INNER MEANING
Does the third degree of Masonry mean something else than
what it says?" The New Mason sat beside the bearer of the sword in the
anteroom and offered his cigar case.
"What does it say?" inquired the Old Tiler,
extracting a cigar and lighting it.
"Why, you know what it says I Fancy asking me that! Any
one would think you never saw one!"
"Oh, I have seen many a third degree," answered the
Old Tiler. "So have a lot of other men. But the third degree seems to say
something different to each man who receives it, and to all who see it. So
before I answer as to whether it means something different to what it says, I
will have to know what it says to you, won't P"
"But that's just the point! I don't know what it means
to me!" cried the New Mason. "It's all so new and strange. It must
have a deeper inner meaning than just the ceremony. It can't be just a
repetition of what may or may not have been a historical fact!"
The Old Tiler puffed at his cigar. "I think the third
degree of Freemasonry is one of the most beautiful of the symbols which mankind
has ever erected, to teach himself what he already knows, to teach others what
they must know. Its immediate and obvious lessons are fidelity to trust,
fortitude in face of danger, the fact that the good a man does lives after him,
the inevitability of justice. But there are other teachings-immortality, for
instance."
"I can see that the Master degree teaches
immortality," responded the New Mason, eagerly, "and that the drama
can be interpreted as one of resurrection. Indeed, the ritual so explains part
of it."
"There is an inner meaning to the teaching of
immortality," continued the Old Tiler. "Have you a piece of string
with only one end?"
"What? There isn't any such thing! It either has no
ends, if it is in a circle, or two ends."
The Old Tiler looked his questioner in the eye.
"Immortality can't have one end only, either! Anything that is to continue
to live forever must always have lived. If it had a finite beginning, it must
have a finite end I"
"Do you mean that Freemasonry teaches the theory of
reincarnation-that we have all lived before, and will again?" demanded the
New Brother, aghast. "I am no Buddhist!"
"I don't mean anything of the kind!" explained the
Old Tiler. "The Buddhist theory of reincarnation is only one way of using
the idea of immortality which has neither beginning nor ending. Surely it is
possible to believe that the immortal part of us, which must have come from God,
his always lived, without thinking that it has lived in the body of some other
man, or in an animal, as the animists believe. But I do not see how anyone who
believes in endless life, can also believe that our souls began when our bodies
were born.
"If I am to be immortal in the future, and have a soul
which has been immortal in the past, I must have an immortal soul now. I am just
as much in immortality and eternity at the present moment as 1 will be when my
body is in the brow of a hill, and the brethren have invested my mortal remains
with a lambskin apron and a sprig of acacia has been dropped upon my lifeless
form.
"So that I must hunt farther than a mere teaching of
immortality to extract the inner meaning of the third degree. I do not need a
Master Mason degree to teach me the common sense of a piece of string which has
only one end!
"All men are, in one sense, haunted houses. The ghosts
of their long dead ancestors rise up and walk with them, The good man who does
something wrong, the clever man who does something stupid, the stupid man who
does something enormously clever, i.3 haunted with the ghosts of those from
whose loins he sprang. We are not just one person, but a lot of persons. We have
an everyday self, and a better self; a selfish, self-seeking self, and a
self-sacrificing, loving self. Sometimes one is in control and sometimes
another.
"The third degree is to me not only the teaching of
immortality of the soul, but the raising of my better self in my own house-my
'temple not made with hands.' It teaches me how to subdue my passions-my selfish
and inconsiderate self-and to allow my better self, my Master Builder self, to
rise from wherever my 'brow of a hill' is, in which the ruffians of selfishness,
meanness, dishonesty have buried him, to shine eternal as the stars, within
me."
The Old Tiler paused. The New Mason broke his spell to ask,
"Old Tiler, did you ever study to be a preacher?"
"I don't know enough!" he answered laughing.
"What put such an idea in your head?"
"Maybe you don't know enough to preach," was the
slow answer. "But you certainly know enough to teach. When next I see a
third degree it will be with new eyes."
"That's nice of you." The Old Tiler was pleased.
"My ideas are just thoughts of a common Mason."
"They are the common thoughts of the best Mason!"
declared the New Brother.
back to top
| 
