masons in English-
speaking lands the widest differences of opinion in regard to
the relation of Masonry to religion. First of all, there are those
who hold that Masonry is a purely social and philanthropic
fraternity and has nothing to do with religion at all, except to
acknowledge its existence, accept its fundamental ideas,
and respect its ordinances. Having done that in a formal
manner, its duty to religion is done, and it is free to take up
its work of "Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth" - the truth
being moral truth and teaching set forth in its symbols and its
ritual.
For example, in the "Royal Masonic Cyclopedia" we find
these words: "But, above all things, let it be clearly seen as a
purely social institution, having no political or religious
tendency at all, tending to make men friendly upon vastly
different grounds than those of agrarian and political rights."
It is astonishing how wide-spread this attitude is, both in
spirit and in practice. Many Brethren, more, perhaps, than
express themselves, object to - though they are good
enough to tolerate as a kind of weakness or folly - emphasis
upon the religious aspect of Masonry and the high spiritual
meaning of its symbols. Indeed, it is much to be feared that
the Order - which word Dr. Johnson defined as "a religious
fraternity" - is actually in danger of becoming what they hold
it to be, merely a social order devoted to fellowship and
philanthropy. If such is to be the future of Masonry, it will
assuredly lose what some of us hold to be its distinctive
quality and tradition, and become one more society among
so many - useful and valuable, to be sure-but in nowise the
Masonry by which our fathers set so much store.
HOW ANYONE can so interpret Masonry is rather difficult to
understand, in view of the facts of initiation and the spirit of
the Lodge. Nor does it help matters to say that Craft
Masonry is ethics, and the Royal Arch religion. Others are
content to say that Masonry is "the handmaid of religion," a
well-worn phrase which, if it means anything, implies that our
Craft is a kind of servant to do the menial work of religion; as
if religion were some haughty Dame too proud and arrogant
to stoop to the common tasks of life. Whereas religion, if it
has any worth or beauty, is the faith and spirit in which we do
the humblest work of the world. As George Herbert put it,
writing in his little rectory at Bemerton, as the birds nested in
the eaves :
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and the action fine.
It is the business of Masonry to cut, carve, polish, and place
in order of wall, pillar and arch the stones of a Temple of
Brotherhood, founded upon spiritual faith and moral truth,
built in accordance with the laws of God, by His aid, and in
His holy name. As such it is manifestIy more than a mere
social order inculcating ethical ideals and practicing
philanthropy. As Arthur Waite put it picturesquely: "It is
possible and is true to affirm that Masonry was born in a
tavern, but it belongs to God Almighty; it began to make the
life of the tavern like a vestibule for the life of the church."
AT THE other extreme, we find those, both friends and foes,
who regard Masonry as a sufficiently organize system of
spiritual thought and practice to be entitled to be called a
religion. By a religion they mean a definite creed arid certain
distinctive rites expressing its faith and spirit, and both of
these they find in Masonry. Such is the position of the
Catholic Church, and of a section of the High Church Party
of the Church of England, which is Catholic in all respects
except in actual allegiance to the Roman See. They really
regard Masonry as a rival religion of a naturalistic kind, to
which, by all the obligations of their own faith in Divine
revelation, they must be opposed; and it must be confessed
that French Masonry, with the Bible off the Altar and the
name of God omitted from the ritual, does justify such a
description. Other elements, of course, enter into the
opposition of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic opposition to
Masonry, but on the distinctively religion side this is the basis
and sum of it.
What, then, is the truth of the matter? Is Masonry a religion?
The leaders and students of the Craft, as well as the rank
and mass of its members, in English-speaking lands at least,
do not regard Masonry as a religion - though, as has been
said, it has certain features which, in the strict technical
sense, might lead those to regard it as such who wish, from
whatever motive, so to regard it. As some of us prefer to put
it, Masonry is not a religion but Religion - not a church but a
worship, in which men of all religions may unite, unless they
insist that all who worship with them must think exactly and
in detail as they think about all things in the heaven above
and in the earth beneath. It is not the rival of any religion, but
the friend of all, laying emphasis upon those truths which
underlie all religions and are the basis and consecration of
each. Masonry is not a religion, but it is religious.
III.
IF WE look at the matter historically, we find an interesting
development in the attitude of Masonry to religion. The
oldest extant document of the Craft - the Halliwell Ms. -
known as the Regius Poem - dated about 1390, is not only
Christian but definitely Catholic. Its discoverer held it to be
such a document as a priest might have written, opening
with an invocation to the Trinity and the Virgin Mary, and
including instruction as to the proper way to celebrate the
Mass. The early craft-Masons were loyal churchmen, and so
far as we have record remained so throughout the cathedral
building period.
With the advent of the Reformation all was changed.
Masonry became allied with the movement, or group of
movements, out of which came the freedom of the peoples,
the liberty of conscience, and the independence of
manhood. At any rate, from the time of Edward VI on the
Craft was emphatically Protestant in its affinities, as is shown
by the invocations of the Old Charges of the period, of which
the Harleian Ms. is a notable instance. But, while Masonry
became Protestant in its spirit and principles, it still remained
Christian, and continued to be distinctly so until a much later
time. just what happened at the time of the "revival" in 1717,
and in the period of the formation of the first Grand Lodge, is
hard to know accurately. The background is dim and the
facts are few, much as we should like to know details of the
influences which played upon the men who devised the
Constitutions of 1723, which Gould said, "may safely be
attributed to Anderson."
THE "REVIVAL," as we describe it, not only gave Masonry a
new form of organization in the Grand Lodge, but a new
attitude toward the church and religion - an attitude the full
import of which was not understood until years afterward,
and then it made a schism which lasted for half a century.
The article on "God and Religion" in the Constitutions of
1723, if read in the setting of that time, is an extraordinary
pronouncement, at once revolutionary and prophetic. In a
word, just as in the Reformation Masonry severed its
connection with Catholicism, so in 1723 it severed itself,
once for all, from any one church or sect, making itself
henceforth free from any system of theology. It proposed to
unite men upon the common eternal religion "in which all
men agree," asking Masons to keep "their peculiar opinions
to themselves," and not to make them tests of Masonic
fellowship.
Only a few, however, realized how far-reaching such a
platform really was, but by the middle of the century its
meaning was discovered, and a rival Grand Lodge was
organized in 1751 - using the religious issue as a pretext, if
nothing more, because other motives and influences mingled
- calling itself "Anxient," on the ground that the "Modern"
Grand Lodge had departed from the faith. The two Grand
Lodges existed side by side for fifty years and more, not
without friction, but the "Moderns" finally won, disengaging
Masonry from specific allegiance to any one religion, to the
exclusion of others. In the Lodge of Reconciliation, in 1813,
the universal religious character of the Craft was finally
affirmed, and the last definite trace of dogmatic theological
influence vanished from our Fraternity - let us hope forever.
HOWBEIT, not all Masons were satisfied with the situation,
and Hutchinson, a gifted and gracious man, in "The Spirit of
Masonry" - a little classic to this day - made plea for a
definitely Christian Masonry; as did Oliver and others. Even
as late at 1885 the late Brother Whymper repeated the plea
very persuasively in an able book, "The Religion of
Freemasonry," but to no avail. He even went so far as to
urge that Jews, Hindoos, and Mohammedans might be
allowed to have Lodges of their own, if they wished, though
not within, or not entirely within, the regular fellowship of the
Fraternity - a thoroughly impossible suggestion on the face
of it. Let us hope that the matter is now finally settled, and
that Masonry will never again be the servant - handmaid or
otherwise - of one religious dogma or creed, save its own
universal creed of fundamental religion, but will continue to
be "the center of union, and the means of conciliating true
friendship," not only among persons but among faiths "that
otherwise must have remained at a perpetual distance."
