THE BUILDER MAGAZINE
may 1922
volume 8 - number 5
Masonry and the World's Work
(Written for the
DETROIT MASONIC NEWS and published by permission of the editor of that
publication)
BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD,
IOWA
ONE MIGHT quibble a
good deal about the exact significance of the important question that you have
posed, but I take it that you mean to ask if I believe that Freemasonry should
discharge its influence altogether, so to speak, into its own vitals and in its
own interests, or if it should turn some of its influence into the great world
outside itself, in order that that world may feel something of the force and
beauty of Freemasonry. I am very sure that you do not mean to infer that at any
time or under any circumstances Masonic lodges should engage in politics, or as
lodges assume an active part in the direction of public affairs. Needless to
say, I should instantly reply in the latter instance that Masonic lodges never
should - as lodges - engage in politics of any kind, or anything like politics:
but I am quite as ready to say that I do believe that Freemasonry should cease
to hibernate inside its own hollow tree, and that it should be harnessing its
great powers up to some of the worthful social causes in orier that it may do
something for the world in general.
I believe that it was
a good thing for the Fraternity to attempt to go abroad in order to lend
fraternal aid and encouragement to Masonic brethren there, and to their friends.
I believe it was a
good thing for Freemasonry to play the part it did in the Revolutionary War, and
in the founding of the United States government.
I believe it is a
good thing for Freemasonry to watch with jealous care the interests of the
public school system of the land, not only because the disruption or
disintegration of that great educational system would defeat many of its own
most cherished purposes but also because such a disintegration would work an
irreparable injury to this nation.
I believe it was a
good thing for a large number of our Grand Lodges to fashion the Masonic Service
Association of the United States in order that all our Grand Lodges may work as
a unity in any cause that may call for the assistance of the Fraternity as a
whole. Freemasonry now has its own Red Cross system, and that is a fact of which
every one of us may feel proud.
I believe it was a
noble thing for this same Masonic Service Association to send to President
Harding, at the beginning of the great conference on the limitation of armament,
a resolution in which Brother Harding was assured the support and
congratulations of the Association, which represented at the time thirty-four
jurisdictions; and I know that the members of all the other jurisdictions would
readily have signed the resolutions, which adequately expressed the fact that
Masons, aloof them, pray for the peace of the world, and stand ready to lend
their aid to any project for bringing to pass the end of war.
I believe that the
Fraternity could - if only it would - do very much toward bringing about a
better understanding among the nations of the world to the end that they may
learn to live together upon the level and discover how good a thing it would be
for peoples to live together in harmony. If that good will does not come among
nations it can never rest secure inside any one nation, because in the community
of the world no nation can live or die unto itself.
And furthermore I
believe that it would be a good thing if every Masonic lodge made it a point to
take up some kind of community service in its own locality. This service need
not be advertised to the profane or undertaken with a flourish of trumpets, but
it could be organized in such a manner as to win the support of every Freemason
in the province of the lodge. Many have been the explanations of Masonic apathy,
of the indifference which falls upon so many men, even after they have passed
the chairs: to my own mind one of the cardinal causes of this apathy lies in the
fact that in so many cases the lodge is a mere engine which keeps all its wheels
turning but does not accomplish anything by its discharge of power. A lodge that
is content with meeting twice a week for initiations and once a month to
transact its little modicum of business, and then "lets it go at that," isn't
much good to itself or to the world; and many of the better men among its
members will soon grow disgusted with such child's play, and remain home. If
that lodge would only enlist its energies in some worthful community cause it
would find that its members would soon lose their apathy. Social service is
necessary for Masonic health.
In the discharge of
my own humble duties in the National Masonic Research Society I receive and
reply to a great grist of letters which come to me from brethren all over the
world, and it will be no betrayal of confidence if I say here, in pages read by
Craftsmen, that a large number of these letters contain complaints against the
fruitlessness of so much of our Masonic endeavor. "Why is it," many of these
brethren ask, "that Freemasonry isn't doing something with itself ?" If one will
carefully scan the fifty or more Masonic journals published in this land; if he
will keep a weather eye out for the Masonic books now being published; and
furthermore if he will study the Grand Lodge Proceedings each year (one of the
most valuable things a Masonic student can do for himself) he will find that the
Fraternity as a whole is now in a kind of ferment, and that the multitudes of
young men who have joined us during the past five or six years are impatiently
asking - if I may echo one of the now melancholy catch phrases of the Great War
- "where do we go from here ?" These men are not satisfied with meekly sitting
on the sidelines watching the ceremonies: they are eager to see all the things
taught in those ceremonies at work in the world, catching on to people's minds,
and taking effect in the general life. In other words, I am quite sure that the
rank and file of members, as things now are, are not only in favor of, but
insistently clamantly in favor of Freemasonry's taking some part "in the work of
the world."
If any of the more
conservative brethren shrink from this, fearing lest it violate the old
traditions or transgress the Ancient Landmarks, let them in all patience study
those ancient traditions, and learn to know what Freemasonry actually has done
in the past! If they will do this they will discover that the more or less
stereotyped American Freemasonry of the 1890's is in no sense representative of
the Freemasonry that the world at large has known these past two centuries. It
would surprise even the ardent and restless youngest member could he learn just
how much the Fraternity has actually done in carrying on the "world's work"
during those two centuries! Recently, while going through all the references to
Freemasonry in the Encyclopedia Britannica and in the Catholic Encyclopedia I
was struck by the fact that in almost every instance the Fraternity is mentioned
as having been at work to win for men more liberty, more equality, and more
democracy.
Consider why it was
that Freemasonry was banned from Russia. Learn what it did in Germany in the
1848's, and what part it played in Belgium and Holland in 1820. Read its history
in Austria and Hungary and discover why it was so cordially hated by the
aristocracy that they at last violently destroyed it. Consider the part that it
played in the liberation and unification of the Italian Peninsula, and recall
how that Garabaldi himself was an active Freemason. Go through the story of
Freemasonry's role in France from the time when it assisted so powerfully to
overturn the Ancient Regime until the present, when it is once more in a death
grapple with the Jesuits who again got their innings during the Great War; and
how that during that long period the Craft was very largely instrumental in
gaining a public school system for France, and in securing the separation of
church and state! The Republic of Portugal is often called "a child of Masonry";
while in Spain the Fraternity has been persecuted again and again on the grounds
that it was instilling the ideas and ideals of democracy into the minds of the
Spanish. There is no need to lengthen this list of references, save to say that
the part played by the Fraternity in our own land has not only not been
exaggerated, but hasn't even yet been fully recognized. One of these days it
will be proved that the Craft saved the Colonists at the most critical stage of
the Revolutionary War, and that if it had not been for Freemasonry the War would
have been lost, and the freeing of the Colonists would have been delayed if not
defeated, and a very different type of government would have been constructed.
These last statements sound strong but they can be every one substantiated by
incontrovertible evidence.
I don't mention these
hints from history in order to illustrate my point that the Craft should do its
own right part in carrying on "the world's work," for an illustration has no
weight in logic: nor do I advance this as a precedent for our social activity,
because a precedent may merely permit - not demand - a given course of action: I
recall this history in order that it may reveal what has ever been the nature of
the Fraternity, and indicates that what it has been in the past it will
necessarily be in the future.
