Seeking
for that which is Lost
by W.Bro. R. A. L. Harland, P.M. No. 1679
The
Freemasons Chronicle - July 1955
Presidential Address at Third Annual Festival of Dormer
Masonic Study Circle London, 5th March, 1955. "Therefore we ought to give
the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at
any time we should let them slip." (Hebrews, chapter 2, verse
1). We may observe in the Craft nowadays clear signs of the
advent of a higher Masonic consciousness. There is indeed, a
marked forward trend which is evinced by the desire of an
increasing number of Brethren to realise for themselves the
significance of truths hitherto but imperfectly apprehended.
Despite many improvements in method, in dignity and
reverence, the Craft, however, regarded as a whole, has not
yet outgrown the Apprentice stage, or modelled the Rough
Ashlar of the "intended structure" into due form; much less
found the central Spirit resident within the perfect Cube of
our "peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and
illustrated by symbols." Nevertheless the spiritual vitality
that has animated the Craft since its inception, that kept it in
being during the early troubled years of the eighteenth
century, and that has maintained it thereafter in vigorous
expansion, is now expressing itself daily more openly.
Herein, then, lies the great opportunity, as well as the
crucial test, for all genuine Masonic students. In the life of
mind and spirit we cannot afford to display a mood of
provincialism. It is written: " Quench not the Spirit " (1st
Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 19); but to deny the
difficulties today presented to the emerging Masonic
consciousness is to forget this command. The world finds it
easy to despise and reject every form of spiritual activity,
every aspiration of the mind, and every degree of higher
knowledge. It readily asserts that such things are a clog
upon the progress of mankind towards complete scientific
organisation, and that on this account they can safely be put
on one side until universal economic prosperity is
assured. In the course of the long struggle which is being
waged in the natural world on behalf of the spirit, and in the
name of God, of love and liberty, the means employed to secure
these eternal verities invariably become ends in themselves.
We have here the origin of the greatest of all tragedies in
the problem of the spiritual life; it is that God is forgotten
in favour of the approach designed to lead men to Him.
Accordingly, men have been deluded to hate in the cause of
love, to use compulsion in the service of freedom, and to
become practising materialists for the vindication of spiritual
principles. The material world, the kingdom of Caesar, has
triumphed over the spiritual world, the Kingdom of God, by
reason of acts of physical violence, internal dissensions,
and barbaric methods of warfare. We have reaped as we have
sown; in our own generation we have twice been thrown into
international conditions of horror; and once again mutual
antagonisms and reciprocal incomprehensions are proving most
dangerous in a closely knit world armed with diabolical weapons
of destruction' We had proposed to enter the Promised Land not
by spiritual but by material agencies, and in the process we
have now come to the pass of forgetting it altogether; by
ceasing to be interested in the "paths of heavenly science" we
have lost even the faculty of mental perception. Truth, however,
can never be enforced; the seed must grow until it urges
fulfilment from within. Truth is as much a quality of the mind
that seeks it as of the things in which it is found; the search
for "that which is lost" is as important as the discovery. Only,
we must in our seeking not forget that the "New Commandment to
love one another" is itself a part of Truth which must be held
at all costs. At the present time the barriers which divide and
restrict men are crumbling, everything is changing and
dissolving in the historic world, and we stand upon the
threshold of a new Age. It is therefore a propitious moment to
put the Masonic way of living into serious practice, and to
thereby assist in bringing about a new relation between means
and ends, between symbols and the realities which lies behind
them. Etymologically speaking the word "symbol" conveys the
sense of something intermediary which has the character of a
sign, and at the same time it suggests a relationship between
the sign and the thing signified. Symbols presuppose the
existence of two worlds and two orders of beings; they show us
that the meaning of the natural world is to be found in the
spiritual world; and they thus constitute the bridge which links
the two worlds together. The qualities of the natural world are
dependent upon the extent to which it functions as a symbol of
the spiritual world. Only symbolism is capable of expressing the
infinite depth and mystery of the spiritual world, while also
maintaining both the distinction from, and close alliance with,
the natural world. The identity of contraries is an antinomy for
the rational faculty; our human reason is not adapted to a form
of reality in which contraries are compatible with one
another. They are subject to the laws of logic governing
identity and contradiction, but these rules of logic can never
express the nature of divinity. We know God as a in mirror,
in an obscure, that is to say, a symbolic fashion; a definite
knowledge of God, a vision of Him face to face, belongs to
another sphere, to the supreme degree of the mystical life in
God. St. Paul has given us an unforgettable description of
what true symbolism in the knowledge of the divine does
involve: "For now we see through a glass darkly but then
face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even
as also I am known (1st Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12).