For, to say no more, Masonry is a system of moral
mysticism, expressing faith in God and the eternal life in old
and simple symbols of the building art, awakening the better
angels in the nature of man and teaching the brotherly life.
Its aim is to aid its sons to win a clearer conception of their
duty to God and man, to develop their spiritual faculties, to
refine and exalt their lives in fellowship and service, leaving
each one to add to its profound and simple faith such
elaborations and embellishments as may seem to him to be
true and beautiful and good, with due respect for and
appreciation of the thought and faith and dream of his
Brothers and Fellows.
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Chapter
1 - The Mystic Tie
I.
WHAT is religion? Unless we have some idea of its nature and
meaning we cannot go very far in the study here proposed, and yet
it is not easy to put it into words. Every great thing opens out upon
the infinite and asks for unfenced frontiers. A definition is a wall
we build around a reality to bring it within reach and range, and a
wall has its limits: it shuts out more than it shuts in. The old farmer
in the Robert Frost poem was right:
Before I build, I would ask to know
What I was walling in, or walling out,
Something there is that does not love a wall,
That wants it down.
None of the really great things of life can be shut up within a wall.
A man may fence a field, but never the soft winds that blow over
it, nor the sunset glow that falls upon it. Yet without the wind, the
sun, and the drifting mist that breaks into a blue dust of rain, his
field would be of no value. No more can we fence religion with a
definition; it breaks through our net of words and escapes. When
all is said there remains a margin of mysticism, a spirit which
baffles speech. Religion is the meaning of life and can only be
learned by living.
OBVIOUSLY we must draw a line between religion and theology.
One is the truth of life in its warmth and radiance, its joy and
pathos; the other is a system of reasonings and conjectures,
symbols, and traditions by which man seeks to justify, clarify, and
interpret the faith by which he lives. Religion is poetry; theology is
prose. It is the difference between a flower garden and a book of
botany, a manual of astronomy and a sky full of stars. Theology is
valuable but not indispensable. As one need not know the facts of
botany in order to enjoy a bed of violets, so we do not have to
fathom the mysteries of theology in order to live the religious life.
Many a man who has only a dim idea of what it means to love God
is really doing it all the time, in the best of all ways, by lending a
hand to his fellows along the road.
Still, by the very necessity of his nature, man cannot be content
with an impulsive and unreflective existence. He is a thinker, a
seeker after truth, a philosopher who desires to analyze the mystery
of his life and know its meaning, in order to live with clearer vision
and to better purpose. So he has made him many theologies, at
times more voluminous than luminous, about which he has debated
hotly, excommunicating those who do not agree with him -
forgetting that without charity no theology is of any value.
Manifestly it is an error to mistake the explanation of religion for
the reality itself, much less to make our dogmas tests alike of
fellowship and salvation. For, according to Jesus, with whom our
best instincts agree, we are saved not by what we think but by what
we are. Our theology ought to be, as revisable as are all other
human ideas, growing as "the thoughts of man widen with the
processes of the suns."
IN THE same way, temples, altars, creeds, feasts, fasts, and solemn
ritual words are not religion. They are efforts, to realize and
express the unseen element of thought and yearning which lies at
the root of it-attempts to utter by symbol, or to invoke by
sacrament, the mystery and meaning of life. Religion is no abstract
thing; it is life itself, "the life of God in the soul of man," as
Scrougall said, three centuries gone by. The Church has no
monopoly of religion, nor did the Bible create it. Instead, it was
religion that created the Bible and the Church, and if they were
destroyed it would create them anew.
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of the nations came,
Like a volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below -
The canticles of love and woe
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
II.
There is in human nature a spiritual quality, by whatever name it is
described, to express which some contrive theologies, others write
rituals, and others sing anthems. It is a part of our human
endowment, at once the fountain of our faith and the consecration
of our labor. It emerged with man, revealing itself in love and
birth, joy and woe, pity and pain and death, in the blood in the
veins of men, the milk in the breasts of women, the laughter of
little children, in the ritual of the seasons - all the old, sweet, sad,
happy human things - adding a rhythm and a pathos to mortal life.
Older than all creeds, deeper than all dogmas, it is a voice out of
the heart of the world; the account which life gives of itself when it
is healthy, natural and free.
Every man shares, in some degree, in the great mysticism of the
race. By the very fact of his humanity, each man has a capacity for
religion, as he has a need of it, whether he knows it or not; just as
he is potentially a poet, though he may not be aware of it. One
doubts the fact of an entirely irreligious person; but if he exists he
is, by so much, less than human. In some men the spark may be
dormant and undeveloped, but it is there, along with much else. As
radium is found only in uranium, and then only a Few grains of it
in tons of alien matter, so "the light that lighteth every man" may
burn darkly; but it does not go out. The religious man is thus of
many sorts, according to type, training, and stage of growth; but
we ought to be able to know him in any garb.
NO WORDS may ensnare this elusive, ineluctable quality in the
life of man, lending dignity to his dust and luster to his days. It
takes myriad shapes - all the shapes which truth and love and duty
take - in all true art, all great literature, in the magic suggestiveness
of music, in the quest of beauty and the search for truth, in old and
simple and lovable things lifted into light and color; no less than in
the many forms of piety, from the crude rites of early man to the
life of Jesus, It is a tone, a temper, a grace, like "touch" in a
musician, like melody which turns sound into song - something
deep, tender, haunting, in the hushed awe of an agnostic or in the
life of a saint; in the grave and kindly Lincoln who walked under a
sky as gray as a tired face, and in Francis who went singing
through the world. Some men seem not to be aware of this fine
thing in their lives, and even deny that they have it, yet they "live
by the fact the lips deny, God knoweth why." All of us know men
like Hankin in "The Mad Shepherds," of whom Snarley Bob
observes:
Shoremaker Hankin were a great man. He'd got hold o' lots o' good
things, but he's got some on 'em by the wrong end. He talked more
than a man o' his size ought to ha' done. He spent his breath in
proving that God doesn't exist, and his life in proving that He does.
The greatest of all Teachers of faith did not use the word religion
at all, but always the word Life instead, saying that He had come
that men might have life, and have it more abundantly. So far from
limiting life, He sanctifies it, lifts it to a higher octave, sets it free,
shakes the poison out of all its wild flowers, and reveals its eternal
values in the arts and acts of every day. With Jesus, religion does
not consist of a few acts of prayer, worship, and alms; it is not one
thing, but the spirit in which we are to do everything, if it be only
to give a cup of cold water to a brother man. Many kinds of life
have to be lived, and no one kind has a right to be called religious,
to the exclusion of others. The humblest labor, no less than the
highest, if done with reference to the whole, has the sanctity of a
sacrament. Every task is sacred which offers opportunity for
growth and service; all things are holy which draw men together in
fellowship and promote justice and beauty in the earth.
RELIGION, to repeat it once more, is not a thing apart from life; it
is life itself at its best - the meaning of life by which we live, the
art by which we learn how to live: how to be, how to do, how to do
without, and, finally, how to join our fleeting lives with tone vast
Life that moves and cannot die," which Jesus called the Eternal
Life.
III.
