Practical
Masonry
by Bro. John Mills Brown
The Master
Mason - September 1924
OF WHAT USE is Masonry unless it be
made practical? Why expend time, labor, and money in
perpetuating the impracticable? Practical Masonry is the
application of its knowledge to the experiences of life, to our
surroundings, to our social, business, and civic relations. The
term brotherhood is meaningless, unless associated with charity,
and charity is but half developed when restricted to the humane
duty of alms-giving. Masonic charity, in its broad, unselfish
sense, is to do unto others as we would that others should do
unto us. It is the charity that seeks for truth, honesty, and
respect for the rights of others, that fosters knowledge,
freedom, and toleration, and searches and strives after the
good. It is the absence of this charity that is the chief cause of
personal difficulties, arising from special and local agencies,
by wrangling discussion, passionate accusation, petty
selfishness, and intolerant opinion, all producing a bitterness
which sooner or later affects the fraternal relations within the
lodge, and, in the sapping and mining of its harmony, impairs,
if not destroys, its effectiveness and usefulness. This is not
imagined or unrealized, but is too frequently an actual,
experienced condition, a great and grievous fault. When brothers
are burdened with defects of their own, they should exercise
charity toward the failings of others; they should not distress
the mind when they themselves stand in need of many things; they
should not forget the law of human interdependence, and should
not pass a severeness of judgment when regarding another's
failings through a medium discolored and distorted.
Cold-heartedness and self-regarding ought to be supplanted by
kindness and self-repression, and, in the practice of
self-command, passion, pride, and self-love, give way to a
chivalrous courtesy which will elevate both the giver and the
receiver. Brothers ought to remember that "a word spoken and a
stone thrown, never return"; that they cannot be Masonically
just, if they are not kindhearted, and, that if they will
entertain faith and experience confidence, have sympathy, and be
charitably considerate, with a desire to help one another, their
own characters for prudence and conduct and integrity will be
enlarged and extended. back to top
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