Sooner or later,
Brother Editor, we shall not raise the question that you have raised because by
that time it will have become taken for granted that Freemasonry, being a public
institution, owes certain duties to the world of which it is a part, just as
every other institution owes social duties. The question then will be as to ways
and means and as to specific tasks. At present we can't talk much about specific
tasks, and as to ways and means that must be decided as the occasion arises.
----o----
FURTHER NOTES ON THE
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES
BY BRO. N. W. HAYDEN,
ONTARIO
IN THE BUILDER for
March, 1920, were published "Some Notes on the Mysteries of Eleusis," which I
sent by way of a comment on the valuable articles on this subject from the pen
of Brother Dudley Wright, of which Part IV appeared in THE BUILDER for
September, 1919. In this portion, and in his little book which reproduces the
whole, (1) Brother Wright offers this question, "It would be interesting to know
why . . . wheat was chosen (for exaltation); why the ear more than the grain;
why it should be emphasized that it was 'gathered'; . . . and in what manner it
secured, or ensured, for the individual a blissful existence after death."
An attempt to answer
this query, after so many centuries have passed since it ceased apparently to be
a living usage, would surely be speculative enough for any of us, but I
addressed myself to it and trust my answer will not be judged as falling short
of its intent.
Let me first draw
attention to a quotation from Vol. II of Frazer's Golden Bough. "In the great
mystelies solemnized at Eleusis in the month of September, the union of the sky
god Zeus with the corn goddess Demeter appear to have been represented by the
union of the hierophant with the priestess of Demeter, who acted the parts of
the god and goddess. But this intercourse was only dramatic or symbolical, (2)
for the hierophant had temporarily deprived himself of his virility by an
application of hemlock. (3) The torches having been extinguished the pair
descended into a murky place while the throng of worshippers awaited in anxious
suspense the result of the mystic congress, on which they believed their own
salvation to depend."
"After a time the
hierophant reappeared and, in a blaze of light, silently exhibited to the
assembly a reaped ear of corn, (4) the fruit of the divine marriage. Then, in a
loud voice, he proclaimed 'Queen Bromo has brought forth a sacred boy, Brimas'
by which he meant 'The Mighty One has brought forth the Mighty.' The
corn-mother, in fact, had given birth to her child, the corn, and her travail
pangs were enacted in the sacred drama. This revelation of the reaped ear of
corn appears to have been the crowning act of the Mysteries."
In addition to the
above, there is the witness of Hippolytus, one of the "early Fathers" (A. D.
160-236), who was bitterly opposed to the religions of the heathen. In his
Philosophoumena he gives a "Translation and Refutation" of the rites and
teachings contained in a Naasene manuscript which had been written for private
circulation, somewhat like our Book of The Work, which contained the following:
"Knowledge of the Perfect Man is deep and hard to comprehend. For the beginning
of Perfection is Gnosis of Man, but Gnosis of God is perfect Perfection. (5) And
the Phrygians called him also 'Plucked Green Wheat Ear,' and after the
Phrygians, the Athenians so designate him, when, in the secret rites of Eleusis
they show those who receive in silence the final initiation there into the
Great, and Marvelous, and Most Perfect Epoptic Mystery, a plucked wheat ear. And
this wheat ear is also with the Athenians the Light-Giver perfect and mighty,
from the Inexpressible, the Holy Son born of Our Lady, the Virgin Spirit."
One can see by the
foregoing that in these Mysteries an ear of corn, which had been reaped - i.e.,
separated from its root and stalk - was used as an emblem of the Deity, who came
through the gate of physical birth and separation for the good of his
worshippers, even as the corn itself has to be separated and prepared that our
bodies may be nourished thereby.
"But why," asks
Brother Wright, "was wheat chosen out for this purpose from among all the plants
which revive and die in the course of the year?"
I believe there is
very much more hidden in this query than appears on the surface, for it takes us
back to the origins of life, the "Divine Kings" of old Egypt, and all that title
connotes. It is a strange fact of our terrestrial life that wheat has never been
traced to any form of wild grass. It is older than history; it has been found
wrapped up with mummies, and the Book of the Dead has several references to it
as the "Corn of Life"; evidently of a symbolic nature as its height varies from
three to seven cubits according to the spiritual condition of the servant of
Horus who is "gleaning the fields of Aanroo," i. e., receiving the due reward of
his actions, good or bad. In one sentence, Isis says "I reveal to mortals the
mysteries of wheat and corn."
Plato in his Critias
(I think) and in his Fourth Book of Laws, suggests that just as man governs his
flocks and herds, not by one of their own kind, but by a superior being, so the
Creator ruled primitive humanity with Divine Shepherds. When these were retired,
"Inventors" appeared who "discovered" fire, wheat, wine and letters. Brother
Wright tells us, "According to some ancient writers the Greeks, prior to the
time of Demeter and Triptolemus, fed upon the acorns of the ilex or the
evergreen oak. Acorns, according to Virgil, were used as food in Epiros; and in
Spain, according to Strabo. The Scythians made bread with acorns. By another
tradition before Demeter's time, men neither cultivated corn nor tilled the
ground, but roamed the mountains and woods in search for the wild fruits which
the earth produced. Isocrates wrote, "Ceres hath made the Athenians two presents
of the greatest consequence: corn, which brought us out of a state of brutality;
and the Mysteries, which teach the initiated to entertain the most agreeable
expectations touching death and eternity." Thus the Greeks trace their knowledge
of tillage to the goddess Ceres. The Chinese trace theirs to the instructions of
"celestial genii." These were the Kabiri, also named in the Vedas the Agni-putra,
both terms meaning "The Sons of Flame," who were too, the first workers in
minerals and metals, the true Te-Baal-Kayin, whose name is remembered because
they were "Lords of the Smiths" and not because of any worldly possessions they
may have acquired.
One of the most
plausible explanations of the fact that the Egyptian civilization seems to have
no beginning, is that it was originally in that respect, a colony from Atlantis,
coeval with another in Yucatan, for knowledge of which we are so indebted to the
labors of Dr. and Mrs. Le Plongeon. An extended review of the evidence on this
point can also be gained from Atlantis by Ignatius Donnelly. Bro. Churchward in
his great work Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man writes: "We are enabled to
give two figures from photographs of 'Two Gods' recently discovered near the
ruins of Mitla, by Prof. Marshall H. Saville. (Mitla is one of the ruined cities
of Yucatan.) These two figures are symbolically typical of the Egyptian Horus,
in two of his characters. The one on the right has a crown on his head, with
four ears of corn, two on each side, and between them the hieroglyphic figure
for running water. In front, between his arms, is the Egyptian ideographic
hieroglyph RHI - 'The Garden of Earth.' His tongue is hanging out, apparently as
two tongues, symbolically uttering or saying that he is the Lord and Bringer of
food and of water; this is identically the same as the Egyptian at Philae, where
'The Corn Spirit' is represented by stalks and ears of corn springing from its
mummy near running water - i. e., Horus is represented as a bringer of food and
water; which must be interesting to Freemasons as being the origin of 'an ear of
corn near a fall of water.'