BY THE same token, it may be said that in the view here set forth,
if religion is everything it ceases to be anything. Or else, if all
thoughts, all feelings, all acts are, or may be, religious, it embraces
what we include under morality, art, and even sport, and we are
using more words than we need. Of course, for purposes of study
and analysis we may separate religion from morality, but in actual
life they blend, they intermingle, they are interwoven. Indeed, my
point is that religion, as the Latin word for it implies, is the
unifying spirit of all life. Cicero preferred the meaning "to think
back," to think over again, to reflect on the meaning of life - to
recollect. Augustine liked best to define it as meaning "to rebind,"
to tie together; that which unites man to God and to his fellows,
They are two aspects of the same thought - the idea of a tie by
which things are held together, a thread on which things are strung;
a power of cohesion and coherence. Recent studies seem to arrive
at the same insight. More and more religion is regarded, not as a
separate faculty or interest or instinct, but rather as a unity of
interests - the organizing spirit among the values of life.
If this seems at first a little hazy and fine-spun, a picturesque
example of what it means may be seen in the life of Anton
Tchekhov, the Russian novelist, to whose art we owe so much.
Something happened in him, whether real or imagined, to cut the
tie which gives unity and continuity to life, scattering ideas and
events like beads in disarray when the thread is broken. It was an
appalling experience, as he describes it, leaving him a sad, weary,
bewildered man. In one of his letters he writes, giving us a glimpse
of his inner chaos:
In all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas which I form about anything
there is wanting the something universal which could bind all these
together in one whole. Each feeling and thought lives detached in
me, and in all my opinions and in all the little pictures which my
imagination paints, not even the most cunning analyst will discover
what is called the general idea, or the God of the living man. If this
is not there, then nothing is there.
NO WONDER he is a specialist in hopelessness, a great artist of
loneliness - like a tiny island in a vast sea. Each man stands by
himself; fraternity is a fiction. Facts pile up Pell-mell, without
sequence or significance. Things have no relation to one another;
they just happen. He knows "the comfortless conglomerate of
finite events." He sees each thing clearly; he etches vividly; he can
fasten a fleeting impression in a flashing phrase. But life has no
plan, no purpose, no meaning; it is just a jumble. Events fall at
haphazard, as in the colors of a kaleidoscope. Ideas are deceptive;
ideals are a mirage; work is unmeaning monotony; each day is an
idle tale, ending in ennui, futility, and the fatigue of despair. So
dismal does life become when the mystic tie is cut. What a fate to
be thus marooned on a desert island in a world where there is truth
to seek, love to win, and beauty passes with the sun on her wings!
Such a man is sick; something has hit him and he goes lame. Yet
his experience, if it be only imagined, does show us that the basis
of life is a sense, vague or vivid, of the "something universal"
which unites things into a whole. As Bruno said, God is the
principle of connection in things, and things are connected by the
Meaning to which all their partial meanings contribute. Nature and
events, as Goethe held, are the language of God, silent and
incessant, of which we can read here a line and there a stanza.
They are facts, but they are also symbols, and have meaning
beyond the facts. That is to say, everything is somehow the voice
of God, if we have ears to hear. To find meaning in the world is to
begin to live in it and to love it, and where love is there God is.
IV.
TWO EXAMPLES will make the idea plainer, one in the field of
psychology and the other in the facts of recent history. In his fine,
closely packed study of "Man and Culture," Dr. Clark Wissler
finds' what he calls two great complexes in human nature, tool-
using and ritual-making, which give the clue to the history of
culture. The reason why man uses tools is plain enough, but why,
from the very beginning, in all ages and all lands, he has made
rituals, is a mystery. The writer suspects that at the bottom of
ritual-making there is a fact as fundamental, as natural, as the using
of tools. Something is there, but he does not know what it is -
something profoundly revealing.
What he suspects - he does not set it forth as a dogma - is that
ritual is the desire, if we may not call it instinct, by which man is
led to "seek to complete the sequence of cause and effect' when an
effect is experienced." In other words, in his rituals man is seeking
to spin and weave a tie uniting cause and effect; that is, trying to
find the connection in things. It is a quest after the sequence of
facts, the relation of events, as over against the awful
miscellaneousness of mere Chance, in which forces move
haphazard. Even Fate is better than Chance; at least it implies
order, direction, control in the nature of things which, if men
follow it, leads to freedom and power. Ritual, then, is man trying to
interpret his experience, flinging across the gaps of life a network
of meaning - his effort to escape from the most terrifying of all
fears, that his life is at the mercy of caprice, the sport of whim. In
his ritual he dramatizes what he thinks the meaning of life is, acts
out its law as he knows it, endeavoring to bring himself into
harmony with the order of the world, and thus to be at home in it.
So the history of religion is the story, more fascinating than any
tale told in fairyland, of man seeking for the meaning of his life,
setting forth in drama, symbol, and sign the truth as he finds it.
Always, by an insight deeper and clearer than he knows, he finds
the meaning of his life in spiritual reality and value; in Truth,
Love, and "that thread of all-sustaining Beauty that runs through
all and doth all unite." In short, he is a mystic, and the essence of
all mysticism is a sense, a vision, of the unity of things, of the
oneness of all life, of the kinship of man with God, without which
life and the world are alike unintelligible and utterly baffling.
When, in an hour of madness or sin or blindness the mystic tie is
cut, chaos comes again. Of this fact we have bad in our own time
the most ghastly demonstration in Russia, whereof a great lawyer
of Moscow has told us. Writing in the Hibbert journal, in 1920,
Eugune Troubetzkoy analyzes Bolshevism in these words:
It is first and foremost the practical denial of the spiritual. They
flatly refuse to admit the existence of any spiritual bond . between
man and man. For them economic and material interests constitute
the only social nexus; they recognize no other. This is the source of
their whole conception of human society. The love of country, for
example, is a lying pretense; for the national bond is spiritual, and,
therefore, wholly fictitious.
From their point of view the only real bond between men is the
material - that is to say, the economic. Material interests divide
men into classes, and they are the only divisions to be taken
account of. Hence they recognize no Nations save the Rich and the
Poor. As there is no other bond which can unite these two Nations
into one social whole, their relations must be regulated exclusively
by the zoological principle revealed in the struggle for existence.
The materialistic conception of society is their method of treating
the family. Since there is no spiritual bond between the sexes. there
can be no constant relation. The rule is therefore that men and
women can change their partners as often as they wish.
THERE IT is, stripped of fine phrases and clothed in the gray garb
of fact, smeared with blood and mud and lust. There we see what
life is, what society becomes, and the pit into which man falls
when the mystic tie of religion is cut. Fraternity is as futile as all
the vain things proclaimed by the Preacher of Despair. Theology
sinks to the level of zoology; the home becomes a brothel; all the
fair and holy things that lend dignity and sanctity to the life of man
are lost in a dark jungle of slimy greed and blind brutality.
Atheism, "the practical denial of the spiritual," ends in anarchy,
running wild and running red. As Benjamin Kidd remarked in his
survey of Western civilization: "The central feature of human
history is not reason, but religion, which has kept progress going
when reason would have ended it. Religion is the real cement of
society."
V.
RELIGION, then, is the bond that binds us, first, to God, whose is
"the something universal" which unites all things into one whole,
and gives to the universe meaning and beauty. Second, it is the tie
by which we are united to our fellow men in the service of duty,
the sanctity of love, and the spirit of fraternal righteousness. Third,
it is the thread which gives unity, and, therefore, peace, in our own
inner life, without which we "go to pieces," as the phrase has it,
describing exactly the spiritual chaos which foretells a physical or
mental or moral collapse. It is the life of God in the life of man
whereby, as Dante said, we learn to make our lives eternal.
So interpreted, our religion is one with our vision of right and
wrong, our capacity for joy and wonder, our sense of the mystery
surrounding our lives; our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; our
latent feeling of fellowship with all creation, and the subtle but
invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness
of innumerable hearts; the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow,
in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to
each other, which binds together all humanity - the dead to the
living and the living to the unborn generations awaiting their
advent.
