STRAINING AT GNATS AND SWALLOWING CAMELS
by Brother Col. R. H, Forman
The American Freemason - January 1913
The following, taken from an address delivered to the Grand Lodge of Scottish
Freemasonry in India by Brother Col. R. H, Forman, then Grand Master, is pithy
and pertinent. The extract is from The Freemason (London);
Permit me, brethren, to draw your attention to a point in Masonic ethics
which is always too prominently in evidence. I may well describe it as the
straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel. Freemasonry must be one of two
things: either it is a mere allegorical olla podrida of empty forms and
ceremonies. dressed in a fictitious and tawdry cloak of mysticism; or it is a
something far nobler and grander, containing within it those deeper and
profounder truths which are at once the hope and the despair of all religions
and of philosophies. Did I believe that the former was its sole aim and object
-- did I think that its symbolism had to be accepted solely at its face value,
so to speak -- I would resign my position tomorrow. wash my hands of a puerile
and contemptible farce, whose only petty claim to respect is a childish clinging
to obsolete superstition, and I would recommend every self-respecting and
intelligent man to follow my example. But believing, as I do, that it is much
more, and knowing that its deeper truths are obscured by a slavish adherence to
the letter to the extinction of the spirit -- that controversy which is as old
as humanity -- I stand by the Craft, hoping that I may be able, be it in ever so
small a degree, to lift the cloud which oppresses her.
May I illustrate my meaning by example? Freemasonry acknowledges no ritual,
and rightly enough, looked at from one point of view; yet we find individuals
and Lodges continually bickering over points of ceremonial, as often as not
contained in some printed ritual which it has pleased some brother to write, and
which gradually assumes the dignity of a sacred volume, especially in the eyes
of the neophyte. Ay, more, we frequently find ruling bodies flatly contradicting
themselves - on the one hand denying any existence to ritual, and on the other
delivering ponderous rulings on points of ritual. So common has this become that
there is danger that ceremonial may take precedence of the landmarks, the
outward form overshadow the inward meaning, the husk replace the kernel, the
spirit succumb to the letter. I am not advocating slipshod working. On the
contrary, I am a strong supporter of uniformity and thoroughness, recognizing
that the frame sets off the picture; but what I want to insist upon is that the
frame is not the picture, but an adjunct thereto. Ceremonial and ritual are good
things in their way, but they never were, and never will be, of the essence of
Freemasonry. There has been many a stout pillar of the Craft who has never known
a word of ritual, and similarly there has been, I regret to add, many an
impressive ritualist whose subsequent actions gave the lie direct to his
professions, and stamped him a recreant. We argue, and hotly contest, such
trivialities as the knocks which should be given at the closing of a degree, and
get solemn rulings thereon from august bodies in conclave assembled, or prate of
the sacredness of the ballot when some Lodge, or members of a Lodge, with as
much grasp of the true meaning of Freemasonry as an infant has of the
differential calculus, black-balls en bloc Brother Masons of high repute. Verily
a straining at the gnat and swallowing of the camel!
I plead, Brethren, with all the earnestness at my command, for the
cultivation of the spirit and the relegation of the letter to its proper place.
In that direction, and in that direction only, the future welfare of the Craft
lies. Without the motive power of the spirit the Order degenerates into a
whitewashed sepulcher, pure without, corrupt within; and only rescued from
contempt by reason of its efforts in the cause of Charity. Nor need it plume
itself too much on that virtue, as the records of a Peabody, a Mitchell, a
Carnegie - or, nearer home, a Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy - clearly show. We don't want
secrecy, mystical ceremonies, and general bogyism to inculcate the lessons of
ordinary morality; why should we?
Two days ago an old P.M. related to me an incident, with, I am afraid, a
certain degree of approbation, about a Lodge refusing admission to a well-known
and distinguished Brother because he did not know the P.W., it having pleased
them to decree that the t. of g. p. was that P.W. It was quoted as an instance
of the strict adherence to Masonic principles - save the mark - maintained in
that Lodge, Do you know what I would term it? Childish rudeness and
impertinence, with a strong flavoring of perjury, in that they had sworn never
to do an unkind action to a Brother. Little wonder that the Brother in question
washed his hands of an Institution which tolerated nonsensical mummery of this
kind. I plead for broad-mindedness in Freemasonry, for tolerance, for brotherly
love. Ignore the gnat, Brethren - it will not choke you; and strive to see that
Masonry is a thing that soars far above mere forms and ceremonies, being, as it
is, an expression of man's yearning towards the divine which is within him, and
having ever before it the ideal of the regeneration of humanity. To those who
can pierce through the outward seeming to the inner soul, I appeal, for therein
lies the vindication of Freemasonry. Behind the veil there stands the awful
Eidolon, the Pleroma filling more than conceivable space, dispensing with the
conditions of form, and obtruding beyond the upper and nether ring of eternity.
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