"The figure on the
left side is one of the Mexican depictions of Horus as 'The Light of the World.'
He has a crown on his head surmounted by several groups (there should be seven)
of Three Rods, or Rays, of Light. In front between the arms is a head with a
rope around its neck which passes over the shoulders of the god, symbolical of a
power bringing death, darkness, or ignorance to the Light Eternal, through or by
Horus. The one Power through whom you are led from death to the mansions of the
Blessed."
On page 381 of
Mexican Antiquities, by Dr. Edward Soler, figure A, Horus is seen as “The Young
Ear of Corn" represented here by maize. He is giving life and plenty, he is the
bringer of food, of life, to the world.
In Memoires de la
Mission Francaise, by Lefebvre, Vol. II, pages 29 and 31, are shown figures from
the coffin of the Pharoah Seti 1st,6 amongst which is the "grain-god"
represented as a man wearing two full ears of wheat upon his head.
It will be useful at
this point to quote from the translation of the Book of Gates, as delineated on
the inside and outside of this sarcophagus, for which we are i debted to the
Efforts of Dr. Wallis Budge:
"On the left of the
course of Afu-Ra are twelve male figures, who represent the 'workers in the
wheat fields of the Tuat.' . . . The ears of wheat are said to he the 'members
of Osiris,' and thus the great god is the food upon which the gods and the
beatified live in the Tuat.... Every ear of wheat which flourished there was a
member of the body of Osiris, for this god himself was the wheat-god, and was
the source of life of every plant of wheat in his kingdom. Thus it follows that
the beatified lived upon the body of their god, whom they ate daily.... The
texts, from the earliest period, speak of Osiris as the everliving and
Everlasting god, and the Prince of eternity, and as he was the wheat-god it alas
his body which was the 'bread of everlastingness' according to the texts which
were written under the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, about 3600-8300 B. C....
Though in the texts under consideration the grain-god Nepra is mentioned by
name, it is Osiris who assumes the lordship of the celestial grain. The
connection between Maat, or righteousness, and the grain-god is not easy to
explain, but it seems to me that we have here a mixture of two conceptions of
Osiris. As the grain-god he would satisfy those who wished for a purely material
heaven, where hunger would be unknown; and as the god of righteousness, of whom
the spiritually-minded hoped to become the counterpart, he would become the hope
and consolation, and the symbol of the Eternal God."
lI have been unable
to get a copy of this figure, but it would probably be similar to the one shown
in Egyptian Mythology by Max Muller, figure 73, page 66, as that of Nepri (male)
or Nepret (female), divine guardian of grain. This authority writes: "The god of
grain, who in female form is sometimes identified with Renemutet, the goddess of
harvest, is rather more of a poetic abstraction, like the gods 'Abundance' and
'Plenty.' In this way Nepri is Lord of Food generally rather than a god of grain
particularly."
I think Brother
Wright's query is answered fairly completely by the foregoing, but there is a
further development which is worth consideration as regards the last sentence of
his question. As I pointed out in my "Notes" of March, 1920, the Mysteries of
Eleusis were the nearest approach to modern Freemasonry of which we have any
historical evidence. For nearly 1500 years they exerted their influence for good
over most of the known world; their initiates were numbered by the thousand, and
all the civilized peoples of the time were represented annually in that little
corner of the world, even as in our own day the otherwise obscure village of
Ober-Ammergau attracted the citizens of Christendom to its decennial Passion
Play.
Is it to be supposed
that the fanaticism of the Byzantine Christians entirely destroyed these ancient
and worshipful ceremonies ? I think not. How many of our modern religious
customs, ceremonies, and anniversaries are but a thin veneer of changed names
laid upon a foundation of "pagan" usages, whose inherent life continued because
they were connected with that inner shrine in humanity where dwells the Great
Architect, no matter how variously our minds may cognize and name Him!
And just as the
popularly useful features of the Eleusinia are reborn in our Masonic usages, so,
I think, the essential intent of the last and greatest of its series of
Mysteries has been preserved for us in a custom which to many today is, as it
was to our Greek forbears, an approach to and communion with our vision of
Deity, the most revered and intimate of all our religious acts.
In the Encyclopabdia
of Religions under the subdivision "Christian, Western," of the subject
"Sacraments" we are shown how the Church Fathers, Tertullian, Jerome, Cyprian,
and Augustine, used the Latin word "sacramentum" as.an equivalent of the Greek
word "musterion," the chief requisite in this valuation being the mutual use of
a material symbol, of an intelligible reality, or to paraphrase the definition
in the Catechism - it must be an outward and physical sign of an inward and
psychical process. Augustine also admits that every religion, true or false, has
its visible signs or sacrament (Cont. Faust. XIX, XI).
From this same
source, under the general heading of "Sacraments," we read: "In the Eleusinia
certain acts of a sacramental character had a place.... Apart from other things
done or seen, they partook of a cup of 'kukeon,' a thick gruel of meal and water
resembling the draught of barley, groats, water and pennyroyal leaves drunk by
the mourning Demeter after her nine days fast. The unemended text of Clement of
Alexandria suggests the handling of a sacred object, rather than the tasting of
a sacred food. What did this drinking and eating mean to the worshippers ? Some
enquirers have seen in it a sacramental communion with Demeter in her passion,
e. g., Gardner in his Origins of the Lord's Supper."
My conclusion, too,
arrived at this same result, as the only explanation of a custom honored through
centuries of observance. It must have satisfied some more or less conscious need
in the psychologic economy of its participants, and our own personal experiences
will sympathize with them. Why should we think like the priests with Cortez and
Pizarro, who held that the signs of the cross and the eucharistic ceremonies
they found in the New World had been planted there by Satan to deceive a people
who were ignorant of the "Holy Mother Church" ? Is it not rather more worthy of
our motto, "Follow Reason," and our belief in an everliving and immanent
Builder, to see in these ancient customs the evidence of a divine method through
which each succeeding race of man, after it has come to a certain growth of
spiritual evolution, can have unsealed in its inmost sanctuary, a new fount of
energy wherewith to meet new trials and win new victories? One can see herein
the vision that inspired the Eastern prayer, the most sacred verse of the
Rig-Veda, the "Gayatri" whose beauty I have not found surpassed anywhere - "Oh
Thou, that givest sustenance to the universe, Thou from whom all things proceed,
and to whom all shall return, unveil that face of the true sun, now hidden by
this vase of golden light, that we may know the Truth and do our whole duty as
we journey to Thy sacred seat." Three thousand years after the mind that framed
this prayer had left its corporeal tenement, we find the same hope and desire
embodied in Cardinal Newman's famous hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light"; and Tennyson
voices our thought that through prayer "men are bound by gold chains up to the
throne of God." The Great Architect has many names and wears many vestures, in
the minds of His offspring, yet withal "He inhabiteth Eternity" as Brother
Hosmer wrote in THE BUILDER for May, 1917. Happy are they who know this, whether
Hindoo, Eleusinian, or the man of today.
(1) "The Eleusinian
Mysteries & Rites," by Dudley Wright, with an Introduction by the Rev. J. Fort
Newton, D. Litt., D. D.