There is an unseen cord that binds
The whole wide world together;
Through every human life it winds,
This one mysterious tether.
There are no separate lives, the chain
Too subtle for our seeing,
Unites us all upon the plane
Of universal being.
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Chapter
II - The Builders
I.
AS HAS been said, it is not the purpose of these pages to deal with
the attitude of Masonry toward organized religion, but to study our
Craft as itself an expression of religious faith, life, and hope. If
religion, as here interpreted, be a great solidarity, a sense of a vast
Kindred-Life, in whose near-neighborliness and far-friendliness
we, and all men, live in a fellowship of duty and destiny, then
surely, Masonry is one of its myriad manifestations; a part of the
organized spiritual experience of the race, a form of the Divine
Life upon the earth.
By the same sign, to know the meaning of Masonry, in any real
sense, it must be studied in the context of the universal spiritual
history of humanity, of which it is a unique and significant aspect.
Otherwise it will remain not a mystery, but a riddle, as
unintelligible as if it had been the work of men of another planet,
having no place in our estimate of the spiritual possessions of the
race. Here lies the value of the work of Edward Waite, to whose
clear vision and rich learning every student of the Craft is so
deeply in debt. He sees that the spiritual life of mankind is one
quest and conquest, no matter how many forms it may take or what
different rituals it may employ - Masonry being one of the three
really great rituals in which man has sought to surprise in art and
embody in experience the mystery and meaning of life.
Such an insight into the unity of the life of the soul ties things
together and gives us not only a wise tolerance, but also a patient
sympathy with, and a clearer understanding of, every form the
search for God has taken, alike in Christian and pagan lands. It
does not mean that all forms of faith are of the same depth, or
degree of development, or value for our guidance, much less does
it deny the reality of that revelation of moral law and spiritual truth
which shines upon our path, a light to lead our wayward feet, in the
Book of Holy Law. But it does help us to see and understand how
and why,
Answering unto Man's endeavor
Truth and right are still revealed,
lifting our aspiration into realization, making our spiritual dream
come true; and that while religions are many, Religion is one -
perhaps we may say one thing, to use once more the words of
Henry Scrougall who, dying in the morning of life, told us that
religion is "the life of God in the soul of man."
UNLESS we see Masonry in this setting and tradition, we miss its
real beauty and infinite suggestiveness, as well as the wonder of its
symbolism. It is unique indeed, not so much in the truth it teaches
or the experience it seeks to realize as in the spirit and method in
which it leads us in the greatest of all adventures. It is in fact, for
those who understand - and, dimly, for those who do not see its full
splendor - a thin shadow of something very great, something
ineffable and memorable. It holds a certain extremely simple and
profound secret, for which words were never made, and which can
only be hinted in symbol and drama; and that is why it speaks to us
in
The picture writing of the world's gray seers,
The myths and parables of primal years.
II.
WHAT, then, is Masonry? One thinks of the answer of Augustine
to a like question long ago, when he said: "I know until you ask
me; when you ask me I do not know." There is something unique
in Masonry, a tie unlike any other, uniting men of all ranks, types,
temperaments into a closely-knit fellowship; something deep and
tender - one would call it mystical, if the word had not been so
badly used - which all of us feel, but which no one of us can
analyze. No one cares to analyze it. We sit in lodge together, each
knowing exactly what will come next; we meet upon the level and
part upon the square - old and simple and familiar symbols - and
somehow, no one knows how, a tie is woven light as air yet
stronger than steel. It is very strange, very wonderful - to attempt
to analyze it is like trying to draw a rim round a perfume.
None the less, as we have set ourselves the task of expounding, as
best we may, something of the deeper meaning of Masonry, we
must attempt some kind of a definition - or, better still, a
description - of its spirit and purpose and form. It will help us,
perhaps, if we bring together a number of definitions, none of them
perfect, as those who made them would be the first to admit, each
one emphasizing one aspect or segment of the many-sided, far-
ramifying wonder of Masonry; and all of them together showing at
once the necessity and the futility of trying to define it. Each man,
as will appear, sees in Masonry the thing nearest to his own nature
and need, his own heart and thought, but there is much more than
he sees, Masonry itself, like its symbols, being a benign and
beautiful mystery which many behold, each from his own angle
and point of view, but which no one exhausts. Thus we may read:
The definition of Freemasonry that it is "a science of morality,
veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols," has been so often
quoted that, were it not for its beauty, it would become wearisome.
This is its internal character. Its ceremonies are external additions,
which affect not its substance. - A.G. MACKEY.
Freemasonry is an ancient male society, having secret methods of
recognition, teaching by symbolism (in part esoteric) a moral
philosophy based upon Monotheism and inculcating the
brotherhood of man and belief in immortality - M.M. JOHNSON.
Masonry is Friendship, Love, and Integrity - friendship which rises
superior to the fictitious distinctions of society, the prejudices of
religion, and the pecuniary conditions of life; love which knows no
limit, nor inequality, nor decay; integrity which binds man to the
eternal law of duty. - A.C.L. ARNOLD.
Masonry is the science of life in a society of men, by signs,
symbols and ceremonies; having as its basis a system of morality
and for its purpose the perfection and happiness of the individual
and the race. - G.F. MOORE.
The word carries with it, through all the variants known to us, the
idea of unity. From this view it appears that Masonry is the
building together of various units, such as stones, bricks, wood,
iron, or human beings, into a compact structure. When we apply it
to Speculative Masonry, we mean the building morally of
humanity into an organized structure, according to a design or
plan. - A.S. MACBRIDE.
Life separates man from man; to unite him again with man needs
an art; a means to this art, not the art itself, is Freemasonry.
Freemasonry is, therefore, the medium of an art which strives to
mold people whom life has separated so that they can enter a new
communion with one another. - OSKAR POSNER.
Masonry is an art of the Brotherhood of Man, a code of ethical
laws and revelations impressing all men with its candor, justice
and faith; commending its members to extend justice to all
mankind; instructing its students in an open mind, strength in the
right and cleanness of heart and body; inculcating love of God,
home and country, and respect for the rights of a brother. - R.W.
ABBOTT.
Masonry is the subjugation of the Human that is in man by the
Divine; the conquest of the appetites and passions by the moral
sense and the reason; a continual effort, struggle and warfare, of
the spiritual against the material and sensual. That victory - when it
has been achieved and secured, and the conqueror may rest upon
his shield and wear the well-earned laurels - is the true Holy
Empire. - ALBERT PIKE.
Masonry is the activity of closely united men who, employing
symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and
from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving
morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring
about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit
even now on a small scale. - GERMAN HANDBUCH.