The symbolic knowledge of God is deeply rooted in the soil
of Masonic tradition. We are likewise to love God with all our
minds, but we must do so freely and no limit can be imposed
upon from without. The spiritual life, as the Craft system
truly teaches, is revealed by degrees, and in a diversity of
qualities. All the intellectual, moral, and artistic life of
humanity, all fellowship in love, form part of it. Truth is
revealed in the way and in the life: "If any man will do His
will, he shall know of the doctrine" (St. John, chapter 7,
verse 17). It can be demonstrated only by a life which is
itself full of meaning, and through a symbolic attitude of
mind which imparts significance to nature as an active
uniting principle. In the natural world, which is the result of
all separation and division the knowing subject is disunited
from the known object; it is separated from being Symbolism
alone, by a delimination of the realms assigned to spirit and
nature by putting a barrier to the competency of rational
knowledge, and by opening new modes of perception,
safeguards the inalienable rights and eternal truths of
spiritual life. The phenomenon of revelation requires the
phenomenon of faith. Revelation is adapted to the structure of
consciousness and is proportional to the degree of
development which it has reached. It follows therefore that
there are degrees also in revelation. Faith is always directed
towards the mysterious and hidden world. It is not a clog
upon reality; it is, according to the immortal definition of
Paul, "the substance of things hoped the evidence of things
not seen" Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1); but which does not
compel recognition on our part. The knowledge of reality which
is revealed to the ordinary mind is a demonstration of things
invisible. This world of visible things which is displayed in
daily events persists within the domain of scientific experience
and leaves us no freedom of choice. Faith, however, the first
rung of the Craft symbolic ladder, is a free act of the spirit,
and is the work of free election and love. No visible and
objective reality can compel us in an act of faith, for faith is
an appeal to the intimate world of spirit which is conditioned
by freedom and not by necessity. Faith knows nothing of external
authority; it is free and "requires a perfect freedom of
inclination on the part of every candidate for its mysteries";
and it prefers folly to the wisdom of this world. Hence St. Paul
writes: "If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world,
let him become a fool, that he may be wise" (1st Corinthians,
chapter 3, verse 18). Faith is the acquiring of grace which
knows nothing of necessity in the logical or juridical sense. We
cannot rebuild the Kingdom of God by force; it I can only be
reconstructed in freedom. To demand guarantees is to admit that
we have failed even to understand the substance of faith by
denying the heroic act which it inspires. None of us can claim
to possess Truth in fullness while, we will persist in regarding
our neighbours as being completely in error. Creative life is
impossible under the dominant influence of an authoritarian
mentality. Proofs are essential in the case of treaties drawn
up by opponents; with friends unity is achieved by the
contemplation of Truth, and it is this vital experience of the
liberty of the subject which creates fresh possibilities of
revelation. " Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity " (Psalm 133, verse 1).
Furthermore, when two or three are gathered together in the
name of Love it begins to permeate them, to break down their
isolation, to confer new powers, and finally to deliver them
into the unity of a spiritual fellowship as real as their former
separation. This creative enlightenment is the final goal of all
aspiration; in it life and action are fulfilled in meaning, and
the gulf between faith and knowledge is closed. Faith does not
strive after certainty, but adores the mystery in which it
rests, and realises continually the Truth in which it
trusts. Man comes to God by many arduous ways, by "repeated
trials and approbations," and through much tribulation and
suffering. In revelation man is born anew; he is shown that
"divine and human affairs are interwoven so awfully and
minutely"; degrees of revelation imply also degrees in the
development of man. Truth gives us freedom, but freedom is
necessary for the acceptance of this truth: " Ye shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (St. John,
chapter 8, verse 32). It is not enough to accept Truth, that is
to say God; the solemn obligation of the novice is to serve "
without evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation of any
kind "; parallel to the exoteric there is always the esoteric.
Goodness and the perfecting rites must likewise be freely
received, for it is just the fact that they are so accepted and
achieved which gives the religious and moral life the quality
of originality and true dignity. Truth, therefore, must
correspond to our spiritual nature; there must be an intimate
kinship between ourselves and the mystery which is to be
apprehended. The rationalistic mind of modern man considers
the existence of evil and suffering as the principal obstacle to
his belief in God, and as the most important argument in favour
of agnosticism. This argument has become classic. Man losses
faith in God because he finds evil is apparently victorious in
the world; but in the historical development of the human
consciousness faith in the divine arose precisely because man
observed great suffering, and felt acutely the need of freeing
himself from the power of evil. Paradoxically, if the evil which
now confounds the world had not come into existence man would
have been content with this " sublunary abode," and his
deliverance would not have been indispensable. The sufferings of
life which attest to the existence of evil are a great school
through which mankind has to pass. We are protected by our
insensibility and lack of perception from much that might prove
dangerous to us, and for the revelation of which we are as
yet quite unprepared. God 'is revealed and triumphs through
" that last and greatest trial," the ordeal of the "valley of
the shadow of death"; for without darkness there is no light.