(2) As to the
symbolic nature of the union, Frazer gives quotations from Tertullian, Ad
Nationes, II, 7; Amasenus, in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, XL, col. 324;
Hippolytus, Refutatic omnium EIaeresium, Vol. 8, pp. 162-4, etc.
(3) In antiquity it
was believed that an ointment or plaster of hemlock applied to the genital
organs prevented them from discharging their function. See Dioscorides, De
Materia Medica IV, 79; Pliny, Nat.
History XXV, 154. Dr.
J. B. Bradbury, Downing Professol of Medicine in the University of Cambridge,
informs me that this belief is correct.
(4) Perhaps it may be
necessary to remind American readers that Wheat is always known as "corn" in
Europe; whereas the Corn of the United States is known there as "maize" or
"Indian corn.'
(5) "Perfect" as used
here is a technical term of the Schools It does not indicate a quality, as with
us today, but rather a rank, somewhat as our term "worshipful" in Masonic usage.
(6) This coffin was
carved from alabaster, and is now in the Sir John Sloane Museum, in London,
England.
----o----
MASONIC TOLERATION
BY BRO. MALCOLM W.
BINGAY, MICHIGAN
THE BUILDER MAY 1922
MAN IN his egotism
has quarrelled about religion since the first day of recorded history; from the
cloud worship of the first Aryan down to our own sadly disturbed times it has
been ever the same: martyrs have given up their anguished souls, armies have
been massacred, empires have been shattered and civilizations sent to decay -
all in the name of God. And yet through all these wars about religion there
never has been and there never can be a religious war for a religious war is a
contradiction in terms: no one can love God and at the same time hate his
brother man.
Religion has been the
pretext for war, but for an explanation of the hate which prompts men to fight
we must turn from the fields of religion to the study of psychology, and it is a
simple fact in psychology that we dislike, even unto hate, those who disagree
with us.
The more strongly we
feel a thing the more firmly we believe in the merit of our feeling; our logic
appeals to us as absolute and we subconsciously justify our attitude often to
the exclusion, in our narrow intensity, of possible outstanding facts. It all
seems so simple and sane and understandable to us from our own personal
viewpoint that we marvel at the inability of others to understand and see as we
do. The average man, when filled with the ardor of an idea resents having
anybody fail to agree with him in that ardor; the one who refuses to be
converted to his attitude is either maddeningly stupid and unworthy of further
consideration and sympathy, or he is purposely venal and vicious. The ratio of
this resentment depends on the strength of the advocate's ardor, on his
narrowness or breadth of mind, and on his inner spiritual qualities or lack of
them.
Christ understood and
forgave; too many of his followers, or those who devoutly believe they are his
followers, scream for the tar and the torch. As Swift said:
"Some men have just
enough religion to hate each other and not enough to love one another."
The blame cannot be
placed upon religion, but rather upon our failure to understand the three
impulses by which man lives, moves and has his being: First, instinct - that
something which man shares with the animals, the simple impulse to exist; Second
- reason, that something by which he is able to differentiate himself from the
animals and through which he has piled up, through the ages, his material
wealth; Third - spirit, that indefinable, ineffable Something transcending both
instinct and reason and which permits him, in his loftier moods to glimpse
faintly a possible answer to those eternal questions which have ever harried his
mortal reason, but which leave his immortal soul calm and at peace with the
Infinite. But Man is ever the egotist; he is proud that he is a reasoning
animal; and he has struggled throughout the ages to gain answer to those
questions by reason alone.
By reason he has
built the cities of the earth; by reason he has encompassed the globe; by reason
he has made the temporal triumphs on which our civilization now exists-and which
seems to be crumbling again into the dust. The spirit alone can save mankind
from himself and his ruthless reasoning. Terrible as was the World War through
which we have just gone, there is one thing more terrible: the state of society
which makes such a thing possible. The battles of the Western front in France
were but outward manifestations of the war which tore the hearts of men before
the guns were unleashed. Peace is a state of mind, and the war was raging in
the minds of men long ere the first gun sung its song of death in the year
1914. When a world is bad enough to make war, war follows even as the boil
protrudes its ulcerous ugliness when the body is bad enough to make boils!
We have boasted of
our Age of Reason, and it has been an age of reason - reason without spirit,
without faith in our God and our fellow man, reason like a giant ship rushing in
circles driven madly on by powerful engines with no rudder to guide its course.
The first question
which stirred the mind of primitive man concerned his God. Since the first
shepherd, stretched on the hills at night, wondered, man has asked himself these
questions and has tried by reason alone to solve them:
What is the nature of
God?
What is the origin of
the world?
Whence came we?
Whither do we go? And why?
They are the
questions on which all the warring theologies of the world have been built; and
they cannot be answered by reason alone - they cannot be answered by reason at
all, for they take in the realms of the immortal and we are only mortal. As
Plotinus, the Alexandrian, said: "I am a finite being; how can I comprehend the
infinite? As soon as I comprehend the infinite, I am infinite myself." Human
reason is a limited and an erring faculty, unable to grasp "the sorry scheme of
things entire" even as the stillest lake fails to reflect the sky as a whole.
But reasoning man will not permit of such a thought; he will answer and explain
to please himself and applaud his own wisdom.
From Thales, Plato
and Aristole to Des Cartes, Fichte and Schelling, man the reasoning animal has
run in the revolving squirrel cage of his reason, trying to solve the mystery of
immortality on his mortal treadmill; from Copernicus, Galilee, Kepler and Newton
to Einstein; from Locke to James; from Pyrrho to Anatole France; from the Sacred
Bull Amon of Egypt to the psycho-analysis of Freud; from Apsu and Tiamit of
Babylonia to Edisonian incandescence; from the fable of Prometheus unbound to
the dream of the arrested energy of the atom - thus man has sought in the stars
and in the human brain for answer to the riddle of existence, that answer which
is hidden away in his own heart. And always he runs in a circle that runs with
him; Hegel is applauded for saying that to which Heraclitus gave utterance two
thousand years before, and a modern Pythagoras still stands at the shore of a
strange sea, pondering the Whence? the Whither? and the Why?
"There was a door to
which I found no key," sang old Omar and for him there was no key and for him
who cannot find it within his own soul there will be no key, for the key is the
key of faith, the key of the spirit which transcends reason. "Faith," said
Tolstoy, "is that by which man lives." That faith is the song in the soul of man
when he ceases to run the circles of his reason, when he rises above the earthly
passions of greed and lust and hate, and sits him down in meekness and humility,
awed by the mightiness of the universe about him - and listens.
The history of human
understanding is the history of man's failure to rise above his own being; he
cannot by the boot-straps of his reason pull himself above the rim of the bowl
of Plato - the Tower of Babel is not the story of ancient days, it is the
outstanding fact of our civilization today. The question that begins with a
childlike wonderment and a childlike glory in our self-sufficiency ends in an
aged doubt. All metaphysics, all philosophy, have swung the circle back to the
beginning point. We are circumscribed and kept within due bounds when in our
egotism we trust to intellect alone. On the grave of the cynical Montaigne
there are engraved his own words in mockery to his dust: "What do I know?"