SO MUCH for definitions, if indeed they ought not to be called
descriptions instead, all except the first which is taken from the
Book of Constitutions, the second which might stand in a court of
law, and the last which entitled us to be called the Builders. The
rest are true and beautiful, the words of Pike being a memorable
picture of the passion, purpose and prophecy of every religion, the
effort of all the higher human life, in nowise peculiar to Masonry,
save as we see and interpret Masonry as a part, or expression, of
the common spiritual aspiration and endeavor of mankind; one
with the old eternal quest of God, however unique its symbolism
may be. Once, somewhere down the years, I tried to sum it tip in
one sentence, to which may be added a like saying by a master
Craftsman:
Let us rather say that Masonry, as we see it in our dream and seek
to realize it in our fellowship, is like one of the Cathedrals which
our brethren built in the olden time: Faith its foundation,
Righteousness its cornerstone, Strength and Wisdom its walls,
Beauty its form and fashion, Brotherly Love its clasped arches,
Reverence its roof, the Bible its altar light, Mysticism its music,
Charity its incense, Fellowship its sacrament, Relief its ritual; its
Symbols windows nobly wrought, half-revealing and half-
concealing a Truth too elusive for words, too vast for dogma, and
too bright for eyes unveiled, and only hinted to us until we are
ready and worthy to behold it with other and clearer eyes than now
we know:-
Masonry is not a Temple of Mysteries, nor a Repository of Rituals,
nor a Reformatory of the Fallen, nor a Branch Office of a
Benevolent Society, but the happy and restful, refined and
intellectual home of men of good-will and good sense; Brethren
not Bondsmen, men of brain and brawn, young men and mature
men, drawn and conciliated together by some magnetic affinity of
association far more than mere gregariousness; just average men in
a world of motion and emotion, of aspiration and purposeful
progress, men who discover one another and realize themselves in
close and familiar association, and who have realized that the
Brotherhood of Man begins with the Manhood of the Brother.
There, in one shining sentence, the thing all of us feel, love and try
to express, does get itself said, giving us a thrill of recognition and
joy. It is a perfect description of the atmosphere in which Masons
live and the spirit in which they work - a spirit gentle, joyous, free
- held together by a magnetic and creative affinity, seeking the
truth without envy, discussing it without rancor, and striving to
make it effective in private life and public service. For Masonry is
Truth, Charity and Service - the truth by which no man was ever
injured, the charity without which no dogma is worth holding, and
the Doing of Good which is the finest art known upon earth and
among men.
III.
THERE is, then, a Religion of Masonry - old, simple, wise - as
profound as it is practical; a religion of faith, freedom, and
fellowship, taking the truths of faith and revelation, but allowing
each man to read and interpret those, truths as his heart elects, thus
avoiding the envies and debates which so often disfigure the
religious life. It is not a theology in the technical sense, nor a
philosophy like the philosophy of Plato or Kant, but, rather, a
living wisdom, a practical moral mysticism, so to name it, veiled in
allegory and illustrated by signs, symbols and dramas. One may
take the words of Jesus as describing its Degrees: "The Way, the
Truth, and the Life"; the way of moral rectitude and fraternal
righteousness, the truth of a moral order and a spiritual law as
exact as geometry, and a life everlasting discovered and lived in
time.
However, let us remember that the Religion of Masonry, be it ever
so simple and profound, just because it is a spiritual interpretation
of life, rests upon the same basis and is subject to the same tests as
all other such readings of the meaning of life. As such, it is open to
denial by sceptical criticism and brute facts, open to persecution by
the accidents of life and the menace of death, to say nothing of
things darker, by far, than death can ever be. It behooves us,
therefore, at least to state the faith by which we live as men and
Masons, as over against those blind thoughts we know not nor can
name, and the blight of cynicism at whose touch all the finer
values of life fade, like flowers in a frost. There is no need to give
reasons for our faith, if only because the profoundest faiths of man
are deeper than reason, and are the basis of reason itself - as deep
as infancy and old age, as deep as love and death.
Masonry, like all the best life of man, rests upon the faith - which
can neither be demonstrated nor refuted by logic - that life has
meaning and value, and is not an accident to be lived at loose ends
and to no purpose. Such a faith, because it is healthy and sane,
makes the venture that life is real, sane, and worth while, and acts
accordingly. It is not a mere opinion we hold, but a passion that
holds us:
It is an affirmation and an act
That bids eternal truth be present fact.
As SPARKS ascending seek the sun, so this high, heroic faith of
man rises above the things that deny and finds its confirmation and
its consecration in God and His life of law and love: a truth never
stated more nobly than in the words of Richard Hooker, a fellow of
Shakespeare and Bacon and Milton, one of the amplest minds of
his age, who, dying at forty-nine, left us a passage famous alike for
its sweep of thought and its stately, old-world style:
Wherefore, that here we may briefly end: of law there can be no
less acknowledged, than that her seat is in the bosom of God, her
voice the harmony of the world; all things in Heaven and earth do
her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as
not exempted from her power; both angels and men and creatures
of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner,
yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their
peace and their joy.
THAT is to say, Masonry, rests upon I and lives and builds in the
assurance, to which human experience and Divine revelation alike
bear witness, of the existence of a universal moral and spiritual
world, whose laws are as real, as reliable, as the laws of the
physical order in which we live; a vast, potent, living, beneficent
order, more radiant than we can yet imagine, of which the
symbolism of the race, in the scattered letters of a lofty language,
gives us hints and gleams; and the seeker after reality recognizes
his own - and understands. Otherwise our symbolism means
nothing at all, because there is nothing to symbolize. Nay, more; if
this be not so, human life is a flash of glory against a dark
background - a flash doomed to fade and be lost in a void. As a
protest against so dark a philosophy our Masonic faith stands
immovable, a Temple covering the holy things of life with an
abiding protection. Its faith may be stated briefly, in more detail, as
follows:
(1) Faith in the universe as friendly to fraternal enterprise. Our
Craft believes that the world in which we live, in spite of facts
apparently contradictory, was made for Brotherhood. At first sight
it may not seem so. Nature appears to be constructed on contrary
lines, "red in tooth and claw," careless of the higher values. For
many the seeming indifference of Nature to the higher ideals of
man is terrifying, and to dream of a brotherly society in such a
world seems futile. It is indeed a daring act of faith, a challenge to
the courage of man, and Masonry accepts the challenge. It affirms,
in spite of appearances, that man was made for man. If there is a
law of the Struggle for Existence, there is also a law of Mutual
Aid, without which man would have perished long ago. Slowly,
surely, the higher, gentler law triumphs over the lower, lesser law -
includes it, indeed, and fulfils it. Man himself is a part of Nature,
and because he has a hunger for fraternity, he believes that the
universe is not against his faith.
(2) Faith in man as a spiritual being. Man is an animal, but if he is
nothing else, religion and fraternity are thin fictions: he would live
by the law of the jungle. But man is more than an animal; he has
"thoughts that wander through eternity." He is a citizen of two
worlds, and the glory of his life is the art of living in two worlds at
the same time. No fraternity built on the baseness of man can
endure. Only the spiritual tie can unite men in the bonds of
brotherhood. Nothing else holds, in the end, against the brute
forces in ourselves and in the world. Any other tie of fellowship is
a rope of sand, weak as water. All fraternity is founded on faith in
man as a moral and spiritual being, capable of disinterested
fellowship, service, and sacrifice.
(3) Faith in the power of spiritual ideals. If man is fashioned by
Fate, if his higher ideals are at the mercy of his lower instincts; that
is, if self-interest is the only motive strong enough to move him to
fight, or serve, or suffer, then fraternity, of the kind we seek, is
impossible. The history of human heroism refutes this cynical
philosophy. The devotion of man to the great disinterested ideals
of liberty, justice, mercy, truth, is overwhelming testimony to the
power of spiritual influences over him. These cannot be simply
human aspirations; they must be divine inspirations. They sway
man in his nobler hours, touching his life to finer issues, and
shaping him after a Divine pattern. This threefold faith underlies
the grand affirmations of Religious Masonry: the Fatherhood of
God, the Brotherly Life, the Geometry of Character, and the Life
Everlasting.
IV.
SUCH is the faith upon which Masonry builds - the faith which
underlies and upholds all the higher life of man - uniting the
flickering rays of the old Light-Religion with the brighter
revelation of moral law and spiritual truth as it shines in the Book
of Holy Law. The three Great Lights of the lodge give us the clue
to the Religion of Masonry, the Holy Bible supporting the Square
and the Compasses - symbols of Revelation, Righteousness, and
Redemption; teaching us that by walking in the light of Truth, and
obeying the law of Right, the Divine in man wins victory over the
earthly. Thus Earth and Heaven are brought together in the lodge -
the earth where man goes forth to his labor, and the heaven to
which he aspires.
