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THE MASONIC INITIATION
postcript
W. L. WILMSHURST
And now let me close this book, as every Lodge is closed, in peace and
concord with all my Brethren, and with the ancient prayer that the Order
may be preserved of God, and its members be cemented with every virtue .
If, in what has here been written, Masonry has been given a conception
spiritualized beyond the measure of its common understanding, I have but
followed the example of our Ancient Brethren, who, lifting up their eyes
to hills whence cometh strength, wrought their Masonic work upon the
highest eminences of the mind and discerned the Mysteries of the Craft, not
with eyes of the flesh, but with the vision and understanding of the spirit.
And they it was who perpetuated for us of later time an Order and a
Doctrine by the right interpretation and use of which we, too, might ascend
where they had risen, and from the same Mount of Vision behold the same
things that they had seen.
Few, perhaps, ascend to those high hills to-day, in this more than
usually
troubled and dark age. But some are ready and eager to do so, and for them
especially it is that this book is written. All must ascend thither at
last. But, at the moment, the World-spirit is dominant in all our
institutions. Wisdom is little apparent; for want of vision the people
perish ; and the quest of Light has to be pursued under conditions of
peculiar adversity . But there is a mystery of Darkness no less than one of
Light, and, in the moulding hands of the Great Architect of the House of
Life, the darkness and the light are both alike and serve as twin pillars
that, finally, will establish that House in strength .
Those, then, who cannot, or are not yet prepared to, mount the higher
path
of understanding the things of the Craft, must nevertheless be thought of
in charity, and spoken of in faith and iii hope. For, placed as we all are
in different and unequal degrees of perception upon the chequer-work floor
of Life, around all alike-black and white, wise and foolish, learned and
uninformed--runs the unifying, surrounding skirtwork and border of 'a
common Providence; about us all are flung the - Everlasting Arms ; whilst,
from the mutual interplay of the light and darkness in us all, becomes
gradually generated the realization of that Wisdom in which, even now, we
are all one, though of that unity few as yet are conscious . And since
Wisdom will at last be justified of all her children, we need not complain
of her processes, which, as they work out through the ages to a beneficent
conclusion, temporarily involve the sharp and painful contrasts that we
find.
Twenty-four centuries ago, at a time of similar darkness and degeneracy
to
the present, an aged seer and golden-tongued poet, who through a long life
had contemplated the Ancient Mysteries of Light and Wisdom, spoke of the
difficulty of conveying them to a world not yet able to appreciate them ;
and yet recognized the truth that, in the opposition -of the World-spirit
to them, the Divine purpose was nevertheless being effected. In sending
forth this book, then, and exhibiting the Mysteries of Masonry in a light
towards which, doubtless, some who read it will not at once be responsive,
let me appropriate that poet's words, and welcome any inappreciation
of what I have written with the same serenity as his ; the same confidence
of forward-looking faith in its ultimate acceptance :
Knowledge, we are not foes !
I seek thee diligently;
But the World with a great wind blows,
Shining-but not from thee !
Yet blowing to beautiful things,
On, amid dark and light.; .
Till Life, through the trammellings
Of laws that are not the Right,
Breaks, clean and pure, and sings
Glorying to God in the .height .
---Euripides, Baccha ; (trans . Murray) .
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