Primitive man was
guided alone by instinct; to eat, to propagate, to exist was the only urge
within his being which gave itself expression; dormant within him were reason
and spirit. When man began to wonder he began to reason, and when he began to
reason his material development started. So not in vain have all the
philosophers of all the world pondered on the unknowable; for while they have
not found that for which they sought they have developed the cerebral
functioning by which man finds his thought processes laid out for him. The
squirrel running in its revolving cage has developed itself for the duties
inherent to that cage. Seeking answer to the unknowable by the rule of reason,
man has been able to grasp and understand the knowable.
Throughout the ages
there have been flashes of that spirit which completes the triangle of man's
impulses; yet we have but to point to the war, the chaos and anarchy of today,
of the hate and suspicion which sweeps the world to know that it has not yet
spread its divine effulgence so far over the earth that we have with us a social
conscience, a social mysticism, which, when it comes, will be that brotherly
love and affection - outward manifestations of the spirit within us - symbolized
by the trowel and cement of Masonry.
Instinct without
reason leaves man as the beast of the field; reason without conscience is a
ruthless Frankenstein which shall destroy mankind; the spirit alone, working
through the alembic of man's inner self, must be the censor and control of
reason. Our "Age of Reason" has been an age of blind hate, of greed, of horrid
fighting and of awful consequence. We stand at the crossroads. We have no
alternative. We must go one way or the other. Either we must cooperate or go
on fighting until the last battle-axed, bullet-riddled, gas-torn torso writhes
to its end and man is no more. We must find understanding, born of the spirit,
to bring to this blood-stained globe the peace of God. And as long as we have
within our own hearts hatred for our fellow man, and engender that hate in the
hearts of others by seeking evil in them rather than purity in ourselves, just
so long do we delay the oncoming of the Great Brotherhood.
"The man who has the
life of the spirit within him views the love of man and woman, both in himself
and others, quite differently from the man who is exclusively dominated by
mind," writes Bertrand Russell. "He sees in his moments of insight, that in all
human beings there is something deserving of love, something mysterious,
something appealing, a cry out of the night, a groping journey and a possible
victory. When his instinct loves, he welcomes its help in seeing and feeling the
value of the human being whom he loves. Instinct becomes a reinforcement in
spiritual insight. What instinct tells him spiritual insight confirms, however
much the mind may be aware of littleness, limitations, and the enclosing walls
that prevent the spirit from shining forth. His spirit divines in all men what
his instinct shows him is the object of his love."
Socrates was the
first to discover this truth in the development of his ethies. "Man," he said,
"is the measure of all things. Descend deeper into his personality and you will
find that underneath all varieties there is a ground for steady truth. Men
differ but men also agree; they differ as to what is fleeting; they agree as to
what is eternal. Difference is the region of opinion; agreement is the region of
truth; let us endeavour to penetrate that region."
It was the aged
arguer of Athens who first sensed a universal law of morals, but all thinkers
have found it out; each man conquering truth for himself, following, as Socrates
did, the inscription at Delphos: "Know Thyself." Plato proved God to exist by
the very feeling of affinity to His nature which stirs within our souls. Guizot,
Tyler, Frazer, in their studies of primitive culture found that whether in the
darkest wilds of Africa, the peasant fields of Europe, or the rushing cities of
America, wherever the hearts of men beat in every age and clime: God is. Man
feels the spirit of divinity within him and seeks to give outward manifestation
to that inner spirit as his capacities permit. His means are determined by his
birth and his environment. He may begin by worshipping the sun which warms him
and sees him on his way, or as the years pass and he develops a greater
knowledge, he may worship Him who made the sun, worshipping God in some temple
of gilt and gold, which reflects the glory of that sun and which has been
erected as the earthly conception of the glory of Him on high. Well may the
proudest Christian gentleman paraphrase the words of John Bunyan, point to the
primitive native in his childlike worship, and say: "There but by the grace of
God, goes he who bears my name."
The great outstanding
fundamental fact of life is that all men, deny as they will with their lips,
know in their higher moods that there is a God; not something that can be
defined for them, but something that is, the ineffable, the inexpressionable
fact of life, symbolized by the Lost Word of Masonry. Only "the fool hath said
in his heart there is no God." "God," said Fichte, "must be believed in, not
inferred." And St. Thomas a Kempis said: "It is better to love God than to
define him." Far easier it would be to explain by what rules of music the deaf
Beethoven drew from the song of his soul his divine harmonies, or what rules of
oratory went to make up the Gettysburg speech, or what geometrical genius
conceived the lowly spider's web.
Yet man the Reasoner
crushes aside the spirit and, in his egotism, proclaims himself dictator by
intellect alone, and wages war on those who will not agree with him. How
unconsciously fitting was the action of those French revolutionists who placed a
naked courtesan on an altar and hailed her as the Goddess of Reason!
This to me is me very
genius of Masonry: A love of God, simple, pure and undefiled, and a deep and
unfeigned friendship for our fellow man with an understanding of his frailties,
perhaps sometimes what we may call his narrowness and his devout inability to
understand some things in the same spirit that we do - the pure essence of
toleration: a recognition of the spirit groping within and not the clumsy
reasoning without.
Yet it is a
deplorable fact and one not avoidable in any discussion of the subject of
Masonic toleration that the greatest message of Christ, "Love thine enemy," has
been so misunderstood as to cause quarrels and bitter misunderstandings among
Christian peoples. Christianity has been split into three general factions: the
Greek church, the Roman Catholic church, and the so-called Protestant churches.
Of the Greek church there need be nothing said as it is not the cause of the
bitterness that has existed for centuries between the two remaining factions -
those who adhere to the Papal authority and those who revolted from its
domination at the time of the Reformation.
From the time of
Uranus, the first Aryan God - and no doubt ages before - man had sought God in
strange and devious ways; hideous were some of his efforts to give expression by
outward manifestation to the spirit within him and needless it is here to trace
this seeking, down to the cradle of Christianity, borne on the cries of Isaiah,
ere the Jehovah of the tent became the God of the altar. Suffice it is to touch
upon the darkness that was upon the earth before the Son of Man poured forth His
flood of light by His divine axiom: "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies
and pray for them that persecute you that ye may be sons of your Father in
heaven." His words to mankind still mean for us the beginning of time. How long
have the years rolled on, and how blood-stained is the calendar!
Rome was ascendant.
She ruled the earth and the people bowed down and worshipped the Caesars. As
country after country was crushed and the people conquered they adopted the
worship of the Romans or gave careless lip service to their own. Isis, Osiris
and Horus competed with the gods of the Greeks, now fallen from Olympus, in the
temples of Rome - and above all stood the Caesar, god of all; the empire shone
externally but it was rotten at the core. There came the cleansing words of
Christ; "the blood of the martyrs" became "the seed of the Church."
There was no other
civilization but that of Rome and when the Christian faith was brought from the
catacombs to its triumph it knew no other form of adaptability than the Roman
law; drawing its religious element from Judea, its philosophy from the Greeks,
it took its constitutional organization from the Romans. Ranke, the great
German Protestant scholar, in his History of the Popes tells eloquently of how
Christ gave to the world its moral awakening:
"How obscure and
unpretentious was His life!" he exclaims, "His occupation was to heal the sick
and to discourse of God in parables with a few fishermen, who did not always
understand His words. He knew not where to lay His head. Yet, even from the
worldly point of view, whence we consider it, we may safely assert that nothing
more guileless or more impressive, more exalted or more holy, has ever been seen
on earth than were His life, His whole conversion, and His death. In every word
there breathes the pure life of God. They are words, as St. Peter expressed it,
of eternal life. The records of humanity present nothing that can be compared
however remotely with the life of Jesus.