Indeed, the Religion of Masonry is Universe Religion, in which all
men can unite: its principles are as wide as the world and as high
as the sky. Nature and Revelation blend in its faith; its morality is
rooted in the order of the world, and its roof is the blue vaunt
above. The lodge, as we are too apt to forget, is always open to the
sky-overhung by a starry canopy by night, lighted by the
journeying sun by day-whence come those influences which exalt
and ennoble the life of man. Symbolically, at least, it has no rafters
but the arching heavens, and the business of man is to reproduce in
his life the. law and order of the far-shining City of God. Of the
heavenly side of Masonry the Compasses are the symbol, and they
are the most spiritual of all its working tools - the law of Nature
and the light of Revelation being the two points of the Compasses
within which our life is set under a canopy of Sun and Stars.
While we hold a view of the world very unlike that held by our
ancient brethren - knowing it to be round, not flat and square - yet
their insight is still true; the whole idea being that man must
imitate the order of the world in which he lives. That is also our
dream and design, our labor and worship. Any man has a right to
build a house to suit himself; but if he expects it to stand and be a
shelter of his home, he must obey certain laws of physics in
building it. By as much as he obeys those laws his home will stand;
if he disobeys, no. Nor is it otherwise with the moral laws which
rule the building of character. If the laws of architecture are moral
laws, as Ruskin taught us, just so moral principles are laws of
spiritual architecture. In short, the basic idea of Masonry is that the
moral order, like the physical world, is a realm of law, order and
beauty, where obedience is liberty and stability.
Upon this fact Masonry erects its noble and beautiful allegory of
human life in al its varied aspects: the lodge a symbol of the world
in which man lives on a checker-board of nights and days, joys and
sorrows - over-arched by the sky, at its center an Altar of
obligation and prayer. By the same sign, initiation is our birth from
the darkness of prenatal gloom into the light of moral and spiritual
faith, out of a merely physical into a human and moral order; into a
new environment with a new body of motive and experience. The
cable tow is like the cord which joins a child to its mother at birth,
nor is it removed until, by the act of assuming the obligations of
the moral life, a new, unseen tie is woven, uniting, its with our race
in its moral effort to build a world of fraternal goodwill.
IN THE First Degree we learn morality and charity - two things
always to be kept together; if counted worthy we pass, in the
Second Degree, out of youth into manhood with its wider
knowledge and heavier responsibilities; and finally, if we have
integrity and courage, we discover, in the Third Degree, that we
are citizens of Eternity living in time. Thus we have portrayed, in a
sublimely simply and eloquent allegory, an ideal world ruled by
wisdom, strength, and fellowship, in which we are set to do our
duty, build our character, and win our destiny. It is a great day for
a young man when Masonry reveals its meaning to him, unveiling
its plan of life, its purpose, its prophecy of a Temple of
Brotherhood, into which he may build his life and thought and
aspiration, so that whatever immortality this human world shall
have his character and personality shall have a share in it.
IN ITS modern form at least, our Masonry is a symposium of
symbolism in which three streams or strands of faith unite, by
which man is a Builder of a Temple, a Pilgrim in quest of a lost
Truth, and, if he be worthy and heroic, a Finder of sublime Secret
of Life. He is, first, a builder, taking the rough stones of the world
and shaping them into forms of beauty, building upon the will of
God, by His design, with His help, in His name; nay, more,
building together with his fellow men, as our Brethren built the
cathedrals. He is, second, a seeker, a pilgrim journeying from the
West, a land of sunset and death, toward the East, the place of
sunrise and life; a pilgrimage of the soul, affected, at least in this
state of its journey, in the sandals of Human Nature - a long, weary
road. He is, finally if he be worthy, a finder of the greatest secret
man may know, whereby he is reborn to Eternal Life here and
now, while walking the dim paths of earth and time. O my soul,
remember, strive, persevere, and rejoice!
TELL me, Brother Man, if in all the world of wisdom and
prophecy, in science or philosophy, you have found a faith more
profound, a plan of life more noble, a task more challenging, a
hope more enchanting! One thinks of the Sonnet by Carl Claudy,
who asked of Masonry her meaning, and answers the question in
words that set our souls singing:
What hath thy lore of life to let it live?
What is the vital spark, hid in thy vow?
The millions learned, as thy dear paths they trod,
The secret of the strength thou hast to give:
"I am a way of common men to God,"
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Chapter III
- The Corner Stone
I.
THE CORNER-STONE of Masonry, at once its first and greatest
Landmark, the basis of its plan and purpose and prophecy, is the
old and simple Faith in God which finds its purest revelation and
clearest interpretation iii the Holy Bible - God the Great Architect
and Master-Builder of the Universe; God the Father of Humanity,
its solidarity and salvation; God the Maker of heaven and earth and
all that in them is, before whom silence is eloquence and wonder is
worship. Other foundation there is none; upon God Masonry builds
its Temple of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth.
In nothing is our gentle Craft wiser than in laying its foundation; it
begins at the beginning and puts first things first. God is the first
Fact and the final Reality - the Truth that makes all other truths
true; the corner-stone of faith, the key-stone of thought, the cap-
stone of hope. Nay, more; God is the meaning of the universe, its
rhythm and its reason, the secret of its integrity, the source of its
goodness, the sign of its sanity; its author and its end. Thought
about God is thought in its longest reach; trust in God is the
highest wisdom and the deepest joy. Beyond Him human faith
cannot go; short of Him it cannot rest.
Everything in Masonry has reference to God, implies God, speaks
of God, points to God. Not a degree, not a symbol, not an
obligation, not a lecture, not a charge but finds its meaning and
derives its beauty from God, the Great Architect, in whose Temple
all Masons are workmen. Every lodge is erected to God and labors
in His name, seeking to make His will the design upon its Trestle-
board. No initiate enters a lodge without first kneeling and
confessing his faith and trust in God, whose love is the fountain of
fraternity. The greatest symbol of Masonry, the Triangle, is the
oldest emblem of God in the history and faith of man. Under His
arching sky, upon his friendly earth where man goes forth to his
labor, Masonry toils for the glory of God.
Upon the Altar of every Lodge, at which every Mason takes vows
of chastity and charity, lies the open Bible, the Book of the Will of
God, revealing the sanities and sanctities of life. Its writers were
seers who beheld God in the ongoing of nature, in the unfolding of
history, and in the yearning heart of man. In a sense unique and
overwhelming, it is a book, not about God, but a book of God.
Even in its driest chronicles one is aware of the presence of God,
as David heard Him moving in the rustle of the mulberry tree. In
the "forest of the Psalms," along the dreamy ways of prophecy, in
Gospel, Epistle and Apocalypse, God is the one living and blessed
reality, the companion of the journeying generations, the
atmosphere of the life of man and his everlasting hope.
Truly God is in Masonry - in its faith, its ideals, its labor - and
without Him it has no meaning, no mission, no ministry among
men. For, when faith in God fades, then falls that "house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens." Then, too, is stultified the
prayer of a true Mason, "by patient continuance in well-doing" to
be "built up as living stones into a spiritual house," meet for the
praise of God. As a great Craftsman said, "I bear my last witness,
God willing, and it testifies that of God moveth the great Rite of
Masonry."
II.