Thus the spiritual development of man proceeds amidst
contradiction and opposition; both man and the world have to
pass through times of great testing; such is the prescribed
method of their progress. The one incontrovertible fact is
this; whatever our experience may have been whether good or
bad, it is never useless; and it always forms part of the next
stage of advancement. The dangers with which we are
threatened today are not those which confronted former
generations. Their danger lay in the very strength of their
convictions; ours in the fact that we have no genuine
convictions at all. There never was an age with a greater
passion for critical analysis, or a sublimer belief in vague
schemes and generalities. What is the cause of the conflicting
theories of our time? We do not know what we want; we are
bewildered. The present age has produced an unprecedented
dualism between things sacred and things secular, between
religion and the world; we are aware of the emptiness and the
profaneness of our life, but not of the means of escape from it.
Herein lies the fundamental antimony with which it is
associated; it is impossible for us to conceive the mystery of
redemption rationally any more than other mystery of the divine
life. Truth is not something merely to study and discuss; it is
something to be realised in ourselves, in spirit as well as
intellectually. Our longing for perfection; our sense of lack;
and our insistent urge towards the highest ideal, these are
the sources of revelation. Truth, then, the Masonic third
grand principle, is also the Way and the Life, and carries its
own warrants; but it is silent like the Sphinx, and there still
seems to be no reply to the age-old question: "What is
Truth?" (St. John, chapter 18, verse 38). There is no life, in
so far as it is human, which is not at the same time an
enquiry into Truth; a struggle with forces inward and
outward; and a practical adaptation of Truth to the
conditions of the transitory life and the service of society.
While, however, from the spiritual standpoint, all work has in
it the power to lead us onwards to perfection, a natural
hierarchy binding the position in society with the cultural
development of the individual arises. Life, as we learn from
the Tracing Board of the First Degree, is a ladder with steps
leading upwards to the goal, and no man can rest satisfied
until he reaches the summit. Nevertheless, not the stage
reached but the movement onwards and upwards is of
importance; the road is better than the resting place; and the
way to the higher life is normally through the world. We
are at a gloomy moment in history; never before has the future
seemed so incalculable. With a dreary fatality the tragedy drags
on; what, we may well ask, are the " prospects of futurity"? As
it happens our society, today is, reaching an exhaustion point;
our, way of, thinking is giving out. The analytic method, of
which we were so proud and which appeared to have made us
irresistibly powerful, almost omnipotent, has betrayed us. It
has given us powers but not vision, means but not meaning,
strength but not sanction. The world is paying a high price for
the benefits of mechanical and industrial progress, and that
price is the surrender of peace and happiness. The internal
combustion engine, jets and rockets, the motor car and the
aeroplane, might possibly have helped mankind to live more
happily and usefully, but, instead, they have been used for
destructive purposes, to rob man of his freedom and to
enslave him, physically, emotionally, and mentally. The
modem system is not to sell people into slavery; they are
conscripted or regimented. We can trace this bondage in all
current tendencies which are characteristic of our age; in
contemporary science, philosophy, and morality; in the
manners and customs of human relations; and in technical
research and productivity. The solution of this urgent
problem depends upon man himself. In his extremity man must
turn to God, and with Him again "unite in the grand design of
being happy and communicating happiness"; he must submit with
"humility and resignation," praying for wisdom to do his duty.
The course being set, man must now "steer the barque of life
o'er the rough sea of passion without quitting the helm of
rectitude"; ever remembering that a smooth sea never made a
skilful mariner, and neither do uninterrupted prosperity and
success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of
adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and
excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the
voyager. We live too close to the momentous changes in the
world, and are too weighted down by events in our individual
lives, to realise the full significance of the transformation
this twentieth century is bringing to humanity. We are entering
upon a period of new spirituality which will be the
counterpart of the present materialism of our world. The old
order changes, but the Universal God is eternal and
unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Truth
can never vary although our knowledge or understanding may
evolve with our outlook, and as we probe into the outer fringe
with our searching minds. Man, however, remains poised between
the opposites; each experience in life becomes either a stepping
stone or a stumbling block: "And a stone of stumbling, and a
rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being
disobedient" (1st Peter, chapter 2, verse 8). It is a necessary
law of life that no man should prevent another against his will
from seizing opportunities to learn, and from exercising his
potentialities. However, once a man makes the choice, and of his
"own free will and accord" elects to gain instruction, then and
then only, does the spiritual law permit him to be helped. It is
decreed that man himself must take the " first regular step";
here the law is laid down: "Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you " (St. Matthew, chapter 7, verse 7). Finally, all the help
and the direction that we can ever need can be found
abundantly within the divine nature; from Him do all things
come forth; unto Him do all things return. This is proclaimed
by the great voice out of heaven, which the revelator heard
in his vision: -
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of
the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit
all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my
son." (Revelation, chapter 21, verses 6-7.)
In concluding
this address, I would once more gratefully acknowledge the debt
we in this Circle owe to that great Masonic teacher, the late W.
Bro. W. L. Wilmshurst, whose writings have been extensively used
in the preparation of our own work. back to top
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