"If the earlier forms
of belief had ever contained an element of true religion, this was now entirely
obscured; they no longer, as we have said, could pretend to the slightest
significance. In Him who united the nature of man with that of God, there shone
forth, in contrast with those shadows, the universal and eternal relation of God
to the world, and of man to God."
He continues:
"The church was at
first governed according to Republican forms but these disappeared as the new
belief rose to pre-eminence and the clergy gradually assumed a position entirely
distinct from that of the laity. . . .
"It was imperative on
the ecclesiastical body to form their constitution on the model of that of the
empire." . . . With the Caesars turned Christian, "Theodosius, the Great,
commands that all nations claiming the protection of his grace should receive
the faith as propounded by St. Peter to the Romans."
Such was the
beginning of the Christian church. When the Lombards, with other barbarians,
sought to destroy the church, Pepin the younger, of the Franks, went to the
rescue. To gain his aid the bishop of Rome gave the sanction of the church to
his title of king. Victorious, he tore from the Lombards lands which they had
conquered from the Roman empire, territory known as the Exarchate. This should
have been returned to emperor, but Pepin answered, to again quote Ranke, "that
for no favour of man had he entered the strife, but from veneration of St. Peter
alone, and in the hope of obtaining freedom from his sins." The keys of the
conquered towns be placed on altar of St. Peter, and "in this act he laid the
foundation of whole temporal power of the popes."
Enough of history.
Suffice to show that the spirit of times, the demands of emperors and kings made
necessary, seemingly so, a Caesarian form of government for the Christian
church. Democracy as we know it today was unknown. The republics of Greece and
Rome were Republics of the leisure or propertied classes, with slaves to be
bought or sold to do the work. Aristotle argues that without slavery there can
be philosophy - the slaves must work that the philosophers may think. Plato's
Republic provided slaves to do the work. Democracy came with the awakening of
the world following Reformation and the development of the printing press. The
church of Rome was the matrix for the faith of the Christian people, built 'tis
true in the spirit of its times, when 'twas said: "If you are in doubt appeal to
Caesar; when Caesar speaks matter is closed!"
Nor need we dwell
long, for our purpose, on the Reformation and the Thirty Years war over dogma,
with both sides hating blind bitterness - hating each other over how each should
expre his love for God! That the church fell into evil days even Roman Catholic
scholar does not deny.
"What," asks the
Roman Catholic Encyclopedia, "has the church of today to do with the fact that
long vanished generations inflicted, in the name of religion, cruelties with
which modern man is disgusted? The children's children cannot held accountable
for the misdeeds of their forefathers. Protestants must also take refuge in this
principle of justice. However much they endeavour to blink the fact, they have
also to regret similar occurrences during the Reformation epoch, when as
everybody knows, the Reformers and their successors made free use of the
existing penal ordinances and punished with death many inconvenient, and,
according to their views, heretical persons. Hundreds of faithful Roman
Catholics who fell victims to the Reformation in England are venerated today as
the English martyrs. The greater number of executions occurred not under Mary,
the Roman Catholic, but under Queen Elizabeth. It is, however, unjust to hold
modern Protestantism, in the one instance, and Roman Catholicism in the other,
responsible these atrocities."
I think even the most
casual student of history will agree that they were rough and ready and
passionate folks in those days, with the civil law and the moral law of the land
rising higher than to really enjoy frying martyrs over live coals. Both sides
did it with freedom and abandon and as to just which side did the most is
childish and endless argument. It would be sensible for the French people today
with their love of Joan of Arc to hate the English people because English
soldiers burned her alive. No church has ever risen above the spirit of the
people that go to make up that church; it cannot rise above the spirit of its
times; where there are a backward and an ignorant people you will find a
backward and an ignorant church, no matter what the denomination.
Let us go not back
into the Dark Ages, digging down into the dust of a dead past to find something
on which we can hinge a hate for living men, women and children!
Let us look to the
present and the future; and what have we?
To begin with, and to
get more directly into the subject Masonic toleration, have the opposition of
the Roman Catholic church to Masonry. Of what does that opposition consist? It
consists of a series of pronouncements directed to the members of the Roman
Catholic church against joining the Masonic Order; worded too harshly to sound
pleasantly to Protestant ears, but they are not directed to the ears of
Protestants but solely to members of the Roman Catholic church.
It is to be assuredly
agreed that no member of any other religion would follow as necessary any ruling
given by the papal authorities, that only devout Roman Catholics would adhere to
his orders. And it is to be further agreed by all Freemasons that there is a
fundamental law of the Order that no man shall be asked to join, but shall, of
his own free will and accord, make application. Therefore, what harm is done
Freemasonry because a certain leader of a certain denomination decrees that his
people should not join? The papal edicts against Freemasonry today mean no more
than if he were to issue an edict to the effect that no faithful member of the
Roman Catholic church should join the Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist or
Christian Scientist churches. Everybody would readily exclaim: "Why, certainly
not!"- and wonder what it was all about.
The fundamental
opposition of the church of Rome to Freemasonry is the fear of indifferentism:
"the indifferentism which equalizes all religions and gives equal rights to
truth and error," as Cardinal Manning expressed it. Because of the very process
of its organization and beginning, as briefly touched upon above, the Roman
Catholic Church feels that it has the one true religion. Masonry cannot adhere
to any such belief. As our own beloved Dr. Newton says in his eloquent book,
"The Builders": "Of no one religion, Masonry finds great truths in all
religions. Indeed it holds that truth which is common to all elevating and
benign religions, and is the basis of each; that faith which underlies all sects
and over-arches all creeds like the sky above and the river bed below the flow
of mortal years. It does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to settle
those questions or solve those dark mysteries which out-top human knowledge.
Beyond the facts of Faith it does not go. With the subtleties of speculation
concerning those truths and the unworldly envies growing out of them, it has not
to do. There divisions begin, and Masonry was not made to divide men, but to
unite them, leaving each man free to think his own thoughts and fashion his own
system of ultimate truth."
Now, here we have
clearly expressed the two points of opposition between Freemasonry and Roman
Catholicism. Pope Leo XIII said of Freemasonry: "By opening their gates to
persons of every creed they promote the great modern error of religious
indifference and of the parity of all worships, the best way to annihilate every
religion, especially the Roman Catholic, which being the one true one, cannot be
joined with others without enormous injustice."
Assuredly this should
not occasion quarrel. It is a striking fact of our civilization that no matter
how low a man may be or how poor his ancestry, common opinion gives that man the
right to display vigorous resentment of any aspersions cast on the character of
his mother. Almost all of us are born to our religions as we are born to our
mothers. We gain our faith as we gain life from a mother's breast; and we
should hold it as hallowed and sacred as we do the love of her who bore us - not
something to be brawled about and to be hating each other over.