THERE IS no need that any one argue to prove that God exists. No
proof is possible; no proof is needed. No vital faith is ever secured,
still less maintained, by debate. There is no proof in reason for
anything which we fundamentally believe, if only because reason
is not fundamental. Men do not believe in God because they have
proved Him; they are always trying to prove Him because they
cannot help believing in Him. Faith in God is not the fruit of logic,
but of experience of life. It is the function of reason to clarify,
justify and interpret the truth learned by living. The Bible does not
argue; it opens the windows and lets in the light.
Each age has its arguments for God, but the arguments of one age
often seem empty and inadequate to the next-frail ghosts of a time
far gone. The arguments pass away but the faith remains. The four
historic arguments may still be stated with power, but they do not
prove that God exists. They only prove that He ought to exist. As
Voltaire said, "If there were no God it would be necessary to
invent Him," because He is necessary to the healthful working of
the human mind. Ever the quest of man goes on, trying to answer
the questions, Who am I? Why am I? Whence did I come? Whither
do I go? The only answer is God, and as the mind of man enlarges,
as his thought fits more truly into the interstices of reality, his
vision is clearer and his faith firmer. Yet, evermore, the horizon
lengthens, the vista deepens, and the wonder of God gathers and
grows.
Often truth is made vivid by its opposite, as night brings out the
stars hidden by day. Emerson was wont to say, "If there ever was
one good man, there will be another and there will be many"; but
without God the life of a good man is a mystery, if not a tragedy. It
is an exotic flower growing in the air, without seed or root. There
is nothing to suggest it, nothing to sustain it, nothing to fulfill its
promise. By the same token, it is not the base man but the good
man who is most profoundly bereaved when the vision of God
grows dim. There is no keener pain known to man than a loss of
the sense of the reality of God, doubly so for a refined and
sensitive nature, as witness the words of Neitzsche lamenting the
loss of his right, as he felt, to pray - words which move like the
overture of a great symphony of despair:
Never more wilt thou pray, never more worship, never more repose
in boundless trust - thou renouncest the privilege of standing
before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate mercy, and unharnessing
thy thoughts - thou hast no constant watcher and friend for thy
seven solitudes - there is now no redeemer for thee, no one to
promise a better life - no more reason in what happens, no love in
that which shall happen to thee - thy heart hast now no resting
place, where it needeth only to find, not to seek - man, of thy self-
denial, wilt thou deny thyself all this? Whence wilt thou gain the
strength?
THERE IS the lonely horror which settles like a pall over man
when faith in God fades, and it is no wonder that it drove him mad.
Such is the fatality of thought. Men seem to be - often seek to be -
atheists, yet the wildest flight of thought is haunted by the presence
of God. Of a truth it has been said, God has made us for Himself,
and our hearts are restless, weary and alone until they rest in Him.
jean Paul Richter was right; no one is so much alone in the
universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has
lost the greatest of Fathers, he stands mourning by the
immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved or sustained by
the Spirit of the universe, but growing in its grave; and he mourns,
until he himself crumbles away from the dead body. It may be
difficult to keep our faith in God at times, but the alternative is far
more difficult - aye, it is desperate, and the very denial of God is
proof of the sanity of faith.
III.
NO TALE ever told in fairyland is more fascinating than the story
of the thought of God in the mind of man. Life is the basis of faith
in God - life with its pain and peril, its joy and woe, its pitiful
broken beauty, its fleeting fellowships and its long partings; life so
brief at its longest, so broken at its best. Older than all arguments,
it is a faith deeper than all dogma, as old as the home and the
family, as deep as infancy and old age, as deep as love and death.
Men lived and died by faith in God ages before philosophy was
born, long before logic had learned its letters. If we have ears we
may hear Vedic poets and penitential Psalmists praising God on
yonder side of the Pyramids. In Egypt, five thousand years ago, a
great king wrote of the unity and purity of God, celebrating the
beauty of the world. Let me trace, as vividly as possible, the long
slow climb of faith in the heart of man:
First, it was an advance from Nothing to Something, from a vague,
bewildered awareness in man of himself and the world to the sense
of a Presence. How little can we realize the earliest musings of
man when thought first found a throne in his brain-the dawning of
faith out of fear, of polytheism out of animism, his sense of kinship
with the world, his worship of spirits in stones, in trees, in flowing
waters. Such a book as The Golden Bough, by Frazier, shows us
man feeling after God, if haply he might find Him, groping his way
through a jungle of shadows, following a flickering light. It is an
encyclopedia of superstitions, but it does portray the birth and
childhood of faith, its growth from magic into mysticism, from
polytheism to pantheism. It is a far cry from the early poetic myths
to the poetry of Wordsworth - a sweet voice singing among the
English lakes - but both were aware, in different degree -
Of Something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
SECOND, it was a long step forward when faith passed, slowly,
from Something to Some One, from gods many to one God, over
all, in all, through all; from personification to Personality. In the
Abbey painting in the Boston Public Library we are shown the
dawning of a nobler vision of God out of the dark night of animal
worship; it is like a sunrise in Nature - truth rises and the shadows
flee away. For ages the old gods lingered - as lower, lesser deities -
haunting places and things; but more and more there grew a sense
of one God above all others - an unknown, awful God, whether
good or evil man did not know. In none of the early religions -
except in Persia - do we find any Devil, because some lesser god
fulfilled that function. In our own day a man like Wells sees above
our troubled mortal life "a Veiled Being," whose character and
purpose are hidden, and he thinks it a new discovery; it is in fact a
primitive idea long since left behind. As the Samoan chief said to
the missionary, "We know that at night Some One goes by among
the trees, but we never speak of it."
Third, it was a day to divide time into before and after when faith
advanced from Some One to the Holy One, from a unifying Power
to a consecrating Moral Empire. This revolutionary insight we owe
to Hebrew genius which dared, once for all, to identify the
stupendous Power above with the Moral Law within, giving a new
date and depth to the history of faith. The vision made the fame of
the Hebrew race immortal, and set apart their ancient shrine on
Mount Moriah as the loftiest temple ever uplifted by man - because
dedicated to the Unity, Righteousness and Spirituality of God.
With the single exception of Indian theism, all the theisms of the
world today depend on the Hebrew faith. It made the old
polytheisms and pantheisms obsolete; it made the world an orderly
place, not the playground of dark Fate and wild Chance; it covered
the precious possessions of humanity with an infinite security. For
that reason the Temple of Hebrew faith became, as in the imagery
of our Craft, the symbol of a moral structure sheltering the holy
things of the life of man.
JUST because we assume a righteous God who requires
righteousness of men, we do not - perhaps cannot - realize the
horror which haunted the hearts of men until they became aware
and assured of the goodness of God. Man has known, from the
beginning, that he is every moment dependent upon a Power other
and greater than himself, by whatever name he called it - Fate,
Force, Destiny, God. The real question - the crux of all questions -
is not as to the fact of such a Power, but as to the nature and
character of Him "in whose great hand we stand." For, naturally,
our thought of God determines what we think about everything
else, about ourselves and our fellow men; about life and duty and
destiny. No wonder, then, the vision of a Moral God, eternally and
unchangeably pure and true and good, brought relief to the noblest
natures, released the finest powers of the soul, and inspired the
spacious and magnificent poetry of Hebrew psalms and prophecy.
By a sure and clear insight, our wise and gentle Masonry, in
searching the noisy and confused quarry of human thought and
faith, found a precious stone - too often rejected by builders
hitherto - and made it the head of the corner; the truth of a
righteous God who asks of man that he do justly, love mercy, and
walk humbly with the Eternal. By an insight equally clear, our
fathers opened upon the Altar the Holy Bible, tile moral manual of
mankind, making it the center of the lodge and "the master light of
all our seeing." As we gather about it, each of us has a profound
quiet deep down inside, just to live under the spell of such a Book
and the things it tells; and when we see it on the Altar of the lodge
we know we are not following a dim taper, but the light of God
shining through our mortal days.