It is regrettable
that some should hold that view of Freemasonry, that it leads to indifferentism,
not unlike Kipling's: "the more you 'ave known of the others, the less you will
settle to one." Freemasons know better. We devoutly believe that our Order
holds men close to their individual religious opinions; but the Roman Catholic
church leaders feel otherwise and in their judgment those of their faith should
not join. As religion is a matter of faith and not of mundane reasoning, as it
is something that transcends reason, therefore he who is born of Roman Catholic
parentage adheres to the faith of his fathers, and it would be grossly unmasonic
to question him in that faith and in his adherence to the edicts of his pope
whom he holds to be infallible on all matters of faith and morals. While it may
strike strangely on Protestant ears, the doctrines of the Protestant sects, we
may rest assured, strike as strangely on his.
"Creeds" says
H.Fielding, "are the grammar of religion, they are to religion what grammar is
to speech. Words are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed
after-wards. Speech never proceeded from grammer but the reverse. As speech
progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammer must follow."
William James, the
greatest of American philosophers (and certainly no supporter of the Roman
faith), expresses thought more in detail, in his masterly volume, "Varieties of
Religious Experiences."
"Men need formulas
just as much as they need fellowship in worship," writes James. "It enriches
our bare piety to carry these exalted and mysterious verbal additions just as it
enriches a church to have an organ and old brasses, marbles and frescoes and
stained windows. Epithets lend an atmosphere an overtones to our devotion.
They are like a hymn of praise an service of glory, and may sound the more
sublime for being incomprehensible. . . . Although some persons aim most at
intellectual purity and simplification, for others richness is the supreme
imaginative requirement. When one's mind is strongly of this type, an
individual religion will hardly serve the purpose. The inner need is rather of
something institutional and complex, majestic in the hierarchic interrelatedness
of its parts with authority descending from stage to stage, and at every stage
objects for adjectives of mystery and splendour, derived the last resort from
the Godhead who is the fountain and culmination of the system. One feels then
as if in the presence of some vast encrusted work of jewelry or architecture;
one hears the multitudinous liturgical appeal; one gets the honorific vibration
coming from every quarter. Compared with such noble complexity, in which
ascending and descending movements seem in no way to jar upon stability, in
which no single item, however humble, is insignificant, because so many august
institutions hold it in its place, how flat does Evangelical Protestantism
appear, how bare the atmosphere of those isolated religious lives whose boast is
that 'man in the bush with God may meet.' What a pulverization and levelling of
what a gloriously piled-up structure! To an imagination used to the perspective
of dignity and glory, the naked gospel seems to offer an almshouse for a
palace.
"It is much like the
patriotic sentiment of those brought up in ancient empires. How many emotions
must be frustrated in their object, when one gives up the titles of dignity, the
crimson lights and blare of brass, the gold embroidery, the plumed troops, the
fear and trembling, and puts up with a president in a black silk coat who shakes
hands with you, and comes, it may be, from a 'home' upon a veldt or prairie with
one sitting room and a Bible on its centertable. It pauperizes the monarchial
imagination!
"The strength of
these aesthetic sentiments makes it rigorously impossible, it seems to me, that
Protestantism, however superior in spiritual profundity it may be to Roman
Catholicism, should at the present day succeed in making many converts from the
more venerable ecclesiasticism. The latter offers so much richer pasturage and
shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different kinds of honey, is
so indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature, that Protestantism will
always show to Roman Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter
negativity of it to the Roman Catholic mind is incomprehensible. To intellectual
Roman Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs and practices to which the Roman
Catholic church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish as they
are to Protestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense of 'childlike'
- innocent and amiable and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the
undeveloped condition of the dear people's intellects. To the Protestant on the
contrary they are childlike in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must
stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Roman Catholic to
shudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were
some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand
each other - their centers of emotional energy are too different. Rigorous
truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of a mutual interpreter.
. . . How can any possible judge or critic help being biased in favour of the
religion by which his own needs are best met? He aspires to impartiality; but he
is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree a participant, and he is
sure to approve most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste most
good and prove most nourishing to him.
In other words, that
we may grasp it more readily, let us take the Roman Catholic ritual as a
symbolism, an eagerness to express the soul within by the outward manifestation
of signs and allegories: that is all it is to the devout Roman Catholic. Down,
each in his own heart, the devout Roman Catholic and the devout Protestant
Freemason, simple and unafraid in his faith, differs in no way, other than in
symbolism - and church symbolism is the clothes of religion. Why quarrel about
the clothes? Assuredly the narrow and the ill-bred on each side will, but that
is something to be regretted and not to be emulated.
The Romanist has his
symbols and we of Freemasonry have ours; yet each teaches the fundamental
philosophy that these forms shall pass, that the spirit alone keeps step with
the march of eternity. The soul of Hiram springs from his grave and cries out,
"My name is Acacia!" and down through the endless ages, there comes the voice of
Divinity, saying, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." In form we are far
apart: "for now we see through a glass darkly": but in spirit, if we but have
faith and charity, we are as one. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal."
"But," someone
interrupts, "the Roman Catholic church still adheres to its age-old contention
of temporal power and now seeks by its 'invisible empire' to again control the
world. It is this that members of the Protestant faiths fear."
Let us examine the
menace to see how solid is the ground on which our fears are based; for hatred
is born of fear and hate is chiefly what is wrong with our world today. Let us
consider statistics for a moment to judge properly the size of the threat which
is made against the fruits of the Reformation.
In fact, let us get
away from ourselves and our little sphere of life and get to the top of some
high mountain and there take in the world as a whole. Our statistics are taken
from the World Almanac.
There are, according
to the latest estimates, 1,702,520,366 people in the world today.
Of this total,
576,000,000 are of the Christian faith.
Of the Christian
faith there are 288,000,000 Romanists and 167,000,000 Protestants. The Greek
church has 121,000,000.
One billion and
several hundred million are not Christian.
In the United States
there are 105,683,000 people. Of these there are but 15,721,815 who are
Catholic.
Now, the problem
resolves itself down to this: how will a relative handful of 288,000,000 Roman
Catholics, scattered over the face of the earth, seize the reins of the world
from a billion, seven hundred million people? How will 15,721,815 men, women and
children of any denomination control America?
In the fifteenth
century, the total population of Europe was estimated at 50 millions. Today it
is 464 millions. In the centuries when the pope had temporal power and swayed
kingdoms and peoples even as did the Caesars, the human race lived in a static
world. Men seldom moved from the towns in which they were born; only a few
hardy adventurers blazed the way around the world. Men lived and died without
ever knowing what went on perhaps in the next town to them. Kings and lords and
churchmen ruled the world and the people were dumb, inert as the beasts in the
field: "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die." Even down into our
own day and age the world stood almost still. Seventy-five years ago it took
three weary months for a message to go across the Atlantic; today it takes three
seconds. The ships of John Paul Jones could travel no faster nor were they
better manned than were the ships of the Phoenicians; the soldiers of Napoleon
could travel no faster than could the soldiers of Hannibal; the messengers of
George Washington could carry tidings no faster than could the messengers of
Julius Caesar.
All that is changed.