IV.
BUT THE great day of the feast arrived when human faith,
divinely daring, was led and lifted from the Holy One to Our
Father, carrying the sublime adventure forward, keeping all that
had been won and lifting it to the highest. If Hebrew monotheism
moralized life, Christian faith humanized it. Hints and gleams of
this all-transfiguring vision had been seen from the heights of song
and prophecy. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord
pitieth," said the Psalmist. "As one whom his mother comforteth,
so will God comfort you," said the greatest prophet of old. The
ancient seers saw that man lives in God, who is "our dwelling
place in all generations" - like an old ancestral home in which a
family lived, and one by one passed away; but it remained for
Another - standing in their tradition and glorifying their vision - to
show us that God lives in man. The idea of God was reborn in the
life of Jesus, shepherded by love and joy and wonder - revealing
the Everlasting Truth by what is true and everlasting in the human
heart.
Jesus revealed the spirit and nature of God through what is deepest,
highest, holiest in man, finding in His Father-heart winter, spring,
summer, and autumn glory, as on the hills of home. The teaching
of Jesus in parable, in sermon, in conversation, in all His
incomparable eloquence - bright with color, warm with sympathy,
profound as life and death - is so simple that it is startling. "If ye,
being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more your Father" - how strange that man finds it so hard to
believe that God is as good as He is! Yet that is what Jesus asked
us to think and believe, and he enshrined his Gospel of the love of
God in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which ought to be named
the Parable of God the Father.
THE HERO of the story is not the boy who went away, wasted his
substance in riotous living, and returned ragged, haggard and
hungry, nor the boy who stayed at home, faithful, respectable, and
selfish - so cold that one could skate all round him. No, the hero of
the parable is the foolishly fond old father, bowed with age, broken
with grief - all-enduring, all-forgiving - waiting on the house-top,
watching for his lost boy - thinking him dead, but still keeping
watch, as love watches beside a grave - recognizing his gait afar
off, running to meet him, stopping his confession of sin with a kiss;
forgetting all else, except to plead with the elder brother to be
brotherly and forgive - wild with a heart-breaking joy: "My son
was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found!" There is
revealed a love that lasts all down the years and beyond; a love that
never tires, and has in it the secret of unknown redemptions. Time
does not limit it. Death does not end it. Nor height nor depth can
defeat it!
What this revelation means, in all its sweep and grandeur, we have
not begun to imagine, much less to realize. There are three stages
in the growth and unfolding of it in the life of man: First, when he
awakes from the wonder of infancy and becomes aware of himself
as a person, separate from others, with a moral responsibility of his
own. Second, when he discovers that God is the One with whom
he really has to do in the adventure of life. God may be to him only
a Power, or, as with most of us, a Big Man up in the sky,
venerable, grave, sometimes kindly, often stern, always watchful;
but that day marks a step toward manhood. Third, When he passes,
suddenly or slowly - taught, it may be, by the love of his own
father, or by the fact that he himself is a father - from the idea of
God as a Power, a Ruler, to the sense of God as Father; that is his
real birthday. Happy is the man who has learned this truth, not as a
pretty theory, but as the meaning of life - he is free indeed!
(1) Such a faith will determine our reading of the meaning of life
and our philosophy of history. As Tolstoi has said, the most
terrible thing to man is not the fear of death - no brave man ears
death-but a dread of the meaninglessness of life. If God is a Father,
our days do not ebb out their hours in futility - no, life has
meaning, worth, nobility. In the same way, the long human march
through the ages is not a blind groping without leadership.
Through the centuries there runs an "increasing purpose" -
invisible, it may be, in nearby events, but made clear in the long
teaching of Time - which is leading humanity to "the far off Divine
event."
(2) Faith in God the Father affects our interpretation of the events
of life. Sorrow, evil, sin, all the tragedy of life - youth blighted in
its bud, manhood shattered in its prime, the cup of death forever
pressed to the lips of love - all the woe of mortality, in which each
of us has his share, or soon or late, becomes bearable if we are
assured that it has a reason, and is not the whim of chance, or the
freak of Fate. Man can endure much - anything, perhaps, even if
his heart breaks - if he knows that an Eternal Goodness rules
things, and we are not at the mercy of blind Force.
(3) Trust in God determines our sense of values. Life, character,
honor, virtue, truth, service, sacrifice, all the high, heroic qualities
have new worth and luster in the light of the master truth of the
Fatherhood of God. The discipline of life, no less than its
opportunity, finds reinterpretation in this faith. Prayer is as natural
as the song of a bird. Love turns prophet and foretells a radiant
future; hope is triumphant. Life does not dismay nor death terrify,
if we are convinced that in all, above all, underneath all, there is
the love of a Father who knows and feels and cares; a love,
as Dante said, one with the love that moves the sun and all the
stars."
SUCH, in dim outline, is the story of faith in God in the life of
man, rising from lowly, groping, shadow-haunted thoughts to the
loftiest truth man may know on earth; and all he needs to know. To
know God as our Father - to realize that, though He holds the
worlds in His hand, yet these wistful, quivering, questioning souls
within us are made in His image, and are precious in His eyes - this
is life indeed. There is much in nature to appal and affright, much
in history to stagger and dismay; but once we know that the heart
of "the veiled Father of men" is unfathomably kind, all the world is
new. Nature then goes forward to music. Nor is it always a battle
chant to which she keeps step. In her song are all things - the shout
of victory and the sob of defeat, but also the ripple of the brook
over the stones, the murmur of the trees, the laughter of little
children, and the thunder in the mountains.
V.
YET, oddly enough at first, if all the teaching of Masonry impIies
the Fatherhood of God, still its ritual does not actually affirm that
truth, much less make it a test of fellowship. It is not an oversight,
but a bit of deep and true wisdom for which all men must be
grateful, if they know what lies back of it. If Masonry made faith
in God the Father a basis of membership, it would debar many a
noble man who is unable to attain to that faith, much as he wants to
hold it and tries, amid the tragedies of life, to win it. Besides, it is
only by the practice of brotherhood that men actually realize the
truth of God the Father; and it is the mission of Masonry to lead
and lift men to the truth.
In nothing is Masonry wiser than in its attitude in regard to the
deep and delicate things of the soul, its trust in God, its thought
about Him, its fellowship with Him. It lays down no dogma about
God, it speaks His name rarely, using, instead, the august phrase
"the Great Architect of the Universe" - a phrase which is like a
chalice into which each man may pour such truth as his insight and
experience may win, such beauty as his vision may behold; at the
same time allowing his brethren a like liberty and joy. The life of
man with God is a thing so intimate, so inward, so utterly
individual, that to violate its privacy, or to invade its sanctity, is a
sacrilege, if not a blasphemy. There is, indeed, a truth which no
man can learn for another and no one can know alone; and
Masonry offers a fellowship in which men may learn together the
truth that makes us men.
If only the Church had learned this simple wisdom, it would have
been spared the ugly agitations which mar its fellowship and
endanger its influence. For, surely, to argue angrily about God, to
bandy bitter words about the sacred things of the soul, is not
religion but irreligion. It is the better way of Masonry to be silent,
as we well may do in the presence of a Reality so great that all men
are one in their littleness, as they should be in their faith and
charity. Our Craft does not drive like a despot; it leads like a lover
- trusting a Truth which is to faith what beauty is to art, what
melody is to music.
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