Today we live in a
little world, a globe made small by the inventive genius of mankind. The earth
is covered by a fine gauze of electrically charged copper wires that tell the
story of all the world every twenty-four hours. A century ago a newspaper was a
rarity and its news was months old. It was weeks before the press of England
heard of the battle Waterloo a few miles away. Today the census shows there
more than one and a half billion copies of newspapers publish yearly in the
United States alone. We live in a new and a thinking world; if any denomination
or sect or order or faith ever again denominates the civilized globe it will be
by the triumph the spirit of truth alone and not by external domination. But
let us get back again to statistics.
The two largest Roman
Catholic nations of the world today are France and Italy. France has a
population of 41,500,000 people. No religious census has been taken since 1872
but best non-Roman Catholic authorities estimate that 75 per cent are members of
the Roman church. Let us look then into its political being and see how much
the church of Rome has had do with the government of that country. For the past
quarter of a century its premiers and its government have been non-Roman
Catholic: Briand, Viviani, Clemenceau, Millerand now Briand again-all are
outside the papal church.
In Italy we find an
even more interesting case. It was great political genius, Cavour, who broke
the last link of pope's hold an temporal power. The story can be found any
standard history on the uniting of Italy. He gave voice his historic utterance,
"a free state and a free church," with Mazzini and Garibaldi he brought the
warring states of Italy together into a great nation, took from the pope the
lands he had held since the days of Pepin, the younger, and made the pope a
self-elected "prisoner of the Vatican." In the very shadow of the Vatican the
people of Rome, under a plebiscite conducted in 1870, voted by a ballot of
134,000 to 1,500 to join Italy, the new nation. This is still the condition in
the land of the ancient Caesars. And yet, of Italy's population of less than
40,000,000 there are 32,983,664 members of the Roman Catholic church.
What, then, is this
fear of the Roman Catholic church seeking domination? The people of its own
faith have shown in its two largest countries that they stand for a separate
church and a separate state.
Japan is the third
largest power in the world today. It has a population of 78,263,000 aggressive
and progressive citizens of a non-Christian faith. There are more than a
billion others who do not come under the banners of the Christian church. Is it
not time the followers of the lowly Nazarene ceased their childish bickering
with each other, overlooked each other's pettiness, and sought for the spirit of
His teachings and not grounds on which to quarrel over how they disagree about
the form?
As long ago as 1643,
John Milton exclaimed:
"How many other
things might be tolerated in peace left to conscience had we but charity and
were it not the chief stronghold of our hyprocrisy to be ever judging one
another!"
As my favourite
Scotch songster sings so well: "We're a going home the same way"; so are we all
going in our chosen route to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveller returns. We're all going home - all on our way to Beulah land of John
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. How shall we go? The modern Pilgrim would take an
auto; let us least use the symbolism.
The old gentleman in
the big car thinks he is driving in majestic Rolls-Royce and looks down upon the
rest in compassion not unmixed with annoyance that "these flivvers" should be
scooting along his highway. What the Roman gentleman sese as "flivvers" we see
as simple, powerfully built and altogether beautiful cars of our own design
which we insist on driving ourselves. He cannot understand how some of "our
side," being not all together well-mannered and perhaps out of patience at his
insistence on his being the only machine, possess the temerity to yell at him
and call his car an "ancient circus wagon." Such scolding and unkindness on the
highroad of life is unseemly. It is a violation of the law and the spirit of the
highway. Let each forgive the other in the order of his peculiarity. The road
is very rough and very long and there are many tempting detours. We, all of us,
have all we can do to keep on our own way, without seeking to find faults in the
other.
Some little while ago
there was a convention of Episcopalian bishops in the city of Detroit and as
Cardinal Mercier, the heroic figure of Belgium's struggle against the German
army, was in the city the Roman prelate was asked to address the convention.
There was considerable curiosity among the laymen present as to how he would
first address the Protestant bishops. He held out his long thin hands as though
in benediction and in a deep, quiet voice opened his remarks by calling to them:
"Brothers in Christ."
He bespoke the true
spirit of Toleration; that toleration which is willing to overlook differences
in dogma in seeking for the inward spirit.
Let us turn for a
moment to that standard authority of the Roman church, the Roman Catholic
Encyclopedia. "The man who is tolerant in every emergency is alone lovable and
wins the hearts of his fellow man," it says. "Such tolerance is all the more
estimable in one whose royal practice of his own faith wards off all suspicion
of unbelief or religious indifference, and whose friendly bearing towards the
heterodox, emanates from pure neighbourly charity and a strict sense of
justice. It is also an indisputable requisite for the maintenance of friendly
intercourse and cooperation among a people composed of different religious
denominations, and is the root of religious peace in the state. It should
therefore be prized and promoted by the civil authorities as a safeguard to
public weal, for a warfare of all against all, destructive of the state itself,
must again break out, if citizens be allowed to assail one another on account of
religious differences. A person who by extensive travel and large experience
has become acquainted with the world and men and with the finer forms of life
does not easily develop into a heretic hunter, a sadly incongruous figure in the
modern world."
We certainly do not
like the wording of some of the papal edicts against the Masonic order; they
sound rather rough on us, but we must remember they are not directed to us but
to the members of that faith to warn them against what the church fears is
indifferentism. The ecclesiastical language is medieval and the bark is worse
than the bite. "The ancient expression, 'heretical poison'," says the same
encyclopedia, "which has passed from canon law into the set phraseology of the
papal chancery and quite naturally sounds hard to the Protestant is not intended
to express any offensive slur on the heterodox who adhere to their opinions in
good faith and in honest conviction."
But, taking all that
the most narrow minded man who happens to be in the Roman Catholic church has to
say about and against Masonry, should we not pity him in his plight of being so
handicapped by the blinkers he wears? Or should we also don blinkers so that we
can only look in one direction - and that straight at him - and reduce ourselves
to his limited view? Rather, opening our eyes, seeing the whole glorious world
and all its future before us, we gain a the perspective on man's narrowness and
go on our way, not in blind anger and hate, but in love and compassion.
I once was asked to
write an article on the Roman church as the "enemy" of Freemasonry; my answer
was, and is, that Freemasonry in this day of quick spreading of intelligence, in
a dawning era of the ready exchange of world ideas and ideals, has no enemy
except that which it creates for itself: that enemy being a narrowness of
outlook, a refusal to look at facts in co-relation to their true values and a
hatred born of fears unfounded. Hate is the child of fear and fear is too often
found within us when we lack faith in ourselves. We have nothing to fear if we
"have faith that right makes might; and in that faith dare to do our duty as we
understand it."
The genius of
Freemasonry is that it welcomes, in a spirit of brotherly love and affection,
men of all creeds to its altars if they but confess a sincere and an abiding
faith in God; nor does it ask them more. Do we not then but vitiate our Masonic
birthright by hating a man who by accident of birth, let us say, holds to
religious views that are different than ours, religious views that will not
permit him to kneel at our altars? Nor need we sneer at his church and his
dogmatism, which is as sacred to him as is ours, even though he does hold to
views that we think harsh toward us; not by returning malediction for
malediction can we keep our spiritual faith and our intellectual freedom. If we
seek to ennoble the souls of men, we must look well into our own hearts for the
purity that is there, |
